Knowledge Update

​Beijing, Jan 16 (IANS) China will quadruple its new energy vehicle annual output to 2 million by 2020, a Cabinet Minister said.

Citing a government plan, Industry and Information Technology Minister Miao Wei said at a Beijing forum over the weekend that by 2025, at least one in every five cars sold in

​London, Jan 16 (IANS) As members of the European Union back a draft resolution to grant legal status to robots, in order to understand this proposal one needs to look at corporations which carry legal responsibility but aren't recognised as having human rights or seen as individuals, say experts.

​Beijing, Jan 16 (IANS) The Airbus is expected to deliver its first A330 aircraft in September 2017, a company statement said on Monday.

According to Airbus, by 2019 the Airbus China site in Tianjin, which is next to Beijing, will reach stable production capacity, completing and delivering two A330 wide-body

​Rome, Jan 16 (IANS/AKI) The world's largest glasses maker Luxottica has agreed to a 46 billion euro merger with rival French eye wear firm Essilor to create a global colossus with revenues of more than 15 billion euros, the firms said on Monday.

​London, Jan 16 (IANS) Channel 4 and Cancer Research UK have teamed up to air a colonoscopy being performed live on a patient in what the two organisations claim is the world's first TV ad showing a live surgical procedure.

The 90-second TV ad, which will rather incongruously air at 3.25 p.m. on Wednesday during the property programme "A Place In The Sun", will demonstrate an operation to remove two bowel polyps from inside Philip McSparron, the Guardian reported on Monday.

McSparron, who started getting regular screenings for cancer after his brother's bowel cancer was spotted in early 2010, said he hoped the live broadcast of his procedure would show people that it is "not something to be frightened of".

"Hopefully people will be interested in seeing the live footage and it will encourage them to be more willing to talk about cancer and think about taking up regular screening," he said. McSparron is not being paid for his appearance in the ad.

The surgery will be performed at the Cardiff and Vale University hospital, who will give a running commentary on what viewers are seeing.

The TV ad, titled Live from the Inside, will be promoted from Monday with 10-second teaser trails on Channel 4.

The charity will simultaneously stream the ad on Facebook, with a cancer nurse to field questions posted by social media users. 

Channel 4 will also simultaneously broadcast the event across its social media accounts.

In 2008, 2.2 million viewers watched the live broadcast of a team skydive in a three-minute ad for Honda. 

Almost 170,000 viewers tuned in just to watch the TV advert. It was the first live ad broadcast on UK TV.

New York, Jan 16 (IANS) Researchers from Harvard University have developed a multiregional brain-on-a-chip that models the connectivity between three distinct regions of the brain.

The in-vitro model was used to extensively characterise the differences between neurons from different regions of the brain and to mimic the system's connectivity.

"The brain is so much more than individual neurons. When modelling the brain, you need to be able to recapitulate that connectivity because there are many different diseases that attack those connections," said Ben Maoz, a postdoctoral fellow in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). 

Researchers from the Disease Biophysics Group at SEAS and the Wyss Institute modelled three regions of the brain most affected by schizophrenia - the amygdala, hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.

They began by characterising the cell composition, protein expression, metabolism, and electrical activity of neurons from each region in vitro.

"It's no surprise that neurons in distinct regions of the brain are different but it is surprising just how different they are," added Stephanie Dauth, co-first author of the paper.

"We found that the cell-type ratio, the metabolism, the protein expression and the electrical activity all differ between regions in vitro. This shows that it does make a difference which brain region's neurons you're working with," Dauth noted.

The team then looked at how these neurons change when they're communicating with one another. 

"When the cells are communicating with other regions, the cellular composition of the culture changes, the electrophysiology changes, all these inherent properties of the neurons change," said Maoz in a paper published in the Journal of Neurophysiology. 

The team doped different regions of the brain with the drug Phencyclidine hydrochloride -- commonly known as PCP -- which simulates schizophrenia. 

The brain-on-a-chip allowed the researchers for the first time to look at both the drug's impact on the individual regions as well as its downstream effect on the interconnected regions in vitro.

"The brain-on-a-chip could be useful for studying any number of neurological and psychiatric diseases, including drug addiction, post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury," the authors wrote.

Colombo, Jan 15 (IANS) Sri Lanka is building a mega port city project in its capital Colombo that will transform the country into an international financial and business hub in the Indian Ocean region in the coming years.

New York, Jan 15 (IANS) If you can spare 20 minutes everyday for moderate exercise, it will stimulate your immune system and make you less prone to diseases like arthritis and fibromyalgia, a new research has found. Scientists at the University of California (UC) in San Diego found one session of moderate exercise can act as an anti-inflammatory. "Our study found one session of about 20 minutes of moderate treadmill exercise resulted in a five per cent decrease in the number of stimulated immune cells producing TNF," said Suzi Hong from UC. Scientists noted that during exercise, the brain and sympathetic nervous system are activated, enabling the body to carry out work while the hormones that are released into the blood stream trigger adrenergic receptors, which immune cells possess. According to the researchers, exercises do not have to be intense to have anti-inflammatory effects, but a moderate session would suffice. "Patients with chronic inflammatory diseases should always consult with their physician regarding the appropriate treatment plan, but knowing that exercise can act as an anti-inflammatory is an exciting step forward in possibilities," Hong noted in a study published in Brain, Behaviour and Immunity.

​London, Jan 15 (IANS) If you think playfulness is associated only with childhood, you may be wrong. A new study suggests that playfulness in adults is a positive trait which may help them to see things from new perspectives, turn monotonous tasks into something interesting as well as help them when choosing partners and in romantic relationships. The study showed that playful people are able to reinterpret situations in their lives so that they experience them as entertaining or are able to reduce stress levels. People who describe themselves as playful are also viewed by others as such. Playfulness should not be equated with humour. Instead we need a new vocabulary to describe it, said Rene Proyer from Martin Luther University (MLU) in Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. "Playfulness is an independent personality trait that shares certain aspects with five global dimensions -- including extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience and emotional stability that are frequently used to describe personality -- but which cannot be interchanged," Proyer explained. In the study, the researchers identified four basic types of playful adults. "There are people who like to fool around with friends and acquaintances. We describe this as other-directed playfulness. By contrast, light-heartedly playful people regard their whole life as a type of game," Proyer said. Another category includes people who like to play with thoughts and ideas -- this describes intellectual playfulness. These people are able to turn monotonous tasks into something interesting. The psychologist describes the final group as being whimsically playful. "These people tend to be interested in strange and unusual things and are amused by small day-to-day observations." Conversely, playfulness in adults has also been associated with negative connotations. Playful people are sometimes not taken seriously or are seen as unreliable, as they may easily change perspectives to find unusual and novel solutions, to complex problems. The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

​New York, Jan 15 (IANS) A new image analysis technique can use cell phone images to quickly find and track important biological molecules, including tell-tale signs of disease.

Developed by scientists from the University of Southern California (USC), "Hyper-Spectral Phasor" analysis, or HySP, has the ability to look at many different molecules in one pass.

"By looking at multiple targets or watching targets move over time, we can get a much better view of what is actually happening within complex living systems," said Francesco Cutrale from the USC.

The study says that one day it might also be possible for clinicians to use HySP to analyse cell phone pictures of skin lesions to determine if they are at risk of being cancerous.

Clinicians could examine the patient further to be certain of a diagnosis and respond appropriately.

Researchers use fluorescent imaging to locate proteins and other molecules in cells and tissues that works by tagging the molecules with dyes that glow under certain kinds of light.

"Both scientists at the bench and scientists at the clinic will be able to perform their work faster and with greater confidence in the results," Cutrale said in a study published in the journal Nature Methods.