Knowledge Update

​Sydney, Jan 5 (IANS) With nearly 76 per cent of the world's population becoming 'overfat', it has become the new pandemic that has quietly overtaken the world, a study has showed. 'Overfat' has been defined as a condition of having sufficient excess body fat to impair health. "This is a global concern because of its strong association with rising chronic disease and climbing healthcare costs, affecting people of all ages and incomes," said lead author Philip Maffetone, CEO of MAFF Fitness in Australia. In addition to those who are overweight and obese, others falling into the overfat category include normal-weight people, the researchers said. "The overfat category includes normal-weight people with increased risk factors for chronic disease, such as high abdominal fat and those with characteristics of a condition called normal-weight metabolic obesity," Maffetone added. "The overfat pandemic has not spared those who exercise or even compete in sports," he said. While the obesity epidemic has grown considerably over the last three to four decades, the study casts light on the much higher numbers of people who may have unhealthy levels of body fat. It also indicates that 9-10 per cent of the world population may be underfat. "While we think of the condition of underfat as being due to starvation, those worldwide numbers are dropping rapidly. However, an ageing population, an increase in chronic disease and a rising number of excessive exercisers or those with anorexia athletica, are adding to the number of non-starving underfat individuals," Maffetone explained. This leaves as little as 14 per cent of the world's population with normal body-fat percentage, showed the study, published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health.

​New York, Jan 5 (IANS) Researchers have spotted for the first time an extremely rare type of galaxy whose elliptical-like core is surrounded by two circular rings.

Approximately 359 million light years away from the Earth, the galaxy appears to belong to a class of rarely observed, Hoag-type galaxies, the researchers said.

"Less than 0.1 per cent of all observed galaxies are Hoag-type galaxies," said lead author Burcin Mutlu-Pakdil from the University of Minnesota at Duluth in the US.

Hoag-type galaxies are round cores surrounded by a circular ring, with nothing visibly connecting them. 

The majority of observed galaxies are disc-shaped like our own Milky Way. 

Galaxies with unusual appearances give astronomers unique insights into how galaxies are formed and change.

The researchers collected multi-waveband images of the galaxy, which is easily observable only in the Southern Hemisphere, using a large diameter telescope in the Chilean mountains. 

These images were used to determine the age of the two main features of the galaxy, the outer ring and the central body.

While the researchers found a blue and young (0.13 billion years) outer ring, surrounding a red and older (5.5 billion years) central core, they were surprised to uncover evidence for second inner ring around the central body. 

To document this second ring, researchers took their images and subtracted out a model of the core. 

This allowed them to observe and measure the obscured, second inner ring structure, according to a study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

"We've observed galaxies with a blue ring around a central red body before, the most well-known of these is Hoag's object. However, the unique feature of this galaxy is what appears to be an older diffuse red inner ring," said the co-author of the study, Patrick Treuthardt, an astrophysicist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

Galaxy rings are regions where stars have formed from colliding gas. 

"The different colours of the inner and outer ring suggest that this galaxy has experienced two different formation periods," Mutlu-Pakdil said.

Hanoi, Jan 5 (IANS) The Vietnamese population that has been forecast to grow at a slower pace will hit 100 million people by 2025, according to the Institute of Public Policy and Management (IPPM) on Thursday.

The country has maintained steady low birth rate as local people have been aware of benefits of small-scale families, Giang Thanh Long, IPPM director under Hanoi-based National Economics University said.

The expert said Vietnam has stepped into the aging process and would soon become a country with an aging population, Xinhua news agency reported.

Vietnam has been following the 'golden population structure' -- for every two people working, there is only one dependent person.

According to the latest figure by the General Statistics Office, Vietnam's average population in 2016 was estimated at 92.7 million people, up 1.08 percent compared to 2015.

The country's population was expected to reach 110 million people by mid-century, said Long.

​New York, Dec 25 (IANS) When exposed to cancer treatment like chemotherapy and radiation, brain and heart tissues in very young children are more prone to apoptosis or programmed cell death, researchers said.

Apoptosis, in which molecular signals order cells to self-destruct, plays an important role in deciding the "fate" of a developing cell.

These toxic treatment stressors put young children at high risk for developing severe, long-lasting impairments in their brain, heart, the study said.

But active apoptosis in the early brain "also sets the stage for extremely high sensitivity to any type of damage or stress, especially that induced by radiation or chemotherapy," said lead author Kristopher A. Sarosiek, Assistant Professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

While some cancer cells die through apoptosis, some escape the death orders by activating "pro-survival" signals.

Anthony Letai from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Massachusetts, developed a test called BH3 profiling that can measure inside any cell the relative dominance of pro-survival or pro-death signals.

A cancer cell in which apoptotic death signals are dominant, is said to be "highly primed" or ready for self-destruction and therefore easily killed by therapy, while a cell with low priming is more resistant to death or damage.

Measuring the priming of cells in normal cells and tissues, the researchers found that in most normal adult tissues, including the brain and the heart, the machinery needed to perform apoptosis is nearly completely absent.

In contrast, this molecular machinery is abundant in newborn and very young rodents. As a result, brain and heart cells were therefore much more vulnerable to undergoing cell death when exposed to chemotherapy or radiation.

When tested in human cells, the youngest human brain cells were more highly primed with apoptotic machinery and vulnerable to chemotherapy and radiation damage.

Human brain and heart cells are most highly primed for apoptosis until four to six years of age, after which priming continues to be reduced, the researchers noted, in the paper appearing in the journal Cancer Cell.

​Beijing, Jan 5 (IANS) Two Chinese companies have signed a contract to construct skyscrapers in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, whose height will exceed the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, currently the tallest twin towers in the world.

Within a period of five years, Sino Great Wall International and the Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group will together build the towers, rising to a height of 560 metres - 108 metres more than the Petronas. 

The new towers will stand on the banks of the Mekong river, making them the fifth and sixth tallest buildings in the world, the China Daily reported on Thursday.

The project, having a $2.7 billion budget and signed on December 31, is financed by Cambodia's Thai Boon Roong Group while Macao-based Sun Kian Ip Group will be its co-developer.

The twin towers and the adjacent buildings, which are part of the project, will accommodate offices, apartments, hotels and malls as well as entertainment facilities, according to officials.

In recent years, the Chinese builders have embarked on significant large skyscraper projects in many cities in their country, and as a result nearly half the buildings measuring over 300 meters in the world are situated in China.

Among them is the world's second highest building, the 632-metre high Shanghai Tower, which has the highest observation deck surpassing the one at Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest skyscraper (828 metres) in Dubai. 

​New York, Jan 5 (IANS) Scientists have developed a new drug compound that has the potential to stop the spread of melanoma -- the most deadly form of skin cancer -- by up to 90 per cent.

About 10,000 people are estimated to die each year from melanoma, which spreads throughout the body quickly and attacks distant organs such as the brain and lungs. 

"The majority of people die from melanoma because of the disease spreading. Our compound can block cancer migration and potentially increase patient survival," said Richard Neubig, Professor at the Michigan State University. 

The study showed that the compound reduced the migration of melanoma cells by 85-90 per cent. 

The new drug also reduced tumours, specifically in the lungs of mice that had been injected with human melanoma cells, the researchers said.

The findings are an early discovery that could be highly effective in battling the deadly skin cancer, added Kate Appleton, a postdoctoral student at Michigan State University. 

The man-made small-molecule drug compound goes after a gene's ability to produce RNA molecules and certain proteins in melanoma tumours. 

This gene activity, or transcription process, causes the disease to spread but the compound can shut it down.Until now, few other compounds of this kind have been able to accomplish this, the researchers stated.

The compounds were able to stop proteins, known as Myocardin-related transcription factors, or MRTFs, from initiating the gene transcription process in melanoma cells. 

These triggering proteins are initially turned on by another protein called RhoC, or Ras homology C, which is found in a signalling pathway that can cause the disease to spread in the body aggressively.

"The effect of our compounds on turning off this melanoma cell growth and progression is much stronger when the pathway is activated. We could look for the activation of the MRTF proteins as a biomarker to determine risk, especially for those in early-stage melanoma," Appleton said, in the paper published in the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics.

​Beijing, Jan 5 (IANS) Chinese scientists are drawing a 1:2.5 million scale geological map of the Moon, a media report said on Thursday.

Ouyang Ziyuan, first chief scientist of China's lunar exploration programme, said five universities and research institutes have set standards for digital mapping and drawing of the Moon's geological structure.

A sketch version of the map, 4.36 metres by 2.2 metres, would be finished by 2018, and released by 2020, Xinhua news agency reported.

The map would provide information on geology, structure and rock types and would reflect the timeline of the Moon's evolution.

Chen Shengbo, a geologist with Jilin University in China, and his team are responsible for drawing the lunar structure outline, which was just one part of the work. 

He said the map would clearly show lunar geography, such as geographic fractures and the size, appearance, and the structure of craters.

Chen said mapping depends on data and images sent by circumlunar satellites from home and abroad. 

Lunar map making was not like drawing a map of the Earth, where scientists can go to the scene in person if they were not sure of their information.

China's satellites have captured images of the Moon, which contribute to the precision of lunar maps. 

New Delhi, Jan 4 (IANS) Aiming to give a technological edge to the small and medium businesses (SMBs) in India, Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Wednesday announced two initiatives 'Digital Unlocked' and 'My Business Website'.

​Las Vegas, Jan 4 (IANS) With the world's biggest annual electronics event -- Consumer Electronics Show (CES-2017) -- commencing here on Tuesday, people expect to see a large range of Artificial Intelligence (AI) devices, robots and self-driving cars open a new window to the future of our increasingly technology-driven world.

​New York, Jan 4 (IANS) As everyone is talking about their new year resolutions, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday resolved to meet people in real life in every US state by the end of the year.