Knowledge Update

​New York, Sep 28 (IANS) Sustained financial hardship early in life may put youngsters at risk of developing worse cognitive functions as well as premature ageing, a study has found.

"Income is dynamic and individuals are likely to experience income changes and mobility especially between young adulthood and midlife," said lead investigator Adina Zeki Al Hazzouri from University of Miami.

"The study places economic hardship as the pathway to cognitive ageing and as an important contributor to premature ageing among economically disadvantaged populations," Hazzouri added. 

The researchers found strong and graded associations between exposure to economic hardship and worse cognitive function, especially in processing speed. 

In the study, individuals with all-time poverty performed significantly worse than individuals never in poverty. 

Similar results were observed in persons with perceived financial difficulty, the reseachers said.

Previous research has shown that exposure to poor socio-economic conditions during childhood, adulthood or cumulatively is associated with cognitive deficits. 

However, most of these studies involved older adults and so there is little data on whether economic adversity influences cognitive health much earlier in a person's life.

For the new study, the team examined the effects of sustained poverty and perceived financial difficulty on cognitive function in midlife using income data for about 3,400 adults in US, aged between 18 to 30, at the start of the study in 1985-86.

Sustained poverty was defined as the percentage of time the participants' household income was less than 200 per cent of the federal poverty level. 

Participants were divided into four groups: never in poverty, less than one-third of the time, from one-third to nearly 100 per cent of the time, or always in poverty. 

In 2010, at a mean age of 50 years, participants underwent three tests that are considered reliable to detect cognitive ageing. 

"It is important to monitor how trends in income and other social and economic parameters influence health outcomes," Hazzouri said in a paper published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

​New York, Sep 28 (IANS) In a groundbreaking feat, a team of biomedical engineers has successfully implanted lab-grown artificial blood vessels in young lambs which are capable of growth within the recipient.

If confirmed in humans, these new vessel grafts would prevent the need for repeated surgeries in some children with congenital heart defects, said the team from the University of Minnesota.

"This might be the first time we have an 'off-the-shelf' material that doctors can implant in a patient and it can grow in the body," said professor Robert Tranquillo from the University of Minnesota Department of Biomedical Engineering.

"In the future, this could potentially mean one surgery instead of five or more surgeries that some children with heart defects have before adulthood," he added.

One of the greatest challenges in vessel bioengineering is designing a vessel that will grow with its new owner.

In this study, Tranquillo and his colleagues generated vessel-like tubes in the lab from a post-natal donor's skin cells and then removed the cells to minimise the chance of rejection.

When implanted in a lamb, the tube was then repopulated by the recipient's own cells allowing it to grow.

To develop the material for the study, researchers combined sheep skin cells in a gelatin-like material, called fibrin, in the form of a tube and then rhythmically pumped in nutrients necessary for cell growth.

The researchers then used special detergents to wash away all the sheep cells, leaving behind a cell-free matrix that does not cause immune reaction when implanted.

The vessel graft replaced a part of the pulmonary artery in three lambs at five weeks of age.

The implanted vessels were soon populated by the lambs' own cells, causing the vessel to bend its shape and grow together with the recipient until adulthood.

"What's important is that when the graft was implanted in the sheep, the cells repopulated the blood vessel tube matrix," Tranquillo noted.

"If the cells don't repopulate the graft, the vessel can't grow. This is the perfect marriage between tissue engineering and regenerative medicine where tissue is grown in the lab," he added in a paper published in the journal Nature Communications.

At 50 weeks of age, the sheep's blood vessel graft had increased 56 per cent in diameter and the amount of blood that could be pumped through the vessel increased 216 per cent.

No adverse effects such as clotting, vessel narrowing or calcification were observed.

Tranquillo said the next step is talking with doctors to determine the feasibility of requesting approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for human clinical trials within the next few years.

​London, Sep 25 (IANS) Strong cross-societal cliches about people from different nations may influence decisions and willingness to cooperate, finds a study.

For the study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers invited 1,200 people from Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Mexico and the US to take part in an online game with one another.

To learn about how the participants formed their expectations, they were subsequently asked about how they assessed their co-players -- on the basis of criteria for assuming a willingness to cooperate: Trustworthy, friendly, generous or likeable. 

The researchers also asked the participants about other characteristics like to specify how attractive, spiritual, sociable, sporty and wealthy they considered the others to be.

The study revealed that the players hold strong beliefs that are influenced by nation-specific cliches about the behaviour of their co-players. 

The researchers had already shown in previous study how differently US Americans assess the willingness to cooperate of partners from other countries. For example, they expect a high degree of willingness from the Japanese, but a very low level of willingness from Israelis or Indians. 

Paradoxically, people from Israel assume a very high level of cooperation from partners in the US and cooperate for their part. The Japanese are essentially more pessimistic about the cooperative behaviour of other nationalities; Germany ranks at an average level in this regard for the Japanese.

The participants thus behave according to stereotypes, even though these ultimately prove to be false and actually correlate negatively with reality. This prompted the researchers to compare the expected contributions with the actual results. 

Participants, for instance, often expect very cooperative behaviour from the Japanese in the test, which ultimately is not the case - most likely because the Japanese do not expect a great deal of cooperation from others. 

These stereotypes have a negative effect on the Israelis - a lower level of willingness to cooperate is generally expected from them, even though they are fully prepared to share.

"There can often be some truth in stereotypes, but if we unjustly judge people wrongly, then our responses are also wrong. This alone should make us more aware," said Angela Rachael Dorrough, Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.

​New York, Sep 25 (IANS) A method to measure the limit to which human skin can be stretched has been developed by US researchers, which could help to grow new skin for burn victims.

"Surgeons use a variety of techniques to grow skin for tissue expansion procedures designed to grow skin in one region of the body so that it can be auto-grafted on to another site (sometimes used for burn victims)," said Guy German, Assistant Professor at the Binghamton University in New York, US.

This procedure stretches the skin, typically, by inflating a balloon with air or silicone under the surface. Skin grows more in regions where it is stretched -- during pregnancy, for instance -- but stretch it too much and the tissue might break.

"Our predictive technique could be employed in this field as a method of predicting the limit to which the skin could be stretched," German added.

The outermost layer of skin, the stratum corneum, regulates water loss from the body and protects underlying living tissue from germs and the environment, in general. It is pretty tough, protecting the body from extreme temperatures, rough surfaces, and most paper edges.

In the study, assuming that the skin is smooth and without major cracks, the researchers looked how the toughness of skin varied significantly in relation to its water content. They found dry skin is brittle and easier to break than hydrated skin.

Then, they used advanced imaging to track skin deformation and stretching which, combined with the structure of the skin itself, correlates to where cracks in skin begin.

This can help scientists and doctors predict where fractures may occur in the future, the study said.

They also found that cracks in the skin are not straight; instead they follow topographical ridges of skin, which have triangular patterns.

In addition, the team proved that most fractures propagate along cell-cell junctions rather than breaking the cells themselves. This does not always happen, but it suggests that cell junctions are structurally the weakest points of the skin, they said.

The results could help create new topical medical creams, soaps and cosmetic products. It may also be used in more extreme cases.

This work also sets the stage for a variety of future studies assessing changes in skin composition, environmental pH, or bacterial colonisation on skin's toughness, German noted, in the paper published in the journal Acta Biomaterialia.

New York, Sep 25 (IANS) Although eye wearable device Google Glass did not take off as it was projected to be, the device is helping Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and paramedics communicate with ease with doctors during emergencies.

The augmented-reality headset is being used by paramedics and EMTs assessing patients and them consult with surgeons and doctors at the hospital in real time, Popular Science reported.

"During disasters, emergency rooms typically get overwhelmed. So when truly injured patients show up later, we have nowhere to put them," said Peter Chai, emergency medical physician at the University of Massachusetts' Medical School (UMMS).

UMMS is set to organise a drill this fall with first responders wearing Google Glass to see if it improves emergency assessment.

The university will also deploy a drone equipped with heat sensors to help find patients and determine which ones need the most urgent attention.

Stanford University is also using Google Glass to help kids with autism.

The university's Autism Glass Project provides families with facial recognition software that helps interpret facial expressions.

New York, Sep 25 (IANS) In a study having far-reaching implications like helping preserve the environment through reducing excess carbon expelled by humans into the atmosphere, an international research team has catalogued surface ocean viruses treble the number of those known hitherto.

The study, led by scientists from Ohio State University, in the US, including University of Michigan biologist Melissa Duhaime, catalogues triple the number of known types of viruses living in waters around the globe and is expected to provide scientists a better idea about what role they play in nature.

Microbes in the oceans make half of the oxygen humans breathe, making viruses that infect these microbes particularly important.

"Our work not only provides a relatively complete catalogue of surface ocean viruses, but also reveals new ways that viruses modulate greenhouse gases and energy in the oceans," said lead author Simon Roux of Ohio State.

The researchers processed viral samples collected by scientists aboard two exploration ships to Antarctica.

Roux analysed genetic information from those samples to catalogue 15,222 genetically distinct viruses and group them into 867 clusters that share similar properties.

"Ten years ago I would never have dreamed that we could establish such an extensive catalogue of ocean organisms around the world," added Matthew Sullivan, the study's senior author and an associate professor of microbiology.

"Scientists around the world are revealing how microbes impact our bodies, soil, air and oceans. As we improve our ability to study viruses, we're seeing the role viruses play in these microbial functions," Sullivan noted.

"These findings have implications far beyond ocean viral diversity and will help us better understand microbial diversity on a global scale," added Duhaime in a paper published online in the journal Nature.

​London, Sep 26 (IANS) Researching about the the early origins of the common house cat , a new DNA study has found that the felines travelled the world with farmers and Vikings.

The findings showed that there appeared to be two big migration waves of ancient cats -- the first occurred not long after the development of agriculture by humans and the second shortly after the domestication of cats in ancient Egypt approximately 4,000 years ago, said Eva-Maria Geigl, an evolutionary geneticist at the Institut Jacques Monod in France. 

The first wave was the result of agriculture by humans.

Small cats came into contact with the humans as an increased populations of rodents started consuming the grains they grew.

A link between cats in the Fertile Crescent -- a region in the Middle East and other parts of the Mediterranean, confirmed this, the researchers said. 

The second wave occurred several thousand years later and appeared to be driven by human migrations out of Egypt. 

Due to farmers and seafaring travellers taking cats along with them to reduce rat and mouse populations, cats were found in Egypt and throughout Eurasia as well as parts of Africa.

In addition, the researchers also found that the fierce Vikings apparently had a soft spot for little kitties and one of them was found buried alongside its master in a common grave site that was dated back 1000 years. 

To learn more about the ancestry of the cat, the researchers obtained mitochondrial DNA samples of 209 cats from multiple archaeological sites around the world. 

The ages of the remains ranged from approximately 15,000 years ago to just 300 years ago. 

The study was presented at International Symposium on Biomolecular Archaeology 2016 at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, in Britain.

Tokyo, Sep 26 (IANS) Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are potentially more exposed to reproaches, say researchers in a study that aimed to find the effect of punishment in children with the disorder.

Children with ADHD often get into trouble with their parents, teachers and friends, for their elevated activity levels, impulsive actions and difficulty in focusing. 

The findings showed that children with ADHD try to avoid punishment more often over time than other children without the disorder. 

On the other hand, for children without the disorder, punishment seemed to be less distractive as they keep their focus on winning.

"If a child with ADHD is reluctant in doing a task, or if the child gives up easily, it might be important for the parent or the teacher to check if the task has the appropriate balance of reward and punishment," said Gail Tripp, Professor at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), in Japan. 

"The task may not have punishment built in, rather the effort needed to do the task might be perceived as punishing by the child," Tripp added. 

For children without ADHD, the more effortful a task is, the more incentives a child is going to need to keep persisting.

"Simple but frequent rewards, such as smiles or words of encouragements, can help children with ADHD to stay on the task," Tripp suggested. 

The same could be said for children without the disorder, but this is especially important for children with ADHD, as they seem more sensitive to repeated experiences of punishment or failure, and are more likely to miss opportunities for success, the researchers said. 

For the study, a team of researchers involved 210 children from Japan and New Zealand. Out of these, 145 were diagnosed with ADHD. 

Both groups of children had to chose between playing two simultaneously available computer-based games that were engaging but still incorporated an element of punishment. 

In both games, when a child won, the computer gave him or her 10 points and played a simple animation. But when a child lost, the computer took away five points and played a laughing sound. 

Over time, the children with ADHD found losing points and the laughter more punishing than children without the disorder. They were also much less likely to play the more punishing game, the researchers concluded.

The results are published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

One of the major concerns in strategic planning for any organization is to have good Succession planning to ensure that the organization will move in the right direction to achieve objectives and also continue the legacy of the founders.  Succession planning drives company leadership development process and it assumes equal weights along with the strategic plan. However many people from CEO to the lower level managers consider the word "succession Planning" a taboo. Planning your exit is like scheduling your own funeral, and it evokes fears and emotions long hidden under layers of defense mechanisms and imperceptible habits. Many executives believe that leadership development is a job for the Human Resource department. This is one of the major misconceptions that managers can have. Succession planning should happen at all levels of management to ensure smooth functioning of the organization at all times.

In UAE context we have many business which are family run and there are many medium and small enterprises which continue to leave succession planning to chance in spite of knowing its importance. Succession planning in simple terms consist of selecting a successor, which includes identifying the potential successors, developing the criteria for selection, and designating the successor, communicating the decision, training the successor, developing the successor and defining the departing leaders role after succession if any. These steps need not be sequential and some can be performed simultaneously. Failure to plan for orderly business succession can result in both monetary losses and even closure of business.

In reality companies that are good at growing leaders like GE, senior managers are at the fore front of succession planning and leadership development. It is part of the manager's job to recognize subordinate's developmental needs, to help cultivate new skills and to provide them with opportunities for professional development and personal growth. One of the roles of manger is to mentor emerging leaders, from their own and other departments, passing on important knowledge and providing helpful evaluation and feedback during the process. In addition manager's own evaluation, development plans and promotions in turn depend on how successfully they nurture their subordinates.

Two important requirements for the succession planning to be successful at the workplace are one, the involvement of the board / directors/ founder/ CEO who will have to spend time to get to know the rising stars, and gauge the efficacy of the leadership. Second key requirement is creating a culture within the organization where all senior managers and head of the units share upcoming junior managers with other units. In this way the rising future leaders will gain exposure to the company's operations and also experience how various units collaborate and execute the strategy. Cross functional assignments also provide opportunities to master new business challenges.

Succession planning can be proactive and reactive. A proactive one is when people move into different areas for experience and training before they occupy key positions. Reactive succession planning is when the organizations frantically searches for appropriate candidate at the last second and end up either experiencing a steady attrition in talent or retaining people with outdated skills or promoting mediocre employees and end up low performing units.

 Some companies however have not only recognized the importance of including succession planning and leadership development on the board's agenda but also have taken steps to ensure that those items get the due attention to deliberate and take it forward. A proper succession planning not only provides stability to an organization to have a longer life span but also emerges as a successful firm with steady growth. Following are some of the benefits of succession planning:

Benefits of Succession Planning

• Aligning strategic goals and human resources to enable the "right people with right attitude in the right place at the right time" to achieve desired business results
• The development of qualified pools of candidates ready to fill critical or key positions
• Providing stability in leadership and other critical positions to sustain a high-performing public service and ensure uninterrupted delivery of services and programs to New Brunswickers
• Identifying workforce that needs to be retained and targeting necessary employee training and development
• Helping individuals realize their career plans and aspirations within the organization
• Improving employees' ability to respond to changing environmental demands, and
• The opportunity for timely corporate knowledge transfer

How to do a Succession Planning for your firm - A 5 Step Process

Step 1:  Identify critical positions

Critical positions are the focus of succession planning efforts.  Without these roles, the department or agency would be unable to effectively meet its business objectives.  Workforce projection data or demographic analysis is essential in identifying risk areas.  A risk assessment may also be conducted and compared to current and future vacancies to identify critical positions within your organization. 

Step 2:  Identify competencies

A clear understanding of capabilities needed for successful performance in critical positions is essential for guiding, learning and developing succession plans. Setting clear performance expectations and assessing performance follows plans. By completing the process of competency or position profiling within your organization, current and future employees gain an understanding of the key responsibilities of the position including the qualifications and behavioral and technical competencies required to perform them successfully.

Step 3:  Identify succession management strategies

After identifying critical positions profiles for competencies need to be prepared, the next step is to choose from a menu of several human resource strategies, including developing internal talent pools, onboarding and recruitment to address appropriate succession planning. 

Step 4: Document and implement succession plans

Once strategies have been identified, the next step is to document the strategies of succession plan into an action plan.  Action Plan provides a mechanism for clearly defining timelines and roles and responsibilities.   

Step 5:  Evaluate Effectiveness

To ensure that the department or agency's succession planning efforts are successful, it is important to systematically monitor workforce data, evaluate activities and make necessary adjustments.

 The best of succession planning programs share some common attributes. They are not stand-alone adhoc activities coordinated by the Human Resource Department, their development initiatives are embedded in every area of the business. From the board of directors, senior managers to the first level managers are deeply involved in evaluating managers and promote them mainly based on their contributions to the organization. By engaging managers and the board in this way, a company can align its succession planning process with its strategic priorities. Such coherence, identity and authenticity in succession planning makes it easier for the company to attract the future leaders it needs.

Succession planning is always an ongoing process and is never finished. On a regular basis, each organization must look at its needs and resources to determine where it needs to have successors in place or in the process of learning the requisite disciplines. Each organization also needs to determine how long a candidate should be involved or exposed to the training and development programs. The organizations should also focus on policies, procedures and practices and not on personalities. Succession planning is a matter of strong HR practices, not a matter of sudden crisis management. To be realistic succession must be planned years in advance of expected needs. To properly train a successor, the organization needs sufficient time to expose the personnel to the full spectrum of opportunities within the firm, as well as any desired or required outside education/ experience expected. Skillfully done succession planning will bring peace of mind to senior management, based on the understanding and expectations of its future leadership. Lot of time and resources are spend on succession planning to ensure that there is a smooth transition and should be integrated with the strategic plan of the organizations.

Prof. Sudhakar Kota

Dr. Ajith Kumar.V.V