Knowledge Update

​New York, May 7 (IANS) Women in the age group 30-60 worldwide are sleeping more than men -- about 30 minutes more on average -- while middle-aged men are getting the least sleep, often getting less than the recommended seven-eight hours, a smartphone app-based study spanning 100 countries has revealed.

People who spend some time in the sunlight each day tend to go to bed earlier and get more sleep than those who spend most of their time in indoor light, the team from University of Michigan (UM) found.

The pioneering study of worldwide sleep patterns combined math modelling, mobile apps and big data to find the roles society and biology each play in setting sleep schedules.

The team used a free smartphone app that reduces jetlag to gather robust sleep data from thousands of people in 100 nations.

Among their findings is that cultural pressures can override natural circadian rhythms, with the effects showing up most markedly at bedtime.

While morning responsibilities like work, kids and school play a role in wake-time, the researchers say these are not the only factor.

"Across the board, it appears that society governs bedtime and one's internal clock governs wake time, and a later bedtime is linked to a loss of sleep," said Daniel Forger from U-M's college of literature, science and the arts.

"At the same time, we found a strong wake-time effect from users' biological clocks -- not just their alarm clocks. These findings help to quantify the tug-of-war between solar and social timekeeping," he added in a paper published in the journal Science Advances.

"Sleep is more important than a lot of people realise. Even if you get six hours a night, you're still building up a sleep debt," noted Olivia Walch, doctoral student in the mathematics department.

Internal or biological clocks are circadian rhythms -- fluctuations in bodily functions and behaviours that are tied to the planet's 24-hour day.

These rhythms are set by a grain-of-rice-sized cluster of 20,000 neurons behind the eyes and are regulated by the amount of light, particularly sunlight, our eyes take in.

Some years ago, the team released an app called "Entrain" that helps travellers adjust to new time zones.

With information from thousands of people from 100 nations in hand, the team analysed it for patterns.

The spread of national averages of sleep duration ranged from a minimum of around seven hours, 24 minutes of sleep for residents of Singapore and Japan to a maximum of eight hours, 12 minutes for those in the Netherlands.

That's not a huge window but the researchers say every half hour of sleep makes a big difference in terms of cognitive function and long-term health.

"It doesn't take that many days of not getting enough sleep before you're functionally drunk," Walch noted, adding that the researchers have figured out that being overly tired can have that effect.

What is terrifying at the same time is that people think they are performing tasks way better than they are despite less sleep. 

"Your performance drops off but your perception of your performance doesn't," the authors emphasised.​

Washington, May 8 (IANS) NASA's MESSENGER mission has unveiled the first global digital elevation model (DEM) of Mercury, revealing in stunning detail the topography across the entire innermost planet.

It will also pave the way for scientists to fully characterise Mercury's geologic history.

"The wealth of these data has already enabled and will continue to enable exciting scientific discoveries about Mercury for decades to come," said Susan Ensor, software engineer at The Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).

This new model reveals a variety of interesting topographic features, including the highest and lowest points on the planet.

The highest elevation on Mercury is at 4.48 km above Mercury's average elevation, located just south of the equator in some of Mercury's oldest terrain.

The lowest elevation, at 5.38 km below Mercury's average, is found on the floor of Rachmaninoff basin, an intriguing double-ring impact basin suspected to host some of the most recent volcanic deposits on the planet.

More than 100,000 images were used to create the new model.

"This has become one of my favourite maps of Mercury. Now that it is available, I'm looking forward to it being used to investigate this epic volcanic event that shaped Mercury's surface," added Nancy Chabot, instrument scientist for the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) in a NASA statement.

"During its four years of orbital observations, MESSENGER revealed the global characteristics of one of our closest planetary neighbours for the first time.

The data from the mission will continue to be utilised by the planetary science community for years to come.​

​New York, May 9 (IANS) Does your child run at the sight of apples, bananas and green leafy vegetables? If yes, serious video games may help your kid increase the consumption of fruits and vegetables, says an interesting study.

Eating adequate amounts of these foods is not only ideal for a healthy lifestyle, but can also reduce the risk of some chronic diseases including heart disease and certain cancers. 

The findings showed that serious video games that are designed to both entertain and promote behaviour change, create specific plans with goals, which help children improve fruit and vegetable intake at specific meals.

"By using a serious video game, we saw increases in meal-specific vegetable intake at dinner for the children and fruit intake at breakfast, lunch, and snacks time," said lead author Karen Cullen, professor at Baylor College of Medicine in the US.

For the study, published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 400 fourth and fifth grade students played 10 episodes of Squires Quest! II -- a serious online video game -- that promotes fruit and vegetable intake. 

At six months after intervention, results showed improvements in both fruit and vegetable intake in participants.

Of the 400 participants, 79 percent reported meeting all goals during game play.

New York, May 8 (IANS) Introducing a noise net around airfields that emit sound levels equivalent to those of a conversation in a busy restaurant could prevent collisions between birds and aircraft, saving lives and billions in damages, new research has found.

Filling a controlled area with acoustic noise around an airfield, where the majority of collisions tend to take place, can reduce the number of birds in the area by 80 percent, the findings showed.

"We are using a different kind of deterrent - trying to stop birds from hearing one another by playing a noise that is at the same pitch as the alarm calls or predator noises they are listening out for," said lead researcher John Swaddle, professor of biology at College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, US.

"By playing a noise at the same pitch, we mask those sounds, making the area much riskier for the birds to occupy. The birds don't like it and leave the area around the airfields, where there is potential for tremendous damage and loss of life," Swaddle noted.

The researchers set up speakers and amplifiers in three areas of an airfield in Virginia state and observed bird abundance over eight weeks, the first four weeks without noise and the second four weeks with the noise turned on.

Results showed a large decrease in the number of birds in the 'sonic net' and areas just outside and found that it was particularly effective at deterring a number of species that were at high risk of bird strike such as starlings.

"We have conducted prior research in an aviary but this is the first study done out in the field to show the efficacy of the sonic net," Swaddle, who is also a visiting research associate at University of Exeter in Britain, said.

The study was published in the journal Ecological Applications.

Bird strikes cost the aviation industry worldwide billions of dollars annually, and were responsible for 255 deaths between 1988 and 2013, yet measures to reduce these have been largely ineffective, the study noted.

Techniques to deter birds from airports include shooting, poisoning, live-capture and relocation, and the use of scare technologies, but these have proved largely ineffective.​

​New York, May 9 (IANS) Researchers have developed a device with the potential of shortening the time required to rapidly diagnose bacterial infections from days to a couple of hours.

The system could also allow point-of-care diagnosis, as it does not require the facilities and expertise available only in hospital laboratories, the study said. 

"Health-care-associated infections are a major problem that affects more than 600,000 patients each year, more than 10 percent of whom will die, and incurs more $100 billion in related costs," said co-senior author of the study Ralph Weissleder from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston, US.

"Rapid and efficient diagnosis of the pathogen is a critical first step in choosing the appropriate antibiotic regimen, and this system could provide that information in a physician's office in less than two hours," Weissleder noted.

The system developed by the MGH team, dubbed PAD for Polarization Anisotropy Diagnostics, allows for accurate genetic testing in a simple device. 

In this study, the team used a prototype PAD system to test clinical samples from nine patients and compared the results with those acquired by conventional microbiology cultures. 

Testing for the presence of five important bacterial species -- E. coli, Klebsiella, Acinetobacter, Pseudomonas, and Staph aureus -- and for factors indicating the virulence and antibiotic resistance of specific strains produced identical results with both procedures. 

But while PAD provided results in less than two hours, the bacterial culture process took three to five days. 

The findings were reported in the journal Science Advances.

"We can see three immediate applications for a system that can provide such rapid and accurate results - quickly diagnosing a patient's infection, determining whether antibiotic-resistant bacteria are present in a group of patients, and detecting bacterial contamination of medical devices or patient environments," co-senior author Hakho Lee, associate professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School, pointed out.​

New York, May 7 (IANS) If you are able to steadily maintain a lean body all your life, you are likely to live longer in comparison to those who have since childhood a heavy body that has got heavier during middle age, new research reveals.

The findings showed that people who had a heavy body shape from their childhood and also put on weight during their middle age are at highest risk of mortality with a 15-year risk of death being 19.7 percent in women and 24.1 percent in men.

In contrast, those who remained stably lean throughout life had the lowest mortality, with a 15-year risk of death being 11.8 percent in women, and 20.3 percent in men.

"Our findings provide further scientific rationale for recommendations of weight management, especially avoidance of weight gain in middle life, for long-term health benefit," said Mingyang Song, doctoral student at Harvard University in the US.

In addition, high body mass index (BMI) in adulthood can also increase the mortality risk.

Among the study participants, lowest mortality was found in the BMI range 22-23 among including healthy non-smokers and excluding people with prevalent diseases.

Obesity has become a public health crisis in most countries worldwide. But, these results indicate the importance of weight management across the lifespan, the researchers noted.

For the results, published in The BMJ, the team of researchers tracked the evolution of body shape and associated mortality in two large cohort studies.

Body shape of 80,266 women and 36,622 men were studied at ages 5, 10, 20, 30, and 40 years.

Their body mass indexes were measured at age 50, and were followed from age 60 over a median of 15-16 years for death. 

In a second study, the team carried out a large meta-analysis of 230 prospective studies with more than 3.74 million deaths among more than 30.3 million participants.

They analysed people who never smoked to rule out the effects of smoking, and the lowest mortality was observed in the BMI range 23-24 among this group.

​Beijing, May 5 (IANS) The Chinese sports industry will amount to over three trillion yuan ($460 billion) by the end of 2020, according to the Asian country's five-year sports development plan released on Thursday.

London, May 5 (IANS) Researchers from University of Exeter have created an app which can help aid humanitarian rescue work in disaster-struck regions by using geographic data to map landscapes.

​Moscow, May 6 (IANS) Tourism authorities in Russia want customs and immigration officials to brush up on their English, even as they acknowledge that not knowing the language could prove an impediment to increasing tourist inflows from the English-speaking world, especially India. Random delays at immigration counters and a dearth of English signages have emerged as some of the red flags for Russian tourism authorities, who have begun to focus on the outbound market from India, which is expected to grow to $40 billion by 2020. "There is very little excuse for the discomfort caused by the conduct of the customs officers. We regret it. Knowledge of English among customs officials in Russia has to increase, there is no question about it," Rimma Sachunova, deputy chairperson of the St. Petersburg Committee on Tourism Development told IANS after a group of travel agents from India were detained for nearly three hours at Moscow's Domodedovo airport. "We will write an official letter to the customs service because now we have a lot of hope and expectation from the Indian tourist market," Sachunova said. Tourism experts believe that while the need for Russia to open up its locales for tourism is very real and necessary, the transition from being a country that was once "behind the Iron Curtain" to a democracy with open transit norms is not an easy one. "Give us a little bit of time for us to change our borders," said Marina Sokolov of Indigo Tour, which caters to the bulk of the inbound Indian tourists to Russia. Ekaterina Borisova, attached to the Moscow Tourism Office, hoped that the federal government's plan to set up a tourist office at major transit points used by international tourists could help cut down on the delay at Russian immigration and customs counters. "We are trying to make customs (and immigration) more open, but unfortunately it takes time. Hopefully, we will open a tourist office at the airport, railway stations and all places where tourists arrive," she said. Sachunova also said that efforts to include the English language in the city's road and Metro signages were already underway. "We are working at ensuring that there are more signages in English at St. Petersburg. In fact St. Petersburg is the only city in Russia that has English signages in all its Metro stations," she said. While the lack of knowledge of the English language both among officials and amongst the populace is an acknowledged impediment, when it comes to enhancing tourist inflows to Russia from India, Paresh Navani of the Russian Information Centre, India, claimed that visa norms should be tinkered to allow easy access to Indians to visit Russia as tourists. "With the Russian Federation opening up its policies and borders to ease tourism, this gives Indians the opportunity to tour these locations with ease, safety, comfort and at very reasonable costs compared to any other European destination and even in comparison to domestic destinations in India," Navani said. Over 50,000 Indian tourists visit Russia annually, while around 200,000 Russians visit India, especially Goa, every year.​

New York, May 6 (IANS) Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have compiled a comprehensive list of potential gases to guide search for life on exoplanets.

Biosignature gases emitted by exoplanetary life forms could be detected remotely by space telescopes but these gases might have quite different compositions from those in the Earth's atmosphere.

“This work reminds me of Charles Darwin's voyage aboard 'The Beagle', exploring the vast diversity of life by sailing around the world," said Nancy Y Kiang, scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. 

“In the search for life beyond our planet, we are currently at a similarly exciting, early but rapidly evolving stage of exploration as the discovery of exoplanets accelerates,” he added.

Instead of netting strange creatures from the bottom of the sea, the authors searched and found thousands of curious, potentially biogenic gas molecules. 

“These will inspire a new body of research into identifying also larger molecules, investigating their origin and fate here, and their potential expression on exoplanets as signs of life,” Kiang added.

This approach maximises the chances of identifying planets orbiting nearby stars that support life.

According to S Seager, W Bains and J.J. Petkowski from MIT and Rufus Scientific from the University of Cambridge in a paper published in the journal Astrobiology, all stable and potential volatile molecules should be considered as possible biosignature gases.