A 'super' house plant that can remove air pollutants from your home

Houseplants do more than just add natural beauty to your abode. They also help clean the air.

Now, researchers  have improved the air-cleaning properties of one common household plant, the pothos ivy. 

The team genetically modified pothos ivy to not only remove carcinogens such as chloroform and benzene from the air, but to synthesize a protein, called 2E1, that transforms these harmful compounds into molecules the plants use for their own growth.  

The researchers chose pothos ivy as the plant for modification because it grows well indoors in a variety of conditions. 

The scientists added benzene or chloroform gas to modified and non-modified plants in glass tubes. Over 11 days, they collected data on how each pollutant's concentration changed.  

According to the study, the unmodified plants didn't affect the concentration of either gas much. But the modified plants changed the concentration of chloroform dramatically inside the tube, making it drop by 82 percent just after three days. By the sixth day, it was almost completely undetectable. 

The concentration of benzene also decreased thanks to the modified plants. By day eight, it dropped by an impressive 75 percent.

"People haven't really been talking about these hazardous organic compounds in homes, and I think that's because we couldn't do anything about them," study author in a statement. "Now we've engineered houseplants to remove these pollutants for us."  

The research team plans to add a protein to pothos plants that can break down another hazardous pollutant inside some homes: formaldehyde. This harmful compound is often found in wood flooring and cabinets. 

THIS IS ONLY FOR INFORMATION, ALWAYS CONSULT YOU PHYSICIAN BEFORE HAVING ANY PARTICULAR FOOD/ MEDICATION/EXERCISE/OTHER REMEDIES.                                                                                
 PS- THOSE INTERESTED IN RECIPES ARE FREE TO  VIEW MY BLOG-                                                                                           https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com/                                                                                                                                                                             FOR INFO ABOUT KNEE REPLACEMENT, YOU CAN VIEW MY BLOG-                                               
     https:// kneereplacement-stickclub.blogspot.com/                                                                                     
  FOR CROCHET DESIGNS                                                                                                                                                                                                              https://gscrochetdesigns.blogspot.com 

This plant can clean indoor air

Researchers have genetically modified a common indoor plant -- pothos ivy -- to remove pollutants inside the house including chloroform and benzene that have been linked to cancer, according to a new study.

The modified plants express a protein, called P450 2E1 or 2E1, that transforms these compounds into molecules that the plants can then use to support their own growth. 

"People have not really been talking about these hazardous organic compounds in homes, and I think that is because we could not do anything about them," said a Prof.
 
For the study, the team tested how well their modified plants could remove the pollutants from air compared to normal pothos ivy. 

They put both types of plants in glass tubes and then added either benzene or chloroform gas into each tube. Over 11 days, they tracked how the concentration of each pollutant changed in each tube.

Findings showed that for the unmodified plants, the concentration of either gas did not change over time. 

However, for the modified plants, the concentration of chloroform dropped by 82 per cent after three days, and it was almost undetectable by day six. 

In addition, the concentration of benzene also decreased in the modified plant vials by about 75 per cent.

"If you had a plant growing in the corner of a room, it will have some effect in that room. But without air flow, it will take a long time for a molecule on the other end of the house to reach the plant," the Prof. noted. 

THIS IS ONLY FOR INFORMATION, ALWAYS CONSULT YOU PHYSICIAN BEFORE HAVING ANY PARTICULAR FOOD/ MEDICATION/EXERCISE/OTHER REMEDIES.                                                                                
 PS- THOSE INTERESTED IN RECIPES ARE FREE TO  VIEW MY BLOG-                                                                                           https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com/                                                                                                                                                                             FOR INFO ABOUT KNEE REPLACEMENT, YOU CAN VIEW MY BLOG-                                               
     https:// kneereplacement-stickclub.blogspot.com/                                                                                     
  FOR CROCHET DESIGNS                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 https://gscrochetdesigns.blogspot.com 

Learning to read in adulthoood transforms brain

A study of women in India who learned to read in their 30s shows the human brain’s incredible capacity to reorganize and transform itself, researchers said on Wednesday.

Researchers recruited women in India, where the illiteracy rate is around 39%, to see what they could learn about the areas of the brain devoted to reading.

At the start of the study, most of the women could not read a word of their mother tongue, Hindi. But after six months of training, the women reached a level comparable to first-grade proficiency.

“This growth of knowledge is remarkable”, said Falk Huettig from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, lead author of the study in the journal Science Advances.
 

Researchers found that reorganisation took place deep inside the brain, particularly in the brainstem and thalamus.

“While it is quite difficult for us to learn a new language, it appears to be much easier for us to learn to read. The adult brain proves to be astonishingly flexible.”

Specifically, researchers found that the exterior of the brain – known as the cortex, which is able to adapt quickly to new challenges – was not the main area where transformation occurred. Instead, researchers found that reorganisation took place deep inside the brain, particularly in the brainstem and thalamus, a walnut-sized structure that relays sensory and motor information.

“We observed that the so-called colliculi superiores, a part of the brainstem, and the pulvinar, located in the thalamus, adapt the timing of their activity patterns to those of the visual cortex,” said co-author Michael Skeide, scientific researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig.

“These deep structures in the thalamus and brainstem help our visual cortex to filter important information from the flood of visual input even before we consciously perceive it.

Researchers found that the more signals aligned in the affected brain regions, the better the women’s reading skills became. “These brain systems increasingly fine-tune their communication as learners become more and more proficient in reading,” Skeide added.

“This could explain why experienced readers navigate more efficiently through a text.”

The finding could also have implications for the treatment of dyslexia, which some researchers have blamed on a malfunctioning thalamus. “Since we found out that only a few months of reading training can modify the thalamus fundamentally, we have to scrutinise this hypothesis,” Skeide said.

Co-authors on the study came from India’s Centre of Bio-Medical Research (CBMR) Lucknow and the University of Hyderabad.

 this is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for medicines, exercises and so on.   
https://gscrochetdesigns.blogspot.com. one can see my crochet creations 
https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com. feel free to view for easy, simple and healthy recipes    
https://kneereplacement-stickclub.blogspot.com. for info on knee replacement