Knowledge Update

​Moscow, Nov 18 (IANS) Multitasking is harder for men because they need to mobilise additional areas of their brain and use more energy than women when switching attention between tasks, says a study.

"Our findings suggest that women might find it easier than men to switch attention and their brains do not need to mobilise extra resources in doing so, as opposed to male brains," said one of the researchers, Svetlana Kuptsova from National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia.

Such differences are typical of younger men and women aged 20 to 45, according to findings published in the journal Human Physiology.

Regardless of gender and age, task switching always involves activation in certain areas of the brain, more specifically, bilateral activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal areas, inferior parietal lobes and inferior occipital gyrus.

However, experiments conducted in this study demonstrated that in women, task switching appears to require less brain power compared to men, who showed greater activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal areas as well as the involvement of supplementary motor areas and insula, which was not observed in women.

The experiments involved 140 healthy volunteers, including 69 men and 71 women aged between 20 and 65. 

The participants were asked to perform a variety of tasks. In one of the experiments using functional MRI, they were asked to perform a test that required switching attention between sorting objects according to shape (round or square) and number (one or two).

The use of functional MRI allowed the researchers not only to observe the participants' behaviour, but also to see what was going on in the brain as the participants switched between tasks and detect differences in brain activation between men and women.

The researchers found that the gender differences in the extent of brain activation when switching between tasks only occurred in participants younger than those aged 45 to 50, while those aged 50 and older showed no gender differences either in brain activation or speed of task switching.

​New York, Nov 18 (IANS) There has been a decline in the percentage of women working at Microsoft, said the company's diversity report, adding that the technology giant saw "modest gains" in the representation of African Americans, Black and Hispanic/Latino(a) employees.

By the end of September 2016, women made up 25.8 percent of Microsoft's global workforce which is a one percent drop from previous year's 26.8 percent, said the report release on Thursday. 

In 2014, 29 percent of Microsoft's global workforce comprised of women.

"This decline was largely due to the business decision we shared last year to restructure our phone hardware business (Nokia), which resulted in the closure of some factories outside the U.S. The workforce at these factories had a higher representation of women, so their closure impacted our total representation of women," said Gwen Houston, Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer at Microsoft.

The diversity repport provides a glimpse of the gender and racial composition of Microsoft's employee population as of September 30, 2016.

Microsoft is creating and delivering compelling career development offerings for women and racial/ethnic minorities, Houston said.

New York, Nov 18 (IANS) People who show strong curiosity traits on personality tests perform better on creative tasks, according to a new study.

This is especially true for those with a strong diversive curiosity trait, or curiosity associated with the interest in exploring unfamiliar topics and learning something new, the study said.

The findings contribute to a growing body of evidence suggesting that testing for curiosity traits may be useful for employers, especially those seeking to fill complex jobs, said lead author of the study Jay Hardy, Assistant Professor College of Business, the Oregon State University, US.

"This research suggests it may be useful for employers to measure curiosity, and, in particular, diversive curiosity, when hiring new employees," Hardy said.

Diversive curiosity is a trait well-suited to early stage problem-solving because it leads to gathering a large amount of information relevant to the problem. That information can be used to generate and evaluate new ideas in later stages of creative problem-solving.

On the other hand, people with strong specific curiosity traits, or the curiosity that reduces anxiety and fills gaps in understanding, tend to be more problem-focused.

While diversive curiosity tends to be a more positive force, specific curiosity tends to be a negative force.

For the study, researchers asked 122 undergraduate college students, to take personality tests that measured their diversive and specific curiosity traits.

They then asked the students to complete an experimental task involving the development of a marketing plan for a retailer. 

Researchers evaluated the students' early-stage and late-stage creative problem-solving processes, including the number of ideas generated. 

The students' ideas were also evaluated based on their quality and originality.

The findings, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, indicated that the participants' diversive curiosity scores related strongly to their performance scores. 

Those with stronger diversive curiosity traits spent more time and developed more ideas in the early stages of the task. 

Stronger specific curiosity traits did not significantly relate to the participants' idea generation and did not affect their creative performance.

​New York, Nov 18 (IANS) Cuts or bruises in older adults take a longer time to heal as compared to youngsters as a result of a disruption in communication between their skin cells and immune system, researchers have found.

Wound healing is one of the most complex processes to occur in the human body. Both skin cells and immune cells contribute to this elaborate process, which begins with the formation of a scab. 

The new skin cells -- known as keratinocytes -- gather under the scab to fill in the wound, the study said. 

"Within days of an injury, skin cells migrate in and close the wound, a process that requires coordination with nearby immune cells. Our experiments have shown that, with ageing, disruptions to communication between skin cells and their immune cells slow down this step," said Elaine Fuchs, Professor at The Rockefeller University, New York.

The researchers found that in older mice keratinocytes were much slower in their travels, while in younger mice they sent a signalling protein to immune cells which increased the healing speed. 

When the same protein was applied to old mouse skin tissue, it boosted the communication.

"This discovery suggests new approaches to developing treatments that could speed healing among older people," Fuchs added.

In the study, the team focused on healing in two-month-old versus 24-month-old mice -- roughly equivalent to 20- and 70-year-old humans. 

They found that among the older mice, keratinocytes were much slower to migrate into the skin gap under the scab, and, as a result, wounds often took days longer to close.

The study will help to develop drugs to activate pathways that help ageing skin cells to communicate better with their immune cell neighbours, Fuchs said, in the paper described in the journal Cell.

Sydney, Nov 18 (IANS) A brief burst of radiation that travelled at least a billion light years through space to reach an Australian radio telescope contains detailed information about the cosmic web - the swirling gases and magnetic fields between galaxies -- regarded as the fabric of the universe, say scientists.

The flash, known as a Fast Radio Burst (FRB), was one of the brightest seen since FRBs were first detected in 2001, the researchers said.

All FRBs contained crucial information but this FRB, the 18th detected so far, was unique in the amount of information it contained about the cosmic web, said one of the researchers Ryan Shannon from International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, Curtin University, Bentley, Australia.

"FRBs are extremely short but intense pulses of radio waves, each only lasting about a millisecond. Some are discovered by accident and no two bursts look the same," Shannon said.

This particular flash described in a new paper in the journal Science, reached CSIRO Parkes radio telescope in Australia mid-last year.

"This particular FRB is the first detected to date to contain detailed information about the cosmic web -- regarded as the fabric of the Universe -- but it is also unique because its travel path can be reconstructed to a precise line of sight and back to an area of space about a billion light years away that contains only a small number of possible home galaxies," Shannon added.

Shannon explained that the vast spaces between objects in the Universe contain nearly invisible gas and a plasma of ionised particles that used to be almost impossible to map, until this pulse was detected.

"This FRB, like others detected, is thought to originate from outside of Earth's own Milky Way galaxy, which means their signal has travelled over many hundreds of millions of light years, through a medium that -- while invisible to our eyes -- can be turbulent and affected by magnetic fields," Shannon said.

​Melbourne, Nov 18 (IANS) Australian researchers have developed a revolutionary blood test to diagnose skin cancer much more quickly and efficiently than conventional methods.

The ground-breaking "liquid biopsy" test will be made available at Melbourne's Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute (ONJCRI), Victoria state's Health Minister Jill Hennessy said on Friday.

Prior to the development of the new test, melanomas could only be identified by a complex and invasive surgery, results from which could take weeks to be obtained, Xinhua news agency reported.

The blood test can provide the same information in a matter of hours from a simple blood test, potentially saving millions of lives worldwide.

Once the skin cancer has been identified via the new test, oncologists can quickly tailor the most appropriate treatment for each individual patient, potentially preventing the cancer from spreading to the bloodstream.

"We're putting cancer patients first and investing in world-leading cancer research and future technologies that have the power to save lives," Hennessy told reporters in Melbourne.

"It will mean patients can get diagnosed and treated sooner, without having to endure long and anxious waits and invasive and painful surgery."

Frank McGuire, Parliamentary Secretary for Medical Research, said the development was the latest example of Victoria's commitment to cancer research.

"This new blood test is a great example of how we are rapidly turning around breakthroughs in cancer research into clinical practice with real benefits for cancer patients," McGuire said.

In addition to diagnosing the cancer quicker the blood test can also tell doctors when a treatment will stop working, allowing them to change medications before a patient's condition starts to decline.

​New York, Nov 17 (IANS) Researchers in the US have developed a new ultra long-acting pill that can remain in the stomach for up to two weeks after being swallowed and aid in elimination of malaria.

The study found that the sustained therapeutic dose of a drug called ivermectin -- used to treat parasitic infections such as river blindness -- can also help keep malaria-carrying mosquitoes at bay.

In large animal models, the capsule safely stayed in the stomach, slowly releasing the drug for up to 14 days, and potentially providing a new way to combat malaria and other infectious diseases. 

This type of drug delivery could replace inconvenient regimens that require repeated doses. 

"Until now, oral drugs would almost never last for more than a day. The study opens the door to ultra-long-lasting oral systems, which could have an effect on all kinds of diseases, such as Alzheimer's or mental health disorders," said Robert Langer, Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), US. 

The drug, designed by scientists at MIT and Brigham and Women's Hospital, is a star-shaped structure with six arms that can be folded inward and encased in a smooth capsule.

After the capsule is swallowed, acid in the stomach dissolves the outer layer of the capsule, allowing the six arms to unfold and stay in the stomach. Once the drug is released, the capsule could break down and pass safely through the digestive tract.

This is a platform into which you can incorporate any drug and can be used with any drug that requires frequent dosing. We can replace that dosing with a single administration, the researchers said.

Beijing, Nov 17 (IANS) China's manned spaceflight Shenzhou-11 began its return to the Earth on Thursday after separating from the Tiangong-2 space laboratory, where it had remained docked for the last one month.

The space capsule manned by astronauts Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong, disconnected from the Tiangong-2 at 4.41 a.m., and is scheduled to land on the Earth on Friday.

The Shenzhou-11 is expected to remain in space near the laboratory until it receives an order from the Beijing Aerospace Control Centre to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and land, Efe news reported.

Jing and Chen departed aboard the Shenzhou-11 from the launch pad in Jiuquan in the Gobi desert on October 17 and docked at the space lab two days later.

Since then the astronauts have been working and living in the Tiangong-2 that was launched in September, and where they conducted several scientific experiments and advanced preparations for the operation of a future Chinese space station, which is expected to be fully operational by 2022.

The Tiangong-2 will remain in its orbit, some 393 km from the Earth's surface, until it docks with the Tianzhou-1, scheduled to be launched in April 2017.

New York, Nov 17 (IANS) Electronic cigarettes are as equally damaging to gums and teeth as conventional cigarettes, new research has found.

"We showed that when the vapours from an e-cigarette are burned, it causes cells to release inflammatory proteins, which in turn aggravate stress within cells, resulting in damage that could lead to various oral diseases," explained lead researcher Irfan Rahman, Professor at University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in the US.

Most e-cigarettes contain a battery, a heating device, and a cartridge to hold liquid, which typically contains nicotine, flavourings, and other chemicals. 

The battery-powered device heats the liquid in the cartridge into an aerosol that the user inhales.

Previously, scientists thought that the chemicals found in cigarette smoke were the culprits behind adverse health effects, but a growing body of scientific data, including this study published in the journal Oncotarget, suggests otherwise.

"How much and how often someone is smoking e-cigarettes will determine the extent of damage to the gums and oral cavity," Rahman said.

The study, which exposed 3-D human, non-smoker gum tissue to the vapours of e-cigarettes, also found that the flavouring chemicals play a role in damaging cells in the mouth.

"We learned that the flavourings -- some more than others -- made the damage to the cells even worse," Fawad Javed from University of Rochester Medical Center added.

"It's important to remember that e-cigarettes contain nicotine, which is known to contribute to gum disease," Javed said.

New York, Nov 17 (IANS) US researchers have developed a tiny, soft and wearable acoustic sensor that can measure vibrations in the human body, allows monitoring of human heart health as well as recognise speech.

The sensor, developed by researchers from the University of Colorado-Boulder and Northwestern University in the US, resembles a small band-aid, weighs less than one-hundredth of an ounce and can be mounted on nearly any surface of the body.

"This device has a very low mass density and can be used for cardiovascular monitoring, speech recognition and human-machine interfaces in daily life," said Jae-Woong Jeong Assistant Professor at University of Colorado-Boulder, in the paper published in the journal Science Advances. 

The new device can also pick up mechanical waves that propagate through tissues and fluids in the human body including the opening and closing of heart valves, vibrations of the vocal cords and even movements in gastrointestinal tracts.

"The thin, soft, skin-like characteristics of these advanced wearable devices provide unique capabilities for 'listening in' to the intrinsic sounds of vital organs of the body, including the lungs and heart, with important consequences in continuous monitoring of physiological health," said John Rogers, Professor at Northwestern University. 

While the sensor was wired to an external data acquisition system for the tests, it can easily be converted into a wireless device. 

Such sensors could be of use in remote, noisy places - including battlefields - producing quiet, high-quality cardiology or speech signals that can be read in real time at distant medical facilities, the researchers said.

Further, the speech recognition capabilities of the sensor also have implications for improving communication for people suffering from speech impairments, Jeong observed.

In the study, the researchers also showed vocal cord vibrations gathered when the device is on one's throat can be used to control video games and other machines. 

"While other skin electronics devices have been developed by researchers, what has not been demonstrated before is the mechanical-acoustic coupling of our device to the body through the skin," Jeong added.