Knowledge Update

New York, July 15 (IANS) The largest island in the Philippines may be home to the greatest concentration of mammal diversity in the world, say researchers who have been exploring the island for the past 15 years.

Their research, published in the scientific journal Frontiers of Biogeography, showed that 56 species of non-flying mammals are now known to live on the island, 52 of which cannot be found anywhere else in the world. 

And out of those 56 species, 28 were discovered in the course of the team's research.

"It's become clear that Luzon Island has exceptional diversity and the greatest concentration of mammal diversity, I'd say on the planet," said one of the researchers Scott Steppan, Professor at Florida State University in the US.

Luzon is roughly 40,000 square miles and has never been connected to any continental land, but it has a complex geography. 

It is tropical, but also very mountainous with lots of volcanic pieces that have come together as the continental plates have crunched into each other.

The mountaintops form distinct habitats that are widely different from the base of the mountain. 

Combining the expertise of scientists from a variety of backgrounds, the team embarked on an extensive effort to catalogue the numerous species they believed were on this island.

Among the 28 new species discovered by the team, there are four species of tiny tree-mice with exceptionally long whiskers, and five species of mice that look like shrews and feed on earthworms. 

"The fact that we found some new ones was not surprising," Steppan said. "New small mammals are being discovered all the time, but finding 28 new species on one island -- an island that had been studied pretty well before -- was beyond expectation," Steppan said.

For comparison, in Luzon there are 56 non-flying land mammals, 52 of which are endemic to the island. 

In Cuba, which is roughly the same size, there are 15 total native non-flying mammals, most of which are native to the island, the researchers said.

"This revealed the exceptional diversity of Luzon," Steppan said. ​

​New Delhi, July 13 (IANS) The newly-launched augmented reality (AR) game Pokemon Go poses a great data security threat to users as the app gets "full access" to their Google account, allowing the gaming company to read all emails, a new report said on Wednesday.

According to security software company Trend Micro, for some users of iPhones, signing into the game with the most convenient option -- using your Google account -- allows the gaming company to read your emails. 

"Other risks this game exposes are physical risks to actual life and limb," the report said.

While enjoying the game, the user is exposed to many threats and introduces whole new categories of life risks.

Firstly, Pokemon Go's real-world gameplay has been linked to armed robberies as criminals have used the game to locate and lure intended targets. 

Secondly, there are reports of trespassing as enthusiastic players try to "find" and "capture" creatures on others' property. In the US, gamers trespassing on others' property face a real threat of physical harm from property owners who may use force to protect their property. 

"And of course, there's the risk of injury or death from not paying attention to your surroundings as you play the game," the report added.

Thirdly, the users can meet an accident while they are indulged in gaming. 

The game requires users' full attention immediately to the exclusion of all else. 

Although, there is a warning each time you start the game to be sure to pay attention but that warning is quickly overlooked.

In the US, where the game is very popular, police departments and safety agencies have warned players of Pokemon Go to stay safe and alert as hysteria over the popular mobile game swells.

Since launch, the game has topped 7.5 million downloads and pulled in an average of $1.6 million a day in revenue, according to estimates from research firm SensorTower.

"Agencies have urged players to stay aware of their surroundings and be careful," USA Today reported.

This is how the game works.

It uses the GPS capabilities of your device in conjunction with Google Maps to "place" creatures in real world locations, which you then try to find them using your device as a guide. 

Once you are in proximity to the "placed" creature, you then use your device's camera to "view" the creature and try to "capture" it. 

"This works with you using your device as a viewer to 'see' the creature near you by looking at an image from the camera with the creature superimposed on it. You then 'capture' the creature for points by throwing Poké Balls at it on the device's screen," Trend Micro stated.

The Pokemon Go is available on Google Playstore and Apple's App Store in the US, Japan and Australia, Philippines, New Zealand and is coming soon in India, Singapore, Germany, Taiwan, Indonesia and Britain.

However, a mirror file is available on the internet and people in India are already downloading the game from insecured sources. 

The Pokemon Go Plus device which is a wrist watch will be available in August, informed apkqueen.com, the website which is providing link to download the game.​

​Johannesburg, July 13 (IANS) Countering a common perception, a new study suggests that climate change, after all, may not have been directly linked to cultural and technological innovations of Middle Stone Age humans in southern Africa.

The Middle Stone Age marked a period of dramatic change among early humans in southern Africa, and climate change has been postulated as a primary driver for the appearance of technological and cultural innovations such as bone tools, ochre production, and personal ornamentation.

The new study published in the journal PLOS ONE showed that while climate shifts may have influenced human subsistence strategies, it may not have been the driving factor behind innovation.

"While acknowledging that climate and environmental shifts may have influenced human subsistence strategies, the research suggests climate change may not have been the driving factor behind cultural and technological innovations in these localities,” said one of the lead researchers Chris Henshilwood, Professor at University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The authors of this study carried out analyses of animal remains, shellfish taxa and the stable carbon and oxygen isotope measurements in ostrich eggshell, from two archaeological sites, Blombos Cave and Klipdrift Shelter to acquire data regarding possible palaeoenvironmental conditions in southern Africa at the Middle Stone Age.

For instance, ostrich eggshell carbon and oxygen stable isotope levels may reflect vegetation and water consumption, which in turn vary with rainfall seasonality and amount in this region.

The researchers found that climatic and environmental variation, reflected in ostrich eggshell stable isotope measurements, faunal records, and shellfish indicators, may not have occurred in phase with Middle Stone Age human technological and cultural innovation at these two sites.

"Our results suggest that although climate and environmental changes occurred, they were not coincident with cultural innovations, including personal ornamentation, or the appearance of complex tool-types,” Patrick Roberts from University of Oxford .

"This suggests that we have to consider that other factors drove human innovation at this stage in our species' evolution," Roberts noted.​

​New York, July 13 (IANS) Big news organisations who first embraced social media use at workplace are now seeing more risks than benefits in employees' use of Facebook and Twitter, reveals an interesting study.

Realising the risks of social media, major news organisations have created guidelines for employees on how to use these outlets, separate from the companies' existing codes of conduct.

Jayeon Lee, assistant professor of journalism at Pennsylvania-based Lehigh University, found that news organisations are more concerned about the current social media environment than excited about it at least when it comes to their employees.

“I was wondering what approaches news organisations take when it comes to their own employees' social media uses," Lee said.

“In particular, knowing both positive and negative implications of journalists' social media uses, I wanted to see if their guidelines were dominantly positive, negative, or neutral in their framing of the implications,” she added.

Overall, Lee found that the guidelines focus primarily on the risks and challenges presented by the use of social media rather than the opportunities and advantages for media.

"As some media critics point out, overreaching rules can stifle creativity and morale and even discourage overall social media use itself," she explained in a paper set to be published in the journal The Communication Review.

The study looked at eight US news organisations - The New York Times, The Associated Press, Bloomberg, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, CNN, and NPR - and three British news outlets - BBC, The Times and The Daily Telegraph.

According to the findings, news organisations are most concerned about: accuracy, breaking objectivity, inappropriate online behaviours and harming their principles and credibility.

Accuracy - sourcing or redistributing false information from social media without sufficient fact verification - was the most frequently raised topic and accounted for 17.8 percent of the total sentences studied.

“The results show that the prevention-focused approach is more common than I would have predicted," Lee said.

"Although I expected that the guidelines would include various warnings related to risky social media activities, I was surprised to find little comment about how to use social media wisely or effectively to derive full benefit from it,” she commented.

Lee recognised that news organizations are actively utilizing various social media to reach a wider audience and build brand loyalty.

“However, it seems they are keen on keeping their own employees from actively engaging in social media,” she added.​

​Washington, July 13 (IANS) A drug approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to treat leukemia has the potential to improve motor and cognitive functions of patients suffering from Parkinson's disease and dementia, a small study has found.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder that causes a range of motor and non-motor symptoms. 

During the course of the disease, dopamine (DA)-producing neurons are lost and bundles of proteins known as Lewy Bodies (LBs) form in the brain.

The researchers found that the leukemia drug nilotinib may restore brain dopamine and reduce toxic proteins associated with Lewy Bodies formation in Parkinson's disease and dementia patients.

The findings were reported in the Journal of Parkinson's Disease.

The researchers conducted a small phase one study that included only 12 patients, primarily intended to evaluate whether patients could tolerate the drug. 

The results showed unanticipated improvements in clinical outcomes and motor function.

"This is the first study to treat subjects with advanced PD with a tyrosine kinase inhibitor," 

"This study suggests that low doses of nilotinib appear to be relatively safe in a small cohort of participants with advanced PD or dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB), and although the data are supportive of additional trials, caution must be used in any future studies,” explained lead investigator Charbel Moussa from Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) in Washington, D.C. 

"The data give a clear signal to move forward with more definitive trials to determine an appropriate therapeutic dose and evaluate nilotinib effects in larger, randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trials," Moussa noted.​

​London, July 13 (IANS) Researchers have found that an extinct specie of primates who walked thousands of years ago had indistinguishable footprints similar to those of a modern day human.

In the study, an international team of scientists examined a set of 1.5-million-year-old footprints of Homo erectus, discovered at a site near the town of Ileret in Kenya in 2009. 

Continued work, since the initial discovery by scientists has revealed an unprecedented set of trace fossils of hominin, including a total of 97 tracks created by at least 20 different presumed Homo erectus individuals from five distinct sites.

The footprints revealed new insight on how they moved and interacted.

Habitual bipedal locomotion is a defining feature of modern humans compared to other primates, the researchers said.

Using an experimental approach, the researchers have found that the shapes of their footprints are indistinguishable from those of modern habitually barefoot people, most likely reflecting similar foot anatomies and foot mechanics.

"Our analyses of these footprints provide some of the only direct evidence to support the common assumption that at least one of our fossil relatives at 1.5 million years ago walked in as much the same way as we do today," said Kevin Hatala, Paleoanthropologist at Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Germany.

Further, there is evidence of several adult males at each of the sites, suggesting these groups had developed tolerance and may be even cooperation.

"It isn't shocking that we find evidence of mutual tolerance and perhaps cooperation between males in a hominin that lived 1.5 million years ago, especially Homo erectus, but this is our first chance to see what appears to be a direct glimpse of this behavioural dynamic in deep time," Hatala added.

​New York, July 13 (IANS) Small shoebox-sized satellites, flying in formation around the Earth, could estimate the planet's reflected energy with twice the accuracy of traditional monolith satellites, according to a new study led by an Indian-origin professor.

If done right, such satellite swarms could also be cheaper to build, launch and maintain.

Sreeja Nag, a former graduate student in Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) department of aeronautics and astronautics, simulated the performance of a single large, orbiting satellite with nine sensors and compared it with a cluster of three to eight small, single-sensor satellites flying together around the Earth. 

The team found that clusters of four or more small satellites were able to look at a single location on Earth from multiple angles and measure that location's total reflectance with an error that is half that of single satellites in operation today. 

According to Nag, such a correction in estimation error could significantly improve scientists' climate projections.

“If we can estimate the reflectance of different surface type, globally and more accurately which a cluster of satellites would let you do, then at least you've solved one part of the climate puzzle,” said Nag in a paper published online in the journal Acta Astronautica. 

Today, satellites that measure the amount of light reflected from the Earth do so with multiple cameras arranged on a single satellite. 

For example, NASA's Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on the Terra satellite houses nine cameras that take images of the Earth from a fan-like arrangement of angles. 

According to Nag, the drawback of this design is that the cameras have a limited view, as they are not designed to change angles and can only observe within a single plane.

Instead, the team proposes a cluster of small satellites that travel around the Earth in a loose formation.

"Over time, the cluster would cover the whole Earth, and you'd have a multiangular, 3-D view of the entire planet from space which has not been done before with multiple satellites," Nag noted

There's another big advantage to monitoring the Earth with small satellites: less risk.

“You can launch three such units and start operating and then put three more up

​London, July 7 (IANS) Grouping young tennis players according to their physical maturity rather than their chronological age could help us develop future tennis champions, suggests new research.

Boys and girls can vastly vary in their rates of growth and maturity during adolescence.

Those who mature early are taller, quicker, bigger and stronger, giving them a significant advantage over their late maturing peers. 

"Tennis is a sport that favours youth who are taller and mature earlier than their peers. Our data show that this selection bias impacts girls from the age of 10 and boys from the age of 12,” said Sean Cumming, Senior Lecturer in Health at University of Bath in England.

"Every extra inch in height of a player increases the velocity of their serve by five per cent. At the elite level, it is quite common to find junior players, especially adolescent boys, who are six foot or greater in height," Cumming noted.

This means that later maturing players are often overlooked in the elite tennis selection process.

"While early maturing boys and girls have initial advantages, the pressure to win can lead them to play to their physical strengths at the expense of their technical development,” Cumming said.

"In contrast, talented, yet late maturing players might be excluded or overlooked by talent spotters on the basis of physical characteristics that are not fully realised until adulthood," Cumming explained.

The research team, which includes mathematicians from Bath's Institute for Mathematical Innovation, is developing new statistical methods to allow practitioners to better assess and account for individual differences in biological maturity and help ensure players are evaluated on the basis of their physical development, and not just their chronological age.

The team published its research in the journal Pediatric Exercise Science.

"The challenge for those working with young tennis players is to look beyond differences in maturity, and recognise those players who may have the greatest potential for success as an adult,” Cumming said.

Now the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), the governing body for the game of tennis in Great Britain, is collaborating with scientists at the University of Bath to use statistics to avoid selection bias towards early maturing players, a university statement said.

Gill Myburgh, a Strength and Conditioning coach at the LTA also sees potential benefits in periodically matching players by maturity status, rather than age, in training and competition.​

​London, July 10 (IANS) Scientists at Finland's Aalto University have set a new world record in microwave detection, breaking the old record by fourteen-fold -- a feat that may lead to manufacturing of ultrasensitive cameras and accessories for the emerging quantum computer.

The record was made using a partially superconducting microwave detector. The first of the two key enabling developments is the new detector design consisting of tiny pieces of superconducting aluminum and a golden nanowire.

This design guarantees both efficient absorption of incoming photons and very sensitive readout. The whole detector is smaller than a single human blood cell, according to the scientists.

"For us size matters. The smaller the better. With smaller detectors, we get more signal and cheaper price in mass production," said Mikko Mottonen, the leader of the record-breaking Quantum Computing and Devices research group.

The European Research Council (ERC) has recently awarded Mottonen a prestigious proof of concept grant to develop the detector towards commercial applications.

The new detector works at a hundredth of a degree above absolute zero temperature. Thermal disturbances at such low temperatures are so weak that the research team could detect energy packets of only a single zeptojoule. That is the energy needed to lift a red blood cell by just a single nanometre.

The second key development concerns the amplification of the signal arising from the tiny the energy packets. To this end, the scientists used something called positive feedback, which means that there is an external energy source that amplifies the temperature change arising from the absorbed photons.

Microwaves are currently used in mobile phone communications and satellite televisions, thanks to their ability to pass through the walls. 

More sensitive microwave detectors may lead to great improvements of the present communication systems and measurement techniques.

"Existing superconducting technology can produce single microwave photons. However, detection of such travelling photons efficiently is a major outstanding challenge. Our results provide a leap towards solving this problem using thermal detection," said Joonas Govenius, the first author of the work.​

​New York, July 10 (IANS) Rats, humans and cockroaches have a system similar to the Global Positioning System (GPS) in their heads that allows them to navigate new surroundings, researchers have discovered.

A team of researchers from Case Western Reserve University in the US recorded the activity in the brain of a restrained cockroach and found that insects use sight and a vestibular-like system to track direction and angle.

The finding, published in journal Current Biology, is an example of convergent evolution -- distinct animals developed similar systems to manage the same problems.

"We've known that a mammal can come into a new area and, after a short period of being disoriented, find its way around," said Roy Ritzmann, a Biology Professor at Case Western Reserve and an author of the new study.

Humans and other mammals rely on head-direction, place and grid cells in their brains to process, integrate and update sensory information. The cues come from the direction they look, what they see and motion, he said.

"Orienting contributes to spatial memory, so they can return to point A or navigate to something they like or away from something they don't like," said PhD student Adrienn G. Varga, lead author of the study.

By repeating experiments that uncovered head-direction cells in rats, Ritzmann and Varga found head-direction-like activity and evidence of contextual cue processing in cockroaches.

When the researchers closely examined the activity of central complex cells, they found that some neurons appear to encode head direction like a compass, while others appeared to encode the relative direction of the rotation after each stop, storing navigational context.

"The fact we found these cell activities that are very similar to those in mice and rats and us strongly indicates insects rely on the same sensory inputs we need to orient ourselves and their brains process these inputs in a similar manner," Varga said.

Ritzmann said either humans and cockroaches have a common ancestor and this capability was retained or, more likely, represents convergent evolution.​