Knowledge Update

Washington, Jan 30 (IANS) Researchers have developed a reconfigurable radio that could help air traffic controllers see in real-time the location of every plane in the air -- even those flying across oceans.

To design and develop the new reconfigurable, higher-bandwidth radio, NASA worked with Palm Bay, Florida-based Harris Corporation.

With real-time global tracking, planes could fly with less space between them and take more direct routes. 

"It tremendously improves public safety and potentially saves a lot of fuel costs, because you no longer have to remain in the particular airline traffic lanes," said Jeff Anderson from Harris Corporation. 

The biggest selling point of the new device, which Harris sells as the AppSTAR, turned out to be its flexibility. 

With hardware and software both fully reconfigurable, the company could quickly and cheaply redesign the radio to fit any customer's needs, Harris programme manager Kevin Moran explained.

The company has already entered into contracts with Virginia-based Aireon LLC that will use the radios to create the first space-based global air traffic control system.

With Aireon flight tracking, powered by a radio developed by Harris Corporation, researchers hope that air traffic control agencies will be able to see in real time the location and heading of every plane in the air.

For decades, airplanes have relied on radar surveillance via land-based radar stations. That has left huge gaps ? particularly over oceans ? where air traffic controllers have no real-time information. 

To compensate, pilots file detailed flight plans and are required to remain within prescribed lanes at different altitudes so air traffic controllers can estimate where they are and work to ensure there are no mid-air collisions.

But that could change when a constellation of 66 satellites, owned by Iridium Communications Inc., goes into orbit equipped with AppSTAR radios. 

The radios are programmed to receive signals from new airplane transceivers called ADS-B, which automatically send out a flight's number, location, heading and other details.

"Within seconds you can keep track of all the aircraft in the world," Anderson noted. 

Aireon has already signed contracts with a number of air traffic control agencies to integrate the space-based system into their flight tracking when the system goes live in 2018. 

A reconfigurable is also useful for NASA engineers.

"A reconfigurable radio lets engineers change how the radio works throughout the life of (any space mission)," Thomas Kacpura, Advanced Communications Programme Manager at NASA's Glenn Research Center, explained in an official statement.

"It can also be upgraded to work better with future missions or to enhance performance, just by adding new software," Kacpura added.

New York, Jan 30 (IANS) Using a mechanism similar to the one used by the organ that allows pit vipers to sense their prey, researchers have developed an artificial skin capable of detecting temperature changes.

The material could be grafted onto prosthetic limbs to restore temperature sensing in amputees. 

It could also be applied to first-aid bandages to alert health professionals of a temperature increase -- a sign of infection -- in wounds.

While fabricating synthetic woods in a petri dish, a team led by California Institute of Technology's Chiara Daraio created a material that exhibited an electrical response to temperature changes in the laboratory. 

It turned out that the component responsible for the temperature sensitivity was pectin, a long-chain molecule present in plant cell walls.

"Pectin is widely used in the food industry as a jellifying agent; it's what you use to make jam. So it's easy to obtain and also very cheap," said Daraio.

Intrigued, the team shifted its attention to pectin and ultimately created a thin, transparent flexible film of pectin and water, which can be as little as 20 micrometres thick (equivalent to the diameter of a human hair). 

Pectin molecules in the film have a weakly bonded double-strand structure that contains calcium ions. 

According to a paper published in the journal Science Robotics, the film senses temperature using a mechanism similar -- but not identical -- to the pit organs in vipers, which allow the snakes to sense warm prey in the dark by detecting radiated heat. 

In those organs, ion channels in the cell membrane of sensory nerve fibres expand as temperature increases. 

This dilation allows calcium ions to flow, triggering electrical impulses, the researchers explained.

​London, Jan 30 (IANS) Kids get more satisfaction from relationships with their household pets than with their brothers or sisters, new research suggests.

"Anyone who has loved a childhood pet knows that we turn to them for companionship and disclosure, just like relationships between people," said lead researcher Matt Cassells from University of Cambridge.

"We wanted to know how strong these relationships are with pets relative to other close family ties. Ultimately this may enable us to understand how animals contribute to healthy child development," Cassells said.

Researchers surveyed children of 12 years of age from 77 families with one or more pets of any type and more than one child at home. 

The children reported strong relationships with their pets relative to their siblings, with lower levels of conflict and greater satisfaction in owners of dogs than other kinds of pets.

"Even though pets may not fully understand or respond verbally, the level of disclosure to pets was no less than to siblings," Cassels said. 

"The fact that pets cannot understand or talk back may even be a benefit as it means they are completely non-judgmental," Cassels noted.

While previous research had often found that boys report stronger relationships with their pets than girls do, the new research actually found the opposite. 

"While boys and girls were equally satisfied with their pets, girls reported more disclosure, companionship, and conflict with their pet than did boys, perhaps indicating that girls may interact with their pets in more nuanced ways," Cassels noted.

The research, published in the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, adds to increasing evidence that household pets may have a major influence on child development, and could have a positive impact on children's social skills and emotional well-being.

New York, Jan 29 (IANS) A group of researchers has invented new ways to interact with smartwatches that not only eases the user-device communication but also gives users better control over the gadget.

Georgia Institute of Technology researchers developed enhancements using LG and Sony smartwatches that allow a user to scroll through apps by running fingers along the watch band, and let him/her launch eight smartwatch apps by tapping key points on the watch case (or bezel) and reject phone calls by blowing on the screen or tapping the side of the watch.

The new enhancements, recently presented at the 2016 ACM International Conference on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces, also let a user to edit dictated text message errors by breathing on the screen, transfer on-screen information from the watch to a phone with breaths and select numbers by tapping the back of the hand.

Ph.D. student Cheng Zhang oversaw WatchOut -- an interaction technique that uses taps and scrolling gestures on the case and watchband. The tapping and scrolling on the smartwatch band was possible because of the watch's gyroscope and accelerometer sensors.

"We wanted to create a technique that allows the user to tap the watch to accept or deny phone calls. Hitting the right side answers the call; the left side ignores it," Zhang said in a statement.

"Other techniques that improve control of smartwatches have included 3D gestures above the screen, bigger screens or adding an extra armband. We wanted to show it could be done with existing technology already common on today's devices," Zhang added.

Washington, Jan 28 (IANS) NASA scientists in an unprecedented study have found that space travel may alter gene expression.

The study involved astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent a year in space and his identical twin Mark who stayed on Earth. 

From the lengths of the twins' chromosomes to the microbiomes in their guts, "almost everyone is reporting that we see differences", Christopher Mason, a geneticist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, was quoted as saying to scientificamerican.com. 

The changes that are likely attributable to Scott's time in orbit include alterations to gene expression, DNA methylation -- the reversible addition of a chemical marker that can affect gene expression -- and other biological markers. 

DNA methylation decreased in Scott during flight and increased in Mark over the same period. 

Levels for both men returned close to pre-flight levels after Scott came back to Earth, according to the preliminary results published in the journal Nature. 

"What this means isn't yet clear," said Andrew Feinberg, a geneticist at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, US.

The researchers also reported changes in gene-expression signatures between the twins. Such changes happen in earthbound people all the time, associated with environmental shifts such as changes in diet and sleep habits. 

However, the changes in Scott seemed to be larger than normal - perhaps due to the stress of eating frozen food and trying to sleep while floating in space, Mason said.

But, because the Kelly twins are just two people, the results may not be generalised, the study said.

Scott spent 340 days in space during 2015-2016, giving him a lifetime total of 520 days, while Mark, also an astronaut, had previously flown in space for a total of 54 days over four space-shuttle missions between 2001 and 2011.

New York, Jan 28 (IANS) If you are a creative person, chances are you may face more trouble in getting good quality sleep although you may sleep more often, researchers say.

In the study, the researchers sought to understand how two types of creativity -- visual and verbal -- influence objective aspects of sleep such as duration and timing and subjective aspects -- sleep quality.

The findings showed that both have different sleep patterns. Visual creativity is activated by different cerebral mechanisms than verbal creativity.

"Visually creative people reported disturbed sleep leading to difficulties in daytime functioning," whereas, "in the case of verbally creative people, the study found that they sleep more hours, go to sleep late and get up later," Neta Ram-Vlasov, doctoral student at University of Haifa in Israel, said in a statement.

"This strengthens the hypothesis that the processing and expression of visual creativity involves different psychobiological mechanisms to those found in verbal creativity," Ram-Vlasov added.

One possible explanations for the differences can be the that a 'surplus' of visual creativity makes the individual more alert which could lead to sleep disturbances.

"On the other hand, it is possible that it is protracted sleep among verbally creativity individuals facilitating processes that support the creative process while they are awake," Ram-Vlasov said.

​New York, Jan 27 (IANS) Questioning the decision-making ability of driverless cars, experts have suggested model driverless car regulations to ensure safety of the passengers.

Artificial intelligence (AI) experts David Danks and Alex John London from Carnegie Mellon University in the US argued that current safety regulations do not plan for autonomous systems and are ill-equipped to ensure that these systems would perform safely and reliably.

"Currently, we ensure safety on the roads by regulating the performance of the various mechanical systems of vehicles and by licensing drivers. When cars drive themselves we have no comparable system for evaluating the safety and reliability of their autonomous driving systems," said London.

In an opinion piece that appeared in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) Intelligent Systems, Danks and London suggested creating a dynamic system that resembles the regulatory and approval process for drugs and medical devices, including a robust system for post-approval monitoring.

"Self-driving cars and autonomous systems are rapidly spreading so we, as a society, need to find new ways to monitor and guide the development and implementation of these autonomous systems," added Danks.

The proposed phased process would begin with "pre-clinical trials," or testing in simulated environments, such as self-driving cars navigating varied landscapes and climates. 

This would provide information about how the autonomous system makes decisions in a wide range of contexts, so that we can understand how they might act in future in new situations, the duo said.

When a vehicle passes this test, the system would move on to "in-human" studies through a limited introduction into real world environments with trained human "co-pilots." 

Successful trials in these targeted environments would then lead to monitored, permit-based testing and further easing of restrictions as performance goals were met, the researchers noted.

New York, Jan 25 (IANS) If you are impulsive in making decisions, chances are that you may become obese, say researchers who found a link between having an impulsive personality and a high body mass index (BMI).

The findings demonstrate that having an impulsive personality -- the tendency to consistently react with little forethought -- is the key factor that links brain patterns of impulsivity and a high BMI.

"Our research points to impulsive personality as a risk factor for weight gain," said lead researcher Francesca Filbey, Associate Professor at The University of Texas at Dallas.

Overweight and obesity are known to increase blood pressure -- the leading cause of strokes.

Excess weight also increases your chances of developing other problems linked to strokes, including high cholesterol, high blood sugar and heart disease.

Thus, "treatments that provide coping skills or cognitive strategies for individuals to overcome impulsive behaviours associated with having an impulsive personality could be an essential component for effective weight-loss programmes", Filbey said.

For the self-report, researchers used an impulsive sensation-seeking scale to gauge innate personality characteristics.

The neuro-psychological measure sought to assess whether an individual's decision-making style was more impulsive or cautious.

An fMRI was used to examine brain activation and connectivity during an impulse control task.

The results showed that "individuals with a high BMI exhibited altered neural function compared to normal weight individuals", Filbey noted.

​New York, Jan 25 (IANS) Early Mars was warmed intermittently by a powerful greenhouse effect caused by methane gas, researchers have revealed.

The team from Harvard University's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) found that interactions between methane, carbon dioxide and hydrogen in the early Martian atmosphere may have created warm periods when the planet could support liquid water on the surface.

In a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters, first author Robin Wordsworth wrote that if humans understand how early Mars operated, it could tell something about the potential for finding life on other planets outside the solar system.

Four billion years ago, the Sun was about 30 per cent fainter than today and significantly less solar radiation reached the Martian surface, the paper said, adding that the scant radiation that did reach the planet was trapped by the atmosphere, resulting in warm, wet periods.

As carbon dioxide makes up 95 per cent of today's Martian atmosphere, it alone does not account for Mars' early temperatures.

"You can do climate calculations where you add carbon dioxide and build up to hundreds of times the present day atmospheric pressure on Mars and you still never get to temperatures that are even close to the melting point," said Wordsworth.

Wordsworth and his collaborators looked to these long-lost gases -- known as reducing gases -- and found that billions of years ago geological processes could have released significantly more methane into the atmosphere. 

This methane would have been slowly converted to hydrogen and other gases, in a process similar to that occurring today on Saturn's moon, Titan, the research found.

Wordsworth and his team experimented to see what happens when methane, hydrogen and carbon dioxide collide and how they interact with photons. The team found that this combination resulted in very strong absorption of radiation.

"We discovered that methane and hydrogen and their interaction with carbon dioxide, were much better at warming early Mars than had previously been believed," Wordsworth said.