Knowledge Update

​London, Jan 31 (IANS) A major risk factor for development of heart diseases, strokes and diabetes is lower in people who live at higher altitudes, says a new study that suggests that something as simple as the geographic area in which you live contribute to your risk of developing these diseases.

"We found that those people living between 457 to 2,297 metres, had a lower risk of developing Metabolic Syndrome than those living at sea level (zero to 121 metres)," said Amaya Lopez-Pascual, who conducted this research as part of her PhD thesis at University of Navarra, Spain.

Metabolic syndrome is the medical term for the combination of high blood pressure, sugar and cholesterol levels, as well as excess body fat around the waist, and contributes to serious health problems.

While the reported increase in the metabolic syndrome is principally blamed on higher obesity rates, smoking and increasingly inactive lifestyles, less is known about the effect our environment may have on us. 

"Living or training at high altitudes or under a simulated hypoxic (oxygen deficient) environment seems to help with heart and lung function, losing weight, and improves insulin sensitivity," co-senior author of this study Pedro Gonzalez-Muniesa, Associate Professor at University of Navarra, noted.

The researchers used data from a Spanish project, where participants have been voluntarily submitting information about their health twice-yearly since 1999. 

Information from thousands of initially healthy participants were used to investigate the development of metabolic syndrome in relation to the altitude of where they lived.

The results, published in the journal Frontiers in Physiology, were quite clear - the higher the altitude, the less likely you were of developing metabolic syndrome. 

Interestingly, using information about the participants' family history, the researchers could also assess if those more prone to this health problem also saw these benefits.

"We found our results were independent of the genetic background of the individuals," Gonzalez-Muniesa noted.

Washington, Jan 31 (IANS) NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray space telescope has identified the farthest gamma-ray blazars, a type of galaxy whose intense emissions are powered by super-sized black holes.

"Despite their youth, these far-flung blazars host some of the most massive black holes known," said Roopesh Ojha, an astronomer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. 

Light from the most distant object began its journey to us when the universe was 1.4 billion years old, or nearly 10 per cent of its present age.

Previously, the most distant blazars detected by Fermi emitted their light when the universe was about 2.1 billion years old. 

"That they developed so early in cosmic history challenges current ideas of how supermassive black holes form and grow, and we want to find more of these objects to help us better understand the process," Ojha said while presenting the findings at the American Physical Society meeting in Washington on Monday.

Blazars constitute roughly half of the gamma-ray sources detected by Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT). 

Astronomers think their high-energy emissions are powered by matter heated and torn apart as it falls from a storage, or accretion, disk toward a supermassive black hole with a million or more times the sun's mass. 

"The main question now is how these huge black holes could have formed in such a young universe," one of the researchers Dario Gasparrini from Italian Space Agency's Science Data Centre in Rome said.

"We don't know what mechanisms triggered their rapid development," Gasparrini noted.

Two of the blazars that the team detected boast black holes of a billion solar masses or more. In the meantime, the team plans to continue a deep search for additional examples.

"We think Fermi has detected just the tip of the iceberg, the first examples of a galaxy population that previously has not been detected in gamma rays," said Marco Ajello from Clemson University in South Carolina, US.

Beijing, Jan 30 (IANS) China's plans for deep space exploration include two Mars missions and one Jupiter probe.

China plans its first Mars probe by 2020, Wu Yanhua, Vice Director of the China National Space Administration, was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency. 

A second Mars probe will bring back samples and conduct research on the planet's structure, composition and environment, Wu said.

Also on the agenda are an asteroid exploration, and a fly-by of the Jupiter system.

China aims to become a space power around 2030, with an advanced and open aerospace industry and space infrastructure.

​New York, Jan 30 (IANS) Although the sales of Microsoft's Augmented Reality (AR) headset HoloLens has not been very promising yet, it is helping put civil engineers build blueprints of a building, making their work easy and less time consuming.

​New York, Jan 30 (IANS) Instant messaging app WhatsApp is working on a feature that will track the live location of members, allowing users to track the whereabouts of their friends in real time.

​New Delhi, Jan 30 (IANS) Ending months of speculation, Vodafone on Monday confirmed it is in talks with the Aditya Vikram Birla group for the merger of its Indian entity and Idea Cellular in what will be the largest such deal in the country's telecom space once it materialises.

​Kathmandu, Jan 30 (IANS) Senior officials of the eight member states of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) will meet here this week to attend the Programming Committee.

Amman, Jan 30 (IANS) Jordan signed a $14.1 million grant agreement with the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development.

Jordan's Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Imad Fakhoury on Sunday, who signed the agreement, said the agreement will finance projects in the field of

​New Delhi, Jan 30 (IANS) Hit by a high-profile exit amid falling numbers in China, Xiaomi -- once touted as the Apple of China -- will not showcase any product at the upcoming Mobile World Congress (MWC), the telecom industrys largest event in Barcelona, Spain next month. First Hugo Barra, Xiaomi's high-profile head of international operations, quit and announced joining Facebook to lead its virtual reality (VR) efforts last week and then came fresh figures from China for 2016 where the company slipped to fourth spot as the demand for its smartphones declined 22 per cent annually in the country. According to a report in Tech Crunch, a company spokesperson has confirmed that Xiaomi will skip the MWC event entirely. "The move is an unexpected one since it was widely assumed Xiaomi would attend. Barcelona-based Mobile World Congress is one of the largest events for the global mobile industry, attracting over 100,000 attendees, and it has a reputation as the place to show off the latest developments in mobile," the report added. There are reports that Xiaomi doesn't have new devices to showcase during the MWC show. Xiaomi used last year's event to introduce Mi5, its flagship smartphone, through a press event that was live-streamed. On its slump in the Chinese market, the key reason is Xiaomi's rivals racing ahead with key features, innovation, bigger marketing budgets and wider online and offline distribution channel during the year, said the report by market analytics firm Counterpoint Research. Huawei, Oppo and Vivo emerged as clear winners with Oppo and Vivo registering significant growth. Hit by the Note 7 fiasco and a delay in Galaxy 8 launch, Samsung is another big player which will not roll out a new device at MWC.

​Tokyo, Jan 30 (IANS) Toyota Motors lost its title as the highest selling automaker in 2016 to German carmaker Volkswagen, a position the Japanese company had enjoyed since 2011, the media reported. According to figures published on Monday by the Toyota group, which includes its subsidiaries Daihatsu Motor and Hino Motors, the company sold a total of 10.175 million units in 2016, Efe news reported. Although the figure is 0.2 per cent higher than 2015, it is lower than Volkswagen's 10.3 million units (growth of around 3.8 per cent) sold in 2016 despite the German manufacturer's recent emissions scandal. The last time Toyota was world's No. 2 annual car seller was in 2011, when Japan's northeastern part was struck by an earthquake and a tsunami, severely affecting the firm's operations and cutting significantly its supply chains. Toyota was also trailing Volkswagen in the first half 2015. However, Volkswagen's emissions scandal in September severely affected its last quarter sales.