Knowledge Update

​London, Jan 16 (IANS) Channel 4 and Cancer Research UK have teamed up to air a colonoscopy being performed live on a patient in what the two organisations claim is the world's first TV ad showing a live surgical procedure.

The 90-second TV ad, which will rather incongruously air at 3.25 p.m. on Wednesday during the property programme "A Place In The Sun", will demonstrate an operation to remove two bowel polyps from inside Philip McSparron, the Guardian reported on Monday.

McSparron, who started getting regular screenings for cancer after his brother's bowel cancer was spotted in early 2010, said he hoped the live broadcast of his procedure would show people that it is "not something to be frightened of".

"Hopefully people will be interested in seeing the live footage and it will encourage them to be more willing to talk about cancer and think about taking up regular screening," he said. McSparron is not being paid for his appearance in the ad.

The surgery will be performed at the Cardiff and Vale University hospital, who will give a running commentary on what viewers are seeing.

The TV ad, titled Live from the Inside, will be promoted from Monday with 10-second teaser trails on Channel 4.

The charity will simultaneously stream the ad on Facebook, with a cancer nurse to field questions posted by social media users. 

Channel 4 will also simultaneously broadcast the event across its social media accounts.

In 2008, 2.2 million viewers watched the live broadcast of a team skydive in a three-minute ad for Honda. 

Almost 170,000 viewers tuned in just to watch the TV advert. It was the first live ad broadcast on UK TV.

New York, Jan 16 (IANS) Researchers from Harvard University have developed a multiregional brain-on-a-chip that models the connectivity between three distinct regions of the brain.

The in-vitro model was used to extensively characterise the differences between neurons from different regions of the brain and to mimic the system's connectivity.

"The brain is so much more than individual neurons. When modelling the brain, you need to be able to recapitulate that connectivity because there are many different diseases that attack those connections," said Ben Maoz, a postdoctoral fellow in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). 

Researchers from the Disease Biophysics Group at SEAS and the Wyss Institute modelled three regions of the brain most affected by schizophrenia - the amygdala, hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.

They began by characterising the cell composition, protein expression, metabolism, and electrical activity of neurons from each region in vitro.

"It's no surprise that neurons in distinct regions of the brain are different but it is surprising just how different they are," added Stephanie Dauth, co-first author of the paper.

"We found that the cell-type ratio, the metabolism, the protein expression and the electrical activity all differ between regions in vitro. This shows that it does make a difference which brain region's neurons you're working with," Dauth noted.

The team then looked at how these neurons change when they're communicating with one another. 

"When the cells are communicating with other regions, the cellular composition of the culture changes, the electrophysiology changes, all these inherent properties of the neurons change," said Maoz in a paper published in the Journal of Neurophysiology. 

The team doped different regions of the brain with the drug Phencyclidine hydrochloride -- commonly known as PCP -- which simulates schizophrenia. 

The brain-on-a-chip allowed the researchers for the first time to look at both the drug's impact on the individual regions as well as its downstream effect on the interconnected regions in vitro.

"The brain-on-a-chip could be useful for studying any number of neurological and psychiatric diseases, including drug addiction, post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury," the authors wrote.

​New York, Jan 15 (IANS) A new image analysis technique can use cell phone images to quickly find and track important biological molecules, including tell-tale signs of disease.

Developed by scientists from the University of Southern California (USC), "Hyper-Spectral Phasor" analysis, or HySP, has the ability to look at many different molecules in one pass.

"By looking at multiple targets or watching targets move over time, we can get a much better view of what is actually happening within complex living systems," said Francesco Cutrale from the USC.

The study says that one day it might also be possible for clinicians to use HySP to analyse cell phone pictures of skin lesions to determine if they are at risk of being cancerous.

Clinicians could examine the patient further to be certain of a diagnosis and respond appropriately.

Researchers use fluorescent imaging to locate proteins and other molecules in cells and tissues that works by tagging the molecules with dyes that glow under certain kinds of light.

"Both scientists at the bench and scientists at the clinic will be able to perform their work faster and with greater confidence in the results," Cutrale said in a study published in the journal Nature Methods.

Beijing, Jan 15 (IANS) Beijing, one of the most polluted cities of the world, will spend $2.6 billion to curb deadly air pollution.

The city of about nearly 22 million has been grappling with suffocating smog for years thanks to unbridled industrialisation in and around the capital city. 

Beijing will spend 18.2 billion yuan ($2.6 billion) to fight air pollution in 2017, officials were quoted by Xinhua news agency. 

This year, Beijing will replace coal with clean energy for 700 villages and phase out 300,000 high-polluting old vehicles. 

It will close or upgrade 2,570 polluting factories, said acting mayor Cai Qi Cai said Beijing will take tougher measures to improve the city's air quality in 2017. 

Acts of excessively or secretly discharging pollutants will be severely punished, Cai added. 

Beijing will also set up environment police thie year. 

The environment police squad can detain suspects in serious environment-related cases, the official told municipal lawmakers. 

The environment police will work with the city's environmental protection authorities to crack down on violations in environmental protection, Fang Li, head of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau. 

​London, Jan 15 (IANS) Want to make your New Year resolution successful? Try relocating, as it may help to overcome the things one wants to change in themselves, a new study says.

The study showed that the time for successful habit change is not based on the calendar, but on big changes in our everyday lives like moving to a new home."Changing your habits is very difficult, including finding the right moment to make a change," said Bas Verplanken, Professor at the University of Bath in Britain.

New Year may be a nice moment to mark the start of a new phase, but "the change in behaviour is embedded in other changes," Verplanken explains."In the case of moving to a new home for instance, people may need to find new solutions for how to do things in the new house, where and how to shop, commute, and so on. All of these aspects are absent when talking about New Year resolutions," Verplanken added.

For the study, the researchers studied the behaviours of over 800 people, half of whom had recently moved and the rest who had been at the same home for several years.The participants responded to questions on 25 environment related behaviours including water and energy use, commuting choices, and waste (food waste, recycling).

The result showed that people who recently relocated reported more change eight weeks later on a composite of twenty-five environment-relevant behaviours compared to participants who had not recently relocated.These results were consistent in spite of the strength of previous habits and views, and are consistent with research from others. The study was presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) Annual Convention in the US.

New York, Jan 14 (IANS) Wish to live longer? Eating hot red chilli peppers with cholesterol lowering properties may help, researchers say.

The findings showed that consumption of hot red chilli peppers can lead to a 13 per cent reduction in total mortality, primarily in deaths due to heart disease or stroke.

People who were regular consumers of hot red chilli peppers showed lower cholesterol.

Although the researchers are not certain about the mechanism by which peppers could delay mortality, "transient receptor potential (TRP) channels, which are primary receptors for pungent agents such as capsaicin -- the principal component in chilli peppers -- may in part be responsible for the observed relationship," said Mustafa Chopan from University of Vermont in the US. 

Capsaicin is believed to play a role in cellular and molecular mechanisms that prevent obesity and modulate coronary blood flow and also possesses anti-microbial properties that "may indirectly affect the host by altering the gut microbiota," Chopan said.

Peppers and spices have been for centuries thought to be beneficial in the treatment of diseases.

For the study, the team examined more than 16,000 Americans who were followed for up to 23 years. 

The results found that consumers of hot red chilli peppers tended to be "younger, male, white, Mexican-American, married, and to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol and consume more vegetables and meats... had lower HDL-cholesterol, lower income, and less education," in comparison to participants who did not consume red chilli peppers. 

The study was published in the journal PLoS ONE.

​London, Jan 14 (IANS) People who suffer with early schizophrenia may also be at risk of developing diabetes, even before being prescribed anti-psychotic drugs and a poor lifestyle -- poor diet and sedentary behaviour -- associated with prolonged period of illness, a study has found.

Schizophrenia -- a brain disorder in which people interpret reality abnormally -- is known to be associated with a reduced life expectancy of up to 30 years. 

This is largely due to the onset of Type 2 diabetes, which increases the risk of physical health disorders such as heart attack or stroke, the researchers said.

"Our findings tell us that people with early schizophrenia have already started down the road to developing diabetes, even if they haven't been diagnosed with diabetes yet," said lead author Toby Pillinger from King's College London.

The findings showed that people with long-term schizophrenia are three times more likely than the general population to have diabetes, something which has previously been attributed to poor diet and exercise habits in this group, as well as the use of antipsychotic medication.

For the study, the team examined data from 16 studies comprising 731 people with a first episode of schizophrenia and 614 people from the general population. 

Blood tests revealed that people with schizophrenia had higher higher levels of insulin and insulin resistance, which increased their risk of developing Type 2 diabetes compared with healthy controls.

Other factors that may raise the risk of developing diabetes include, premature birth, low birth-weight and the stress associated with developing schizophrenia that increases the levels of cortisol -- the stress hormone.

"Our study highlights the importance of considering physical health at the onset of schizophrenia and calls for a more holistic approach to its management, combining physical and mental health," Pillinger noted.

The study was published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry. 

Beijing, Jan 13 (IANS) An oil-electricity hybrid locomotive, the most powerful of its kind, was started in an experiment in extreme cold weather in northeast China, said manufacturing company CRRC Ziyang Co Ltd.

The experiment was conducted in Hulunbuir in the north of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, on Thursday morning when the local temperature was minus 40 degrees Celsius, Xinhua news agency reported.

Despite the extreme cold weather, the temperature in the cab was 25 degrees Celsius and the batteries showed a temperature of 12 degrees Celsius, suitable for the operation.

The experiment marked the end of a series of experiments for the hybrid locomotive, said Xiang Jun, chairman of the company based in southwest China's Sichuan Province.

On January 7, the locomotive carried out a successful small operation experiment in environment of minus 30 degrees Celsius in northeast China.

In August 2016, the same locomotive had operated in high temperatures in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Hybrid locomotives are environment friendly, energy-saving and less noisy, according to Xiang. 

The successful experiments in both extreme cold and hot weather showed the world's largest-power hybrid locomotive can run in environment with different temperatures, he said.

New York, Jan 13 (IANS) It is very likely that you have a namesake who is very distinct from your personality. To disambiguate you two, a new method has been developed that can tell you from your namesake.

This ambiguity often occurs in bibliographic, law enforcement and other areas.

Computer scientists from the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) have developed a novel machine-learning method to provide better solutions to this perplexing problem. 

"We can teach the computer to recognise names and disambiguate information accumulated from a variety of sources -- Facebook, Twitter and blog posts, public records and other documents -- by collecting features such as Facebook friends and keywords from people's posts using the identical algorithm," explained Mohammad al Hasan, Associate Professor, IUPUI. 

The new method, unlike the existing methods, can perform non-exhaustive classification so that it can tell whom a new record, which appears in streaming data, belongs to.

"Our method grows and changes when new persons appear, enabling us to recognise the ever-growing number of individuals whose records were not previously encountered. While working in non-exhaustive setting, our model automatically detects such names and adjusts the model parameters accordingly," added Hasan.

The researchers trained computers by using records of different individuals with that name to build a model that distinguishes between individuals with that name, even individuals about whom information had not been included in the training data previously provided to the computer.

The researchers focused on three types of "features" -- bits of information with some degree of predictive power to define a specific individual.

"Relational or association features to reveal persons with whom an individual is associated; text features, such as keywords in documents; and venue features to determine memberships or events with which an individual is currently or was formerly associated," the study noted.

The study was published in proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management.

​London, Jan 13 (IANS) Spending hours in front of digital screen may be harmful for adolescents. However, but moderate use may not harm but increase their well-being, researchers say.

"Digital screens are now an inextricable part of modern childhood. Our findings suggest that adolescents' moderate screen use has no detectable link to well-being and levels of engagement above these points are modestly correlated with well-being," said lead researcher Andrew Przybylski, psychological scientist at the University of Oxford.

The findings showed that as a result of a digital "sweet spot" between low and high technology use, moderate screen time can increase teenagers' well-being.

This sweet spot benefits teenagers' well-being by providing opportunities to develop social connections and skills, the researchers said.

For the study, the researchers examined data measuring screen time and well-being collected from 120,115 teenagers, with an average of 15 year olds. 

Nearly all of the participating adolescents reported spending time using at least one type of digital technology on a daily basis.

The also reported spending more time engaging in digital activities on weekend days than on weekdays and that they spent more time using smartphones in overall compared with watching TV.

Using statistical methods to determine the tipping point for each type of activity, the researchers found that on weekdays, teenagers' well-being peaked at about 1 hour and 40 minutes of video-game play, about 1 hour 57 minutes of smartphone use, about 3 hours and 41 minutes of watching videos, and about 4 hours and 17 minutes of using computers.

However, above these tipping points, screen time turned potentially harmful and was associated with decreased well-being.

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science.