Knowledge Update

​Beijing, Jan 4 (IANS) China plans to conduct some 30 space launch missions in 2017, a record-breaking number in the country's space history, said China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.

Long March-5 and Long March-7 rockets would be used to carry out most of the space missions, the China News Service reported.

Long March-5 is China's largest carrier rocket. The successful test launch of the vehicle in November in Hainan would pave the way for space station construction, analysts said.

Wang Yu, general director of the Long March-5 program, said 2017 is a critical year for China's new generation of carrier rockets and the Long March-5 rockets would carry Chang'e-5 probe to space. 

The probe would land on the moon, collect samples and return to Earth.

On the other hand, Long March-7, the more powerful version of Long March-2, would send China's first cargo spacecraft Tianzhou-1 into the space in the first half of 2017, according to Wang Zhaoyao, director of China Manned Space Engineering Office. 

Tianzhou-1 was expected to dock with Tiangong-2 space lab and conduct experiments on propellant supplement, People's Daily reported.

China conducted 22 launch missions in 2016 and 19 in 2015. The country successfully tested its Long March-7 rocket in June 2016, and has gradually shifted to new generation rockets that reduce the use of toxic rocket fuels.

​New York, Jan 3 (IANS) Researchers have developed a new non-invasive retinal imaging technique that could prevent vision loss in diseases like glaucoma -- the second leading cause of acquired blindness worldwide.

The new technique called multi-offset detection, which images the human retina -- a layer of cells at the back of the eye that are essential for vision -- was able to distinguish individual retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), which bear most of the responsibility of relaying visual information to the brain. The death of these RGCs causes vision loss in glaucoma, the researchers said.

Glaucoma is currently diagnosed by assessing the thickness of the nerve fibres projecting from the RGCs to the brain.

However, by the time retinal nerve fibre thickness has changed detectably, a patient may have lost 100,000 RGCs or more.

"You only have 1.2 million RGCs in the whole eye, so a loss of 100,000 is significant," said David Williams from the University of Rochester in New York, US.

"The sooner we can catch the loss, the better our chances of halting the disease and preventing vision loss," Williams added.

For the study, the team modified an existing technology -- known as confocal adaptive optics scanning light ophthalmoscopy (AOSLO). They collected multiple images, varying the size and location of the detector they used to gather light scattered out of the retina for each image, and then combined those images.

The results showed that the technique not only enabled to visualise individual RGCs, but even the structures within the cells like nuclei could also be distinguished in animals.

If this level of resolution can be achieved in humans, it may be possible to assess glaucoma before the retinal nerve fibre thins -- and even before any RGCs die -- by detecting size and structure changes in RGC cell bodies.

"This technique offers the opportunity to evaluate many cell classes that have previously remained inaccessible to imaging in the living eye," Ethan Rossi, Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburg in the US, noted in the paper appearing in the journal PNAS.

​New York, Jan 3 (IANS) People who can notice misinformation that is inconsistent with the original event may have better memory compared with people who never saw the misinformation, a study has found.

The findings showed that although exposure to misinformation seemed to impair memory for the correct detail, detecting and remembering misinformation in the narrative seemed to improve participants' recognition later on.

Details that were less memorable, relatively speaking, were more vulnerable to the misinformation effect, the researchers said.

"Our study shows that misinformation can sometimes enhance memory rather than harm it," said lead author Adam Putnam.

"These findings are important because they help explain why misinformation effects occur sometimes but not at other times -- if people notice that the misinformation isn't accurate then they won't have a false memory," Putnam, who is a psychological scientist at Carleton College in Minnesota, US added.

The study suggests that the relationship between misinformation and memory is more complex than we might have thought -- mere exposure to misinformation does not automatically cue the misinformation effect, the researchers noted.

"Classic interference theory in memory suggests that change is almost always bad for memory, but our study is one really clear example of how change can help memory in the right circumstances," Putnam explained.

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science.

​Washington, Jan 3 (IANS) Contradicting a prevalent perception, a new study says that our brain enlargement and dental reduction did not happen in lockstep.

The findings suggest that evolution of brain and tooth size in humans were likely influenced by different ecological and behavioural factors.

"Once something becomes conventional wisdom, in no time at all it becomes dogma," said study co-author Bernard Wood, Professor at George Washington University, US.

"The co-evolution of brains and teeth was on a fast-track to dogma status, but we caught it in the nick of time," Wood noted.

This research challenges the common view that reduction of tooth size in hominins is linked with having a larger brain. 

The reasoning is that larger brains allowed hominins to start making stone tools and that the use of these tools reduced the need to have such large chewing teeth. 

But recent studies by other authors found that hominins had larger brains before chewing teeth became smaller, and they made and used stone tools when brains were still quite small, which challenges this relationship.

The new study -- published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences -- evaluated this issue by measuring and comparing the rates at which teeth and brains have evolved along the different branches of the human evolutionary tree.

"The findings of the study indicate that simple causal relationships between the evolution of brain size, tool use and tooth size are unlikely to hold true when considering the complex scenarios of hominin evolution and the extended time periods during which evolutionary change has occurred," lead author Aida Gomez-Robles from George Washington University noted.

For the study, the researchers analysed eight different hominin species. 

They identified fast-evolving species by comparing differences between groups with those obtained when simulating evolution at a constant rate across all lineages, and they found clear differences between tooth evolution and brain evolution. 

New York, Jan 3 (IANS) The eggs of non-avian dinosaurs took nearly between three to six months to hatch, similar to crocodiles and lizards, which explains the reason behind the extinction of the dinosaur species, scientists have found.

It was long assumed that the duration of dinosaur incubation was similar to birds, whose eggs hatch within 11 to 85 days, but they are more like of reptiles whose eggs take weeks to months to hatch.

"Some of the greatest riddles about dinosaurs pertain to their embryology -- virtually nothing is known. Did their eggs incubate slowly like their reptilian cousins? Or rapidly like living dinosaurs -- the birds," asked lead author Gregory Erickson, Professor at Florida State University. 

For the study, the team examined the fossilised teeth of two extremely well-preserved ornithischian dinosaur embryos: Protoceratops -- a pig-sized dinosaur, whose eggs weighed 194 grams -- and Hypacrosaurus -- a very large duck-billed dinosaur, with eggs weighing more than 4-kg.

Analysing the pattern of "von Ebner" lines -- the growth lines that are present in the teeth of all animals, as well as humans --, the researchers found that the Protoceratops embryos were about three months old when they died and the Hypacrosaurus embryos were about six months old. 

"These are the lines that are laid down when any animal's teeth develops. They're kind of like tree rings, but they are put down daily. And so we could literally count them to see how long each dinosaur had been developing," Erickson added.

In addition, the study found that the prolonged incubation may have affected dinosaurs' ability to compete with more rapidly generating populations of birds, reptiles, and mammals following the mass extinction event that occurred 65 million years ago. 

The long incubation period also exposed the non-avian dinosaur eggs and attending parents to predators, starvation, and environmental disruptions such as flooding, the researchers stated, in the paper published in the journal PNAS.

​New York, Jan 3 (IANS) Seven Zika virus proteins, believed to cause conditions, including birth defects such as microcephaly and neurological problems such as Guillain-Barre syndrome, have been identified.

"The mechanism of Zika virus has been a real mystery," said lead researcher Richard Zhao, Professor at University of Maryland School of Medicine (UM SOM). 

"These results give us crucial insight into how Zika affects cells. We now have some really valuable clues for future research," Zhao added.

Zika virus infected hundreds of thousands of people around the world, mostly in the Americas. No vaccines or treatments to prevent or treat the symptoms of Zika infection has been developed yet.

To test the virus, Zhao used fission yeast -- a species that in recent years has become a relatively common way to test how pathogens affect cells. 

For the experiment, Zhao separated each of the virus's 14 proteins and small peptides from the overall virus. He then exposed yeast cells to each of the 14 proteins, to see how the cells responded. 

Seven of the 14 proteins harmed or damaged the yeast cells in some way, inhibiting their growth, damaging them or killing them.

The next step is to understand more about how these seven proteins work in humans. It may be that some of them are more damaging than others, or perhaps all of them work in concert to cause harm, the researchers said. 

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

​London, Jan 2 (IANS) New garden villages and towns will be built across England in an attempt to alleviate the housing crisis, the government said.

The villages will not be extensions of existing small towns or villages, but "distinct new places with their own community facilities," the Guardian quoted authorities as saying on Monday.

Sites from Cornwall to Cumbria have been identified in the first round of approved locations, making them eligible for a share of a £6 million ($7,39,6440) government technical and financial support fund. 

After completion, the villages may vary in size from 1,500 homes up to 10,000.

The development of the villages would be locally led by communities rather than central government, said Housing Minister Gavin Barwell. 

"New communities not only deliver homes, they also bring new jobs and facilities and a big boost to local economies," he said.

The 600-acre former Deenethorpe airfield near Corby, Northamptonshire, is one of the sites that has been approved for a village. The plans include a village green, shops and community hall, as well as more than 1,000 homes.

Dunton Hills, a garden village set to be built near Brentwood, Essex, will have at least 2,500 homes, as well as new Gypsy and Traveller pitches.

Three new garden towns have also been announced near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, Taunton in Somerset, and Harlow and Gilston in Hertfordshire.

Announcing the scheme, the Housing Minister said the villages will create almost 50,000 new homes from Cheshire down to Devon, while the towns will take the total to 200,000 new homes.

Other planned villages include Long Marston in Warwickshire, Spitalgate Heath in Lincolnshire, Bailrigg in Lancaster and the Infinity garden village in Derbyshire.

The final six are Oxfordshire Cotswold, Culm in Devon, Welborne in Hampshire, Halsnead in Merseyside, Longcross in Surrey and St Cuthberts near Carlisle.

The garden village initiative was announced by the then chancellor George Osborne last year.

The government has announced seven garden towns and cities to date but the 14 new villages are the first of a new kind of development designed to alleviate concerns about large-scale schemes swamping existing towns.

Sydney, Jan 2 (IANS) The rapid growth in wing length of a common Western Australian bird may be related to climate change, according to a study released on Monday.

Scientists from the University of Notre Dame in Sydney linked the growth in wing length of the Australian ringneck parrot, or Barnardius zonarius, to climate change as the limbs of animals in warm climates tend to be longer, Efe news reported.

The wings of the parrot lengthened 4 to 5 cm in the last 45 years.

As temperatures rise, the increase in the length of wings can help these birds release excess heat and adapt better to their environment, said one of the study's scientists, Dylan Korczynskyj.

Korczynskyj explained that the biggest changes in wing length have occurred since the 1970s, a period that coincides with temperature changes of more than 0.1 to 0.2 degrees Celsius and deforestation carried out in the state of Western Australia.

Although temperature variation appears minimal, the impact on the environment is significant, as evidenced by research on the bird species, he added.

The study examined several specimens from the museum of Western Australia, which has a collection of birds dating back to the early 19th century and includes a ringneck parrot specimen from 1904.

​New York, Jan 1 (IANS) Researchers have designed molecules with the potential to deliver healing power to stressed cells -- such as those involved in heart attacks.

The research, at a cellular level in the laboratory, involves organic molecules that break down to release hydrogen sulphide when triggered by specific conditions such as increased oxidative stress.

Oxidative stress damages cells and is tied especially to heart disease and cancer as well as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

"We have discovered that small organic molecules can be engineered to release a molecule called carbonyl sulphide, which is the most prevalent sulphur-containing molecule in the atmosphere, but more importantly converts rapidly to hydrogen sulphide under biological conditions," said study co-author Michael Pluth, Professor at the University of Oregon in the US.

"We developed and demonstrated a new mechanism to release small molecules that provide therapeutic hydrogen sulphide," Pluth said.

Hydrogen sulphide, a colourless gas, has long been known for its dangerous toxicity -- and its telltale smell of rotten eggs -- in the environment, but it also is produced in mammals, including humans, with important roles in molecular signalling and cardiac health.

One of the goals of developing these small hydrogen sulphide-releasing molecules is the potential for long-term applications in therapeutics, Pluth said.

Separate portions of the research were detailed in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and in an international journal Angewandte Chemie.

​New York, Jan 1 (IANS) A gene mutation linked to Alzheimer's disease and other age-related cognitive declines in our relatively safe and sterile post-industrial setting might have actually helped protect us from cognitive decline in ancient times, a new research suggests.

The findings suggest that a genetic mutation (or allele) that puts populations at risk for illnesses in one environmental setting could manifest itself in positive ways in a different setting.

"It seems that some of the very genetic mutations that help us succeed in more hazardous time periods and environments may actually become mismatched in our relatively safe and sterile post-industrial lifestyles," said lead author Ben Trumble, Assistant Professor at the Arizona State University in the US.

In a paper published in The FASEB Journal, the researchers examined how the apolipoprotein E (ApoE) gene might function differently in an infectious environment than in the urban industrialised settings where ApoE has mostly been examined.

All ApoE proteins help mediate cholesterol metabolism, and assist in the crucial activity of transporting fatty acids to the brain.

But in industrialised societies, ApoE4 variant carriers also face up to a four-fold higher risk for Alzheimer's disease and other age-related cognitive declines, as well as a higher risk for cardiovascular disease.

The goal of this study was to reexamine the potentially detrimental effects of the globally-present ApoE4 allele in environmental conditions more typical of those experienced throughout our species' existence -- in this case, a community of Amazonian forager-horticulturalists called the Tsimane.

"For 99 per cent of human evolution, we lived as hunter gatherers in small bands and the last 5,000-10,000 years -- with plant and animal domestication and sedentary urban industrial life -- is completely novel," Trumble said.

Due to the tropical environment and a lack of sanitation, running water, or electricity, remote populations like the Tsimane face high exposure to parasites and pathogens, which cause their own damage to cognitive abilities when untreated.

As a result, one might expect Tsimane ApoE4 carriers who also have a high parasite burden to experience faster and more severe mental decline in the presence of both these genetic and environmental risk factors.

But researchers discovered the exact opposite when they tested these individuals using a seven-part cognitive assessment and a medical exam.

In fact, Tsimane who both carried ApoE4 and had a high parasitic burden displayed steadier or even improved cognitive function in the assessment versus non-carriers with a similar level of parasitic exposure.

This indicated that the allele potentially played a role in maintaining cognitive function even when exposed to environmental-based health threats.