Introduction & Purpose
Knowledge update and Industry update at Skyline University College (SUC) is an online platform for communicating knowledge with SUC stakeholders, industry, and the outside world about the current trends of business development, technology, and social changes. The platform helps in branding SUC as a leading institution of updated knowledge base and in encouraging faculties, students, and others to create and contribute under different streams of domain and application. The platform also acts as a catalyst for learning and sharing knowledge in various areas.
SUC Editing Team
Travel and Tourism
Tokyo, May 30 (IANS) If you are a frequent traveller and get bogged down by jet lag with every flight, help is on the way. Researchers have designed new molecules that can help modify the human biological clock to manage sleep-deprived travellers as well as improve treatment for sleep disorders.
Most living organisms, including humans, have a circadian rhythm or the 24-hour biological clock that regulates functions such as sleep-wake cycles, hormone secretion and metabolism.
This cycle often gets disrupted in situations like jet lag and sleep disorders like sleep apnea where long-term sleep loss ensues. This may affect cardiovascular, endocrine, immune and nervous systems with severe consequences including hypertension, obesity and mental health disorders, among others.
"We can make bioactive molecules that can control the circadian rhythm of animals and gain further insight into the circadian clock mechanism which will surely contribute to medical applications, food production and advances in clock research," said Takashi Yoshimura, professor at Nagoya University's Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules (ITbM) in Japan.
The team synthesised the activity of circadian rhythm-changing molecules and targeted a molecule that affects a specific circadian protein called CRY.
The findings showed that FBLX3 -- a compound that readies protein CRY for degradation by cellular enzyme -- competes with KL001 -- a molecule that lengthens the circadian cycle -- to preventing its degradation.
They prepared compounds that were similar to KL001, thus synthesising the first circadian shortening molecules that target the CRY protein.
The negative impacts of jet lag and shift work could be significantly reduced if it were possible to reset our 24-hour natural circadian or sleep/wake cycle with the new discovery, the authors noted.
SUC Editing Team
Travel and Tourism
Abu Dhabi, May 30 (IANS/WAM) UAE's Emirates Airline on Monday signed a memorandum of understanding with Jordan Tourism Board to boost tourism in the country, a statement said.
The deal focuses on the growth of key tourist destinations in Jordan which has been an important part of Emirates' network since 1986.
Emirates together with the Jordan Tourism Board will put into effect a range of joint marketing activities, including tourism promotions amongst other initiatives.
"The MoU underscores Emirates' confidence in Jordan's potential as a world-class destination, and we are committed to promoting tourism from key target regions including the Far East, Australia, West Asia and Central and South America," Thierry Antinori, Emirates Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, said.
Abed Al Razzaq Arabiyat, managing director of the Jordan Tourism Board, expressed the hope that the common efforts with Emirates will inspire travellers to explore Jordan.
Super User
Lifestyle and Trends
Sydney, May 29 (IANS) There is a limit to the maximum number of people you can choose to connect with in a social network, and that limit has largely remained unchanged since humans lived in hunter-gatherer societies over thousands of years ago, finds a new study.
"When you have got this network of relationships, there are a lot of things going on in that network. It takes a lot of brain power to actually socially navigate these large networks and there's an upper limit to our ability to do that," said study lead author Michael Harre from the University of Sydney.
Harre and colleague Mikhail Prokopenko have now calculated how that limit -- known as Dunbar's Number -- is reached.
"For humans the limit is around 132 individuals," Harre said.
The limit applies to small groups in both hunter-gatherer societies and modern societies where people are increasingly getting connected to one another using online social networking sites like Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter.
The study, published recently in the Royal Society journal Interface, however points out that you don't have to maintain relationships with everyone in the group for it to remain cohesive.
"To connect together a group of 132 individuals we estimate the average number of links each individual has to be able to maintain is between four and five," the researchers said.
According to the study, a person in a group of five such as a book club or group of friends needs to maintain an average of one to two links. A person in a group of 15 needs an average of two to three links, and a person in a group of 45 needs an average of three to four links.
"The strength of our result is in showing that it is sufficient to add just one connection per person on average while increasing the size of the group roughly three-fold," Prokopenko said.
It means you don't have to like or even be friends with people to co-operate with them -- as long as others in the group do.
"You only have to like enough people to bind the group together," he added.
This would have been important in the days when hunter-gatherers needed, say, 15 people to cooperate in the hunting of a mammoth.
"All you need to do is like two or three people in that group and that's adequate for you to go off and hunt with them," Prokopenko said.
Super User
From Different Corners
London, May 29 (IANS) Listening to soothing music just before an eye surgery can ease patients’ anxiety as well as help reduce the level of sedation required, finds a new study.
"Listening to music may be considered as an inexpensive, non-invasive, non-pharmacological method to reduce anxiety for patients undergoing elective eye surgery under local anaesthesia," said Gilles Guerrier from Cochin University Hospital in France.
According to the researchers, being awake during surgery is particularly stressful for patients.
The findings showed a significant reduction in anxiety among patients who listened to music (score 23 out of 100) compared to those who didn’t (score 65 out of 100).
Patients who listened to music received significantly less sedatives during surgery compared with the non-music group (16 percent vs 32 percent).
Further, the postoperative satisfaction was significantly higher in the music group (mean score 71 out of 100 versus 55 for the non-music group).
"The objective is to provide music to all patients before eye surgery. We intend to assess the procedure in other type of surgeries, including orthopaedics where regional anaesthesia is common,” Guerrier added.
The pilot study evaluated the effect of music on anxiety in outpatients undergoing elective eye surgery under topical (local) anaesthesia.
The team evaluated a total of 62 patients who heard relaxing music or no music for around 15 minutes just before cataracts surgery.
The selected 16 pieces of music of various styles including jazz, flamenco, Cuban, classical and piano, aimed at preventing and managing pain, anxiety and depression.
A surgical fear questionnaire (SFQ) was also used to assess anxiety before and after a music session.
The results were presented recently at Euroanaesthesia 2016 in London.
Super User
From Different Corners
Washington, May 30 (IANS) NASA's New Horizon probe has sent home the most detailed view of Pluto's terrain you will see for a very long time.
The mosaic strip - extending across the hemisphere that faced the New Horizons spacecraft as it flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015 - now includes all of the highest-resolution images taken by the NASA probe.
With a resolution of about 260 ft per pixel, the mosaic gives New Horizons scientists and the public the best opportunity to examine the fine details of the various types of terrain on Pluto, and determine the processes that formed and shaped them.
"This new image product is just magnetic. It makes me want to go back on another mission to Pluto and get high-resolution images like these across the entire surface," said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado.
The view extends from the "limb" of Pluto at the top of the strip, almost to the "terminator" (or day/night line) in the southeast of the encounter hemisphere.
The width of the strip ranges from more than 90 km at its northern end to about 75 km at its southern point.
New Horizons spacecraft recently observed a first object in Kuiper Belt - a region of the solar system beyond the orbit of Neptune.
"1994 JR1" is a 145-km-wide Kuiper Belt object (KBO) orbiting more than 5 billion km from the Sun.
The images shatter New Horizons' own record for the closest-ever views of this KBO in November 2015 when New Horizons detected "JR1" from 280 million km away.
The observations contain several valuable findings.
"Combining the November 2015 and April 2016 observations allows us to pinpoint the location of JR1 to within 1,000 km, far better than any small KBO," said Simon Porter from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado.
The more accurate orbit also allows the science team to dispel a theory, suggested several years ago, that JR1 is a quasi-satellite of Pluto.
The team also determined the object's rotation period, observing the changes in light reflected from JR1's surface to determine that it rotates once every 5.4 hours (or a JR1 day).
"That's relatively fast for a KBO. This is all part of the excitement of exploring new places and seeing things never seen before," added science team member John Spencer from SwRI in a NASA statement.
The observations are great practice for possible close-up looks at about 20 more ancient Kuiper Belt objects that may come in the next few years.
New Horizons flew through the Pluto system, making the first close-up observations of Pluto and its family of five moons.
The spacecraft is on course for an ultra-close flyby of another Kuiper Belt object, "2014 MU69", on January 1, 2019.
Super User
From Different Corners
London, May 29 (IANS) A team of archaeologists has scanned the highest prehistoric paintings of animals in Europe discovered in a rock shelter in the French Alps 2,133 metres above sea level.
The team from the University of York used car batteries to power laser and white-light scanners in a logistically complex operation to reveal the rock paintings of Abri Faravel that were discovered in 2010.
The rock shelter has seen phases of human activity from the Mesolithic to the medieval period, with its prehistoric rock paintings known to be the highest painted representations of animals (quadrupeds) in Europe.
Researchers recently published the scans in online journal Internet Archaeology.
"After years of research in this valley, the day we discovered these paintings was undeniably the highlight of the research programme," said project lead Kevin Walsh from University of York.
"As this site is so unusual, we made the decision to carry out a laser-scan of the rock shelter and the surrounding landscape, plus a white-light scan of the actual paintings," he added.
The scanning was logistically complex as the only source of electricity was car batteries, which, along with all of the scanning equipment, had to be carried up to the site.
"This is the only example of virtual models, including a scan of the art, done at high altitude in the Alps and probably the highest virtual model of an archaeological landscape in Europe," Walsh said.
The project was part of a study that investigates the development of human activity over the last 8,000 years at high altitude in the southern Alps.
Artefacts found in Abri Faravel also include Mesolithic and Neolithic flint tools, Iron Age hand-thrown pottery, a Roman fibula and some medieval metalwork.
However, the paintings are the most unique feature of the site, revealing a story of human occupation and activity in one of the world's most challenging environments from the Mesolithic to post-Medieval period.
Super User
From Different Corners
London, May 30 (IANS) Even if comets did not play as big a role in delivering water as once thought to the Earth they certainly had the potential to deliver the ingredients of life, new research has found.
The possibility that water and organic molecules were brought to the early Earth through impacts of objects like asteroids and comets have long been the subject of debate.
The European Space Agency's (ESA) Rosetta probe has now shown a significant difference in composition between Comet 67P/C-G's water and that of Earth.
“The multitude of organic molecules already identified by ROSINA, now joined by the exciting confirmation of fundamental ingredients like glycine and phosphorus, confirms our idea that comets have the potential to deliver key molecules for prebiotic chemistry," explained Matt Taylor, Rosetta project scientist of the European Space Agency (ESA).
While more than 140 different molecules have already been identified in the interstellar medium, amino acids could not be traced.
However, hints of the amino acid glycine, a biologically important organic compound commonly found in proteins, were found during NASA's Stardust mission that flew by “Comet Wild 2” in 2004.
Now, for the first time, repeated detections at a comet have been confirmed by Rosetta in Comet 67P/C-G's fuzzy atmosphere or coma.
“This is the first unambiguous detection of glycine in the thin atmosphere of a comet," says Kathrin Altwegg, principal investigator of the ROSINA instrument at University of Bern.
At the same time, the researchers also detected the organic molecules methylamine and ethylamine which are precursors to forming glycine.
Unlike other amino acids, glycine is the only one that has been shown to be able to form without liquid water.
"The simultaneous presence of methylamine and ethylamine, and the correlation between dust and glycine, also hints at how the glycine was formed," Altwegg noted.
Another exciting detection by ROSINA made for the first time at a comet is of phosphorus.
It is a key element in all living organisms and is found in the structural framework of DNA and RNA.
“Demonstrating that comets are reservoirs of primitive material in the solar system and vessels that could have transported these vital ingredients to Earth is one of the key goals of the Rosetta mission, and we are delighted with this result,” Taylor pointed out in a paper forthcoming in the journal Science.
SUC Editing Team
Information Systems
New York, May 28 (IANS) In a bid to expand its user base, social media giant Facebook has announced it will begin displaying ads to web users who are not members of its social network.
Super User
Retail and Marketing
Tokyo, May 27 (IANS) Japan's transport ministry on Friday said seven million more vehicles with Takata-made airbags will be recalled within the country, bringing the total number of vehicles called back as a result of the Takata airbag defect in Japan to a whopping 19.6 million.
The decision came after the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) ordered earlier this month that airbag inflators using ammonium nitrate as propellant without desiccant shall also be recalled, Xinhua news agency reported.
With recall expanded in the US, Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport has required automakers to recall vehicles equipped with airbags with the same problems also in Japan.
The total number of Takata-made airbags to be called back is expected to top 100 million globally, costing over $9.12 billion to Takata Corp. and automakers, though how much each will shoulder is not decided yet.
The cost is expected to be a huge burden for the Tokyo-based company, which recorded a net loss of $1.19 trillion in fiscal 2015, its second straight year of red ink, amid impact of the global recall of its airbag inflators.
The Takata-made airbag inflators, which could explode with too much force, spraying metal fragments at passengers, have been reportedly linked to at least 10 deaths worldwide.
Super User
From Different Corners
Sydney, May 27 (IANS) In a finding that could lead to new drugs to treat cancer and autoimmune diseases, researchers, including one of Indian-origin, have discovered a new way of triggering cell death.
Programmed cell death, also called apoptosis, is a natural process that removes unwanted cells from the body. Failure of apoptosis can allow cancer cells to grow unchecked or immune cells to inappropriately attack the body.
The protein known as Bak is central to apoptosis. In healthy cells Bak sits in an inert state but when a cell receives a signal to die, Bak transforms into a killer protein that destroys the cell.
In this study, researcher Sweta Iyer from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Victoria, and colleagues discovered a novel way of directly activating Bak to trigger cell death.
The researchers discovered that an antibody they had produced to study Bak actually bound to the Bak protein and triggered its activation.
"We were excited when we realised we had found an entirely new way of activating Bak," said Ruth Kluck who is also from Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Australia.
The researchers hope to use this discovery to develop drugs that promote cell death.
"There is great interest in developing drugs that trigger Bak activation to treat diseases such as cancer where apoptosis has gone awry," she said.
"This discovery gives us a new starting point for developing therapies that directly activate Bak and cause cell death," Kluck pointed out.
The researchers used information about Bak's three-dimensional structure to find out precisely how the antibody activated Bak.
The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.
"The advantage of our antibody is that it can't be 'mopped up' and neutralised by pro-survival proteins in the cell, potentially reducing the chance of drug resistance occurring," Kluck said.