Knowledge Update

​Washington, Nov 2 (IANS) A sensing technique that the US military currently uses to remotely monitor the air to detect potentially life-threatening chemicals, toxins, and pathogens has inspired a new instrument that could "sniff" for life on Mars.

The Bio-Indicator Lidar Instrument, or BILI is a fluorescence-based lidar, a type of remote-sensing instrument similar to radar in principle and operation. 

Instead of using radio waves, however, lidar instruments use light to detect and ultimately analyse the composition of particles in the atmosphere.

Although NASA has used fluorescence instruments to detect chemicals in Earth's atmosphere as part of its climate-studies research, the agency so far hasn't employed the technique in planetary studies. 

"NASA has never used it before for planetary ground level exploration. If the agency develops it, it will be the first of a kind," said Branimir Blagojevic, a NASA technologist at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Blagojevic, who formerly worked for Science and Engineering Services, LLC, that developed the sensor, has applied the technology to create an instrument prototype, proving in testing that the same remote-sensing technology used to identify bio-hazards in public places also could be effective at detecting organic bio-signatures on Mars.

The beauty of BILI is its ability to detect in real-time small levels of complex organic materials from a distance of several hundred meters, Blagojevic added in a NASA statement.

Therefore, it could autonomously search for bio-signatures in plumes above recurring slopes -- areas not easily traversed by a rover carrying a variety of in-situ instruments for detailed chemical and biological analysis. 

Furthermore, because it could do a ground-level aerosol analysis from afar, BILI reduces the risk of sample contamination that could skew the results.

"This makes our instrument an excellent complementary organic-detection instrument, which we could use in tandem with more sensitive, point sensor-type mass spectrometers that can only measure a small amount of material at once," Blagojevic said. 

"BILI's measurements do not require consumables other than electrical power and can be conducted quickly over a broad area. This is a survey instrument, with a nose for certain molecules," Blagojevic noted.

With such a tool, which also could be installed on an orbiting spacecraft, NASA could dramatically increase the probability of finding bio-signatures in the solar system, he added.

"We are ready to integrate and test this novel instrument, which would be capable of detecting a number organic bio-signatures," Blagojevic said.

​San Diego, Nov 2 (IANS) Investing in creativity pays off with tangible benefits -- from higher income to greater national competitiveness and productivity, a new Adobe report said on Wednesday.

The report, "State of Create: 2016", released on the eve of Adobe MAX 2016 creativity conference, revealed that people who identify as creators globally report household income that is 13 per cent higher than non-creators.

Globally, more than two-thirds believe that being creative helps make people better workers, leaders, parents and students, the report highlighted. It incorporates responses from more than 5,000 adults across five countries.

"Creativity and productivity go hand in hand, but investing in creativity isn't on the agenda for enough of today's leaders," Mala Sharma, Vice President and General Manager of Creative Cloud at Adobe, said in a statement. 

"This survey provides a big wake-up call to businesses that they need to think differently and give employees the tools and freedom to be creative," she added.

According to the report, US respondents said that being creative is valuable to the economy (77 per cent) and society (82 per cent).

Only five in 10 respondents (55 per cent) describe themselves as creative and 44 per cent say they are living up to their creative potential, showed the survey that found US creators earning 17 per cent more than non-creators.

"Businesses benefit from prioritising creativity and good design. Nearly 88 per cent believe that businesses that invest in creativity are more likely to foster innovation and 89 per cent believe that those who have adopted creativity have satisfied customers," the report found.

The report pointed out that governments that invest in creativity are viewed more positively but agrees that there is a clear disconnect between the high value society places on creativity and the lack of investment in creative education. 

Seventy-one per cent of respondents believe that creativity is being stifled by the educational system, and only 41 per cent feel that the government encourages schools to teach students to be creative.

The report also found that Japan is the most creative country and Tokyo the most creative city followed by the US and New York respectively.

​Beijing, Nov 2 (IANS) Chinese aircraft manufacturer AVIC unveiled the country's first unmanned plane during the International Aviation & Aerospace Exhibition held this week in Zhuhai, China.

The plane, which is capable of flying at high altitudes of more than 14,000 m, is designed for reconnaissance and attack missions, Efe news reported.

Named 'Cloud Shadow', the plane has a maximum speed of 620 kmph, a control system that allows a range of 290 km, and is available for export, according to defence experts.

Other noteworthy specifications include its autonomy of six hours, maximum load of 400 kg and compatibility with several air-to-surface missiles, bombs and other new weapons. 

The International Aviation & Aerospace Exhibition offers a peek into the latest developments in China's civil and military airline industry.

San Francisco, Nov 1 (IANS) Japanese car maker Toyota has developed an app called Smart Key Box that lets people use smartphones to access and start up a car.

The app would only allow users that have previously signed up for the shared-use car to operate it, providing a more secure way of lending and renting cars, Toyota said in a

​Sydney, Nov 1 (IANS) Australian researchers have found that children with vitamin D deficiency were more likely to develop asthma and other allergies later in life.

Researchers from Western Australia's Telethon Kids Institute tracked vitamin D levels from birth to age 10 in Perth and found that children were at high risk of developing asthma and allergies as they grew older if they lacked the nutrient at a young age, Xinhua news agency reported.

The findings also showed that repeated bouts of vitamin D deficiency in early childhood were linked to higher rates of asthma at age 10, as well as allergy and eczema.

The study's lead author Elysia Hollams on Tuesday said the findings showed that vitamin D plays an important role in regulating the immune system as well as promoting a healthy lung development.

"Our study is the first to track vitamin D levels from birth to asthma onset, and it has shown a clear link between prolonged vitamin D deficiency in early childhood and the development of asthma," Hollams said.

"We've also shown for the first time that babies deficient in vitamin D have higher levels of potentially harmful bacteria in their upper airways, and are more susceptible to severe respiratory infections."

But Hollams was quick to caution against rushing out and purchasing vitamin D supplements as more research needs to be done in the field.

"We still don't know what the optimal level of vitamin D is for good lung health and immune function, and we don't know if supplementation would address this issue, or if healthy sun exposure is what is required, given that vitamin D is an indirect measure of recent sun exposure," Hollams said.

The study's co-author professor Prue Hart said the findings were a significant endorsement that vitamin D levels may be important throughout childhood.

Hollams and Hart's study was published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology on Tuesday.

New York, Nov 1 (IANS) Normal, healthy heart muscle is well-supplied with oxygen-rich blood, but a new study says that very low oxygen levels -- about the concentration at the top of Mt. Everest -- may help reverse heart disease.

"This work shows that hypoxia (very low oxygen level) equivalent to the summit of Mt. Everest can actually reverse heart disease, and that is extraordinary," said Benjamin Levine, Professor of Internal Medicine at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in the US.

In this study, by placing mice in an extremely low-oxygen environment, the researchers said they were able to regenerate heart muscle.

"The adult human heart is not capable of any meaningful repair following a heart attack, which is why heart attacks have such a devastating impact," said Hesham Sadek, Associate Professor of Internal Medicine.

"Though counterintuitive, we've shown that severely lowering oxygen exposure can sidestep damage to cells caused by oxygen and turn cell division back on, leading to heart regrowth," Sadek noted.

The findings, published in the journal Nature, build upon years of work that began with the discovery that the hearts of newborn mammals have the ability to regenerate, similar to the way skin has the ability to repair itself after a cut. 

But this ability of heart muscle to regenerate is quickly lost in the following weeks as the animal ages and the cells are bathed in the oxygen-rich environment of the beating heart, causing damage to the cells.

In the current study, the researchers lowered the oxygen in the air breathed by mice from the normal 21 percent to seven per cent -- about the concentration of oxygen at the top of Mt. Everest -- over a period of weeks, then monitored the mass and function of the heart. 

After two weeks in the low-oxygen environment, the heart muscle cells -- called cardiomyocytes -- were dividing and growing. 

Under normal circumstances these heart muscle cells do not divide in adult mammals.

The researchers had tried a 10 per cent oxygen environment, but there was no heart regrowth in the 10 per cent oxygen environment. 

To avoid oxygen damage to cells, oxygen levels needed to be very low, a situation referred to as hypoxia.

"In theory, creating a low-oxygen environment could lead to repair not only of heart muscle, but of other organs as well," Sadek noted.

"Although exposure to this level of hypoxia can result in complications, it is tolerated in humans when performed in a controlled setting," he pointed out.

​New York, Oct 31 (IANS) In a new twist to waste-to-fuel technology, scientists at the US Department of Energys Oak Ridge National Laboratory have accidentally discovered a process to turn carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas, into ethanol, a renewable fuel.

The researchers used tiny spikes of carbon and copper to turn CO2 into ethanol. 

"We discovered somewhat by accident that this material worked," said lead author of the study Adam Rondinone.

"We were trying to study the first step of a proposed reaction when we realised that the catalyst was doing the entire reaction on its own," Rondinone noted.

The team used a catalyst made of carbon, copper and nitrogen and applied voltage to trigger a complicated chemical reaction that essentially reverses the combustion process. 

With the help of the nanotechnology-based catalyst which contains multiple reaction sites, the solution of carbon dioxide dissolved in water turned into ethanol with a yield of 63 per cent, showed the study published in the journal ChemistrySelect. 

Typically, this type of electrochemical reaction results in a mix of several different products in small amounts.

"We're taking carbon dioxide, a waste product of combustion, and we're pushing that combustion reaction backwards with very high selectivity to a useful fuel," Rondinone said.

"Ethanol was a surprise -- it's extremely difficult to go straight from carbon dioxide to ethanol with a single catalyst," Rondinone noted.

The catalyst's novelty lies in its nanoscale structure, consisting of copper nanoparticles embedded in carbon spikes. This nano-texturing approach avoids the use of expensive or rare metals such as platinum that limit the economic viability of many catalysts.

Given the technique's reliance on low-cost materials and an ability to operate at room temperature in water, the researchers believe the approach could be scaled up for industrially relevant applications. 

"A process like this would allow you to consume extra electricity when it's available to make and store as ethanol," Rondinone said. 

"This could help to balance a grid supplied by intermittent renewable sources," Rondinone pointed out.

​New York, Oct 31 (IANS) Repeating statements regardless of whether they are true or not may present it more true, a study has found.

According to researchers, repeated lies have higher truth ratings than new statements in a phenomenon called the illusory truth effect. 

"If you repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth. And if you look around yourself, you may start to think that everyone from advertisers to politicians are taking advantage of this foible of human psychology," said Lisa K. Fazio, Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, US.

Repetition may be one way that insidious misconceptions, such as the belief that vitamin C prevents the common cold, enter our knowledge base. 

"Repeated statements are easier to process, and subsequently perceived to be more truthful, than new statements," Fazio added.

In the study, the researchers used paired true and un-true statements, but also split their items according to how likely participants were to know the truth. 

The prevailing assumption has been that knowledge constrains this effect i.e., repeating the statement "The Atlantic Ocean is the largest ocean on Earth" will not make you believe it. 

However, contrary to this, illusory truth effects occurred even when participants knew better, Fazio said. 

The study showed that participants sometimes rely on fluency even if knowledge is also available to them.

The participants demonstrated knowledge neglect, or the failure to rely on stored knowledge, in the face of fluent processing experiences. 

​London, Oct 31 (IANS) A team of students from University of Sheffield in Britain, including one of Indian-origin, is building a device that could differentiate between bacterial and non-bacterial infections, which in turn could help to tackle antibiotic resistance by reducing the number of patients with viral infections being prescribed antibiotics.

"The main aim behind this project is to create more informed prescriptions to address the ever increasing resistance against antibiotics that we face today," said one of the researchers Saylee Jangam.

"Antibiotic resistance is a huge problem and this is why we chose to base our project on it. We may not be able to reverse it, but with our device, we could potentially slow it down," Jangam said in a university statement.

The diagnostic tool uses genetically engineered bacteria to detect the presence of a bacterial infection in a patient's blood sample.

"What's even more interesting is that we are using genetically engineered bacteria to detect the presence of bacterial infections in blood - that's right - using bacteria to detect bacteria," she noted. 

The tool can distinguish between a viral and bacterial infection by detecting a protein known as lipocalin. This protein is produced in high levels by cells of the immune system in response to bacterial infections.

The protein's function is to bind to small molecules which bacteria use to access iron in order to grow.

The Sheffield team is developing the device so that genetically modified bacteria mixes with a patient's blood sample and turn florescent when there are low levels of the lipocalin protein - indicating a viral not bacterial infection.

Toronto, Oct 31 (IANS) Reminding people of their close, caring relationships can reduce their tendency to anthropomorphise objects -- ascribing humanlike characteristics to inanimate objects -- as a way of feeling socially connected, and help people reconnect with real people, suggests new research.

"Although anthropomorphism is one of the more creative ways people try to meet belonging needs, it is nevertheless difficult to have a relationship with an inanimate object," the researchers said.

There are many ways that people who feel socially disconnected can reconnect -- they can try reinforce existing social bonds or forge new relationships, but there are other ways, too. 

An earlier study showed that one of the ways that people may try to increase their sense of connection and belonging is by anthropomorphising inanimate objects, such as a pillow or an alarm clock.

"Reliance on such a compensatory strategy could permit disconnected people to delay the riskier--but potentially more rewarding -- steps of forging new relationships with real people," the current study noted.

"We think this work really highlights how important feeling socially connected is to people and the lengths people will go to 'reconnect' when they feel disconnected, and it reminds us of the value of our close relationships," lead researcher Jennifer Bartz of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

The researchers wondered whether boosting people's feelings of social connection might make them less likely to anthropomorphise.

They also explored whether attachment anxiety -- marked by a preoccupation with closeness and intimacy and heightened sensitivity to social cues of rejection -- might be one individual characteristic associated with this tendency to anthropomorphise.

To find out, the researchers conducted an online experiment with a total of 178 participants, who completed a variety of established survey measures aimed at assessing their feelings of attachment anxiety and avoidance, loneliness, self-esteem, and need to belong.

Some of the participants were then asked to think about someone who was important to them and whom they could trust.

Other participants completed the same tasks but were told to think about an acquaintance, instead of someone they were close to, serving as a comparison group.

The results, published in the journal Psychological Science, showed that thinking about a close relationship can make a difference.

Participants who thought and wrote about someone they were close to were less likely to anthropomorphise objects compared with participants who thought about an acquaintance.

In addition, the researchers found that attachment anxiety was associated with a tendency to anthropomorphise, and was actually a stronger predictor than loneliness was.