Knowledge Update

Toronto, Jan 22 (IANS) Scanning the brain of a premature baby shortly after birth to map the location and volume of lesions -- small areas of injury in the brain's white matter -- may help doctors better predict whether the baby will have disabilities later, researchers say.

Lack of oxygen to the brain is the most common form of brain injury in premature infants, resulting in damage to the white matter - which contains nerve fibers that maintain contact between various parts of the brain.

Damage to white matter can interfere with communication in the brain and the signals it sends to other parts of the body.

"In general, babies who are born before 31 weeks gestation have a higher risk of thinking, language and movement problems throughout their lives, so being able to better predict which infants will face certain developmental problems is important so they get the best early interventions possible," said Steven P. Miller from The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto, Canada.

For the study, the team looked at a group of A58 premature babies with white matter injury who had an MRI brain scan at an average of 32 weeks after gestation. These babies were then evaluated for motor, thinking and language skills when they were 18 months old.

The findings showed that a greater volume of small areas of injury, no matter where they were located in the brain, could predict movement problems at 18 months.

A greater volume of these small areas of injury in the frontal lobe -- area of the brain that regulates problem solving, memory, language skills and voluntary movement skills -- could predict thinking problems.

On the other hand, premature infants with larger frontal lobe injuries had a 79 fold greater odds of developing thinking problems than infants without such injuries, as well as a 64 fold greater odds of problems with movement development.

Future studies should evaluate premature infants not just at 18 months, but at various points throughout childhood to determine the long-term consequences of early injuries in the brain, Miller added.

The study was published in the journal Neurology.

​New York, Jan 21 (IANS) You will no longer miss the tweets from your best friend as Twitter is testing a new feature that highlights tweets from a select, single person it thinks you should not miss.

​Seoul, Jan 21 (IANS) After launching its modular device G5 this year, South Korean electronics conglomerate LG will launch its G6 smartphone with Google voice assistant service next month, media reported. According to Yonhap news agency, LG agreed with Google last year to feature the assistant and is in the final stage of stabilising the software before unveiling the model just ahead of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) scheduled to take place from February 27 to March 2 in Barcelona. iPhone already has its voice assistant Siri and Samsung is reportedly working on its own smart assistant for Galaxy S8 called Bixby. "Google Assistant will be very helpful for LG Electronics when all other tech firms are showcasing their voice assistant service. The difficult task for LG is whether the service will recognize the Korean language," a source was quoted as saying. An LG official said the company "cannot confirm the speculation at the moment" and Google also declined to comment on the matter at the moment, the report said. LG G6 will be equipped with "heat pipes" for better cooling as part of its efforts to strengthen product safety. This technology lowers the temperature of the processor by some 6-10 per cent by dispersing heat and helping prevent it from reaching the battery cell.

​London, Jan 21 (IANS) When people start becoming delirious, it may have a long-lasting impact on their brains, accelerating the dementia process among them, a new study has found.

A research conducted in the University College London and the University of Cambridge found that episodes of delirium in people who are not known to have dementia, might also reveal dementia at its earliest stages.

"If delirium is causing brain injury in the short and long-term, then we must increase our efforts to diagnose, prevent and treat delirium. Ultimately, targeting delirium could be a chance to delay or reduce dementia," said Daniel Davis from the University of Cambridge.

The study noted that while both delirium and dementia are important factors in cognitive decline among the elderly, delirium is preventable and treatable through dedicated geriatric care.

"Unfortunately, most delirium goes unrecognised. In busy hospitals, a sudden change in confusion is not noticed by hospital staff. Patients can be transferred several times and staff often switch over -- it requires everyone to 'think delirium' and identify that a patient's brain function has changed," Davis noted in a paper published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.

​New York, Jan 20 (IANS) If you think that going incognito online will save you from being seen or noticed, you are wrong. According to researchers including two of Indian-origin, online behaviour can be identified by linking anonymous web browsing histories with your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram profiles.

New York, Jan 20 (IANS) In an aim to improve competition in downloadable audiobook distribution in Europe, Apple and Amazon have agreed to end an exclusivity agreement that made Audible the only seller of audiobooks inside of iTunes.

​Copenhagen, Jan 20 (IANS) Social media giant Facebook announced on Thursday that it would build a new data centre in Odense, Denmark's third largest city in Funen island.

The new centre, which is Facebook's third outside the United States, would be one of the most advanced and energy-efficient data centres in the world and would be powered

​New York, Jan 20 (IANS) In an attempt to search for life outside Earth, an astronomer has studied an exoplanet called Wolf 1061 and found the celestial body could be habitable in the future.

Astronomer Stephen Kane from San Francisco State University, in his research focused on finding "habitable zones" where water could exist in a liquid state on a planet's surface. 

Kane and his team examined a habitable zone on a planetary system 14 light years away. "The Wolf 1061 system is important because it is so close and that gives other opportunities to do follow-up studies to see if it does indeed have life," Kane said in a statement.

One of the three known planets in the Wolf 1061 system, a rocky planet called Wolf 1061c, is entirely within the habitable zone. 

When scientists search for planets that could sustain life, they are basically looking for a planet with nearly identical properties to Earth. 

"Simply put, the planet can't be too close or too far from its parent star. A planet that's too close would be too hot like Earth's twin Venus. If it's too far, it may be too cold and any water would freeze, which is what happens on Mars," Kane noted.

Since Wolf 1061c is close to the inner edge of the habitable zone, meaning closer to the star, it could be that the planet has an atmosphere that's more similar to Venus. 

Kane and his team also observed that unlike Earth, which experiences climatic changes such as an ice age because of slow variations in its orbit around the sun, Wolf 1061c's orbit changes at a much faster rate, which could mean the climate there could be quite chaotic.

According to Kane, life is possible on Wolf 1061c under one possibility -- the short time scales over which Wolf 1061c's orbit changes could be enough that it could actually cool the planet off.

But fully understanding what's happening on the planet's surface will take more research, he added.

The findings are forthcoming in the Astrophysical Journal in a paper titled "Characterization of the Wolf 1061 Planetary System".

​New York, Jan 20 (IANS) Older adults with low blood levels of a circulating protein in the blood may be at an increased risk of experiencing decline in their kidney function, a study has found.

The findings showed that higher blood levels of a protein called soluble klotho -- with anti-ageing properties -- may help preserve kidney function. 

"We found a strong association between low soluble klotho and decline in kidney function, independent of many known risk factors for kidney function decline," said David Drew from Tufts University in Massachusetts, US.

The kidney has the highest levels of klotho expression and is likely the major source of soluble klotho, and thus, in patients with kidney disease levels of klotho tend to be low.

Although the exact mechanism of action of soluble klotho remains to be identified, the protein has been shown to influence multiple cellular and endocrine pathways, the researchers said.

After adjusting for various factors such as demographics, comorbidities, and kidney disease risk factors, each two-fold higher level of klotho was linked with a 15-20 per cent lower likelihood of experiencing kidney function decline in the elderly.

"This suggests that klotho could play a role in the development of chronic kidney disease and also raises the possibility that klotho could be an important therapeutic target for future clinical trials," Drew added.

For the study, the team analysed 2496 study elderly with measures of soluble serum klotho and repeated measures of kidney function over 10 years of follow up.

Although additional studies are needed, the findings point to a potential target for preventing and treating kidney disease, the researchers stated.

The study is forthcoming in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN).

​Singapore, Jan 20 (IANS) Ever wondered why we are not plunged into intermittent darkness when we blink? Researchers in Singapore may have the answer.

It is because our brain works extra hard to stabilise our vision, without which our surroundings would appear shadowy, erratic and jittery after we blink, a study has showed.

Blinking lubricates dry eyes and protects them from irritants. However, when we blink, our eyeballs roll back in their sockets and do not always return to the same spot when we reopen our eyes. 

This misalignment prompts the brain to activate the eye muscles to realign our vision, the researchers said. 

The finding showed that when we blink, our brain repositions our eyeballs so we can stay focused on what we are viewing.

"Our eye muscles are quite sluggish and imprecise, so the brain needs to constantly adapt its motor signals to make sure our eyes are pointing where they're supposed to," said lead author Gerrit Maus, Assistant Professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. 

"Our findings suggest that the brain gauges the difference in what we see before and after a blink and commands the eye muscles to make the needed corrections," Maus added.

For the study, healthy young adults participated where they sat in a dark room for long periods staring at a dot on a screen while infrared cameras tracked their eye movements and eye blinks in real time.

Every time they blinked, the dot was moved one centimetre to the right. While participants failed to notice the subtle shift, the brain's oculomotor system registered the movement and learned to reposition the line of vision squarely on the dot.

After 30 or so blink-synchronised dot movements, participants' eyes adjusted during each blink and shifted automatically to the spot where they predicted the dot to be.

The study was published in the journal Current Biology.