Knowledge Update

Washington, Jan 11 (IANS) Charon -- Pluto's moon which is more than half its diameter and orbits only 12,000 or so miles away -- is slowing down the decay of Pluto's atmosphere, scientists have found.

To put that into perspective, picture our moon three times closer to Earth and as large as Mars.

A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology has provided additional insight into this relationship and how it affects the continuous stripping of Pluto's atmosphere by solar wind. 

When Charon is positioned between the Sun and Pluto, the research indicates that the moon can significantly reduce atmospheric loss.

"Charon doesn't always have its own atmosphere. But when it does, it creates a shield for Pluto and redirects much of the solar wind around and away," said Carol Paty, associate professor in the school of earth and atmospheric sciences.

This barrier creates a more acute angle of Pluto's bow shock, slowing down the deterioration of the atmosphere. 

When Charon doesn't have an atmosphere, or when it's behind or next to Pluto (a term scientists call "downstream"), then Charon has only a minor effect on the interaction of the solar wind with Pluto.

The study's predictions, performed before the New Horizons probe collected and returned data to Earth, is consistent with the measurements made by the spacecraft about Pluto's atmospheric loss rate. 

The research was published in a special Pluto issue of the journal Icarus.

London, Jan 11 (IANS) In a first, Danish researchers including one of Indian origin, have engineered E. coli bacteria to develop a cell line that produces large quantities of the compound serine -- used in detergents, tube feeding formula and as building blocks for many key chemicals.

The researchers from The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability (DTU Biosustain) believe this cell line will help produce the ingredients sustainably and at low cost. 

"This discovery is quite unique and proves that we can actually adapt cells to tolerate large amounts of serine -- something many people thought wasn't possible," said Professor Alex Toftgaard Nielsen from DTU Biosustain. 

In order to develop these cells, the team used highly specialised robots.

"Cell growth must be monitored 24 hours a day, and the cells must be transferred to new medium at a certain time of growth. Therefore, it is crucial that we use 'Adaptive Laboratory Evolution' (ALE) robots," explained lead author Hemanshu Mundhada from Technical University of Denmark.

Serine is an amino acid important for humans because it is one of the 20 amino acids forming proteins in our bodies. 

Being highly water soluble, serine finds application as moisturiser in lotions of pharma and cosmetic industry.

The first step in the development process was to produce E. coli cells that could survive high concentrations of serine. 

To achieve this, the scientists used ALE method in which they first exposed the cells to a small amount of serine. When the cells had grown accustomed to these conditions, the bacteria were transferred to a slightly higher concentration. 

The experiment was repeated several times with the cells best suited to tolerate serine.

The tolerant E. coli cells were subsequently optimised genetically to produce serine.

"We have shown that our E coli cells can use regular sugar and even residues from sugar production, molasses, in lower concentrations. We have seen promising results with less expensive sugars, which makes it even more attractive to produce serine in E. coli," Mundhada added in a paper published in the journal Metabolic Engineering.

Sydney, Jan 10 (IANS) A drug that could "melt away" cancer cells has been approved for human use in Australia, a media report said on Tuesday.

Developed in Melbourne, Venetoclax, which will be sold as Venclexta, has been approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) for use by patients with advanced forms of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, Xinhua news agency reported.

The drug, which was approved for use in the US in August 2016, would be made available to patients who have not responded to standard treatments or who have not been able to undergo other therapies.

Venetoclax works by blocking the action of the BCL-2 protein which enables cancer cells to survive, a solution that researchers worldwide have been studying for more than 30 years.

Doug Hilton, the director at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, said the approval was important for patients with limited options.

"Like a lethal arrow, Venetoclax flies straight to the heart of BCL-2," Hilton told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

David Huang, the developer of the drug from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, won the Eureka Prize for Innovation in Medical Research in 2016. 

London, Jan 10 (IANS) Retroviruses, the family of viruses that includes HIV, are almost half a billion years old -- several hundred million years older than previously thought, claim scientists from Oxford University.

New research suggests that retroviruses have ancient marine origins, having been with their animal hosts through the evolutionary transition from sea to land.

Until now, it was thought that retroviruses were relative newcomers -- possibly as recent as 100 million years in age.

"Our research shows that retroviruses are at least 450 million years old, if not older, and that they must have originated together with, if not before, their vertebrate hosts in the early Paleozoic era," explained Dr Aris Katzourakis from Oxford University's department of zoology.

Furthermore, they would have been present in our vertebrate ancestors prior to the colonisation of land and have accompanied their hosts throughout this transition from sea to land, all the way up until the present day.

Retroviruses are a family of viruses that includes the HIV virus responsible for the AIDS pandemic. 

They can also cause cancers and immunodeficiencies in a range of animals. 

The 'retro' part of their name comes from the fact they are made of RNA, which they can convert into DNA and insert into their host genome.

In this study, the researchers unearthed genomic fossils for foamy-like retroviruses in highly diverse hosts, including ray-finned fish and amphibians in which they had not previously been found.

"We need to consider the adaptations that vertebrates have developed to combat viruses, and the corresponding viral countermeasures, as the product of a continuous arms race that stretches back hundreds of millions of years," Katzourakis noted in the journal Nature Communications.

The findings will help researchers understand more about the continuing 'arms race' between viruses and their hosts.

​Tel Aviv, Jan 10 (IANS) A team of Israeli researchers has developed a smartphone-based system to assess obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) severity while a patient is awake and analyse the sleep-wake activity.

Currently, patients are diagnosed using polysomnography (PSG) to record brain waves, blood oxygen level, heart rate, breathing and eye and leg movements overnight. 

The new system, which does not require contact sensors, can be installed onto a smartphone or other device that utilises ambient microphones. 

It both analyses speech while the user is awake and records and evaluates overnight breathing sounds using new technology that is simpler to use and significantly less expensive than PSG, said the team from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU).

"We've developed technology that could help diagnose OSA and sleep disorders in a convenient way," said Dr Yaniv Zigel, head of BGU's biomedical signal processing research lab (BSP) in a statement.

"The audio-analysis application can record speech signals from awake subjects. Now, we will be able to get a fast, OSA severity estimation without an overnight sleep study," added professor Ariel Tarasiuk, head of the sleep-wake disorders unit at Soroka University Medical Center in Beer-Sheva. 

Researchers tested the new speech and breathing sound analysis systems on more than 350 subjects, along with PSG, in laboratory and at-home settings. 

They were able to reliably evaluate sleep quality parameters such as sleep-wake activity, snoring severity and OSA using this system.

"We are excited about this non-contact sleep tracking system which does not require patients to wear uncomfortable monitoring equipment on their body," Tarasiuk added. 

The application can also be very useful for CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine users who want to check the effectiveness of their sleep apnea therapy.

Abu Dhabi, Jan 10 (IANS/WAM) The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations has lauded the decision of UAE Vice President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, to fight hunger and food waste by launching the Food Bank initiative.

Nabil Gangi, FAO Representative to the UAE, said the initiative "reflects the true spirit of giving, which has always characterised the UAE communities, and the vision of the founder of the country, late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan".

Gangi praised the initiative to turn Dubai into the first city in the region, and probably in the world, to achieve zero food waste. 

He also confirmed the FAO's readiness to continue working hand-in-hand with the United Arab Emirates government and stakeholders to ensure the success of the initiative within a sustainable food diversification strategy.

The newly-established UAE Food Bank will bring together several stakeholders to collect excess food from hotels, supermarkets, restaurants and farms. 

It will then store and package the food for distribution, while the inedible food will be recycled for different usage, including but not limited to, animal feed and fertilisers.

​New York, Jan 9 (IANS) What if you can remotely charge your smartphone with the flat-screen TV in your living room? If we believe a team of US engineers, turning your living room into a wireless charging station is not a far-fetched dream.

The flat-screen technology can produce a wide-range, wireless power transfer devices, say engineers from Duke University and University of Washington, adding that the technology already exists to build such a system and it is only a matter of time to design it.

"Whether its headphones, cell phones, watches or even your mouse and keyboard, a major irritation for consumers is the hassle of being tethered to cords to recharge batteries," said David Smith, professor at Duke. 

"They always run dry at the worst possible moment. Our proposed system would be able to automatically and continuously charge any device anywhere within a room, making dead batteries a thing of the past," Smith wrote in a paper posted on the arXiv pre-print e-repository. 

Some wireless charging systems already exist to help power speakers, cell phones and tablets. The problem to date has been that the antennas in a wireless power transfer system would need to be able to focus on any device within a room. 

The solution proposed by Smith and his colleagues relies on metamaterials -- a synthetic material composed of many individual, engineered cells that together produce properties not found in nature.

"Imagine you have an electromagnetic wave front moving through a flat surface made of thousands of tiny electrical cells," said Smith. 

"If you can tune each cell to manipulate the wave in a specific way, you can dictate exactly what the field looks like when it comes out on the other side," he explained.

According to the results, a flat metamaterial device no bigger than a typical flat-screen television could focus beams of microwave energy down to a spot about the size of a cell phone within a distance of up to 10 metres. 

It should also be capable of powering more than one device at the same time.

"The ability to safely direct focused beams of microwave energy to charge specific devices, while avoiding unwanted exposure to people, pets and other objects, is a game-changer for wireless power," said co-author Matt Reynolds from the University of Washington. 

Smith has used this principle to create the world's first cloaking device that bends electromagnetic waves around an object held within.

To achieve this on a big scale, a powerful, low-cost electromagnetic energy source would need to be developed. 

"I think building a system like this, which could be embedded in the ceiling and wirelessly charge everything in a room, is a very feasible scheme," Smith noted.

​London, Jan 9 (IANS) A team of researchers at King's College London has discovered a new method of stimulating the renewal of living stem cells in tooth pulp using an Alzheimer's drug.

The novel, biological approach encourages natural tooth repair rather than using cements or fillings which are prone to infections and often need replacing a number of times. 

Currently, dentists use man-made cements or fillings, such as calcium and silicon-based products, to treat larger cavities and fill holes in teeth. 

This cement remains in the tooth and fails to disintegrate, meaning that the normal mineral level of the tooth is never completely restored.

In the new method, one of the small molecules used by scientists from the Dental Institute at King's College London to stimulate the renewal of the stem cells included Tideglusib, a drug to treat neurological disorders including Alzheimer's disease. 

"The simplicity of our approach makes it ideal as a clinical dental product for the natural treatment of large cavities, by providing both pulp protection and restoring dentine," said Professor Paul Sharpe.

In addition, using a drug that has already been tested in clinical trials for Alzheimer's disease provides a real opportunity to get this dental treatment quickly into clinics, he added in a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Toronto, Jan 9 (IANS) If you know two or more languages, chances are that you will save more brain power as you age compared to those who missed out.

A team of researchers has established that years of bilingualism change how the brain carries out tasks that require concentrating on one piece of information without becoming distracted by other information. 

This makes the brain more efficient and economical with its resources.

"After years of daily practice managing interference between two languages, bilinguals become experts at selecting relevant information and ignoring information that can distract from a task," said Dr Ana Inés Ansaldo from the University of Montreal.

To arrive at this conclusion, Ansaldo's team asked two groups of seniors (one of monolinguals and one of bilinguals) to perform a task that involved focusing on visual information while ignoring spatial information. 

The researchers compared the networks between different brain areas as people did the task. 

They found that monolinguals recruited a larger circuit with multiple connections, whereas bilinguals recruited a smaller circuit that was more appropriate for the required information. 

In a nutshell, bilinguals showed higher connectivity between visual processing areas located at the back of the brain. 

"These data indicate that the bilingual brain is more efficient and economical, as it recruits fewer regions and only specialised regions," explained Ansaldo in a paper published in the Journal of Neurolinguistics.

The results may explain why the brains of bilinguals are better equipped at staving off the signs of cognitive ageing or dementia.

"We now need to study how this function translates to daily life, for example, when concentrating on one source of information instead of another, which is something we have to do every day," Ansaldo noted.

​New York, Jan 8 (IANS) Symptoms of agitation among patients with dementia can be managed safely by using tablet computers, a new study has found.

The study, published in The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, builds upon previous studies demonstrating that art, music, and other similar therapies can effectively reduce symptoms of dementia without medication.

By using tablet devices to employ these therapies, however, patients and providers also benefit from a computer's inherent flexibility, the study noted.

"Tablet use as a nonpharmacologic intervention for agitation in older adults, including those with severe dementia, appears to be feasible, safe, and of potential utility," said Ipsit Vahia from McLean Hospital, Massachusetts, US.

"We know that art therapy can work, music therapy can work. The tablet, however, gives you the option of switching from one app to another easily, modifying the therapy seamlessly to suit the individual. You do not need to invest in new equipment or infrastructure," Vahia added.

The use of tablet is safe for every patient, regardless of the severity of their dementia, according to the study that noted that the use of tablets significantly reduced symptoms of agitation among patients with milder forms of dementia.

Citing an example of a Romanian-speaking patient, Vahia explained, "We started showing him Romanian video clips on YouTube, and his behaviour changed dramatically and instantaneously. His mood improved. He became more interactive. He and his medical support team also started using a translation app so that staff could ask him simple questions in Romanian, facilitating increased interaction."