Knowledge Update

​New York, July 1 (IANS) Neuroscientists have found that the resting-state brain activity - the neural activity that goes on while we are doing nothing in particular - helps some people learn new languages faster.

"The way someone's brain functions while at rest predicts 60 per cent of their capacity for learning a second language," said study author Chantel Prat from University of Washington.

In the small yet significant study, published recently by the US Office of Naval Research, 19 participants between the ages of 18 and 31 with no previous experience learning French, visited Prat's lab twice weekly over eight weeks for 30-minute French lessons delivered through a virtual-reality computer programme called Operational Language and Cultural Training System (OLCTS).

OLCTS is designed to make military personnel proficient in a foreign language after 20 hours of training. The programme guides users through a series of scenes and stories. A voice-recognition component enables users to check their pronunciation.

For five minutes before and after the eight-week curriculum, Prat had participants sit still, close their eyes, breathe deeply and wear an EEG (electroencephalogram) headset measuring resting-state brain activity from the cerebral cortex - an area of the brain crucial to memory, attention and perception.

"The brain waves we recorded reflect synchronised firing of large networks of neurons," Prat said. 

"We found that the larger the networks were in 'beta' frequencies (brain frequencies associated with language and memory), the faster our participants learned French," he added.

To confirm this, at the end of the eight-week language programme, participants also completed a proficiency test covering the lessons they had finished. Those with the larger "beta" networks learned French twice as quickly.

However, Prat pointed out that language learning rates were the only things predicted by the recorded brain activity. Participants with smaller "beta" networks still learned the material to which they were exposed equally well.

"There's more that goes into learning a new language than speed," Prat said. "You also have to factor in motivation, study habits and practice methods," he added.​

​Washington, July 2 (IANS) After its historic first-ever flyby of Pluto, NASA's New Horizons mission has received the green light to fly onward to an object deeper in the Kuiper Belt.

The spacecraft's planned rendezvous with the ancient object named 2014 MU69 -- considered one of the early building blocks of the solar system -- is January 1, 2019.

"The New Horizons mission to Pluto exceeded our expectations and even today the data from the spacecraft continue to surprise," said NASA's Director of Planetary Science Jim Green.

"We're excited to continue onward into the dark depths of the outer solar system to a science target that wasn't even discovered when the spacecraft launched," he added.

In addition to the extension of the New Horizons mission, NASA said the Dawn spacecraft should remain at the dwarf planet Ceres rather than changing course to the main belt asteroid Adeona.

"The long-term monitoring of Ceres, particularly as it gets closer to perihelion -- the part of its orbit with the shortest distance to the sun -- has the potential to provide more significant science discoveries than a flyby of Adeona," Green noted in a statement.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN), the Opportunity and Curiosity Mars rovers, the Mars Odyssey orbiter, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), and NASA's support for the European Space Agency's Mars Express mission have also got extension.​

Colombo, July 1 (IANS) An increase in tourists mainly from China and India will help strengthen Sri Lanka's frail economy as tourism is poised to become the largest foreign exchange earner for the country, an official said on Friday.

The number of tourists from China and India increased in the recent years and due to the prevailing crisis in Europe, Asia has become an ideal destination, Xinhua news agency reported.

"India and China are one of our main markets and we will conduct more promotional programmes to attract tourists from these two countries in the future. Currently, the average money spent by a tourist per day is valued at $165, which is good," an official said.

While tourism was currently the third foreign exchange earner, it would soon lead as a higher number of tourists were selecting Sri Lanka as an ideal tourism destination, the official added.

An estimated 1.8 million tourists arrived in Sri Lanka in 2015, contributing to $2.98 billion of earnings to government revenues. 

The government said it hoped to attract at least three million tourists by the end of 2016, and it has set a target of four million by 2020.​

London, July 1 (IANS) Finding it difficult to complete a task? If so, speaking to yourself that "I can do better" can improve your performance, new research says.

The findings showed that people using self-talk, like telling oneself "I can do better next time" - performed better than the control group in every portion of the task.

The greatest improvements were seen in self-talk-outcome (telling yourself, "I can beat my best score"), self-talk-process (telling yourself, "I can react quicker this time"), imagery-outcome (imagining yourself playing the game and beating your best score) and imagery-process (imagining yourself playing and reacting quicker than last time).

The study, which examined if one motivational method would be more effective for any specific aspect of a task, tested over 44,000 people to discover which physiological skills would help people improve their scores in an online game.

The methods tested were self-talk, imagery and if-then planning. Each of these psychological skills was applied to one of four parts of a competitive task: process, outcome, arousal-control, and instruction.

If-then planning was found to be one of the least successful of this study, despite being an effective tool in weight management and other real life challenges.

Online interventions that focus on increasing motivation, increased arousal, effort invested, and pleasant emotions were the most effective, said Andrew M. Lane, Professor at University of Wolverhampton in Britain.

Further, watching a short motivational video was also found to improve performance, said the paper published in Frontiers in Psychology has found.​

​New York, June 30 (IANS) Facebook has announced an update to its "News Feed" to prioritise posts from the user's friends and family "so that people can see what they care about first, and don’t miss important stuff from their friends".

​Tokyo, July 1 (IANS) Japan's consumer prices fell 0.4 per cent in May from a year earlier due to declining energy prices, marking the biggest drop in over three years, the government said on Friday.

New York, July 1 (IANS) Technology giant Google on Thursday announced on Snapchat that the latest version of Android operating system Android N will now go by "Android Nougat".

​London, July 1 (IANS) In hope for people suffering from dementia, accidents or traumatic events, a team of researchers has managed to erase unpleasant memories in mice using a "genetic switch."

The team from KU Leuven (Belgium) and the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology (Germany) found that that some memories can also be erased when one particular gene is switched off.

The team trained mice that had been genetically modified in one single gene: neuroplastin.

This gene, which is investigated by only a few groups in the world, is very important for brain plasticity.

In humans, changes in the regulation of the neuroplastin gene have recently been linked to decreased intellectual abilities and schizophrenia.

“We were amazed to find that deactivating one single gene is enough to erase associative memories formed before or during the learning trials,” said Professor Detlef Balschun from the KU Leuven's laboratory for biological psychology.

“Switching off the neuroplastin gene has an impact on the behaviour of the mice, because it interferes with the communication between their brain cells,” he informed.

In the study, the mice were trained to move from one side of a box to the other as soon as a lamp lights up, thus avoiding a foot stimulus.

This learning process is called associative learning.

When the scientists switched off the neuroplastin gene after conditioning, the mice were no longer able to perform the task properly.

In other words, they showed learning and memory deficits that were specifically related to associative learning.

The control mice with the neuroplastin gene switched on, by contrast, could still do the task perfectly.

By measuring the electrical signals in the brain, the KU Leuven team discovered clear deficits in the cellular mechanism used to store memories.

These changes are even visible at the level of individual brain cells, as postdoctoral researcher Victor Sabanov was able to show.

"This is still basic research. We still need further research to show whether neuroplastin also plays a role in other forms of learning,” said Balschun adds in a paper published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.​

​Beijing, July 1 (IANS) Long-term exposure to air pollution, which has risen to alarming levels in the past years, is likely to cause damages to the kidneys, irrespective of age, warns a study.

The findings showed that air pollution increased the chances of developing membranous nephropathy -- an immune disorder of the kidneys -- that can lead to kidney failure.

Long-term exposure to high levels of particulate matter (PM 2.5) was associated with an increased risk of membranous nephropathy.

Previous studies have showed that increased exposure to air pollution may raise respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.

To examine how particulate matter in the air is affecting kidney health, a team analysed data on kidney biopsies taken over 11 years from 71,151 patients from 938 hospitals in 282 cities across China, encompassing all age groups.

The areas with high levels of fine particulate air pollution had the highest rates of membranous nephropathy.

On average, the likelihood of developing membranous nephropathy increased 13 per cent annually over the 11-year study period.

"Our primary finding is that the frequency of membranous nephropathy has doubled over the last decade in China. We show that the increase corresponds closely with the regional distribution of particulate air pollution," said lead author Fan Fan Hou of China's Southern Medical University.

The results, which appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN), calls for attention on the role of air pollution in the development of kidney disease in urban areas, the researchers concluded.​

​New York, July 1 (IANS) Researchers have identified a protein that acts as a powerful protectant against free radicals -- a molecule that causes cell damage and death as well as ageing.

The findings showed that Lysosomes -- the protein that comprise the cell's recycling centre, are crucial for cleaning up injured and dying parts of the cells.

“Free radicals are guilty in the ageing process. If we have chemical compounds that can directly activate this channel, we can lower the oxidative stress in ageing and other diseases," said lead researcher Haoxing Xu, Associate Professor at University of Michigan, in the US.

Lysosomes were found to have a radical-sensing ability to know that the body has many free radicals.

Thus, when lysosomes "sense" an overload of free radicals, they activate a calcium channel on their membranes. 

This triggers the expression of many genes and the production of more and stronger lysosomes, which spurs into overdrive to get rid of the damaged parts of the cells.

"The result will be that cell damage and free radical levels could be reduced, and one can possibly slow down ageing," Xu added.

Ironically, the protein is activated by excessive free radicals. Human mutations of the gene for this protein are previously known to cause a rare, neurodegenerative disease, said the paper published in the journal Nature Communications.​