Knowledge Update

New York, Oct 18 (IANS) Researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard Medical School have developed a biocompatible and highly stretchable optical fiber which can be implanted in the body to deliver therapeutic pulses of light or light up at the first sign of disease.

According to the study, the researchers suggested that such stretchable, strain-sensing optical fibers could be implanted or fitted along the length of a patient's arm or leg to monitor for signs of improving mobility.

The study also suggested that the fibers may also serve as sensors, lighting up in response to signs of disease.

"We may be able to use optical fibers for long-term diagnostics, to optically monitor tumors or inflammation. The applications can be impactful," said Xuanhe Zhao, Associate Professor, MIT in the study published in the journal Advanced Materials.

The fiber, made from hydrogel is as bendable and is an elastic, rubbery material composed mostly of water and may serve as a long-lasting implant that would bend and twist with the body without breaking down.

Using light to activate neurons in the brain, which is a highly active field known as optogenetics, in which researchers delivered short pulses of light to targeted tissues using needle-like fibers, through which they shine light from an LED source.

"But the brain is like a bowl of Jell-O, whereas these fibers are like glass -- very rigid, which can possibly damage brain tissues. If these fibers could match the flexibility and softness of the brain, they could provide long-term more effective stimulation and therapy," Zhao added.

For the study, the researchers began to play with the fiber's optical properties, to see if they could design a fiber that could sense when and where it was being stretched.

Then they shone a laser light through the fiber and stretched and measured the spectrum of light.

By measuring the amount of light at the far end of the fiber, the researchers could quantitatively determine where and by how much a fiber was stretched.

​London, Oct 18 (IANS) Pregnant women who are dissatisfied in their relationship may be at an increased risk of developing infectious diseases, which may in turn, also affect their children, researchers have found.

The risk of pregnant women with the lowest satisfaction in their relationship becoming ill is more than twice than those who are satisfied.

"The study does not prove that the first thing leads to the second. But those who report that they are dissatisfied in their relationship more often report illnesses during pregnancy. Their children are also reported ill more often during their first year," said Roger Ekeberg Henriksen from the University of Bergen in Norway.

"Infections during pregnancy may lead to complications and diseases later in life, Henriksen said, adding "dissatisfaction with your partner during pregnancy should be considered a risk factor for reproductive health." 

Relationship researchers have been usually interested in psychological factors such as depression and life quality. But social isolation and loneliness can also directly affect the physiology.

During stressed condition our immune system may be given lower priority, and we thus become less resistant towards infectious diseases from bacteria and viruses, the researchers said.

"If we look at brain research and other research on physiological mechanisms, we see that having a partner who is predictable and supportive may be decisive for our ability to handle stress. On the opposite side, stress responses may occur with the absence of social support," Henriksen stated.

In the study, Henriksen looked at the occurrence of eight different infectious diseases, from the common cold to stomach flu and inflammation of the ear. 

With children up to six months, the occurrence of all eight infections was higher when the mothers were dissatisfied in their relationship.

"If there's a lot of stress in your life and you have few good relations, this should be given particular attention. It might be a good idea to talk to your midwife or your general practitioner about this," Henriksen suggested.

For the study, the team collected data from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) -- a health study on mothers and their children since 1999. The study of pregnant women's infectious diseases includes more than 67,000 women. The study of children's infectious diseases includes nearly 91,000 women and more than 100,000 children.

​London, Oct 18 (IANS) Higher body mass index (BMI) in women before pregnancy can lead to shorter telomere length -- a biomarker for biological age -- in their newborns, according to a study.

Telomeres are structures at the ends of chromosomes which are vital in maintaining the stability of a person's genome as they protect chromosomes from degradation. 

"Compared with newborns of mothers with a normal BMI, newborns of women with obesity are older on a molecular level, because shortened telomere lengths mean that their cells have shorter lifespans," said Tim Nawrot, Professor at Hasselt University in Belgium. 

Telomere length, which is measured by the number of DNA base pairs they occupy, is directly linked to the number of times a cell can divide in its lifetime. 

Thus, longer telomeres allow cells to divide more often, providing a link between telomere length and biological age. 

Telomere length in adults has been associated with age-related diseases such as cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and increased mortality.

In the study, the research team found that for each one-point increase in the mothers' BMI, telomeres in the babies were about 50 base pairs shorter. 

According to the researchers, this 50 base pair shortening of telomere length is equivalent to the length that people normally lose in 1.1 - 1.6 years of adult life, which may increase the risk of chronic diseases in adulthood.

"Our results add to the growing body of evidence that high maternal BMI impacts foetal programming, which could lead to altered foetal development and later life diseases," Nawrot said. 

"So maintaining a healthy BMI during a woman's reproductive age may promote molecular longevity in the offspring," he added.

For the study, published in the journal BMC Medicine, the team involved 743 mothers, who were 17 to 44 years of age, and their newborn babies. 

​Sydney, Oct 18 (IANS) Researchers from University of Adelaide have developed a world's first optical sensor that can detect vitamin B12 in diluted human blood - a novel step towards developing a low-cost and portable deficiency test.

Vitamin B12 deficiency is associated with an increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

Such a device would enable the tracking of vitamin B12 levels in high-risk patients and early intervention can help overcome the limitations of current testing methods which are time-consuming and costly.

"Vitamin B12 deficiency has been shown to be a potential modifiable risk factor for dementia and Alzheimer's disease and is associated with cognitive decline," said Dr Georgios Tsiminis, Research Fellow at University of Adelaide.

Older adults are particularly at risk of B12 deficiency due to age-related reduction in absorbing vitamin B12 received through their diet.

"Our sensor is an early step towards a point-of-care solution for measuring and tracking B12 in healthy ageing adults. This would allow doctors to monitor B12 levels and intervene as soon as B12 deficiency was detected," Dr Tsiminis added.

The sensor is still at proof-of-concept stage but, with development, has wide-reaching potential applications.

The optical sensor measurement of B12 in human blood takes less than a minute and requires minimum preparation.

This is the first demonstration of vitamin B12 being measured in human blood serum without the need for a full laboratory test.

The sensor uses an optical measuring technique called Raman spectroscopy which produces a unique optical fingerprint of a target molecule, in this case vitamin B12.

"Our method provides a realistic basis for a system that is portable, cost-effective, and affords rapid results, along the lines of the pin-prick test for diabetes," Dr Tsiminis noted in a statement.

The research by scientists in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale BioPhotonics (CNBP), the Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing, and the Schools of Physical Sciences and Medicine was presented at an international biophotonics conference in Adelaide last weekend.

​London, Oct 16 (IANS) Individuals who prefer to watch "bad" or "trashy" movies, typically known as the low-budget films, are smarter, a study has found.

"Trash films" were described as cheaply or poorly made films that feature embarrassing or disturbing content. These low-budget films do not correspond to the mainstream standards and taste.

The study explored how trash films' characteristics support positive use of the label, the researchers said.

The study focuses on how something can be identified as cheap and worthless "trash" and still be embraced and (re)evaluated as providing positive enjoyment, Keyvan Sarkhosh, Film scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, Germany, was quoted as saying to natureworldnews.com.

The findings showed that people tend to watch such trashy films because they provide humour as well as entertainment.

On the other hand, the same group was also found to appreciate art films.

The enjoyment of watching trash films was found related to an ironic viewing stance.

Viewers attribute to trash films with not just amusing/entertaining qualities, but also a positive, transgressive deviance from the cinematic mainstream, and their appreciation of these films is coupled with marked preferences for art cinema, Sarkhosh said.

For the study, Sarkhosh conducted an online survey and included 372 participants -- composed of university students and people whose online presence on Facebook and on trashy film-related forums are felt.

The study showed that an 84 per cent of the fans of trash films had university degrees, which means they were primarily well-educated and were described as "omnivorous" audience.

"Such viewers are interested in a broad spectrum of art and media across the traditional boundaries of high and popular culture," Sarkhosh noted.

The study was published in journal Poetics.

​London, Oct 17 (IANS) Researchers from University of Cambridge said they are developing a new imaging technique with the aim of detecting and characterising early cancerous changes in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract.

The technique involves using a standard endoscopy system with a novel set of camera filters, increasing the number of colours that can be visualised during endoscopy and potentially improving the ability to detect abnormal cells in the lining of the gut.

"In traditional endoscopy, we use white light and detectors that replicate our eyes, which detect light in red, green and blue colour channels. We are now developing an approach called 'hyperspectral imaging', which will increase the number of colour channels that can be visualised from three to over 50," explained Sarah Bohndiek from University of Cambridge.

"Since cell changes associated with the development of cancer lead to colour changes in the tissues, we believe that hyperspectral imaging could help us to improve the specificity of lesion identification because we can use these colours to identify abnormal tissues," Bohndiek added.

Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) collects and processes information from across the electromagnetic spectrum. 

In contrast to the human eye, which sees colour primarily in three bands (red, green and blue), spectral imaging divides the colour spectrum into many more bands and can be extended beyond the visible range of light. 

The images obtained by hyperspectral imaging can provide information about the physiology and chemical composition of human tissues, and the technique is emerging as having great potential for non-invasive diagnosis and image-guided surgery.

"Hyperspectral imaging is a powerful tool that can reveal the chemical composition of human tissues and together with different fluorescent dyes, can identify a range of biological processes," Bohndiek pointed out. 

"The technique has many potential applications within cancer diagnostics, with exciting developments already reported in the detection of Barrett's oesophagus, which is a precancerous condition in some people," Bohndiek noted.

The technique was presented at UEG Week 2016 in Vienna, Austria.

​San Francisco, Oct 17 (IANS) US' Stanford University is moving ahead with its goal that 50 per cent of its electricity will be powered by a new solar plant now in the final stages of construction.

With one of the largest campuses in the country, the private research university in northern California announced the Stanford Solar Generating Station project last year. The plant, in Kern county of southern California, is scheduled to be functional by the end of November, Xinhua news agency reported on Monday.

After a testing period, according to a news release from Stanford, the plant located on a site of 242 acres, or nearly 1 sq.km, in the high desert region about 300 miles, or 483 km, southeast of Stanford is expected to be providing power to the 125-year-old school on a regular basis by the end of 2016.

Built for Stanford by the northern Californian solar company SunPower Corp., the plant's construction began in January 2016. The solar panels have now been installed, and work is proceeding on wiring and completing the system. When finished, the plant will draw on more than 150,000 solar panels and produce a peak 67 megawatts of power.

While several Stanford building complexes already feature solar panels, under the Stanford Energy System Innovations (SESI), which includes a heat recovery system completed last year for the heating and cooling of campus buildings, 16 additional campus buildings are being outfitted with solar panels and the work is expected to be complete later this fall, so that they provide an additional five megawatts of power for the school.

We have been engaged in a major effort to make Stanford one of the most energy-efficient universities in the world, and this expansion of our solar resources will make a dramatic difference," Joseph Stagner, executive director of sustainability and energy management at Stanford said on Sunday. 

"Clean, renewable energy will become the dominant part of Stanford's energy mix, and its proportion in that mix will continue to grow over time."

The solar plant and the campus rooftop panels will produce 53 per cent of Stanford's electricity. The university will purchase the remaining 47 per cent from the California electricity grid, of which 25 per cent currently comes from renewable power sources including solar, wind and geothermal, and 50 per cent will be renewable by 2030 under state law.

In total, once its solar projects are complete by year's end, Stanford said it would be getting 65 per cent of its power from renewable sources. 

Dubai, Oct 16 (IANS) Chinese ICT giant Huawei on Sunday said Dubai is the smartest city in the Gulf region in relation to strategy and execution.

The emirate of Dubai has emerged number one in a Smart City Index that examined the smart city campaigns across 10 Gulf Arab cities, Xinhua news agency cited the company as saying.

The Gulf emirate stood out for its "strategic vision coupled with a clear understanding of the practical requirements to deliver on its vision", said Huawei and research firm Navigant which conducted the study.

"While we realise that each city is different and has its own smart city needs, we valued the strategic impact of the governments' vision and even more important how effectively a government of a city or emirate executes that strategy," Safder Nazir, an executive at Huawei Middle East in Dubai, said.

The Smart Dubai roadmap has targeted the delivery of 1,000 services by next year across 100 initiatives, said Huawei.

As of September this year, it had documented more than 500 current and planned smart services and initiatives, of which 150 have been completed, it added.

Eric Woods, research director at Navigant Consulting, said: "Dubai stands out in this Navigant Research ranking as a leader among cities for its strategic vision and ambitious implementation programme."

Dubai's neighbour Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, and Doha, the capital of Qatar, were contenders in the smart city index. Kuwait city ranked 10th and therefore last.

The five-day fair hosts 4,000 exhibiting companies and expects 100,000 trade visitors from 150 countries, according to the organiser Dubai World Trade Centre.

​New York, Oct 15 (IANS) Imagine a TV that looks like glass and can be fit into your furniture's glass panes. Panasonic has developed a protoype of an "invisible" TV which generates bright, clear images as normal TVs. According to tech website Engadget, Panasonic has improved the image quality in the new prototpye. "The OLED screen is made from a fine mesh, embedded into the glass sliding door," the report added. The TV image is visible even with the backlighting on. Once it's dimmed, the image is bright enough to be almost indistinguishable from existing TV sets. The screen shifts between "transparent mode" where you can see the shelving behind it, and "screen mode", where you can see the screen. "Because the display is on a railing, you can move it up and down the shelf for even greater customisability," Engadget reported. According to Panasonic, the television is likely to hit the market in the next three years.

​Sydney, Oct 16 (IANS) Using a new probability model, Australian mental health researchers have made a promising breakthrough in the early detection of the risk of psychosis -- a mental disorder characterised by a disconnection from reality.

The new model could lead to appropriate treatments to prevent psychotic episodes from occurring, the study said.

The new model has shown 70 per cent accuracy in predicting patients who are at greatest risk of developing psychosis.

The model combines medical history, the latest bedside clinical assessment, and biomarkers of fatty acids to determine a patient's risk of psychosis, the researchers observed. 

"Fatty acids such as omega-3 and nervonic acid are critical for the normal functioning of the brain, and low levels have been associated with the development of psychosis in high-risk groups," said lead author Scott Clark from the University of Adelaide in Australia.

In the probability model, fatty acid levels provided improved accuracy of prediction when patients were at intermediate risk following clinical assessment, the authors noted.

"Of those patients who are considered to be 'ultra-high risk', only about 30 per cent of them go on to experience a psychotic episode in the long-term," Clark added.

Currently all patients in the ultra-high risk group are considered to have a similar chance of a future psychotic episode, however we have been able to identify high, intermediate and low-risk groups.

"The new model may help clinicians to decide when a patient's risk of psychosis outweighs any side effects of treatment," Clark said.

The study was published in the journal Translational Psychiatry.