APPS,DATA AND ECONOMIC GROWTH.

A San Francisco-based startup has sent out data collectors armed with just an Android phone, to harvest real-time economic data as and where it happens. From the price of onions in Indian cities to delayed infrastructure projects in rural China, Premise data is, for the first time, giving governments, investors and NGOs an accurate glimpse of what is happening on the ground. Premise was founded in 2012 by an American former investment analyst, David Soloff, now 46, who realized that a large amount of developing-world economic data, on which big institutions were basing their risk and funding decisions, was significantly out of date by the time it reached their desks The company's real strength is to zoom in to spot specific issues on the ground, work that has already helped the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) identify 
food shortages before they happen. The company's first client, when it was still in stealth mode in 2013, was Bloomberg, which streamed Premise's food-staples indices for the US, China, India, Argentina and Brazil to analysts' screens. From then on, the company grew fast, attracting clients such as Standard Chartered bank, which uses data supplied by Premise to publish a food-price index for Nigeria and Ghana. Premise now has data-gatherers situated across 34 countries, has raised $66.5 million (£45m) in VC funding and, so far, has paid out $3 million to its contributors on the ground. The Premise app is designed to run on the often-outdated versions of the Android OS that are common in the developing world. (The company says 30 per cent of the phones the app is running on are "vintage" – older than 2012.) Each week, collectors receive a new list of items they need to record. It is up to them when they go out and complete it, though the system is designed to understand their individual work patterns and preferences, and to hand out jobs accordingly. Premise now processes about 42,000 images per day, each of which is vetted for accuracy. The app can be used to predict economic changes as seen last year when it asked its collectors in Venezuela to photograph the lengths of queues outside supermarkets, gaps on shelves and signage that indicated rationing, to see the true effect of falling oil prices on the country's food supply. The government was painting a rosier picture and it predicted the outcome of Brazil's 2014 presidential election by counting the number of posters for rival candidates on the streets of the country's cities. Source;wired.co.uk

CALIFORNIA SEA LION PUP RESCUED AND RETURNED TO WILD.

A young California sea lion found malnourished and injured inside a waterfront San Diego restaurant was returned to the wild on Tuesday, after eight weeks of rehabilitative care at Sea World’s animal rescue center. The female sea lion pup, nicknamed Marina, made headlines when she was discovered huddled in a booth at the Marine Room, a white-tablecloth eatery known for its gourmet seafood menu, in early February. She was one of many hundreds of sea lions, mostly pups, to turn up starving and stranded along the California coast since last year, apparently the result of warming seas that have disrupted the marine mammals’ food chain. At the time of her rescue, Marina, then 8 months old, weighed only about 20 pounds (9 kg), about half the ideal weight for her age, and was suffering from an eye injury of unknown origin, according to Sea World. After being nursed back to health, her eye healed, Marina was taken by boat, along with eight recently rescued and rehabilitated sea lions to be returned home in the Pacific, 12 miles to 14 miles (19 km to 23 km) off the coast of San Diego, Sea World said. source; News daily.com

ZIKA VIRUS AND NERVE CELL INFECTION.

Top Zika investigators now believe that the birth defect microcephaly and the paralyzing Guillain-Barre syndrome may be just the most obvious maladies caused by the mosquito-borne virus. Fueling that suspicion are recent discoveries of serious brain and spinal cord infections – including encephalitis, meningitis and myelitis – in people exposed to Zika. Evidence that Zika’s damage may be more varied and widespread than initially believed adds pressure on affected countries to control mosquitoes and prepare to provide intensive – and, in some cases, lifelong – care to more patients. The newly suspected disorders can cause paralysis and permanent disability – a clinical outlook that adds urgency to vaccine development efforts. Scientists are of two minds about why these new maladies have come into view. The first is that, as the virus is spreading through such large populations, it is revealing aspects of Zika that went unnoticed in earlier outbreaks in remote and sparsely populated areas. The second is that the newly detected disorders are more evidence that the virus has evolved. “What we’re seeing are the consequences of this virus turning from the African strain to a pandemic strain,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. The suspicion that Zika acts directly on nerve cells began with autopsies on aborted and stillborn fetuses showing the virus replicating in brain tissues. In addition to microcephaly, researchers reported finding other abnormalities linked with Zika including fetal deaths, placental insufficiency, fetal growth retardation and injury to the central nervous system. Doctors also are worried that Zika exposure in utero may have hidden effects, such as behavioral problems or learning disabilities, that are not apparent at birth. “If you have a virus that is toxic enough to produce microcephaly in someone, you could be sure that it will produce a whole series of conditions that we haven’t even begun to understand,” said Dr. Alberto de la Vega, an obstetrician at San Juan’s University Hospital in Puerto Rico. A rare and poorly understood condition, Guillain-Barre can weaken muscles and cause temporary paralysis, often requiring patients to need respirators to breathe. Guillain-Barre is an autoimmune disorder, in which the body attacks itself in the aftermath of an infection. The newly discovered brain and spinal cord infections are known to be caused by a different mechanism – a direct attack on nerve cells. That has prompted scientists to consider whether the Zika virus also may infect nerves directly in adults, as they already have suspected in fetuses In medical journals published last month, doctors described neurological syndromes in two patients that they attributed to Zika. Doctors in Paris diagnosed meningoencephalitis, an infection of both the brain and spinal cord, in an 81-year-old man who was hospitalized after being exposed to Zika on a cruise. Another French team reported acute myelitis, a paralyzing infection of the spinal cord, in a 15-year-old girl who had been infected with Zika on the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. In its latest surveillance report, the WHO said the two cases “highlight the need to better understand the range of neurological disorders associated with Zika-virus infection.” Other mosquito-borne viruses – including dengue, Japanese encephalitis and West Nile – are known to directly infect nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. But such viruses are seldom associated with Guillain-Barre, and never with microcephaly, said Baylor’s Hotez. Read more at http://newsdaily.com/2016/04/zika-mystery-deepens-with-evidence-of-nerve-cell-infections/#Y57C3WqytSrm3AEj.99

DOCTORS USE GENETICALLY MODIFIED ADENO VIRUS TO ATTACK TUMOR CELLS.

Researchers in Argentina say they have genetically modified an adenovirus – which can cause colds, conjunctivitis and bronchitis – to home in on cancer, killing tumor cells in patients without harming healthy tissue. Scientific journal Nature reported in October last year that cancer-fighting viruses had started to win approval. Dr. Osvaldo Podhjacer, Chief of the Laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Therapy at the Fundacion Instituto Leloir in Buenos Aires, and his team developed an ‘oncolytic’ virus designed to target both malignant cells and tumor-associated stromal cells. This is a virus, which, by genetic modification, we have restricted their infectivity exclusively to malignant cells. In spite of the fact that originally, the virus can infect normal cells and cause colds, conjunctivitis and bronchitis. There is need for immunotherapy, because in addition to the changes made to restrict the infection only to malignant cells, it also has a gene that exacerbates the immune response. Then there is a direct attack on the tumor initial and an additional immunological response which in principle eliminates the residual tumor, which was not eliminated by the virus and disseminated metastases. “These viruses are very effective in pre-clinical models of cancer, we have tested and in particular, ovarian cancer and melanoma but we also have other viruses for pancreatic and colon rectal cancer. These are non-toxic and they are as important as their therapeutic efficacy, where we have managed to reverse the levels of liver enzymes to a normal level with animals that have a tumor. These levels become very high due to the toxicity. In general terms, it allows us to qualify this virus as an ideal candidate to be taken to a clinical trial in humans beings, Read more at http://newsdaily.com/2016/04/gm-adenovirus-used-by-doctors-to-attack-tumor-cells/#mFksmxHRsSPdOXiV.99

ALGAE, LIVESTOCK FEED AND THE IMPACT ON ENVIRONMENT.

A new study shows that widespread use of algae in animal feed could help limit the rise in global temperature to 2 degrees Celsius by 2100 and possibly even turn back the clock, bringing atmospheric carbon concentrations down to pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. The study, "New feed sources key to ambitious climate targets," published in the December 2015 issue of Carbon Balance and Management, details how the cultivation of algae for feed could free up millions of acres currently used to produce pasture and feed crops, reducing the tension that exists between food security and bioenergy crops. When combined with a modest application of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) this approach can lead to dramatic reductions in atmospheric carbon. Algae's ability to consume waste CO2 from power plants, grow prolifically in waste or salt water and provide protein and oils makes it an incredible resource.The study shows that algae cultivation can play an outsized role in limiting greenhouse gas concentrations to levels that can avert the worst consequences of global warming, while also meeting the challenge of sustain ably feeding a growing world population. The findings show that alga culture adopted at any scale would have a direct effect on greenhouse gas emissions and that its promise exceeds that of other biomass solutions, which not only face competition for arable land, but could affect land that is currently acting as a carbon sink. Algae-based feeds have been proven to be equal to or better than other feed stocks in nutritional value and digestibility, and could free large swaths of arable land and simultaneously address food security issues in an era of rising demand for animal proteins. Research has already shown that algae can be used as a highly effective component of animal feed, and can be produced with much smaller land and water inputs. Algae feeding in livestock has demonstrated enormous benefits in terms of growth,productivity and cost of production. read more from ; previous posts.

HOW TO GENERATE DATA FOR FOOD SECURITY USING APPS, PHOTOS AND FOOD PRICES.

A San Francisco-based startup has sent out data collectors armed with just an Android phone, to harvest real-time economic data as and where it happens. From the price of onions in Indian cities to delayed infrastructure projects in rural China,


Premise data is, for the first time, giving governments, investors and NGOs an accurate glimpse of what is happening on the ground.

 In the Butantã branch of Extra, the Brazilian supermarket chain, in the western suburbs of São Paulo, Sandra Morais, 37, is taking photos of bags of rice.

She's not some retail Instagrammer or an obsessive foodie, but one of 25,000 data collectors that a San Francisco-based startup called premise.

 The aim is to ascertain which products are available , at what price and quantities available and location available to facilitate proper planning .

 Premise was founded in 2012 by an American former investment analyst, David Soloff, now 46, who realized that a large amount of developing-world economic data, on which big institutions were basing their risk and funding decisions, was significantly out of date by the time it reached their desks.

PIG HEART TRANSPLANT FOR BABOON .

Scientists have kept a pig heart alive in a baboon for more than two years, the work described in the journal Nature Communications.The result could boost hopes for the successful transplantation of animal organs into people, amid a shortage of human donors. Cross-species transplants provoke a powerful immune reaction, leading to rejection of the organ by the host. The a US-German team used a combination of gene modification and immune-suppressing drugs to achieve success. This is very significant because it makes the method one step closer to using these organs in humans . Muhammad Mohiuddin, from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Maryland, told the AFP news agency. "Xeno transplants - organ transplants between different species - could potentially save thousands of lives each year that are lost due to a shortage of human organs for transplantation." Dr Mohiuddin and colleagues used a previously established line of donor pigs with three genetic modifications that allowed for a degree of immune tolerance in recipient baboons. A combination of antibodies and drugs were then used to help prevent rejection of pig hearts transplanted into five baboons. The hearts did not replace those of the monkeys, but were connected to the circulatory system via two large blood vessels in the baboon abdomen. The transplanted heart beat like a normal heart, but the baboon's own heart continued the function of pumping blood - a known method in studying organ rejection. The median (or "middle") survival time was 298 days, while the maximum survival was 945 days - just over two-and-a-half years. This exceeded previous records by the same group of researchers of 180 and 500 days, respectively. Given their genetic proximity to humans, primates were initially thought to be the best donor candidates. But there is no large source of captive-bred apes - which take long to grow and mature, and some, like chimpanzees, are endangered. Their genetic closeness also poses a higher danger of inter-species disease transmission, as well as ethical questions. Pigs have since emerged as better donors as their hearts are anatomically similar to ours. They pose a lower risk in terms of disease transmission and they mature fast. The team opines that this regimen appears potentially safe for human application for patients suffering from end-stage organ failure who might be candidates for initial trials of xeno transplantation. source; wired.co.uk