Knowledge Update

Melbourne, Feb 9 (IANS) Australian researchers have developed a mobile application to monitor and improve the mental health of taxi drivers.

Researchers from the University of Melbourne developed the app after a study discovered that taxi drivers were among the most stressed people in a workplace, Xinhua news agency reported.

The studyh found that two in three taxi drivers reported high levels of psychological distress due to long working hours and the prospect of being assaulted by passengers.

Nearly a third of drivers surveyed rated their physical health as poor, twice the average for Australian men.

"We're all used to messages about cutting the road toll, but there's another road toll that is unique to taxi drivers -- the mental and physical health hazards they face on the job," Sandra Davidson from the University of Melbourne's Department of General Practice said on Thursday.

"Taxi drivers are mostly male, shift workers, recently arrived in Australia, and either too time poor or reluctant to seek help," Davidson said.

"The biggest challenge is enabling taxi drivers themselves to make small but important changes to their routines, given that they have lots of 'dead' time that they can't do much with, because they have to get their next fare."

Davidson said the idea for the app came from survey findings that taxi drivers were spending large amounts of time on their smartphones but were unlikely to seek mental health help.

New York, Feb 9 (IANS) Do you yell, hit or use physical threats as a punishment for your children? If so, your children may be at a greater risk of performing poorly in school, a study has showed.

The study by American researchers showed that students who were brought up harshly were likely to find their peer group more important than other responsibilities, including following parents' rules. 

This further led them to engage in more risky behaviours in teenage. While females engaged in more frequent early sexual behaviour, males, on the other hand, indulged in wrongdoings like hitting and stealing.

"In our study, harsh parenting was related to lower educational attainment through a set of complex cascading processes that emphasised present-oriented behaviours at the cost of future-oriented educational goals," said lead researcher Rochelle F. Hentges from the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, US.

Further, those relying on peers, instead of doing homework, decided to spend time with friends and felt that there is nothing wrong in breaking rules to keep friends.

The researchers found that direct as well as indirect effects of parenting shapes a child's behaviour and his or her relationship with the peers.

"The study used children's life histories as a framework to examine how parenting affects children's educational outcomes via relationships with peers, sexual behaviour and delinquency," Hentges added, in the paper published in the journal Child Development. 

Teaching methods focussing on present-oriented goals and strategies like hands-on experimental learning, group activities may promote learning and educational goals for individuals, especially those who are brought up harshly, the researchers suggested.

For the study, the team included 1,482 students from Washington, who were followed for over nine years -- beginning in seventh grade and ending three years after students' high school graduation.

​New York, Feb 9 (IANS) Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan's non-profit medical research organisation has announced it will be investing $50 million in its first class of 47 disease investigators in an endeavour to help cure all diseases in our children's lifetime.

The Chan Zuckerberg Biohub (CZ Biohub), which aims to create a "planet without disease", funded 47 scientists, technologists and engineers working at University of Stanford, University of California - San Francisco (UCSF) and University of Berkeley -- which includes nearly 50 per cent women and 15 per cent underrepresented minorities.

"We're investing $50 million in this first class of investigators. This programme will provide five years of funding to some of the most innovative researchers," Zuckerberg was quoted as saying in a Facebook post on Wednesday.

"This first group includes a Stanford data scientist working to analyze massive quantities of genomic data, a doctor from UCSF looking at how malaria spreads, an engineer from Berkeley who is designing tools to better understand human biology, including a miniature foldable microscope, and more," Zuckerberg added. 

Each of the CZ Biohub researcher will receive a five-year appointment and up to $1.5 million in funding to conduct life science research in their respective areas of expertise.

"CZ Biohub investigators share our vision of a planet without disease," said Joseph DeRisi, co-president of CZ Biohub and Professor at UC San Francisco.

"CZ Biohub Investigators will challenge traditional thinking in pursuit of radical discoveries that will make even the most stubborn and deadly diseases treatable," DeRisi noted.

​New York, Feb 9 (IANS) Administering a single dose of ketamine -- a drug commonly used as general anaesthetic or a rapid-acting antidepressant -- one week before a stressful event can act as a buffer against a heightened fear response and might prevent post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), researchers have found.

PTSD is an anxiety disorder that occurs in about one-quarter of individuals who experience psychological trauma.

The symptoms include re-living the trauma -- experiencing repeated flashbacks, hyperarousal, and hyperreactivity -- as well as mood changes, psychological numbing, and chronic physical symptoms such as headache.

The likelihood that PTSD symptoms will develop depends on the nature and intensity of the trauma and an individual's response.

"If our results in mice translate to humans, giving a single dose of ketamine in a vaccine-like fashion could have great benefit for people who are highly likely to experience significant stressors, such as members of the military or aid workers going into conflict zones," said lead author Christine A. Denny, Assistant Professor at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) in New York, US.

However, "ketamine is a powerful drug, and we wouldn't advocate widespread use for preventing or reducing PTSD symptoms," Denny added. 

For the study, published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, the team conducted experiments in mice who were given a small dose of ketamine via a drip or a placebo either one month, one week, or one hour before they were subjected to a series of small shocks.

The mice -- conditioned to associate the test environment with the shocks -- were later returned to the same environment and assessed for their freezing behaviour -- a measure of their conditioned fear response.

Only the mice given ketamine one week before the stressor exhibited reduced freezing when they were returned to the test environment, suggesting that timings of administering dose may be important.

​London, Feb 8 (IANS) If your child is good at maths, chances are that he or she may have an increase in positive emotions, but bad results in maths may trigger negative emotions such as anxiety and boredom, a new study has found.

The findings showed that mathematics -- a subject that is known to trigger strong emotions in students -- impacted their academic performance for years.

"Successful performance in math increased students' positive emotions and decreased their negative emotions over the years," said Stephanie Lichtenfeld from the University of Munich in Germany.

Students with higher intelligence had better grades and test scores, but those who also enjoyed and took pride in math had even better achievement. 

While, students who experienced anger, anxiety, shame, boredom or hopelessness had lower achievements.

"In contrast, students with poor grades and test scores suffered from a decline in positive emotions and an increase in negative emotions, such as math anxiety and math boredom. Thus, these students become caught in a downward spiral of negative emotion and poor achievement," Lichtenfeld added.

For the study, published in the journal Child Development, the team studied 3,425 German students from grades five to nine belonging to different socio-economic backgrounds, whose annual assessments of emotions and achievement in math were evaluated.

While questionnaires measured the self-reported emotions of students, their achievement was assessed by year-end grades and scores on a math achievement test.

Administrators, educators and parents need to strengthen students' positive emotions and minimise negative emotions relating to subjects in school, the researchers recommended.

​London, Feb 8 (IANS) In a first, anonymised data from mobile phones and satellite imagery data can be combined to create high resolution maps to measure poverty.

The researchers from the University of Southampton and the Sweden-based Flowminder Foundation found that by combining mobile data and geospatial data from satellites, they were able to produce poverty predictions which are comparable with those made from traditional sources, but with significant advantages.

"Census and household surveys are normally used as data sources to estimate rates of poverty. However, they aren't regularly updated -- for example, censuses only take place every ten years -- and in low income countries, surveys can be patchy," said Jessica Steele, lead author of the study.

Since the information on mobile phone is continually updated, it can be interrogated in various ways and can track changes on an ongoing basis. 

"Paired with satellite data that has similar features, it can give a much more dynamic view of poverty and its geographic spread," Steele added.

The researchers explained that every time a person uses a mobile it sends information to a receiving tower and gives an approximate location of where they are. 

"It also contains information about levels of data usage, numbers of texts sent, times calls were made and their duration. It can reveal how much and how far people are travelling, as well as the type of phone they're using. This kind of anonymised data helps build a picture of poverty," the paper published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface noted.

For example, monthly credit consumption on mobiles, and the proportion of people in an area using them, can indicate household access to financial resources. While movements of mobiles and their use of networks provide information on individuals' economic opportunities.

"Satellite data can provide us with excellent information about living conditions in rural areas, but in tightly packed cities it's more difficult. It's the reverse for mobiles as more masts in cities means more information, contrasted with the countryside where mobile receiving towers can be thinly spread," Steele said.

The researchers noted that some of the poorest in society may not own a mobile, but even taking this in to account, they were able to identify distinct differences between low income informal settlements and richer areas.

Sydney, Feb 7 (IANS) A treatment made with antibodies from horses may provide an effective and economical option to fight Ebola infection, says a study.

"This is a cost-effective treatment that can be used in low-income countries in Africa where equine production facilities are already in operation for producing snake-bite antivenin," said one of the lead researchers Alexander Khromykh, Professor at University of Queensland in Australia.

"It's the first time that equine antibodies have been shown to work effectively against Ebola infection," Khromykh pointed out.

The post-exposure treatment made with antibodies from horses was administered over five days to monkeys infected 24 hours previously with a lethal dose of Ebola virus.

The treatment suppressed viral loads significantly and protected the animals from mortality, showed the findings published in the journal Scientific Reports.

The largest recorded outbreak of Ebola virus occurred primarily in West Africa from 2014 to 2016, infecting 30,000 people and killing more than 11,000, with exported cases in Europe and North America.

The outbreak resulted in the establishment of the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response and an acceleration of research on development of vaccines and therapies.

This led to the development of monoclonal antibodies that were used in Britain to treat infected health workers returning from Africa.

"The down side is that monoclonal antibodies require considerable investment for scale-up and manufacture, and are expensive," Khromykh said.

"Equine antibodies are a considerably cheaper alternative, with manufacturing capacity already in place in Africa. Antibodies from vaccinated horses provide a low-cost alternative, and are already in use for rabies, botulism and diphtheria," Khromykh said.

The research resulted from a strong collaboration between Australian, French and Russian scientists and a Queensland-based company Plasvacc Pty Ltd.

​Sydney, Feb 7 (IANS) Australian researchers are a step closer to understanding immune complications caused by commonly prescribed medications, the media reported.

Many well-known and commonly prescribed drugs that are successfully used to treat diseases can also have harmful side effects. While it has been known that some drugs can inhibit the immune system, why it occurs has remained a mystery, Xinhua news agency reported.

Research published by Monash University and the University of Melbourne on Tuesday has taken the most significant step yet in understanding the process that inhibits the immune system.

The research team investigated Mucosal associated invariant T (MAIT) cells, a specialised type of immune cells, to discover what type of drugs were activating the MAIT cells.

They found that some drugs prevented the MAIT cells from performing their main function of detecting infections while others activated the immune system.

Andrew Keller, lead author of the study which was published in Nature Immunology, said the research should lead to a much better understanding of immune reactions by some people to certain drugs.

Keller said that the T cells were an integral part of the body's immune system.

"They protect the body by 'checking' other cells for signs of infection and activating the immune system when they detect an invader," Keller said in a statement.

"This arrangement is dependent on both the T cells knowing what they're looking for, and the other cells in the body giving them useful information."

Sidonia Eckle from the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity at the University of Melbourne said the implications point to possible links between MAIT cells and drug hypersensitivities.

"A greater understanding of the interaction between MAIT cells and other host cells will hopefully allow us to better predict and avoid therapeutics that influence and cause harm," Eckle said.

"It also offers the tantalising prospect of future therapies that manipulate MAIT cell behaviour, for example, by enhancing or suppressing immune responses to achieve beneficial clinical outcome." 

Washington, Feb 7 (IANS) Astronomers have detected a giant black hole that ripped apart a star and then gorged on its remains for an unusually long time -- about a decade, which is more than ten times longer than any observed episode of a stars death by black hole.

Researchers made this discovery using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Swift satellite as well as European Space Agency's XMM-Newton.

The trio of orbiting X-ray telescopes found evidence for a "tidal disruption event" (TDE), wherein the tidal forces due to the intense gravity from a black hole can destroy an object -- such as a star -- that wanders too close. 

During a TDE, some of the stellar debris is flung outward at high speeds, while the rest falls toward the black hole. As it travels inwards to be ingested by the black hole, the material heats up to millions of degrees and generates a distinct X-ray flare.

"We have witnessed a star's spectacular and prolonged demise," said lead researcher Dacheng Lin from the University of New Hampshire in Durham, New Hampshire.

"Dozens of tidal disruption events have been detected since the 1990s, but none that remained bright for nearly as long as this one," Lin noted.

The extraordinary long bright phase of this event spanning over ten years means that among observed TDEs this was either the most massive star ever to be completely torn apart during one of these events, or the first where a smaller star was completely torn apart, said the study published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

The X-ray source containing this force-fed black hole, known by its abbreviated name of XJ1500+0154, is located in a small galaxy about 1.8 billion light years from Earth.

The sharp X-ray vision of Chandra data showed that XJ1500+0154 is located at the centre of its host galaxy, the expected location for a supermassive black hole.

The X-ray data also indicated that radiation from material surrounding this black hole has consistently surpassed the so-called Eddington limit, defined by a balance between the outward pressure of radiation from the hot gas and the inward pull of the gravity of the black hole. 

​New York, Feb 5 (IANS) A new self-contained robot that mimics the key flight mechanisms of bats has been developed by scientists.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Caltech have developed Bat Bot (B2) with soft, articulated wings that can mimic the biological bats.



"Our work demonstrates one of the most advanced designs to date of a self-contained flapping-winged aerial robot with bat morphology that is able to perform autonomous flight," said Alireza Ramezani from the University of Illinois.



The robot weighs 93 grams, with dynamic wing articulations and wing conformations similar to those of biological bats.



The bats have a flight mechanism that involves more than 40 types of joints that interlock the bones and muscles to one another creating a musculoskeletal system that can change shape and is capable of movement in multiple independent directions, researchers said.



"We reduced those numbers to nine joints in the B2 robot. The compliant wings of a bat-like flapping robot flapping at lower frequencies are inherently safe," the study mentioned.



According to the researchers, the robot utilises a morphing skeleton array and a silicone-based membrane skin that enables the robot to change its articulated structure in mid-air without losing an effective and smooth aerodynamic surface.



"When a bat flaps its wings, it's like a rubber sheet. It fills up with air and deforms. And then, at the end of its down-stroke motion, the wing pushes the air out when it springs back into place. So you get this big amplification of power that comes just from the fact you are using flexible membranes inside the wing itself," said Seth Hutchinson, professor at the University of Illinois.



Researchers said that B2 can also contribute biological studies on bat flight.



Researchers believe that B2 can be used to reconstruct flight maneuvers of bats by applying wing movement patterns observed in bat flight, "thereby helping us understand the role of the dominant degrees of freedom of bats".



"Although these approaches can effectively analyse the joint kinematics of bat wings in flight, they cannot help understand how specific wing movement patterns contribute to a particular flight maneuver of a bat," the paper published in AAAS Science Robotics noted.