Knowledge Update

New York, June 27 (IANS) A gene responsible for the elimination of paternal mitochondria in the offspring has revealed how and why mitochondria are only passed on through a mother's egg and not the father's sperm.

Mitochondria, present inside the cells of nearly all multicellular animals, plants and fungi, organelles, plays an important role in generating the energy that cells need to survive. 

The findings showed that a gene CPS-6 serves as a paternal mitochondrial factor that is critical for its degradation.

Further, the enzyme that CPS-6 encodes first breaks down the interior membrane of the paternal mitochondria before moving to the space within the inner membrane to breakdown mitochondrial DNA.

CPS-6 plays a key role in initiating the self-destruction of paternal sperm, which likely benefits the embryo. 

Delayed removal of paternal mitochondria causes increased embryonic lethality, demonstrating that paternal mitochondrial elimination is important for normal animal development, the researchers explained. 

Shortly after a sperm penetrates an egg during fertilisation, the sperm's mitochondria are degraded while the egg's mitochondria persist. 

The paternal mitochondria were found to partially self-destruct before the mitochondria were surrounded by autophagosomes, which target components within a cell and facilitate their degradation, said Qinghua Zhou from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a US-based nonprofit organisation.

For the study, the team analysed sperm mitochondria or paternal mitochondria in Caenorhabditis elegans -- a type of roundworm -- during early stages of development.​

Washington, June 28 (IANS) US space agency NASA is set to test-fire a booster for the world's most powerful rocket Space Launch System (SLS) which will power astronauts on the journey to Mars and on other deeper space missions

The booster will be fired up at Orbital ATK Propulsion Systems' test facilities in Promontory, Utah, at 7.05 p.m. (Indian standard time) on Tuesday.

The test will provide NASA with critical data to support booster qualification for flight.

This is the last time the booster will be fired in a test environment before the first test flight of SLS with NASA's Orion spacecraft, known as Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1), in 2018.

The first, full-scale booster qualification test was successfully completed in March 2015.

The SLS that will launch an uncrewed Orion spacecraft to a stable orbit beyond the Moon in 2018 will also carry 13 tiny satellites to test innovative ideas.

These small satellite secondary payloads or "CubeSats" will carry science and technology investigations to help pave the way for future human exploration in deep space, including the journey to Mars.

SLS' first flight, referred to as Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1), provides the rare opportunity for these small experiments to reach deep space destinations, as most launch opportunities for CubeSats are limited to low-Earth orbit.

"The 13 CubeSats that will fly to deep space as secondary payloads aboard SLS on EM-1 showcase the intersection of science and technology, and advance our journey to Mars," said NASA deputy Administrator Dava Newman in an earlier statement.

On this first flight, the SLS will launch the Orion spacecraft to a stable orbit beyond the moon to demonstrate the integrated system performance of Orion and the SLS rocket prior to the first crewed flight.

The CubeSats will be deployed following Orion separation from the upper stage and once Orion is a safe distance away.​

​New York, June 28 (IANS) A single oral dose of a drug that is already being used to treat a type of blood disorder could also improve our memory, suggests new research.

The researchers found that single dose of the common, inexpensive and safe chemical called methylene blue results in an increased response in brain areas that control short-term memory and attention.

Methylene blue is used to treat methemoglobinemia, a blood disorder in which oxygen is unable to release effectively to body tissues, and as a surgical stain.

"Although the memory-enhancing effects of methylene blue were shown in rodents in the 1970s, the underlying neuronal changes in the brain responsible for memory improvement and the effects of methylene blue on short-term memory and sustained-attention tasks have not been investigated," said study author Timothy Duong from University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Texas. 

"Our team decided to conduct the first multi-modal MRI study of methylene blue in humans," Duong noted.

Twenty-six healthy participants, between the ages of 22 and 62, were enrolled in a double-blinded, randomised, placebo-controlled clinical trial to measure the effects of methylene blue on the human brain during working-memory and sustained-attention tasks. 

The participants underwent functional MRI (fMRI) before and one hour after low-dose methylene blue or placebo administration to evaluate the potential effects of the compound on cerebrovascular reactivity during tasks. 

Mean cerebral blood flow was measured pre- and post-intervention.

The results showed methylene blue increased response in the bilateral insular cortex -- an area deep within the brain associated with emotional responses -- during a task that measured reaction time to a visual stimulus. 

The functional MRI results also showed an increased response during short-term memory tasks involving the brain's prefrontal cortex, which controls processing of memories, the parietal lobe, primarily associated with the processing of sensory information, and the occipital cortex, the visual processing centre of the brain. 

In addition, methylene blue was associated with a seven percent increase in correct responses during memory retrieval.

The study was published online in the journal Radiology.

The findings suggest that methylene blue can regulate certain brain networks related to sustained attention and short-term memory after a single oral low dose​

​New York, June 28 (IANS) Researchers including one of Indian-origin have created a new computer model that shows how tiny slits in the spleen prevent diseased red blood cells from re-entering the bloodstream.

Their model provides a new tool for studying the spleen's role in controlling diseases that affect the shape of red blood cells, such as malaria and sickle cell anaemia, and can be used to develop new diagnostics and therapeutics for a variety of acute and chronic diseases.

"The computational and analytical models from this work, along with a variety of experimental observations, point to a more detailed picture of how the physiology of human spleen likely influences several key geometrical characteristics of red blood cells," said Subra Suresh, President, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US.

The findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"They also offer better understanding of how the circulatory bottleneck for the red blood cell in the spleen could affect a variety of acute and chronic disease states arising from hereditary disorders, human cancers and infectious diseases, with implications for therapeutic interventions and drug efficacy assays." 

The spleen is like the water treatment plant for the body's bloodstream. It prevents pathogens from reaching the bloodstream and filters out old and misshapen red blood cells.

In order to "see" how the interendothelial slits regulate red blood cell circulation, the researchers created a computer simulation based on dissipative particle dynamics, a modeling method developed and refined for biological cells in partnership with Brown University Professor George Karniadakis. 

Their model allowed them to determine the range of cell sizes and shapes that could fit through the slits. 

The range closely mirrored the range of sizes and shapes for healthy red blood cells, indicating that only healthy cells should be able to pass through the slits.

In addition to giving researchers a better picture of how the spleen functions, the findings provide new insights into drug treatments. 

A class of drugs currently in development for treating malaria alters the shape of red blood cells infected with malaria, theoretically preventing them from passing through the interendothelial slit. 

The researchers' results also could explain why artemisinin-based anti-malarial drugs, which stiffen healthy and malaria-infected red blood cells, could lead to severe anaemia, the study said.​

​Bratislava, June 27 (IANS) Britain's exit from the European Union (EU) will greatly weaken the bloc, European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic has said here.

"If a country like Britain exits, it must be perceived by the outside world as weakening the Union and as a demonstration of the crisis that the EU is undergoing," said Sefcovic on

​New York, June 26 (IANS) Smartphone apps and other digital technology have the potential to provide rapid emergency care for cardiac arrest, heart attacks and strokes, says researchers.

​London, June 26 (IANS) British scientists have designed a computer programme that could help consumers shop more efficiently online by recognising sketches.

Pioneered by scientists from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), the programme recognises a sketch -- like sketches of a pair of shoes or piece of furniture - which are

​London, June 25 (IANS) In a first, a British technology start-up has invented a multi-function antenna for laptops that combines Wi-Fi, GPS, bluetooth and 3G/4G LTE and WiGig -- multi-gigabit per second wireless speed -- in one unit.

New York, June 27 (IANS) Ever struggled with a shampoo bottle in trying to get the last drop out or the last bit of a hand wash, dish wash or laundry detergent? Worry not as researchers, including one of Indian-origin, have found a way to create the perfect texture inside plastic bottles to let soap products flow out freely. The new technology involves lining a plastic bottle with microscopic "y-shaped" structures that cradle the droplets of soap aloft above tiny air pockets so that the soap never actually touches the inside of the bottle. "Manufacturers are really interested in this because they make billions of bottles that end up in the garbage with product still in them," said Bharat Bhushan, Professor from Ohio State University. The "y" structures are built up using spray-coating a small amount of solvent and ultra-fine silica nanoparticles onto the inside of bottles. Mixing the silica and solvent to the surface of the polypropylene -- the common plastics used to package foodstuffs and household goods -- softened it just enough, so that when the plastic re-hardened, the silica got embedded in the surface. The structures are only a few micrometers -- millionths of a meter-high -- and covered in even smaller branchlike projections. The main branches of the "y" overhang the plastic surface at an angle less than 90 degrees -- steep enough that water, oils and even surfactant can't physically sustain a droplet shape that would fall in between the branches and touch the plastic. Surfactants -- the organic molecules that make soap "soapy"-- have a very low surface tension and stick to plastic easily. "It was an extra challenge for us to make a surface that could repel surfactant as the plastic bottles end up with air pockets underneath that gives them a liquid repellency," explained Philip Brown, post-doctoral Student at Ohio State. But, "we embedded a hard material directly into the polymer surface, so we know it's durable," Brown added in a paper published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The researchers further hope to license the coating technique to manufacturers -- not just for shampoo bottles, but for other plastic products that have to stay clean, such as biomedical devices or catheters. ​

​Beijing, June 26 (IANS) China will send its second orbiting space lab Tiangong-2 into space in mid September, said a senior official with the country's manned space programme.

The Shenzhou-11 manned spacecraft will be launched in mid September and its re-entry module will return in November, said Wu Ping, deputy director of the manned space engineering office, at a press conference on Saturday after the successful launch of the Long March-7, a new generation carrier rocket, at Wenchang, Hainan province.

As part of the country's space lab programme, the Shenzhou-11 spacecraft will carry two astronauts on board and dock with Tiangong-2.

The two astronauts have been chosen and currently under intense training, Wu said.

The Tiangong-2 and Shenzhou-11 will be carried by Long March-2F carrier rocket, she said.

In April 2017, the country's first cargo spaceship, Tianzhou-1, will be launched and carried by the Long March-7, Wu said.

"With the improvement of the rocket's technological performance, the Long March-7 will step by step replace the current carrier rockets and become the main carrier for space launches," she added.​