Knowledge Update

Tokyo, April 27 (IANS) Japanese videogame company Nintendo will release its new console globally in March 2017, the company announced on Wednesday. "Nintendo is currently developing a gaming platform codenamed 'NX' with a brand-new concept... NX will be launched in March 2017 globally," the company said in its report, without giving any more details. The Kyoto-based company decided to halt production of its Wii U game console, after scanty sales till December 2015 that pushed it to focus on the Nintendo NX, EFE news reported citing the Nikkei daily. The launch of the new console could, however, result in a greater dip in Wii U sales, which dropped 8.4 percent in 2015.​

​London, April 27 (IANS) People need not check their cholesterol levels on an empty stomach, suggests new research involving more than 300,000 individuals from Denmark, Canada and the US.

So far, fasting has been required before cholesterol and triglyceride measurement in all countries except Denmark, where non-fasting blood sampling has been used since 2009, the study pointed out.

Fasting is a problem for many patients, and the latest research shows that cholesterol and triglyceride levels are similar whether you fast or not. 

"This will improve patients compliance to preventive treatment aimed at reducing number of heart attacks and strokes, the main killers in the world," said one of the researchers Borge Nordestgaard from Herlev Hospital, University of Copenhagen.

The research was published in the European Heart Journal.

In Denmark, the use of random, non-fasting cholesterol testing at any time of the day irrespective of food intake has been used successfully since 2009. 

Patients, doctors and laboratories have all benefitted from this simplified procedure. For people at work, children, patients with diabetes and the elderly it is particularly beneficial not to have to fast before blood sampling for cholesterol and triglyceride testing.

This is the first international recommendation that fasting is no longer necessary before cholesterol and triglyceride testing. 

These recommendations represent a joint consensus statement from the European Atherosclerosis Society and European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine involving 21 medical experts from Europe, Australia and the US.

"We hope that non-fasting cholesterol testing will make more patients together with their doctors implement lifestyle changes and if necessary statin treatment to reduce the global burden of cardiovascular disease and premature death," Nordestgaard added.​

​New York, April 27 (IANS) Old age brings with it many health problems including the loss of vision, hearing and taste, and a new study says that the ability to smell the food through the mouth decreases with age.

Human beings not only pick up aromas through the nose, but also through the mouth while chewing the food. Retronasal smell, which is smelling from behind the nose comes into play when food is chewed and volatile molecules are released in the process.

These then drift through the mouth to the back of the nose where the odour is detected.

But, unfortunately, for some, this ability decreases with age, said Tyler Flaherty from Oregon State University in the US.

This might be, among other reasons, because of the prolonged use of medication or physical and mental changes associated with older age, the researchers noted in the study published in the journal Chemosensory Perception. 

One's ability to pick up smells through the mouth could also be influenced by, for instance, the use of dentures.

The results revealed that many of the older participants found it difficult to pick out specific odours.

However, younger participants fared better when individual smells where presented to them in combination with other tastes.

"Generally, large individual differences in odour responsiveness become even greater when ageing is considered as a factor," Flaherty said.

The team studied how people experience odours via their mouths, and whether age or gender has an influence on it. 

They included 102 non-smoking healthy people between the ages of 18 and 72 years old participants in the study.

The researchers then rated how intensely they pick up on two tastes (sweet and salty) and four odours (strawberry, vanilla, chicken and soy sauce) put to them. 

Participants were also exposed to these in combinations that go well together, such as sweet and vanilla, or salty and chicken.

Significantly, only three percent of the participants had trouble picking up any traces of the sweet or salty tastes, whereas up to 23 percent of them found it difficult to detect some of the sampled odours.

New York, April 28 (IANS) If you are 65 and still working, it can be an add-on for you to live longer while retiring early may increase your chances of dying early, says new research, suggesting that there is a strong relationship between work and longevity.

The findings showed that healthy retirees who worked a year longer of age 65 had an 11 percent lower risk of death while unhealthy retirees who worked a year longer had a nine percent lower mortality risk which indicates that factors beyond health may affect post-retirement mortality.

"It may not apply to everybody but we think that work brings people a lot of economic and social benefits that could impact the length of their lives," said lead study author Chenkai Wu from the Oregon State University in the US.

The team analysed 2,956 people who had retired from 1992 to 2010 and looked at effects of retirement on health.

Poor health is one reason people retire early and also can lead to earlier death, so researchers wanted to find a way to mitigate a potential bias in that regard.

They divided the participants into unhealthy retirees -- who indicated that health was a factor in their decision to retire and healthy retirees -- who indicated health was not a factor. 

The results indicated that during the study period, about a 12 percent of the healthy and a 25.6 percent of the unhealthy retirees died. 

Working a year longer had a positive impact on the study participants' mortality rate regardless of their health status.

"Most research in this area has focused on the economic impacts of delaying retirement. I thought it might be good to look at the health impacts," Wu added in the paper published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.​

​New York, April 28 (IANS) A single antibody infusion can protect monkeys against infection with an HIV-like virus for up to 23 weeks, researchers have found.

The findings suggest that using infusion of broadly neutralising antibodies (bNAbs) as a prevention strategy potentially could protect people at high risk for HIV transmission. 

The study, published in the journal Nature, was led by scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the US National Institutes of Health, and The Rockefeller University in New York.

In the study, the researchers rectally exposed macaques to weekly low doses of simian human immunodeficiency virus (SHIV), which contains components of HIV and a related monkey virus. 

On average, it took three weeks for detectable levels of virus to appear in the blood of untreated animals.

To investigate whether bNAb infusion could offer long-term protection against SHIV infection, the scientists gave single infusions of one of three individual bNAbs against HIV to three groups of six macaques, then exposed the animals weekly to low doses of SHIV. 

In all cases, the bNAb infusions delayed the acquisition of SHIV, with the longest period of protection lasting 23 weeks. 

The researchers found that the duration of protection depended on the antibody's potency and half-life - a measure of the antibody's lifespan in the blood and tissues.

Enrollment for the first of two planned human clinical trials assessing one of three individual bNAbs infusions for preventing HIV infection has already begun, the study pointed out.​

​Toronto, April 28 (IANS) You may now have no excuse not to exercise as researchers have found that a single minute of very intense exercise produces health benefits similar to 45 minutes of traditional endurance training.

The findings put to rest the common excuse for not getting in shape -- there is not enough time.

"This is a very time-efficient workout strategy," said lead author on the study Martin Gibala, professor of kinesiology at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. 

"Brief bursts of intense exercise are remarkably effective," Gibala said.

The scientists set out to determine how sprint interval training (SIT) compared to moderate-intensity continuous training (MICT), as recommended in public health guidelines. 

They examined key health indicators including cardiorespiratory fitness and insulin sensitivity, a measure of how the body regulates blood sugar.

A total of 27 sedentary men were recruited and assigned to perform three weekly sessions of either intense or moderate training for 12 weeks, or to a control group that did not exercise.

The SIT protocol involved three 20-second 'all-out' cycle sprints and was found effective for boosting fitness. 

The workout totalled just 10 minutes, including a two-minute warm-up and three-minute cool down, and two minutes of easy cycling for recovery between the hard sprints.

The new study compared the SIT protocol with a group who performed 45 minutes of continuous cycling at a moderate pace, plus the same warm-up and cool down. 

After 12 weeks of training, the results were remarkably similar, showed the findings published online in the journal PLOS ONE.

"Most people cite 'lack of time' as the main reason for not being active," Gibala said.

"Our study shows that an interval-based approach can be more efficient -- you can get health and fitness benefits comparable to the traditional approach, in less time," Gibala said.​

London, April 27 (IANS) Researchers have found that tablet computers loaded with literacy applications could improve the reading preparedness of young children living in economically disadvantaged communities.

The results of first three trials of the study were presented recently at the Association for Computing Machinery's Learning at Scale conference in Britain.

In all three cases, study participants' performance on standardised tests of reading preparedness indicated that the tablet use was effective.

The trials examined a range of educational environments. One was set in a pair of rural Ethiopian villages with no schools and no written culture; one was set in a suburban South African school with a student-to-teacher ratio of 60 to one; and one was set in a rural US school with predominantly low-income students.

In the African deployments, students who used the tablets fared much better on the tests than those who did not, and in the US deployment, the students' scores improved dramatically after four months of using the tablets.

"The whole premise of our project is to harness the best science and innovation to bring education to the world's most underresourced children," said study first author Cynthia Breazeal, associate professor of media arts and sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US.

The experiments consisted of an inexpensive tablet computer using Google's Android operating system. 

The researchers also developed their own interface for the tablets, which grants users access only to approved educational apps. Across the three deployments, the tablets were issued to children ranging in age from four to 11.

"When we do these deployments, we purposely don't tell the kids how to use the tablets or instruct them about any of the content," Breazeal said. ​

​London, April 27 (IANS) Danish researchers have developed a novel genetic method that could lead to the development of safe and effective vaccines for controlling diseases such as cancer, asthma, and allergies.

"The major research breakthrough is that we have created a general and user-friendly platform for the development of a special type of effective and safe vaccines,” said one of the researchers Adam Sander from University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

"The highly effective method opens a new door for controlling diseases such as cancer, asthma, allergies and cardiovascular diseases by means of vaccines,” Sander pointed out.

The method was described in the Journal of Nanobiotechnology.

The idea behind the new technique is to mimic the structure of a virus. When you have made the virus structure, it is used as a platform onto which are glued harmless parts of the disease which you want to vaccinate against. 

This creates an overall virus-like structure, which constitutes an important danger signal for the body. The immune system would therefore produce antibodies against the disease -- a mechanism which has been difficult to activate by traditional vaccines.

The technology is also so effective that it can trick the immune system into attacking the body's own cells, which may be used in the treatment of a number of serious diseases, such as cancer, which are not caused by foreign organisms, the study said.

"Previously, it was a major problem to activate the immune system and get an adequate response. We have lacked the possibility to easily create a vaccine which mimics something that will trigger a natural response from the body, but the new virus-like platform now allows us to do so,” Susan Thrane from University of Copenhagen noted.

"In other words, we now have a unique technique that enables us to develop vaccines against diseases that we have so far been unable to fight," Thrane pointed out.

"It will be a game changer for low-income countries, which can now make vaccines targeted at widespread diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria. There is no doubt that the new results will have a significant impact on tomorrow's vaccines and public health," Ali Salanti, professor at University of Copenhagen, said.​

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​New York, April 25 (IANS) Children exposed to chemicals used in liquid laundry detergent packets may have serious health effects such as breathing problems, heart problems, and even death, warns a study.

The study, published online in the journal Pediatrics, found that from January 2013 to December 2014 poison control centres in the US received 62,254 calls related to laundry and dishwasher detergent exposures among children younger than six years old.

Incidents related to laundry detergent packets saw the biggest rise -- increasing 17 percent over the two-year study period.

Poison control centres in the US received more than 30 calls a day about children who had been exposed to a laundry detergent packet, which is about one call every 45 minutes.

At least one child a day was admitted to the hospital due to a laundry detergent packet exposure.

In addition, the study also saw two child deaths which were associated with exposure to liquid laundry detergent packets.

"Many families don't realise how toxic these highly concentrated laundry detergent packets are," noted study co-author Marcel Casavant, chief of toxicology at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio, US.

To curb incidents related to laundry detergent packets exposure, ASTM International -- a standards organisation that develops and publishes voluntary consensus technical standards for various products, published a voluntary standard safety specification for liquid laundry packets in 2015.

But, according to some experts, the report is ineffective or not substantial enough to reduce unintentional exposures to the contents of laundry detergent packets.

"This voluntary standard is a good first step, but it needs to be strengthened," one of the researchers Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio said.

"Unless this unacceptably high number of exposures declines dramatically, manufacturers need to continue to find ways to make this product and it's packaging safer for children," Smith suggested.

Experts recommend that families with children younger than six-years old should use traditional detergent, which is much less toxic than laundry detergent packets, as well as store all laundry detergents up, away, and out of sight of the kids.

"Use traditional laundry detergent when you have young kids in your home. It isn't worth the risk when there is a safer and effective alternative available," Casavant pointed out.​