Knowledge Update

New York, April 4 (IANS) A single dose of oxytocin nasal spray, known to cut food intake, can lower impulsive behaviour in overweight and obese men, say researchers.

Oxytocin nasal spray is a synthetic version of the hormone oxytocin which is important for controlling food intake and weight.

"Our preliminary results in men are promising. Oxytocin nasal spray showed no strong side effects and is not as invasive as obesity surgery," said Franziska Plessow, an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Results of their new pilot study in 10 overweight and obese men suggest that one way oxytocin lowers food intake might be by improving self-control.

"Knowing the mechanisms of action of intranasal oxytocin is important to investigating oxytocin as a novel treatment strategy for obesity," Plessow added.

Participants took a psychology research test on two occasions 15 minutes after they self-administered a dose of nasal spray in each nostril.

In a randomly assigned order, one day they received oxytocin and another they received a placebo or dummy drug.

After receiving oxytocin, participants were acting less impulsively and exerting more control over their behaviour after receiving oxytocin.

More study is necessary to determine how oxytocin alters self-control and how important this mechanism is in regulating food intake since not all overeating relates to poor self-control.

The information may allow scientists to move forward to large clinical trials, identify who can benefit from the drug, and help optimise the treatment. They also will need to test the drug in women.

The preliminary study was presented at the Endocrine Society's 98th annual meeting in Boston last weekend.​

​New York, April 4 (IANS) A person's age and gender can affect the prevalence of certain types of peripheral vascular diseases (PVD), which can lead to heart attack, stroke and even amputation of the limbs.

PVD is a circulation disorder that affects blood vessels outside of the heart and brain, particularly the veins and arteries that supply blood to the arms and legs. 

The results revealed that women, especially younger women, have a significantly higher prevalence of peripheral artery disease than men.

"These findings point to very important differences between women and men, and older and younger individuals, when it comes to PVD," said one of the researchers, Jeffrey S. Berger, associate professor at NYU Langone Medical Centre in New York, US. 

"Sex-specific guidelines for PVD are important, and we are starting to realise that women and men need to be approached differently," Berger added.

In addition, diabetes was found to be a major risk factor for developing PVD, even in patients without heart disease.

The team used data collected from more than 3.6 million individuals and found that people with both diabetes and coronary heart disease the risk of developing PVD increases.

However, the researchers cautioned that the findings might not represent PVD prevalence in all men and women, or disease risk in people with diabetes. 

The findings were presented at the American College of Cardiology's 65th Annual Scientific Session in Chicago, US.​

​New York, April 5 (IANS) El Nino - the climate cycle that develops along the tropical west coast of South America every three to seven years - can have huge impact on the marine food chain with rippling effect on fisheries and the livelihoods of fishermen, says a new NASA study.

El Nino's mass of warm water puts a lid on the normal currents of cold, deep water that typically rise to the surface along the Equator and off the coast of Chile and Peru, said Stephanie Uz, from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland.

In a process called upwelling, those cold waters normally bring up the nutrients that feed the tiny organisms, which form the base of the food chain.

These tiny plants, called phytoplankton, are fish food -- without them, fish populations drop, and the fishing industries that many coastal regions depend on can collapse.

"An El Nino basically stops the normal upwelling," Uz said, adding that "there's a lot of starvation that happens to the marine food web". 

Uz's team used NASA satellite data and ocean colour software called SeaDAS to find out El Nino's impact on phytoplankton. 

From shades of blue and green, scientists calculated the amount of green chlorophyll -- and therefore the amount of phytoplankton present.

They found that in December 2015, at the peak of the current El Nino event, there was more blue -- and less green chlorophyll -- in the Pacific Ocean off of Peru and Chile, compared to the previous year. 

After analysing data from the large 1997-1998 El Nino event, the researchers said the green chlorophyll virtually disappeared from the coast of Chile. 

In 1997-1998, the biggest ocean temperature abnormalities were in the eastern Pacific Ocean. But this year's event caused a drop in chlorophyll primarily along the equator, the study said. 

"We know how important phytoplankton are for the marine food web, and we're trying to understand their role as a carbon pump," Uz said. 

Other scientists at Goddard are investigating ways to forecast the ebbs and flows of nutrients using the centre's supercomputers, incorporating data like winds, sea surface temperatures, air pressures and more.​

Taipei, April 3 (IANS) People with type 1 diabetes are three times more prone to the risk of developing epilepsy later in life, finds a new research.

The findings revealed that in patients with type 1 diabetes, the risk of developing epilepsy -- a neurological disorder -- was significantly higher than that in patients without the disease.

Also, an excess of glucose in the bloodstream known as hyperglycaemia and deficiency of glucose in the bloodstream, known as hypoglycaemia, can alter the balance between the inhibition and excitation of neuronal networks and cause focal motor seizures.

Immune abnormalities, brain lesions, genetic factors and metabolic abnormalities have been identified as the potential causes for the link between type 1 diabetes and epilepsy.

In addition, younger age has been linked with an increased risk of developing epilepsy, the researchers said.

"This result is consistent with those of previous studies in that epilepsy or seizures are observed in many autoimmune or inflammatory disorders and are linked to the primary disease, or secondary to pro-inflammatory processes," said I-Ching Chou from China Medical University in Taiwan.

In the study, published in the journal Diabetologia, computer modelling was used to estimate the effects of type 1 diabetes on epilepsy risk.

The study cohort contained 2,568 patients with type 1 diabetes, each of whose frequency was matched by sex, urbanisation of residence area and index year with 10 control patients without type 1 diabetes.

The results showed that the type 1 diabetes the cohort was 2.84 times more likely to develop epilepsy than the control cohort.​

​New York, April 3 (IANS) A team of US researchers has found that monetary rewards for healthy behaviour can pay off both in the pocketbook and in positive psychological factors like internal motivation to eat fruits and vegetables.

The study, which encouraged daily consumption of fruits and vegetables in exchange for payment, not only showed monetary incentives worked, but that participants increased their internal motivation to eat fruits and vegetables over time.

Increased fruit and vegetable consumption by participants is linked to more positive attitudes and self efficacy - the confidence in one's own ability to succeed

"While programs involving monetary incentives to encourage healthy behaviour have become more popular in recent years, the evidence has been mixed as to how they can be most effective and how participants fare once the incentives stop," said lead author Casey Gardiner from University of Colorado Boulder in US.

"Some psychological research and theories suggest that if individuals have external motivations like payment to perform tasks, their internal, or intrinsic motivation can be undermined," said Gardiner of the psychology and neuroscience department.

The findings showed that participants who were assigned to receive payment for eating fruits and vegetables were still consuming more than usual two weeks after the study ended.

In the study, 60 adults were randomly assigned to three different groups.

Individuals in one group received $1 for every serving of fruits and vegetables they reported consuming daily over a three-week period.

People in the second group accrued $1 for every serving of fruits and vegetables eaten, with the lump sum money delivered at the end of the study.

Participants in the third group reported their fruit and vegetable consumption daily for three weeks with no incentives.

The participants who received daily monetary incentives had the greatest increase in their fruit and vegetable consumption.

"This finding highlights the importance of incentive design in health programs and differences in the timing or type of incentive can alter their effectiveness," Gardiner stated.

We essentially showed that incentives may be able to help people to 'jumpstart' behaviour changes, but that changes in key psychological factors help people maintain the behaviour when the incentives end, Gardiner noted.​

FUTURE EDUCATION

Dr. ROBINSON JOSEPH

SKYLINE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE,SHARJAH,UAE

Education is one of the basic human rights. Parents strive to ensure good education that would help their children better equipped in this competitive world and gain a decent livelihood. However, good intentions alone do not make it suffice, as children will have to take moral decisions at every turn in their lives. In the long run, only that which is morally right will prevail. During the years of their development, young people need to think of values of life, which should enable them to take appropriate moral decisions.   

Our society can boast of many intellectuals with technical expertise. Many successful doctors, engineers, bureaucrats, and educationists make us proud and fill us with joy. Nevertheless, how many of them deserve the attribute of a "good person"? This is some veritable subject for thought. World is benefited only through such individuals who can be rightly called good human beings. In many areas of our society we are facing the evil fall out of an education which do not integrate the program of learning with the process of evolving good individuals. A value based educational system is of paramount importance installing the negative possibility as we see that knowledge in itself runs the risk of being misused if it is not backed by value based standards.

As English writer G.K. Chesterton once said, "Every education teaches a philosophy of life, if not explicitly, then by suggestion, by implication, by atmosphere. If the different parts of the education do not cohere or connect with each other; if, in the end, it does not empower and transform, then, it is not education at all" A transformative education is one in which the student is incrementally invited to engage life, to reflect upon it and, then, to be of service to our world.

Education is one that helps students name their gifts, formulate their conviction, and ultimately take full ownership of their own lives. An education, then, is one that transforms students in order that they transform the world. A transformative pedagogy trains students for dialogue and conversation, providing a way to tackle the root of so many crises that face humanity today. It is also a way of bridging the divide of gender, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic class.

There are clear moral dimensions to the economic, political, social, and environmental crises our world is currently facing. Many professional – lawyers, bankers, accountants, politicians, academics, and the entire chain of intermediaries, including religious leaders – have failed to detect the wrongdoing of our institutions; instead of exercising their moral duty, many chose the path of silence, convenience, and complicity. It is more important than ever that our students receive a strong foundation in moral discernment in order that they can act responsibly in all their relationships and pursue the common good

One of the main goals of an education is learning to live in right relationship: right relationship with oneself, right relationship with others, right relationship with God, and right relationship with our environment. Each of these fundamental relationships requires sensitivity, understanding, and care.

Education is the quest for truth. Truth is Omnipotent. The world supports itself in the strength of this Omnipresent. The denial of this truth leads to the destruction and corruption we see around the world. Value based education is the solution for this sad state of our life and world.

Education seeks to address the world in which we actually live as well as the hopes and challenges of that world. Indeed, one can view the current situation in the world against a backdrop of a whole range of key desires, really, "hungers" of the contemporary world for wholeness and peace.

 Students today appreciate having so much information at their fingertips, and yet, they long for a more robust formation that integrates their intellectual, affective and volition capacities and helps them to appreciate how the varied subjects and disciplines fit together.

Students today experience the limitation of a moral discourse that focuses almost exclusively on individual rights while almost ignoring the responsibilities we have to each other; not looking for recipes, our students display desire to acquire an ethical foundation and a method for moral discernment

The educational mission lies precisely in the study; debate, conversation, and discovery that help students identify these hungers, form their own assessment of them, and decide how they might address them for themselves and the world they seek to shape. 

We should know that the crisis our society faces in all walks of life can be related to the disorientation our educators feel in the field of Value based education. The educational system is primarily concerned with "How to make a living". It ignores the more fundamental question "How to live". Most of the innovations in educational field are concerned with acquiring knowledge and skills. But knowledge and skills, in the absence of an integrated system of values can be dangerous and suicidal. It is obvious that a sound awareness of the need for healthy components of value education in our schools and universities curriculum is an imperative if we want to bring up a generation of young people with character.  

Education, if it doesn't happen to be values based, will serve no purpose because the primary objective of education itself is and has to be nothing but value based education. Values are, indeed, certain orientations which will help one to distinguish between the right and the wrong and a capacity to accept and follow the right, while rejecting and dismissing the wrong from one's life. In this process, it is the teachers who can and who should play the key role, capturing the minds of the learners while they are young. "Catch them young" is an accepted motto.     

The four pillars of education are 1.Learning to know, 2.Learning to do, 3.Learning to live together and 4.Learning to be. Value based approach to education is embedded in all these aspects. In this context, it becomes crucial to implement values rich education in schools and colleges to guide the young's behavior and to assign meaning to their existence. The future educational system requires revamping to bring out the best in terms of superior character in the young generation.

A Chinese proverb says: "If there is nobility in heart, there will be beauty in character; if there is beauty in character, there will be harmony at home; if there is harmony at home, there will be order in the nation; if there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world."

A new explanation of how gypsum forms may change the way we process this important building material, as well as allowing us to interpret past water availability on other planets such as Mars.

​New York, April 3 (IANS) Researchers have developed a portable and affordable balance machine that is about twice as effective as the most widely used balance test for concussion.

When athletes gets their bell rung on the field or court, there is often tension between their desire to keep playing and a trainer's responsibility to prevent them from further harming themselves.

The problem with standard on-field concussion protocols is that several of their components are subjective and prone to human error.

The new inexpensive, ultraportable balance board called BtrackS, developed by researchers at San Diego State University, provides fast, objective feedback on an athlete's balance disruption following a suspected concussion, according to a study published in the International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy.

Impaired balance is one of the major symptoms of a recent concussion. Most governing bodies in sports recommend three testing components in a concussion protocol: physical symptoms, cognitive function and balance.

For the balance portion, most sports organisations use what is known as the BESS (Balance Error Scoring System) test.

"The problem with the BESS is that it's really unreliable," said Dann Goble, inventor of BTrackS and author on the study.

You can measure balance objectively using force plates that track precisely how much a person sways, but most of these devices are either very large, very expensive, or both, making them unlikely to gain traction in sports.

Goble has adapted this technology into a balance board about the size of a suitcase that plugs into a computer or laptop, all for under $1,000.

To test whether the technology could accurately detect concussions in a real-world environment, Goble and colleagues took baseline balance measurements from more than 500 student athletes.

Then they followed those athletes over the course of their season.

Of 25 athletes determined by a team physician to have received concussions, BTrackS detected 16 of them, giving Goble's technology a success rate of 64 percent -- more than twice that of the BESS test, the study said.​

New York, April 3 (IANS) US researchers have identified DNA of two distinct strains of the virus that causes cold sores and fever blisters within an individual, which can unravel the history of a person.

The findings revealed that most people harbour HSV-1 virus, also known as oral herpes, frequently as a strain acquired from their mothers shortly after birth and carried for the rest of their lives.

The study will be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Virology.

Using the technique similar to genetic fingerprinting, HSV-1 could help flesh out a person's life story, adding an extra layer of genetic information not provided by our genomes alone.

The results could help forensic scientists to trace a person's history as well as understand how a patient's viruses influences the course of disease.

"Deep sequencing of viruses like HSV-1 will provide a better view of the viral genetic diversity that individuals harbour, and will provide valuable information about how that influences the course of disease," said lead researcher Moriah L. Szpara, assistant professor at Pennsylvania State University in US.

The new discovery was made with the help of a volunteer from US.

The study revealed that one strain of the HSV-1 virus harboured by this individual is of a European/North American variety and the other is an Asian variety -- likely acquired during the volunteer's military service in the Korean War in the 1950s.

Earlier research has demonstrated that the geographical origin of HSV-1 can be predicted and also implied that a personal strain of HSV-1 can reflect a person's origin.

"We're working on better ways to sequence viral genomes from ever-smaller amounts of starting material, to allow identification and comparison of samples from diverse sources," Szpara added.​

New York, April 3 (IANS) In a first, a team of Indian-origin researchers cast an improved titanium alloy that can improve vehicle's fuel economy and reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

An improved titanium alloy -- stronger than any commercial titanium alloy currently on the market -- gets its strength from the novel way atoms are arranged to form a special nanostructure, the researchers noted in their study.

The researchers at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in the US examined this alignment and then manipulated it to make the strongest titanium alloy ever developed and with a lower cost process to boot.

The note in a paper published in journal Nature Communications said that the material is an excellent candidate for producing lighter vehicle parts, and that this newfound understanding may lead to creation of other high strength alloys.

Researchers used powerful electron microscopes and a unique atom probe imaging approach to examine the structure and once they understood the nanostructure, they created the strongest titanium alloy ever made.

This nanostructure of the alloy would help the auto industry build lighter vehicles that use less fuel and put out less carbon dioxide that contributes to climate warming, the researchers said.

The team optimised the heat-treating process that makes alloy stronger to tailor the nanostructure and achieve very high strength.

"We found that if you heat treat it first with a higher temperature before a low temperature heat treatment step, you could create a titanium alloy 10-15 percent stronger than any commercial titanium alloy currently on the market and that it has roughly double the strength of steel," Arun Devaraj, a material scientist, said.

"This alloy is still more expensive than steel but with its strength-to-cost ratio, it becomes much more affordable with greater potential for lightweight automotive applications," Vineet Joshi, a metallurgist, added.​