Knowledge Update

​London, Sep 7 (IANS) Aimed at making the task of predicting renewable output easier for the industry, researchers have created an interactive web tool to estimate the quantum of energy that could be generated by wind or solar farms at any location.

The researchers have already used the tool, called Renewables.ninja, to estimate current Europe-wide solar and wind output.

"Renewables.ninja has already allowed us to answer important questions about the current and future renewable energy infrastructure across Europe and in the UK, and we hope others will use it to further examine the opportunities and challenges for renewables in the future," said Stefan Pfenninger from ETH Zurich in Switzerland.

To test the model, Pfenninger and Iain Staffell from College London used the tool to estimate the productivity of all wind farms planned or under construction in Europe for the next 20 years. 

Wind and solar energies have a strong dependence on weather conditions, and these can be difficult to integrate into national power systems that requires consistency. If there is excess power generated by all energy sources, then some supplies have to be turned off.

Currently, wind and solar power generators are the easiest to switch on and off, so they are often the first to go, meaning the power they generate can be wasted.

Renewables.ninja uses 30 years of observed and modelled weather data from organisations such as NASA to predict the wind speed likely to influence turbines and the sunlight likely to strike solar panels at any point on the Earth during the year, the researchers said in a paper published in the journal Energy.

These figures are combined with manufacturer's specifications for wind turbines and solar panels to give an estimate of the power output that could be generated by a farm placed at any location.

​Johannesburg, Sep 7 (IANS) Scientists, including researchers from India, have predicted the existence of a new boson that might aid in the understanding of dark matter in the universe.

Using data from a series of experiments that led to the discovery of Higgs boson at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in 2012, the team led by the High Energy Physics Group (HEP) of the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg established what they call "Madala boson".

The experiment was repeated in 2015 and 2016, after a two-and-half years' shut-down of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN.

The data reported by the LHC experiments in 2016 have corroborated the features in the data that triggered the Madala hypothesis in the first place.

The Wits Madala project team consists of approximately 35 young South African and African students and researchers, along with theorists such as Professor Alan Cornell and Dr Mukesh Kumar.

Some of these scientists include Dr Deepak Kar and Dr Xifeng Ruan, two new academic staff in the group, who have years of expertise at the LHC.

"Based on a number of features and peculiarities of the data reported by the experiments at the LHC and collected up to the end of 2012, the Wits HEP group in collaboration with scientists in India and Sweden formulated the Madala hypothesis," says Professor Bruce Mellado, team leader of the HEP group at Wits, in a statement.

The hypothesis describes the existence of a new boson and field, similar to the Higgs boson.

Boson is a subatomic particle, such as a photon, which has zero or integral spin and follows the statistical description given by theoretical physicists Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein.

However, where the Higgs boson in the Standard Model of Physics only interacts with known matter, the Madala boson interacts with dark matter, which makes about 27 per cent of the universe.

The theory that underpins the understanding of fundamental interactions in nature in modern physics is referred to as the Standard Model of Physics.

With the discovery of the Higgs boson at the LHC in 2012, for which the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded in 2013, the Standard Model of Physics is now complete.

However, this model is insufficient to describe a number of phenomena such as dark matter.

"With the Madala hypothesis predictions of striking signatures are made, that is being pursued by the young scientists of the Wits HEP group," the authors noted.

​New York, Sep 7 (IANS) As commercial speech recognition systems are derived largely from adult speech, Disney researchers have developed a new speech technology system that could make playing certain video games or interactions with robots more fun for kids.

The new technology sorts through the overlapping speech, social side talk and creative pronunciations of young children to help them better control a video game called Mole Madness that require kids to say say just two words - "jump" and "go".

The multi-keyword-spotting system, developed by Disney Research, could make it possible to design any number of speech-based game or entertainment applications for children, including interactions with robots, the study said.

"Speech recognition applications have become increasingly commonplace as the technology has matured, but understanding what kids say when they play remains difficult," said Jessica Hodgins, vice president at Disney Research - an international network of research labs in US.

"Kids don't necessarily pronounce words quite like adults and when they are playing together, as they like to do, they often engage in side banter, or exclamations of excitement, or simply talk over each other," Lehman said. 

In the cooperative Mole Madness - a two-player video game, kids needed to say just two words - "jump" and "go" while moving an animated mole through its environment, gathering rewards as they avoid obstacles. 

During game play, the players often say their commands simultaneously. In other cases, they make statements to each other, such as "Don't say 'go' yet," that can be misinterpreted by the system. 

"This technology can be reproduced with other vocabulary, allowing designers and developers to build novel children's applications that use limited speech as an input method," Lehman said.

The findings were presented at the Workshop on Child Computer Interaction in San Francisco.

​London, Sep 6 (IANS) Genetic factors are responsible for prompting individuals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to develop alcohol dependence as well as indulge in binge eating, finds a study.

Apart from children, nearly five per cent of the global adult population is also suffering from ADHD, the study said, adding that both alcohol dependence and binge eating are more common in adults with ADHD than in the general population. 

The research suggests that certain individuals inherit a susceptibility for both ADHD symptoms and dependency disorders or binge eating, thus these problems must be treated in parallel, said Andrea Johansson Capusan from Linkoping University in Sweden.

"When treating adults who come with dependency disorder or substance-abuse behaviour, it's important to remember that ADHD is very common in these patients. And conversely-it's important to treat ADHD early in order to prevent alcohol dependence and binge eating later in life," Capusan added.

For the study, the researchers examined more than 18,000 twin pairs aged between 20 and 46 years.

They compared identical twins, who share 100 per cent of their genes, with fraternal twins, whose genetic makeups are no more similar to each other than any pair of siblings. 

Twin pairs grow up in the same environment, but are affected by individual environmental factors, such as diseases and their circles of friends, the researchers said. 

For ADHD symptoms and alcohol dependence, 64 per cent of the overlap was explained by common genetic factors. 

The remaining variance was accounted for by environmental factors specific for each twin with no sex differences for the overlap. 

Similarly, 91 per cent of the association between ADHD symptoms and binge-eating behaviour was explained by common genetic factors. 

The study helped researchers to determine whether the correlation between different conditions can best be explained by a person's genetic background giving higher susceptibility to a condition, or whether environmental factors are significant. 

Since heredity plays such a large role, it is important that ADHD is treated at an early stage, and that measures are taken to prevent individuals developing these disorders later in life, the researchers concluded.​

New York, Sep 7 (IANS) While electric fans keep young adults cooler by increasing the evaporation of sweat, they may, surprisingly, have the opposite effect for those above the age of 60, suggests new research.

The heart rate and internal temperature of seniors exposed to 41.6 degree Celsius temperatures and increasing humidity levels climbed even higher when they tried to cool off with fans -- instead of falling as expected, according to study findings reported in the journal JAMA.

"Although differences were small, the cumulative effect could become clinically important during prolonged heat exposure, such as during extreme heat waves," said Craig Crandall, Professor of Internal Medicine at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in the US.

"We know that fans keep young adults cooler by increasing the evaporation of sweat," Crandall said. 

"We surmise that age-related impairments in sweating capacity make fans an ineffective means of cooling for the elderly during exceptionally hot days, and may, in fact, increase thermal and cardiac strain," Crandall noted.

Researchers studied the physiological responses of a small group of elderly patients in a high-heat, high-humidity environment. 

Participants between the ages of 60 and 80 were observed for approximately two hours in a room with the temperature set at a sweltering 41.6 degrees Celsius and a humidity level that was gradually increased from 30 per cent to 70 per cent. 

Not surprisingly, both heart rate and internal body temperature rose as the humidity level in the room rose. 

The eight individuals in the study were tested under those conditions without a fan and, on a separate occasion, with an electric fan. 

Unexpectedly, the participants' heart rates were 10 beats per minute higher and their internal temperatures marginally higher when a fan was part of the experimental environment. 

Although these findings suggest that fan use may be counterproductive for seniors during heat waves, the investigators propose that fan use may still be beneficial under less extreme environmental conditions, though this needs to be confirmed.

New York, July 31 (IANS) In their bid to design new bio-materials that promote tissue regeneration, scientists have identified how inflammation, when precisely controlled, is crucial for bone repair.

The findings showed that a new type of ceramic scaffold causes inflammatory cells to behave in a way that is more regenerative than scaffolds that are currently used clinically.

The reason can be attributed to macrophages -- swallowing white blood cells that digest foreign particles, the researchers said.

"We wanted to know why these scaffolds were successful and to understand the contributions of macrophages to that process," said Kara Spiller, Associate Professor Drexel University, in Pennsylvania, the US.

The findings showed that the new ceramic scaffolds caused macrophages to transform into an M2c phenotype, meaning they express genes associated with re-modelling.

This behaviour was not seen in the scaffolds that have been approved to be used in humans.

Further, the study also found that macrophages must be in direct contact with the scaffold in order to regenerate tissue.

"The macrophages degrade the scaffolds and shape them into something new," Spiller said.

Determining why certain scaffolds are successful in re-growing bone will ultimately help biomedical engineers design other types of scaffolds and new drug delivery strategies to promote healing in other areas of the body, the researchers concluded in the paper published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.​

​Beijing, July 31 (IANS) A rare Chinese yew tree, believed to be about 3,000 years old, was discovered in Jilin province, authorities said on Sunday.

The living tree, located in Huanggou Forest, is more than 40 metres tall and has a diameter of 1.68 metres, Xinhua news agency quoted Yang Yongsheng, head of the forest administration, as saying.

The tree was among the more than 30 Chinese yew trees discovered earlier this week in the forest.

Called a "living fossil" of the plant world, the Chinese yew has existed for 2.5 million years.

Since many of the trees have been harvested to extract taxol, used to treat cancer, the species is now under first-grade national protection for endangered plants.​

Seoul, July 31 (IANS) A research team at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has developed ultra-thin and transparent oxide thin-film transistors (TFT) that can be used to make high performance wearable and transparent displays.

With the advent of the "Internet of Things" era, strong demand has grown for wearable and transparent displays that can be applied to fields like augmented reality and skin-like thin flexible devices. But flexible transparent displays developed in earlier studies face challenges like poor transparency and low electrical performance. 

Led by Keon Jae Lee and Sang-Hee Ko Park from KAIST, researchers set out to overcome these challenges by using the inorganic-based laser lift-off (ILLO) method, according to the study published recently in the journal Advanced Materials. 

"By using our ILLO process, the technological barriers for high performance transparent flexible displays have been overcome at a relatively low cost by removing expensive polyimide substrates. Moreover, the high-quality oxide semiconductor can be easily transferred onto skin-like or any flexible substrate for wearable application," Lee said.

The team fabricated a high-performance oxide TFT array on top of a sacrificial laser-reactive substrate. After laser irradiation from the backside of the substrate, only the oxide TFT arrays were separated from the sacrificial substrate as a result of reaction between laser and laser-reactive layer, and then subsequently transferred onto ultrathin plastics. 

Finally, the transferred ultrathin-oxide driving circuit for the flexible display was attached conformally to the surface of human skin to demonstrate the possibility of the wearable application. The attached oxide TFTs showed high optical transparency of 83 per cent.

​London, July 31 (IANS) Cognitive ability like intelligence and verbal abilities, whether high or low, only predicts prejudice towards specific groups, according to a study.

"Very few people are immune to expressing prejudice, especially towards people they disagree with," said Mark Brandt, researcher, Tilburg University, the Netherlands, in the study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science.

The researchers analysed data from 5,914 people that includes a measure of verbal ability and prejudice towards 24 different groups.

Analysing the results, the researchers found that people with both relatively higher and lower levels of cognitive ability show approximately equal levels of intergroup bias but towards different sets of groups. 

People with low cognitive ability tended to express prejudice towards groups perceived as liberal and unconventional such as atheists, gays and lesbians.

People with high cognitive ability showed the reverse pattern. They tended to express prejudice towards groups perceived as conservative and conventional such as Christians, the military, big business, revealed the study.

"In our prior work we found that people high and low in the personality trait of openness to experience show very consistent links between seeing a group as 'different from us' and expressing prejudice towards that group. The same appears to be true for cognitive ability,” added Brandt.

According to the study, low cognitive ability express prejudice towards some target groups. For other target groups the relationship was in the opposite direction. For these groups, people with high levels of cognitive ability expressed more prejudice. ​

​New York, July 31 (IANS) Researchers have identified a genetic link between a rare heart rhythm disease and an increased risk for seizures proving a clear association between the heart and the brain of such patients.

Long QT syndrome (LQTS) is a rare heart rhythm condition that can potentially cause fast, chaotic heartbeats. These rapid heartbeats might trigger a sudden fainting spell or seizure.

The findings showed that patients carrying LQTS genetic mutations were three times more likely to have experienced seizures in their past, compared to their family members who did not carry those mutations.

Further, people with LQTS who experience seizures are at greater risk of sudden cardiac death.

“Seizure status is the strongest predictor of cardiac arrhythmias - the abnormal heart rhythms characteristic of LQTS,” said lead author David Auerbach from University of Rochester in New York, US.

In fact, about 20 per cent of the LQTS patients in the study who had a history of seizures had survived at least one lethal cardiac arrhythmia.

For the study, the team analysed of more than 18,000 people affected with LQTS as well as their affected and unaffected family members, who provide a nearly ideal group of controls.

"In essence, they have the same genetic makeup, except theoretically, the LQTS-causing mutation," Auerbach added.

Analysing patients' genetic information, the team found that among the three different types of LQTS (LQTS1-3) patients with LQTS1 and LQTS2 had much higher prevalence of seizures than LQTS3 or no mutation - with LQTS2 at the greatest risk.

Further investigation of the LQTS-causing mutation showed that the specific location of the mutation greatly affected the risk of cardiac arrhythmias and seizures.

In one location on the gene, the mutation protected against these symptoms, but in another location on the same gene, the mutation increased the risk of those symptoms.

Understanding what each of these mutations does may shed new light on a basic mechanism of seizures and may provide viable therapeutic targets to treat LQTS, the researchers cocnluded.

The results were published in the journal Neurology.​