Knowledge Update

​New York, May 12 (IANS) Researchers from Harvard University have developed a flexible exosuit that reduces the energy required for walking when carrying a heavy load - helping people like soldiers, rescuers in emergency situations or hikers who frequently have to do so.

The exosuit reduced the amount of energy required while walking with a load - the metabolic cost - by 7.3 percent on an average.

The suit also significantly reduced the work done by the hip, knee and ankle joints, without impacting step frequency or length.

This suggests that the suit does not affect the wearers' freedom of movement but allows them to return to a walking profile closer to that of people walking without a load.

“Apart from assisting load carriers, we are exploring how the soft exosuit can be used to assist individuals with impaired movement, paving the way for the use of this technology in a wide range of people,” said Conor Walsh, the corresponding author.

The Harvard researchers used textiles to build their alternative to rigid exoskeletons which are heavier and can interfere with the natural movement of the joints, causing the wearer to change the way they walk.

The suit is composed of a waist belt, two thigh pieces and two calf straps, connected by cables to two motors mounted on a backpack.

The energy from the motors travels via the cables to the suit which transfers it to the wearer.

The suit becomes active only when it detects a walking motion.

It assists the hip and ankle joints which together contribute about 80 percent of the power produced by the leg joints during walking.

“Our results demonstrate for the first time that an autonomous soft exosuit can reduce the energy expenditure experienced by load carriers, possibly enhancing their overall gait performance,” Walsh added in a paper published in the Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation.

Seven experienced load carriers who had no injuries or diseases of their muscles, joints or bones, walked on a treadmill at a constant speed of 1.5 meters per second while carrying a load equal to 30 percent of their body mass.

Researchers monitored the participants' metabolism, kinetics (forces that influence the movements of the body) and kinematics (extension or rotation of joints and muscles).

The researchers also analysed the participants' breathing, gait and muscle activation.

The device can also prove useful for people with physical impairments, the authors noted.​

​New Delhi, May 12 (IANS) Software major Adobe on Thursday unveiled its new Document Cloud in India to transform tedious paper-based processes to digital workflows, thereby improving efficiency and productivity for users, a senior Adobe executive said.

​New York, May 11 (IANS) Including seafood or other foods containing omega-3 fatty acids at least once a week in your diet may protect against age-related memory loss and thinking problems, says a study.

The age-related memory loss and thinking problems of study-participants who reported eating seafood less than once a week declined more rapidly compared to those who ate at least one seafood meal per week.

"This study helps show that while cognitive abilities naturally decline as part of the normal ageing process, there is something that we can do to mitigate this process," said study senior author Martha Clare Morris from Rush University Medical Centre in Chicago, US.

The findings were published online in the journal Neurology.

The researchers followed 915 people with a mean age of 81.4 years for an average of five years. 

At study enrollment, none had signs of dementia.

During the course of the study, each person received annual, standardized testing for cognitive ability in five areas -- episodic memory, working memory, semantic memory, visuospatial ability and perceptual speed. 

The study group also completed annual food frequency questionnaires, allowing the researchers to compare participants' reported seafood intake with changes in their cognitive abilities as measured by the tests.

The questionnaires included four types of seafood: tuna sandwiches; fish sticks, fish cakes and fish sandwiches; fresh fish as a main dish; and shrimp, lobster and crab. 

The participants were divided into two groups: those who ate at least one of those seafood meals per week and those who ate less than one of those seafood meals per week.

People who ate more seafood had reduced rates of decline in the semantic memory, which is memory of verbal information. They also had slower rates of decline in a test of perceptual speed, or the ability to quickly compare letters, objects and patterns, the findings showed.

Seafood is the direct nutrient source of a type of omega-3 fatty acid (docosahexaenoic acid) that is the main structural component of the brain.

​New York, May 11 (IANS) A team of US researchers has come up with a rough map of part of the brain that controls vision and leaves things out even when they are plainly in sight.

The frontal cortex is often seen as our “thinking cap,” associated with thinking and making decisions. But it's not commonly connected with vision. 

“Some people believe that the frontal cortex is not involved. The new research adds to previous evidence that it is,” said Dobromir Rahnev, psychologist at Georgia Institute of Technology.

“The 'thinking cap' of the brain controls and oversees the whole process, making it as essential to how we see as those other areas,” Rahnev explained. 

How that works also accounts for why we sometimes miss things right in front of us.

“We feel that our vision is like a camera, but that is utterly wrong," Rahnev said. 

Our brains aren't just seeing, they're actively constructing the visual scene and making decisions about it. 

Sometimes the frontal cortex is not expecting to see something so although it's in plain sight, it blots it out of consciousness, said the team that involved researchers from the University of California-Berkeley.

The frontal cortex sends a signal to move your attention onto the object you select.

“It does some of the combining with other information, and then it's probably the primary evaluator of what you think you saw,” Rahnev noted.

The findings were published in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.​

​London, May 11 (IANS) There is good news for mango lovers! You may soon be able to tell how ripe a mango is without having to taste it as researchers have identified a way to “sniff” the ripeness of the fruit.

They have identified the unique chemical signature of ripening for mangoes, a development that could lead to small hand-held electronic noses to detect the ripeness of not just mangoes but other fruits as well.

Mangoes are one of the most important and popular tropical fruits with India producing approximately 40 percent of the world's supply. 

"It is really important for people to be able to tell how ripe fruit is without having to taste it. This is important for fruit producers and supermarkets,” said lead researcher Paul Monks, professor at the University of Leicester in Britain.

The new research, published in the journal Metabolomics, has shown that is possible to 'sniff' the ripeness of mangoes.

"We used a novel fast-sensitive "electronic-nose" for sniffing volatile compounds from the ripening fruit. Popular supermarket species of mango were used. In particular, the work showed an increase in ester compounds -- the smell of pear drops -- was a particular marker of over ripe fruit," Monks noted.

The work has, for the first time, followed in real-time and detail the chemical signatures of ripening for mangoes, Monks said.

"There are some real potential applications of this research for making devices to be able to assess ripeness non-destructively. The information gained from the work could be used to develop small, hand-held electronic noses that could be deployed to assess fruit maturity prior to picking and thus determine the optimum point to harvest mature green mangoes,” he added.​

​London, May 11 (IANS) A long wait before asking for feedback about a service or product would increase the odds of getting a better review by your customers, researchers say.

The findings revealed that people who waited longer or travelled farther before authoring a review gave more favourable evaluations.

"If someone visited a particular restaurant in their home town and then in another state, he or she gave a better star rating when the restaurant was out of town," said lead author Nina Huang from Temple University in Pennsylvania.

The investigators analysed data from more than 166,000 online restaurant reviews on travel website TripAdvisor.com that provides reviews of travel-related content. 

They used a Google Maps application and information in the reviewer's profile to calculate the distance between the author's home and the restaurant.

The same positive effect occurred when reviewers waited two or more months versus one month or less to write a review. 

The researchers discovered that reviewers who experienced both time delay and greater physical distance from the restaurant gave the highest ratings. 

It might be wise to take a moment to distinguish between reviews written by locals versus travellers before judging a product or service, the authors noted in a paper published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology. 

"When people are reading a review, they assume it is objective," Huang noted, adding, "We found that reviews are not always as objective as we thought. Time and space distance is going to bias someone's evaluation of certain experiences."​

​New York, May 11 (IANS) Far from being rejuvenating, a peaceful walk in nature after a difficult day at work can make people prone to anxiety more stressed, new research suggests.

They should instead take a walk in a busy, urban environment, the study said.

What should you do after a difficult day at work? Many people would take a peaceful walk in nature, but this may not be a wise choice for everyone.

A study found evidence that people who are more prone to anxiety should instead take a walk in a busy, urban environment.

"Previous literature says that natural environments tend to restore cognitive abilities better than urban environments, but we questioned whether this one-sided perspective was accurate," said study lead author Kevin Newman, assistant professor at Providence College in Rhode Island, US.

The researchers started by asking participants to perform tasks that drained them mentally, such as writing sentences without using the letters "A" or "N." 

Then participants answered questions that revealed their level of neuroticism, such as whether they were a worrier, irritable, highly strung or experienced moods that often go up and down.

Then all the participants performed tasks that exposed them to words or pictures associated with either a natural or urban environment. 

Surprisingly, the results revealed that people with neurotic personalities had more success restoring their cognitive abilities after they viewed words related to a busy urban environment. 

In fact, nature could provide frenetic, stressful cues when the participants were exposed to words like "bear," "cliff" and "thunder." 

The nature-related words, however, were more beneficial for people who were not generally neurotic.

The findings appeared in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

"People tended to do better in environments that fit with their personality," Newman said.

"Imagine someone with a neurotic personality like Woody Allen. If you put him in a forest it could be very off-putting rather than rejuvenating," he said.

Washington, May 10 (IANS) A team led by an Indian-origin computer engineer from University of Washington has built a five-fingered robotic hand that can not only perform dexterous in-hand manipulation but also learn from its own experience without depending on humans to direct it.

New York, May 10 (IANS) The additional "Reaction" buttons that social media giant Facebook introduced next to the "Like" button this year have failed to charm users, a study has found.