Knowledge Update

​Sydney, Sep 28 (IANS) Cinnamon just not enhances taste but significantly contributes in improving health by cooling the body by up to two degrees, according to research.

The research published in the journal Scientific Reports said that the investigators used pigs for the study and found that cinnamon maintained the integrity of the stomach wall.

"When pigs feed at room temperature, carbon dioxide (CO2) gas increases in their stomach. Cinnamon in their food reduces this gas by decreasing the secretion of gastric acid and pepsin from the stomach walls, which in turn cools the pigs' stomachs during digestion," said Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh, Professor at the RMIT's School of Engineering.

The researchers have developed swallowable gas sensor capsules or smart pills which the by-product of digestion and could provide valuable insights into the functioning and health of the gut.

"Our experiments with pigs and cinnamon show how swallowable gas sensor capsules can help provide new physiological information that will improve our understanding of diet or medicine. They are a highly reliable device for monitoring and diagnosing gastrointestinal disorders," Kalantar-zadeh added.

​Palo Alto (California), Sep 28 (IANS) Rapid urbanisation, changing demographics, hyper globalisation and accelerated innovation will shape the future of technology in the next 30 years for countries like India and HP is ready to address these with its advanced research centre HP Labs, a tops executive has said.

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of HP Labs here on Tuesday, the printer and laptop major said the research centre was dedicated to develop technology to improve the lives of people globally.

"This is a company on the move and while we are on the move, we have a simple vision to make life better for everyone, everywhere," Dion Weisler, President and Chief Executing Officer, HP, told select mediapersons here.

The vision of blended reality drives the research at HP Labs. 

"Blended reality fuses digital and physical worlds to create new and improved experiences for people at home, at work and on the go," added Shane Wall, Chief Technology Officer, HP and and global head of HP Labs.

In 1991, there were 10 mega cities (defined as having more than 10 million people). 

By 2030, there will be over 40 mega cities and by the end of 30 year time frame, there will be over 50 mega cities.

"Those mega cities will be largely located outside of the mature markets. In fact, most of them are going to be in India, China and Africa," Wall noted. 

On the changing demographics trend, Wall said that 97 per cent of the world's growth will be in emerging markets like India and China and only three per cent will occur in the US and Western Europe.

"By 2025, over half of Fortune 500 companies will be outside the US," Wall noted.

Accelerated innovation in the form of tablets, phablets and PCs that surround us are going to be billion times more powerful 10 years down the line than today.

"HP's vision of blended reality highlights four emerging technologies --3D transformation, Internet of All Things, hyper mobility and microfluidics," the chief technology officer added.

According to Wall, 3D transformation in the form of 3D printing will serve as the next industrial revolution that will transform and disrupt manufacturing, supply chains and the way we live.

It also includes designing in digital way and Wall believes that industry will move to digital manufacturing.

Internet of All Things includes tables, chairs and everything that moves and can be tracked through a supply chain.

"The vision we are driving to is the Internet of All Things," Wall said.

Microfluidics, or labs-on-a-chip is also the next big thing and the last research effort will focus on hypermobility.

"We stare at our phones 137 times a day. In the future, the 'phone' will be on us, either as a wearable or 'on your body, attached to your body, a part of your body,' Wall pointed out.

"The entire way we manufacture will moved to digital manufacturing: How do we take the technologies we have and apply them in areas of health care and life sciences to have a profound effect on life?" the HP Labs global head told the media.

​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.