Knowledge Update

Shanghai, March 27 (IANS) A China-made wearable robot, which can help disabled people walk, is expected to enter the market in one to two years, the developer has said. The Fourier X1, developed by Chinese technology start-up Fourier Intelligence, was unveiled in Shanghai earlier this month, Xinhua news agency reported. Gu Jie, CEO of Fourier, said the Fourier X1 weighed 20 kg and applied industrial design into the exoskeleton. It can assist with walking for people who have had a stroke or spinal cord injuries. He said the company aimed to make the robot more affordable than foreign models such as Israel-made ReWalk and Japanese-made Cyberdyne currently on the market. Prices of the Fourier X1 robots are expected to be a third cheaper than similar foreign models, which are sold between 600,000 yuan ($87,000) and 1 million yuan ($1,45000) each. Gu said the company was working to test and improve the robot's various functions such as sitting, standing, walking and climbing stairs. The Fourier X1 has four motors, two for the hips and two for the knees, as well as four batteries inside that enable it to work for seven hours. China has 80 million disabled people, many of them unable to walk. The global market for walk-assisting exoskeleton robots is estimated to exceed $1.8 billion by 2020.

Brisbane, March 27 (IANS) A team of palaeontologists has identified 150 tracks from 21 dinosaur species in Australia, the University of Queensland announced on Monday.

The discovery includes five different types of predatory dinosaur tracks, at least six types of tracks from long-necked herbivorous sauropods, four types of tracks from two-legged herbivorous ornithopods, and six types of tracks from armoured dinosaurs, the university said in a press release.

The diversity of the tracks is unparalleled, said Australian paleontologist Steve Salisbury, lead author of the study that was published in the 2016 Memoir of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, Efe news reported.

"Among the tracks is the only confirmed evidence for stegosaurus in Australia. There are also some of the largest dinosaur tracks ever recorded. Some of the sauropod tracks are around 1.7 metres long," he said in the statement.

Salisbury called the discovery "extremely significant" as it forms the primary record of non-avian dinosaurs in the western half of the continent and provides the only glimpse of Australia's dinosaur fauna during the first half of the Early Cretaceous Period.

The footprints were found in a rocky area, 127 to 140 million years old, in Walmadany, a region in western Australia containing thousands of dinosaur tracks, and which was listed as a National Heritage in 2011.

The newly-identified 150 tracks are older than most dinosaur fossils unearthed in the eastern part of Australia and which are thought to be between 90 and 115 million years old, added the release.

Members of the aboriginal group Goolarabooloo, traditional inhabitants of Walmadany, approached Salisbury and his team to research the tracks in the region after authorities chose the area to build a liquid natural gas processing plant.

These dinosaur tracks also form part of the Goolarabooloo's songs about Marella, also known as Emu Man, a creator being whose ancient footprints they believe appear and disappear along the coastline.

Washington, March 27 (IANS) NASA has partnered with real-time visualisation platform Epic Games' Unreal Engine to create a mixed reality International Space Station (ISS) that can provide an 'out of this world' environment for its astronauts and engineers, a media report said on Monday.

Unreal Engine's applications are designed to allow people to work in environments that are practically impossible to access for training and development.

The mixed reality ISS app sweeps astronauts-in-training off their feet with an "active response gravity offload system" techcruch.com reported. 

It works in conjunction with a robotic crane that makes the trainee feel like he or she would in micro-, lunar- or Martian gravity. 

Besides using the mixed reality system to train astronauts and engineers for life and work in orbit, NASA will use it to design new habitats, the techcruch.com report said.

Previously, astronaut training meant dives in a "neutral buoyancy lab," a giant pool that holds 6.2 million gallons of water and spending time at NASA's "space vehicle mock-up facility," a life-sized model of the space shuttle orbiter and parts of the ISS. 

These physical facilities have limited capacity, thus adding a mixed reality mock-up, alongside the physical facility, could allow astronauts-in-training a lot more time to hone their skills in a convincing simulator, the report said.

​Brasilia, March 26 (IANS) China, one of the first countries to suspend imports of Brazilian meat following revelations that companies were selling unsafe produce for years, has decided to fully reopen its market, a top minister said.

​London, March 26 (IANS) A group of researchers has demonstrated that both humans and smartphones show a degree of error in distinguishing face morph photos from their 'real' faces on fraudulent identity cards.

Researchers at the University of York in Britain investigated what the success rate would be like if two faces were morphed together to create a "new" face.

"We use photo ID all the time, not just at borders, and we know that people are not very accurate when matching the photo to the real face," said Professor Mike Burton from University of York's Department of Psychology.

"In recent years, we have seen more examples of photo IDs that have been created by morphing two faces together, which can be used as fraudulent ID by both parties. Our research is important in highlighting the potential security problem with this and quantifying the risk of this type of fraud being missed," Burton added.

In their study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, the researchers found that initially human viewers were 68 per cent of the time unable to distinguish a 50/50 morph photo from its contributing photos.

However, after simply briefing the viewers to look out for manipulated, "fraudulent" images, the error rate dropped greatly to 21 per cent.

The team also looked at smartphone software, which achieved similar results to briefed human viewers, with an error rate of 27 per cent.

These rates, however, are still significantly higher than error rates when comparing two photos of entirely different people.

"Raising awareness of this type of fraud and including it in training schemes for frontline staff can help overcome these issues and with new technologies coming on line, it should be a challenge that can be tackled with some success," Burton added.

​London, March 25 (IANS) Stem cell therapy can potentially reduce lung damage caused by chronic inflammation in conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and cystic fibrosis, research from a pre-clinical trial has revealed.

In the study, the researchers investigated the effectiveness of Mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) therapy in a mouse model of chronic inflammatory lung disease, which can lead to reduced lung function and eventually respiratory failure. 

The results showed that inflammation was significantly reduced in the group receiving MSC therapy. 

"The preliminary findings demonstrate the potential effectiveness of MSC treatment as a means of repairing the damage caused by chronic lung diseases such as COPD," said Declan Doherty from Queens University Belfast in Britain.

The study was presented at the European Respiratory Society's Lung Science Conference in Portugal.

Further, the cell counts for both monocytic cells and neutrophils -- both signs of inflammation -- were significantly reduced after MSC therapy. 

Analysis of lung tissue revealed reduction in inflammation in the lung and significant improvements in lung structure, suggesting that this form of treatment has the potential to repair the damaged lung, the researchers said.

"The ability to counteract inflammation in the lungs by utilising the combined anti-inflammatory and reparative properties of MSCs could potentially reduce the inflammatory response in individuals with chronic lung disease whilst also restoring lung function in these patients," Doherty added. 

Mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) therapy is currently being investigated as a promising therapeutic approach for a number of incurable, degenerative lung diseases.

​London, March 25 (IANS) A record breaking brown dwarf -- a star too small for nuclear fusion -- with the purest composition and the highest mass yet known has been identified by an international team of astronomers.

The object, known as SDSS J0104+1535, is a member of the so-called halo - the outermost reaches of our Galaxy -- and is made up of the most ancient stars, the scientists reported in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

"We really didn't expect to see brown dwarfs that are this pure. Having found one though often suggests a much larger hitherto undiscovered population - I'd be very surprised if there aren't many more similar objects out there waiting to be found," said lead authors ZengHua Zhang from the Institute of Astrophysics in the Canary Islands in Spain.

Located 750 light years away in the constellation of Pisces, SDSS J0104+1535 is made of gas that is around 250 times purer than the Sun, so consists of more than 99.99 per cent hydrogen and helium. 

It is estimated to have formed about 10 billion years ago and measurements also suggest it has a mass equivalent to 90 times that of Jupiter, making it the most massive brown dwarf found to date.

SDSS J0104+1535 has been classified as an L type ultra-subdwarf using its optical and near-infrared spectrum, measured using the European Southern Observatory's "Very Large Telescope" (VLT). This classification was based on a scheme very recently established by Zhang.

Brown dwarfs are intermediate between planets and fully-fledged stars. Their mass is too small for full nuclear fusion of hydrogen to helium (with a consequent release of energy) to take place, but they are usually significantly more massive than planets.

It was previously not known if brown dwarfs could form from such primordial gas, and the discovery points the way to a larger undiscovered population of extremely pure brown dwarfs from our Galaxy's ancient past.

San Francisco, March 24 (IANS) US tech giant Apple has acquireed 'Workflow,' a popular iOS tool that allows users combine the functionalities of various apps together to automate normally complex processes, media reported on Friday.

New York, March 24 (IANS) Tech giant Google has introduced shortcuts on the Google Search app for Android, iOS and Google.com on the mobile web that gives users the ability to explore deeper within topics they care about.

​New York, March 24 (IANS) Researchers have found a way to make the normally brittle material of glass bend and flex, adding a new level of flexibility to the microscopic world of medical devices.

The research opens up the ability to create a new family of lab-on-a-chip devices based on flexing glass.

"If you keep the movements to the nanoscale, glass can still snap back into shape," said lead researcher Aaron Hawkins, Professor at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, US.

"We've created glass membranes that can move up and down and bend," Hawkins added.

Glass has some great perks. It is stiff and solid and not a material upon which things react, it's easy to clean, and it is not toxic, according to lead study author John Stout from Brigham Young University.

"Glass is clean for sensitive types of samples, like blood samples," Stout said. 

"Working with this glass device will allow us to look at particles of any size and at any given range. It will also allow us to analyse the particles in the sample without modifying them," Stout added.

While current lab-on-a-chip membrane devices effectively function on the microscale, the new research, published in the journal Applied Physics Letters, will allow equally effective work at the nanoscale. 

Chemists and biologists could use the nanoscale devices to move, trap and analyse very small biological particles like proteins, viruses and DNA.

The researchers believe their device could also mean performing successful tests using much smaller quantities of a substance. 

Instead of needing several ounces to run a blood test, the glass membrane device created by the researchers would only require a drop or two of blood.