Knowledge Update

​New York, June 28 (IANS) A single oral dose of a drug that is already being used to treat a type of blood disorder could also improve our memory, suggests new research.

The researchers found that single dose of the common, inexpensive and safe chemical called methylene blue results in an increased response in brain areas that control short-term memory and attention.

Methylene blue is used to treat methemoglobinemia, a blood disorder in which oxygen is unable to release effectively to body tissues, and as a surgical stain.

"Although the memory-enhancing effects of methylene blue were shown in rodents in the 1970s, the underlying neuronal changes in the brain responsible for memory improvement and the effects of methylene blue on short-term memory and sustained-attention tasks have not been investigated," said study author Timothy Duong from University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Texas. 

"Our team decided to conduct the first multi-modal MRI study of methylene blue in humans," Duong noted.

Twenty-six healthy participants, between the ages of 22 and 62, were enrolled in a double-blinded, randomised, placebo-controlled clinical trial to measure the effects of methylene blue on the human brain during working-memory and sustained-attention tasks. 

The participants underwent functional MRI (fMRI) before and one hour after low-dose methylene blue or placebo administration to evaluate the potential effects of the compound on cerebrovascular reactivity during tasks. 

Mean cerebral blood flow was measured pre- and post-intervention.

The results showed methylene blue increased response in the bilateral insular cortex -- an area deep within the brain associated with emotional responses -- during a task that measured reaction time to a visual stimulus. 

The functional MRI results also showed an increased response during short-term memory tasks involving the brain's prefrontal cortex, which controls processing of memories, the parietal lobe, primarily associated with the processing of sensory information, and the occipital cortex, the visual processing centre of the brain. 

In addition, methylene blue was associated with a seven percent increase in correct responses during memory retrieval.

The study was published online in the journal Radiology.

The findings suggest that methylene blue can regulate certain brain networks related to sustained attention and short-term memory after a single oral low dose​

​New York, June 28 (IANS) Researchers including one of Indian-origin have created a new computer model that shows how tiny slits in the spleen prevent diseased red blood cells from re-entering the bloodstream.

Their model provides a new tool for studying the spleen's role in controlling diseases that affect the shape of red blood cells, such as malaria and sickle cell anaemia, and can be used to develop new diagnostics and therapeutics for a variety of acute and chronic diseases.

"The computational and analytical models from this work, along with a variety of experimental observations, point to a more detailed picture of how the physiology of human spleen likely influences several key geometrical characteristics of red blood cells," said Subra Suresh, President, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US.

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

"They also offer better understanding of how the circulatory bottleneck for the red blood cell in the spleen could affect a variety of acute and chronic disease states arising from hereditary disorders, human cancers and infectious diseases, with implications for therapeutic interventions and drug efficacy assays." 

The spleen is like the water treatment plant for the body's bloodstream. It prevents pathogens from reaching the bloodstream and filters out old and misshapen red blood cells.

In order to "see" how the interendothelial slits regulate red blood cell circulation, the researchers created a computer simulation based on dissipative particle dynamics, a modeling method developed and refined for biological cells in partnership with Brown University Professor George Karniadakis. 

Their model allowed them to determine the range of cell sizes and shapes that could fit through the slits. 

The range closely mirrored the range of sizes and shapes for healthy red blood cells, indicating that only healthy cells should be able to pass through the slits.

In addition to giving researchers a better picture of how the spleen functions, the findings provide new insights into drug treatments. 

A class of drugs currently in development for treating malaria alters the shape of red blood cells infected with malaria, theoretically preventing them from passing through the interendothelial slit. 

The researchers' results also could explain why artemisinin-based anti-malarial drugs, which stiffen healthy and malaria-infected red blood cells, could lead to severe anaemia, the study said.​

​Bratislava, June 27 (IANS) Britain's exit from the European Union (EU) will greatly weaken the bloc, European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic has said here.

"If a country like Britain exits, it must be perceived by the outside world as weakening the Union and as a demonstration of the crisis that the EU is undergoing," said Sefcovic on

​New York, June 26 (IANS) Smartphone apps and other digital technology have the potential to provide rapid emergency care for cardiac arrest, heart attacks and strokes, says researchers.

​London, June 26 (IANS) British scientists have designed a computer programme that could help consumers shop more efficiently online by recognising sketches.

Pioneered by scientists from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), the programme recognises a sketch -- like sketches of a pair of shoes or piece of furniture - which are

​London, June 25 (IANS) In a first, a British technology start-up has invented a multi-function antenna for laptops that combines Wi-Fi, GPS, bluetooth and 3G/4G LTE and WiGig -- multi-gigabit per second wireless speed -- in one unit.

New York, June 27 (IANS) Ever struggled with a shampoo bottle in trying to get the last drop out or the last bit of a hand wash, dish wash or laundry detergent? Worry not as researchers, including one of Indian-origin, have found a way to create the perfect texture inside plastic bottles to let soap products flow out freely. The new technology involves lining a plastic bottle with microscopic "y-shaped" structures that cradle the droplets of soap aloft above tiny air pockets so that the soap never actually touches the inside of the bottle. "Manufacturers are really interested in this because they make billions of bottles that end up in the garbage with product still in them," said Bharat Bhushan, Professor from Ohio State University. The "y" structures are built up using spray-coating a small amount of solvent and ultra-fine silica nanoparticles onto the inside of bottles. Mixing the silica and solvent to the surface of the polypropylene -- the common plastics used to package foodstuffs and household goods -- softened it just enough, so that when the plastic re-hardened, the silica got embedded in the surface. The structures are only a few micrometers -- millionths of a meter-high -- and covered in even smaller branchlike projections. The main branches of the "y" overhang the plastic surface at an angle less than 90 degrees -- steep enough that water, oils and even surfactant can't physically sustain a droplet shape that would fall in between the branches and touch the plastic. Surfactants -- the organic molecules that make soap "soapy"-- have a very low surface tension and stick to plastic easily. "It was an extra challenge for us to make a surface that could repel surfactant as the plastic bottles end up with air pockets underneath that gives them a liquid repellency," explained Philip Brown, post-doctoral Student at Ohio State. But, "we embedded a hard material directly into the polymer surface, so we know it's durable," Brown added in a paper published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The researchers further hope to license the coating technique to manufacturers -- not just for shampoo bottles, but for other plastic products that have to stay clean, such as biomedical devices or catheters. ​

​Beijing, June 26 (IANS) China will send its second orbiting space lab Tiangong-2 into space in mid September, said a senior official with the country's manned space programme.

The Shenzhou-11 manned spacecraft will be launched in mid September and its re-entry module will return in November, said Wu Ping, deputy director of the manned space engineering office, at a press conference on Saturday after the successful launch of the Long March-7, a new generation carrier rocket, at Wenchang, Hainan province.

As part of the country's space lab programme, the Shenzhou-11 spacecraft will carry two astronauts on board and dock with Tiangong-2.

The two astronauts have been chosen and currently under intense training, Wu said.

The Tiangong-2 and Shenzhou-11 will be carried by Long March-2F carrier rocket, she said.

In April 2017, the country's first cargo spaceship, Tianzhou-1, will be launched and carried by the Long March-7, Wu said.

"With the improvement of the rocket's technological performance, the Long March-7 will step by step replace the current carrier rockets and become the main carrier for space launches," she added.​

Kuala Lumpur, June 26 (IANS) Dried sewage sludge could be recycled by adding it to cement to make concrete, researchers in Malaysia have discovered.

Disposing sludge left over from treating sewage water is a major challenge for wastewater plants.

Meanwhile, the construction sector seeks economic and ecological cement replacement materials in order to meet an increasing demand for concrete.

Researchers from Universiti Teknologi MARA investigated the potential to replace various quantities of cement with processed sewage sludge to create a concrete mixture.

The researchers first produced domestic waste sludge powder (DWSP). They dried and burnt wet sludge cake to remove moisture, and then ground and sieved the dried sludge cake to make the sludge powder.

Using varying proportions of the powder, ranging from three-fifteen per cent, the researchers mixed the material with cement to produce normal strength and two higher strength grades of concrete.

They then compared the domestic waste sludge powder concrete mixture of each proportion with normal concrete in terms of their compressive strength, water absorption, water permeability and permeability to salt.

Overall, the researchers found that while domestic waste sludge powder has a potential role in the manufacture of concrete, the performance of the concrete blends tends to decline with increasing concentrations of the powder.

The findings were published in the Pertanika Journal of Science and Technology.

"Overall, there is potential for using DWSP as a partial cement replacement," the researchers said.

"However, more detailed research should be conducted to yield better quality powder," they added.​

​London, June 27 (IANS) Space-based detector can spot at least two gravitational waves -- ripples in space-time -- each year caused by collisions between supermassive black holes, revealing the initial mass of the seeds from which the first black holes grew 13 billion years ago.

A space-based instrument called the Evolved Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (eLISA) detector is set to be launched in 2034.

As eLISA will be in space - and will be at least 250,000 times larger than detectors on Earth - it should be able to detect the much lower frequency gravitational waves caused by collisions between supermassive black holes that are up to a million times the mass of our sun.

Scientists led by Durham University's Institute for Computational Cosmology ran the huge cosmological simulations that can be used to predict the rate at which gravitational waves caused by collisions between the monster black holes might be detected.

The study combined simulations from the EAGLE project - which aims to create a realistic simulation of the known Universe inside a computer - with a model to calculate gravitational wave signals.

“Understanding more about gravitational waves means that we can study the universe in an entirely different way. These waves are caused by massive collisions between objects with a mass far greater than our Sun," said lead author Jaime Salcido, PhD student in Durham University.

"By combining the detection of gravitational waves with simulations we could ultimately work out when and how the first seeds of supermassive black holes formed,” Salcido added.

In February, the international LIGO and Virgo collaborations announced that they had detected gravitational waves for the first time using ground-based instruments and in June reported a second detection.

Current theories suggest that the seeds of these black holes were the result of either the growth and collapse of the first generation of stars in the Universe; collisions between stars in dense stellar clusters; or the direct collapse of extremely massive stars in the early Universe.

As each of these theories predicts different initial masses for the seeds of supermassive black hole seeds, the collisions would produce different gravitational wave signals.

This means that the potential detections by eLISA could help pinpoint the mechanism that helped create supermassive black holes and when in the history of the Universe they formed.

“Black holes are fundamental to galaxy formation and are thought to sit at the centre of most galaxies, including our very own Milky Way,” noted co-author professor Richard Bower.

“Our research has shown how space-based detectors will provide new insights into the nature of supermassive black holes,” he added.

Gravitational waves were first predicted 100 years ago by Albert Einstein as part of his Theory of General Relativity.

The research was set to be presented at the Royal Astronomical Society's national astronomy meeting in Nottingham on Monday.​