The Wiki entry for R rosea says it may be effective for improving mood and alleviating depression and early stage studies on people have shown some efficacy in improving physical and mental performance, alleviating fatigue, and reducing high-altitude sickness. A possible mode of action involves what the entry describes as, “optimizing serotonin and dopamine levels”. This apparently happens by inhibition of the enzyme monoamine oxidase, which supposedly ties in with an effect on endorphins, the body’s natural opiates. However, this is pure speculation rather than having basis in published scientific studies.

According to the latest press release I received today, R rosea is a remarkable story, the story of how a traditional herbal remedy from Sweden became the force behind Soviet Olympic athletes and cosmonauts. The Swedish Herbal Institute has even done what the email claims is “hard” research, unusually for a herbal product, in the form of double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trials. The SHI holds a trademark on an extract of R rosea, referring to it as Arctic Root (SHR-5). So, their research is not without designs on the herbal remedies market. It is also sold in the US as ADAPT 232.

The press release highlights a previously published article by a science journalist and says that, “the roots appear to aid the brain by alertness and energy, without any trace of stimulants such as caffeine.” I find that phrase a little irritating. If the root has efficacy in stimulating the brain, then by definition it is a stimulant. It is irrelevant that it does not contain caffeine, why should it, there are dozens of natural products that act as stimulants that aren’t caffeine?

I asked the author of the press release, Linda Todten of publicity company TMC Communications, to explain exactly what the description was intended to convey, this is what she had to say:

As you know, the trend is for “energy drinks” that combine large amounts of caffeine, or caffeine containing plants such as Guarana, along with high amounts of carbs for a big “energy boost.” The studies that the Swedes and Russians have done over the years have shown how this category of plant, the Adaptogen, can actually bring the body back to its full energy level without being over stimulated as happens with caffeine. Plus, the extract SHR-5 has been shown to have a very solid mental acuity boost via double-blind, placebo controlled studies in students or night shift physicians and others.

So, this plant is an adaptogen, by definition “one that has no ill effects on the body at all - no interaction with pharmaceuticals - and yet which appear to have a normalizing influence on the body and brain.”

I’m afraid that sounds like wishful thinking to me. Previously, adaptogens were known as rejuvenating herbs, qi tonics, rasayanas, or restoratives, which sounds like a product of the Victorian sanitorium era or a dubious backstreet apothecary? Any product that has an apparently direct influence on brain enzymes, or enzymes anywhere else in the body for that matter, is not going to be without side-effects. Our bodies are far too complicated for that. It would be an incredible impossible coincidence that we could find a compound in nature that was perfectly adapted to improve our health but produce no byproducts and have no side effects. Life’s just not like that.

More to the point, the plant root contains a variety of natural products including rosavin, rosarin, rosin and salidroside (and sometimes p-tyrosol, rhodioniside, rhodiolin and rosiridin), which are claimed to be the active ingredients of R rosea. These compounds are polyphenols, they may have some antioxidant activity but have no proven health benefits in humans.

I realise, of course, that people can become desperate, especially when they or their loved ones are suffering, but simple herbs with
no
medicinal activity
are not a panaceaherbs with no medicinal activity are not a panacea. R rosea products are now being marketed in the USA and elsewhere. Todten had this suggestion: “Think about the fact that this one product (Arctic Root brand) has sold over 400 million doses. Not many dietary supplements can claim that. That says, to me, that people must like the way it works to reduce stress or energize,” she told me. “People are not sheep, and they wouldn’t make a product a best seller in Europe over ten years with hundreds of millions taken if it didn’t do something that they liked!”

Well, actually, that says to me that the herbal marketeers (do they call themselves adaptogenicists yet? Or Adaptopaths perhaps?) are very good at marketing and must be jumping for joy all the way to the bank as consumers unaware of the fundamentals of biochemistry lap up this abundant weed in the hope of boosting their brains, staying fit, and living longer.

Rhodiola rosea

According to the press blurb that came with my review copy of the book, he’s a visiting scientist at Florida Institute of Technology. Now, I can find FIT on the web, but I cannot find Witt at FIT. Anyway, he puts forward an intriguing, if not entirely original, idea that modern physics requires a paradigm shift back to common sense thinking and a logical reconnection between observation and theory.

There is, Witt says, a disconnect between the two in our current Big Bang theory of the origins of the universe. In Our Undiscovered Universe, Witt puts forward the hypothesis that the universe is static and not expanding, and rouses various equations to explain away the red shift of distant cosmic objects and concepts such as dark matter and dark energy. Likewise there is a disconnect between the purportedly irrational quantum world and the reality we observe.

Perhaps there are almost as many loopholes in modern physics as there are wormholes and maybe it is possible to tangle up any scientific model with enough string to fill a universe. But, Witt’s is too comfortable a conclusion, that the universe does not rely on any unknowable precursors in the untestable past and will not grow old, collapse or die, but is an unimaginably large cosmic engine. Moreover, his null hypothesis suggests that “our universe actually is, the only thing it could possibly be: the internal structure of nothingness.”

So, you might ask, what is Witt’s evidence for this concept? He explains that evidence of the Null Axiom is everywhere:

• Matter and antimatter are always created in equal, yet opposite amounts whose electrical sum is zero
• Positive and negative electric fields sum to a neutral universe with zero net electrical charge
• Energy is conserved in all interactions; the magnitude of the universe’s energy has zero change
• Space is a collection of points, little bits of nothingness itself, which embodies a geometric zero - Null
• Charge must be conserved in particle interactions; the sum of the difference between charges is zero
• Momentum is conserved, so the universe’s net momentum remains constant at zero

I put a few questions to Witt on behalf of Sciencebase readers. First off, I asked him to describe null physics briefly.

Null physics is a bottom-up theory built upon the solution to the ontological dilemma: why does the universe exist [instead of nothing]? The solution - that our universe is composed of nothing - leads directly to the four-dimensional geometry of which energy and space are composed. Null physics is the study and quantification of this geometry and its larger ramifications. In contrast to modern physics’ top-down, heuristic approach, which uses measurements and mathematical symmetries to build models that conform to empirical reality, null physics derives empirical reality, such as the magnitude of unit elementary charge and the range and strength of the strong force, through calculations applied to the topology of a fully known underlying geometry.

I put it to Witt that because his theory is a blend of philosophy and science, that might be a double-edged sword?

Not at all. What we currently call physics originally began as natural philosophy. Physics replaced natural philosophy because it provided an accurate mathematical description of the macroscopic scale of the physical world. This set the stage for untold advances in engineering and technology, but many of the foundational questions that natural philosophy confronted, such as why the universe exists and why matter is composed of discrete particles, were lost in this transition, leaving us with empty mathematical models. Null physics is the best of both worlds, fusing a deep understanding of physical reality (as geometry) with empirical validation. The geometry used in Null physics is derived using logic and reasoning similar to that employed by natural philosophy, but has no philosophical component in its final geometric formulation.

Of course, there are other theories around that suggest the universe did not begin with the Big Bang, I asked Witt, what makes his stand out among them?

Sweeping unification and empirical validation. Unlike other non-Big Bang theories, null cosmology is falsifiable, provides testable predictions, and gives a full accounting of the many nuanced properties of the intergalactic redshift and CMB. It also, unlike any cosmology before it (including the Big Bang), provides a logical reason for the universe’s existence and a clear framework that unifies a wide variety of known galactic properties with the large-scale universe. And in keeping with true scientific progress, the unification provided by null cosmology illuminates a number of currently unknown galactic properties, such as the vortical motion of a galaxy’s disk material.

Finally, I was still curious about the philosophical implications and asked about what this theory can tell us of our place in the universe.

It tells us everything about our place in the universe. It tells us why and how we exist on a finite scale that, because of space’s intrinsic symmetry, must exist precisely midway between infinite largeness and smallness. It tells us that the universe is, through causality and sheer size, large enough to contain its own history. In fact the universe must contain its own history, because each and every moment of our lives is integral to ultra-large-scale structure. Perhaps most importantly, null physics demonstrates that our existence is neither accident nor design - it is inevitable.

Convinced?

His theory has an additional redeeming feature for people hoping to eradicate the ultimate irrational explanation in that it closes the door on a designer. If the universe has always existed and always will exist, then how could a creator have any role to play at all? My cynical brain suspects that this could be one of the motives for the resurrection of the static universe theories that are springing up at regular intervals. Witt is not the first to try to defuse the Big Bang. In the final, and I use the word lightly, given that apparently there is no final, Witt’s conclusion could be summed up with the naive parent’s riposte to the childish question: Why are we here? Because we’re here!

How to Discover Our Universe

Alcohol blamed for oral cancer risk - A large-scale statistical analysis of mouth and throat cancer incidence over a long period of time has looked at possible correlations between exposure to industrial chemicals, dust and alcoholic beverages in a wide variety of individuals in different occupations across Finland. The perhaps surprising conclusion drawn is that alcohol consumption rather than industrial chemicals or dusts is the critical factor associated with this form of cancer. Get the full story in this week’s edition of my SpectroscopyNOW column here.

I suppose it’s a little ironic that in the same edition of Spec Now, I’m also writing about how to make beer taste fresher and last longer on the shelf. NMR spectroscopy, and a chromatography sniff test have yielded results that could help brewers improve the flavour and shelf-life of beer thanks to work by scientists in Venezuela. The team has identified alpha-dicarbonyls as important compounds that reduce beer’s flavour and point to a new approach to brewing beer that stays fresher, longer. Take a sip here…

Meanwhile, another subject of mixed messages regarding health benefits is that perennial favourite chocolate. To maintain the seductive and lustrous brown gloss of chocolate, so enticing to chocoholics the world over, food technologists must find a way to prevent fat bloom from forming on the surface and turning the surface an unappealing grey. Now, scientists from Canada and Sweden have found new clues to understanding the microstructure of chocolate and what happens when it turns grey with age. More…

Finally, some straight chemistry with absolutely no hint of biomedicine, health, or pharmaceutical implications (yet). A novel structure studied using X-ray crystallography hints at the possibility of a carbon atom that, at first site seems to be a little different from the conventional textbook view. Could the oldest rule of organic chemistry have been broken at last, or is low atomic separation being equated too keenly with the presence of a bond, or could there be something else afoot, as Steve Bachrach suggests? Read on…

Alcohol Causes Cancer

My latest science news write-ups on the SpectroscopyNOW portal are now up for grabs. This week, I cover the apparent gender gap when it comes to computer games, how Japanese researchers are using near-infrared light to probe young women’s brains to find out if they can reduce stress and potentially acne with pleasant fragrances, and the discovery that cancer cells seem to be stuffed full of the dreaded trans fats. You can find my other spec news from this week linked in the Sciencebase Geeky Bits column.

However, I want to step back a little with respect to that video games research. The team used the apparently powerful technique of functional MRI (basically a brain scan that can spot changes and lights up active regions of the brain). The researchers devised a very simple computer game, a kind of cross between Tetris and Pong (without the bats). To win you had to gain territory. The researchers scanned the brains of males and females while they played this game. Their results showed that men and women got the game, but the men were sharper when it came to realising you had to use a particular strategy to gain the most territory.

What was most interesting to Allan Reiss and colleagues at Stanford University School of Medicine who carried out the research was that the region of the brain associated with rewarding feelings lit up the most in the males than in the females. This, the researchers say, suggests a possible explanation as to why males enjoy, and even become addicted to, video games more commonly than females. “These gender differences
may
help explain
why males are
more attracted
to, and more
likely to become ‘hooked’
on video games than femalesgender differences may help explain why males are more attracted to, and more likely to become ‘hooked’ on video games than females,” Reiss explains in the Journal of Psychiatric Research.

Now, I take issue with the fundamental assumption that Reiss and his colleagues make regarding video games. While historically video games have been aimed almost squarely at boys, the manufacturers over the last few years have recognised that they only corner half the potential market with such a biased aim. As such, they have developed dozens of new types of games that are not of the familiar war and killing fantasy type. They have also remodelled their hardware to offer colours and skins that will appeal to females, the pink and white Nintendos, for instance, generally appeal to the female market more than the blue.

More to the point though, my ten-year old daughter and dozens, if not all, of her friends have taken to Nintendos, Wiis, Playstations, Tamagotchi, just as addictively as their male counterparts, fighting for screen time on their various devices and computers. Admittedly, the games they play are more frequently of the SingStar, Petz, and Sims kind as opposed to Halo, World of Warcraft etc. They also network with each other online in various online games with small furry animals rather than three-eyed aliensonline games with small furry animals rather than three-eyed aliens with vast armaments. Like I say, though, they are just as addicted to these games as the boys.

So, while Reiss’s work is fascinating and does hint vaguely at latent aspects of how territorialism evolved in the male brain. One has to wonder whether if he and his colleagues created a different type of game, a more “feminine” type game, like a pet simulation, for instance, they would see those reward centres lighting up more brightly in the female brain. Perhaps if the experiment had had an intrinsic bias towards a feminine type of game and they’d seen such activity in their fMRI, they would have come to a very different conclusion about video game addiction.

Girly Games

Musical molecules, bright fibres, polarised brain chemistry, and cholesterol regulation, all feature in my SpectroscopyNOW column this week.

Musical molecules - What do Schroedinger’s equation and Schoenberg’s expressionism have in common? Not a lot you might think. However, researchers in Germany and the US have now modelled the hydrogen molecule, the archetypal subject of molecular modelling, using a theory of behaviour that emerges from music. The study demonstrates how a hydrogen molecule responds to laser pulses as if the molecule’s vibrational motions, its quantum states, were the notes making up a changing musical chord and offers the opportunity of laser-controlled chemical reactions.

Fibre, fibre burning bright - A European research team has developed novel strategies for the rapid trace element analysis of metals in polyamide synthetic fibres by graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Their method allows the accurate determination for quality control of polyamide products containing titanium dioxide as an optical brightener.

Bad cholesterol regulator - US researchers have discovered exactly how a destructive protein binds to and interferes with one of the molecules involved in removing low-density lipoproteins (LDL), the so-called “bad” cholesterol, from the blood.

Bipolar disorder - Spectroscopic studies of post mortem brain chemistry reveals that sufferers of bipolar disorder (often referred to as manic depression) have a distinct chemical signature linked to this mental illness. A collaboration between researchers in the UK and US also suggests a possible mode of action for the mood stabilisers used to treat the disorder and how they counteract changes in brain chemistry.

Full Spectrum Science News

That has to be the oddest blog headline I’ve come up with this week, but it’s not in fact that esoteric once you get down to it. Basically, researchers in China have created a new material based on dolomite (porous kitty litter material) and the crab shell derivative chitosan.

The new composite material not only absorbs water it can release an NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium) fertiliser over a prolonged period for use in agriculture and horticulture. Advantages are, improved irrigation efficiency and less run off into waterways together with improved crop yields. More on this, in my SpectroscopyNOW column this week and you get a chance to see a photo of my kitty too. What more could you want? Other than links to the rest of this week’s news in SpecNOW, of course.

In NMR news, a brainy approach to using microNMR coils could allow scientists to probe the activity of cerebral compounds, such as choline, without having to worry about NMR’s relatively low sensitivity. In the X-ray ezine, I report on how British scientists have demonstrated that it is possible to predict the crystal structures of small organic molecules using software, winning them accolades at this year’s Blind Test in Crystal Structure Prediction, organised by the University of Cambridge and hosted by the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre.

Finally, new informatics evidence suggests that the land-bridge which is currently the Bering Strait was the sole route into the Americas for humans tens of thousands of years.

Composting Chitosan Cat-litter Composite

A new naturally derived artificial sweetener could soon hit the market, thanks to the development of a mass production technique devised by University of Wisconsin-Madison research Fariba Assadi-Porter. The sweetener, known as brazzein, is a 54 amino acid protein derived from an extract of the fruit of the tropical plant Pentadiplandra brazzeana Baillon. It has been eaten in West Africa across the millennia, but only recently caught the attention of the West because of its incredible sweetness. The protein extract tastes sweet only to humans and old-world monkeys and is is 2000 times sweeter than sucrose when compared to a 2% solution of sugar.

Assadi-Porter and her colleagues are using spectroscopy to help them understand the relationship between the structure of this protein and its sweetness. They have recently devised a new approach to fermenting it on a large scale and startup company Natur Research is now seeking FDA approval to commercialise the protein as a food stuff for the low-calorie drinks and food industries. A paper detailing the production process has now been accepted by Protein Expression and Purification Journal, and you can read more about the story in the NMR channel on SpectroscopyNOW.

More on proteins in this week’s issue: Roderick MacKinnon and his colleagues at Rockerfeller U have come up with a novel technique, lipid-detergent-mediated crystallization, that allows them to crystallise membrane proteins, such as the voltage-dependent potassium ion channel, in as near as natural state as possible. The approach could open the door to countless studies of membrane proteins using crystallography that have not previously been possible. More on that in the SpectroscopyNOW X-ray ezine, here

Also in this week’s round up, news not related directly to proteins and molecular biology. Researchers in Canada and the US have used MRI to demonstrate that there is something like a three-year delay in the development of certain regions of the brain in children with ADHD. The most obvious delay is seen in the front cortex, a region important in thinking, concentration, and planning. Rather than worrying parents, the discovery should be reassuring to parents and sufferers, says Philip Shaw of the NIMH Child Psychiatry Branch who led the research because although there is a delay, brain development is otherwise normal. “Finding a normal pattern of cortex maturation, albeit delayed, in children with ADHD should be reassuring to families and could help to explain why many youth eventually seem to grow out of the disorder,” he says.

The research also revealed that the regions affected by the developmental delay are coincident with the regions that develop precociously in children with autism. More on the scan results, again in SpectroscopyNOW.

Sweet Proteins, Crystallised Proteins

A new approach to testing urine samples without having to purify them first has led to the discovery of a new hormone that controls sodium excretion and so could be involved in controlling high blood pressure. Too much sodium equates to raised bp. The discovery solves a riddle that confronted medical scientists for more than four decades and could lead to new approaches to treating high blood pressure.

I asked team leader Frank Schroeder about the work and discuss it in detail in this week’s SpectroscopyNOW. One issue that must be addressed before such a discovery can be applied realistically to the develop of new therapies for high blood pressure, or even low blood pressure, is to find out whether the hormone is involved in other control systems in the body. This is somewhat likely given that most other known hormones multitask. I asked Schroeder about this aspect of the research:

“At this point, it is difficult to speculate about what other biological processes might be influenced by the newly identified compounds, and the next step will be to find the receptor(s) that the [hormonal] xanthurenic acid derivatives bind to,” he told me. “From our analyses, it appears that the two xanthurenic acid derivatives represent the actual signalling molecules - the activity is very well-defined and the compounds are of high specific potency. Furthermore, a closely related metabolite, xanthurenic acid itself, is not active.”

Also, in this week’s issue, in the field of atomic spectroscopy, Jordanian scientists have found that garlic extract can reduce the levels of the toxic heavy metals, cadmium and lead, in vital organs, such as the liver, heart, and kidneys. You can read more about that here.

In pure chemistry, it has been a record-breaking year for coordination chemists Klaus Theopold and Kevin Kreisel of the University of Delaware and their colleagues who have synthesised an organometallic chromium compound with the shortest Cr-Cr bond ever. Not since the 1978 work of F. Albert Cotton and his team at Texas A&M University has such a short one been seen. Theopold told me that he does not think it will be too long before this new record is broken. “I don’t think it will be another 30 years, although I’d like to hold on to the record for a while,” he said, “As to who, there are three possibilities: somebody who is not trying for it, and discovers it accidentally (like us), Phil Power, or myself, because I am now interested and have some ideas.”

Finally, the rather delicate subject of turning raw
sewage
into compostturning raw sewage into compost for farms. Remy Albrecht of the Paul Cézanne University in Aix-Marseille and colleagues have developed an infra-red technique that could be used to monitor how well the composting process is going for biological wastes, such as sewage sludge. Obviously, compost quality for land application must be monitored and controlled closely, but there are so many benefits, such as quickly raising nutrient levels and improving soil quality that it is worth the effort. An analytical approach to near infrared reflectance spectroscopy can provide an inexpensive way to monitor the composting process, Albrecht told me.

“NIRS is a highly reproducible technique able to draw a precise chemical fingerprint of an organic material Moreover, NIRS is rapid and makes it possible to analyse a large number of samples in a practical and timely manner. Control of maturation can be easily simplified with good calibrations and a data bank in reference,” he said.

I do worry about the accumulation of heavy metals from such biological sources as with each iteration from crop/livestock, to dinner table, to sewage plant, back to farm, they could increase in concentration. There is also the issue of pathogens. I’d be interested to learn what safeguards are in place to prevent their circulation.

Taking the P out of Urine Testing

MRI brain scans have recently been used to calibrate and corroborate the results of a new eye-scanning technique that can diagnose multiple sclerosis symptoms in just a few minutes. The technique, optical coherence tomography (OCT), scans the layers of nerve fibres in the retina to reveal nerve damage associated with the disease. The quick test will ultimately complement more detailed MRI studies of the brain when nerve damage is found an be useful in monitoring how effective treatment is. More on this in the latest issue of SpectroscopyNOW.com which goes live on November 1 (Sciencebase readers can get a sneak preview here)

Also, in the new issue, I discuss new research that could help pharmaceutical companies distinguish more easily between the different possible forms - polymorphs - of their products. The approach does not need to be used with a pure crystalline product and so works on formulated tablets. Researchers at the University of Warwick working with colleagues at Astra Zeneca have demonstrated that solid-state proton NMR spectroscopy can be used to crack the polymorphic secret of drugs by focusing on hydrogen atoms. The discovery could allow pharmaceutical companies to eradicate unwanted polymorphs from their formulations and so potentially improve drug efficacy and safety. Once again, you can get a sneak preview here

Also, in the new issue: A new grid technology that allows images from different analytical sources to be superimposed with high precision and so provide a mashup of X-ray fluorescence results on the inorganic components of a sample with an infrared image of the organic parts. The researchers who developed the technique say that their grid technology could be as useful in medical diagnostics and biomedical research as in environmental studies. More on this here.

Other research covered includes a study of bacteriophage DNA that could help explain how we get our mother’s eyes but not our father’s nose, and how Raman spectroscopy might explain the bacterial activity that is destroying ancient Italian frescoes - all on www.spectroscopynow.com

High-speed MS Diagnosis is in the Eyes

Science news with a spectroscopy bent from my desktop hit the virtual newsstands today over on SpectroscopyNOW.com First up, an atomic coilgun that can stop atoms in their tracks using a sequence of pulsed magnetic fields has been developed by US scientists. The device opens up the possibility of slowing and trapping atoms regardless of atomic number, which is not possible even with Nobel prize winning laser trapping science, which works only for specific atoms. The new approach could allow technologically important elements such as iron, nickel, and the most fundamental element of all, hydrogen, to be slowed to a standstill.

Next, we have a story for fans of Italian cuisine in which scientists have figured out the details of how enzymes in the fragrant herb basil give it its sweet zing so beloved of pesto fans. structure of eugenol synthase, frozen in mid-action as it makes its natural product, eugenol. The researchers at the University of Michigan have taken an X-ray snapshot of basil’s enzyme eugenol synthase working on a substrate molecule key to the biological synthesis of the aromatic component of fresh basil leaves, eugenol. Apparently, the enzyme has a rather unique action in that it involves a push-pull mechanism that evolved from a simpler enzyme seen in other plants and basil’s ancestors.

We also have a rather gory story in this week’s issue related to sticky blood. In it, an entirely new approach to testing for the sticky blood disorder known as Hughes syndrome, or antiphospholipid syndrome (APS) is developed. The technique involves a statistical analysis of near-infrared (NIR) spectra recorded for suspect blood samples. The accurate results suggests that NIR might one day be developed as a non-invasive test that can be carried out without piercing the skin for a blood sample. Some observers are already suggesting this is yet another step
towards
a Tricorder
type deviceanother step towards a Tricorder type device for medical diagnostics.

Finally, NIR spectroscopy is also being investigated as a new approach to detecting the microscopic calcium salt crystals that form in tissue during the early stages of breast cancer. A Harvard medical team is developing the novel scanning technique and has invented an easy to make compound that latches on to the microcalcifications and lights up in the near-infrared region of the spectrum. Presumably, the same observers heralding a medical Tricorder type device for blood diseases will see this as another example of so NIR and yet so far.

A Tricorder for Blood Disease and Breast Cancer