Knowledge Update

​Beijing, Oct 7 (IANS) China may be the only space station in service when the International Space Station (ISS) retires in 2024, an official of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) said on Friday.

China plans to launch the experimental core module of its space station around 2018 with a Long March-5 heavyload carrier rocket, and the 20 tonne combination space station will be sent into orbit around 2022, Xinhua news agency quoted Chairman of CASC Lei Fanpei as saying.

CASC is a major space developer.

When the International Space Station, China's space station may be the only one left in service, Lei said.

China's space station will include a core module and two lab modules, with ports that will allow multiple spacecraft to dock, according to Lei.

Following this, a manned spacecraft and cargo spacecraft will travel between the space station and the Earth to provide supplies. Taikonauts -- Chinese astronaut -- can stay at the space station for over one year.

The space station has a designed life of 10 years in orbit which is 400 km above the Earth's surface.

With this space station, China will become the second country after Russia to have developed a space station, Lei said.

China in 1992 made a three-step strategy for its manned space program, the large-scale manned space station being the last step.

In mid October, the Shenzhou-11 spacecraft would transport two taikonauts to Tiangong-2. They would stay there for 30 days.

​New York, Oct 6 (IANS) Researchers at Stanford University have developed a smartphone microscope that allows kids to play games or make more serious observations with miniature light-seeking microbes called Euglena.

"Many subject areas like engineering or programming have neat toys that get kids into it, but microbiology does not have that to the same degree," said Ingmar Riedel-Kruse, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering. 

"The initial idea for this project was to play games with living cells on your phone. And then it developed much beyond that to enable self-driven inquiry, measurement and building your own instrument," Riedel-Kruse noted.

Riedel-Kruse named his device the LudusScope after the Latin word "Ludus," which means "play," "game" or "elementary school". 

The LudusScope consists of a platform for the microscope slide where the Euglena swim freely, surrounded by four LEDs. 

Kids can influence the swimming direction of these light-responsive microbes with a joystick that activates the LEDs.

Above the platform, a smartphone holder positions the phone's camera over a microscope eyepiece, providing a view of the cells below.

On the phone, children can run a variety of software that overlay on top of the image of the cells. 

One looks like the 1980s video game Pac-Man, with a maze containing small white dots. Kids can select one cell to track, then use the LED lights to control which direction the cell swims in an attempt to guide it around the maze and collect the dots. 

Another game looks like a soccer stadium. 

Kids earn points by guiding the Euglena through the goal posts.

Other non-game applications provide microscope scale-bars, real-time displays of swimming speed or zoomed-in views of individual cells. 

These let kids collect data on Euglena behaviour, swimming speed and natural biological variability. 

The details of the LudusScope were published in the journal PLOS ONE

​Toronto, Oct 6 (IANS) Children have no difficulty and can easily distinguish between truth and lies, regardless of age. However, as they age, they get confused around particular kinds of truths and lies, a study has found.

Younger children see things more starkly. For them, truths are good and lies are bad.

But, by the time the children are 10-12 years old, they become more aware that truth and lies are less binary. 

"Children get a lot of messages from their parents saying that lying is always bad, but at the same time they see their parents telling 'white' lies to make life easier. Depending on their age, this is likely to be a bit confusing for children," said Victoria Talwar from the McGill University in Quebec, Canada. 

As children get older, their moral evaluations of both lies and truths increasingly gets influenced by whether they think this behaviour will cause harm to either others or themselves.

Younger children saw false confessions to help someone else as being more negative than older ones did.

Younger children are less concerned by truth-telling that had negative consequences for someone else, whereas older children were more conflicted about tattling. 

"The older they are, the more interested children are in the consequences of these actions. They are also more able to start looking at the intentions behind the speech," added Shanna Mary Williams, doctoral student at the McGill University. 

Further, the study showed that both young and old children had different views when it came to the skill of deciding which behaviours to reward or condemn. 

While younger children may be reflecting what is taught by parents and caregivers when it comes to tattling (i.e. that honesty in all forms is virtuous), the older children may be less likely to reward tattling because they are concerned with how their peers will perceive this behaviour, the researchers observed. 

In both cases, parents and teachers need to have a much more involved conversation about truth-telling or lie-telling with children starting as early as the age six, the researchers suggested. 

For the study, the team assessed how a child's moral understanding develops. They studied the behaviour of close to 100 children, aged six to 12.

"Looking at how children see honesty and deceit is a way of gaining insight into different stages of moral and social development," Talwar said.

The study was published in the journal International Review of Pragmatics.

​New York, Oct 18 (IANS) If you find your teenage son indulging in alcohol or drugs, do not just blame his peers. A specific imbalance in the functioning of his brain may put him at risk-taking behaviour risk, a study has found.

The study conducted on animals showed that the adolescent-specific behaviour may be driven by an imbalance in activity between the prefrontal cortex (PFC) -- an area of the brain involved in cognitive control and inhibition -- and the nucleus accumbens (NAC) which plays a central role in reward-seeking and addiction. 

Researchers from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire in the US said that the low activity in PFC with concurrent high activity in NAC -- an imbalance which appears to exist only during adolescence -- is essentially at odds with each other.

This imbalance is behind the tendency that could lead to potentially dangerous behaviour, including drug use, harmful drinking, addiction, unsafe sex and risky driving, which may result in unintended injuries, violence and/or even premature death.

"Understanding how specific changes in brain function during development relate to behaviour is critically important for determining why some individuals engage in excessive risk-taking behaviour during adolescence," said David J Bucci, professor at Dartmouth College.

For the study, researchers used adult rats, which normally have balanced activity in these areas and used a novel approach to decrease the activity in PFC and simultaneously increase activity in NAC while the rats learned an inhibition task. 

The rats that were treated with the new approach exhibited a dramatic delay in learning to inhibit and required twice the amount of training to learn the behaviour. 

The delay in learning this inhibitory response matched the delay that the researchers observed in normal adolescent rats during an earlier study. 

"Our hope is that these findings will inform new means to minimise the potential for engaging in drug use and other harmful behaviours during this important period of development," Bucci added in the paper published in the journal Current Biology. 

New York, Oct 18 (IANS) Researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard Medical School have developed a biocompatible and highly stretchable optical fiber which can be implanted in the body to deliver therapeutic pulses of light or light up at the first sign of disease.

According to the study, the researchers suggested that such stretchable, strain-sensing optical fibers could be implanted or fitted along the length of a patient's arm or leg to monitor for signs of improving mobility.

The study also suggested that the fibers may also serve as sensors, lighting up in response to signs of disease.

"We may be able to use optical fibers for long-term diagnostics, to optically monitor tumors or inflammation. The applications can be impactful," said Xuanhe Zhao, Associate Professor, MIT in the study published in the journal Advanced Materials.

The fiber, made from hydrogel is as bendable and is an elastic, rubbery material composed mostly of water and may serve as a long-lasting implant that would bend and twist with the body without breaking down.

Using light to activate neurons in the brain, which is a highly active field known as optogenetics, in which researchers delivered short pulses of light to targeted tissues using needle-like fibers, through which they shine light from an LED source.

"But the brain is like a bowl of Jell-O, whereas these fibers are like glass -- very rigid, which can possibly damage brain tissues. If these fibers could match the flexibility and softness of the brain, they could provide long-term more effective stimulation and therapy," Zhao added.

For the study, the researchers began to play with the fiber's optical properties, to see if they could design a fiber that could sense when and where it was being stretched.

Then they shone a laser light through the fiber and stretched and measured the spectrum of light.

By measuring the amount of light at the far end of the fiber, the researchers could quantitatively determine where and by how much a fiber was stretched.

​London, Oct 18 (IANS) Pregnant women who are dissatisfied in their relationship may be at an increased risk of developing infectious diseases, which may in turn, also affect their children, researchers have found.

The risk of pregnant women with the lowest satisfaction in their relationship becoming ill is more than twice than those who are satisfied.

"The study does not prove that the first thing leads to the second. But those who report that they are dissatisfied in their relationship more often report illnesses during pregnancy. Their children are also reported ill more often during their first year," said Roger Ekeberg Henriksen from the University of Bergen in Norway.

"Infections during pregnancy may lead to complications and diseases later in life, Henriksen said, adding "dissatisfaction with your partner during pregnancy should be considered a risk factor for reproductive health." 

Relationship researchers have been usually interested in psychological factors such as depression and life quality. But social isolation and loneliness can also directly affect the physiology.

During stressed condition our immune system may be given lower priority, and we thus become less resistant towards infectious diseases from bacteria and viruses, the researchers said.

"If we look at brain research and other research on physiological mechanisms, we see that having a partner who is predictable and supportive may be decisive for our ability to handle stress. On the opposite side, stress responses may occur with the absence of social support," Henriksen stated.

In the study, Henriksen looked at the occurrence of eight different infectious diseases, from the common cold to stomach flu and inflammation of the ear. 

With children up to six months, the occurrence of all eight infections was higher when the mothers were dissatisfied in their relationship.

"If there's a lot of stress in your life and you have few good relations, this should be given particular attention. It might be a good idea to talk to your midwife or your general practitioner about this," Henriksen suggested.

For the study, the team collected data from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) -- a health study on mothers and their children since 1999. The study of pregnant women's infectious diseases includes more than 67,000 women. The study of children's infectious diseases includes nearly 91,000 women and more than 100,000 children.

​London, Oct 18 (IANS) Higher body mass index (BMI) in women before pregnancy can lead to shorter telomere length -- a biomarker for biological age -- in their newborns, according to a study.

Telomeres are structures at the ends of chromosomes which are vital in maintaining the stability of a person's genome as they protect chromosomes from degradation. 

"Compared with newborns of mothers with a normal BMI, newborns of women with obesity are older on a molecular level, because shortened telomere lengths mean that their cells have shorter lifespans," said Tim Nawrot, Professor at Hasselt University in Belgium. 

Telomere length, which is measured by the number of DNA base pairs they occupy, is directly linked to the number of times a cell can divide in its lifetime. 

Thus, longer telomeres allow cells to divide more often, providing a link between telomere length and biological age. 

Telomere length in adults has been associated with age-related diseases such as cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and increased mortality.

In the study, the research team found that for each one-point increase in the mothers' BMI, telomeres in the babies were about 50 base pairs shorter. 

According to the researchers, this 50 base pair shortening of telomere length is equivalent to the length that people normally lose in 1.1 - 1.6 years of adult life, which may increase the risk of chronic diseases in adulthood.

"Our results add to the growing body of evidence that high maternal BMI impacts foetal programming, which could lead to altered foetal development and later life diseases," Nawrot said. 

"So maintaining a healthy BMI during a woman's reproductive age may promote molecular longevity in the offspring," he added.

For the study, published in the journal BMC Medicine, the team involved 743 mothers, who were 17 to 44 years of age, and their newborn babies. 

​Sydney, Oct 18 (IANS) Researchers from University of Adelaide have developed a world's first optical sensor that can detect vitamin B12 in diluted human blood - a novel step towards developing a low-cost and portable deficiency test.

Vitamin B12 deficiency is associated with an increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

Such a device would enable the tracking of vitamin B12 levels in high-risk patients and early intervention can help overcome the limitations of current testing methods which are time-consuming and costly.

"Vitamin B12 deficiency has been shown to be a potential modifiable risk factor for dementia and Alzheimer's disease and is associated with cognitive decline," said Dr Georgios Tsiminis, Research Fellow at University of Adelaide.

Older adults are particularly at risk of B12 deficiency due to age-related reduction in absorbing vitamin B12 received through their diet.

"Our sensor is an early step towards a point-of-care solution for measuring and tracking B12 in healthy ageing adults. This would allow doctors to monitor B12 levels and intervene as soon as B12 deficiency was detected," Dr Tsiminis added.

The sensor is still at proof-of-concept stage but, with development, has wide-reaching potential applications.

The optical sensor measurement of B12 in human blood takes less than a minute and requires minimum preparation.

This is the first demonstration of vitamin B12 being measured in human blood serum without the need for a full laboratory test.

The sensor uses an optical measuring technique called Raman spectroscopy which produces a unique optical fingerprint of a target molecule, in this case vitamin B12.

"Our method provides a realistic basis for a system that is portable, cost-effective, and affords rapid results, along the lines of the pin-prick test for diabetes," Dr Tsiminis noted in a statement.

The research by scientists in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale BioPhotonics (CNBP), the Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing, and the Schools of Physical Sciences and Medicine was presented at an international biophotonics conference in Adelaide last weekend.

​London, Oct 17 (IANS) Researchers from University of Cambridge said they are developing a new imaging technique with the aim of detecting and characterising early cancerous changes in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract.

The technique involves using a standard endoscopy system with a novel set of camera filters, increasing the number of colours that can be visualised during endoscopy and potentially improving the ability to detect abnormal cells in the lining of the gut.

"In traditional endoscopy, we use white light and detectors that replicate our eyes, which detect light in red, green and blue colour channels. We are now developing an approach called 'hyperspectral imaging', which will increase the number of colour channels that can be visualised from three to over 50," explained Sarah Bohndiek from University of Cambridge.

"Since cell changes associated with the development of cancer lead to colour changes in the tissues, we believe that hyperspectral imaging could help us to improve the specificity of lesion identification because we can use these colours to identify abnormal tissues," Bohndiek added.

Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) collects and processes information from across the electromagnetic spectrum. 

In contrast to the human eye, which sees colour primarily in three bands (red, green and blue), spectral imaging divides the colour spectrum into many more bands and can be extended beyond the visible range of light. 

The images obtained by hyperspectral imaging can provide information about the physiology and chemical composition of human tissues, and the technique is emerging as having great potential for non-invasive diagnosis and image-guided surgery.

"Hyperspectral imaging is a powerful tool that can reveal the chemical composition of human tissues and together with different fluorescent dyes, can identify a range of biological processes," Bohndiek pointed out. 

"The technique has many potential applications within cancer diagnostics, with exciting developments already reported in the detection of Barrett's oesophagus, which is a precancerous condition in some people," Bohndiek noted.

The technique was presented at UEG Week 2016 in Vienna, Austria.