Day: 05/13/2015

Doctors to withhold treatments in campaign against ‘too much medicine’ | Society | The Guardian

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Academy of Medical Royal Colleges to draw up list of 100 interventions to advise against in attempt to curb ‘unnecessary’ care, rousing fears of NHS rationing
X-rays for back pain may be more difficult to obtain under the new approach.
Doctors are to stop giving patients scores of tests and treatments, such as x-rays for back pain and antibiotics for flu, in an unprecedented crackdown on the “over-medicalisation” of illness.

In a move that has roused fears that it will lead to the widespread rationing of NHS care, the body representing the UK’s 250,000 doctors is seeking to ensure that patients no longer undergo treatment that is unlikely to work, may harm them and wastes valuable resources.

The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges wants to bring an end to a culture of “too much medicine” in which “more is better” and doctors feel compelled to always “do something”, often because they feel under pressure from the patient, even though they know that the treatment recommended will probably not work.

Many patients with asthma, prostate and thyroid cancers, and chronic kidney disease already undergo “unnecessary care” because they are “over-diagnosed” and thus “over-treated”, the academy claims.

In a major change to patients’ relationships with their doctors, it will try and persuade the sick to stop expecting to automatically receive some form of medical intervention, such as drugs or surgery.

In future, doing nothing for the patient may be the best thing to do for them, according to the academy.

It wants doctors to start talking honestly to patients about the benefit or potential lack of benefit from a certain procedure and the possibility that some treatments can involve risk, and about alternative ways of handling their illness.

In an article in the BMJ, a group of senior doctors – including the academy president, Prof Dame Sue Bailey, and her predecessor Prof Terence Stephenson – say: “These new conversations will rebalance discussions about the risks and benefits of tests and interventions, such that doctors and patients will be supported to acknowledge that a minor potential benefit may not outweigh potential harm, the minimal evidence base, and substantial financial expense and therefore that, sometimes, doing nothing might be the favourable option.”

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Patients’ desire for treatment “has bred unbalanced decision-making. This has resulted in patients sometimes being offered treatments that have only minor benefit and minimal evidence, despite the potential for substantial harm and expense”, write the doctors.

They warn that the NHS will not be able to cope with growing demand for healthcare unless over-treatment is banished. “This culture threatens the sustainability of high-quality healthcare,” they add.

The NHS’s “tariff” system of paying hospitals for treatment incentivises them to undertake medical activity, as does the Quality Outcomes Framework system under which GPs are rewarded for, for example, treating high cholesterol or high blood pressure, they say.

“Defensive medicine, patient pressures, biased reporting in medical journals and a lack of understanding of health statistics and risk” have also contributed to some treatments being performed regularly, despite a lack of robust evidence showing they work, they add.

The academy – whose 21-member medical royal colleges represent different types of doctors such as GP, surgeons and hospital physicians – has decided to introduce a policy called Choosing Wisely, which is already used in the US, Australia, Germany and other countries. It aims to get doctors to “stop using various interventions that are not supported by evidence, free from harm, and truly necessary”.

By the autumn each of the medical royal colleges will have drawn up a list of the top five tests or procedures their members do which are of “questionable value”, giving a final list of about 100 interventions, and advise doctors to stop using them.

The Patients Association criticised the plan. “For me, the concern is that I hope this is not the start of the road to widespread rationing of investigations and treatments, but I fear it might be,” said Katherine Murphy, its chief executive, who is a former NHS manager and former nurse.

“We acknowledge that the NHS has to balance the books, but that should not be at the expense of treating patients appropriately. While not treating a cold or flu might be the best thing to do, I would be very concerned that [in future] a GP or hospital doctor might think twice about whether ordering an investigation for the patient to get a diagnosis, such as a scan or x-ray, is needed or not,” she added.

But Bailey said: “The whole point of Choosing Wisely is to encourage doctors to have conversations with their patients and about the value of a treatment. It’s not, and never will be, about refusing treatment or in any way jeopardising safety. It’s just about taking a grown-up approach to healthcare and being good stewards of the resources we have.”

Dr Aseem Malhotra, a cardiologist and the academy’s consultant clinical associate, said: “We have unwittingly been complicit in creating an epidemic of misinformed doctors and misinformed patients contributing to considerable harm and great expense to our health systems and national economies.”

Prof Maureen Baker, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said: “If there is evidence to show that a particular intervention might be of little benefit to a patient, it is good practice that alternatives are explored. For example, mindfulness and talking therapies have been shown to have positive effects in some patients with recurring depression and anxiety, as opposed to taking antidepressants.

“However, family doctors are often under considerable pressure to prescribe, or take some form of action, as a result of a patient consultation, so it is important that we work together to make people realise that drug or surgical treatment isn’t always the best way forward.”

An NHS England spokesman said: “NHS England has been working as a partner with the Academy of Royal Medical Colleges to join the international campaign of Choosing Wisely to establish which interventions do not help patients in the care of their condition.

“There is much evidence that there is significant overuse of some treatments such as antibiotics but when medicines are needed it’s important that patients receive them.”

Seasonal immunity: Activity of thousands of genes differs from winter to summer — ScienceDaily

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Our immune systems vary with the seasons, according to a study that could help explain why certain conditions such as heart disease and rheumatoid arthritis are aggravated in winter while people tend to be healthier in the summer. The study shows that the activity of almost a quarter of our genes (5,136 out of 22,822 genes tested) differs according to the time of year, with some more active in winter and others more active in summer. This seasonality also affects our immune cells and the composition of our blood and adipose tissue (fat).
Changing seasons (stock image). Scientists have known for some time that various diseases, including cardiovascular disease, autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis, and psychiatric disorders, display seasonal variation, as does vitamin D metabolism.
 Our immune systems vary with the seasons, according to a study led by the University of Cambridge that could help explain why certain conditions such as heart disease and rheumatoid arthritis are aggravated in winter whilst people tend to be healthier in the summer.

The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, shows that the activity of almost a quarter of our genes (5,136 out of 22,822 genes tested) differs according to the time of year, with some more active in winter and others more active in summer. This seasonality also affects our immune cells and the composition of our blood and adipose tissue (fat).

Scientists have known for some time that various diseases, including cardiovascular disease, autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis, and psychiatric disorders, display seasonal variation, as does vitamin D metabolism. However, this is the first time that researchers have shown that this may be down to seasonal changes in how our immune systems function.

“This is a really surprising — and serendipitous — discovery as it relates to how we identify and characterise the effects of the susceptibility genes for type 1 diabetes,” says Professor John Todd, Director of the JDRF/Wellcome Trust Diabetes and Inflammation Laboratory. “In some ways, it’s obvious — it helps explain why so many diseases, from heart disease to mental illness, are much worse in the winter months — but no one had appreciated the extent to which this actually occurred. The implications for how we treat disease like type 1 diabetes, and even how we plan our research studies, could be profound.”

An international team, led by researchers from the JDRF/Wellcome Trust Diabetes and Inflammation Laboratory in the Department of Medical Genetics, Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, examined samples from over 16,000 people living in both the northern and southern hemispheres, in countries including the UK, USA, Iceland, Australia and The Gambia. These samples included a mixture of blood samples and adipose tissue.

The researchers used a variety of techniques to study the samples, including looking at the cell types found in the blood and measuring the level of expression of the individuals’ genes — a gene is said to be ‘expressed’ when it is active in a particular cell or tissue, usually involving the generation of proteins. They found that the thousands of genes were expressed differently in blood and adipose tissue depending on what time of year the samples were taken. Similarly, they identified seasonal differences in the types of cells found in the blood.

Seasonal differences were present across mixed populations in geographically and ethnically diverse locations — but the seasonal genes displayed opposing patterns in the northern and southern hemispheres. However, the pattern of seasonal activity was not reflected as strongly in Icelandic donors. The researchers speculate that this may be due to the near-24 hour daylight during summer and near-24 hour darkness in winter.

One gene of particular interest was ARNTL, which was more active in the summer and less active in the winter. Previous studies have shown that, in mice at least, the gene suppresses inflammation, the body’s response to infection; if the gene has the same function in humans, then levels of inflammation will be higher during winter in the northern hemisphere. Inflammation is a risk factor for a range of diseases and hence in winter, those at greatest risk will likely reach the ‘threshold’ at which the disease becomes a problem much sooner. Drugs that target the mechanisms behind inflammation could offer a way of helping treat these diseases more effectively during the winter periods.

A particularly surprising finding was that a set of genes associated to an individual’s response to vaccination was more active in winter, suggesting that some vaccination programmes might be more effective if carried out during winter months when the immune system is already ‘primed’ to respond.

During European and Australian winters, they argue, the thresholds required to trigger an immune response may be lower as a direct consequence of our coevolution with infectious organisms, which tend to be more prevalent during winter. Interestingly, people from The Gambia showed distinct seasonal variation in the numbers of immune cells in the blood that correlated with the rainy season (June-October), during which time infectious diseases, particularly mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria, are more rife.

“We know that humans adapt to changing environments,” says Dr Chris Wallace. “Our paper suggests that human immune systems adapt to show different seasonal variation in equatorial regions with fewer distinct seasons compared to regions at higher and lower latitudes with more pronounced differences between winter and season.”

It is not clear yet what mechanism maintains the seasonal variation seen in the immune system, though it may be due to environmental cues such as daylight and ambient temperature. Our internal body clock — known as our circadian rhythm — is in part coordinated by changes in daylight, which explains why people in jobs that do not fit with the daily cycle, such as factory shift workers or crews on long haul flights, can be affected by poorer health.

Professor Todd adds: “Given that our immune systems appear to put us at greater risk of disease related to excessive inflammation in colder, darker months, and given the benefits we already understand from vitamin D, it is perhaps understandable that people want to head off for some ‘winter sun’ to improve their health and well-being.”

The research was funded by the Wellcome Trust, the type 1 diabetes charity JDRF and the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre.

Professor Mike Turner, Head of Infection and Immunobiology at the Wellcome Trust said: “This is an excellent study which provides real evidence supporting the popular belief that we tend to be healthier in the summer. Seasonal variation to this extent is a fascinating find — the activity of many of our genes, as well as the composition of our blood and fat tissue, varies depending on the seasons. Although we are still unclear of the mechanism that governs this variation, one possible outcome is that treatment for certain diseases could be more effective if tailored to the seasons.”

Karen Addington, Chief Executive of JDRF in the UK, said: “We have long known there are more diagnoses of type 1 diabetes in winter. This study begins to reveal why. It identifies a biological mechanism we didn’t previously know of, which leaves the body seasonally more prone to the autoimmune attack seen in type 1 diabetes.

“While we all love winter sun, flying south for the whole of each winter isn’t something anyone can practically recommend as a way of preventing type 1 diabetes. But this new insight does open new avenues of research that could help untangle the complex web of genetic and environmental factors behind a diagnosis.”

Detecting Breast Cancer: 3D-Screening Method Detects 40% More Tumors, May One Day Replace Mammograms

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For the average older woman, the mammography has become one of life’s more uncomfortable rites of passage.

DBT

Tightly squeezing your breasts between two paddles as they blast out (low level) radiation is hardly the height of pleasantness. And being advised to go through that process every one to two years once you turn 50 (or 40) is only the compressed cherry on top. Someday soon, though, breast cancer screenings might become at least a little easier to bear, and possibly more useful, if the results from a Swedish study comparing a relatively new method of cancer detection called tomosynthesis to the standard mammogram are of any worth. It found that the new kid on the block was able to detect 40 percent more of breast cancers, while using less radiation and feeling less agonizing for the patient.

Recruiting 7,500 women from Malmö, Sweden, the researchers asked the participants to take both a routine mammogram as well as undergo a digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT), a screening method that takes a rotating array of x-ray images from several different angles, creating a 3D composite image of the breast. Using six blinded experts with an average amount of 26 years’ experience in breast radiology to examine the women’s screening results, they found the DBT method detected 67 cancers compared to the 47 cancers detected via mammogram. Twenty-one cancers were solely detected by DBT where mammograms had failed to notice anything, 17 of which were considered invasive (one cancer was solely detected via mammogram). The tumors found by DBT were also found in both fatty and dense breast tissue, the latter of which has historically made detection difficult.

Perhaps more importantly, comfort wise, DBT screenings required less compression of the breast, with participants often commenting, without prompting, of its relative ease. Because of the nature of its technique, less radiation per screening was also needed. “Our results suggest that one-view DBT might be feasible as a stand-alone breast cancer screening modality,” the authors wrote.

Not all the news was necessarily positive, as the recall rate, in other words the number of perfectly healthy women who were contacted for further examination to determine cancer risk, was slightly higher among DBT readings than with mammograms. This suggests that there might be a higher incidence of mistakenly subjecting women without cancer to unnecessary testing, though the authors hope that more familiarity with DBT imaging can reduce that.

As the mammography as of late has itself been fiercely criticized for an unacceptably high rate of overdiagnosis, with some experts even recommending that the practice of offering routine mammograms be abolished, that’s especially worrying. These concerns might be minimized by the less radiation and the greater detection rate of invasive tumors DBT offers, though. The authors recommend large randomized studies to determine any potential pitfalls with DBT screenings. They will themselves conduct a second part of their study, examining another 7,500 women.

Overall, the authors are hopeful for the future of this technology. “We see five to 10 years from now as a possible timeframe for the large-scale introduction of the technique,” said study author Sophia Zackrisson in a press release. “There is also an aspiration for more personalized screening, and breast tomosynthesis could therefore be one of several methods used.”

Watch the video. URL: https://youtu.be/qCmIF6AQNoA

Trends in Mechanical Ventilation Among Patients Hospitalized With Acute Exacerbations of COPD in the United States, 2001 to 2011

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BACKGROUND:  The use of noninvasive ventilation (NIV) in acute exacerbation of COPD has increased over time. However, little is known about patient factors influencing its use in routine clinical practice.

METHODS:  This was a retrospective cohort study of 723,560 hospitalizations for exacerbation of COPD at 475 hospitals between 2001 and 2011. The primary study outcome was the initial form of ventilation (NIV or invasive mechanical ventilation [IMV]). Hierarchical generalized linear models were used to examine the trends in ventilation and patient characteristics associated with receipt of NIV.

RESULTS:  After adjusting for patient and hospital characteristics, initial NIV increased by 15.1% yearly (from 5.9% to 14.8%), and initial IMV declined by 3.2% yearly (from 8.7% to 5.9%); annual exposure to any form of mechanical ventilation increased by 4.4% (from 14.1% to 20.3%). Among case subjects treated with ventilation, those aged ≥ 85 years had a 22% higher odds of receiving NIV compared with those aged < 65 years, while blacks (OR, 0.86) and Hispanics (OR, 0.91) were less likely to be treated with NIV than were whites. Cases with a high burden of comorbidities and those with concomitant pneumonia had high rates of NIV failure and were more likely to receive initial IMV. Use of NIV increased at a faster rate among the admissions of the oldest patients relative to the youngest.

CONCLUSIONS:  The use of NIV for COPD exacerbations has increased steadily, whereas IMV use has declined. Several patient factors, including age, race, and comorbidities, influenced the receipt of NIV. Further research is needed to identify the factors driving these patterns.

Nature’s Most Powerful Antibiotics (Recipe Included!)

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Your first line of defense against any virus or infection is your own immune system, and there has never been a better time than right now to learn how to support your immune system naturally.

Combining 7 antibacterial and antiviral ingredients, the basic formula of this ‘Master Tonic’ dates back to medieval Europe. It is a super cleansing natural antibiotic, destroying both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. It is a potent anti-viral and anti-fungal/yeast formula, and can increase blood and lymph circulation in the body. It is also known to be effective for treating colds and the flu, as well as Candida.

 Nature's Most Powerful Antibiotics (Recipe Included!) (2)

Apple cider vinegar (ACV)

ACV contains high levels of acetic and malic acid as well as vitamins, mineral salts and amino acids. Some of ACV’s active ingredients are soluble fibers in the form of pectin, vitamin A, vitamin B6, vitamin C, vitamin E, thiamin, lycopene, niacin, pantothenic acid, riboflavin and beta-carotene. It also contains other minerals like sodium, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, iron and magnesium. All of these powerful substances work together and make ACV very effective as an antiviral, antibacterial and antifungal tonic.

Garlic

Garlic has been used for thousands of years to help fight a vast number of illnesses. Garlic produces a chemical called allicin, which is what gives it its powerful smell and makes it effective as an antibacterial and antiviral food. A scientific study of 146 adults showed that taking high doses of Allicin for 12 weeks reduced the chances of catching a cold by 64%, and if a cold did set in, the symptoms were reduced by 70% in the study group.

Ginger

Ginger is a very powerful and aromatic root. The aromatic smell comes from essential oils and phenolic compounds such as gingerols and shogaols in the root. Gingerols increase the movement of the gastrointestinal tract. It also has analgesic, sedative, anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties.

Horseradish root

Horseradish has been shown in laboratory tests to be antibiotic, active against a variety of bacteria so this can benefit a sinus, intestinal, bladder and skin infections. It has a high sulfur content, which may contribute to its antibiotic properties. It is also used as a successful vermifuge, helping kill and expel parasites from the system. It is an important immune stimulate which is also known to increase the number of white blood cells in the bloodstream. It’s is also a powerful antioxidant, helping counteract the effects of stress and pollution in the environment on the body.

Onion

For centuries, onions have been used to reduce inflammation and heal infections. A powerful compound called quercetin in onions is known to play a significant role in preventing cancer. Onions scavenge free radicals, thereby reducing your risk of developing gastric ulcers. The phytochemicals in onions improve the absorption of vitamin C by the body, which leads to improved immune system activity.

Habanero peppers

Habaneros are one of the spiciest foods on the planet, and it is the heat that makes them so beneficial to your health. Habaneros contain a compound called capsaicin. Capsaicin stimulates the blood flow throughout the body, which can help relieve congestion associated with the common cold and sinus infections. They also contain significant amounts of vitamin C, even more than citrus fruits!

Turmeric

Turmeric has been called the most effective nutritional supplement in existence. This root has been widely studied by science for its incredible healing properties. It has very powerful compounds called curcuminoids, the most important of which is curcumin. It has powerful anti-inflammatory effects and is a very strong antioxidant. Curcumin is a bioactive substance that fights inflammation at the molecular level, blocking certain molecules from entering and disrupting proper cellular function.

The Master Tonic

To make the Master Tonic at home, click here for the recipe.

If you do not have time or can’t find the ingredients to make this tonic yourself, you can order it from my store here: www.earthiemama.com/store. I have mastered the recipe and infuse every bottle with love ❤  It’s 100% Organic, laboratory tested and clean of heavy metals.

Cheers to your health!

Watching TV before bedtime, sleeping with lights on can make you fat

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A new study has found that people who sleep with lights on or while watching TV or using mobile phones tend to put on weight.

The researchers of Leiden University Medical Centre, Netherlands found out in a survey that artificial lights can disrupt the body clock and also the brown fat cells that burn calories. It is advisable to switch off all lights and gadgets at bedtime, the Mirror reported.

The researchers mentioned that on an average people stay online for about 20 hours a week and for 16 to 24-year-olds this figure rises to more than 27 hours.

Sander Kooijman, a researcher said that the increasing prevalence of obesity was associated with a disrupted sleep-wake pattern in humans and coincides with the availability of artificial light.

The survey is published in National Academy of Sciences journal Proceedings.

Drug Dosing and Pharmacokinetics in Children With Obesity

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Importance  Obesity affects nearly one-sixth of US children and results in alterations to body composition and physiology that can affect drug disposition, possibly leading to therapeutic failure or toxic side effects. The depth of available literature regarding obesity’s effect on drug safety, pharmacokinetics, and dosing in obese children is unknown.

Objective  To perform a systematic literature review describing the current evidence of the effect of obesity on drug disposition in children.

Evidence Review  We searched the MEDLINE, Cochrane, and EMBASE databases (January 1, 1970-December 31, 2012) and included studies if they contained data on drug clearance, volume of distribution, or drug concentration in obese children (aged ≤18 years). We compared exposure and weight-normalized volume of distribution and clearance between obese and nonobese children. We explored the association between drug physicochemical properties and clearance and volume of distribution.

Findings  Twenty studies met the inclusion criteria and contained pharmacokinetic data for 21 drugs. The median number of obese children studied per drug was 10 (range, 1-112) and ages ranged from newborn to 29 years (1 study described pharmacokinetics in children and adults together). Dosing schema varied and were either a fixed dose (6 [29%]) or based on body weight (10 [48%]) and body surface area (4 [19%]). Clinically significant pharmacokinetic alterations were observed in obese children for 65% (11 of 17) of the studied drugs. Pharmacokinetic alterations resulted in substantial differences in exposure between obese and nonobese children for 38% (5 of 13) of the drugs. We found no association between drug lipophilicity or Biopharmaceutical Drug Disposition Classification System class and changes in volume of distribution or clearance due to obesity.

Conclusions and Relevance  Consensus is lacking on the most appropriate weight-based dosing strategy for obese children. Prospective pharmacokinetic trials in obese children are needed to ensure therapeutic efficacy and enhance drug safety.

Physicist finds mysterious anti-electron clouds inside thunderstorm

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A terrifying few moments flying into the top of an active thunderstorm in a research aircraft has led to an unexpected discovery that could help explain the longstanding mystery of how lightning gets initiated inside a thunderstorm.

University of New Hampshire physicist Joseph Dwyer and lightning science colleagues from the University of California at Santa Cruz and Florida Tech describe the turbulent encounter and discovery in a paper to be published in the Journal of Plasma Physics.

In August 2009, Dwyer and colleagues were aboard a National Center for Atmospheric Research Gulfstream V when it inadvertently flew into the extremely violent thunderstorm—and, it turned out, through a large cloud of positrons, the antimatter opposite of electrons, that should not have been there.

To encounter a cloud of positrons without other associated physical phenomena such as energetic was completely unexpected, thoroughly perplexing and contrary to currently understood physics.

“The fact that, apparently out of nowhere, the number of positrons around us suddenly increased by more than a factor of 10 and formed a cloud around the aircraft is very hard to understand. We really have no good explanation for it,” says Dwyer, a lightning expert and the UNH Peter T. Paul Chair in Space Sciences at the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space.

It is known that can sometimes make flashes of energetic , which may produce pairs of electrons and positrons when they interact with air. But the appearance of positrons should then coincide with a large increase in the number of gamma rays.

“We should have seen bright gamma-ray emissions along with the positrons,” Dwyer says. “But in our observations, we first saw a positron cloud, then another positron cloud about seven kilometers away and then we saw a bright gamma-ray glow afterwards. So it’s all not making a whole lot of sense.”

Adds coauthor David Smith of the UC Santa Cruz, “We expected the thunderstorm to make some forms of radiation but not this. We don’t even know whether it’s something nature can do on its own or only happens when you toss an airplane into the mix.”
The physical world is filled with normal matter and antimatter. For every normal particle there’s an antiparticle, such as an electron and its associated anti-particle, called the positron, which, when brought together, annihilate each other in a flash of gamma rays. It is, Dwyer points out, the very same process that is supposed to power Star Trek’s Starship Enterprise.

Having boldly gone where few people should, Dwyer says the experience inside the belly of the beast provides further insight into the bizarre and largely unknown world of thunderstorms—an alien world of gamma rays, high-energy particles accelerated to nearly the speed of light and strange clouds of antimatter positrons.

One possible explanation for the sudden appearance of positrons is that the aircraft itself dramatically influenced the electrical environment of the thunderstorm but that, Dwyer says, would be very surprising. It’s also possible the researchers were detecting a kind of exotic electrical discharge inside the thunderstorm that involves positrons.

“This is the idea of ‘dark lightning,’ which makes a lot of positrons,” says Dwyer. “In detecting the positrons, it’s possible we were seeing sort of the fingerprint of dark lightning. It’s possible, but none of the explanations are totally satisfying.”

Dark lightning is an exotic type of electrical discharge within thunderstorms and is an alternative to normal lightning. In dark lightning, high-energy particles are accelerated and produce , which help discharge the electric field.

Says Dwyer, “We really don’t understand how lightning gets started very well because we don’t understand the electrical environment of thunderstorms. This positron phenomenon could be telling us something new about how thunderstorms charge up and make lightning, but our finding definitely complicates things because it doesn’t fit into the picture that was developing.”

​With an infrared rainbow, IBM optical chip outpaces copper wires.

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Big Blue’s researchers have demonstrated fiber-optic technology that could help computers break through today’s speed limits by transferring data faster.

IBM Research engineers have pushed a step ahead with a technology called silicon photonics designed to loosen up bottlenecks in the computing industry.

Silicon photonics marries conventional chip technology with the superfast data-transfer abilities of fiber optics. Sending data as light over optical links instead of electrons over copper wires offers big advantages in both speed and transmission distance, but because it’s expensive, it’s mostly limited to long-haul uses like connecting computers in different buildings, cities and continents.

But IBM’s researchers demonstrated a computer chip that can simultaneously transmit and receive four different colors of infrared light over a single fiber-optic line — a technology called multiplexing. Each link can transmit 25 gigabits of data per second, for a total of 100Gbps. That’s enough to transfer a Blu-ray disc’s full-resolution 25 gigabyte movie every 2 seconds.

This multiplexing-based speed, combined with the chip’s all-in-one design, is an industry first, IBM said in an announcement Tuesday.

It’s only a demonstration chip from a research lab at this stage, but silicon photonics work from companies like IBM, Intel and Luxtera could play a crucial role in advancing services like Google search,Microsoft Office Online and Facebook social networking that are housed in mammoth data centers packed with thousands of servers. Those servers today are often linked with copper lines, but more economical fiber-optic links could help unify those servers into a larger, more powerful block of computing power. That means more sophisticated online services.

“People would love to have a way to do inexpensive silicon-compatible photonics,” said Linley Group analyst David Kanter. But the technology hasn’t been easy to develop, he said.

Silicon photonics dovetails with a number of technologies like spintronics, exotic carbon materials and quantum computing that are in development to ensure the computing industry can keep up its steady pace of progress even after conventional silicon runs out of steam. The steady progress is embodied in a 50-year-old observation called Moore’s Law named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore.

Commercial use later

IBM Research typically works a step ahead of what’s commercially feasible, but Big Blue expects the work will pay off for the company later.

“Making silicon photonics technology ready for widespread commercial use will help the semiconductor industry keep pace with ever-growing demands in computing power driven by big data and cloud services,” said Arvind Krishna, senior vice president and director of IBM Research. So-called big-data services rely on computationally intense analysis that reveals patterns in things like shopping, traffic or product demand.

The four-link technique could cut data-center fiber-optic costs roughly in half, said Will Green, manager of IBM Research’s Silicon Photonics Group.

“Multiplexing four wavelengths into one optical fiber means that you can carry four times as much data per fiber, and therefore will need four times less fiber in your interconnect system,” Green said. “This fact translates into an additional system-level cost savings for the data-center application on the order of two times on the cost of installed fiber.”

Longer-term future

In the longer run, fiber-optic links could tie together components within a computer, too.

Power-consumption limits have capped the speed of processors — few chips ever make it past 4GHz these days, meaning that their internal clock speed ticks 4 billion times per second. As a result, computing engineers have been looking for other ways to improve overall system performance, and silicon photonics could play a role in keeping processors fed with the data they need to work at maximum efficiency instead of spending large fractions of their time idle.

Key to silicon photonics will be bringing the optical transmitters and receivers — transceivers — closer to the processors that need to send and receive data. Those components eventually will be stacked one atop another, linked with a technology called a through-silicon via (TSV), said An Steegen, senior vice president of process technology at Imec, a large Belgian-based chip research group. It’ll take years to bring that idea to fruition, she predicted.

Intel has had a long-running interest in silicon photonics and with a technology called Light Peak hoped to build an inexpensive fiber-optic link for computers. It never commercialized that project, though, instead partnering with Apple on the Thunderbolt technology that uses either copper or fiber-optic links that today reach up to 40Gbps.

That’s pretty fast, but copper has significant length limits. Copper Thunderbolt cables can reach 3 meters, but fiber-optical alternatives from Corning are available in lengths up to 60 meters.

Scientists have discovered a new state of matter, called ‘Jahn-Teller metals’ .

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And it could be the key to understanding one of the biggest mysteries in physics today – high-temperature superconductors.


An international team of scientists has announced the discovery of a new state of matter in a material that appears to be an insulator, superconductor, metal and magnet all rolled into one, saying that it could lead to the development of more effective high-temperature superconductors.

Why is this so exciting? Well, if these properties are confirmed, this new state of matter will allow scientists to better understand why some materials have the potential to achieve superconductivity at a relativity high critical temperature (Tc) – “high” as in −135 °C as opposed to −243.2 °C. Because superconductivity allows a material to conduct electricity without resistance, which means no heat, sound, or any other form of energy release, achieving this would revolutionise how we use and produce energy, but it’s only feasible if we can achieve it at so-called high temperatures.
As Michael Byrne explains at Motherboard, when we talk about states of matter, it’s not just solids, liquids, gases, and maybe plasmas that we have to think about. We also have to consider the more obscure states that don’t occur in nature, but are rather created in the lab – Bose–Einstein condensate, degenerate matter, supersolids and superfluids, and quark-gluon plasma, for example.

By introducing rubidium into carbon-60 molecules – more commonly known as ‘buckyballs’ – a team led by chemist Kosmas Prassides from Tokohu University in Japan was able to change the distance between them, which forced them into a new, crystalline structure. When put through an array of tests, this structure displayed a combination of insulating, superconducting, metallic, and magnetic phases, including a brand new one, which the researchers have named ‘Jahn-Teller metals’.

Named after the Jahn-Teller effect, which is used in chemistry to describe how at low pressures, the geometric arrangement of molecules and ions in an electronic state can become distorted, this new state of matter allows scientists to transform an insulator – which can’t conduct electricity – into a conductor by simply applying pressure. Byrne explains at Motherboard:

“This is what the rubidium atoms do: apply pressure. Usually when we think about adding pressure, we think in terms of squeezing something, forcing its molecules closer together by brute force. But it’s possible to do the same thing chemically, tweaking the distances between molecules by adding or subtracting some sort of barrier between them – sneaking in some extra atoms, perhaps.

What happens in a Jahn-Teller metal is that as pressure is applied, and as what was previously an insulator – thanks to the electrically-distorting Jahn-Teller effect – becomes a metal, the effect persists for a while. The molecules hang on to their old shapes. So, there is an overlap of sorts, where the material still looks an awful lot like an insulator, but the electrons also manage to hop around as freely as if the material were a conductor.”

And it’s this transition phase between insulator and conductor that, until now, scientists have never seen before, and hints at the possibility of transforming insulating materials into super-valuable superconducting materials. And this buckyball crystalline structure appears to be able to do it at a relatively high TC. “The relationship between the parent insulator, the normal metallic state above Tc, and the superconducting pairing mechanism is a key question in understanding all unconventional superconductors,” the team writes in Science Advances.

There’s a whole lot of lab-work to be done before this discovery will mean anything for practical energy production in the real world, but that’s science for you. And it’s got people excited already, as chemist Elisabeth Nicol from the University of Guelph in Canada told Hamish Johnston at PhysicsWorld: “Understanding the mechanisms at play and how they can be manipulated to change the Tc surely will inspire the development of new [superconducting] materials”.