Knowledge Update

​New York, Oct 6 (IANS) Leisure time spent at home with family may not only satisfy individuals but also become a more effective route to happiness, says a study.

The best predictor of happiness for families may be spending quality time together in familiar activities inside the home, the researchers said.

"That may be because when the brain is focused on processing new information -- such as taking part in an unfamiliar activity with unfamiliar people in a new location -- less 'brain power' is available to focus on the family relationships," said lead author Karen K. Melton, Assistant Professor at Baylor University in Texas, US.

On the other hand, while quality time together contributes to satisfaction with family life, "all family leisure is not equal", Melton added. 

Melton also said the catchy expression, "The family that plays together, stays together!" carries two misconceptions: that all family leisure brings positive results and that all family activities are equal.

"Family members can also express stress and conflict as well as pleasure during leisure time. The activities alone will not heal the scars of hurting families," she noted. 

While stating that one-size may not fit all families, Melton said: "for some families, quality togetherness is having dinner together or playing games; for others, it may be hobbies, videos or TV, music," Melton said. 

For the study, researchers used a sample of 1,502 individuals in 884 families in Britain. Each family unit taking part in the online research had at least one child between the age of 11 and 15. 

Participants answered questions about whether they took part in family leisure in the past years, and if so, what activities they did, how much time they spent doing them and how frequently they did so.

The study was published in World Leisure Journal.

London, Oct 6 (IANS) Researchers have developed a simple device that can act as a virtual physiotherapist and improve the ability of patients with arm disability to exercise using physiotherapy-like computer games.

Arm weaknesses impairs people's ability to carry out daily activities and requires expensive long-term care.

The low-cost device, with the trade name gripAble, consists of a lightweight electronic handgrip, which interacts wirelessly with a standard PC tablet to enable the user to play arm-training games. 

"The use of mobile-gaming could provide a cost-effective and easily available means to improve the arm movements of stroke patients," said lead researcher Paul Bentley, senior lecturer at Imperial College, London. 

To use it, patients squeeze, turn or lift the handgrip, and it vibrates in response to their performance whilst playing. 

The device uses a novel mechanism, which can detect the tiny flicker movements of severely paralysed patients and channel them into controlling a computer game, the researchers said.

The device improves arm and cognitive function of patients who have mild to severe arm weaknesses and can also be used unsupervised in hospitals and independently by patients at home, Bentley added. 

Researchers have shown that the device enabled more than half of the severely disabled patients in the study to engage with the arm-training software, whereas none of the patients were able to use conventional control methods such as swiping and tapping on tablets and smartphones.

Using the device increased the proportion of paralysed stroke patients able to direct movements on a tablet screen by 50 per cent compared to standard methods. 

Further, the study showed that 93 per cent of patients were able to make meaningful movements to direct the cursor as a result of using gripAble. 

The potential of gripAble as a means of delivering cost-effective physiotherapy was also recognised by a NHS England Innovation Challenge Prize in early 2016.

The findings appear in the paper published in the journal PLOS ONE. 

​London, Oct 6 (IANS) Nearly from the moment of birth, human beings possess the capacity to distinguish between speakers of their native language and other language.

Thus, they pay more attention to native language cues in deciding where to place their focus as well as adopt to the native speakers' cultural behaviour, a study has found. 

"The study reveals the great importance of cultural and linguistic similarity in how infants choose to direct their attention," said Hanna Marno from the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. 

The findings show how infants and young children are tuned to quickly acquire the knowledge of their society and adapt to their cultural environment, Marno added.

In the study, the researchers determined to know whether young babies would selectively pay attention to different speakers in their environment, even when they do not understand the meaning of the words.

They conducted an experiment that included forty 12-month-old infants, who first listened to two adult female speakers -- one in their native language of Italian, the other in Slovenian -- for two minutes. 

The infants then observed movies of both women -- the native and non-native speaker separately -- gazing at two colorful objects.

The results showed that the infants focused on the object that had first been presented by the native speaker for a longer period of time. 

Even though language was not directly related to the objects, infants appeared to be making linguistic distinctions in their object preferences.

The experiment proved that listening to native speakers affects infants' behaviour, the study observed.

Humans have a hard-wired preference for own language patterns, so much so that the cries of very young infants reflect the melodies of their native language, the researchers said, in the paper recently published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

​London, Oct 6 (IANS) Vitamin E supplementation may reduce the risk of pneumonia in elderly men who are not smokers, new research has found.

Administration of 50 mg per day of vitamin E decreased the risk of pneumonia in elderly male smokers by 72 per cent after they quit smoking, the findings, published in the journal Clinical Interventions in Aging, showed.

For the study, Harri Hemila from University of Helsinki, Finland, explored whether vitamin E supplementation might influence the risk of community-acquired pneumonia. 

He analysed the data of the randomised trial (Alpha-Tocopherol Beta-Carotene Cancer Prevention [ATBC] Study) which was conducted in Finland and included male smokers aged from 50 to 69 years.

The age when the participant had started to smoke significantly modified the effect of vitamin E on pneumonia. 

Vitamin E decreased the risk of pneumonia by 35 per cent in 7,469 participants who had started smoking at a later age, at 21 years or older, whereas the vitamin had no apparent effect on pneumonia for those who had started to smoke at a younger age.

Among the 7,469 participants who started to smoke at a later age, vitamin E supplementation reduced the incidence of pneumonia by 69 per cent in a subgroup of 2,216 light smokers who exercised in their leisure time. 

In this subgroup, vitamin E prevented pneumonia in 12.9 per cent of the participants by the time they reached the age of 74 years, which corresponds to one in eight getting a benefit from the vitamin. 

The vitamin did not have a significant effect on participants who smoked heavily or had not been exercising.

The incidence of pneumonia was 72 percent lower in the vitamin E participants who had quit smoking, and this benefit from vitamin E was also seen among those who smoked heavily or did not exercise.

New York, Oct 5 (IANS) Medication-resistant bacteria are making it more difficult to treat a common but severe kidney infection, says a study.

Pyelonephritis -- infection of the kidney usually caused by E. coli bacteria and which can start as a urinary tract infection -- causes fever, back pain and vomiting. 

About half of people infected require hospitalisation. If not treated with effective antibiotics, it can cause sepsis and death.

"This is a very real example of the threat posed by the emergence of new antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, which greatly complicates treatment of infection," said the study's lead author David Talan, Professor at David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California, Los Angeles. 

In an earlier study based on data from 10 large hospital emergency departments in the US, almost 12 per cent of people diagnosed with pyelonephritis had infections resistant to the standard class of antibiotic used in treatment -- fluoroquinolone. That is up from four per cent in a similar study conducted a decade ago. 

The new study -- published in the jurnal Emerging Infectious Diseases -- also documents the emergence of infections caused by a specific strain of E. coli that is resistant to additional types of antibiotics, severely limiting treatment options. 

That strain, dubbed ESBL for the antibiotic-destroying enzymes it produces (extended-spectrum beta-lactamases), was not detected in the previous study. 

Currently, there are only a few intravenous antibiotic options to treat ESBL-related infections, and no oral antibiotics that are consistently effective.

The study included 453 people diagnosed with kidney infection. The study participants were diagnosed between July 2013 and December 2014 in 10 emergency departments at large hospitals in the US.

The rates of ESBL-related infections varied from zero per cent to more than 20 per cent, depending on the location of the emergency room and patient risk factors.

About three of every four people infected with ESBL-producing E. coli were initially treated with antibiotics ineffective against that particular strain of bacteria, placing them at risk for poor outcomes, the researchers reported.

New York, Oct 4 (IANS) New York, Oct 4 (IANS) A gene associated with an increased risk of children developing a common ear infection has been identified by US researchers.

Middle-ear infection, or acute otitis media, is an ear infection that is usually caused by bacteria or viruses.

Common symptoms include ear pain and fever and in some cases, it may also cause drainage of fluid from the ear or hearing loss. 

"This painful childhood ear infection is the most frequent reason children receive antibiotics," said Hakon Hakonarson from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). 

For the study, the team performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) with DNA samples from 11,000 children. 

They found that an association between acute otitis media and a site on chromosome 6 containing the gene FNDC1, and then replicated the finding in an independent pediatric cohort with data from 2,000 children. 

The scientists showed that the mouse gene corresponding to FNDC1 was expressed in the animal's middle ear. 

"Although the gene's function in humans has not been well studied, we do know that FNDC1 codes for a protein with a role in inflammation," Hakonarson added.

The finding, published online in the journal Nature Communications, may offer an early clue to helping doctors develop more effective treatments to prevent one of the most common childhood illnesses.

Middle-ear infection, or acute otitis media, is an ear infection that is usually caused by bacteria or viruses.

Common symptoms include ear pain and fever and in some cases, it may also cause drainage of fluid from the ear or hearing loss. 

"This painful childhood ear infection is the most frequent reason children receive antibiotics," said Hakon Hakonarson from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). 

For the study, the team performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) with DNA samples from 11,000 children. 

They found that an association between acute otitis media and a site on chromosome 6 containing the gene FNDC1, and then replicated the finding in an independent pediatric cohort with data from 2,000 children. 

The scientists showed that the mouse gene corresponding to FNDC1 was expressed in the animal's middle ear. 

"Although the gene's function in humans has not been well studied, we do know that FNDC1 codes for a protein with a role in inflammation," Hakonarson added.

The finding, published online in the journal Nature Communications, may offer an early clue to helping doctors develop more effective treatments to prevent one of the most common childhood illnesses.

​New York, Oct 4 (IANS) Gender bias at workplace can influence how supervisors view a manager's long-term potential, a new study shows.

The researchers examined a phenomenon called managerial derailment and found that supervisors can have subtle, even subconscious differences while expecting behaviour from male and female managers, which can have costly consequences for women in the workplace, most notably the loss of mentorship.

"If you're doing performance evaluations, there's a record in a Human Resource file you could refer to, and gender biases could be identified and dealt with," said Joyce Bono, Professor at the University of Florida, US.

"However, perceptions of derailment potential exist in a supervisor's head. They're informal assessments that supervisors make, yet they have important implications for the opportunities that supervisors provide," added Bono.

To examine gender bias in perceptions of derailment potential, the authors conducted four studies. 

Two studies analysed data collected on nearly 50,000 managers enrolled in leadership development programmes and the other two were experimental studies where managers examined performance reviews of two fictitious employees whose only difference was their gender.

Bono and her colleagues found that when evaluating managers who exhibited equal levels of ineffective interpersonal behaviours, supervisors were more likely to predict derailment for women managers than for men. 

Because of these negative assessments, female managers receive less mentoring.

"Sponsorship and mentoring are even more important for women than men because women are typically are less connected to those higher in the corporate hierarchy in part because there are more men than women at higher levels," Bono added in the study published in the journal Personnel Psychology.

Bono emphasises that the negative assessments female managers receive from male supervisors are not purposeful or nefarious.

"Don't think of the bias exhibited here as behaviour of bad people who don't want women to get ahead. Rather, we expect women to be nicer than men, because that's what our society has told us to expect. These beliefs influence our behaviors, often without our awareness," the author said.

​New York, Oct 4 (IANS) Driven by burning of fossil fuels, which consumes oxygen and produces carbon dioxide, the rate of oxygen decline from the Earth's atmosphere has speeded up over the past 100 years, says a study.

Researchers from Princeton University compiled 30 years of data to construct the first ice core-based record of atmospheric oxygen concentrations spanning the past 800,000 years, according to the paper published in the journal Science.

The record showed that atmospheric oxygen has declined 0.7 per cent relative to current atmospheric-oxygen concentrations, a reasonable pace by geological standards, the researchers said. 

During the past 100 years, however, atmospheric oxygen has declined by a comparatively speedy 0.10 per cent because of the burning of fossil fuels, which consumes oxygen and produces carbon dioxide.

"This record represents an important benchmark for the study of the history of atmospheric oxygen," said Assistant Professor of Geosciences John Higgins.

"Understanding the history of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere is intimately connected to understanding the evolution of complex life," Higgins noted.

Curiously, the decline in atmospheric oxygen over the past 800,000 years was not accompanied by any significant increase in the average amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, though carbon dioxide concentrations do vary over individual ice age cycles. 

To explain this apparent paradox, the researchers called upon a theory for how the global carbon cycle, atmospheric carbon dioxide and the Earth's temperature are linked on geologic timescales.

"The planet has various processes that can keep carbon dioxide levels in check," said first author Daniel Stolper.

The researchers discussed a process known as "silicate weathering" in particular, wherein carbon dioxide reacts with exposed rock to produce, eventually, calcium carbonate minerals, which trap carbon dioxide in a solid form. 

As temperatures rise due to higher carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, silicate-weathering rates are hypothesised to increase and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere faster.

The study suggests that the extra carbon dioxide emitted due to declining oxygen concentrations in the atmosphere stimulated silicate weathering, which stabilised carbon dioxide but allowed oxygen to continue to decline.

"The Earth can take care of extra carbon dioxide when it has hundreds of thousands or millions of years to get its act together. In contrast, humankind is releasing carbon dioxide today so quickly that silicate weathering can't possibly respond fast enough," Higgins noted.

"The Earth has these long processes that humankind has short-circuited," Higgins said.

The researchers built their history of atmospheric oxygen using measured ratios of oxygen-to-nitrogen found in air trapped in Antarctic ice. This method was established by co-author Michael Bender.

​New York, Oct 4 (IANS) Electrifying brain circuits could treat neurological and psychiatric symptoms not because it causes neurons to fire but it creates an environment that makes it more or less likely for neurons to fire, researchers, including one of Indian-origin, have found.

Rather than taking medication, a growing number of people who suffer from chronic pain, epilepsy and drug cravings are zapping their skulls -- using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) -- in the hope that a weak electric current will jolt them back to health.

"Although this therapy is taking off at the grassroots level and in academia (with an exponential increase in publications), evidence that tDCS does what is being promised is not conclusive," said the study's senior author Danny J.J. Wang, Professor of neurology at Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, University of Southern California in the US.

In this study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers developed an MRI method whereby the magnetic fields induced by tDCS currents can be visualised in living humans

"Scientists don't yet understand the mechanisms at work, which prevents the FDA from regulating the therapy. Our study is the first step to experimentally map the tDCS currents in the brain and to provide solid data so researchers can develop science-based treatment," Wang noted.

People in antiquity used electric fish to zap away headaches, but tDCS, as it is now known, was introduced in 2000, said study lead author Mayank Jog, a graduate student conducting research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California, Los Angeles.

"Since then, this noninvasive, easy-to-use, low-cost technology has been shown to improve cognition as well as treat clinical symptoms," Jog said.

The study is a technological breakthrough, study co-author Maron Bikson, Professor at The City College of New York, noted.

"You cannot characterise what you cannot see, so this is a pivotal step in the development of tDCS technology," Bikson said.

The researchers validated their MRI algorithm with a phantom, where the current path and induced magnetic field was known. 

Then they tested the method using simple biological tissue -- a human calf. Finally, they repeated the process on the scalp of 12 healthy volunteers.

After 20 to 30 minutes in a scanner, the new algorithm produced an image of the magnetic field tDCS created. 

​New York, Oct 4 (IANS) Researchers have developed a new technology that could allow non-invasive testing of glucose levels, via a contact lens that samples glucose levels in tears.

Current method to monitor glucose levels involve a medication process along with a painful fingerpick blood test.

Glucose is a good target for optical sensing, and can be used as an alternative approach, the study said. 

"It should be noted that glucose is present not only in the blood but also in tears, and thus accurate monitoring of the glucose level in human tears by employing a contact-lens-type sensor can be an alternative approach for non-invasive glucose monitoring," said Wei-Chuan Shih, Associate Professor at University of Houston in Texas, US. 

The researchers developed a tiny device built with multiple layers of gold nanowires and gold film that was produced, using solvent assisted nanotransfer printing.

This component strengthens a technique called surface-enhanced Raman scattering -- named after Indian physicist C.V. Raman, who discovered the effect first in 1928 -- which gauges how light interacts with a material to determine its molecular composition, the researchers stated.

Further, the device enhances the sensing properties of the technique by creating "hot spots" or narrow gaps within the nanostructure which intensified the Raman signal.

Traditional nanofabrication techniques rely on a hard substrate -- usually glass or a silicon wafer -- but researchers wanted a flexible nanostructure which would be more suited to wearable electronics, Shih said. 

The layered nanoarray was produced on a hard substrate but lifted off and printed onto a soft contact, Shih said in the paper published in the journal Advanced Materials.

Although non-invasive glucose sensing is just one potential application of the technology, it provided a good way to prove the technology, he said. 

Moreover, the device is also an effective mechanism for using surface-enhanced Raman scattering spectroscopy.