Knowledge Update

​New York, June 7 (IANS) Scientists have discovered a ‘third gene' that leads to the development of the common neurodegenerative disease, a study said.

The study provided evidence that mutations in gene TMEM230 caused Parkinson's disease -- a disorder of the central nervous system that affects movement, often including tremors.

“The study showed that mutations in this new gene lead to pathologically and clinically proven cases of the disease," said led researcher Teepu Siddique, Professor at Northwestern University in the US.

The findings showed that the gene is responsible for producing a protein involved in packaging the neurotransmitter dopamine in neurons. Loss of dopamine-producing neurons is a defining characteristic of Parkinson's disease.

Also, individuals with this gene mutation showed both clinical characteristics of the disease -- symptoms like tremors, slow movement and stiffness -- as well as pathological evidence in the brain -- loss of dopamine neurons and abnormal accumulations of proteins inside surviving neurons.

"This particular gene causing Parkinson's disease is not just limited to one population in North America," Siddique said.

"It's worldwide, found in very different ethnic and environmental conditions. These mutations are that strong."

Further, TMEM230 was also found to encode a protein that extends across the membrane of tiny sacks inside neurons called synaptic vesicles, which store neurotransmitters before they are released from one cell to another.

The scientists hypothesised that the protein is involved in the movement of these vesicles.

"We believe that vesicle trafficking defects are a key mechanism of Parkinson's disease, not just for cases with this mutation, but a common pathway for the majority of cases," added Han-Xiang Deng, Professor at Northwestern University. 

"Our new findings suggest normalising synaptic vesicle trafficking may be a strategy for future therapeutic development. We can develop drugs to promote this critical pathway," Deng noted in the paper detailed in the journal Nature Genetics.

In the study, which stretched for 20 long years, the researchers performed genome-wide analysis on 65 members of a family, including 13 with the disease, in hopes of finding a common mutation that could explain the prevalence.​

​Beijing, June 7 (IANS) Concerned over increasing health problems, China has decided to provide 'family doctors' to every household in the country by 2020.

The State Council's Medical Reform Office said 200 cities will come under the service in 2016. In the following year, it plans to provide the facility to about 30 percent of China's population.

With a population of about 1.4 billion, of which 9 percent is elderly, China is faced with rising health problems such as cancer and obesity among others.

The problems have to do with various factors which range from pollution to sedentary lifestyle.

In 2015, over four million people were diagnosed with cancer and nearly three million died from it.

Family doctors are expected to serve as health guards for Chinese people, Xinhua news agency reported, quoting the National Health and Family Planning Commission.

A health official said the move will reduce healthcare costs and make it more accessible to public.

The doctors, to be put into services, will be from local hospitals and clinics and rural areas.

The public healthcare system is overburdened in China, which is faced with a shortage of doctors. The burgeoning middle class has given rise to growing privatization in the health sector.

According to state-run newspaper Global Times, there was an acute shortage of pediatrician in China: an average of 0.53 doctors for every 1,000 children.

According to WHO, China had 1.9 physicians per 1,000 people.

China ranked 95th globally in health expenditure per capita in 2013, according to the most recent World Bank data.​

​London, June 7 (IANS) Despite having a much simpler and smaller brain than that of primates, fish have the remarkable ability to distinguish between human faces, new research has found.

“Being able to distinguish between a large number of human faces is a surprisingly difficult task, mainly due to the fact that all human faces share the same basic features,” said first author Cait Newport from Oxford University.

“It has been hypothesised that this task is so difficult that it can only be accomplished by primates, which have a large and complex brain,” Newport noted.

To test this idea, the researchers wanted to determine if another animal with a smaller and simpler brain, and with no evolutionary need to recognise human faces, was still able to do so.

In the study, archerfish -- a species of tropical fish well known for its ability to spit jets of water to knock down aerial prey -- were presented with two images of human faces and trained to choose one of them using their jets. 

The fish were then presented with the learned face and a series of new faces and were able to correctly choose the face they had initially learned to recognise. 

They were able to perform this task even when more obvious features, such as head shape and colour, were removed from the images.

The fish were highly accurate when selecting the correct face, reaching an average peak performance of 81 per cent in the first experiment (picking the previously learned face from 44 new faces) and 86 per cent in the second experiment (in which facial features such as brightness and colour were standardised).

The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

“Once the fish had learned to recognize a face, we then showed them the same face, as well as a series of new ones. In all cases, the fish continued to spit at the face they had been trained to recognize, proving that they were capable of telling the two apart,” Newport said.

“The fact that archerfish can learn this task suggests that complicated brains are not necessarily needed to recognise human faces,” Newport noted.​

​London, June 7 (IANS) Astrophysicists from the University of Birmingham have captured the sounds of some of the oldest stars in our Milky Way galaxy, a study says.

The findings could help researchers understand how our galaxy formed and evolved.

"We were thrilled to be able to listen to some of the stellar relics of the early universe,” said lead researcher Andrea Miglio.

The researchers reported the detection of resonant acoustic oscillations of stars in 'M4', one of the oldest known clusters of stars in the galaxy, some 13 billion years old.

"The stars we have studied really are living fossils from the time of the formation of our Galaxy, and we now hope be able to unlock the secrets of how spiral galaxies, like our own, formed and evolved,” Miglio noted.

Using data from the NASA Kepler/K2 mission, the team studied the resonant oscillations of stars using a technique called asteroseismology. 

These oscillations lead to miniscule changes or pulses in brightness, and are caused by sound trapped inside the stars. By measuring the tones in this 'stellar music', it is possible to determine the mass and age of individual stars.

The findings published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society open the door to using asteroseismology to study the very early history of our galaxy.

"Just as archaeologists can reveal the past by excavating the earth, so we can use sound inside the stars to perform Galactic archaeology,” Professor Bill Chaplin said.​

New York, June 7 (IANS) Scientists have developed a new tool to modify brain activity and memory in targeted ways, without the help of any drugs or chemicals.

The new tool is a protein that can be encoded in animal genomes to effectively switch off their inhibitory synapses -- connections between neurons -- increasing their electrical activity.

The GFE3 protein may help researchers map the brain's connections and better understand how inhibitory synapses modulate brain function, said lead author Don Arnold, Professor at University of Southern California.

It also may enable them to control neural activity and lead to advancements in research for diseases or conditions ranging from schizophrenia to cocaine addiction, Arnold said.

"GFE3 harnesses a little known and remarkable property of proteins within the brain," Arnold said.

The protein takes advantage of an intrinsic process -- the brain's cycle of degrading and replacing proteins.

Most brain proteins last only a couple of days before they are actively degraded and replaced by new proteins. GFE3 targets proteins that hold inhibitory synapses together to this degradation system and as a result, the synapses fall apart.

"Rather than a cell deciding when a protein needs to be degraded, we sort of hijack the process," Arnold explained.

For the study, published in the journal Nature Methods, the team of scientists studied the protein's effect in both mice and zebrafish. 

The researchers found that GFE3 protein triggered the neurons on the two sides of the spine to work in opposition, generating uncoordinated movements.

Drugs could be used to inhibit inhibitory synapses in the brain, for instance benzodiazapines, which treat anxiety, insomnia or seizures. 

"Unfortunately, cells that have very different, even opposite functions tend to be right next to each other in the brain," Arnold said. 

"Thus, pharmacological experiments are especially difficult to interpret. By encoding GFE3 within the genome, we can target and modulate the inhibitory synapses of specific cells without affecting other cells that have different functions," Arnold noted.​

New Delhi, June 7 (IANS) US-based tech giant InFocus on Tuesday launched Buddy, a portable notebook, that runs on Windows 10 and will be available exclusively on Snapdeal for Rs 14,999. "InFocus Buddy is our endeavour to cater to the core needs of youth - Internet browsing, multimedia and portability. The laptop delivers high performance, superior build quality of Foxconn, and a high design quotient while being low on budget," said InFocus India team in a statement. "We are confident that it will be well received by our customers who are looking to upgrade to a sleek notebook experience at an affordable price," said Tony Navin, Senior Vice President, Partnerships and Strategic Initiatives, Snapdeal, in a statement. The InFocus Buddy features a 13.3-inch HD display and is powered by 2.6 GHz Intel Celeron processor paired up with 2 GB RAM. It comes with a 32 GB eMMC storage and allows users to add up to 256 GB SSD internal storage. The battery in InFocus Buddy provides a backup of 8 hours. It supports a micro-SD card slot, two USB 3.0 ports and a HDMI port.

“UC News” app is powered by big data technology and is a one-stop source of trending and curated news content covering all popular categories that Indian users can consume on the go, the company said in a statement.

​New York, June 6 (IANS) A vast majority of the food and beverage products endorsed by some of the most popular celebrities in the US are unhealthy, finds a new study. The findings showed that advertisements on fast foods, sweets as well as non-alcoholic beverages like soda and other sugary drinks, were the second-largest in the endorsement category, comprising 18 per cent of endorsements and frequently targetted children and adolescents as the audience. Celebrity food endorsements promote higher product preference, and exposure to any kind of food advertising is linked to "excessive consumption, the researchers warned. "Research has already shown that food advertising leads to overeating and the food industry spends $1 billion per year marketing to youth alone," lead author Marie Bragg, assistant professor at the New York University (NYU). Full-calorie soft drinks were the most commonly endorsed in the category. Of 69 beverages endorsed, 49 or 71 per cent were sugar-sweetened. Twenty-one out of 26 food products -- or 81 per cent -- were deemed as "nutrient poor". In contrast, water-related endorsements appeared only thrice. Also, none of the stars were found endorsing fruits, vegetables or whole grains. Such advertisements have led to an alarming rise in childhood and teenage obesity, the researchers rued in the paper published in the journal Pediatrics. The study used a rigorous nutritional analysis to evaluate the health quotient of food and drinks marketed by music stars, reviewing dozens of advertisements that were disseminated over a 14-year period. "Because of our childhood and teenage obesity public health crises, it is important to raise awareness about how companies are using celebrities popular with these audiences to market their unhealthy products," added Bragg. "As the popularity of celebrities among adolescents makes them uniquely poised to serve as positive role models, they ought to endorse healthy products and aid in exacerbating the society's struggle with obesity," added Alysa N. Miller from NYU.

Apparels form one of the largest retail categories all over the world. It is one of the most happening retail categories. Consumers belonging to different segments have different choices and their choices in this category change fast. When we think of fashion, we think of apparels first. As fashion by nature is changing continuously, the consumer preferences related to apparels keep on changing. The changes in this category is not related only to merchandise being retailed, but also in the way retailing is done. The advent of new technologies provide new ways for apparel retailing. When we look at the data related to online retailing, we find that clothing is one of the most purchased product categories. This trend is visible in many parts of the world like Europe, Middle East, Latin America and so on. Online shoppers have many obvious advantages over offline shoppers. The most important is they can buy directly from the merchants situated in any part of the world. This may result in better value for their money and direct interactions with these merchants expedites the process of product development as consumers' choices and consumers have chances of being better informed about the products. No wonder, a large number of online shoppers from Eastern European countries can be seen buying directly online from the clothing merchants in East Asian or Western European countries. In other cases, there are large number of customers who do the switching between the channels. They sometimes use the ecommerce websites as virtual shop windows, and purchase in physical stores. Filtering options and attractive images facilitate smooth browsing and shopping experience. Many online retailers are creating attractive social media profiles, and are able to pull the buyers towards through Facebook and Twitter. The social media offers many conveniences at one place. They can compare the product offerings, they can get the opinions of other shoppers through reviews and can check the availability and product details about large number of products in short time by using various combinations of filters and keywords.​​ The possibility of shopping through mobile phones and tablets have made online buying further attractive. In a few countries, shopping through mobile phones is growing very fast. For example, in South Korea, thirty percent shoppers purchased their recent clothing through mobile phones. Consumers are also using mobile applications like The Hunt, LIKEtoKNOW.it, Keep, Lyst etc. The distinction between the online and offline activities of shoppers are getting blurred. Shoppers are not only moving between the devices, they are using mobile devices for shopping while in stores as well. It helps them in assuring that they get the best value for their money and they are able to check all the relevant products before making any purchase. We will see far smarter technologies in near future, which will change the way we shop today. The advent of Virtual Reality and various apps has so many surprises in store for all of us. A new app under development will do away with the need of physically trying clothes on our bodies. It will create a composite image of a person's form and then facilitate the 'trying on' items of clothing.

New York, June 7 (IANS) Photo sharing app Instagram has rolled out an update that makes it easier and faster for iOS users to share photos and videos -- without opening the app.

With the help of share extensions users can now send pictures directly to their feeds from apps like photos.

Share extensions became available to developers back in 2014 when iOS 8 was released. Apps that already have the share option enabled include Facebook (Instagram's parent company) and Twitter, but it took Instagram about two years to finally add the feature, technology website techcrunch.com reported on Monday.

How it works? A user first needs to update to the latest version and then open the app he or she wants to send a picture from. 

Press the share button and tap on the Instagram icon. A window will open to let the user write a caption before posting to Instagram.

The update also alters the context of an Instagram post by enabling users the ability to post a photo without filters and edits.​