Knowledge Update

​New York, July 3 (IANS) Auricular acupuncture has a greater overall impact on headache-related quality of life (QoL) than did traditional Chinese acupuncture, says a new US study.

The study, published in Medical Acupuncture journal, compared the effectiveness of usual care alone to usual care plus either auricular or traditional Chinese acupuncture in treating patients with headaches due to a previous traumatic brain injury (TBI) and showed a significant improvement in headache-related quality of life (QoL) with the addition of acupuncture. 

The study was conducted on previously deployed members of the US military who had mild to moderate TBI and headaches. Chronic or recurrent headache is reported by 80 per cent of service members with TBI.

"Chronic concussion headaches are a clinical challenge. Acupuncture appears promising to avoid the opioid gateway for these patients," says Richard C. Niemtzow, director, US Air Force Acupuncture and Integrative Medicine Center.

​Norwich, July 3 (IANS) Realistic workloads and ongoing emotional support are essential if social workers are to manage stress and perform their job effectively, says a study by British researchers.

Involving 209 child and family social workers across eight local authorities in Britain, the study by University of East Anglia's Centre for Research on Children and Families (CRCF) examined the relationship between emotional intelligence - the ability to identify and manage emotions in oneself and others, stress, burnout and social work practice. 

"The study confirmed that social work is an emotionally demanding profession, suggesting that particular attention should be given by social work employers to the workplace environment and social worker support," said Laura Biggart, lecturer in social science research and psychology.

The researchers recommend that if social workers are to be most effective, it is essential that they have realistic workloads and good administrative support and that the demands for more recording and regulation should come with provision of sufficient resources.​

​Beijing, July 3 (IANS) Installation was completed on the world's largest radio telescope on Sunday as the last of 4,450 panels was fitted into the centre of the big dish.

Hoisting of the last triangular panel to the reflector, which is the size of 30 football fields, began at 10.47 a.m. and lasted about an hour. It was a landmark step for the telescope's planned launch of operations in September, Xinhua news agency reported.

About 300 people, including builders, experts, science fiction enthusiasts and reporters, witnessed the installation at Karst Valley in the southwestern province of Guizhou.

"The telescope is of great significance for humans to explore the universe and extraterrestrial civilisations," said Liu Cixin, a renowned science fiction writer.

"I hope scientists can make epoch-making discoveries," said Liu, who won the 2015 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

Scientists will begin debugging and trial observation of the 500 metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), said Zheng Xiaonian, deputy head of the National Astronomical Observation (NAO) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which built the telescope.

The project has the potential to search for more strange objects to better understand the origin of the universe and boost the global hunt for extraterrestrial life, said Zheng. It will be the global leader for the next 10 to 20 years.

In the first two or three years after its completion, the telescope will undergo further adjustment, and during that period Chinese scientists will use it for early-stage research.

After that, it will be open to scientists worldwide, said Peng Bo, director of the NAO Radio Astronomy Technology Laboratory.

Upon completion, the telescope will dwarf Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory, which is 300 metres in diameter. It will also be 10 times more sensitive than the steerable 100-metre telescope near Bonn in Germany, he said.

Work on the 1.2-billion-yuan ($180 million) FAST project began in 2011.​

​Toronto, July 3 (IANS) Activities such as playing cards and repeatedly throwing a foam ball or wad of paper into a wastepaper basket are just as effective in helping people regain strength and co-ordination following a stroke as playing virtual reality games, a new study has found.

The study, published in the 'Lancet Neurology' journal, was based on a clinical trial conducted at 14 centres in four countries in which patients were randomised into two groups.

One group received one-hour sessions of virtual reality using the Nintendo Wii system and the other spent the same amount of time doing simple recreational activities such as playing cards or dominoes.

Patients randomised to both groups saw a 30 per cent and 40 per cent improvement in motor performance at the end of two weeks of the intervention and four weeks after the intervention, respectively.

"There was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of strength, dexterity, gross motor skills, quality of life or activities of daily living. We all like technology and have the tendency to think that new technology is better than old-fashioned strategies, but sometimes that's not the case," said Dr. Gustavo Saposnik, scientist at St. Michael's Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute in Toronto. 

This study revealed that simple recreational activities that can be implemented anywhere may be as effective as technology.​

​Beijing, July 4 (IANS) At least 14 more meteorological satellites will be launched by China into orbit by 2025, officials said at a science conference on Monday.

China plans to launch one Fengyun-II satellite, four Fengyun-IIIs, three Fengyun-IVs and another six for multiple meteorological purposes, Xinhua quoted an official of the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence, as saying.

Fengyun satellites are a series of remote-sensing meteorological satellites developed by China. The Fengyun series is an important part of the earth observation satellite system.

China has launched 14 Fengyun satellites since 1988, with seven still in orbit as part of the World Meteorological Organisation network.​

​New York, July 1 (IANS) Neuroscientists have found that the resting-state brain activity - the neural activity that goes on while we are doing nothing in particular - helps some people learn new languages faster.

"The way someone's brain functions while at rest predicts 60 per cent of their capacity for learning a second language," said study author Chantel Prat from University of Washington.

In the small yet significant study, published recently by the US Office of Naval Research, 19 participants between the ages of 18 and 31 with no previous experience learning French, visited Prat's lab twice weekly over eight weeks for 30-minute French lessons delivered through a virtual-reality computer programme called Operational Language and Cultural Training System (OLCTS).

OLCTS is designed to make military personnel proficient in a foreign language after 20 hours of training. The programme guides users through a series of scenes and stories. A voice-recognition component enables users to check their pronunciation.

For five minutes before and after the eight-week curriculum, Prat had participants sit still, close their eyes, breathe deeply and wear an EEG (electroencephalogram) headset measuring resting-state brain activity from the cerebral cortex - an area of the brain crucial to memory, attention and perception.

"The brain waves we recorded reflect synchronised firing of large networks of neurons," Prat said. 

"We found that the larger the networks were in 'beta' frequencies (brain frequencies associated with language and memory), the faster our participants learned French," he added.

To confirm this, at the end of the eight-week language programme, participants also completed a proficiency test covering the lessons they had finished. Those with the larger "beta" networks learned French twice as quickly.

However, Prat pointed out that language learning rates were the only things predicted by the recorded brain activity. Participants with smaller "beta" networks still learned the material to which they were exposed equally well.

"There's more that goes into learning a new language than speed," Prat said. "You also have to factor in motivation, study habits and practice methods," he added.​

​Washington, July 2 (IANS) After its historic first-ever flyby of Pluto, NASA's New Horizons mission has received the green light to fly onward to an object deeper in the Kuiper Belt.

The spacecraft's planned rendezvous with the ancient object named 2014 MU69 -- considered one of the early building blocks of the solar system -- is January 1, 2019.

"The New Horizons mission to Pluto exceeded our expectations and even today the data from the spacecraft continue to surprise," said NASA's Director of Planetary Science Jim Green.

"We're excited to continue onward into the dark depths of the outer solar system to a science target that wasn't even discovered when the spacecraft launched," he added.

In addition to the extension of the New Horizons mission, NASA said the Dawn spacecraft should remain at the dwarf planet Ceres rather than changing course to the main belt asteroid Adeona.

"The long-term monitoring of Ceres, particularly as it gets closer to perihelion -- the part of its orbit with the shortest distance to the sun -- has the potential to provide more significant science discoveries than a flyby of Adeona," Green noted in a statement.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN), the Opportunity and Curiosity Mars rovers, the Mars Odyssey orbiter, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), and NASA's support for the European Space Agency's Mars Express mission have also got extension.​

​London, July 1 (IANS) In hope for people suffering from dementia, accidents or traumatic events, a team of researchers has managed to erase unpleasant memories in mice using a "genetic switch."

The team from KU Leuven (Belgium) and the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology (Germany) found that that some memories can also be erased when one particular gene is switched off.

The team trained mice that had been genetically modified in one single gene: neuroplastin.

This gene, which is investigated by only a few groups in the world, is very important for brain plasticity.

In humans, changes in the regulation of the neuroplastin gene have recently been linked to decreased intellectual abilities and schizophrenia.

“We were amazed to find that deactivating one single gene is enough to erase associative memories formed before or during the learning trials,” said Professor Detlef Balschun from the KU Leuven's laboratory for biological psychology.

“Switching off the neuroplastin gene has an impact on the behaviour of the mice, because it interferes with the communication between their brain cells,” he informed.

In the study, the mice were trained to move from one side of a box to the other as soon as a lamp lights up, thus avoiding a foot stimulus.

This learning process is called associative learning.

When the scientists switched off the neuroplastin gene after conditioning, the mice were no longer able to perform the task properly.

In other words, they showed learning and memory deficits that were specifically related to associative learning.

The control mice with the neuroplastin gene switched on, by contrast, could still do the task perfectly.

By measuring the electrical signals in the brain, the KU Leuven team discovered clear deficits in the cellular mechanism used to store memories.

These changes are even visible at the level of individual brain cells, as postdoctoral researcher Victor Sabanov was able to show.

"This is still basic research. We still need further research to show whether neuroplastin also plays a role in other forms of learning,” said Balschun adds in a paper published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.​

​Beijing, July 1 (IANS) Long-term exposure to air pollution, which has risen to alarming levels in the past years, is likely to cause damages to the kidneys, irrespective of age, warns a study.

The findings showed that air pollution increased the chances of developing membranous nephropathy -- an immune disorder of the kidneys -- that can lead to kidney failure.

Long-term exposure to high levels of particulate matter (PM 2.5) was associated with an increased risk of membranous nephropathy.

Previous studies have showed that increased exposure to air pollution may raise respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.

To examine how particulate matter in the air is affecting kidney health, a team analysed data on kidney biopsies taken over 11 years from 71,151 patients from 938 hospitals in 282 cities across China, encompassing all age groups.

The areas with high levels of fine particulate air pollution had the highest rates of membranous nephropathy.

On average, the likelihood of developing membranous nephropathy increased 13 per cent annually over the 11-year study period.

"Our primary finding is that the frequency of membranous nephropathy has doubled over the last decade in China. We show that the increase corresponds closely with the regional distribution of particulate air pollution," said lead author Fan Fan Hou of China's Southern Medical University.

The results, which appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN), calls for attention on the role of air pollution in the development of kidney disease in urban areas, the researchers concluded.​

​New York, July 1 (IANS) Researchers have identified a protein that acts as a powerful protectant against free radicals -- a molecule that causes cell damage and death as well as ageing.

The findings showed that Lysosomes -- the protein that comprise the cell's recycling centre, are crucial for cleaning up injured and dying parts of the cells.

“Free radicals are guilty in the ageing process. If we have chemical compounds that can directly activate this channel, we can lower the oxidative stress in ageing and other diseases," said lead researcher Haoxing Xu, Associate Professor at University of Michigan, in the US.

Lysosomes were found to have a radical-sensing ability to know that the body has many free radicals.

Thus, when lysosomes "sense" an overload of free radicals, they activate a calcium channel on their membranes. 

This triggers the expression of many genes and the production of more and stronger lysosomes, which spurs into overdrive to get rid of the damaged parts of the cells.

"The result will be that cell damage and free radical levels could be reduced, and one can possibly slow down ageing," Xu added.

Ironically, the protein is activated by excessive free radicals. Human mutations of the gene for this protein are previously known to cause a rare, neurodegenerative disease, said the paper published in the journal Nature Communications.​