Knowledge Update

New York, Dec 8 (IANS) A team of University of Illinois researchers has discovered the existence of hot atomic hydrogen (H) atoms in an upper layer of Earth's atmosphere known as thermosphere.

This finding significantly changes current understanding of the H distribution and its interaction with other atmospheric constituents.

Because H atoms are very light, they can easily overcome a planet's gravitational force and permanently escape into interplanetary space.

The ongoing atmospheric escape of H atoms is one reason why Earth's sister planet, Mars, has lost the majority of its water.

In addition, H atoms play a critical role in the physics governing the Earth's upper atmosphere and also serve as an important shield for satellites in low-earth orbit against the harsh space environment.

"Hot H atoms had been theorized to exist at very high altitudes, above several thousand km, but our discovery that they exist as low as 250 km was truly surprising," said Lara Waldrop, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and principle investigator of the project.

The result suggests that current atmospheric models are missing some key physics that impacts many different studies, ranging from atmospheric escape to the thermal structure of the upper atmosphere.

The results also show that the presence of such hot H atoms in the thermosphere significantly affects the distribution of the H atoms throughout the entire atmosphere.

The origin of such hot H atoms, previously thought not to be able to exist in the thermosphere, is still a mystery.

"We know that there must be a source of hot H atoms, either in the local thermosphere or in more distant layers of the atmosphere, but we do not have a solid answer yet," said Waldrop in a paper published in the journal Nature Communications.

​New York, Dec 8 (IANS) Want to live longer? Try to maintain an optimistic outlook towards life -- a general expectation that good things will happen.

In the study, the researchers have found that women who were optimistic had a significantly reduced risk of dying from several major causes of death -- including cancer, heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease and infection, compared with women who were less optimistic.

"While most medical and public health efforts today focus on reducing risk factors for diseases, evidence has been mounting that enhancing psychological resilience may also make a difference," said Eric Kim, research student at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, US.

"Our new findings suggest that we should make efforts to boost optimism, which has been shown to be associated with healthier behaviours and healthier ways of coping with life challenges," Kim added.

The study also found that healthy behaviours only partially explain the link between optimism and reduced mortality risk. 

One other possibility is that higher optimism directly impacts our biological systems, Kim said.

For the study, the team analysed 70,000 women's levels of optimism and other factors that might play a role in how optimism may affect mortality risk, such as race, high blood pressure, diet and physical activity.

The results showed that most optimistic women had a nearly 30 per cent lower risk of dying from any of the diseases analysed in the study compared with the least optimistic women.

Previous studies have shown that optimism can be altered with relatively uncomplicated and low-cost interventions, even something as simple as having people write down and think about the best possible outcomes for various areas of their lives, such as careers or friendships, the researchers said, adding that encouraging the use of such interventions could be an innovative way to enhance health in the future.

The study appeared online in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

​New York, Dec 8 (IANS) Not just pizzas or groceries, drones can one day transport blood for transfusion to hospitals in rural areas -- while keeping it safe and intact -- in less time.

In what is believed to be the first proof-of-concept study of its kind, researchers from Johns Hopkins University have determined that large bags of blood products, such as those transfused into patients every day, can maintain temperature and cellular integrity while transported by drones.

Remotely-piloted drones are an effective, safe and timely way to quickly get blood products to remote accident or natural catastrophe sites, or other time-sensitive destinations.

"For rural areas that lack access to nearby clinics, or that may lack the infrastructure for collecting blood products or transporting them on their own, drones can provide that access," says Timothy Amukele, assistant professor of pathology and the paper's first author.

The new study examined the effects of drone transportation on larger amounts of blood products used for transfusion, which have significantly more complex handling, transport and storage requirements compared to blood samples for laboratory testing.

The team purchased six units of red blood cells, six units of platelets and six units of unthawed plasma from the American Red Cross, and then packed the units into a 5-quart cooler two to three units at a time.

The cooler was then attached to a commercial S900-model drone.

This particular drone model comes equipped with a camera mount, which the team removed and replaced with the cooler.

For each test, the drone was flown by remote control a distance of approximately 13 to 20 km while 328 feet above ground. This flight took up to 26.5 minutes.

The team designed the test to maintain temperature for the red blood cells, platelets and plasma units. They used wet ice, pre-calibrated thermal packs and dry ice for each type of blood product, respectively.

Following flight, all samples were transported to The Johns Hopkins Hospital where the team used the institution's laboratories to check for any damage.

The team plans larger studies in the US and overseas and hopes to test methods of active cooling, such as programming a cooler to maintain a specific temperature.

The findings are forthcoming in the journal Transfusion.

New York, Dec 8 (IANS) Saturn's moons may be younger than previously thought, says a study based on freshly-harvested data from NASA's Cassini mission.

"All of these Cassini mission measurements are changing our view of the Saturnian system, as it turns our old theories upside down," said Radwan Tajeddine from Cornell University in the US.

Tajeddine is a member of the European-based Encelade scientific team that pored over the Cassini data.

The Encelade team provided two key measurements in the research -- the rigidity of the tidal bulge, or the Love number - named for Augustus E.H. Love, a famed British mathematician who studied elasticity - and the dissipation factor, which controls the speed at which moons move away.

While Saturn is mostly a gigantic shroud of liquid hydrogen and liquid helium, it contains a rocky core -- about 18 times the size of Earth, which responds to tidal forces from all of Saturn's major moons by bulging. 

The forces of the bulging core, in turn, push the moons slightly away.

The team detected and examined the orbits of four tiny moons associated with the larger moons Tethys (Telesto and Calypso) and Dione (Helene and Polydeuces). 

While these tiny moons do not affect the tidal forces on Saturn, their orbits are disturbed by Saturn's core tidal bulges.

"By monitoring these disturbances, we managed to obtain the first measurement of Saturn's Love number and distinguish it from the planet's dissipation factor," Tajeddine said. 

"The moons are migrating away much faster than expected," Tajeddine said.

If Saturn moons actually formed 4.5 billion years ago, as currently believed, their current distances from the home planet should be greater, Tajeddine explained.

Thus, this new research -- published in the astronomy journal Icarus -- suggests, the moons are younger than 4.5 billion years, favouring a theory that the moons formed from Saturn's rings.

"What we believe about Saturn's moons history might still change in the coming years with the finale of the Cassini mission," lead researcher Valery Lainey of the Paris Observatory said.

"The more we learn about Saturn, the more we learn about exoplanets," Lainey noted.

​London, Dec 6 (IANS) Continuous usage of caesarean sections or c-section may be impacting human evolution as more mothers now need surgery to deliver a baby due to their narrow pelvis size, scientists say.

C-section is the delivery of a baby through a surgical incision in the mother's abdomen and uterus. 

"Women with a very narrow pelvis pass on their genes encoding for a narrow pelvis to their daughters," Philipp Mitteroecker from the University of Vienna in Austria, was quoted as saying to bbc.com.

Historically, these genes would not have been passed from mother to child as both would have died in labour.

However, today the global rate of cases where the baby could not fit through the maternal birth canal have increased from 30 in 1,000 in the 1960s to 36 in 1,000 births.

That is about a 10-20 per cent increase of the original rate, due to the evolutionary effect.

Although, the trend is likely to continue, but not to the extent that non-surgical births will become obsolete, the researchers noted.

The research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

​Toronto, Dec 6 (IANS) People with high attachment anxiety -- those who worry their partners do not love and care for them -- are especially likely to think of past grudges in new, unrelated contexts, leading to more conflicts in the relationship, says a study.

To them, past misdeeds tend to feel closer to the present than for those who are more secure in their relationships, the study said.

"When memories feel closer to the present, those memories are construed as more relevant to the present and more representative of the relationship," said co-author of the study Kassandra Cortes from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.

"If one bad memory feels recent, a person will also be more likely to remember other past slights, and attach more importance to them," Cortes said.

The researchers found that even if no one mentions the transgressions during arguments, just thinking about them could be enough to have a detrimental effect on the relationship.

A person may feel confused and frustrated if they do not understand why their partner has become so upset over something so seemingly minor.

The study - published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin - found that those who reported thinking about past transgressions during a recent conflict said they reacted to the current conflict more destructively, reported having more frequent and intense conflicts with their partners and felt worse about their relationships in general.

"It may be useful for people to resolve an issue with their partner when it occurs, rather than pretending to forgive their partner or just letting it go when they are clearly upset. This way, the issue may be less likely to resurface in the future," the study said.

​New York, Dec 6 (IANS) Famine may have a lasting impact on the male descendants of its victims, suggests new research focused on survivors of a mass famine that took place in the early 1920s in several rural regions of Russia.

The findings suggest that periods of fasting or starvation may significantly shorten the lifespans of both children and their male descendants.

"A variety of experimental and epidemiological studies have tried to propose that intermittent or periodic fasting, like caloric restriction, may slow the aging process and extend lifespans," said lead researcher Eugene Kobyliansky, Professor at Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University in Israel.

"But there is also evidence demonstrating that even moderate caloric restriction may not extend but, on the contrary, can shorten the human lifespan," Kobyliansky said.

Past research suggests a strong correlation between telomere dynamics and the processes that determine human ageing and lifespan. 

Telomeres, compound structures at the end of each chromosome that protects the end of the chromosome from deterioration, are the genetic key to longevity. They shorten with every chromosome replication cycle.

The team evaluated telomere lengths in a population-based sample comprised of survivors of the mass famine of the early 1920s and in the survivors' descendants, who originated from Chuvashia, a rural area in the mid-Volga region of Russia. 

In Chuvashia, the proportion of starving inhabitants reached 90 per cent in late March 1922, and mortality among starving peasants reached between 30-50 per cent. The situation only began to improve in April 1923. By the end of that year, the mass famine in Chuvashia was considered over.

The researchers found that here were shorter leukocyte telomeres in men born after 1923 after the mass famine ended than in men born before 1922.

There was a stable inheritance of shorter telomeres by men born in ensuing generations, the findings showed. 

But there was an absence of any correlation between shorter telomeres and women born before or after the event, said the study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

New York, Dec 6 (IANS) Pre-school children's skills in patterning, comparing quantities and counting objects were stronger predictors of their math achievement in fifth grade than other skills, researchers said.

The study showed that pre-school math skills supported first-grade math skills, which in turn supported fifth-grade math knowledge. 

By first grade, patterning remained important and understanding written numbers and calculating emerged as important predictors of later achievement.

But, because not all types of math knowledge were equally important, certain early math topics should get more attention than they currently do, the researchers said.

"Counting, calculating, and understanding written numbers already get a lot of attention from teachers and parents, for good reasons," said lead author Bethany Rittle-Johnson, Professor at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, US. 

"However, comparing quantities may merit more attention in pre-school and patterning knowledge may merit more attention in both pre-school and the early elementary grades," Rittle-Johnson added.

The findings suggest that educators and school administrators may want to consider carefully which areas of math study should they shift attention to as they develop curricula for the early years.

For the study, the team followed 517 low-income children aged between 4-11.

Determining how to help children achieve in math is important, particularly for children from low-income families who often enter school with weaker math knowledge than their peers, the researchers suggested. 

The study appeared in the journal Child Development.

​Dubai, Dec 5 (IANS/WAM) The UAE on Monday highlighted its efforts on biodiversity protection at the 13th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity.

A delegation from the UAE is participating in the meeting in Cancun, Mexico, which is aimed at the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of the components of biological diversity and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilisation of genetic resources.

Khalfan Al Suwaidi, Deputy Executive Director of Terrestrial and Marine Biodiversity Sector, who is representing the UAE, said: "The preservation of natural life and its development are top priorities in the UAE and considered as the cornerstones of the country's policy in the field of environmental conservation and development."

Quoting President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan regarding the nation's environment conservation strategy, Al Suwaidi said: "Since its inception, the UAE has been keeping the balance between economic and social development and the preservation of the country's cultural, social and environmental heritage."

"The country has been taking a number of measures, as well as developing relevant laws and legislation regulating professional fishing to preserve, develop and ensure the sustainability of fish stocks," he added.

Toronto, Dec 5 (IANS) Is the very idea of exam giving you stress and negative moods? Take heart, a new study suggests that the occasional bout of bad feelings can actually improve a student's academic performance.

The findings showed that students who were mostly happy during their four years of university but who also experienced occasional negative moods had the highest grade per annum (GPA) at the time of graduation.

In contrast, students who experienced high levels of negative moods and low levels of positive moods often ended up with the lowest GPAs -- a pattern consistent with depressive disorders.

"Students often report feeling overwhelmed and experiencing high levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms. The study shows that we need to teach them strategies to both manage negative emotions and stress in productive ways and to maintain positive emotional experiences," said Erin Barker, Professor at Concordia University in Quebec, Canada.

For the study, Barker and her team worked with 187 first-year university students. They looked at the students' response patterns to better understand how experiences of positive and negative emotions occurred over time.

The study also demonstrated that both negative and positive emotions play a role in our successes.

"We often think that feeling bad is bad for us. But if you're generally a happy person, negative emotions can be motivating. They can signal to you that there is a challenge that you need to face. Happy people usually have coping resources and support that they draw on to meet that challenge," Barker said, in the study published in the journal Developmental Psychology.