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Researchers Identify New Genes Linked With Schizophrenia Risk in First-of-Its-Kind Study

Researchers have made an important discovery about the causes of schizophrenia, a disease related to dementia or fragmented mentality.   Researchers have identified two genes associated with the disease as well as a third gene that carries the risk of schizophrenia and autism. Scientists involved in this research believes, this discovery can go a long way in finding a cure for these kind of diseases. Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine found that these harmful genes are almost the same in every ethnic or racial group. The findings of this research were published in Nature Genetics . According to an estimate, about one percent of people worldwide suffering from schizophrenia. The scientists identified two risky genes, SRRM2 and AKAP11, based on a comparative analysis of gene sequencing from individuals with schizophrenia and healthy individuals. It compared a dataset of 35,828 patients with schizophrenia to 107,877 healthy or control groups and included a v...
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Space Bricks Have Been Made for The Development of Infrastructure on Mars


Scientific developments has given wings to human dreams. Our scientific missions have reached to Mars. Efforts are being made to collect evidence related to the possibility of life on Mars. For this, NASA's Mars rover is exploring various regions of Mars.

In such a situation, there is also a dream to establish human settlements on this red planet. Scientists around the world are researching ways to build on Mars. 

In this direction, Indian scientists have achieved a feat. They have developed a specific bacteria-based technology to produce 'Space Bricks' for build infrastructure on Mars. Such space bricks can be manufactured on a large scale using this technique.

This research was jointly carried out by scientists from Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). For this, he used simulant soil of Mars and urea. These space bricks can be used for set up infrastructure on Mars, which will make it easier to settle there. This achievement of the scientists of IISc and ISRO has been published in the journal PLOS One.

High iron content in the soil of Mars is a big challenge

Professor Kumar, who is associated with this research, says that, it was very challenging to use the soil of Mars for this study because the soil of Mars contains a lot of iron. This constitutes a significant cause of the toxicity of the organisms. It was almost impossible for bacteria to flourish in this situation. Adding nickel chloride proved to be decisive in making this soil bacteria-friendly.

Now the researchers plan to investigate the effects of the Martian atmosphere and low gravity on the strength of space bricks. The atmosphere of Mars is 100 times more sparse than that of Earth. It contains about 95 percent carbon dioxide which can affect bacterial growth.

Researchers have developed a special tool called Mars (Martian Atmosphere Simulator). This device can be used to measure the activity of bacteria under low gravity conditions also.

Key features of the new method

Researchers also used this method to make bricks for the moon. However, only cylindrical bricks could be used with this method, whereas the new slurry casting method could also use complex shaped bricks. The slurry casting method was developed with the help of Professor Kaushik Viswanathan.

What kind of brick is this

Martian soil was mixed with guar gum, a bacteria called sporosarcina pasteuri, urea and nickel chloride to form a solution. This solution can be molded into any size mold. After a few days, the bacteria convert the urea into crystals of calcium carbonate.

These crystals act as a cement holding the soil particles together with the biopolymers secreted by the bacteria. Another advantage of this type of bricks is the low porosity of the bricks, which is a major challenge to achieve by other methods that can be used to consolidate mars clay into bricks. Researcher Alok Kumar says that bacteria use their own proteins to bind particles together and reduce porosity.

Future plan

The researchers say that a device is being built with our intention to experiment in microgravity conditions in the near future. With the help of ISRO, scientists plan to send such instruments to space so that they can study the low gravitational force on the growth of bacteria.
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