Knowledge Update

​New York, May 26 (IANS) Researchers have shed new light on the ageing process in sea urchins -- remarkable organisms with the ability to quickly re-grow damaged organs and live to extraordinary old ages without showing any signs of poor health.

James A. Coffman from the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory and Andrea G. Bodnar from the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Studies found that regenerative capacity in three species of sea urchins they studied was not affected by age.

"We wanted to find out why the species with short and intermediate life expectancies aged and the long-lived species didn't," said Coffman. 

"But what we found is that ageing is not inevitable: sea urchins don't appear to age even when they are short-lived. Because these findings were unexpected in light of the prevailing theories about the evolution of ageing, we may have to rethink theories on why ageing occurs," he explained.

The prevailing theory of the evolution of ageing holds that it is a side effect of genes that promote growth and development of organisms that have a low likelihood of continued survival in the wild once they have reproduced. 

Many organisms with a low expectation of survival in the wild experience rapid decline once they have reached reproductive maturity.

But the findings, published in the journal Aging Cell, contradict the prevailing theory. 

The researchers studied the red sea urchin Mesocentrotus franciscanus, which has a life expectancy of more than 100 years; the purple sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus, with a life expectancy of more than 50 years; and the variegated sea urchin Lytechinus variegatus, with a life expectancy of only four years.

The scientists found that although the variegated sea urchin, L. variegatus, has a much lower life expectancy in the wild than the other two species they studied, it displayed no evidence of a decline in regenerative capacity with age, which suggests that senescence (to grow old) may not be tied to a short life expectancy in the wild.​

​New York, May 27 (IANS) The discovery of a giant planet orbiting a very young star some 450 million light years from the Earth has forced astronomers to rethink their long-held view that larger planets take longer to form.

"CI Tau b" is at least eight times larger than Jupiter and orbits a two million-year-old star in the constellation Taurus. 

"For decades, conventional wisdom held that large Jupiter-mass planets take a minimum of 10 million years to form," said lead author Christopher Johns-Krull from Rice University in Texas. 

"That's been called into question over the past decade, and many new ideas have been offered, but the bottom line is that we need to identify a number of newly formed planets around young stars if we hope to fully understand planet formation," he added.

The study, involving a dozen researchers from Rice, Lowell Observatory, University of Texas at Austin, NASA and Northern Arizona University, made the peer-reviewed study available online this week.

"CI Tau b" orbits the star CI Tau once every nine days. 

The planet was found with the radial velocity method -- a planet-hunting technique that relies upon slight variations in the velocity of a star to determine the gravitational pull exerted by nearby planets that are too faint to observe directly with a telescope. 

"This result is unique because it demonstrates that a giant planet can form so rapidly that the remnant gas and dust from which the young star formed, surrounding the system in a Frisbee-like disk, is still present," said co-author Lisa Prato of Lowell Observatory. 

"Giant planet formation in the inner part of this disk, where CI Tau b is located, will have a profound impact on the region where smaller terrestrial planets are also potentially forming," she added.​

​London, May 25 (IANS) Christie's sold the first four folios of well-known British playwright William Shakespeare on Wednesday, the first four editions of his collected works.

The folios were offered in a four-lot auction in London to commemorate the 400th anniversary of his death. The sale began at 3.00 p.m. (local time) on Wednesday, Xinhua news agency reported.

Christie's said the sale was led by an unrecorded copy of the First Folio, the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, widely considered the most important literary publication in the English language.

The First Folio contains 36 plays, 18 of which, including Macbeth and The Tempest, might have been lost without this edition. It is estimated to sell for 800,000 to 1.2 million pounds.

Prior to the auction, the four folios have been displayed in New York and London. The second Folio is estimated to sell for 180,000 to 250,000 pounds, the third is between 300,000 and 400,000 pounds, and the fourth one is between 15,000 and 20,000.

The First Folio, published in 1623, was a commercial success and was followed only nine years later by the Second Folio, providing a page-by-page reprint of the First.​

​London, May 25 (IANS) The communicative exchanges in bonobos and chimpanzees closely resemble human communication -- which is one of the most sophisticated signalling systems in the animal kingdom -- being highly cooperative and including fast interactions.

The team of Marlen Frohlich and Simone Pika from Germany's Max Planck Institute conducted the first systematic comparison of communicative interactions in mother-infant group of two different bonobo and two different chimpanzee communities in their natural environments.

The study showed that communicative exchanges in both species resemble cooperative turn-taking sequences in human conversation. However, bonobos and chimpanzees differ in their communication styles. 

"For bonobos, gaze plays a more important role and they seem to anticipate signals before they have been fully articulated," said Marlen Froehlich in the study published in the journal Scientific Reports.

In contrast, chimpanzees engage in more time-consuming communicative negotiations and use clearly recognizable units such as signal, pause and response. 

Bonobos may, therefore, represent the most representative model for understanding the prerequisites of human communication. 

"Communicative interactions of great apes thus show the hallmarks of human social action during conversation and suggest that cooperative communication arose as a way of coordinating collaborative activities more efficiently," noted lead researcher Simone Pika.​

New York, May 26 (IANS) Internet of Things (IoT) success is dependent on tiny communication devices and instead of powering those machines by fossil fuels, they can be run on wind or solar energy, say scientists.

​New Delhi, May 23 (IANS) Chinese internet and technology conglomerate LeEco on Monday announced that the sale for its supertainment-loaded device Le 1s Eco will begin on Flipkart's big shopping days from May 25 to May 27. The consumers planning to buy a Le 1s Eco device will be offered LeEco earphone worth Rs.1,300 on every purchase, additional 10 percent cash back on Citibank debit and credit cardholders, additional Rs.2,000 on exchange of the old phone and free back cover on every purchase. "We are overwhelmed with the kind of responses we are getting from our users. This announcement of giving special offers is a way of expressing our gratitude to our loyal users," said Atul Jain, COO, LeEco India, in a statement. The Rs.9,999 device will come with a one-year free LeEco membership programme worth Rs.4,900 where the users will have access to over 2,000 movies (in 10 languages) and over 100 live TV channels. The device comes with 3GB RAM and 32GB ROM and a mirror-surfaced fingerprint scanner.​

​Mumbai, May 23 (IANS) TataCLiQ.com, the Tata group's multi-brand e-commerce platform, on Monday said it has formalised a strategic partnership with Genesis Luxury Fashion to offer a wide range of international luxury brands exclusively. "The partnership is a testament to providing the Indian consumer authentic brand experiences directly through authorized sellers and not unknown resellers. Currently, all the international luxury brands online on TataCLiQ.com are through our exclusive tie-up," said ecommerce portal's CEO Ashutosh Pandey. "They are also targeting a number of luxury brands that are not present in India .... These will be launched over a period of time on," he said. "The partnership enable us to expand our presence to cater to our growing affluent consumer market," said Genesis CEO Nikhil Mehra.

​New Delhi, May 23 (IANS) Taipei-based technology products marketer BenQ has once again emerged as the top player in the Indian projector market with a market share of 25 percent in the first quarter of 2016, said a report by global research and consulting firm Futuresource Consulting on Monday. In 2015, BenQ's annual market share was 22.3 percent with top market raking. The company registered a growth of 24 percent year-on-year for the quarter and a quarter-on-quarter growth of over 50 percent during the first quarter of 2016, the company said in a statement. The company is also at the top in three important categories -- Full HD, "High Brightness 4000AL~4999AL" and "Short Throw" projectors. "This is a result of BenQ's strong focus on technology specifically meant for India, service capability and deep penetration of our sales and marketing efforts," said Rajeev Singh, managing director, BenQ India. The company sold more than 50,000 projectors in 2015.​

​New York, May 24 (IANS) Higher long-term fluctuations in blood pressure readings may be linked to faster declines in brain and cognitive function among older adults, says a study.

"Blood pressure variability might signal blood flow instability, which could lead to the damage of the finer vessels of the body with changes in brain structure and function," said Bo (Bonnie) Qin, lead study author and a postdoctoral scholar at Rutgers Cancer Institute in New Brunswick, New Jersey, US.

"These blood pressure fluctuations may indicate pathological processes such as inflammation and impaired function in the blood vessels themselves," she noted.

For the study, the researchers analysed results from 976 Chinese adults (half women, age 55 and or older) who participated in the China Health and Nutrition Survey over a period of five years. 

Blood pressure variability was calculated from three or four visits to the health professional. Participants also underwent a series of cognitive quizzes such as performing word recall and counting backwards.

Higher visit-to-visit variability in the top number in a blood pressure reading (systolic blood pressure) was associated with a faster decline of cognitive function and verbal memory, the findings showed.

However, higher variability in the bottom number (diastolic blood pressure) was associated with faster decline of cognitive function among adults aged 55 to 64, but not among those aged 65 and older.

The findings appeared in the journal Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association.

While physicians tend to focus on average blood pressure readings, the new findings suggest that high variability may be something for physicians to watch for in their patients.

"Controlling blood pressure instability could possibly be a potential strategy in preserving cognitive function among older adults," Qin said.​

Munich, May 23 (IANS) Bayer, Germany-based life science company in health and agriculture has offered to buy Monsanto, the American seed multinational in an all-cash deal worth $62 billion.