Knowledge Update

​Washington, Sep 16 (IANS) The 2016 Arctic sea ice cover tied with 2007 for the second lowest yearly minimum on record, according to a new report.

Arctic sea ice appeared to have reached its annual lowest extent on September 10, NASA and the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado at Boulder reported on Thursday.

At 4.14 million square kilometres, the 2016 Arctic sea ice minimum extent is effectively tied with 2007 for the second lowest yearly minimum in the satellite record. 

"The record makes it clear that the ice is not rebounding to where it used to be, even in the midst of the winter," said Claire Parkinson, main author of the study and a senior climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland

The lowest sea ice extent recorded was on September 17, 2012, when it fell to just 3.39 million square kilometres, CNN reported.

The sea ice cover of the Arctic ocean and surrounding seas helps regulate the planet's temperature, influences the circulation of the atmosphere and ocean, and impacts Arctic communities and ecosystems. 

Arctic sea ice shrinks every year during the spring and summer until it reaches its minimum yearly extent. 

Sea ice regrows during the frigid fall and winter months, when the sun is below the horizon in the Arctic.

This summer, the melt of Arctic sea ice surprised scientists by changing pace several times.

The melt season began with a record low yearly maximum extent in March and a rapid ice loss through May. 

But in June and July, low atmospheric pressures and cloudy skies slowed down the melt.

Then, after two large storms went across the Arctic basin in August, sea ice melt picked up speed through early September, the report said.

"It's pretty remarkable that this year's sea ice minimum extent ended up the second lowest, after how the melt progressed in June and July," Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center said.

New York, Sep 16 (IANS) In a first study of its magnitude, researchers in the US aim to infuse an antibody into human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-negative men and transgender individuals to determine whether it will prevent the infection from developing.

The Antibody Meditated Prevention (AMP) study -- led by an Indian-origin scientist -- aims to recruit a combined 2,700 HIV-negative men and transgender individuals whose sexual partners are men -- the highest-risk demographic for HIV infection -- to test the efficacy of antibody VRC01 in the large clinical trial. 

"It is the first study of this magnitude to see whether an antibody infusion can help prevent new HIV infections. If it proves effective, it could potentially pave a way for developing a vaccine for HIV infection," said Shobha Swaminathan, an infectious disease specialist from Rutgers University in New Jersey, US.

The VRC01 antibody was initially detected in an individual who was able to successfully control HIV infection without taking any medications for HIV.

Further, in laboratory tests, VRC01 antibody has shown to be effective against 90 per cent of HIV-1 isolates that were tested, the researchers said. 

Those enrolled will either be given intravenous infusions of VRC01 or a placebo every eight weeks for a total of 10 infusions.

Participants will be closely monitored for approximately 22 months for safety and also to determine whether they have remained HIV-negative.

HIV continues to be a major global public health issue, though the rate of infection has fallen significantly in recent years. 

In 2014, gay and bisexual men accounted for an estimated 83 per cent of all new HIV infections among men in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Though the number of new HIV diagnoses fell 19 per cent from 2005 to 2014, certain demographic groups showed increases in the infection, CDC noted. 

"According to CDC estimates, only about 25 per cent of people who are HIV-positive have it under control," says Swaminathan.

​New York, Sep 16 (IANS) Researchers at Harvard Medical School have found how certain tumours develop a taste for fat over sugar and that one way to kill them could be starving them of their life-sustaining fuel.

The findings showed how a mechanism that normally keeps fat burning in check goes awry in some cancers, revving up fat consumption and fuelling tumour growth.

"This really represents a new frontier in looking at the metabolism of cancer," said senior author of the study Marcia Haigis, Associate Professor of Cell Biology.

"Understanding the molecular handle of this pathway is the first step toward translating the basic work into therapy," Haigis said.

Specifically, the study, published in the journal Molecular Cell, found that a protein called prolyl hydroxylase 3 (PHD3) appears to be a key regulator of the delicate balance inside cells that dampens fat burning. 

That protein, the research showed, is abnormally low in certain forms of cancer - a finding that can help lay the ground for development of therapies that work by starving tumours of their fuel.

Two forms of cancer -- acute myeloid leukemia and prostate cancer -- had by far the lowest PHD3 levels, the analysis showed.

To test their hypothesis that these particular cancers needed fats to survive and that PHD3 was a key regulator in the fat-burning process fuelling tumour growth, the researchers restored to normal the levels of PHD3 in a line of cancer cells and in mice. 

The tumours not only stopped growing, they died.

"That was really exciting," Haigis said. 

"We've altered a lot of metabolic pathways in cancer, and this is one of the few pathways we've modulated where we really see the tumours die. They are so dependent on fat oxidation that they die," Haigis noted.

Before this discovery can move ahead to the clinic, she said, more basic research needs to be done, both in animal models and in cancer cells taken from patients, to understand why certain tumours depend on fat.

New York, Sep 16 (IANS) A team of researchers in the US has developed a new inverter that -- despite being smaller and lighter -- improves the fuel-efficiency and range of hybrid and electric vehicles.

Electric and hybrid vehicles rely on inverter components, which are made of the semiconductor material silicon, to ensure that enough electricity is conveyed from the battery to the motor during vehicle operation.

Now researchers at the Future Renewable Electric Energy Distribution and Management (FREEDM) Systems Centre at North Carolina State University have developed an inverter using components made of the wide-bandgap semiconductor material silicon carbide (SiC).

"Our silicon carbide prototype inverter can transfer 99 per cent of energy to the motor, which is about two per cent higher than the best silicon-based inverters under normal conditions," said Iqbal Husain, ABB Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

The new SiC-based inverter is able to convey 12.1 kilowatts of power per liter (kW/L) -- close to the US Department of Energy's goal of developing inverters that can achieve 13.4 kW/L by 2020. By way of comparison, a 2010 electric vehicle could achieve only 4.1 kW/L.

"Conventional, silicon-based inverters have likely improved since 2010 but they are still nowhere near 12.1 kW/L," Husain noted in a statement provided by the university.

According to the researchers, they can make an air-cooled inverter up to 35 kW using the new module, for use in motorcycles, hybrid vehicles and scooters.

"The silicon carbide inverters can be smaller and lighter than their silicon counterparts, further improving the range of electric vehicles. And new advances we have made in inverter components should allow us to make the inverters even smaller still," added Husain, who is also the director of the FREEDM Centre. 

The current SiC inverter prototype was designed to go up to 55 kW -- the sort of power you would see in a hybrid vehicle. 

The researchers are now in the process of scaling it up to 100 kW -- akin to what would see in a fully electric vehicle -- using off-the-shelf components, the research paper, to be presented at the IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE), being held from September 18-22 in Milwaukee, US said.

New York, Sep 16 (IANS) It is an immediate, intrinsic response of the hepatitis A virus (HAV)-infected cell that results in liver inflammation, researchers at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have discovered.

HAV does not cause chronic liver disease like hepatitis B and C viruses. But in rare cases, it can cause acute liver failure, which is often fatal.

The new findings, published in the journal Science, could lead to new response to control the infection as hepatitis researchers earlier thought that immune cells sent by the body to attack virus-infected cells in the liver cause the acute liver injury.

"The virus evokes a response in the infected cell that activates a pre-programmed cell death pathway," said one of the study authors Stanley Lemon, Professor of Medicine.

"In effect, the cell commits suicide, sacrificing itself along with the virus in an effort to save the host. This results in inflammation within the liver that we recognise as hepatitis," Lemon explained.

Hepatitis A virus is a vaccine preventable form of infectious hepatitis. HAV is found worldwide and is transmitted through ingestion of food and water that is contaminated with the feces of an infected person. 

Symptoms of hepatitis A include nausea, stomach pain, fever, sore throat, headache and diarrhea. 

People infected with HAV may not experience any symptoms, but shed the virus for two to four weeks. During this period, an infected person can pass the virus to others.

​London, Sep 17 (IANS) The memory of a heart attack gets stored in genes through epigenetic changes -- chemical modifications of DNA that turns our genes on or off, a study has found.

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) which are the leading causes of death worldwide are influenced by both heredity and environmental factors. 

CVD includes all the diseases of the heart and circulation including coronary heart disease, angina, heart attack, congenital heart disease and stroke. 

The study examined epigenetic changes -- that can lead to the development of various diseases -- in people who have had a previous heart attack.

"During a heart attack the body signals by activating certain genes. This mechanism protects the tissue during the acute phase of the disease, and restores the body after the heart attack. It is therefore likely that epigenetic changes are also associated a heart attack", said Asa Johansson, researcher at the Uppsala University in Sweden.

The results of the study showed that there are many epigenetic changes in individuals who had experienced a heart attack. 

Several of these changes are in genes that are linked to cardiovascular disease. 

However, it was not possible to determine whether these differences had contributed to the development of the disease, or if they live on as a memory of gene activation associated with the heart attack, the researchers said.

"We hope that our new results should contribute to increasing the knowledge of the importance of epigenetic in the clinical picture of a heart attack, which in the long run could lead to better drugs and treatments", Johansson added.

For the study, the team took blood samples from the northern Sweden population health study. Individuals with a history of a CVD were identified in the cohort. It included individuals with hypertension, myocardial infarction, stroke, thrombosis and cardiac arrhythmia. 

The results were published in the journal Human Molecular Genetics.

​New York, Sep 17 (IANS) Using NASA's Hubble space telescope, astronomers have captured the sharpest, most detailed observations of a comet breaking apart 108 million kilometres from Earth.

In a series of images taken over three days in January 2016, Hubble showed 25 fragments consisting of a mixture of ice and dust that are drifting away from the comet at a pace equivalent to the walking speed of an adult, said lead researcher David Jewitt from University of California, Los Angeles.

The images suggest that the roughly 4.5-billion-year-old comet, named 332P/Ikeya-Murakami, or comet 332P, may be spinning so fast that material is ejected from its surface.

The resulting debris is now scattered along a 4,828-km-long trail, said the study published online in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

These observations provide insight into the volatile behaviour of comets as they approach the sun and begin to vaporise, unleashing powerful forces.

"We know that comets sometimes disintegrate, but we don't know much about why or how," Jewitt said. 

"The trouble is that it happens quickly and without warning, so we don't have much chance to get useful data. With Hubble's fantastic resolution, not only do we see really tiny, faint bits of the comet, but we can watch them change from day to day. That has allowed us to make the best measurements ever obtained on such an object," Jewitt noted.

The three-day observations show that the comet shards brighten and dim as icy patches on their surfaces rotate into and out of sunlight. 

Their shapes change, too, as they break apart. The icy relics comprise about four percent of the parent comet and range in size from roughly 65 feet wide to 200 feet wide. 

They are separating at only a few kilometres per hour as they orbit the sun at more than 80,467 kms per hour.

The Hubble images show that the parent comet changes brightness frequently, completing a rotation every two to four hours. A visitor to the comet would see the sun rise and set in as little as an hour, Jewitt said.

The comet is much smaller than astronomers thought, measuring only 1,600 feet across, about the length of five football fields.

Comet 332P was discovered in November 2010, after it surged in brightness and was spotted by two Japanese astronomers.

​New York, Sep 16 (IANS) Facebook-owned Instagram said it will roll out four new updates of which three are related to its call to action button and the fourth works with video link ads to make ads more visible and interactive. Now when you look at an Instagram ad for at least four seconds or tap on the name of the advertiser's profile, the call to action button will be highlighted. Apart from appearing at the bottom of the advertiser's profile, now when you open the call to action button, it will also show up in the ad's comments which allows Instagrammers to engage with a business quicker without additional tapping or scrolling. "When we detect additional information from an ad like price, destination URL or app store rating, it will be automatically added to the call to action button," said Instagram in a blog post on Thursday. For video link ads, when people unmute a video they will be taken to the destination URL while the video continues to play at the top of the screen. Now people can explore, browse and take action on a landing page while continuing to watch the video. People can also go to full screen or dismiss the video player if they prefer to browse the web page.

With an arrival of more than 10 million tourists every year, tourism has emerged as a promising business sector in the UAE. The country is flourishing with three national airlines and a huge number of tourism organizations such as travel agencies, tour operators, ground operators, hotels, and destination tourism authorities.  Capitalizing on the strengths and opportunities, the country presents an ideal tourism model to rest of the world.  Its strategic location, an optimum blend of natural attractions (sun, sand, sea) with those of man-made such as palm islands, sky scrapers, shopping festivals, well established infrastructure and availability of a range of accommodation, make UAE a perfect destination for a variety of tourists.  All this and a huge support and investments by government to diversify from oil sector have given a major thrust to tourism development and promotion.  Though the last few years cast a shadow on the UAE economy as well, yet tourism industry would be a thriving business in the times to come.

Subsequently, the tourism statistics in UAE are quite encouraging. According to WTTC (World Tourism and Travel Council), the direct contribution of Travel & Tourism to GDP in 2015 was AED64.9bn (4.2% of GDP). This is forecast to rise by 4.2% to AED67.6bn in 2016.

The total contribution of Travel & Tourism to employment (including wider effects from investment, the supply chain and induced income impacts) was 557,000 jobs in 2015 (9.6% of total employment). This is forecast to rise by 3.8% in 2016 to 578,000 jobs (9.8% of total employment). By 2026, Travel & Tourism is forecast to support 850,000 jobs (12.4% of total employment), an increase of 3.9% pa over the period.

The encouraging statistics supported by unique characteristics of the UAE such as political stability, low barriers to enter the market, a well-managed banking system and other supporting services and an excellent infrastructure, establishes a solid platform for the investors looking for a business opportunity. What makes UAE business support different from that of others is the clarity in their procedure, rules and regulations.

However, at the same time the tourism sector in the country is starving for suitable man power to work at all levels ranging from the top management decision makers to bottom level operational staff in various tourism and hospitality related organizations. As in many other business sectors in UAE, most of the human resource is being outsourced for tourism and hospitality. While there is nothing wrong in that but one should not forget the importance of training the newly recruited staff about the new markets, and more importantly about the country itself.  Many medium and big size organizations in tourism do have separate Human Resources department taking care of training requirements whereas the small size enterprises might find it challenging to spare their staff for such activities. Need of the hour is to understand tourism industry's functioning at a larger level and fuel a sustainable growth which is socially, culturally and environmentally viable. This is possible only when the people running this sector are equipped with holistic knowledge of tourism sector and take decisions accordingly. At the same time the educational institutes and varsities should also respond innovatively and effectively to the training and education needs of this ever growing sector. Although a whole range of tourism related courses, job oriented professional diplomas and certifications are being offered in the marketplace, their credibility remains questionable. Tourism sector aspirants should carefully analyze their requirement, affordability, availability and match it with the training program and the institute's credibility.

London, Sep 16 (IANS) Children who engage in fantasy play are likely to score higher in creative thinking, a study has found.

The study found that it is possible that children who enjoy fantasy play are subsequently more creative, and it's equally possible that children who are more creative subsequently engage in more fantasy play. 

"This is because, theoretically, playing in make-believe worlds requires imagination to conceive of the world differently to its current reality, which is also necessary to think creatively," said lead researcher Louise Bunce from the Oxford Brookes University in Britian. 

The children's fantasy play involved pretending that mirrored real-life (e.g. having a tea party or pretending to be a teacher), events that were improbable in reality (e.g. fighting a lion and being unharmed or going to school in a helicopter) or impossible events (e.g. going to wizarding school or playing with an elf), the researchers said.

For the study, the team interviewed 70 children aged 4-8 years old to assess the extent to which their fantasy play involved.

The children also completed three creativity tasks. In the first task children had to think of as many things as possible that were red, in the second task they had to demonstrate as many ways as possible of moving across the room from A-B, then the third task asked them to draw a real and pretend person. 

In the first two tasks children received points for the number of responses they gave and how unique those responses were. Their drawings were rated for their level of creativity according to two judges.

Children who reported higher levels of fantasy play also received higher creativity scores across all three tasks.

"The results provide evidence that engaging in play that involves imagining increasingly unrealistic scenarios is associated with thinking more creatively, although at the moment we don't know the direction of this relationship," Bunce noted. 

"Parents and teachers could consider encouraging children to engage in fantasy play as one way to develop their creative thinking skills," the researchers suggested.

The findings were presented at the annual conference of the British Psychological Society's Developmental Psychology Section in Belfast, recently.