Knowledge Update

Washington, May 5 (IANS) A team of US doctors has shown for the first time that soft tissue surgery can soon be performed entirely by a robot on humans, putting surgery one step closer into the realm of intelligent machines.

The so-called Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (STAR) succeeded in suturing and reconnecting bowel segments in living pigs -- a procedure known as intestinal anastomosis -- and all the animals survived with no complications.

The STAR robotic sutures were compared with the work of five surgeons completing the same procedure using three methods -- open, laparoscopic and robot-assisted surgery with the well-known da Vinci Surgical System.

The robot's time was longer than open and robot-assisted surgery but comparable to the laparoscopic procedure. The robotic procedure lasted 35 to 57 minutes, while the open surgery took eight minutes.

Kuala Lumpur, May 5 (IANS) Social media giant Facebook has opened a local office in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, a media report said on Thursday.

"The office launch marks a milestone for Facebook in Malaysia and we are committed to helping Malaysians and businesses connect in more meaningful ways," said Facebook

​London, May 4 (IANS) Taking at least 2-3 minutes rest between weight-lifting sets at the gym can help boost muscle growth, British researchers have found.

The results suggest that guys who took longer rest periods showed two-fold increase in myofibrillar protein synthesis (MPS) -- associated with strength and muscle growth.

The study highlights that short rest intervals may actually impair the processes that control muscle growth.

However, with short rests of one minute, the actual muscle response is blunted. 

“If you're looking for maximised muscle growth with your training programme, a slightly longer interval between sets may provide a better chance of having the muscle response you're looking for," said Leigh Breen from University of Birmingham in Britain.

The study, published in the journal Experimental Physiology, analysed 16 men who completed resistance exercises interspersed by either one minute or five minutes of rest. 

Muscle biopsies were obtained at 0, four, 24 and 28 hours post-exercise. 

Beginners starting out on weight training programmes should take sufficient rest, of at least 2-3 minutes, between weight lifting sets that can help with muscle growth, the authors recommended.

For experienced lifters, it's possible that they may not experience the same blunted muscle building response to short rest intervals particularly if they have trained this way for a prolonged period and adapted to this unique metabolic stress. 

"Nonetheless, similar recommendations of 2-3 minutes between sets should help ensure maximal muscle growth in well-trained individuals,” Breen added.​

​New York, May 5 (IANS) Consuming grapes combined with a diet rich in saturated fats can lower obesity risk as well as improve gut bacteria, a new study has found.

According to researchers, it may also help counter the negative effects of a high fat diet, including heart disease, hypertension and diabetes.

The findings showed that the unique and diverse composition of antioxidants called polyphenols present in grapes can help reduce the percentage of body fat, subcutaneous and visceral fat deposits, markers of inflammation in the liver and improve glucose tolerance.

Further, it also increased microbial diversity and decreased abundance of several deleterious bacteria in the intestinal tract.

The research, published in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry, is based on two laboratory studies.

In the first study, intake of a diet high in fat content (33 percent of energy from fat) and enriched with 3 percent grapes for 11 weeks, showed a lower percentage of overall body fat and reduced subcutaneous fat deposits.

In the second study, which ran for 16 weeks, the researchers used an even higher fat diet (44 percent of energy from fat) with multiple types of saturated fat, including lard, beef tallow, shortening, and butter similar to some Western-type diets.

"These two studies suggest that grapes and grape polyphenols may help offset a number of the adverse effects of consuming a high fat diet and trigger improvements in intestinal or systemic health," said lead researcher Michael McIntosh from the University of North Carolina in the US.

The researchers investigated the impact of the high fat diet enriched with extracts of either the polyphenol fraction of grapes or the non-polyphenol portion of grapes, as well as the high fat diet plus five percent whole grapes.

All the high fat experimental diets were matched for sugar type and amount.​

​London, May 5 (IANS) Studying a nearby star has given scientists a fascinating insight into how the Sun may have behaved billions of years ago.

A team of international astronomers, including professor Stefan Kraus of the University of Exeter in Britain, used cutting-edge techniques to create the first direct image of surface structures on the star Zeta Andromedae - found 181 light years from Earth.

In order to image the star's surface during one of its 18-day rotations, the researchers used a method called interferometry where the light of physically separate telescopes is combined in order to create the resolving power of a 330m telescope.

Found in the northern constellation of Andromeda, the star showed signs of “starspots” - the equivalent of sunspots found within our own solar system. The pattern of these spots differs significantly from those found on the Sun.

The researchers suggest these results challenge current understandings of how magnetic fields of stars influence their evolution.

Furthermore, they believe that the findings offer a rare glimpse of how the Sun behaved in its infancy, while the solar system was first forming.

“Most stars behave like giant rotating magnets and 'starspots' are the visible manifestation of this magnetic activity. Imaging these structures can help us to decipher the workings that take place deep below the stellar surface,” said Kraus.

“While imaging sunspots was one of the first things that astronomer Galileo Galilei did when he started using the newly-invented telescope, it has taken more than 400 years for us to make a powerful enough telescope that can image spots on stars beyond the Sun," added John Monnier, professor of astronomy in University of Michigan.

It's important to understand the Sun's history because that dictates the Earth's history -- its formation and the development of life.

“The better we can constrain the conditions of the solar environment when life formed, the better we can understand the requirements necessary for the formation of life,” said Rachael Roettenbacher, who conducted this research as part of her doctoral thesis at University of Michigan.

The findings were published in the scientific journal Nature.​

​Washington, May 5 (IANS) Pluto behaves less like a comet than expected and somewhat more like a planet like Mars or Venus in the way it interacts with the solar wind -- a continuous stream of charged particles from the Sun, a first ever analysis has revealed.

Using data from the New Horizons flyby of Pluto last year, scientists have observed the material coming off of Pluto's atmosphere and studied how it interacts with the solar wind, leading to yet another "Pluto surprise".

"This is a type of interaction we've never seen before anywhere in our solar system," said David J. McComas, professor of astrophysical sciences at the Princeton University.

According to space physicists, they now have a treasure trove of information about how Pluto's atmosphere interacts with the solar wind.

Solar wind is the plasma that spews from the Sun into the solar system at a supersonic 160 million km per hour, bathing planets, asteroids, comets and interplanetary space in a soup of mostly protons and electrons.

Previously, most researchers thought that Pluto was characterised more like a comet which has a large region of gentle slowing of the solar wind as opposed to the abrupt diversion solar wind encounters at a planet like Mars or Venus.

Instead, like a car that is part gas-and part battery-powered, Pluto is a hybrid, researchers said.

"These results speak to the power of exploration. Once again we've gone to a new kind of place and found ourselves discovering entirely new kinds of expressions in nature," added Alan Stern, New Horizons' principal investigator.

Since it is so far from the Sun, scientists thought Pluto's gravity would not be strong enough to hold heavy ions in its extended atmosphere.

But, "Pluto's gravity clearly is enough to keep material relatively confined", McComas noted.

Like the Earth, Pluto has a long ion tail that extends downwind at least a distance of about 118,700 km, almost three times the circumference of the Earth, loaded with heavy ions from the atmosphere and with "considerable structure".

The findings, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Space Physics offer clues to the magnetised plasmas that one may find around other stars.​

​London, May 5 (IANS) Large meteorite and comet impacts in the sea created structures that provided conditions favourable for life on Earth, reveal geochemists from Trinity College Dublin in Ireland.

Water then interacted with impact-heated rock to enable synthesis of complex organic molecules and the enclosed crater itself was a microhabitat within which life could flourish, said the team.

It has long been suggested that the meteoritic and cometary material that bombarded early Earth delivered the raw materials - complex organic molecules and water - and the energy that was required for synthesis. 

According to the researchers, impact craters were ideal environments to facilitate the reactions that saw the first “seeds of life” take root.

“The findings suggest that extensive hydrothermal systems operated in an enclosed impact crater at Sudbury, Ontario, Canada,” said first study author Edel O'Sullivan in a paper published in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta.

The Sudbury basin provides a unique opportunity to study the sediment that filled the basin as a guide to what the earlier impact craters would have looked like. 

The Sudbury structure has an unusually thick basin fill and much of this is almost black in colour (due to carbon), also containing hydrothermal metal deposits.

To reach these findings, representative samples across the basin fill were analysed for their chemistry and for carbon isotopes.​

​New York, May 5 (IANS) Researchers have discovered how an immune system molecule hijacks a brain circuit and reduces appetite when you are inflicted with an illness.

While loss of appetite during illness is common, it contributes to reducing a patient's strength and in cancer patients, it can even shorten lifespan.

The new research points to potential targets for treating loss of appetite and restoring a patient's strength.

"Treating loss of appetite won't cure an underlying disease, but it could help a patient cope," said senior author of the study Bruno Conti, professor at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in California, US.

"Many times, loss of appetite can compromise clinical outcome. A weak individual is less likely to be able to cope with chemotherapy, for instance," Conti said.

Many people recover their appetite after illness. But in patients with diseases such as cancer or AIDS, loss of appetite can turn into a wasting disease called cachexia, also known as "the last illness" because it can accelerate a patient's decline.

The findings were published in The Journal of Neuroscience.

The researchers believe the circuit affected by an immune molecule called interleukin 18 (IL-18) may be a potential drug target for treating loss of appetite, and possibly support weight loss for those with metabolic disorders.

"IL-18 regulates feeding by locking directly into the neuronal circuitry," Conti said.​

New York, May 4 (IANS) Medical error is the third leading cause of death in the US after heart disease and cancer, experts have said.

While accurate data on deaths associated with medical error is lacking, recent estimates suggest a range of 210,000 to 400,000 deaths a year among hospital patients in the US.

Using studies from 1999 onwards - and extrapolating to the total number of US hospital admissions in 2013 - the researchers calculated a mean rate of death from medical error of 251,454 a year.

Comparing their estimate to the annual list of the most common causes of death in the US, compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), suggests that medical error is the third most common cause of death in the US.

"Although we cannot eliminate human error, we can better measure the problem to design safer systems mitigating its frequency, visibility, and consequences," the researchers said in the article published in the journal The BMJ.

Death certificates in the US have no facility for acknowledging medical error, lamented the researchers Martin Makary and Michael Daniel from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Currently, death certification in the US relies on assigning an International Classification of Disease (ICD) code to the cause of death - so causes of death not associated with an ICD code, such as human and system factors, are not captured.

The researchers suggested three strategies to reduce death from medical care - making errors more visible when they occur so their effects can be intercepted, having remedies at hand to rescue patients, and making errors less frequent by following principles that take human limitations into account.

For instance, instead of simply requiring cause of death, they suggest that death certificates could contain an extra field asking whether a preventable complication stemming from the patient's medical care contributed to the death.

Another strategy would be for hospitals to carry out a rapid and efficient independent investigation into deaths to determine the potential contribution of error.

Measuring the consequences of medical care on patient outcomes "is an important prerequisite to creating a culture of learning from our mistakes, thereby advancing the science of safety and moving us closer towards creating learning health systems," the researchers noted.​

Tokyo, May 4 (IANS) The number of children in Japan under the age of 15 reached a historic low again, according to figures released by the government on Wednesday.

On April 1, the number of children of up to 14 years of age was 16.05 million, a year-on-year drop of 150,000 or almost one percent, and the worst figure since 1950 when the data began to be compiled, EFE news reported.

The number has dipped for the 35th consecutive year.

In terms of gender, the number of girls and boys stood at 7.82 million and 8.22 million respectively.

This age group now represents only 12.6 percent of the total population, and the 42nd consecutive year of decrease, according to the ministry of interior and communications data.

The data shows a serious fall in birth rate in the world's third largest economy, which has seen a downward trend since 1982.

Meanwhile, the number of children rose in only one of the 47 prefectures -- Tokyo -- this year, while only two -- Fukuoka and Okinawa -- maintained their figures from last year.​