Knowledge Update

​Beijing, April 11 (IANS) China will invest around $1.5 billion to upgrade Beijing's Zhongguancun district or the "Silicon Valley of China", an area with a strong presence of technology companies.

​Beijing, April 11 (IANS) The World Bank expects the Chinese economy to grow 6.7 percent in 2016, the bank said in a report on Monday.

The projection is on par with its last estimate in January. The bank has kept its projection for 2017 at 6.5 percent, Xinhua reported.

​Abu Dhabi, April 11 (IANS/WAM) The overall growth of foreign direct investment in Abu Dhabi in 2014 grew by 12.8 percent, figures revealed on Monday.

The figures came as part of the final findings of the field foreign investment survey carried out by the Statistics Centre - Abu Dhabi (SCAD).

​Nairobi, April 11 (IANS) Kenya is fast tracking the development of disease free zones in order to boost livestock exports, an official said on Sunday.

Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries Principal Secretary Dr Andrew Tuimur told Xinhua in Nairobi that two disease free zones will be operational by the end of the year.

​London, April 11 (IANS) Using data from NASA's Kepler space telescope, astrophysicists from the University of Birmingham have discovered extra-solar planets whose atmospheres have been stripped away by their host stars.

According to them, planets with gaseous atmospheres that lie very close to their host stars are bombarded by a torrent of high-energy radiation. 

Due to their proximity to the star, the heat that the planets suffer means that their "envelopes" have been blown away by intense radiation. 

This violent "stripping" occurs in planets that are made up of a rocky core with a gaseous outer layer.

"The results show that planets of a certain size that lie close to their stars are likely to have been much larger at the beginning of their lives. Those planets will have looked very different," said Dr Guy Davies from the University of Birmingham's school of physics and astronomy. 

The findings have important implications for understanding how stellar systems, like our own solar system, and their planets, evolve over time and the crucial role played by the host star.

Scientists expect to discover many such "stripped systems" using a new generation of satellites including the NASA TESS Mission which will be launched next year. 

The paper was published in the journal Nature Communications. ​

​London, April 11 (IANS) How to determine that a person is trustworthy? According to researchers, people who hold onto moral absolutes are more trusted and more valued as social partners, suggesting that people gauge others' trustworthiness based on their moral judgments.

The findings help explain that snap judgements about morality tend to be based on a set of absolute moral rules even if a person makes different decisions when given more time.

"If people who stick to moral absolutes are preferred as social partners, expressing this view will reap benefits for oneself," said lead researcher Jim AC Everett from the University of Oxford.

The team used several variations of moral dilemmas where a person must decide whether or not to sacrifice an innocent person in order to save the lives of many others. 

The results indicate that across nine experiments, more than 2,400 participants who took an absolute approach to the dilemmas (like refusing to kill an innocent person, even when this maximised the greater good) were seen as more trustworthy than those who advocated a more flexible approach. 

When asked to entrust a person with a sum of money, participants handed over more money and were more confident of getting it back, when dealing with someone who refused to sacrifice one to save many. 

"This explains why we appear to like people who stick to these intuitive moral rules -- not because they are sticklers for the letter of the law, but because the rules themselves tend to emphasize the absolute importance of respecting the wishes and desires of others," added David Pizarro from Cornell University in the US.

Our day-to-day moral decisions don't fit into the neat categories defined by moral philosophers. Instead, real life morality is suited to the complexity of real life situations, the researchers suggested in a paper that appeared in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. ​

​Sydney, April 10 (IANS) An Australia-based digital health solution provider has developed an app that can diagnose respiratory diseases like pneumonia, croup and asthma with high accuracy through a cough into a smartphone, a media report said.

Tehran, April 10 (IANS) Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zangeneh has said Tehran mulls joining refinery projects in India, the country's Petro-Energy Information Network, SHANA, reported on Sunday.

New York, April 11 (IANS) Scientists have invented a “smart” paint spray can that robotically reproduces photographs as giant murals.

The computerised technique which basically spray paints a photo is not likely to spawn a wave of giant graffiti but it can be used in digital fabrication, digital and visual arts, artistic stylisation and other applications, said the team from Dartmouth college and colleagues.

The system uses an ordinary paint spray can, tracks the can's position relative to the wall or canvas and recognises what image it "wants" to paint. 

As the person waves the pre-programmed spray can around the canvas, the system automatically operates the spray on and off button to reproduce the specific image as a spray painting.

“We show that by combining computer graphics and computer vision techniques, we can bring such assistance technology to the physical world even for this very traditional painting medium, creating a somewhat unconventional form of digital fabrication,” said study co-author Wojciech Jarosz who worked as senior research scientist at Disney Research Zurich. 

“We wanted to maintain the aesthetic aspects of physical spray painting and the tactile experience of holding and waving a physical spray can while enabling unskilled users to create a physical piece of art,” he added.

The prototype includes two webcams and QR-coded cubes for tracking and a small actuation device for the spray can 00 attached via a 3D-printed mount. 

Paint commands are transmitted via radio directly connected to a servo-motor operating the spray nozzle. 

Running on a nearby computer, the real-time algorithm determines the optimal amount of paint of the current colour to spray at the spray can's tracked location. 

“The end result is that the painting reveals itself as the user waves the can around, without the user necessarily needing to know the image beforehand,” the team noted in a paper that appeared in the journal Computer & Graphics. ​

​New York, April 11 (IANS) US doctors, including an Indian American doctor reported the first case of a human patient whose severely damaged oesophagus was reconstructed using commercially available stents and skin tissues.

After the 24-year-old man was paralysed in a car crash seven years ago, doctors struggled to repair his disrupted oesophagus.

Despite several surgeries, the defect in the oesophagus was too large to repair and it was resulting in life-threatening infection, the physicians noted in the paper published in the journal in The Lancet.

The team of doctors decided to try a technique previously tested only in animals, to reconstruct the upper oesophagus with stents and skin tissue approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.

"This is a first in human operation and one that we undertook as a life-saving measure once we had exhausted all other options available to us and the patient,” Kulwinder Dua, professor at Medical College of Wisconsin in the US. 

The doctors used metal stents as a non-biological scaffold and a regenerative tissue matrix from donated human skin to rebuild a full-thickness five cm defect in the oesophagus of the patient.

They inserted an endoscope containing a wire through the man's stomach and up through what remained of his oesophagus, leading to his mouth. 

Guided by the wire, they then inserted three stents to recreate the structure of the oesophagus and covered it with skin tissue. 

The tissue was then sprayed with a gel made from the patient's own blood, which contained natural substances to attract stem cells.

Although the doctors wanted to remove the stents about three months after the surgery, the patient refused, fearing he would not be able to eat and drink; he was also worried about possible scarring. 

Nearly four years later, doctors removed the stents after the man had trouble swallowing when a problem arose with the lower stent.

One year after that, doctors examined the man's oesophagus and found that all five layers of the oesophagus had regrown, closely resembling a normal one. 

The patient now does not need a feeding tube and also has not reported any other complications.

Swallowing tests showed full recovery and functioning was also established with oesophageal muscles able to propel water and liquid along the oesophagus into the stomach in both upright and 45 degrees sitting positions.

"The approach we used is novel because we used commercially available products which are already approved for use in the human body and hence didn't require complex tissue engineering," Dua explained.

The research including animal studies and clinical trials, are now needed to investigate whether the technique can be reproduced and used in other similar cases.

“The use of this procedure in routine clinical care is still a long way off as it requires rigorous assessment in large animal studies and phase one and two clinical trials," Dua stated.

The oesophagus is a hollow muscular tube that connects the mouth to the stomach carrying food and liquids.