Knowledge Update

​London, March 21 (IANS) For mothers-to-be, going for an MRI of the cervix area can give more accurate results than ultrasound to predict if some women will give a preterm birth, say researchers.

Early dilation of the cervix, a neck of tissue connecting the uterus with the vagina, during pregnancy can lead to premature delivery. 

Women in their second trimester of pregnancy with a cervix measuring 15 millimeters or less, as seen on ultrasound, are considered to be at higher risk of preterm birth. 

However, ultrasound has limitations as a predictor of preterm birth, as it does not provide important information on changes in cervical tissue in the antepartum phase just before childbirth.

"A better understanding of the process of antepartum cervical remodeling, loosely divided in two distinct phases called softening and ripening, is critical to improve the diagnosis of cervical malfunction and anticipate the occurrence of birth," explained lead study author Gabriele Masselli from Sapienza University in Rome.

To learn more, researchers used an MRI technique called diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) to examine pregnant women who had been referred for suspected fetal or placental abnormality. 

DWI has been increasingly used for abdominal and pelvic diseases, but has not been tested for the evaluation of the uterine cervix in pregnant patients.

Each of the 30 pregnant women in the study, published in the Journal of Radiology, had a sonographically short cervix and a positive fetal fibronectin test between 23 and 28 weeks of gestation. 

Fetal fibronectin is a glue-like protein that helps hold the fetal sac to the uterine lining and the presence of it before week 35 of gestation may indicate a higher risk of preterm birth.

Of the 30 women, eight delivered within a week of the MRI examination. The other 22 delivered an average of 55 days later. 

The researchers analysed the difference between an MRI and ultrasound method.

"Our results suggest that MRI has emerged as a powerful imaging biomarker in evaluating patients with impending delivery," the authors stated.​

New York, March 22 (IANS) Not only genes, even jobs may run in some families, and people within a family are proportionally more likely to eventually also choose the same occupation and this is especially true of twins, a Facebook study has revealed.

New York, March 22 (IANS) Researchers from the University of Missouri have developed a method of transferring an energy source to virtually any shape - a technology that can help develop new-age smartphones and other devices.

​Hong Kong, March 21 (IANS) Even as it promotes Hong Kong as the gateway for Indian companies to the Chinese markets, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) is promoting India as an alternative manufacturing base for its industries based in China, states a research report.

​New Delhi, March 22 (IANS) Expanding its presence in the professional projectors solutions category, consumer electronics major Sony has launched five new laser and lamp projectors, an official statement said. The projectors aim to cater to professional users who require higher level of brightness and resolution, with enhanced versatility and affordability for business, academic, large venue or entertainment use, the statement added. The new products include three 3LCD laser models (VPL-FHZ65, VPL-FHZ60 and VPL-FHZ57). The new laser models deliver brightness of 6,000 lumens (VPL-FHZ65), 5,000 lumens (VPL-FHZ60) and 4,100 lumens (VPL-FHZ57). The other two are lamp models. The new laser models are designed to deliver enhanced picture quality with new features such as "reality creation" and "contrast enhancer," both technologies already in use by Sony’s home theatre projection systems for high-end consumer entertainment, the statement added. The new projectors also offer colour space adjustment and colour correction features for more accurate colour reproduction. A laser light source means there is no lamp that needs to slowly warm up or cool down, no lamp to limit tilt angle and no compromise between high brightness and high resolution. Smartly designed, the new laser models’ “quick turn on/off” requires only approximately seven seconds for the brightness to ramp up after turning on, the statement said.​

Beijing, March 22 (IANS) Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce company, is preparing to unveil its first internet-connected smart car in April, the People's Daily reported on Tuesday. According to the company's chief technology officer Wang Jian, internet character is one of the car's technological innovations. Details of the sport utility vehicle (SUV) will be unveiled at a launch event in April. This is an energy-saving car whose battery will retain 80 percent of its storage capacity after running 160,000 km. Internet cars adopt technologies including computer, modern sensor, information fusion, telecommunication, artificial intelligence and automatic control. The car jointly developed by Alibaba and Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) is equipped with real car-based smart operation system which has proprietary intellectual property rights. Independent development of smart operation system plays a key role in the process to transform an ordinary car to an internet car. In order to fulfil this task, Alibaba arranged over 800 researchers for the project and invested billions of dollars into the project. Wang added the internet car will not only promote people-to-car communication, it will expand car-to-car, car-to-road, and car-to-infrastructure communication too.​

​Toronto, March 21 (IANS) Astrophysicists from York University have revealed the fastest winds ever seen at ultraviolet wavelengths near a supermassive black hole.

“We’re talking wind speeds of 20 percent the speed of light which is more than 200 million kms per hour. That’s equivalent to a category 77 hurricane,” said Jesse Rogerson who led the research as part of his PhD thesis in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at York. 

"We have reason to believe that there are quasar winds that are even faster," he added.

Astronomers have known about the existence of quasar winds since the late 1960s. At least one in four quasars have them. 

Quasars are the discs of hot gas that form around supermassive black holes at the centre of massive galaxies - they are bigger than Earth’s orbit around the sun and hotter than the surface of the sun, generating enough light to be seen across the observable universe.

“Black holes can have a mass that is billions of times larger than the sun, mostly because they are messy eaters in a way, capturing any material that ventures too close,” added associate professor Patrick Hall.

As matter spirals toward a black hole, some of it is blown away by the heat and light of the quasar. 

"These are the winds that we are detecting," Hall stated.

The team used data from a large survey of the sky known as the "Sloan Digital Sky Survey" to identify new outflows from quasars. 

After spotting about 300 examples, they selected about 100 for further exploration, collecting data with the Gemini Observatory’s twin telescopes in Hawaii and Chile, in which Canada has a major share.

"We not only confirmed this fastest-ever ultraviolet wind, but also discovered a new wind in the same quasar moving more slowly, at only 140 million kilometres an hour," says Hall. 

"We plan to keep watching this quasar to see what happens next, the authors noted in a paper which appeared in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

​London, March 21 (IANS) Have you ever failed to notice your phone vibrating or have been pick-pocketed while searching for a friend's face in a crowded place? It is because you were so much engrossed in the visual task that you actually lost the ability to notice that your own wallet was being picked.

According to a new study, people's ability to notice the sense of touch is reduced when they are carrying out a demanding visual task.

The study pointed out an example of cars that now come fixed with tactile alerts and signals the driver when it begins to drift across lanes. 

However, the researchers said that the drivers are less likely to notice these alerts when engaging in demanding visual tasks such as searching for directions at a busy junction. 

"Our research is particularly important given the growing use of tactile information in warning systems,” said Sandra Murphy of Royal Holloway, University of London, in a paper detailed in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.

For the study, the team asked volunteers to perform a letter search task of either low or high difficulty, as well as respond to the presence or absence of a brief vibration delivered simultaneously to either the left or the right hand. 

Their sensitivity to the clearly noticeable tactile stimulus was reduced when they carried out the more taxing visual search task, the authors reported.

​London, March 21 (IANS) A team of British researchers has discovered how the immune system stops bacteria in our gut from leaking into the blood stream that may help in treatment and prevention of life threatening infections.

If the bacteria escape from the gut into the bloodstream, they can cause infections elsewhere in the body that become deadly if left untreated.

"Gut barrier injury can lead to the often deadly disease known as sepsis, which is one of the biggest killers of critically-ill patients”," said Chengcan Yao from the University Of Edinburgh. 

"Our study reveals a new approach that could be exploited as a treatment to help prevent one of the common causes of sepsis," Yao added.

The study, published in the journal Science, also helps explain why we do not suffer more infections, despite the vast number of bacteria that are found naturally in our gut.

Their escape is triggered by an immune system failure that causes a massive inflammatory response. This damages healthy tissues and can lead to multiple organ failure.

They found that a small molecule called "PGE2" plays a crucial role by activating specialised immune cells called innate lymphoid cells. These cells help to maintain the barrier between the gut and the rest of the body.

If "PGE2" is blocked or doesn't function correctly, these cells are not activated and the gut barrier breaks down allowing bacteria to escape.

The findings could lead to new approaches for preventing whole-body infections which can be life threatening if they are not caught early.

"Sepsis is often difficult to diagnose and treat, therefore, better understanding of the immune mechanisms involved will help us to devise strategies to improve patient prognosis," added study co-author Rodger Duffin.​

​London, March 21 (IANS) You may compare this with human attitude to a certain extent but when it comes to well-qualified bumblebees, they do not like sharing their pollinating knowledge with the less experienced bees and even attack newcomers in the field, researchers report.

The study focused on whether bees can copy other bees' flower visitation sequences in the field to improve their foraging and to show how animals with relatively simple brains find workable solutions to complex route-finding problem.

"Like other pollinators, bees face complex routing challenges when collecting nectar and pollen. They have to learn how to link patches of flowers together in the most efficient way to minimise their travel distance and flight costs, just like in a travelling salesman problem," explained lead author Mathieu Lihoreau from thd Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) in Britain.

The findings, published in the journal PLOS ONE, revealed that though the newcomers tried to copy the choices of seasoned foragers, the more experienced bees really didn't appreciate being copied.

"We wanted to monitor the way bumblebees behave when they bump into each other at flowers -- would they compete, attack each other, or tolerate each other?" added Lars Chittka, one of the authors.

The team set up one of the largest outdoor flight cages ever used in bee research and installed a range of artificial flowers, fitted with motion-sensitive video cameras which had controlled nectar flow rates for the bees to visit. 

The researchers then allowed two bees in at a time: One more experienced resident, and one a newcomer. 

While the newcomers did try to copy the choices of seasoned foragers, the more experienced bees really didn't appreciate their behaviour and frequently attacked the newcomers and tried to evict them from flowers.

"Our study is the first to examine the foraging routes followed by multiple bees at the same time. Responses to intense initial competition between bees for nectar could explain how pollinators gradually learn to visit different patches of flowers across the landscape," Lihoreau commented. ​