Knowledge Update

New York, July 31 (IANS) Researchers have determined how a protein can boost immune system's ability to battle pneumonia.

The finding may offer a new way for doctors to boost patients' ability to fight off the life-threatening infection as bacteria become more and more resistant to antibiotics.

"We're interested in seeing if there are things we can do to strengthen the natural defences of the host to help them fight the infection more effectively," said Borna Mehrad from University of Virginia School of Medicine.

"Potentially this would be the sort of thing you could do in addition to antibiotics to help patients with severe infections," Mehrad noted.

Mehrad and his team determined that the lack of the cytokine M-CSF (short for macrophage-colony stimulating factor) in infected mice worsened the outcome of bacterial pneumonia.

Not having the protein resulted in 10 times more bacteria in the lungs, 1,000 times more bacteria in the blood and spread the infection to the liver, resulting in increased deaths.

Clearly M-CSF has an important role in battling pneumonia, but what exactly does it do?

"M-CSF has previously been shown to help make a type of immune cell, called monocytes, so my idea was that if you take it away, infected hosts just stop making monocytes and that's why they get sick, and it turned out that was completely wrong," Mehrad said.

Instead, the findings published in The Journal of Immunology showed that M-CSF helped monocytes survive once they have arrived in the infected tissues.

"If you take M-CSF away, the infections get worse, so that raises two important questions about therapy: Would more be better? It may be that during infection, the body is making the right amount of M-CSF and if we add extra, it won't improve outcomes further," Mehrad said.

"The second possibility is that there is room for improvement: in the fight between monocytes and the bacteria, M-CSF may make monocytes live longer and give them an edge. In addition, some people with weakened immunity might not make enough of M-CSF. If that's the case, you could augment that and improve their ability to fight the infection," Mehrad explained.​

​New York, July 30 (IANS) Tech giant Google's navigation app "Google Maps" for Apple's iOS has got a new feature giving users the ability to add multiple stops to a single trip.

Rather than only directing you from point A to point B -- as the app generally does -- the new Maps can now bring a user from point B to points C, D, E, and so on, making it

New York, July 29 (IANS) While Apple attempted to manufacture a TV product and own a complete ecosystem -- both hardware and software -- in the past, owing to stringent conditions the US tech giant put on cable operators, the deals did not materialise, media reported on Friday.

​Beijing, July 29 (IANS) With the adoption of the two-child policy, China has seen a boom of its "second-child economy", heating up related industries, according to a media report on Friday.

London, July 30 (IANS) If you are looking for ways to reduce that ever-burgeoning waistline, stay clear of foods rich in saturated fat found in butter, cheese or fried foods as these can make your brain struggle to control what you eat, says a study.

The findings showed that consuming fatty food affects the hypothalamus -- a part of the brain that helps regulate hunger.

A meal rich in saturated fat causes inflammation in the brain as well as reduces an individual's cognitive function that make it more difficult to control eating habits.

In other words, people struggle to control how much they eat, when to stop and what type of food to eat -- symptoms seen in obesity.

“Although the effects of high fat diet on metabolism have been widely studied, little is known about the effects on the brain," said Marianna Crispino Professor at the University of Naples Federico II in Naples, Italy.

On the other hand, consuming foods rich in unsaturated fats such as fish, avocado or olive oil makes a significant difference, the researchers said.

The study shows that brain function remains normal and manages to restrain from eating more than necessary.

"The difference was very clear and we were amazed to establish the impact of a fatty diet onto the brain,” Crispino explained.

“Our results suggest that being more aware about the type of fat consumed with the diet may reduce the risk of obesity and prevent several metabolic diseases", Crispino concluded.

The results were published in the journal Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience.

​New York, July 29 (IANS) Scientists have developed a sustainable, wearable bio-sensor to detect conditions like muscle fatigue, stress and dehydration by taking advantage of trove of medical information present in human sweat.

"When the human body undergoes strenuous exercise, there's a point at which aerobic muscle function becomes anaerobic muscle function," said study co-author Jenny Ulyanova from CFD Research Corporation (CFDRC). 

"At that point, lactate is produce at a faster rate than it is being consumed. When that happens, knowing what those levels are can be an indicator of potentially problematic conditions like muscle fatigue, stress, and dehydration," he added.

What separates this study from other researches is the use of purely biological green technology. 

The team, in collaboration with University of New Mexico, developed an enzyme-based sensor powered by a biofuel cell -- providing a safe, renewable power source. 

"The biofuel cell works in this particular case because the sensor is a low-power device," Ulyanova said. 

"They're very good at having high energy densities, but power densities are still a work in progress. But for low-power applications like this particular sensor, it works very well," he added in a paper published in the ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology.

The team powered the biofuel cells with a fuel based on glucose. This same enzymatic technology, where the enzymes oxidise the fuel and generate energy, is used at the working electrode of the sensor which allows for the detection of lactate in human sweat.

Another novel aspect of this work is the use of electrochemical processes to very accurately detect a specific compound in a very complex medium like sweat.

"We're doing it electrochemically, so we're looking at applying a constant load to the sensor and generating a current response," Ulyanova said, "which is directly proportional to the concentration of our target analyte".

Although the sensor was designed for a soldier in training, it could also be applied to people that are active and anyone participating in strenuous activity.

As for commercial applications, the researchers believe the device could be used as a training aid to monitor lactate changes in the same way that athletes use heart rate monitors to see how their heart rate changes during exercise.​

New York, July 29 (IANS) Researchers have developed a potentially game-changing solar cell that essentially does the work of plants -- converting atmospheric carbon dioxide into usable hydrocarbon fuel using only sunlight for energy.

"The new solar cell is not photovoltaic - it's photosynthetic," said senior study author Amin Salehi-Khojin from the University of Illinois at Chicago. 

"Instead of producing energy in an unsustainable one-way route from fossil fuels to greenhouse gas, we can now reverse the process and recycle atmospheric carbon into fuel using sunlight," he added.

While plants produce fuel in the form of sugar, the artificial leaf delivers syngas, or synthesis gas, a mixture of hydrogen gas and carbon monoxide. Syngas can be burned directly, or converted into diesel or other hydrocarbon fuels.

The ability to turn CO2 into fuel at a cost comparable to a gallon of gasoline would render fossil fuels obsolete.

Chemical reactions that convert CO2 into burnable forms of carbon are called reduction reactions, the opposite of oxidation or combustion. 

Engineers have been exploring different catalysts to drive CO2 reduction, but so far such reactions have been inefficient and rely on expensive precious metals such as silver, Salehi-Khojin said.

"What we needed was a new family of chemicals with extraordinary properties," he added in a paper published in the journal Science.

The team focused on a family of nano-structured compounds called transition metal dichalcogenides -- or TMDCs -- as catalysts, pairing them with an unconventional ionic liquid as the electrolyte inside a two-compartment, three-electrode electrochemical cell.

The best of several catalysts they studied turned out to be nanoflake tungsten diselenide.

"The new catalyst is more active; more able to break carbon dioxide's chemical bonds," said study lead author Mohammad Asadi. 

In fact, the new catalyst is 1,000 times faster than noble-metal catalysts and about 20 times cheaper.

The technology should be adaptable not only to large-scale use, like solar farms, but also to small-scale applications, Salehi-Khojin said. 

It may prove useful on Mars, whose atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide, if the planet is also found to have water.

New York, July 30 (IANS) Researchers have developed a portable production system that can manufacture a range of bio-pharmaceuticals on demand to help doctors treat patients in remote or developing parts of the world like India, where getting rapid access to drugs can be challenging.

Bio-pharmaceutical drugs are used in a wide range of therapies including vaccines and treatments for diabetes and cancer. But these are typically produced in large, centralised fermentation plants and transporting them to the treatment site can be expensive and time-consuming.

The new system, developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, can be used to produce a single dose of treatment from a compact device containing a small droplet of cells in a liquid. 

It was recently described in the journal Nature Communications.

"Imagine you were on Mars or in a remote desert, without access to a full formulary, you could program the yeast to produce drugs on demand locally," said senior study author Tim Lu.

The system could be carried onto the battlefield and used to produce treatments at the point of care. It may also be used to manufacture a vaccine to prevent a disease outbreak in a remote village.

​New York, July 29 (IANS) Taking a selfie could be fun but due to the camera's proximity, such photos may render your nose larger, ears smaller and forehead more sloping. A new tool developed by researchers at Princeton University can correct these distortions, and has the potential to bring an end to selfie stick.

​Tokyo, July 29 (IANS) The Bank of Japan on Friday announced a modest expansion of its monetary easing programme, blaming Britain's decision to leave the European Union as the biggest uncertainty facing world markets.