Knowledge Update

Washington, Jan 28 (IANS) NASA scientists in an unprecedented study have found that space travel may alter gene expression.

The study involved astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent a year in space and his identical twin Mark who stayed on Earth. 

From the lengths of the twins' chromosomes to the microbiomes in their guts, "almost everyone is reporting that we see differences", Christopher Mason, a geneticist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, was quoted as saying to scientificamerican.com. 

The changes that are likely attributable to Scott's time in orbit include alterations to gene expression, DNA methylation -- the reversible addition of a chemical marker that can affect gene expression -- and other biological markers. 

DNA methylation decreased in Scott during flight and increased in Mark over the same period. 

Levels for both men returned close to pre-flight levels after Scott came back to Earth, according to the preliminary results published in the journal Nature. 

"What this means isn't yet clear," said Andrew Feinberg, a geneticist at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, US.

The researchers also reported changes in gene-expression signatures between the twins. Such changes happen in earthbound people all the time, associated with environmental shifts such as changes in diet and sleep habits. 

However, the changes in Scott seemed to be larger than normal - perhaps due to the stress of eating frozen food and trying to sleep while floating in space, Mason said.

But, because the Kelly twins are just two people, the results may not be generalised, the study said.

Scott spent 340 days in space during 2015-2016, giving him a lifetime total of 520 days, while Mark, also an astronaut, had previously flown in space for a total of 54 days over four space-shuttle missions between 2001 and 2011.

New York, Jan 28 (IANS) If you are a creative person, chances are you may face more trouble in getting good quality sleep although you may sleep more often, researchers say.

In the study, the researchers sought to understand how two types of creativity -- visual and verbal -- influence objective aspects of sleep such as duration and timing and subjective aspects -- sleep quality.

The findings showed that both have different sleep patterns. Visual creativity is activated by different cerebral mechanisms than verbal creativity.

"Visually creative people reported disturbed sleep leading to difficulties in daytime functioning," whereas, "in the case of verbally creative people, the study found that they sleep more hours, go to sleep late and get up later," Neta Ram-Vlasov, doctoral student at University of Haifa in Israel, said in a statement.

"This strengthens the hypothesis that the processing and expression of visual creativity involves different psychobiological mechanisms to those found in verbal creativity," Ram-Vlasov added.

One possible explanations for the differences can be the that a 'surplus' of visual creativity makes the individual more alert which could lead to sleep disturbances.

"On the other hand, it is possible that it is protracted sleep among verbally creativity individuals facilitating processes that support the creative process while they are awake," Ram-Vlasov said.

​New York, Jan 27 (IANS) To protect users from potential viruses, tech giant Google has announced to restrict Gmail users from sending Javascript files from February 13.

"Gmail currently restricts certain file attachments (e.g. .exe, .msc, and .bat) for security reasons and similar to other restricted file attachments, you will not be able to attach a

​New York, Jan 27 (IANS) To minimise data breach, Facebook has added a new login option with 'security keys' that requires a user to enter a special security code from their phone in addition to the password when they login from a new browser.

​Beijing, Jan 27 (IANS) In a bid to expand online payment business in the US after a successful run in India with Paytm, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba's digital payments arm Ant Financial has bought global money-transfer service MoneyGram for nearly $880 million.

​Tokyo, Jan 27 (IANS) Japan's consumer prices dropped for the first time in four years in 2016 by 0.3 per cent from a year earlier, the government said on Friday.

It shows the country is still grappling with deflationary pressure despite the Bank of Japan (BOJ)'s numerous monetary easing measures, Xinhua news agency cited the Ministry

​New York, Jan 27 (IANS) Riding on its Cloud services, Microsoft on Friday announced revenues of $26.1 billion for the second quarter of fiscal year 2017 which exceeded analysts projections.

New York, Jan 27 (IANS) Facebook is changing the way it ranks videos that appear on the News Feed so that the videos which are more relevant to you surface on the screen.

With this new change, longer videos that people spend time watching may get a boost.

​Beijing, Jan 27 (IANS) Xiaomi, touted as the 'Apple' of China, slipped to fourth spot in 2016 as the demand for its smartphones declined 22 per cent annually in the country, a report revealed on Friday. The key reason for the decline was Xiaomi's rivals racing ahead with key features, innovation, bigger marketing budgets and wider online and offline distribution channel during the year. Huawei, Oppo and Vivo emerged as clear winners with Oppo and Vivo registering significant growth, said the report from by market analytics firm Counterpoint Research. "The final quarter of the year was marked with series of flagship upgrades from key brands such as Apple, Oppo, Huawei, Xiaomi which catalysed the smartphone demand in China healthier than last year," said James Yan, Research Director, Counterpoint, in a statement. The demand for smartphones in China remained healthy during the fourth quarter of 2016 as smartphone shipments were up 12 per cent annually and nine per cent sequentially, driving the full-year growth. Only five brands registered healthy growth during the full year. Oppo, Huawei, Vivo, Meizu and Gionee drove the majority of the volume, capturing a combined 58 per cent of the total Chinese smartphone market. "Demand for rest of the brands declined, especially last year's star performers Xiaomi and Apple with lower-than-expected demand for their smartphones during the year," Yan added. Apple, with slowing traction for its flagship iPhone 6s during the year, saw its double-digit negative growth, being somewhat offset by relatively healthy demand for the newer flagship iPhone 7 series in fourth quarter of 2016, the findings showed. However, Apple still remains in a vulnerable position and there is higher expectation already with the next year flagship which is rumoured to be a substantial upgrade from both design and components perspective. In terms of features, the key focus remained on proliferation of smartphones with fingerprint sensors, 4G+/VoLTE ready, fast-charging, OLED displays, battery, adoption of dual rear cameras and higher megapixel front-camera for selfies, the report added.

​New York, Jan 27 (IANS) Questioning the decision-making ability of driverless cars, experts have suggested model driverless car regulations to ensure safety of the passengers.

Artificial intelligence (AI) experts David Danks and Alex John London from Carnegie Mellon University in the US argued that current safety regulations do not plan for autonomous systems and are ill-equipped to ensure that these systems would perform safely and reliably.

"Currently, we ensure safety on the roads by regulating the performance of the various mechanical systems of vehicles and by licensing drivers. When cars drive themselves we have no comparable system for evaluating the safety and reliability of their autonomous driving systems," said London.

In an opinion piece that appeared in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) Intelligent Systems, Danks and London suggested creating a dynamic system that resembles the regulatory and approval process for drugs and medical devices, including a robust system for post-approval monitoring.

"Self-driving cars and autonomous systems are rapidly spreading so we, as a society, need to find new ways to monitor and guide the development and implementation of these autonomous systems," added Danks.

The proposed phased process would begin with "pre-clinical trials," or testing in simulated environments, such as self-driving cars navigating varied landscapes and climates. 

This would provide information about how the autonomous system makes decisions in a wide range of contexts, so that we can understand how they might act in future in new situations, the duo said.

When a vehicle passes this test, the system would move on to "in-human" studies through a limited introduction into real world environments with trained human "co-pilots." 

Successful trials in these targeted environments would then lead to monitored, permit-based testing and further easing of restrictions as performance goals were met, the researchers noted.