Knowledge Update

New York, Feb 19 (IANS) Researchers have developed an electrode that is more durable and could allow for improved restoration of mobility after spinal cord accidents, as well as improved powered prosthetic limbs.

This "glassy carbon" electrode that is patterned inside chips lasts longer in the body and transmits clearer and more robust signals than available electrodes.

When people suffer spinal cord injuries and lose mobility in their limbs, it is a neural signal processing problem. The brain can still send clear electrical impulses and the limbs can still receive them but the signal gets lost in the damaged spinal cord.

According to the study, published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, this new chip can record neural electrical signals and transmit them to receivers in the limb, bypassing the damage and restoring movement.

"Glassy carbon is much more promising for reading signals directly from neurotransmitters. You get about twice as much signal-to-noise. It's a much clearer signal and easier to interpret," said Sam Kassegne, one of the study's lead investigators. 

The current material for electrodes in these devices is thin-film platinum which can fracture and fall apart over time.

Researchers in Kassegne's lab are using these new and improved brain-computer interfaces to record neural signals both along the brain's cortical surface and from inside the brain at the same time.

​New York, Feb 19 (IANS) In a first, researchers have found that neurotransmitter dopamine -- a chemical that acts in various brain systems to spark the motivation necessary to work for a reward -- was involved in human bonding.

In the research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a researcher studied 19 mother-infant pairs and found that the results had important implications for therapies addressing disorders of the dopamine system.

"The infant brain is very different from the mature adult brain -- it is not fully formed," said Lisa Feldman Barrett of Northeastern University psychology.

"Our study shows that a biological process in one person's brain, the mother's, is linked to behaviour that gives the child the social input that will help wire his or her brain normally. That means parents' ability to keep their infants cared for leads to optimal brain development, which over the years results in better adult health and greater productivity," Barrett added.

To conduct the study, the researchers used a machine capable of performing two types of brain scans simultaneously--functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI and positron emission tomography, or PET.

fMRI studied the brain in slices, front to back, like a loaf of bread and tracked blood flow to its various parts. 

Barrett's team tied the mothers' level of dopamine to her degree of synchrony with her infant as well as to the strength of the connection within a brain network called the medial amygdala network that, within the social realm, supports social affiliation.

"We found that social affiliation is a potent stimulator of dopamine. This link implies that strong social relationships have the potential to improve your outcome if you have a disease, such as depression, where dopamine is compromised," Barrett noted.

​London, Feb 19 (IANS) It is not the brain that determines whether a person is a lefty or a righty, but the spinal cord, a study has claimed.

Until now, it had been assumed that differences in gene activity of the right and left hemisphere might be responsible for a person's handedness -- people's tendency to naturally favour the use of one hand over the other. 

But the recent study demonstrated that gene activity in the spinal cord is asymmetrical already in the womb and could be linked to the handedness of a person.

"Our findings suggest that molecular mechanisms for epigenetic regulation within the spinal cord constitute the starting point for handedness, implying a fundamental shift in our understanding of the ontogenesis of hemispheric asymmetries in humans," said Sebastian Ocklenburg from Ruhr University Bochum in Germany.

According to ultrasound scans carried out in the 1980s, a preference for moving the left or right hand develops in the womb from the eighth week of pregnancy. From the 13th week of pregnancy, unborn children prefer to suck either their right or their left thumb.

Arm and hand movements are initiated via the motor cortex in the brain. It sends a corresponding signal to the spinal cord, which in turn translates the command into a motion. 

However, the motor cortex is not connected to the spinal cord from the beginning. In fact, even before the earliest indications of hand preference appear, the spinal cord has not yet formed a connection with the brain, stated researchers in the paper appearing in the journal eLife.

In addition, environmental factors were found to be controlling whether spinal cord activity was greater on the left or right side.

For the study, the team analysed the gene expression in the spinal cord during the eighth to 12th week of pregnancy and detected marked right-left differences in the eighth week -- in precisely those spinal cord segments that control the movements of arms and legs. 

​New York, Feb 19 (IANS) Adult stem cells collected directly from human fat are more stable than other cells -- such as fibroblasts from the skin -- and have the potential for use in anti-ageing treatment, says a study.

Stem cells collected directly from human fat -- called adipose-derived stem cells (ASCs) -- can make more proteins than originally thought, showed the findings published in the journal Stem Cells.

"Our study shows these cells are very robust, even when they are collected from older patients," said the study's lead author Ivona Percec from Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

"It also shows these cells can be potentially used safely in the future, because they require minimal manipulation and maintenance," Percec said.

The researchers made the discovery after developing a new model to study chronological ageing of these cells.

Stem cells are currently used in a variety of anti-ageing treatments and are commonly collected from a variety of tissues.

But Percec's team specifically found ASCs to be more stable than other cells, a finding that can potentially open the door to new therapies for the prevention and treatment of aging-related diseases.

"Unlike other adult human stem cells, the rate at which these ASCs multiply stays consistent with age," Percec said.

"That means these cells could be far more stable and helpful as we continue to study natural aging," Percec noted.

London, Feb 19 (IANS) Researchers have developed hens that do not produce their own chicks and can be used as surrogates to lay eggs from rare breeds.

Using gene-editing techniques, this could help to boost breeding of endangered birds, as well as improving production of commercial hens, researchers wrote in the study published in the journal Development.

A team led by the University of Edinburgh's Roslin Institute used a genetic tool called TALEN to delete a section of chicken DNA. They targeted part of a gene called DDX4, which is crucial for bird fertility.

"These chickens are a first step in saving and protecting rare poultry breeds from loss in order to preserve future biodiversity of our poultry from both economic and climate stresses," said lead researcher Mike McGrew from the University of Edinburgh's Roslin Institute. 

Researchers noted that donor primordial germ cells from other breeds could be implanted into the gene-edited chickens as they are developing inside an egg. 

The surrogate hens would then grow up to produce eggs containing all of the genetic information from the donor breeds.

The surrogate chickens are the first gene-edited birds to be produced in Europe.

​San Francisco, Feb 19 (IANS) Researchers studying the brains of infants who have older siblings with autism were able to identify 80 per cent of the babies who would be subsequently diagnosed with autism at two years of age.

The results, published this week in the journal Nature, stem from research led by the University of North Carolina to use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure the brains of "low-risk" infants, with no family history of autism, and "high-risk" infants who had at least one autistic older sibling, Xinhua news agency reported.

A computer algorithm was then used to predict autism before clinically diagnosable behaviours set in, subsequently making it the first study to show that it is possible to use brain biomarkers to identify which infants in a high-risk pool, namely those having an older sibling with autism, will be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, at 24 months of age.

"Typically, the earliest we can reliably diagnose autism in a child is age 2, when there are consistent behavioural symptoms, and due to health access disparities the average age of diagnosis in the US is actually age 4," said co-author and University of Washington (UW) professor of speech and hearing sciences Annette Estes. "But in our study, brain imaging biomarkers at 6 and 12 months were able to identify babies who would be later diagnosed with ASD."

While researchers at four clinical sites in the United States took part, the project included hundreds of children across the country.

The researchers obtained MRI scans of children while they were sleeping at 6, 12 and 24 months of age, and assessed the babies' behaviour and intellectual ability at each visit. 

They found that the babies who developed autism experienced a hyper-expansion of brain surface area from 6 to 12 months, as compared to babies who had an older sibling with autism but did not themselves show evidence of autism at 24 months of age. 

Increased surface area growth rate in the first year of life was linked to increased growth rate of brain volume in the second year of life. Brain overgrowth was tied to the emergence of autistic social deficits in the second year.

By inputting these data, including MRI calculations of brain volume, surface area, and cortical thickness at 6 and 12 months of age, into a computer program, the researchers sought to classify babies most likely to meet ASD criteria at 24 months of age. 

They found that, among infants with an older ASD sibling, the brain differences at 6 and 12 months of age successfully identified 80 per cent of those infants who would be clinically diagnosed with autism at 24 months of age.

The predictive power of the findings may lead to a diagnostic tool for ASD that could be used in the first year of life, before behavioural symptoms have emerged.

"We don't have such a tool yet," Estes was quoted as saying in a news release from UW. "But if we did, parents of high-risk infants wouldn't need to wait for a diagnosis of ASD at 2, 3 or even 4 years and researchers could start developing interventions to prevent these children from falling behind in social and communication skills ... By the time ASD is diagnosed at 2 to 4 years, often children have already fallen behind their peers in terms of social skills, communication and language."

​Los Angeles, Feb 19 (IANS) US space firm SpaceX on Sunday launched its 10th cargo mission to the International Space Station from US space agency NASA's historic moon pad for the first time.

NASA TV showed a Falcon 9 lifting off at 09.39 a.m. from US space agency NASA's historic Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the first time, Xinhua news agency reported.

The launch is the first from LC-39A since the final flight of the space shuttle fleet in July 2011. LC-39A was best known as the launch site for the Apollo 11 mission, which sent the first humans to the surface of the moon, as well as numerous space shuttle missions.

About 8 minutes after launch, the California-based company successfully landed the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on ground again after launching commercial cargo to the International Space Station.

"Falcon 9 first stage has landed at LZ-1," SpaceX then tweeted.

On Saturday morning, SpaceX aborted the lift-off in the last minute due to a technical problem.

The rocket is being launched the company's Dragon spacecraft into orbit carrying about 5,500 pounds of equipment and experiments to the International Space Station.

It's the first SpaceX launch from Florida since a Falcon 9 exploded on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on September 1, 2016.

Beijing, Feb 19 (IANS) A Chinese health alliance on Sunday agreed to promote the use of peak flow charts on both physical paper and smartphone apps to monitor the breath for children suffering from asthma.

The alliance is joined by the State Clinical Research Centre for Respiratory Diseases, Beijing Children's Hospital, Chinese Pediatric Society under Chinese Medical Association.

Professor Shen Kunling, head of the State Clinical Research Centre for Respiratory Diseases, said parents' knowledge, compliance with medicine instructions, and regular monitoring remain key to control childhood asthma.

Asthma is one of the most common chronic respiratory diseases for children. China has more than 6 million children with asthma. Nearly 30 per cent of them do not seek treatment in time and more than two thirds have reported asthma attacks.

​New York, Feb 18 (IANS) Photo-sharing mobile service Snapchat is reportedly planning to launch an Android smartphone that will give consumers more control over the camera features. "A California-based marketing firm has unveiled a concept handset equip with a 360-degree camera, buttons that let users scroll through filters and a one touch capture function for easy sharing," Daily Mail reported. The device might also inlcude a lock screen that allows users to easily swipe for Snapchat notifications and updates, messaging, and syncing with Spectacles. It may also pack Discover screen that combines GPS and maps, Snapchat Stories, and advertisements. Earlier this year, Snap Inc., parent company Snapchat, has made its long-awaited initial public offering (IPO) filing public, seeking to raise up to $3 billion. Snapchat aims to derive most of its revenue from advertising where it will compete against Google, Facebook and Twitter. Snap Inc. has recently rolled out major changes in its app that will make it easier to navigate the app with a universal search bar that's always accessible at the top of the app. Snapchat is also introducing "Our Story" -- a new global live story that any user can contribute to at any time.

​Beijing, Feb 18 (IANS) Chinese 4G users reached 770 million by the end of 2016, accounting for 58 per cent of all the country's mobile phone users, an official said here.

Zhang Feng, spokesperson and chief engineer for the Ministry of Industry and Informational Technology, on Friday said China has made great progress in the research and