Knowledge Update

​London, April 26 (IANS) Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration was the major driver behind the global climatic shifts that occurred in the "Eocene epoch" between 53 and 34 million years ago, says a new study.

The results support the view that elevated CO2 was responsible for the extreme warmth of the early Eocene and that CO2 decline was responsible for the subsequent cooling that ultimately led to the establishment of today’s polar ice sheets.

The researchers believe that the findings, published in the journal Nature, could help scientists better predict future climate change.

For the study, the research team developed new records of past CO2 levels by analysing ancient ocean sediments. 

"We cannot directly measure CO2 concentrations from that long ago,” said study lead author Eleni Anagnostou, postdoctoral researcher at University of Southampton in Britain.

"Instead we must rely on indirect ‘proxies’ present in the geological record. In this study, we used the chemical composition of marine fossils preserved in sediments to reconstruct ancient CO2 levels,” Anagnostou noted.

Applying pioneering geochemical techniques - developed at the University of Southampton over the past five years - the team used isotopes of the element boron in the shells as a proxy for pH (a measure of acidity), and used that to determine the atmospheric CO2 levels.

They found that between the early Eocene and the late Eocene, CO2 levels approximately halved. 

Using our current understanding of the relationship between sea surface temperature and CO2 at different latitudes, they also demonstrated that the changes in CO2 concentration can explain the majority of the cooling that occurred.

This research can also be used to gain a better understanding of how the Earth will respond to increasing levels of CO2 in the future, the scientists said.​

​Beijing, April 25 (IANS) China's central bank on Monday pumped more money into the market to ease a liquidity strain.

The People's Bank of China (PBOC) conducted 180 billion yuan ($27.6 billion) of seven-day reverse re-purchase agreements (repo), a process in which central banks purchase

Tokyo, April 24 (IANS) The agriculture ministers of the G7 countries agreed on Sunday to deepen cooperation to combat diseases that affect livestock by creating a system to rapidly exchange information on cases of this kind.

New York, April 23 (IANS) A team led by an Indian-origin researcher has developed a smartphone app that projects a magnified smartphone screen to provide better visibility to low-vision users.

​United Nations, April 23 (IANS) Investors and corporate boards can be convinced to make green investments by showing them the value of tangible and intangible future returns, industrialist Mahendra Singhi has said.

New York, April 23 (IANS) More than one million people are now connecting to Facebook through Tor "dark web" -- which maintains privacy and leaves no digital trail -- every month, media reports said on Saturday.

New York, April 23 (IANS) In a fresh bid to recover from the stalled users' growth and declining revenue, micro-blogging website Twitter has joined hands with business listing and review site Yelp to supply location services for Japan and Britain inside its app.

London, April 25 (IANS) Fancy a device -- dubbed “Rolls Royce of smartphones" -- that will set you back by nearly $10,000 (over Rs.6.6 lakh) The “most advanced mobile device with highest privacy settings” is not being built in the US or China but in a quite corner in Israel. Called “Solarin,” the high-end smartphone is set to be rolled out May-end by Sirin Labs, a Tel Aviv-based startup that recently raised $72 million to make what it bills as the “Rolls-Royce of smartphones”, technology website venturebeat.com reported. According to Sirin Labs, it was to “create the most advanced mobile device that combined the highest privacy settings, operated faster than any other phone, built with the best materials from around the world.” The company's first smartphone may be launched at a dedicated retail store in London - “the natural home of the Sirin LabsÂ’ customer,” according to the company. The luxury smartphone is not new. In 2006, Nokia launched a $310,000 “Signature Cobra” device in 2006 and the $5,000 “Constellation” smartphone in 2011. In 2012, Nokia dropped luxury-phone brand maker Vertu. After leaving Nokia, Vertu brought its first Android device “Vertu Ti” to market. According to media reports, the smartphone was priced at a whopping Rs.6,49,990 in India. It has dual-core 1.7GHz processor along with 1GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. According to Vertu, its smartphones have 184 individual parts. The body is made by Grade 5 titanium, and has a set of Bang & Olufsen stereo speakers. The sapphire crystal renders the screen virtually scratch-proof and it is tested to be four times stronger than other smartphones in terms of impact resistance, it had claimed. Vertu was later acquired from Swedish private equity group EQT by a consortium of Chinese investors. According to Sirin Labs, its high-end device will first go on sale on its e-commerce site and the firm plans to open additional retail stores across Europe, North America and Asia soon.​

New York, April 23 (IANS) Contrary to popular perception, smoking cessation drugs do not increase the risk of serious neuropsychiatric adverse effects such as depression, hostility or suicidal behaviour, says a large study.

Researchers have found that compared to the nicotine patch and a placebo the smoking cessation drugs varenicline and bupropion do not show a significant increase in neuropsychiatric adverse events. 

"There are one billion smokers in the world and nearly six million smoking-related deaths each year, but there are only three approved medication treatments for quitting: nicotine replacement therapies like the patch and the two non-nicotine medications, bupropion and varenicline," said first author of the study Robert Anthenelli, professor at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine.

The study, published online in the journal The Lancet, is important because it prospectively examined the neuropsychiatric safety risks and quit-enhancing potential of the three medication classes versus placebo in a rigorous, adequately-sized, randomised controlled trial, Anthenelli said.

The researchers sought to directly assess the safety and efficacy of varenicline and bupropion compared to the nicotine patch and to a placebo in smokers with and without psychiatric disorders. 

The study involved examination of more than 8,000 smokers seeking to quit in 16 countries over a period from November 2011 to January 2015. 

Trial participants, investigators and research personnel were blinded to who received which treatment.

In terms of safety, approximately two percent of non-psychiatric participants reported moderate or severe adverse neuropsychiatric events for any of the treatments.

In the cohort of participants with psychiatric disorders, moderate and severe adverse neuropsychiatric events were slightly higher across the board: 6.5 percent for varenicline, 6.7 percent for bupropion, 5.3 percent for the nicotine patch and 4.9 percent for placebo.

Anthenelli said the risk difference in the incidence of serious neuropsychiatric adverse events for varenicline and bupropion was not significantly higher than placebo - but that psychiatric patients trying to stop smoking are likely to have more confounding factors in treatment and appear to have a harder time quitting.

​New York, April 24 (IANS) Researchers have found that adding salt to metal oxides increases their energy storage capacity by increasing their surface area.

The team, including researchers from Drexel University in the US, Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) and Tsinghua University in China, published the results in the journal Nature Communications.

The results show that using salt crystals as a template to grow thin sheets of conductive metal oxides make the materials turn out larger and more chemically pure -- which makes them better suited for gathering ions and storing energy.

"The challenge of producing a metal oxide that reaches theoretical performance values is that the methods for making it inherently limit its size and often foul its chemical purity, which makes it fall short of predicted energy storage performance," said Jun Zhou, an author of the research, said.

"Our research reveals a way to grow stable oxide sheets with less fouling that are on the order of several hundreds of times larger than the ones that are currently being fabricated," Zhou, who is also a professor at HUST's Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, added.

In theory, the best materials for the job should be thin sheets of metal oxides, because their chemical structure and high surface area makes it easy for ions to attach -- which is how energy storage occurs.

But the metal oxide sheets that have been fabricated in labs thus far have fallen well short of their theoretical capabilities, the paper said.

"This method of synthesis, called 'templating' -- where we use a sacrificial material as a substrate for growing a crystal -- is used to create a certain shape or structure," said Yury Gogotsi, another author of the paper.

"The trick in this work is that the crystal structure of salt must match the crystal structure of the oxide, otherwise it will form an amorphous film of oxide rather than a thing, strong and stable nanocrystal. This is the key finding of our research -- it means that different salts must be used to produce different oxides," Gogotsi added.​