Knowledge Update

Beijing, Feb 19 (IANS) A Chinese health alliance on Sunday agreed to promote the use of peak flow charts on both physical paper and smartphone apps to monitor the breath for children suffering from asthma.

The alliance is joined by the State Clinical Research Centre for Respiratory Diseases, Beijing Children's Hospital, Chinese Pediatric Society under Chinese Medical Association.

Professor Shen Kunling, head of the State Clinical Research Centre for Respiratory Diseases, said parents' knowledge, compliance with medicine instructions, and regular monitoring remain key to control childhood asthma.

Asthma is one of the most common chronic respiratory diseases for children. China has more than 6 million children with asthma. Nearly 30 per cent of them do not seek treatment in time and more than two thirds have reported asthma attacks.

​London, Feb 18 (IANS) For patients in the advanced stages of cancer, walking for at least 30 minutes thrice a week may boost a positive attitude towards their illness and improve their quality of life, new research claims.

Despite growing evidence of significant health benefits of exercise to cancer patients, physical activity commonly declines considerably during treatment and remains low afterwards.

"Walking is a free and accessible form of physical activity, and patients reported that it made a real difference to their quality of life," said lead researcher Jo Armes, a senior lecturer at London's King's College. 

The study is a first step towards exploring how walking can help people living with advanced stages of cancer. 

The findings in the programme of group walk for cancer patients showed marked improvement both physically, emotionally and psychologically.

"The study shows that exercise is valued by, suitable for, and beneficial to people with advanced cancer," said Emma Ream Professor at the University of Surrey in Britain.

Many participants noted that walking provided an improved positive attitude towards their illness and spoke of the social benefits of participating in group walks.

It also increased their motivation to reduce weight by altering diet, the researchers said, in the paper published in the journal BMJ Open.

For the study, the team included 42 cancer patients with advanced breast, prostate, gynaecological or haematological cancers.

They measured patient outcome after assessing quality of life, activity, fatigue, mood and self-efficacy that were completed at baseline of six, 12 and 24 weeks.

​New York, Feb 18 (IANS) Researchers have uncovered the mechanisms that the Zika virus uses to cause foetus microcephaly, a brain development disorder.

Babies with microcephaly can have a wide array of problems including a small brain and head, developmental delays, seizures, vision and hearing loss and feeding difficulty. 

While a Zika infection typically results in mild or symptom-free infections in healthy adults and children, the risk of microcephaly in the developing foetus is an alarming consequence that has created a worldwide health threat.

Since a normal brain develops from simple cells called stem cells that are able to develop into any one of various kinds of cells, the research team deduced that microcephaly is most likely linked with abnormal function of these cells.

Two weeks after the cells had developed into a certain type, the Zika infection was mainly found in glial cells, which provide support and insulation for the brain, according to the study published in the journal Stem Cell Reports.

There are currently 70 countries and territories reporting active Zika transmission, according to the World Health Organisation. 

There are two main lineages of the virus, African and Asian. 

Recently, the team found that only the Asian lineage has been linked with microcephaly. So, what is it about this particular form of the virus that inflicts such damage?

The researchers established a method of investigating how Zika alters the production, survival and maturation of brain stem cells using cells donated from three human foetal brains.

They focused on the impact of the Asian lineage Zika virus that was involved in the first outbreak in North America in late 2015.

"We discovered that the Asian lineage Zika virus halted the proliferation of brain stem cells and hindered their ability to develop into brain nerve cells," said study senior author Ping Wu, Professor at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston in the US.

"However, the effect that the Zika virus had on the ability of stem cells to develop into specialized cells differed between donors. This difference seems to be linked with a Zika-induced change in global gene expression pattern, it remains to be seen which genes are responsible," Wu said.

"The unique system containing stem cells from three donors will allow us to dissect molecular mechanisms underlying Zika virus-induced brain malformation," Wu said.

Toronto, Feb 18 (IANS) Are you making the environment and water a bit too clean for your kids? Beware! You may be depriving them of the good microbes that may protect them against various illness, researchers warn.

In a shocking revelation, Canadian researchers have found that children with access to clean drinking water may be at an increased risk of developing asthma in childhood than those who do not.

They also suggested a link between the risk of asthma and a super clean environment (air).

"Those that had access to good, clean water had much higher asthma rates and we think it is because they were deprived of the beneficial microbes," said Brett Finlay, a microbiologist at University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada. 

"That was a surprise because we tend to think that clean is good but we realise that we actually need some dirt in the world to help protect you," Finlay added. 

The study also showed that while gut bacteria plays a role in preventing asthma, it was the presence of a microscopic fungus or yeast known as Pichia that was more strongly linked to the respiratory condition.

"Children with Pichia were much more at risk of asthma," Finlay noted, adding "instead of helping to prevent asthma, its presence in those early days puts children at risk."

The researcher said this while presenting the details at the 2017 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting in Boston. 

The study may help in understanding the role of microscopic organisms in our overall health.

​Toronto, Feb 18 (IANS) Researchers have found a novel way to print perovskite solar cells easily and at a cost similar to bringing out a newspaper!

A team, led by Hairen Tan from University of Toronto Engineering found that the solar cells manufactured with perovskite mineral could lead to low-cost, printable solar panels capable of turning nearly any surface into a power generator.

"Economies of scale have greatly reduced the cost of silicon manufacturing," Ted Sargent, an expert in emerging solar technologies, said in a university statement.

"Potentially, perovskites and silicon cells can be married to improve efficiency further, but only with advances in low-temperature processes," added Sargent, who is also the Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology. 

Perovskite solar cells depend on a layer of tiny crystals -- each about 1,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair -- made of low-cost, light-sensitive materials. 

Because the perovskite raw materials can be mixed into a liquid to form a kind of 'solar ink', they could be printed onto glass, plastic or other materials using a simple inkjet printing process.

"The most effective materials for making electron selective layers (ESLs) start as a powder and have to be baked at high temperatures, above 500 degrees Celsius," said Tan. 

Tan noted that perovskite solar cells using the older, high-temperature method are only marginally better at 22.1 per cent and even the best silicon solar cells can only reach 26.3 per cent.

Tan's perovskite solar cells were also stable and retained more than 90 per cent of their efficiency even after 500 hours of use.

New York, Feb 18 (IANS) If you thought wireless charging in smartphones was a new thing, you are mistaken as researchers have found a new method to power devices without connecting them to cords.

The new method developed by Disney Research, published in the journal PLOS ONE, for wirelessly transmitting power throughout a room enables users to charge electronic devices as seamlessly as they now connect to WiFi hotspots.

The researchers demonstrated their method, called quasistatic cavity resonance (QSCR), inside a specially built 16-by-16-foot room at their lab. 

They safely generated near-field standing magnetic waves that filled the interior of the room, making it possible to power several cellphones, fans and lights simultaneously.

"This new innovative method will make it possible for electrical power to become as ubiquitous as WiFi," said Alanson Sample, associate lab director and principal research scientist at Disney Research. 

"This in turn could enable new applications for robots and other small mobile devices by eliminating the need to replace batteries and wires for charging," added Sample.

According to Sample, wireless power transmission is a long-standing technological dream. 

"In this work, we've demonstrated room-scale wireless power, but there's no reason we couldn't scale this down to the size of a toy chest or up to the size of a warehouse," Sample noted.

The QSCR method involves inducing electrical currents in the metalised walls, floor and ceiling of a room, which in turn generate uniform magnetic fields that permeate the room's interior. 

This enables power to be transmitted efficiently to receiving coils that operate at the same resonant frequency as the magnetic fields. 

The induced currents in the structure are channelled through discrete capacitors, which isolate potentially harmful electrical fields.

"Our simulations show we can transmit 1.9 kilowatts of power while meeting federal safety guidelines," Chabalko said, adding that this was equivalent to simultaneously charging 320 smart phones.

​London, Feb 18 (IANS) In a first, researchers have developed a novel DNA computer that is capable of detecting several antibodies in the blood, that may allow better control of the medication for diseases like rheumatism and Crohn's.

"What is special about this system is that it can think and that it can be connected to actuation such as drug delivery," said Maarten Merkx, professor at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in The Netherlands.

To determine whether someone has a particular disease, it is essential to measure the concentration of specific antibodies -- the agents that our immune system produces when we are ill. 

The new method will translate the presence of each antibody into a unique piece of DNA whereby the DNA computer can decide on the basis of the presence of one or more antibodies whether drug delivery, for example, is necessary. 

"The presence of a particular DNA molecule sets in motion a series of reactions whereby we can get the DNA computer to run various programs," explained Wouter Engelen, doctoral student at the Eindhoven University of Technology.

"Our results show that we can use the DNA computer to control the activity of enzymes, but we think it should also be possible to control the activity of a therapeutic antibody," Engelen added.

In addition, the system can measure the quantity of therapeutic antibodies in the blood and decide whether it is necessary to administer any extra medication used in treating chronic diseases like rheumatism or Crohn's disease.

​London, Feb 17 (IANS) A fat pay cheque may be influenced by more than just physical attractiveness or the lack of it, say researchers dispelling the 'beauty premium' theory which says beautiful people earn more while those who are not so gorgeous are paid less.

The findings showed that healthier and more intelligent people and those with more conscientious, more extraverted and less neurotic personality traits are the ones who take fatter pay checks home. 

"Physically more attractive workers may earn more, not necessarily because they are more beautiful, but because they are healthier, more intelligent and have better personality traits conducive to higher earnings, such as being more conscientious, more extraverted and less neurotic," said Satoshi Kanazawa from the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

Economists have widely documented the "beauty premium" -- or, conversely, the "ugliness penalty" -- on wages.

Population-based surveys in the US and Canada for instance showed that people who are physically attractive earn more, while those who are aesthetically compromised earn less.

For the study, detailed in the Journal of Business and Psychology, the team analysed a nationally representative sample from a US data set that measured physical attractiveness of all respondents on a five-point scale at four different points in life over 13 years.

The beauty premium theory was dispelled when factors such as health, intelligence, and major personality factors together with other correlates of physical attractiveness were taken into account.

The analysis showed that people are not necessarily discriminated against because of their looks.

In addition, the study also offered narrower categories of relative attractiveness, with less attractive participants split into "very unattractive" and "unattractive."

The differentiation revealed an apparent ugliness premium, with very unattractive people earning more than their merely unattractive peers, the researchers said.

​London, Feb 17 (IANS) Antibiotics may be an effective treatment for acute non-complicated appendicitis in children, instead of surgery, a study says.

The condition, which causes the appendix -- a small organ attached to the large intestine -- to become inflamed due to a blockage or infection, affects mainly children and teenagers.

Appendicitis is currently treated through an operation to remove the appendix, known as an appendicectomy.

"Acute appendicitis is one of the most common general surgical emergencies worldwide and surgery has long been the gold standard of treatment. But it is invasive and costly, not to mention extremely daunting for the child concerned and their family," said lead researcher Nigel Hall, Associate Professor of Paediatric Surgery at the University of Southampton in Britain.

"Our review shows that antibiotics could be an alternative treatment method for children," Hall noted.

For the study, the researchers assessed existing literature published over the past 10 years that included 10 studies reporting on 413 children who received non-operative treatment rather than an appendectomy.

The review published in the journal Pediatrics showed that no study reported any safety concern or specific adverse events related to non-surgical treatment, although the rate of recurrent appendicitis was 14 per cent.

"When we compared the adult literature to the data in our review it suggested that antibiotic treatment of acute appendicitis is at least as effective in children as in adults. This now needs to be explored more widely," Hall said.