Knowledge Update

​Wellington, Nov 30 (IANS) New Zealand scientists have unlocked the mystery of why so many cancer patients die of blood clots while undergoing chemotherapy in a study.

Chemotherapy stimulates release of tiny bubbles from the surface of cancer cells, causing the potentially fatal clots, said the study by University of Otago researchers that came out on Wednesday, Xinhua news reported.

Most deaths from cancer were caused by uncontrolled growth of tumour in vital organs, but the second most common way that cancer kills is by triggering blood clotting resulting in thrombosis.

The clots cause blockage of major blood vessels, preventing oxygen and nutrients to vital organs.

Despite being life-prolonging, chemotherapy is thus associated with a six-to-seven fold increase in the risk of thrombosis in cancer patients.

The link between cancer and thrombosis was noted over 100 years ago, but the reasons for the association had been elusive, Associate Professor Alex McLellan said in a statement.

McLellan's team discovered cancer cells treated with chemotherapy releasing lipid-rich bubbles from their membranes that activated coagulation (clotting) processes.

"We now have insight into how these bubbles from dying cancer cells may cause thrombosis during chemotherapy," McLellan said.

The research had showed that certain solid cancers were more active in promoting blood coagulation, as compared to lymphomas.

"A general pattern is that cancers such as pancreatic, lung and brain cancers carry the largest risk of thrombotic events," he said.

The study opened the possibility of developing inhibitors to the major coagulation pathway identified in cancer cells.

​Singapore, Nov 30 (IANS) The next time you try to tell a lie or simpler versions of truth to your kids, be careful.

A new study has suggested that children as young as two and a half years old can understand others' "false beliefs". This suggests that they can also recognise when people are lying, cheating, or pretending.

Using a methodology known as the 'false belief task', an international team of researchers tested the abilities of more than 140 toddlers aged two and a half, to understand when other people have different thoughts from them.

False beliefs are misconceptions that result from incorrect reasoning, and the researchers suspected it may be too advanced for children to understand, or there may be too much information for them to deal with at once.

However, the findings showed that the cognitive abilities of two-and-half-year olds more advanced than previously thought.

"Our findings suggest that children may be able to spot when parents are doing this (telling lie) from as early as two and a half years old. Parents of young children and early childhood educators should be aware that children's early cognitive abilities may be more advanced than previously thought," said Setoh Pei Pei, Assistant Professor at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore.

For the study, the researchers used a modified story of 'Emma' and her apple in which the apple was taken away to an undisclosed location. The kids were then shown two object pictures and asked additional location questions. After this, they are asked where Emma will look for her apple.

The results suggest that young children are aware that others may hold different beliefs from them, but were not able to demonstrate this understanding due to information-processing overload. 

"The ability to answer questions about persons with false beliefs is present very early in development, contrary to what was traditionally thought," said Renee Baillargeon, Professor at the University of Illinois in the US. 

The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

London, Nov 30 (IANS) Most of the tweets about plastic surgery are about celebrities while only a few of those are posted by credentialed plastic surgeons that offer evidence-based information, a study has revealed.

"Twitter provides a great opportunity to engage with and educate patients and the public about plastic surgery, but all too often, the conversation is dominated by celebrity gossip and marketing by practitioners who are not Board-certified plastic surgeons," said lead researcher Olivier Alexandre Branford from The Royal Marsden Hospital, London.

The researchers analysed 2,900 tweets -- including the words "plastic surgery" -- and found that only six per cent of tweets about plastic surgery were actually made by plastic surgeons while 70 per cent were posted by the public.

While the researchers believe that Twitter "may be the best-suited platform to fulfil the role of public education and engagement," the study reveals that a high percentage -- 37 per cent -- of tweets with hashtag "PlasticSurgery" by plastic surgeons were self-promotional.

It also noted that only five per cent of tweets included the "PlasticSurgery" hashtag.

The report, published in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, found that 50 per cent of the tweets were about celebrity plastic surgery while 44 per cent were about aesthetic surgery. 

Only a few posts provided information about the basic science of plastic surgery, patient safety issues or topics related to reconstructive surgery.

The researchers suggested plastic surgeons to reclaim plastic surgery from the tabloid press, celebrity gossip and cosmetic quackery in the interests of public safety and quality outcomes.

New York, Nov 30 (IANS) If you want your kids to become successful later in life, better avoid pressuring them over grades, suggests new research.

Parents should not obsess over grades and extracurricular activities for young schoolchildren, especially if such ambitions come at the expense of social skills and kindness, as doing so can work against helping kids become well adjusted and successful in life, the study said.

"When parents emphasise children's achievement much more than their compassion and decency during the formative years, they are sowing the seeds of stress and poorer well-being, seen as early as sixth grade," said study co-author Suniya Luthar, Professor at Arizona State University in the US.

"In order to foster well-being and academic success during the critical years surrounding early adolescence, our findings suggest that parents should accentuate kindness and respect for others at least as much as (or more than) stellar academic performance and extracurricular accolades," Luthar noted.

The study focused on perceptions of parents' values among 506 sixth grade students from an affluent community. 

Kids were asked to rank the top three of six things their parents valued for them. 

Three values were about personal successes such as good grades and a successful later career, and the other three were about kindness and decency towards others.

The researchers examined underlying patterns on scores based on children's perceptions of their parents' achievement emphasis (relative to children's kindness to others). 

These patterns on perceived achievement emphasis were compared against the children's school performance and actions as measured by grade point average and in-class behaviour.

Results showed that mothers and fathers perceived emphasis on achievement versus interpersonal kindness played a key role in the child's personal adjustment and academic performance, as did perceptions of parents' criticism.

The best outcomes were among children who perceived their mothers and fathers as each valuing kindness toward others as much as, or more than, achievements, Luthar said.

Much poorer outcomes were seen among children who perceived either mothers or fathers valuing their achievements more highly than they valued being kind to others. 

The findings, published online in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, demonstrate the value of being socially oriented, Luthar said. 

"It is beneficial for kids to be strongly connected with their social networks, whereas focusing too much on external validations (such as grades, extra-curricular honours) for their sense of self-worth can lead to greater insecurity, anxiety and overall distress," she added.

Washington, Dec 1 (IANS) NASA's Cassini spacecraft began a "ring-grazing" mission to study Saturn's rings and moons, media reports said.

According to NASA, the "thrilling" ride marked the first phase of a "dramatic endgame" for the 19-year-old spacecraft and over the next five months, Cassini will circle high over and under the poles of Saturn every seven days for a total of 20 times, Xinhua news agency reported.

"We're calling this phase of the mission Cassini's Ring-Grazing Orbits, because we'll be skimming past the outer edge of the rings," Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Linda Spilker said in a statement.

"In addition, we have two instruments that can sample particles and gases as we cross the ring-plane, so in a sense Cassini is also 'grazing' on the rings."

During the first two orbits, the spacecraft will pass directly through an extremely faint ring produced by tiny meteors striking Saturn's two small moons Janus and Epimetheus.

Then, ring crossings in March and April will send the spacecraft through the dusty outer reaches of the F ring, which marks the outer boundary of the planet's main ring system.

Cassini's ring-grazing orbits also offer "unprecedented opportunities to observe the menagerie of small moons", including best-ever looks at the moons Pandora, Atlas, Pan and Daphnis, said NASA.

However, these orbits are merely a prelude to the spacecraft's "Grand Finale phase" that will begin in April 2017, when Cassini is scheduled to fly through the 2,350 km gap between Saturn and its rings.

Finally, the long-lived spacecraft will make a mission-ending plunge into the planet's atmosphere on September 15, 2017.

Launched in 1997, Cassini has been touring the Saturn system since arriving there in 2004. 

During its journey, Cassini has made numerous dramatic discoveries, including a global ocean within Enceladus and liquid methane seas on Titan. But the mission is drawing near its end because the spacecraft is running low on fuel. 

​Sydney, Dec 1 (IANS) Australia welcomed the first day of its summer on Thursday with a surge in the maximum temperatures that are expected to soar past 40 degrees Celsius, reports said.

As sun tilted towards the southern hemisphere heatwave was projected for Queensland and New South Wales states, Xinhua news reported.

Temperatures are expected to soar past 40 degrees Celsius over the next three to five days, nine degrees above the December average.

This has forced authorities to activate a safety plan usually reserved for floods and cyclones due to the high risk of heatstroke.

Australia's weather bureau said heatwaves have taken more lives in the 200 years than any other natural hazard downunder.

"For every 100,000 people exposed to a category five heatwave, you would get at least three fatalities," Risk Frontiers' lead catastrophe loss modeller Thomas Loridan said.

Australia's Bureau of Meteorology have rated the heatwave hitting southeast Queensland and northern New South Wales as "severe to extreme".

Washington, Dec 1 (IANS) NASA scientists are developing artificial intelligence for underwater drones that could be used to understand Earths marine environments as well as track signs of life below the surface of icy oceans believed to exist on Jupiter's moon Europa.

While satellites can study the ocean surface, their signals cannot penetrate the water and therefore robotic submersibles have become critical tools for ocean research. 

"Autonomous drones are important for ocean research, but today's drones don't make decisions on the fly," said Steve Chien, who leads the Artificial Intelligence Group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. 

"In order to study unpredictable ocean phenomena, we need to develop submersibles that can navigate and make decisions on their own, and in real-time. Doing so would help us understand our own oceans -- and maybe those on other planets," Chien said in a NASA statement.

If confirmed, the oceans on moons like Europa are thought to be some of the most likely places to host life in the outer solar system.

If successful, this project could lead to submersibles that can plot their own course as they go, based on what they detect in the water around them. 

That could change how scientists collect data, while also developing the kind of autonomy needed for planetary exploration, said Andrew Thompson, Assistant Professor at California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

"Our goal is to remove the human effort from the day-to-day piloting of these robots and focus that time on analysing the data collected," Thompson said.

"We want to give these submersibles the freedom and ability to collect useful information without putting a hand in to correct them," Thompson noted.

As part of this research, a team of scientists from NASA and other institutions recently used a fleet of six coordinated drones to study Monterey Bay, California.

The fleet roved for miles seeking out changes in temperature and salinity. To plot their routes, forecasts of these ocean features were sent to the drones from shore.

The drones also sensed how the ocean actively changed around them. 

New York, Dec 1 (IANS) Using data from four different telescopes, a team of astronomers led by an Indian-origin researcher has reported that an asteroid discovered last year is the tiniest known asteroid.

At two meters (six feet) in diameter, the asteroid, named 2015 TC25, is also one of the brightest near-Earth asteroids ever discovered, the researchers said.

"If we can discover and characterise asteroids and meteoroids this small, then we can understand the population of objects from which they originate: large asteroids, which have a much smaller likelihood of impacting Earth," said Vishnu Reddy, Assistant Professor at University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in the US .

"In the case of 2015 TC25, the likelihood of impacting Earth is fairly small," Reddy, an alumnus of Madurai Kamraj University in Tamil Nadu, said.

Small near-Earth asteroids such as 2015 TC25 are in the same size range as meteorites that fall on Earth. Astronomers discover them frequently, but not very much is known about them as they are difficult to characterise. 

By studying such objects in more detail, astronomers hope to better understand the parent bodies from which these meteorites originate.

Discovered by the University of Arizona's Catalina Sky Survey last October, 2015 TC25 was studied extensively by Earth-based telescopes during a close flyby that saw the micro world sailing past Earth at 128,000 kilometres, a mere third of the distance to the moon.

In a paper published in The Astronomical Journal, Reddy noted that new observations from the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility and Arecibo Planetary Radar showed that the surface of the asteroid is similar to a rare type of highly reflective meteorite called an aubrite. 

Aubrites consist of very bright minerals, mostly silicates, that formed in an oxygen-free, basaltic environment at very high temperatures. Only one out of every 1,000 meteorites that fall on Earth belong to this class.

"This is the first time we have optical, infrared and radar data on such a small asteroid, which is essentially a meteoroid," Reddy said. 

"You can think of it as a meteorite floating in space that hasn't hit the atmosphere and made it to the ground - yet," Reddy noted.

New York, Dec 1 (IANS) Lucy -- the common name accorded to the world-famous fossilised remains of an early human ancestor who lived 3.18 million years ago -- was adept at walking on her two legs as well as climbing trees, researchers have determined.

Evidence preserved in the internal skeletal structure of Lucy, a member of the ancient human species known as Australopithecus afarensis, suggests that she climbed trees, the study said.

Since Lucy's discovery in Ethiopia 42 years ago, paleontologists have debated whether she spent her life walking on the ground or combined walking with frequent tree climbing.

The new analysis, published in the journal PLOS ONE, showed that Lucy's upper limbs were heavily built, similar to tree-climbing chimpanzees, supporting the idea that she often used her arms to pull herself up, most likely onto tree branches. 

"It may seem unique from our perspective that early hominins like Lucy combined walking on the ground on two legs with a significant amount of tree climbing, but Lucy did not know she was unique," said one of the researchers John Kappelman from The University of Texas at Austin in the US.

Researchers also suggested that because her foot was better adapted for bipedal locomotion -- or upright walking -- rather than grasping, Lucy had to rely on upper-body strength when climbing, which resulted in more heavily built upper-limb bones.

"We were able to undertake this study thanks to the relative completeness of Lucy's skeleton," study's lead author Christopher Ruff, Professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, noted. 

"Our analysis required well-preserved upper and lower limb bones from the same individual, something very rare in the fossil record," Ruff said.

A recent study by Kappelman proposed that Lucy probably died after falling from a tall tree, where she may have been nesting to avoid predators.