After Bihar, the BJP leadership is a worried lot. Besides Assam, the possibility of the BJP breasting the tape is bleak. In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP might find the going tough with a possibility of the Congress joining hands with the RLD and BSP. Even in Assam, where the party wrested seven Lok Sabha seats, the going could be tough if the Congress manages to ally with the All-India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), a party that claims to represent Assam’s Muslims. The combined vote share of the Congress and AIUDF is around 45 per cent. In West Bengal, the BJP is in terminal decline and, if reports are to be believed, Punjab is rapidly slipping out of its grip.Next year both Assam and West Bengal will go to polls. Assam is the only state where the BJP could possibly romp home. However, if the Congress manages to join hands with the AIUDF in the state, the saffronites could find the going tough. The combined vote share of the Congress and AIUDF is around 45 per cent of which the former controls a vote share of nearly 30 per cent.

It’s in Bengal where the BJP — which was on a high after the Lok Sabha polls — is facing a sharp decline. During the local bodies elections in April while the BJP drew a blank, the Trinamul Congress doubled its tally from 38 in 2010 to 71 this year. The Left parties are also slowly regaining lost ground. If the trend continues, the BJP could fight with the Congress for the third or fourth slot.With trouble over the Panthic agenda, the Akali Dal government is in trouble in Punjab. If the Akalis go down, they will drag the BJP down with it. The Congress meanwhile has managed to settle the infighting and Capt. Amarinder Singh has been brought back to lead the party. The AAP, despite the fight within, could manage to put its house in order before the polls. Anti-incumbency and corruption charges could possibly hurt the SAD-BJP coalition in the state.After Bihar, the battle royale will be in Uttar Pradesh. In 2014 the BJP stunned the nation by winning 73 of 80 Lok Sabha seats. The Congress, which has shown signs of limping back to regain lost ground in Bihar, is looking at another grand alliance. Speculation is rife that top Congress leaders met the BSP’s Satish Chandra Mishra before Diwali. The parties apparently discussed seat-sharing.

With 403 seats in the UP Assembly, the lion’s share would go to the BSP while the rest would be divided between the Congress and RLD. With the SP going downhill, the party’s vote bank could shift to the BSP. However, if vote percentage has to be taken into consideration, the Congress-BSP control nearly 36 per cent of vote share. If caste arithmetic works out for the RLD, it could also add to the kitty. After Delhi and Bihar, the BJP could find it difficult to hold on to its Lok Sabha vote share of 43 per cent. Coming down to caste arithmetic, the RLD’s Jat vote bank, which had shifted to BJP in western UP during the LS polls, could return to it if the outfit comes up with winnable faces. During the LS polls the BJP had cut across caste combinations in UP. The Bihar results are a clear indication that this time the BJP could find cutting across caste barriers difficult. Dalits are still firmly behind the BSP and the Muslim vote could go with Ms Mayawati or the Congress. The upper caste has always been divided between the Congress and BJP.Dalits comprise nearly 22 per cent while Muslims account for nearly 19 per cent of the vote in UP. The BSP also has considerable influence over non-Yadav OBCs, which includes Gangwards, Kushwahas and Mauryas.

Two-thirds of Alzheimer’s cases in the US are in women and "it’s not just because we live longer," said Maria Carrillo, the association’s chief science officer.Some previous studies suggest that women at any age are more likely than men to develop Alzheimer’s. It’s long been known that women do better on tests of verbal memory — skills like recalling words and lists.Using scans on more than 1,000 older adults, they found sex differences in how the brain uses sugar, its main energy source.Researchers don’t know yet exactly how these genes affect risk — or by how much. The new studies add more evidence and potential explanations for suspected variations between how men and women develop the disease. "Some of these look like they’re tied to the immune system and we know there are differences between males and females" in how that works, said another study leader, Brian Kunkle. University of California, San Diego, and researchers found that women did better on these skills despite similar signs of early to moderate Alzheimer’s than men.At the University of Miami, scientists analysed genes in 30,000 people — half with Alzheimer’s, half without it — and found four that seem related to disease risk by sex. Using scans on 301 people with normal thinking skills and 161 others with mild impairment, they mapped where tau was deposited and correlated it with nerve networks — highways that brain signals follow.Los Angeles: New research gives some biological clues to why women may be more likely than men to develop Alzheimer’s disease and how this most common form of dementia varies by sex.

They found that tau networks in women with mild impairment were more diffuse and spread out than in men, suggesting that more areas of the brain were affected. "Women are able to sustain normal verbal performance longer," partly because of better brain metabolism. Women metabolized sugar better, which may give them more ability to compensate for the damage from dementia and make them less likely to be diagnosed with it by tests that involve verbal skills. There’s also "a biological underpinning" for sex differences in the disease, she said.At the same time, women with the disease in its early stages may go undiagnosed because they tend to do better on verbal tests than men, which mask Alzheimer’s damage. Other researchers showed that several newly identified genes seem related to the disease risk by sex. "One confers risk in females and not males and three confer risk in males but not females," said one study leader, Eden Martin.

"The female advantage might mask early signs of Alzheimer’s and delay diagnosis," said study leader Erin Sundermann. Scientists also know that a gene called APOE-4 seems to raise risk more for women than for men in certain age groups.At the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Los Angeles on Tuesday, 3D signs Manufacturers scientists offered evidence that the disease may spread differently in the brains of women than in men. The researchers have a National Institute on Aging grant to do an international study on nearly 100,000 people to try to validate and extend the results..Vanderbilt University researchers found differences in how tau, a protein that forms tangles that destroy nerve cells, spreads in the brains of women compared to men.Seven other genes seem to have a different effect on risks in men versus women

The move suggests that Amazon will increasingly offer basic media options through Prime while selling additional subscriptions for consumers who want to go deeper.The service also will diversify Amazon's subscription offerings and be another step away from Wayfinding signage Manufacturers a single, annual subscription.The new music offering also is intended to increase the appeal of the Amazon Echo, its home speaker, which searches the Internet and orders products from the retailer with voice commands.Amazon similarly hopes its new service’s tight integration with the Echo will help it stand out and reinforce the speaker’s appeal, the sources said.Although it will be a late entrant to the crowded streaming space,

Amazon believes a comprehensive music service is important to its bid to be a one-stop shop for content and goods, the sources said.Amazon.com is preparing to launch a standalone music streaming subscription service, placing it squarely in competition with rival offerings from Apple Inc and Spotify, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.Amazon, which offers a free streaming music service with a limited catalog to subscribers of its Prime shipping and video service, did not respond to a request for comment about the new, full-fledged music plan. Amazon recently began allowing subscribers to Prime to pay monthly, for instance.99 per month, in line with major rivals, and it will offer a competitive catalog of songs, the sources said. Apple launched its service last year in one of the highest profile signs that listeners wanted subscription services, rather than paying for individual songs or albums. Amazon is finalising licenses with labels for the service, which likely will be launched in late summer or early fall, the sources said. Released broadly last year, the Echo has become a surprise hit that rival Google is now seeking to emulate with a speaker of its own.Silicon Valley titans such as Apple and Alphabet Google have muscled into music streaming in recent years, aiming to weave themselves more tightly into their customers’ daily routines and drive device sales."A music service will further increase the daily interactions between Amazon and its customer base," said former music executive Jay Samit when told about the company's plan.The new Amazon effort will compete directly with Apple Music and Spotify.

The Amazon service, which he called "inevitable," "might take a little oxygen out of Apple’s potential pool of paying users," he said.. The company recently launched a standalone video service.The new Amazon effort will compete directly with Apple Music and Spotify, which boast more than 30 million songs.The service will be offered at $9.The new music service is unlikely to steal many customers from Spotify, but it could pose a threat to other players, said David Pakman, a partner at Venrock who headed early Apple music efforts, when informed of the move

Several disorders are associated with Chromosome 16 abnormalities in the human body like a missing copy of region in this chromosome can lead to a 25-point intelligence quotient (IQ)-drop in humans, according to researchers."Further studies are needed to quantify the effect of all mutations associated with autism and characterize the additive effects that lead to this psychiatric disorder. Each first-degree relative -- parents and offspring, siblings -- has 50 per cent of their genetic code in common and therefore 50 per cent of the genetic factors that partially determine cognition," said Jacquemont..To reach these conclusions, the researchers measured the intelligence of 700 family members who had at least one relative carrying the same genetic mutation on chromosome 16.Studying families thus enabled the researchers to measure the factors that combine with the mutations which effects they wanted to quantify. "No single mutation can cause the whole set of clinical signs shown by these patients," concludes the scientist.

"Indeed, it is quite common for mutation carriers to show no mental health problems," says the study.2 gene deletions."We now understand that each gene mutation has a specific effect, which adds to other effects to draw a unique picture of the disease in each patient," he wrote in an article published in the renowned scientific journal JAMA Psychiatry. Toronto: Lack of a vital gene copy of Chromosome 16 may cause a 25-point drop in your IQ, a new study has claimed."We have just discovered, for example, that a missing copy of a region in chromosome 16 results in a 25-point intelligence quotient drop in carriers," said Sebastien Jacquemont, a clinical researcher at CHU Sainte-Justine, the mother-child hospital affiliated to University of Montreal. No autism is alike.On the other hand, an addition of a copy in the same genomic region on chromosome 16 can cause to autistic spectrum disorders."Strangely enough, even if carriers show much differentiated sets of symptoms -- and sometimes no symptoms at all -- the specific effect of these two mutations seems to remain the same," said Jacquemont.According to him, to understand mental disorders, we must quantify the specific effect of each contributing gene mutation.Also, an addition of a copy in the same genomic region on chromosome 16 - known to predispose to autistic spectrum disorders - results in an approximate 16-point drop in IQ.Even China Custom Mini Signs Suppliers in participants whose IQ was considered to be normal, the researchers found a substantial 25 points IQ drop induced by 16p11. This is also true of most mental disorders."Intellectual faculties are the sum of many factors, the majority of which are genetic and inherited from parents."For example, depending on the additional factors involved, a 25-point IQ drop can determine whether or not a person has crossed the threshold of 'intellectual disability