Knowledge Update

​New York, March 24 (IANS) Researchers have found a way to make the normally brittle material of glass bend and flex, adding a new level of flexibility to the microscopic world of medical devices.

The research opens up the ability to create a new family of lab-on-a-chip devices based on flexing glass.

"If you keep the movements to the nanoscale, glass can still snap back into shape," said lead researcher Aaron Hawkins, Professor at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, US.

"We've created glass membranes that can move up and down and bend," Hawkins added.

Glass has some great perks. It is stiff and solid and not a material upon which things react, it's easy to clean, and it is not toxic, according to lead study author John Stout from Brigham Young University.

"Glass is clean for sensitive types of samples, like blood samples," Stout said. 

"Working with this glass device will allow us to look at particles of any size and at any given range. It will also allow us to analyse the particles in the sample without modifying them," Stout added.

While current lab-on-a-chip membrane devices effectively function on the microscale, the new research, published in the journal Applied Physics Letters, will allow equally effective work at the nanoscale. 

Chemists and biologists could use the nanoscale devices to move, trap and analyse very small biological particles like proteins, viruses and DNA.

The researchers believe their device could also mean performing successful tests using much smaller quantities of a substance. 

Instead of needing several ounces to run a blood test, the glass membrane device created by the researchers would only require a drop or two of blood.

​London, March 23 (IANS) Researchers have found that several unsaturated fatty acids in the brain may be associated with the progression of Alzheimer's disease.

Alzheimer's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder, which causes impaired memory, executive function and language. It accounts for 60-80 per cent of total dementia cases worldwide, with over 46 million people suffering from the disease worldwide. The number of patients is estimated to rise to 131.5 million by 2050.

Currently it is thought that the main reason for developing memory problems in dementia is the presence of two big molecules in the brain called tau and amyloid proteins -- that are shown to start accumulating in the brain up to 20 years prior to the onset of the disease. 

However, the findings, published in the journal PLOS Medicine, showed that the metabolism of omega-3 and omega-6 unsaturated fatty acids were significantly decreased in Alzheimer's brains when compared to brains from healthy patients.

"Our results show a potentially crucial and unexpected role for fats in the onset of dementia. Most surprisingly, we found that a supposedly beneficial omega-3, DHA, actually increased with the progression of the disease," said Cristina Legido Quigley from King's College London. 

In the study, the team looked at brain tissue samples from 43 people ranging in age from 57 to 95 years old. 

The researchers then measured the metabolite levels of the brain regions that are commonly associated with neurodegerative diseases -- the middle frontal gyrus and the inferior temporal gyrus -- as well as the metabolite levels in a brain area that is not normally affected by the disease's pathology -- the cerebellum.

The results showed that unsaturated fatty acid metabolism is significantly dysregulated in the brains of patients with varying degrees of Alzheimer pathology.

The main molecules that were different were six small fats -- docosahexaenoic acid, linoleic acid, arachidonic acid, linolenic acid, eicosapentaenoic acid, and oleic acid -- including omegas, which changed in abundance in different regions of the brain.

Washington, March 23 (IANS) While Arctic Sea ice reached this year a record low wintertime maximum extent, sea ice around Antarctica also hit its lowest extent ever recorded by satellites at the end of summer in the Southern Hemisphere, scientists have said.

In February this year, the combined Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extent was at its lowest point since satellites began to continuously measure sea ice in 1979, said scientists at NASA and the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado.

Total polar sea ice covered 16.21 million square km, which is two million square km less than the average global minimum extent for 1981-2010 -- the equivalent of having lost a chunk of sea ice larger than Mexico, the study said.

"It is tempting to say that the record low we are seeing this year is global warming finally catching up with Antarctica," Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a NASA release on Wednesday.

"However, this might just be an extreme case of pushing the envelope of year-to-year variability. We'll need to have several more years of data to be able to say there has been a significant change in the trend," Meier added.

The ice floating on top of the Arctic Ocean and surrounding seas shrinks in a seasonal cycle from mid-March until mid-September. 

As the Arctic temperatures drop in the autumn and winter, the ice cover grows again until it reaches its yearly maximum extent, typically in March. 

The ring of sea ice around the Antarctic continent behaves in a similar manner, with the calendar flipped --it usually reaches its maximum in September and its minimum in February.

This winter, a combination of warmer-than-average temperatures, winds unfavourable to ice expansion, and a series of storms halted sea ice growth in the Arctic, the scientists said.

This year's maximum extent, reached on March 7 at 14.42 million square kilometres, is 97,00 square kilometres below the previous record low, which occurred in 2015, and 1.22 million square kilometres smaller than the average maximum extent for 1981-2010, according to the scientists.

New York, March 23 (IANS) While the rise in machine learning technology may be making people's lives smarter and easier, it has conversely given rise to fear and anxiety among people about losing jobs to artificial intelligence (AI) devices, a study has showed.

"Technophobes" -- persons who fear robots, artificial intelligence and new technology that they don't understand -- are three times more likely to be fearful of losing their jobs to technology when compared to others and nearly three times more likely to fear not having enough money in the future, the study has shown.

"If you're afraid of losing your job to a robot, you're not alone. This is a real concern among a substantial portion of the population. They are not simply a subgroup of generally fearful people," said researcher Paul McClure, a sociologist in Baylor University's College of Arts & Sciences, in Texas, US.

"People in certain occupations may legitimately fear losing their jobs to robots and software that can work for cheaper and for longer hours than any human," McClure added, in the paper published in the journal Social Science Computer Review.

Technophobes also have 95 per cent greater odds of not being able to stop or control worrying when compared to others, and 76 per cent greater odds of feeling as if something awful might happen and are also more likely to suffer anxiety-related mental health issues.

While a transformation would most likely be gradual, it could trigger a major social unrest among those who are displaced from their jobs, McClure said.

For his study, McClure examined 1,541 participants, of whom more than a third were found to be more fearful of automation that could lead to job displacement than they are of potentially threatening or dangerous circumstances such as romantic rejection, public speaking and police brutality.

​New York, March 22 (IANS) Scientists have developed an ultra-thin gel-like coating material that has the potential to extend the life and improve the efficiency of lithium-sulfur batteries.

"Our approach is general, in that it can be integrated with virtually any kind of sulfur electrode to increase cycling stability," said lead investigator of the study Hailiang Wang, Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, US.

In a study published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers described the new material which can be applied to any sulfur cathode. 

A cathode is the positive terminal on a battery.

Sulfur cathodes coated with the material can be stably discharged and recharged for more than 1,000 cycles, enhancing the battery's efficiency and number of cycles, according to the researchers.

"The developed film is so thin and light it will not affect the overall size or weight of the battery, and thus it will function without compromising the energy and power density of the device," Wang said.

New types of electrodes -- positive and negative terminals -- are considered essential for the development of a new generation of high energy-density batteries. 

As lithium-ion batteries -- currently widely used in mobile phones and laptops, among other electronic devices -- begin to reach their capacity limits, many researchers are looking at lithium-sulfur as a solution. 

Sulfur is both lightweight and abundant, with a high theoretical energy capacity. 

The Yale team made its discovery by combining the distinct properties of two material components. 

They merged the mechanical strength of graphene oxide with the ability of a dendrimer molecule to confine lithium polysulfides. 

The result is a gel-like slurry that can be readily coated as a 100-nanometer-thin film onto sulfur electrodes, the study said.

​Washington, March 22 (IANS) The first woman to serve on Facebook's board, who is now the Social media giants Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg has announced the release of her latest book, which focusses on finding meaning and happiness after an adversity.

Titled "Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy," the book has been co-written with author Adam Grant. 

In a Facebook post, Sandberg said that the book focuses on how she learned to find meaning and happiness after the sudden death of her husband, Dave Goldberg, in 2015. 

The title, Sandberg said, has been inspired by a conversation with a friend. 

"A few weeks after my husband Dave died, I was talking to my friend Phil Deutch about a father-son activity that Dave was not here to do. We came up with a plan for someone to fill in so my son would not have to miss out. I cried, 'But I want Dave.' Phil put his arm around me and said, 'Option A is not available. So let's just kick the shit out of Option B,'" Sandberg wrote in a post on Facebook. 

"That became my mantra, and for the past two years I've tried hard to find meaning and happiness in the wake of our despair." 

"Because no one's life is perfect, we all live some form of Option B," she wrote. "It's my deepest hope that Option B will help others learn what I learned: that when life pulls you under, you can kick against the bottom, break the surface, and breathe again."

Sandberg, who previously authored "Lean In" in 2012, she was named in the Time 100, an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world according to Time magazine.

​New York, March 22 (IANS) Researchers have found that flaw in a gene linked to birth defects in mouse models may cause cleft lip and palate in humans too.

In the study, three siblings born with cleft lip and palate were found to have the same gene mutation associated with the birth defect.

The gene intraflagellar transport 88 (IFT88) ensures transportation antennae (cilia) on embryonic cells travel to the right place, enabling the development of cartilage, bone and smooth muscle in the face and skull.

"Finding this birth defect in every single child in a family is like catching lightning in a bottle because it allowed us to pinpoint the gene mutation that is probably responsible," said senior author of the study Yang Chai from University of Southern California in the US.

"Our finding that the gene IFT88 is involved in cleft lip and palate is unlikely to be mere coincidence," Chai said.

However, because this study - published in the journal Human Molecular Genetics -- involved only three children, Chai said more investigation is needed to find a causal relationship.

Operation Smile, an international nonprofit that provides free facial surgeries in developing countries, found and provided support to the three siblings -- two boys and a girl -- in Mexico who were born with cleft lip and palate. 

Their mother did not have the congenital disorder, but their father did.

Researchers went through 32,061 unique gene variations to identify IFT88.

"If someone carries this mutation, they may have a higher chance of giving birth to children with cleft lip and palate," said Chai.

"In our study, the animal model and the human mutation match," Chai said. 

"In the animal model, there is no doubt. We have shown that 100 per cent of the mice who have a single mutation in IFT88 have cleft lip and palate," Chai added.

New York, March 22 (IANS) Insulin resistance, caused in part by obesity and physical inactivity, is also linked to a more rapid decline in cognitive performance, researchers say.

Insulin resistance is a condition in which cells fail to respond normally to the hormone insulin. The resistance prevents muscle, fat, and liver cells from easily absorbing glucose. As a result, the body requires higher levels of insulin to usher glucose into its cells.

The study, appearing in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, showed that both diabetic and non-diabetic subjects with insulin resistance experienced accelerated cognitive decline in cognitive functions such as memory, executive function, visual spatial processing, and attention. 

"The findings may help to identify a group of individuals at increased risk of cognitive decline and dementia in older age," said David Tanne, Professor at Tel Aviv University in Israel. 

Without sufficient insulin, excess glucose builds up in the bloodstream, leading to prediabetes, diabetes, and other serious health disorders.

However, "insulin resistance can be prevented and treated by lifestyle changes and certain insulin-sensitizing drugs. Exercising, maintaining a balanced and healthy diet, and watching your weight will help you prevent insulin resistance and, as a result, protect your brain as you get older," Tanne added.

For the study, the team followed a group of nearly 500 patients with existing cardiovascular disease for more than two decades and assessed their insulin resistance with the homeostasis model assessment (HOMA) -- calculated using fasting blood glucose and fasting insulin levels --, and cognitive functions. 

​Washington, March 22 (IANS) In a key advance for safely navigating future human exploration of the solar system, NASA said it is set to send its next-generation atomic clock to space in late 2017.

This clock will be smaller, lighter and magnitudes more precise than any atomic clock flown in space before, NASA said.

Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California have completed integration of the instrument, the Deep Space Atomic Clock, with the spacecraft that will take it into orbit later in 2017, the US space agency said in a statement on Tuesday.

Timekeeping plays a critical role in spacecraft navigation and will be especially important for future deep space missions. 

Most spacecraft are tracked using "two-way" methods -- the ground-based antenna 'pings' the spacecraft and waits for the signal to return. 

By measuring how long the signal takes to travel, the distance to the spacecraft can be calculated. 

A navigation team then processes this information to determine the spacecraft's flight path and also determine if any course corrections are required. 

The next-generation atomic clock developed by NASA enables "one-way" tracking, where the spacecraft does not need to send the signal back to Earth. 

The tracking measurements could be taken onboard and processed with a spacecraft-based navigation system to determine the path and whether any manoeuvre are needed to stay on course. 

This will be a key advance for safely navigating future human exploration of the solar system by providing astronauts with their position and velocity when they need it, according to NASA.

It will lighten the load on the antennas in NASA's Deep Space Network, allowing more spacecraft to be tracked with a single antenna.

The Deep Space Atomic Clock would also improve the precision and quantity of the radio data used by scientists for determining a planet's gravity field and probing its atmosphere, NASA said.

United Nations, March 22 (IANS) Nearly 600 million children, one in four worldwide, will live in areas with extremely limited water resources by 2040, according to a UN report.

The report was released late Tuesday by the UN International Children's Emergency Fund (Unicef), Efe news reported on Wednesday.

Unicef warned of the threat to children's lives due to the lack of safe water and of how climate change is exacerbating the problem.

"Water is elemental; without it, nothing can grow. But around the world, millions of children lack access to safe water -- endangering their lives, undermining their health, and jeopardising their future," Unicef Executive Director Anthony Lake said.

"This crisis will only grow unless we take collective action now," he insisted.

The report warns that population growth as well as increased consumption and demand are putting more and more stress on water availability, while right now such stress is already "extremely high" in 36 countries.

The situation occurs when demand for water far exceeds the renewable supply available, the report said.

It also highlighted various factors affecting the quality and availability of water such as warmer temperatures, rising sea levels, melting ice and increasing droughts.

To date, 663 million people are lacking adequate access to water sources and more than 800 children under the age of five die every day from diarrhoea linked to contaminated water and inadequate sanitation and hygiene.

According to Unicef, the lack of an adequate supply exposes children to deadly diseases forcing children in many places to spend hours every day to collect water, preventing them from going to school.

The report furthermore includes recommendations for different sectors and urges governments to plan for possible changes in water availability and demand over the coming years.

According to Unicef, the priority must be to safeguard access to water for the most vulnerable children