Knowledge Update

​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.​

​New York, July 10 (IANS) If you are having problems at work then there is a likelihood that your parents might be responsible to some extent for your troubles, a new research has startlingly revealed.

According to the study published in the journal Human Relations, the researchers studied manager-employee relationships in the workplace and found a link between parenting styles and workplace behaviours.

"It seems cliché, but, once again, we end up blaming mom for everything in life. It really is about both parents, but because mothers are typically the primary caregivers of the children, they usually have more influence on their children," said Peter Harms, Researcher, University of Alabama.

A mother or father figure later in life can provide that needed love and support, even in the context of the workplace, suggested the study.

The research was based on the work of John Bowlby, an early psychoanalyst, who argued that the way parents treat their offspring could have long-term implications for how their children approach relationships.

Babies learn over time that when they feel abandoned or threatened they can either count on their parent to come to their rescue right away or they need to escalate to high levels of distress in order to get attention.

Individuals with reliable parents view others as potential sources of support. Those individuals with unreliable parents tend not to see them as sources of support. These people are often categorized as having anxious or avoidant attachment depending on the style they adopted to cope with distress.

"Essentially, we figured that bosses would matter less to individuals with secure or avoidant attachment styles. Avoidant individuals just simply don't care. It was the anxiously attached individuals we were most interested in," added Harns.

The researchers speculated that individuals may transfer this pattern of thinking into the workplace and in particular that it may influence one's relationship with one's boss.

The research also finds that the way bosses treated their subordinates impacted some, but not all, employees.

The study showed that when anxious followers were paired with supportive leaders, they were perfectly fine. But when they were paired with distant, unsupportive leaders, the anxiously attached employees reported higher levels of stress and lower levels of performance.​

​Toronto, July 11 (IANS) Is your toddler addicted to "bad habits" such as thumb-sucking or nail-biting? Worry not, as according to a study, she or he is less likely to develop allergic sensitivities in the long run.

The findings showed that children with both thumb-sucking or nail-biting habits were less likely to be allergic to things such as house dust mites, grass, cats, dogs, horses or airborne fungi.

"Our findings are consistent with the hygiene theory that early exposure to dirt or germs reduces the risk of developing allergies," said Malcolm Sears, professor at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.

"While we don't recommend that these habits should be encouraged, there does appear to be a positive side to these habits," Sears added in the work published in the journal Pediatrics.

In the study, the researchers tested the idea that these common childhood habits would increase microbial exposures, affecting the immune system and reducing the development of allergic reactions also known as atopic sensitisation -- the tendency to be "hyperallergi”.

The habits were measured in a longitudinal birth cohort of more than 1,000 New Zealand children at ages 5, 7, 9 and 11. Atopic sensitisation was measured by skin-prick testing at 13 and 32 years old.

The researchers found 31 per cent of children were frequent thumb suckers or nail biters.

Among all children at 13 years old, 45 per cent showed atopic sensitisation but among those with one oral habit, only 40 per cent had allergies. 

Among those with both habits, only 31 per cent had allergies. 

This trend was sustained into adulthood and showed no difference depending on smoking in the household, ownership of cats or dogs or exposure to house dust mites.

However, the study did not find associations between the oral habits and development of asthma or hay fever, the researchers noted.

​Washington, July 12 (IANS) Scientists have discovered an enormous, bizarre galaxy possibly formed from the parts of other galaxies about 718,000 light-years away in an otherwise quiet neighbourhood.

More than seven times wider than the Milky Way, UGC 1382 is a "Frankenstein" galaxy that had originally been thought to be old, small and typical.

Instead, scientists using data from NASA telescopes and other observatories have discovered that the galaxy is 10 times bigger than previously thought and, unlike most galaxies, its insides are younger than its outsides, almost as if it had been built using spare parts.

“This rare, 'Frankenstein' galaxy formed and is able to survive because it lies in a quiet little suburban neighbourhood of the universe, where none of the hubbub of the more crowded parts can bother it," said study co-author Mark Seibert from Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science.

It is so delicate that a slight nudge from a neighbour would cause it to disintegrate.

Seibert and Lea Hagen, a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, came upon this galaxy by accident.

While looking at images of galaxies in ultraviolet light through data from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), a behemoth began to emerge from the darkness.

"We saw spiral arms extending far outside this galaxy, which no one had noticed before, and which elliptical galaxies should not have," said Hagen who led the study appeared in the Astrophysical Journal.

It is one of the three largest isolated disk galaxies ever discovered.

But the biggest surprise was how the relative ages of the galaxy's components appear backwards.

In most galaxies, the innermost portion forms first and contains the oldest stars.

As the galaxy grows, its outer, newer regions have the youngest stars. Not so with UGC 1382.

"The centre of UGC 1382 is actually younger than the spiral disk surrounding it," Seibert said. "It's old on the outside and young on the inside. This is like finding a tree whose inner growth rings are younger than the outer rings."

More galaxies like this may exist, but more research is needed to look for them.

"By understanding this galaxy, we can get clues to how galaxies form on a larger scale, and uncover more galactic neighborhood surprises," Hagen noted.​

​Vienna, July 12 (IANS) Austrian researchers have developed a treatment that could spell a breakthrough in the treatment of AIDS, the Krone newspaper reported on Monday.

The research duo of Thomas Szekeres, a human geneticist who also serves as President of the Vienna Medical Association, and Walter Jaeger, a pharmacist, said the arduous research project spanned 15 years.

Jaeger said while it was "full of setbacks", there were also often "new hopes", and they are now satisfied with the research results and ready to make them public, Xinhua reported.

The research is based on a substance known as resveratrol, that occurs naturally in grapes as a means of defence against fungi and bacteria.

Based on this substance as well as a similar artificially developed chemical compound known as "M8", Szekeres conducted research into a substance, that Jaeger then developed, that is to inhibit the growth of HIV.

"We have meticulously proven this in human cells. And if is effective there, it can also begin healing processes in human HIV sufferers," Szekeres said according to the report.

The researchers were assisted in the project by several Canadian institutes such as the McGill University AIDS Centre and the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research affiliated with the Jewish General Hospita

​Wellington, July 12 (IANS) Pollution experts from around the world will gather in New Zealand later this month to study ways to improve public health in areas affected by wood smoke.

Leading researchers in atmospheric wood smoke and its impact on health from the US, Canada, Sweden, Finland, Australia and New Zealand would launch the International Wood Smoke Research Network on July 26, the government's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) said on Tuesday.

Wood burning for heating is the primary cause of poor air quality in New Zealand, NIWA air quality scientist Ian Longley said in a statement.

However, the decision to form the network stemmed from limited and uncertain evidence about how wood smoke affected health and what had been gained by introducing regulations on their use, Xinhua news agency reported.

"We know that strict regulations on wood burners have had mixed results, with air quality improving slowly in some towns, but hardly at all in others," said Longley.

"Studies in North America, Europe and Australia have indicated great potential from wood burner management, but the results have been inconsistent."

A major factor in the inconsistent results has been the small scale and isolation of each study, as well as interference from other pollutant sources.

The network aimed to design a large-scale research and intervention program with input from other interested groups who were disproportionately affected.

​London, July 12 (IANS) Humans might have learned how to eat cashew by observing Brazilian capuchin monkeys cracking the tough nuts with stone tools, suggests new research.

The researchers found archaeological evidence to suggest that Brazilian capuchins have been using stone tools to crack open cashew nuts for at least 700 years. The findings could represent the earliest archaeological examples of monkey tool use outside of Africa. 

"Here we have new evidence that suggests monkeys and other primates out of Africa were also using tools for hundreds, possibly thousands, of years,” said lead author Michael Haslam from University of Oxford.

"This is an exciting, unexplored area of scientific study that may even tell us about the possible influence of monkeys' tool use on human behaviour,” Haslam observed.

"For example, cashew nuts are native to this area of Brazil, and it is possible that the first humans to arrive here learned about this unknown food through watching the monkeys and their primate cashew-processing industry,” Haslam explained.

The study, published in the journal Current Biology, involved a team from Oxford and the University of São Paulo in Brazil, who observed groups of modern capuchins at Serra da Capivara National Park in northeast Brazil, and combined this with archaeological data from the same site. 

The researchers watched wild capuchins use stones as hand-held hammers and anvils to pound open hard foods such as seeds and cashew nuts, with young monkeys learning from older ones how to do the same. 

The capuchins created what the researchers describe as 'recognisable cashew processing sites', leaving stone tools in piles at specific places like the base of cashew trees or on tree branches after use. 

They found that capuchins picked their favourite tools from stones lying around, selecting those most suitable for the task. 

The capuchins also chose particular materials, using smooth, hard quartzite stones as hammers, while flat sandstones became anvils.

Using archaeological methods, the researchers excavated a total of 69 stones to see if this tool technology had developed at all over time. 

They dug to a depth of 0.7 metres at a site close to cashew trees where they had seen modern capuchins frequently using their stone tools. 

They identified the tools from inspecting the size and shape of the stones, as well as the distinctive damage on the stone surface caused by capuchin pounding. 

Through mass spectrometry, the researchers were able to confirm that dark-coloured residues on the tools were specifically from cashew nuts. 

They also carbon-dated small pieces of charcoal discovered with the stones to establish the oldest were least 600 to 700 years old -- meaning the tools predate the arrival of Europeans in the New World.

In the paper, the researchers estimate that around 100 generations of capuchins have used this tradition of stone tools. 

They compared tools used by modern capuchins with the oldest excavated examples, finding they are similar in terms of weight and materials chosen. 

This apparent lack of change over hundreds of years suggests monkeys are 'conservative', preferring not to change the technology used, unlike humans living in the same region, the study said.​