Knowledge Update

​Beijing, Nov 28 (IANS) Archaeologists have found ruins of a pentagonal structure in China's Shanxi province which is believed to have been a tribal meeting hall or a leader's office 6,000 years ago, authorities said on Monday.

The semi-subterranean house, discovered at the neolithic ruins in Taoyuan, a village in the province, covered a total area of 90 square metres, with surviving walls reaching a maximum of 50 cm, Xinhua news agency quoted Xue Xinming, a researcher with Shanxi provincial Institute of Archaeology, as saying.

The walls were painted with a mixture of grass and mud inside, and several holes were also found where wooden pillars were located to support the house and walls, said Xue.

A cylinder-shaped fireplace was also found underground in the house, which ancient people used for heating, cooking and lighting.

According to Xue, the pentagonal building was rare for that period as the prehistoric people only built structures larger than 80 square metres in the shape.

"Such a big building perhaps was an office of a tribe leader or a public venue for meetings or worship ceremonies of a major tribe," he said, adding it was the first of its kind found in Shanxi province.

Previously, a dozen prehistoric pentagonal buildings had been found in China, mainly located in Lingbao city in Henan province.

The discovery is part of findings from an excavation that began in August in Taoyuan to prepare for highway construction in the area, said Zheng Yuan, excavation team leader of the project.

Zheng said the total excavation area is 2,500 square metres, and aside from four house ruins, they have also discovered ruins of a pottery kiln and unearthed a variety of pottery pieces.

She said the excavation is important for researching society and life in the Miaodigou Culture, the most powerful period in prehistoric China, which was centred around the provinces of Shanxi, Shaanxi and Henan.

New York, Nov 27 (IANS) A novel way to pause the development of early mouse embryos for up to a month in the lab has been identified, a finding that has potential implications for assisted reproduction, regenerative medicine, ageing and even cancer, researchers say.

In the study, the researchers were able to stop the development of early-stage mouse embryos -- known as blastocysts -- using drugs that inhibit the activity of mTor, a master regulator of cell growth.

"Normally, blastocysts only last a day or two, maximum, in the lab. But blastocysts treated with mTOR inhibitors could survive up to four weeks," said the study's lead author Aydan Bulut-Karslioglu, post-doctoral student at the University of California -San Francisco (UCSF).

The paused embryos could quickly resume normal growth when mTOR inhibiters were removed. When implanted back into a recipient mother, they developed into healthy mice, the researchers said.

"mTOR is this beautiful regulator of developmental timing that works by being a nutrient sensor. It doesn't just drive cells into growing willy-nilly. It tunes cell growth based on the level of nutrients that are available in the environment," added Miguel Ramalho-Santos, Associate Professor at UCSF. 

The new research could have a big impact on the field of assisted reproduction -- technology used to achieve pregnancy in procedures such as fertility medication, artificial insemination, in vitro fertilisation and surrogacy -- where practitioners are currently limited by the rapid degradation of embryos once they reach the blastocyst stage.

Further, pausing the development of early-stage embryos may also avoid the compromise of freezing embryos and give practitioners more time to test fertilised blastocysts for genetic defects before implanting them, Bulut-Karslioglu said.

Humans too may have the ability to delay implantation of fertilised embryos in some circumstances, suggested the practitioners of in vitro fertilisation, in the paper published online in the journal Nature.

Singapore, Nov 27 (IANS) Indian-origin researchers from Singapore have developed a new material that will make vehicles and buildings cooler and quieter as compared to the current insulation materials in the market.

Known as aerogel composites, this new foam insulates against heat 2.6 times better than a conventional insulation foam.

The product, which is expected to hit the market by early 2017, was compared to traditional materials used in soundproofing. It was found that it can block out 80 per cent of outside noise -- 30 per cent more than the usual ones.

The foam is made from silica aerogels with a few other additives. The details of the new material were published in peer-reviewed Scientific Journals.

A patent has been filed for by Nanyang Technological University's (NTU) innovation and enterprise arm NTUitive.

A local company, Bronx Creative and Design Centre Pte Ltd (BDC), has licensed the aerogel composites technology with a joint venture of 7 million Singapore dollars ($5.2 million) and will produce the products in various forms such as sheets or panels, in line with current industry sizes.

According to Sunil Chandrankant Joshi, Associate Professor at the NTU, the foam will be easy to install and use as it is thinner than conventional foam.

"Our NTU thin foam is also greener to manufacture as it does not require high heat treatment or toxic materials in its production. It is, therefore, eco-friendly and less hazardous to the environment," said Joshi, who is from NTU's School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

Meanwhile, BDC has various negotiations underway with other companies to expand the production to India and various Southeast Asia countries within the next three years.

The new aerogel composite has been branded "Bronx AeroSil" by BDC and is being developed for various applications by Mahesh Sachithanadam, Chief Technology Officer at BDC.

"For both heat insulation and sound-proofing, we can now use less material to achieve the same effect, which will also lower the overall material and logistic costs," said Sachithanadam, who was Joshi's PhD student at the university.

Apart from being a good thermal and acoustic insulator, the new material is also non-flammable -- a crucial factor for materials used in high heat environments common in the oil and gas industries.

It is also resilient and can withstand high compression or heavy loads. 

A small 10cm by 10cm piece of the aerogel composite material weighing just 15 grams can take up to 300 kg of weight, maintaining its shape without being flattened.

​New York, Nov 27 (IANS) Nearly three weeks ahead of the next instalment of Star Wars series "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story", Japanese mobile carrier SoftBank has unveiled a smartphone dedicated to the science fiction film, a media report said on Sunday. Available in two colours -- Dark (black) and Light (White) side editions -- the device lets you choose your "Force allegiance". The 7.6 mm thin Star Wars mobile phones are made by electronic products manufacturer Sharp and sport a 5.3-inch, full HD (1080p) display, The Verge reported. It runs on Android 6.0 and has skin in both light and dark side themes. The device is powered by Snapdragon 820 processo with 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage which can be expanded by a microSD card. Apart from a 22.6 MP primary camera and 3,000 mAh battery for extended running hours, the device also has "Live wallpapers" that make the phone look like an X-Wing or TIE fighter cockpit, a Star Wars Movie Player app that lets a user watch The Force Awakens until the year 2020 and pre-loaded Star Wars: Force Collection card game. The phone, which will go on sale from December 2 in Japan, has Star Wars-themed alarm clock app, Star Wars emoji and Star Wars ringtones.

​London, Nov 27 (IANS) In a first, scientists from Switzerland have developed a new perovskite material with unique magnetic properties that can be used to build next-generation hard drives, making writing and accessing data on them easy.

​Dubai, Nov 27 (IANS) US space agency NASA will work with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Space Agency to put communications capability on the UAE's Mars spacecraft Hope that will reach the Red Planet in 2021, an official said on Sunday.

​Tokyo, Nov 27 (IANS) Japan's Beppu city has figured out how to create a place that will calm your senses while driving your heartbeat through the roof, media reported on Sunday.

The mayor of Beppu, a city known for its hot springs, issued a posting on social media last week: "If this YouTube video hits a million views, I'll build a 'spamusement park' in the city." 

The hot-spring themed amusement park would be where you can soak in a tub while zooming down a rollercoaster, wearing only a towel, the Mashable reported.

In seven days, the video hit 1.8 milliion views and the mayor's office released a statement to the press celebrating the project's commencement.

It hasn't said when the park will be completed, but the city is now seeking creative types to submit ideas for rides and attractions at tghe proposed "spamusement" park.

Sydney, Nov 27 (IANS) Dietary combination of protein and carbohydrate may help promote good gut health as such a diet encourages cooperation between ourselves and bacteria in our gut, suggests new research. "There are many different diet strategies that claim to promote gut health, and until now it has been very difficult to establish clear causality between various types of diet and their effect on the host's microbiome," said led author Andrew Holmes, Associate Professor at the University of Sydney in Australia. "This is because there are many complex factors at play, including food composition, eating pattern and genetic background," Holmes said. In this study, the researchers found that the availability of intestinal nitrogen to microbes in the gut plays a key role in regulating interactions between gut microbes and their host animal. "This research really lays the groundwork for future modelling by setting out the rules for a general model of how diet shapes the gut ecosystem," Holmes said. "The simple explanation is that when we eat in a way that encourages cooperation between ourselves and bacteria we achieve a good microbiome, but when we eat in a way that doesn't require cooperation this lets bacteria do whatever they want -- and mischief can ensue," Holmes explained. Despite the huge diversity of gut bacteria, two main response patterns emerged in the study -- microbe species either increased or decreased in their abundance depending on the animal's protein and carbohydrate intake. "The largest nutrient requirements for our gut bacteria are carbon and nitrogen in the foods we eat. As carbohydrates contain no nitrogen but protein does, the bacterial community response to the host animal's diet is strongly affected by this diets' protein-carbohydrate ratio," Holmes said. "The fact that this same pattern was seen across almost all groups of gut bacteria indicates that the makeup of the microbial ecosystem is fundamentally shaped by a need to access nitrogen in the intestinal environment," Holmes added. This new research -- published in the journal Cell Metabolism -- is the latest in a series stemming from a study in which 25 different diets composed of different amounts of protein, carbohydrates and fat were systematically varied in 858 mice. The researchers said their new model suggests that while high-carbohydrate diets were the most likely to support positive interactions in the microbiome, such benefits were relative to the protein intake of the host animal.

London, Nov 27 (IANS) If you thought cushioned footwear can protect you better during jogging, think again! Researchers have found that shoes with no cushioning, or minimal footwear, are, in fact, better at reducing risk of running injuries. Runners who wear running shoes with no cushioning and land on the ball of their foot rather than the heel put significantly less demand on their bodies, the study found. Researchers compared how quickly the force acts when runners' feet hit the ground -- known as the loading rate -- which has been shown to influence running injury risk. "This research shows that running in minimal shoes and landing on the balls of your feet reduces loading rates and may therefore reduce the risk of injury," said lead author Hannah Rice from University of Exeter in Engalnd. The study of 29 runners -- published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise -- found significantly lower loading rates for those who wore the so-called minimal running shoes and landed on the ball of their foot, compared to people in normal running shoes, regardless of whether the latter landed on the heel or ball of the foot. "So many people use running as a means of reducing the risk of chronic diseases, but about three quarters of runners typically get injured in a year," Rice said. "Footwear is easily modifiable but many runners are misguided when it comes to buying new running shoes," Rice noted. Running continues to grow in popularity, and research aimed at reducing the high incidence of running-related injuries has been ongoing for decades -- but injury rates have not fallen. Modern-day runners in cushioned footwear tend to land on their heel -- known as a "rearfoot strike" -- while those who run in the natural barefoot state are more likely to land on the ball of their foot -- a "forefoot strike." "Our research tells us that becoming accustomed to running with a forefoot strike in shoes that lack cushioning promotes a landing with the lowest loading rates, and this may be beneficial in reducing the risk of injury," Rice said. The researchers, however, cautioned that any transition to new footwear or to a different foot strike pattern should be undertaken gradually, and with guidance.

​New York, Nov 27 (IANS) Repeated jet lag can increase both obesity related liver disease and the risk of liver cancer, researchers warned. "Liver cancer is on the rise worldwide, and in human studies we have now seen that patients can progress from fatty liver disease to liver cancer without any middle steps such as cirrhosis," said lead author David Moore, Professor at Baylor College of Medicine in the US. The study found that chronically jet-lagged mice developed liver cancer in a very similar way as that described for obese humans. When we constantly travel through different time zones, work night shifts, or push ourselves to stay awake at the regular sleep time, our central circadian clock in the brain becomes chronically disrupted, the researchers said. "We think most people would be surprised to hear that chronic jet lag was sufficient to induce liver cancer," Moore added. In the study, the researchers changed the times the lights went on and off during the night each week to understand the effects of chronic jet lag in normal mice who were fed a healthy diet. They found that the mice gained weight and fat, and developed fatty liver disease, which progressed to chronic inflammation and eventually liver cancer in some cases. The jetlagged mice lost normal control of liver metabolism. This included not only the buildup of fat, but also increased production of bile acids -- acids produced by the liver to help us digest our food -- linked with liver cancer. Further, the jetlagged mice were also lacking in receptors -- called FXR and CAR -- that help regulate liver bile acid metabolism, which works in a similar manner in humans. Although the researchers did not directly study jetlag in humans. But as evidence have showed that sleep disruption increases both fatty liver disease and liver cancer risk in humans, they hypothesised that lifestyle changes that generate chronic jet lag can also disrupt the body's internal homeostasis and increase liver cancer risk in humans. The study appears in the journal Cancer Cell.