Humanity’s most significant collaborative achievement started with, then Director of the Parkes Observatory, John Bolton, who did an official one-line contract with NASA: “The (CSIRO) Radiophysics Division would agree to support the Apollo 11 mission”.
In 1966, NASA made a proposal to include Parkes 64 meter dish in its international network. NASA did complete a 64-meter dish at Goldstone, California, but due to cuts in the budget, they postponed the second and third parts of its 64-meter network in Spain and Australia. They all were supposed to be modeled on Parkes Telescope. Now, they had to opt for Parkes as an alternative for their work.
Later, in October 1968 John Bolton, the director of Parkes Observatory was convinced by Eb Rechtin of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to collaborate with NASA for Apollo 11 Mission; the nature and severity of the mission that human lives were at risk in space made it vivid that it’s possible and should be.
The Steerable S-Band antenna on Eagle pointing at the Earth. Credits: NASA
After the final decision of early 1969, that NASA owes people to see the historic landing and visuals of the moon, it was decided to include a TV camera on the mission to show the world what’s happening.
Now, it was more wishful to have Parkes included in the mission, as they had the telescope with such a large collecting area (dish size), the extra signal receiving strength from the Moon. The astronauts had the burden of installing a 3-meter S-Band antenna on the moon. But, the specific timely-schedule as planned by NASA was not in favor of allotting 20-45 minutes for it. So, instead, they had to use a 0.66-meter S-band antenna already attached with the Lunar Module stage, which had to be connected with Parkes to have extra gain in signal strength. NASA had planned to have Neil Armstrong’s photos be stepping-foot on the Lunar surface, which obviously wasn’t possible before he could install an erectable S-band antenna. At this moment, Parkes was the most reliable, powerful quality and straight option, which was demanded by the planners of the Apollo.
The characteristics of Parkes telescope are designed to receive radio signals from the sky at a sidereal rate. Its maximum movable coordinates in azimuth and elevation are around 25o/min and 10o/min. It’s very significant if used for deep-sky objects at near sidereal rates, making it a great bet for the Apollo 11 Mission.
Schematic diagram of the Parkes Telescope. Note the telescope’s 30-degree horizon. Credits: CSIRO
The historic words were said by Neild Armstrong, “One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” and it was taken at time: 12.56 pm AEST on Monday, July 21, 1969.
This grand endeavor was watched all over the world by 600 million people, i.e. 1/5th of the global population, and it was all made possible due to this grand-collaboration. Two other stations were also working side by side with Parkes Radio Telescope, the Honeysuckle in Canberra, and Goldstone in California.
The Parkes control room as it appeared during the Apollo 14 mission. (Center) PMG Senior Technician Brian Coote, (right) John Bolton near the PDP-9 computer and (left) the NASA receiving equipment from the USNS Vanguard. Credits: CSIRO
When NASA was trying to judge the quality of broadcasting they remained with Parkes TV pictures, as it was superior from both other signal stations, and all the signals were being transferred to Mission Control at Houston. So, NASA continued using the quality for the 21/2 hour telecast live for the Global Audience.
At morning 6.17 AEST on July 21, the Apollo 11 Mission landed their LM Eagle, on the sea of Tranquility within the space of a few hours that were needed for the moon to be positioned at an exact spot that can be witnessed from the Parkes Telescope.
In the meantime, the astronauts took some rest before the legendary Moonwalk. However, Armstrong changed his mind from the planned moonwalk.
The schedule required the astronauts to rest before attempting the moonwalk, by which time the Moon would have been high overhead at Parkes. However, Armstrong departed from the original plan, opting for an immediate moonwalk instead. Still, the preparations took time and the moonwalk was simultaneous at the time when the moon rises over Parkes.
Armstrong’s heart rate as he stepped onto the Moon. This was recorded at Honeysuckle Creek and sent to Parkes. It was signed by Tom Reid the Honeysuckle Creek station director, and the annotation is by Ed von Renouard. Credits: CSIRO
Great missions come with greater challenges. One such moment was when the telescope was struck by a series of high-speed winds of around 110 kph, which made the entire operation shudder. It was being slammed against its zenith axis, the entire showdown was in jeopardy and hazardous for the structure of the entire machinery. Fortunately, the winds stopped and Astronaut Buzz Aldrin activated the camera while the moon was up within the telescope’s reach and signal reception began.
The vigilant staffer of Parkes, Neil Fox Mason was not allowed to see the incoming photos on the TV, while continuously driving and controlling the telescope with dedication for the integrity of the successful mission, just in case winds start blowing again or signal reception gets interrupted.
The three principal players at Parkes: (L-R) John Bolton, Robert Taylor, and Taffy Bowen. Credits: CSIRO
Two places were receiving the signal; the first was the Australian Broadcasting Commission in Sydney and the other was Houston for the global viewers. As the signal was traveling half of the world from Sydney to Houston by the INTELSAT Geostationary Satellite, a 0.3-second delay occurred, people in Australia saw the moonwalk 0.3 seconds earlier than the rest of the viewers globally.
This scientific collaboration of support and endeavor for the Apollo 11 Mission and sending a man to the moon inspires to show us the professionalism of CSIRO and NASA staff, combining efforts of so many organizations such as the Australian Broadcasting Network, the postmaster General’s Office, Astronomers, Technicians and all who were involved in to maintain the tiniest of details of the mission.
Rocking researchers at the University of Chicago and Field Museum USA found the most ancient solid material within the reach of humanity, it’s age is around 7,000,000,000 years.
The grains of dust are even older than our own sun’s formation trapped inside the meteor piece. There the grains remain for billions of years and such meteorite was found in Australia. These grains also offer us clues about the massive star formation campaign at that time.
The study was published in a paper on Jan 13, 2020 Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, the author Philipp Heck says “This is one of the most exciting studies I’ve worked on, These are the oldest solid materials ever found on the planet, and they tell us how stars formed in our galaxy.”
We usually see stars as fixed stable objects in the sky. But, astrophysically we know they have life cycles, from birth to death. Dust and gaseous clouds form stars in interstellar nurseries, forged by the reckoning force of gravity. Then, they burn for millions to billions of decades, and then they die. At the perfect moment of their death, their particles spread into space, in form of new stars, planets.— also in meteorites.
Scientists took electron microscope photos to be able to see the grains—this one is eight microns across, about the size of a single red blood cell. Credits: Janaína N. Ávila
Within meteorites, it is a daunting a task to discover presolar grains, they are extremely rare, only found 5% of the time. Now, at the Field Museum, we have the largest part of the Murchison meteorite, a true nature’s masterpiece with presolar grains that were fallen around 50 years ago, and was made available to science by the people of Murchison, Victoria.
Jennika Greer, a graduate student at the University of Chicago and co-author of the study says, “It starts with crushing fragments of the meteorite down into a powder.”, Once all the pieces are segregated, a kind of paste, and it has a pungent characteristic, it smells like a rotten peanut butter. For the analogy, this Rotten-peanut-butter-meteorite-paste is mixed with acid until only the presolar grains remained present. Once the presolar were isolated, the researched used a rigorous process based on cosmic rays to figure out from what types of stars they came and how old they were.
“We used exposure data, which measures the exposure of grains to the cosmic rays, as cosmic rays are high energy particles that fly through our galaxy and penetrate with the solid matter”, said Heck. She works in pioneering new scientific methods to understand Astrophysics’ phenomenal questions by investigating meteorites.
Some of the pre-solar grains in the Murchison meteorite (inset) could have come from evolved stars similar to the Egg Nebula (pictured) Credits: ESA/HUBBLE/NASA/JANAÍNA ÁVILA
To find out their age, we need to know how many elements were produced by the cosmic rays within the presolar grains.“Some of these cosmic rays interact with the matter and form new elements. And the longevity of exposure equals to more those elements”.
The meteor scientists found out that the presolar grains in the sample were the oldest ever discovered. Due to the high amount of cosmic radiation they soaked up in, most of them had the age of 4.6 to 4.9 billion years old, and some other grains were even older than 5.5 billion years — In order, to grab the understanding and relevancy here, the age of the sun is 4.6 billion years old, and the planet Earth is 4.5 billion.
The story doesn’t end here, as the presolar grains formed when a star dies. They are also valuable to tell us about the ancient history of the stars. Yet, we hypothesize that 7 billion years ago, there would have been a loud boom in star formation.
Dr Philipp R. Heck is an Associate Professor University of Chicago’s Department of the Geophysical Sciences and Curator of Meteoritics and Polar Studies at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Image Credits: Australian Institute of Geoscientists
This rocking evidence is now a debate between scientists about whether new stars form at a steady rate or if there are high and lows in their number over time. “Some of the people in the science community think that the star formation rate within a galaxy is constant.”, “But thanks to these grains, we now have direct evidence for a period of enhanced star formation in our galaxy seven billion years ago with samples from meteorites. This is one of the key findings of our study,” said Heck.
Associate Prof. Philipp Heck: “This is one of the most exciting studies I’ve worked on. These are the oldest solid materials ever found, and they tell us about how stars formed in our galaxy.”
Other study co-authors came from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Washington University, Harvard Medical School, ETH Zurich, and the Australian National University.
Citation: “Lifetimes of interstellar dust from cosmic ray exposure ages of presolar silicon carbide.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Jan 13, 2020.
Given the pandemic situation globally affecting every part of the world and changing its dimensions rapidly to the digital site in recent times, it would be rightful to say that AI has been the only futuristic technology that maintained its competitive edge and proliferated; solving problems automating manual workflows, saving time, reducing cost and increasing productivity manifolds.
This past decade could truly be called a golden era for AI as it has managed very efficiently to maneuver through the tough times, creating a buzz, making innovations in big fields, and giving a new sense of comfort and ease to humans.
With the increase in the demand for AI every day and millennials being curious about this emerging technology, it won’t be a surprise to know about the recent stats forecasting that 80% of emerging technologies will have an AI foundation by the end of 2021.
The global AI market size calculated as $39.9 Billion in 2019 is expected to achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) up to 42.2% from 2020 to 2027. Stats are concrete evidence of AI having a long way to go with the exciting trends surfacing every day.
If you are curious to know about AI’s future in the post-pandemic times after all the restrictions will curb and business start capitalizing exponentially, then this article is for you!
Here we jotted down the top 5 trending technologies of AI that will be surging ahead in 2021 and boggle the world with wonders. So without further ado, let’s dive deep into it!
Here are some of the AI trends to look out for in 2021
AI for Cyber Security and Data Breaches
With the increase in digital data, the risk of data breaching, and its vulnerability to phishing attacks have become a major concern. The sensitive data hacking and constantly evolving threats from malware, ransomware, and DDS attacks constantly worry for corporate systems and home security.
But with AI-powered cybersecurity, we are finally stepping into a safe space where users will not face any malicious threats regarding their data privacy.
AI-powered tools will collect data from different sources like the company’s own transactional systems, communications networks, digital activity, and websites and implement algorithms to recognize patterns and identify potential threats and suspicious IP addresses.
With the increase in digital data, the risk of data breaching, and its vulnerability to phishing attacks have become a major concern
Home security systems integrated with AI were limited to consumer video cameras and intruder alarm systems only. But now Al has expanded its horizon to create “”smart homes”” where the system learns the ways, habits, and preferences of its occupants – improving its ability to identify intruders. AI enabling cybersecurity with the efficient gears to analyze, understand, and prevent cybercrimes, will make it the new hot sensation of 2021.
The Emergence of a Hybrid workforce
The exponential growth of business and the Covid times gave organizations the realization to use AI for repetitive mundane tasks, saving energy and finances. Organizations have started to jump on the bandwagon to use the amicable blend of RPA and cognitive AI to handle the bulk of work, transforming the workplace into a hybrid workforce environment. Alexa, Siri, and other digital assistants apply this hybrid network, where the human workforce collaborates with automated robots. According to the recent statics Technology and financial services, companies are currently absorbing 60% of AI talent.
With people being more comfortable with AI’s indulgence in their daily lives, be it for personal tasks or commercial work, we can expect the hybrid workforce to be the next big thing in 2021 and beyond.
Natural language processing
NLP is defined as thenatural manipulation of normal languages, such as speech and text, by software. It helps in perfect communication between human language and computer language. NLP is getting popular quite fast because of its vital role as Amazon Alexa and Google home.
Apart from being an easy interpreter and being used for machine translation, summarizing a process, auto-video caption generation, NLP has improved its structure and interface to increase different devices’ productivity.
In 2021, NLP is expected to play a significant role in finance marketing and online business; it would use the recommendation systemto study customers’ behavior. NLP will be used in the semantic analysis for social media to study people’s views and opinions towards a particular topic. NLP will also elate the chat boat market to go about 9.4 billion US dollars by 2024.
AI-enabled chips will boost performance
2021 can be seen as the herald of a new era where AI chips will be a boon for startups and small businesses, making them accessible to all the powerful AI tiers.AI-enabled chips- genius chips- doubled in density and increased manifolds in processing will perform tasks like natural processing, facial recognition, object detection, and computer vision at a much faster rate.
AI-enabled chips are expected to reach $ 91,185 million in 2025, compared to $ 6,638 million in 2018. Top companies such as NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and AMD are projecting to enhance AI applications’ performance by making AI-enabled chips. Qualcomm has launched its new AI-enabled Snapdragon processor this year that can perform 15 trillion operations per second with efficiency.
2021 can be seen as the herald of a new era where AI chips will be a boon for startups and small businesses
Smartphones will be immensely benefited from these genius chips- as the processing done on an offline cloud platform or main GPU CPU chipset will now be done on board in less time and more efficiently. Chips will evolve smartphones into smart gadgets consuming less power with increased battery life.
IPA (Intelligent Process Automation)
IPA is much like RPA (Robotic process automation), but it uses artificial intelligence to automate specific tasks. IPA helps businesses forecast the future outcomes of investments by creating visual models from the system’s information and analyzing them in real-time to identify outliers and bottlenecks.
According to a recent study, 25% of Fortune 500 companies want to implement and invest in IPAs. Machine learning Algorithms and text analysis are used by companies to process documents. Programs are designed to integrate automated responses to persuade customers through customer communications in desktop assistants digitally.
Forrester predicts that this automation will “”become the tip of the digital transformation spear, impacting everything from infrastructure to customers and business models.”” Freeing up employees from routine tasks, boosting efficiency, ensuring proper governance, and minimizing risk will surely make IPA a groundbreaking technology in the coming time.
At this pace and passion of renovating itself with new trends and increasing social acceptance alongside ethical monitoring, AI will make it the new refreshing face of the technology market. Now is the time for businesses and organizations to plunge into the AI pool to obtain real-time information, perform predictive maintenance, and do effective digitalization powered with AI tools to sustain, survive, and grow.
Human knowledge of the natural world is improving day by day. Amazing discoveries have been made in vastly spread space and from under the lens of the microscope. Each passing year leaves behind a pile of scientific research and information. The year 2020 held its significance for being more focused on medical and biological sciences research. Experts around the world were challenged with the task of Coronavirus vaccine development. Like many other countries worldwide, experts from Pakistan also conducted valuable research on COVID-19.
Apart from COVID related studies, medical science research in general was quite fruitful. From the winning of the Leibniz prize by Pakistani origin biologist Asifa Akhtar to Mishal Khan’s appointment to the governing body of London School of Tropical Hygiene and Medicine, Pakistanis rocked the stage everywhere. In the coming paragraphs, we’ll discuss some of the most prominent medical science discoveries, and innovations are done by Pakistani researchers in the year 2020.
Pain-free Injections
Many adults and children have trypanophobia – the extreme fear of needles – which leads to resisting or denying simple procedures like an intravenous drip and even essential vaccinations.
Ibrahim Sajid
Realizing that trypanophobia is a real problem, a fourth-year student at AKU’s Medical College, Ibrahim Sajid, has been striving to find a solution. Over the past four years, he has worked with a range of emergency medicine specialists, product designers, phlebotomist,s and nurses to develop a prototype ‘pain-free, invisible’ method to deliver injections that will begin human trials soon.
A detachable cardboard sleeve to hide the injection from patients.
Research shows that the sight of needles accounts for 70 percent of the fear. Simultaneously, the actual prick sensation contributes to the remaining 30 percent, which is why any offered solution should focus on both visual and sensory stimuli.
Ibrahim has tried various low-cost options like a Japanese hand fan and detachable cardboard sleeve to hide the injection from patients, thus controlling the visual stimulus. For the actual sensory stimulation, numbing cream and bio freeze was tested on various patients.
This innovation won him the ‘Global pediatrics researcher Investigator Award.’
NUST’s Cardiac Stents production
Scientists of the Biomedical Engineering Department at the National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad, finally developed cardiac stents in 2020.
Dr. Murtaza Najabat Ali worked on this project individually for 11 years and with his team for another 3.
The locally produced stents were tested extensively compared to their international counterparts and be at par with the imported stents’ clinical performance. The tests were carried out in different renowned centers of Germany and Poland.
The locally produced stents were tested extensively compared to their international counterparts.
A facility has also been inaugurated. The facility – ‘N-ovative Health Technologies’ has started mass production of cardiac stents and angioplasty balloon catheters for the general public at affordable prices.
Discovery of New Meningitis Sign – Stiff Neck
Prof Shahid Jamil and Dr. Syed Shahmeer Raza’s of Khyber Medical College, Peshawar, carried out a study to introduce and validate a novel clinical sign in Meningitis. It was accepted for abstract presentation at the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) London Conference to be held on 8th December 2020.
The introduction of a new clinical sign is Neck Stiffness in Lateral Position (NSLP) named Jamil’s Sign after the Principal Author: Professor Dr. Shahid Jamil. The observation leading to this study was the effect of change in posture that a person resists when the Neck Stiffness (NS) is checked in Supine position. This resistance was observed to be far more than when the same change in posture was brought about in the Lateral Position. Throughout his career journey, Dr.Jamil has come across more than 3000 cases of Meningitis.
Jamil’s Sign’s pathophysiology could be similar to examining the tone in different parts of the body. The concept is to look for an increased tone in the neck muscles under the influence of meningeal irritation. The maneuver will lead to a motor response as a result of nociceptor exploitation. This motor response is gauged in the form of neck stiffness.
Jamil’s sign removes the effect of gravity and passive resistance to the neck movement observed in the supine position.
Recombinant B- Lactamase production:
A recombinant ß-lactamase has been produced from Bacillus subtilis R5 using Recombinant DNA Technology during a research study at the Institute of Biochemistry and #Biotechnology, the University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Lahore.
Despite resistance, ß-lactamases hold several useful applications in the pharmaceutical industry, wastewater treatment plants, diagnostics, food analysis, and cancer treatment for the targeted drug delivery to cancerous cells. In Pakistan, there is no single unit for the production of ß-lactamases, and this enzyme is being imported for diagnostic purposes.
The researchers aim at producing this ß-lactamase in bulk. Still, it needs funding for its large-scale production and its testing at various laboratories before its commercial level availability.
Local production of ß-lactamase will save massive foreign exchange for the import of this enzyme.
Pakistan’s First Affordable and Bloodless Dialysis Machines
Byonyks developed Pakistan’s first bloodless risk-free dialysis machine with the collaboration of the Ministry of Information, Technology, and Telecommunication. Byonyks’ unique technology does not require extracting blood out of the human body to perform dialysis. Patients can perform bloodless dialysis at home without any supervision with protection from life-threatening infections.
Byonyks’ unique technology does not require extracting blood out of the human body to perform dialysis.
Pakistan is the 5th country globally to have its indigenously produced “Bloodless” Dialysis Technology after the United States, Germany, Japan, France, and China.
Study on CLN5 mutations
Two previously-unknown mutations in the CLN5 gene were reported to cause CLN5 disease, a form of late infantile Batten disease, in a new study. The study also represented the second-ever publication describing CLN5 illness in Pakistan, hinting at a more worldwide distribution of the condition than previously thought.
The results, “Novel likely disease-causing CLN5 variants identified in Pakistani patients with neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis,” were published in the Neurological Sciences Journal.
The new study describes two Pakistani families that were found to be affected by CLN5 disease. In both families, the parents were consanguineous (biologically related to each other). The two oldest children have been affected by one family: a 10-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy. Both children experienced a similar progression of symptoms, including memory loss, difficulty moving, loss of vision, and speech impairment, which started to emerge at 6–7 years of age and progressed over time.
Late infantile Batten disease refers to Batten disease in which symptoms manifest in childhood, usually at the ages of 2 to 8. CLN5 disease is a form of late infantile Batten disease caused by mutations in the gene CLN5. The disease was initially identified in northern European populations in the late 1990s. Since then, research has revealed the presence of this disease elsewhere in the world as well.
Speedy Recovery of Diabetic Chronic Wounds
Nanomedicine, in combination with some hormone or oxygen-producing agents, can improve diabetic wound healing. Oxygen-carrying nanocomposites can also enhance chronic diabetic wounds’ recovery rate by supplying the oxygen upon external stimulation.
Sodium percarbonate (SPC) is one of the potent peroxide-based oxygen-generating materials that have been found useful for the treatment of dermal wounds. SPC is a moderate water-soluble salt (<0.01% at 20°C) that releases hydrogen peroxide and ultimately oxygen on decomposition. No one has investigated its effectiveness for the treatment of diabetic wounds models yet, so this study was aimed to explore the therapeutic features of SPC for diabetic wound applications.
In the present study, PCL polymer matrix based electrospun nanofibrous wound dressings loaded with inorganic SPC salt that can chemically generate oxygen in-situ were used.
The study included assessing sustained oxygen release from prepared dressings for a minimum of 4 days, followed by evaluating their efficacy through in-vitro cell studies and a CAM assay to evaluate their angiogenesis potential and healing response of a full-thickness chronic diabetic wound rat model.
First Stereotactic Surgery
For the first time in Pakistan’s history, an 11-year-old boy possessing a 10cm tumor in the brain was saved using a compassionate and complicated technique of stereotactic neurosurgery. The procedure was performed by Dr. Sattar Hashim, a renowned neurosurgeon at the Neurospinal and Cancer Care Institute (NCCI) in Karachi.
Stereotactic neurosurgery is a form of surgical intervention that locates small targets inside the skull using a three-dimensional coordinate system and performs several types of procedures on them. Under this procedure, a tiny hole was drilled in the child’s brain, and a 200 ml tumor was extracted through a syringe
Antibody Treatment for COVID-19
The C-IVIG therapy uses immunoglobulin (IG), a blood product extracted from the plasma of people who have recovered from the infection, rich in the antibodies that target the virus. Continuous infusion of immunoglobin can neutralize the condition in patients and shorten the course of the disease.
Pakistan is on the threshold of becoming the first country to carry out research. It is mandatory to introduce intravenous immunoglobulin (C-IVIG) therapy at a mass level as ‘severe’ patients under treatment for coronavirus have a 100% recovery rate.
Scientists at the Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS) in Karachi, who are conducting clinical trials of the C-IVIG therapy for the treatment coronavirus, have said that the trials were very encouraging and remarkable.
Pakistan was the first country to develop the immunoglobulin solution in April 2020
Brain Controlled Bionic Arm
Pakistani Software Engineers (Muhammad Umer Tariq, Muhammad Umar Lodhi, Umair Ahmed) invented a Bionic Arm controlled by human thoughts. Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) is used for manufacturing this arm along with Image processing, Machine learning, Artificial intelligence, Networking, Mechatronics, and Hardware development.
Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) is used for manufacturing the bionic arm.
This system is capable of sensing brain signals using active electrodes placed non-invasively on the subject’s head. As the accuracy of non-invasive brain-computer interfaces is very low. They improve the accuracy of non-invasive brain-computer interfaces by applying Image processing, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Networking.
Using this system, no internal surgery of the brain is required for placing the electrodes invasively inside the brain. This system can be easily installed on a person who has no arm from the shoulder joint. This bionic arm is created for a worst-case scenario. It has nine joint movements (shoulder, bicep, elbow, wrist, and five individual fingers)
World’s first Portable MRI Machines
New York-based company called ‘Hyperfine’ has acquired 501(k) clearance from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the world’s first-ever portable MRI scanner. The FDA accords the 501(k) clearance to those devices that demonstrate that not only are they useful, but they are safe for public use as well.
Hyperfine is an initiative of a Pakistani-American Radiologist, Engineer, Serial Entrepreneur, and Healthcare professional, Dr. Khan Siddiqui. Although the portable MRI machine’s weight is around 635 Kgs, it is almost negligible compared to the 4,500 Kgs of a typical 1.5T MRI machine. A 3T MRI scanner weighs even more at 7,500 Kgs.
What makes this MRI scanner portable is the wheel array at its bottom. Anyone can maneuver the machine through the wheel array without having to push 635 Kgs from room to room. Besides, Lucy’s point-of-care MRI – as the portable device is known – will consume 35-times less power than the traditional MRI scanner.
Discovery of Factors involved in the transmission of trauma effects
Research effort involving Pakistani neuroscientist Dr. Ali Jawaid identified a role for metabolic factors in transmitting the effects of traumatic experiences from parents to children.
After previously showing that adverse exposures in parents’ early life can lead to many psychological and metabolic perturbations in the children, he & colleagues have now demonstrated that the main culprit behind the transmission of these effects is certain chemicals called metabolites in the blood of parents.
These metabolites include chemicals released by the brain, liver, and other organs.
They first studied trauma in a mouse model where the newly born pups face separation from their mothers and are raised by stressed mothers, similar to many childhood adversity cases in humans. They found that this traumatic exposure affects many metabolites, especially fatty acids in the blood.
They further show that these altered fatty acids make their way to the sperm cells and change a nuclear receptor’s activity, an essential regulator of gene expression. When the offspring is born, it has an altered metabolic makeup and responds atypically to periods of high sugar intake or starvation.
The most notable aspect of the study is its relevance to humans. While the central part of the study was performed in Zurich, for the human part, Dr. Ali Jawaid traveled to Pakistan and collaborated with the SOS children’s’ villages. Together with a team of dedicated students, he studies children who had endured early life trauma in the form of paternal demise or maternal separation and found similar alterations in their blood.
Proteins are behind every biological reaction happening within the human body, helping us ensure our immune system’s health. Out of many properties, one that allows them functioning well and fulfill their various tasks is their shape. They have a raveled three-dimensional shape that acquires via ‘protein folding’ – a process in which sequences of amino acids, the building blocks of protein, interact with one another to ‘fold’ into proteins. The 3-D structure of a protein determines its function. The underlying cause of many diseases can be that the protein is misfolded.
Simplified Process of Protein Folding
THE PROTEIN FOLDING PROBLEM
In more than 200 million proteins we are aware of, we know a few structures so far. There are various methods to predict the structures of proteins ranging from x-ray crystallography to nuclear magnetic resonance. But progress has been slow and heavy on the budget. X-ray crystallography costs around 120,000 dollars and can take up to a year to give a result. We can better understand the difficulty in predicting a protein structure through Levinthal’s paradox. In 1969, Cyrus Levinthal – an American molecular biologist – claimed that, according to the calculations, the protein folding process should take place over a period longer than the age of our universe. Yet proteins usually fold within a millisecond.
STORY OF CASP
The fifty-year-old ‘protein folding problem’ seemed to be far away from advancing until now. Out of nowhere,Google’s company DeepMind has come up with a way to demystify the different structures of proteins, understanding their function in the process! It can justly be considered one of the significant breakthroughs in structural biology as well as artificial intelligence.
The story begins in 1994 when the first edition of Critical Assessment of protein Structure Prediction, or CASP (I recommend using this), was held. Since then, the community-driven experiment has happened every two years. Every edition, teams participating are given a hundred proteins that have already mapped using one of the methods mentioned above. The groups, who don’t have access to the mapped structure, submit their predicted arrangement to be reviewed by the global distance test, or GDT for short. They are compared to the pre-existing structure to find measure homogeneity.
EMERGENCE OF ALPHAFOLD
In 2018, DeepMind participated in CASP13, where they triumphed with their algorithm – Alphafold. They surpassed expectations with the most accurate predictions till then, leaving the competition behind. Researchers were impressed by the results of Alphafold and deemed it to be a great success. But for DeepMind, this was just the beginning. 2020 saw CASP14 being held virtually due to the ongoing pandemic. DeepMind submitted their structures predicted by Alphafold 2, a neural network system trained by being fed a large amount of data on protein structures and their constituent amino acid sequences.
Comparison of Alphafold Prediction and pre-existing structure
The results that came out were unprecedented. A score above 90 on the GDT is considered accurate and matches the best experimental methods’ standard. In other words, a score above 90 means that the problem is solved. Alphafold 2 scored between 87 to 92.4! As can be inferred, this is a big step in solving the ‘protein-fold problem’ taken via the unlikeliest of routes – Artificial Intelligence.
WHY IS THIS SO IMPORTANT?
Alphafold 2 could have far-reaching implications spanning across many fields. Molecular biologists will now be able to advance onto more complex and specific questions with access to reliable protein structure predictions. With a better understanding of the way proteins fold, researchers will better understand drug discovery. They could design specific medicines for diseases with newfound knowledge about protein structures and their functions. This year, Alphafold successfully predicted several protein structures of the SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19, previously unknown.
DeepMind is looking forward to collaborating with biologists and researchers to realize the impact of Alphafold 2 further. They also aim to make the system more accessible for research labs. Needless to say, DeepMind has advanced not only the pursuit of molecular biology but also the pursuit of computation and AI. The success story of DeepMind is a welcomed one and holds even more significance due to the challenging times it has come in.
If you love astronomy and have dreamt of winning the Nobel Prize, this piece is for you. Here, we will go through the research work of Reinhard Genzel along with his companions Andrea Ghez and Roger Penrose, who shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in physics and conquered our hearts. The thing common about these 3 scientists is black hole research. Roger Penrose made a bigger contribution and got half the prize share. He proved that the very formation of a black hole was predicted in Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.
Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez, who both have one-fourth share of the prize, discovered a supermassive compact object at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. This shows how far we have come in the race to explore the cosmos, but still not even outside our galaxy.
About Reinhard Genzel
Born in 1952, Reinhard Genzel received his physics degree from Bonn University in Germany. Later, I studied at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, went to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and then served as a professor at the University of California. Besides his extraordinary academic background, this genius has won a whole bunch of prizes, which include the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation in the year 1990, the Balzan Prize in the year 2003, the Shaw Prize in the year 2008, andthe Crafoord Prize in the year 2012.
What exactly did Reinhard Genzel work on?
With their team, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez worked on the stars’ patterns close to the center of our galaxy, which made them realize that something fishy was going on in the center. That’s where the Nobel seeds were sown, and the prize was reaped. They discovered a supermassive black hole and calculated its mass. This is my favorite part because I’m not too fond of the uncertainty around black holes as an astronomy student. Even though our academic syllabus will become harder, it will be a little clearer about black holes from now on.
How the existence of a supermassive black hole was proved?
To prove that a supermassive black hole exists in the center of our galaxy, the scientists had to demonstrate that;
The center was extremely massive.
The mass at the center was located in a very tiny volume.
Another concept is the Schwarzschild radius.
This is one of the best things I ever came across. Here is when we realize that astronomy is actually about the universe. If an object is compressed to the Schwarzschild radius, which is different for everything and depends on the mass, it will become a black hole if an object is somehow compressed to its Schwarzschild radius.
To put it simply, the black hole was just a massive star once, which now is compressed to the Schwarzschild radius of that parent star. Now, this concept is important because if we know the Schwarzschild radius of something and the mass, we can move towards proving whether it’s a black hole.
Finding out the mass and the Schwarzschild radius is vital to the black hole neighborhood. Stars revolving around a black hole tell a lot about its nature. Like planets in the solar system revolve around the sun and maintain an orbit, so do stars around a black hole.
Their orbit helps find the Schwarzschild radius, and the velocity helps determine the mass of the black hole. With the orbit and velocity information of close stars like the star named S0-2, scientists concentrated on a much smaller area, and the mass that we measured there strongly suggested the presence of a black hole. With the Schwarzschild radius information, we knew that such a huge mass could only be possible for a black hole in such a small region.
Star dancing around a supermassive black hole. Credit: arstechnica.com
The mass of our very own black hole
After years of detailed study of close stars, Reinhard and his team calculated the mass of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way known as Sagittarius A*. They found it to be 4.3 million times the mass of our Sun. Radio emissions from the black hole further suggested that it’s a pretty small object, confirming the idea that it is a supermassive black hole. Observations also suggested that stars close to the black hole do not revolve in a neat elliptical pattern. Instead, they make rosettes, as shown in Figure 1. This discovery aligns with the General Theory of Relativity predictions, thus proving that Einstein was right again!
Another extraordinary observation was the gravitational redshift, a light shifting to the spectrum’s Red part due to extreme gravity. A star named S0-2 came very close to the black hole in 2018 and had a distance of 14 Billion Kilometers, showing gravitational redshift. This redshift was predicted by none other than Einstein in his Theory of General Relativity.
With all this said, it’s amazing to see how far we have come from when stars were godly objects. We are now aware of the Life cycles of stars, how they are born, and how they die to become black holes or supermassive black holes; on top of all that, we are aware of how a black hole can be spotted.
Thoughts on the 2020 Nobel Prize
This year’s Nobel Prize was not just about scientific discoveries but about how magnificent scientific collaborations could be. Reinhard Genzel, Andrea Ghez Roger Penrose, and several other scientists proved the existence of a black hole and further validated General Relativity. It is quite unbelievable how far scientists can feed their curiosity.
This year has been a roller coaster for almost everyone on the planet; nobody needs to introduce all to the topics of Coronavirus. The struggle has been real in the Healthcare industry to study and understand this virus and develop a vaccine. It needed a lot of energy and time for pharmacists, medical experts, chemists, and scientists; they all had to put their heads together before an effective vaccine presented for the open trail in Nov 2020.
A couple of companies worldwide have invented different variations of a Covid-19 vaccine; a few are mRNA vaccines. This is a relatively new technology and has not been extensively used before. This vaccine is injected into the upper muscle of the human arm. Unlike many other vaccines that introduce a weakened or inactive form of the virus, it presents a genetic material called “messenger RNA.”
Inside a normal cell, there is a nucleus, and that is where our DNA is stored. The human DNA stores information and instructions on keeping the body functioning correctly, and it is what makes the human a unique creature. Inside the cell is a sort of machinery that reads and transcribes it into mRNA, which goes to the cytoplasm, where the ribosomes in cells read the RNA and, based on the specific code, build a chain of amino acids fold tightly to make protein.
The mRNA vaccine gives the immune system a preview of the actual virus will be like without causing the disease. Basically, it will trigger the response signal of the antibodies. Another benefit of these vaccines is they can be made in labs much quicker and faster than other vaccines. It’s also far more cost-effective to make mRNA molecules than the proteins themselves.
A couple of companies worldwide have invented different variations of a Covid-19 vaccine
The details of a few other available and in use vaccines are as under;
Pfizer/ BioNtech vaccine
Pfizer vaccine is an mRNA vaccine developed in collaboration with Germany and the US; it is one of the first mRNA vaccines ever to exist. It is 95% effective against Covid-19. By the end of this month, about 4 million people are expected to inject this vaccine. It gives in two doses separated by a time-lapse of 21 days. The only downfall to this and all the other mRNA vaccines is that they need to be stored at -70°C at least.
Sputnik vaccine
Sputnik vaccine is another vaccine for covid19, developed by Russia, and is 91.4% efficient. The vaccine will be free of cost for Russian citizens, but for the rest of the world, it will only be 10$ for one of two doses, which is a big plus as not everyone can afford expensive vaccines. Another good point to this vaccine is that it can be stored between 2-8°C.
RDIF continues expanding existing agreements with international manufacturing partners to produce the vaccine for more than 500 million people in 2021.
Cambridge’ Moderna
Moderna vaccine is made by the US biotechnology company Cambridge, Massachusetts. This mRNA vaccine holds the same benefits and flaws as other mRNA vaccines. It is approved about a week after Pfizer/BioNTech and is now being distributed worldwide. The US has agreed to purchase 200 million doses of Moderna, and as reported, about six million doses ready to ship so far. It is 95% effective and should be given twice in 4 weeks intervals. A plus point to this vaccine is that it can be stored at -20°C for up to 6 months.
Sinovac Biotech’s CoronaVac
Coronavac is developed by a Beijing-based biopharmaceutical company, Sinovac. This vaccine uses an inactive form of the virus instead of the spike protein, as observed with the mRNA vaccines. It works with killed viral particles, exposes the body’s immune system directly to the virus without risking a serious disease response. Basically, it is a traditional way of vaccination like that for measles and mumps. It can be stored at 2-8°C.
Oxford’ AstraZeneca
Oxford University, in collaboration with AstraZeneca, develops AstraZeneca. Initially, this vaccine was tested by giving two full doses but the results were only 62% efficient. Later by mistake, a patient was given a dose followed by a half dose, and shockingly, the results were up to 90% effective. The UK Government is going to manufacture 100 million doses. It can also be stored at normal fridge temperatures; also, it is the cheapest one. The AstraZeneca vaccine uses a modified version of a chimpanzee cold virus for delivering instructions to cells.
Exoplanets are possible worlds like our planetary system orbiting around any other star than our Sun. NASA’s quest for exoplanets has achieved several milestones in the past three decades. Till now, more than 4324 planets have been discovered and are present in NASA’s exoplanet catalog.
More than 200 exoplanets have been explored in the year 2020 with a couple of breakthroughs in exoplanets to find intelligent life with empathy and knowledge. The eyes are still on other solar systems in quest of the possibility of other Earth-like worlds where life can be present in any form. Some exoplanets are of different sizes, properties, specifications, masses, and composition.
There are gas giants, and rocky planets roaming around a star or even roaming freely around the galactic center unbounded to any star and are known as rogue planets. The exoplanets discovered until now are quite from a tiny region of our Milky Way galaxy. Our galaxy is supposed to have more than 300 million, the potentially habitable world, out of ten of billions of exoplanets that may be able to harbor life.
Exoplanets space ventures
A couple of space missions carrying telescopes, satellites, probes have been sent by NASA for the exploration and discovery of exoplanets, and there are more advanced telescopes like James Webb Space Telescope & Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which are planned to be sent this year on October 31, 2021, & 2025 respectively. Now we know because of the previously done discoveries by telescopes like Hubble, Kepler. Spitzer & TESS that there are more planets than stars in the galaxy, and there is more than 50% chance that the planetary system of Sun-like stars has the planetary system that does support life like our very own Earth. Kepler Telescope, also known as “Planets Hunter,” has exponentially discovered exoplanets in its nine-year expedition. Though by today’s date, Earth is the only life-supporting planet in the whole known Universe.
Credits: NASA
Astrobiology: Quest for intelligence life
Astrobiology has been developed to read any intelligent life signs in our planetary system or far across the ocean of planets in our galaxy and moreover in our Universe. There may be life lying beneath the surface of water or ice, there may exist breathing organisms in rocky planets, or there may be a living creature in planets abundant with elements present on our Earth. Life could be in any form, shape, size, or composition that we may have never seen or our mind has never predicted before.
They may be the species capable of fundamental change, and their DNA may be determining their fate in a much-hidden way veiled through the other world. There may be unfortunate life perished from the face of their planets, or there may be any species completely wiped by any other species. There is also a chance that somewhere on any other planet, life may be flourishing in any form at the micro-level, give birth to an intelligent life millennium centuries after. Human exploration has now been open to the imagination with dynamics more than before to think beyond limitations.
A portion of exoplanets discovery in 2020 catalog. Credits: NASA
Earth: Story of the evolution of only life-supporting planet known in the Universe
Earth was born in fire, formed from a dead star; in its beginning time, it was like a firing ball spinning very faster with shorter days just to 6 hours long. Moon was 10 times more near our young planet with greater gravitational pull and thousand times high tidal waves the world has ever known. Earth was not a place to foster human life or any other kind of life back then.
The atmosphere was hostile, mostly composed of carbon dioxide, methane, and ammonia, in which life was impossible to exist in any form. But then millenniums of centuries after then, life was nurtured in the form of a tiny creature like shrugs of the methane eating carbon dioxide in sunlight found a way to make a living in the oceans and crafted the whole world that we know today. These first autotrophic bacteria, very similar to the cyanobacteria, enriched the Earth with oxygen eating up carbon dioxide and giving oxygen, which destroyed the methane shrouds, turning the skies blue and cool.
The ozone was formed from the high up oxygen atoms creating an invisible canopy against harmful radiations of the Sun. Hence the life sprouts out of the oceans to face the new opportunities to flourish in variant sizes, shapes, and compositions to step on the ground as new inhabitants. Soon after, there were ears, eyes, feet, wings, fins, everywhere roaming in the kingdom of land and oceans, witnessing the very evolution of life. This is the exception rather than the rule and holds so many mysteries that the human mind cannot decipher yet.
Credits: NASA
Techniques that are opening the gateways to discovering different kinds of exoplanets
So when we place our vision beyond the horizon, we look deeper into the infinite possibilities. We have changed our insight as well as our tools with time. We have discovered thousands of planets by now, and the count will rise to tens or hundreds of thousands within the next decade. We are counting on more powerful observing robotic telescopes mounted in space to tell us our past and future in a different way. We are developing new methods of identifying and detecting rather than just catering to them through direct imaging.
We have discovered 3287 exoplanets through transit method, 826 exoplanets through radial velocity method, 51 exoplanets through direct imaging, 106 exoplanets through gravitational microlensing, and one planet through astrometry. The researchers have categorized them according to their masses and sizes, and they have calculated their temperatures. We have the simulation for the predictability of the light level, sky color, and other specifications. So far, the discovered exoplanets have been divided into four major categories that include:
Gas Giants
Neptunian
Super-Earth
Terrestrial
Gas Giants
The large exoplanets are mostly composed of helium/hydrogen or Jupiter and Saturn of our planetary system. They may be far huge than Jupiter and much closer to their stars than anything found in our solar system. There are 1357 confirmed Gas Giants’ discoveries, with 51 Pegasi-b as one of the famous gas giants.
Neptunian
Those exoplanets that fall in Neptune or Uranus’s size category of their own planetary system are considered Neptunian exoplanets. They usually have hydrogen/helium abundant atmospheres with core and heavier metals. There are 1467 confirmed Neptunian exoplanets discovered until now, with Kepler 1655-b as one of the most helpful discoveries of this category.
Super-Earth
Super-Earth is gas or rock giants exoplanets that are massive than our Earth and lighter than Neptune. They can be double the size of Earth to ten times its mass. There have been 1331 confirmed Super-Earth discoveries in NASA’s catalog with Barnard’s Star-b as the 2ndclosest star to us until now.
Terrestrial
The exoplanets between half of Earth’s size to twice its radius are classified as Terrestrial exoplanets. They are highly expected to be with rocky surfaces and similar elements as found here. There have been 163 confirmed terrestrial exoplanets in the NASA catalog of exoplanets with Trappist 1-e as one of the most special discoveries of this class.
Credits: NASA
Best chances of life in exoplanets
There are wide-ranging stars in our universe, with their specification impacting many factors, including their star system. This evaluates if their system can have the rocky planet in their orbit with the possibility of liquid water or any kind of life-supporting elements. There are huge complications in determining the potentially habitable planets. The scientist is more looking towards the exoplanets in the “Goldilocks zone” to their parent star, which varies with the star size and mass.
The habitable zone or “Goldilocks zone” is the region around any star where the temperature is just right enough to support life like our planet Earth in our solar system. The temperature is neither too hot nor too cold but moderate enough to support liquid water, which has been the key component as far as we think to harness life. There is a good occurrence rate of exoplanets’ possibility to be inhabitable zone predicted by the models created through the absorption of light by the planet given off by their star established on a star’s flux.
There are wide-ranging stars in our universe, with their specification impacting many factors, including their star system. Credits: NASA
Possibilities of breakthroughs in future exploration
The human quest is continuously pulling its threads to make some real breakthroughs and answer our existence’s mysteries. We even don’t know how intelligent species like us find their way into this planet 480 million years back. We don’t know that from where our consciousness comes from that witnessed the evolution of life diversity in millions of other forms. We faced mass extinction and then sprouted again to witness another era of philosophical implications of life and understanding different patterns attached to it. We design the world and architect it as we wish, incarnating the destinies, choosing life, and developing our own patterns, facing chaos that unleashes in very mystical ways.
We inhabit a cosmos hidden in the veils of unrevealed dimensions of paradoxical realities that the human mind cannot understand. We own a single perception, but there may be paradoxes that are stopping us from decrypting them. Nature intimate secrets, and in stretching the fabric of space and time, there may be unfolded realities and anomalies that may be just a few steps away from knowing. The future holds too much that we don’t know today and what we don’t know never means that it does not exist. It may exist in a way beyond our understanding for now, but it will not be forever. The curtain will move, and the revelations will occur if not today, then tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, then the day after it, whenever it will, it will unleash the deepest secrets of nature.
We’re all sore in the ears from hearing headlines on the pandemic and its aftermath in all spheres of life. In 2020, millions got affected and died. Humankind invented new ways to cope with the mental breakdown due to the lockdown. The SOPs are now following worldwide; a couple of countries started programs for vaccinating their citizens.
In 2020, besides virology, microbiology, and healthcare, the life sciences breakthroughs deserve as much of an applauding recognition. The wildlife on planet earth experienced equally harrowing events during the year. While there are depressing news and discoveries, Nature does give us good news once in a while.
Let’s look at some of the topmost stories on the breakthrough research made in wildlife during 2020.
Wildlife has benefited from our pandemic-induced lifestyle changes
Millions of species populate the earth, including plants and animals; unfortunately, it is the most dominant humans and creates havoc on land, oceans, and the atmosphere. From pollution to hunting and deforestation, we’ve pretty much knocked over the ecosystem’s delicate balance. With the onset of the pandemic, we were forced to practice social distancing and stay locked up in our houses. Traffic and workplace pollution dramatically declined, and this gave wildlife a chance to thrive and flourish again.
The downward spike in pollution saw a boost in the environment, created a natural rehabilitation of many wild animals, fish, and birds.
Another major milestone during the pandemic was the ban on using wildlife as food by the global wildlife trade in areas of China like Wuhan, where the virus has originally been traced. Zoo animals were freed as a mutual feeling of being trapped inside developed in humans during the lockdown. Hunting and killing of wild mountain animals were also banned. In short, the pandemic proved to be a blessing for the wildlife and their habitats.
The discovery of new species
Many species that had been previously thought to be extinct have been rediscovered. Some examples are as follow:
A new dwarf gecko in India’s Eastern Ghats.
The devil-eyed frog in the Bolivian Andes
The Duobrachium sparksaejellyfish
Loureedia Phoenix spider in Iran. Interestingly, this spider has been compared with Joker in Batman and Joker as its colors are strikingly similar to those of Joker’s face.
Greater Gliders in Myanmar. These are a new kind of possum.
Popa Langur. This is the world’s latest discovered species of monkey.
New snake discovered named after Harry Potter character
This new species deserves a separate headline because it has been named after a character from the most popular fiction series Harry Potter by J.K.Rowling. That’s right; we’re talking about the Salazar’s pit viper, a green beauty found in Arunkal Pradesh, India. It’s a venomous snake and was stumbled upon in April.
The Salazar’s pit viper
Around 156 plant and fungal species named as new in 2020
Naturally growing plants and microorganisms also add up to a rudimentary part of the wildlife ecosystem. Here is a glimpse of some of the new species discovered:
A bizarre shrub with a new family and a new genus found in the deserts of Namibia; Tiganophytaceae
Beautiful Brazilian bromeliad
Gastrodia nucellus; the ugliest orchid in the world, found in a forest in Madagascar
Blue gold, a shrub related to blueberries
Mushroom species unearthed in the UK near Heathrow airport named after it; Cortinarius Heather.
World Wildlife Day 2020
Celebrated by the UN on 3rd March, the theme of 2020’s year’s event was sustaining all life on Earth. Here are glimpses of the headlines:
Wild beavers, which were reintroduced in the UK, helped improve the local environment as they dig holes around the waterside and reduce local flooding.
Whales are helping in the fight against climate change. They capture carbon dioxide from the environment. One whale captures CO2 as much as a thousand trees in its lifetime.
Pest control is done by ducks rather than pesticides, especially in rice paddles.
Dogs are sniffing out disease in citrus crops, which is a swift method due to their over-sensitive noses.
Let’s hope that the coming year proves to be a fruitful one in rescuing wildlife from humanity’s despairs and discovering more species that have been yet to be researched upon.
Cancer is one of the leading causes of death in Pakistan1 and around the rest of the world.2; occurred about 178,388 new cancer cases with 117149 cancer deaths in Pakistan in 2020.3 The process of uncontrolled proliferation of normal or previously healthy body cells could resultantly disrupt the normal function of the tissue they reside in, spreading to adjacent and ultimately to distant tissues is known as cancer.
There are about 35 different types of cancers with breast cancer being the most prevalent cancer type among women and lung cancer as the most prevalent cancer type in men in Pakistan.3 Signs and symptoms of almost all types of cancers usually occur at a later stage, when cancer has spread to other organs, majorly contributing to disease-related mortality. One of the most common symptoms of almost all types of cancers including breast and lung cancer is chronic pain.5
Chronic pain and its incidence
An ongoing pain lasting for more than about 12 weeks despite medication intake is known as chronic pain.6 Chronic cancer pain can occur due to cancerous cells pressing against the nearby nerve, bone, or toxins produced by cancerous cells.7 Occurrence of chronic pain can be one of the first signs and symptoms of cancer, requiring careful examination to rule out further the malignancy, the site, and the stage of cancer.7
Chronic pain has been estimated to be prevalent in about 37.3 % of developing countries, including Pakistan.8 It is looked upon as a disease in itself due to its strongly associated biophysical components such as depression, sleep disorders, and functional impairment.9
Chronic pain is a significant factor behind the decline in people’s well-being, social relationships, and ability to live independently. It also leads to a decline in people’s productivity posing to be a major constraint on the economy of the country,10 categorizing it as a major health cause burdening the economy of developed countries like Denmark, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom, etc.11-13
Unfortunately, Pakistan faces the challenge of a lack of up-to-date research on the subject, keeping the experts and policymakers unaware of the significance of chronic cancer pain on the country’s economy and its healthcare. Since the past few decades, chronic cancer pain in Pakistan has been managed as per the WHO guidelines through opioids.
A table summarising cancer statistic for the year 2020 in Pakistan
Drawbacks of conventional “opioid therapy” and how the usage of “nerve blocks” can overcome them
Opioids are a form of medicine that previously used to be made from opium poppy but are now human-made in the lab. Opioids depict the effect of natural pain-relieving substances such as endorphins produced by the body and are known to be essentially a part of the pain-management plan for cancer patients.14 However, prolonged use of opioids is accompanied by serious side effects, including breathing and urinating problems plus mental impairments.14
Hence, the researchers’ focus shifted towards deepening their understanding of cellular and molecular mechanisms of pain and developing less harmful and more promising pain-management therapeutics. This led to researchers’ attention at Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Center being caught by “nerve blocks.” Nerve blocks (nerve blockade) is the intentional interruption of signals traveling along a nerve to fulfill the purpose of pain relief. To study this intervention’s therapeutic efficacy in a clinical setting, a retrospective study15 was launched at the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Center in 2016.
The study comprised 252 patients divided into two groups, i.e., cancer patients and non-cancer patients—the cancer group comprised 168 patients with a mean age of about 50 years. Three main interventional procedures were carried out in the study: Coeliac plexus, Epidural Rhizolysis, and Intrathecal neurolysis. Coeliac plexus was performed in patients with upper abdominal organ carcinomas based upon the promising results of a recent study investigating its effect in such patients. Epidural Rhizolysis was carried out for patients with chronic back pain due to its well-established therapeutic role in treating back pain.16-18 Intrathecal neurolysis was used for intractable cancer pain.
Ultrasound guided femoral nerve block
The Numerical Rating Scale (NRS) was used to evaluate pain to determine the respective intervention dose and evaluate patient satisfaction one and four weeks post-procedure. The study reported promising findings, with 74.4% of the patients being satisfied with the intervention’s therapeutic effects after one week and 66.07% were satisfied after four weeks of the procedure, whereas 10.12% lost follow-up 4 weeks post-procedure.
Limitations of present research and future implications of “nerve blocks”
Despite the promising findings reported, the study had limitations of small sample size, limited follow-up time of four weeks only, and problems with participant adherence to the study and its protocols. The study did not mention the intervention’s safety profile, nor did it report any drug-related adverse reaction in the participants. The missing data could potentially downgrade the scientific validity of the study results. Hence, a large-scale study with long-term follow-ups of at least 6 months to one year of the study participants with a strategic approach towards patient adherence is warranted.
A well-established safety profile for the intervention can be achieved through the long-term follow up of study participants. Once the research’s highlighted gaps are overcome, the intervention could potentially progress towards seeking approval for its clinical use from the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan as an adjuvant to pharmacological therapy. This would potentially help reduce nationwide opioid usage consequently limiting its health side-effects and economic burden on a country’s healthcare.
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Ahmad U, Abbas S, Hamadani S, Abbas S, Usman S, Hafeez Z et al. Pain Intervention for Cancer and Non-cancer Pain: A Retrospective Analysis of Tertiary Care Hospital Experience. Cureus. 2020;.
Nagels W, Pease N, Bekkering G, Cools F, Dobbels P: Celiac plexus neurolysis for abdominal cancer pain: a systematic review. Pain Med. 2013, 14:1140-1163. 10.1111/pme.12176
Burton AW, Rajagopal A, Shah HN, Mendoza T, Cleeland C, Hassenbusch SJ III, Arens JF: Epidural and intrathecal analgesia is effective in treating refractory cancer pain . Pain Med. 2004, 5:239-247. 10.1111/j.1526-4637.2004.04037.x
Jeon YS, Lee JA, Choi JW, et al.: Efficacy of epidural analgesia in patients with cancer pain: a retrospective observational study. Yonsei Med J. 2012, 53:649-653. 10.3349/ymj.2012.53.3.649.
