Knowledge Update

​New York, Oct 4 (IANS) US tech giant Microsoft is discontinuing its wearable fitness tracker called "Band" and the company has no plans to release "Band 3". "The Band 2 has been wiped completely from Microsoft's online store and is no longer available from Best Buy either," technology website The Verge reported on Tuesday. Consumers can still buy it from Amazon through its remaining inventory. The team behind the "Band" was recently dissolved and the company has also removed the device's software development kit that allows apps to be created for the device from its site. Micrsoft, however, will still support existing "Band 2" owners. The device was criticised for its uncomfortable design. Microsoft introduced a second-generation model with added features last year but it also carried forward many of the original's flaws, the report added.

Toronto, Oct 3 (IANS) The world's tallest wood building at 18 storeys -- about 174 feet -- is set to be completed four months ahead of schedule, showcasing the advantages of building with wood, officials in Canada said.

"This remarkable building, the first of its kind in the world, is another shining example of Canadian ingenuity and innovation, an apt demonstration of how Canada's forest industry is finding new opportunities through technology and innovation -- opening up a world of possibilities for our forest and construction industries," said Jim Carr, Canada's Minister of Natural Resources.

The mass wood structure and facade is for the University of British Columbia's Brock Commons student residence.

The structure was completed less than 70 days after the prefabricated components were first delivered to the site. Construction will now focus on interior elements, with completion expected in early May 2017 -- 18 per cent (or four months) faster than a typical project, a university statement said.

Brock Commons is the first mass wood, steel and concrete hybrid project taller than 14 storeys in the world. The building is expected to welcome more than 400 students in September 2017, the statement added.

The building has a concrete podium and two concrete cores, with 17 storeys of cross-laminated-timber floors supported on glue-laminated wood columns. 

The cladding for the facade is made with 70 per cent wood fibre.

"Brock Commons is living proof that advanced wood products are a terrific material to build with and support efficient assembly," Steve Thomson, Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, said.

​London, Oct 2 (IANS) Holidays are not just for relaxing but can also help to improve your health and should be prescribed for sick people, says a study.

According to the study, being in an environment that stimulates curiosity could turbo-charge the immune system, quoted the Daily Mail.

For the study, the researchers took mice which were given a two-week stay in a large cage packed with toys and the exciting environment appeared to boost their white blood cells, which fight off infections.

"This effect is remarkable because we haven't given them any drugs, all we've done is change their housing conditions," said Fulvio D'Acquisto, Professor at Queen Mary University, London.

"You could say that we've just put them in their equivalent of a holiday resort for two weeks and let them enjoy their new surroundings," D'Acquisto added.

White blood cells are key to auto-immune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis.

The researcher suggested that prescribing a holiday could help the sick recover more quickly -- and even give worn-out office workers a new lease of life.

"We could boost the effects of standard drug treatments that deal with the mechanics of infection, by also offering something environmental that improves a patient's more general well-being. That might be a promising approach for treating chronic diseases," D'Acquisto said.

The study is published in the journal Frontiers in Immunology.

New York, Oct 2 (IANS) Just as persistent negative thinking is a common trait that characterises most emotional disorders, researchers have found that underlying brain abnormalities in such disorders also have a lot to share.

"This study provides important insights into mechanisms shared across multiple emotional disorders, and could provide us with biomarkers that can be used to more rapidly diagnose these disorders," said study senior author Scott Langenecker, Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the US.

Those disorders, he said, can sometimes take many years to be diagnosed accurately.

The most common difference in white matter structure that Langenecker's group found -- present in every emotional disorder they looked at -- was disruption in a region of the brain that connects different parts of the "default-mode network", which is responsible for passive thoughts not focused on a particular task.

That area is the left superior longitudinal fasciculus or SLF, which also connects the default-mode network and the cognitive control network, which is important in task-based thinking and planning and tends to work in alternation with the default-mode network.

The constant negative thoughts or ruminations associated with most emotional disorders appear to be due to a hyperactive default-mode network, Langenecker said.

"If the part of the brain that helps rein in the default-mode network isn't as well-connected through the SLF, this could explain why people with emotional disorders have such a hard time modulating or gaining control of their negative thoughts," he said.

The findings were published in the journal NeuroImage: Clinical.

​London, Oct 3 (IANS) For people with Type 2 diabetes, heart failure is a common condition. According to a new study, individuals with Type 2 diabetes who had undergone coronary artery surgery prior to their heart failure diagnosis have better chances of survival in the long term.

Over 90 per cent of the patients with Type 2 diabetes have one or more other precursors of heart failure, such as high blood pressure, COPD or atrial fibrillation, diseases to which effective treatments are available that improve the chances of long-term survival, the study said.

Heart failure in people with Type 2 diabetes is often attributable to atherosclerotic coronary artery disease (CAD) -- damage or disease in the heart's major blood vessels, and such people are given either a bypass operation or catheter balloon dilation. 

"Our study indicates that revasculising coronary artery surgery can do much to improve the prognosis," said Isabelle Johansson, doctoral student at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.

The risk of death within eight years of heart-failure onset was much higher if the patient also had Type 2 diabetes, with those who also had CAD showing the worst prognosis. 

However, the prognosis for long-term survival was better for the patients who had undergone coronary artery surgery before developing heart failure, an observation that held even when controlling for factors such as old age or other diseases, which might have affected the decision to perform revasculising surgery, the researchers explained.

"A decision must be taken as to whether this is possible should be made without delay for all patients with combined Type 2 diabetes and heart failure," Johansson added.

For the study, published in the Journal of American College of Cardiology, the team studied data of over 35,000 heart failure patients, over a quarter of whom had Type 2 diabetes.

​New York, Oct 3 (IANS) Meditation can help tame your emotions even if you are not a mindful person, suggests a new study

Mindfulness, a moment-by-moment awareness of one's thoughts, feelings and sensations, has gained worldwide popularity as a way to promote health and well-being. 

"Our findings not only demonstrate that meditation improves emotional health, but that people can acquire these benefits regardless of their 'natural' ability to be mindful," said lead investigator Yanli Lin, a graduate student at the Michigan State University. 

For the study, the team assessed 68 participants for mindfulness using a scientifically validated survey. 

The participants were then randomly assigned to engage in an 18-minute audio-guided meditation or listen to a control presentation of how to learn a new language, before viewing negative pictures (such as a bloody corpse) while their brain activity was recorded.

The participants who meditated -- they had varying levels of natural mindfulness -- showed similar levels of "emotion regulatory" brain activity as people with high levels of natural mindfulness. 

In other words, their emotional brains recovered quickly after viewing the troubling photos, essentially keeping their negative emotions in check, the researchers said.

Further, some of the participants were instructed to look at the gruesome photos "mindfully" while others received no such instruction. 

The people who viewed the photos "mindfully" showed no better ability to keep their negative emotions in check.

According to Jason Moser, Associate Professor at Michigan State University, this suggests that for non-meditators, the emotional benefits of mindfulness might be better achieved through meditation, rather than "forcing it" as a state of mind.

"If you're a naturally mindful person, and you're walking around very aware of things, you're good to go. You shed your emotions quickly," Moser said. 

"If you're not naturally mindful, then meditating can make you look like a person who walks around with a lot of mindfulness," Moser observed. 

But for people who are not naturally mindful and have never meditated, forcing oneself to be mindful 'in the moment' doesn't work. You'd be better off meditating for 20 minutes, the researchers concluded in the paper published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 

​London, Oct 3 (IANS) In a promising step towards being able to manipulate and control the behaviour of high energy, or 'hot', electrons, scientists have, for the first time, identified a method of visualising the quantum behaviour of electrons on a surface.

Hot electrons are necessary for a number of processes and the implications of being able to manipulate their behaviour are far-reaching -- from enhancing the efficiency of solar energy, to improving the targetting of radiotherapy for cancer treatment.

"Hot electrons are essential for a number of processes -- certain technologies are entirely reliant on them. But they're notoriously difficult to observe due to their short lifespan, about a millionth of a billionth of a second," said one of the researchers Peter Sloan from University of Bath in England.

"This visualisation technique gives us a really new level of understanding," Sloan noted.

In the experiment, a Scanning Tunnelling Microscope was used to inject electrons into a silicon surface, decorated with toluene molecules. As the injected charge propagated from the tip, it induced the molecules to react and 'lift off' from the surface.

By measuring the precise atomic positions from which molecules departed on injection, the team were able to identify that electrons were governed by quantum mechanics close to the tip, and then by more classical behaviour further away.

The team found that the molecular lift-off was "suppressed" near the point of charge injection, because the classical behaviour was inhibited. 

The number of reactions close to the tip increased rapidly until reaching a radius, up to 15 nanometres away, before seeing relatively slow decay of reactions beyond that point more in keeping with classical behaviour. 

This radius, at which the behaviour changes from quantum to classical, could be altered by varying the energy of the electrons injected, said the study published in the journal Nature Communications.

"When an electron is captured by a molecule of toluene, we see the molecule lift off from the surface -- imagine the Apollo lander leaving the moon's surface. By comparing before and after images of the surface we measure the pattern of these molecular launch sites and reveal the behaviour of electrons in a manner not possible before," Professor Richard Palmer from the University of Birmingham explained.

​London, Oct 3 (IANS) It may appear counter-intuitive, but a new study suggests that you are more likely to get help from others in emergency situation than in harmless everyday condition as extreme conditions bring out the best in people, especially those who are altruistic and pro-social.

"Emergency situations seem to amplify people's natural tendency to cooperate," said one of the researchers Mehdi Moussaid from Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany.

In the study published in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers showed that readiness to help depends heavily on personality. 

The experiments showed that pro-social and altruistic people in particular often helped others even more in an emergency situation than in a relaxed and non-threatening situation, whereas selfish participants became less cooperative.

The researchers invited 104 individuals to participate in a computer game that was developed specifically for the experiment. 

In this "help-or-escape dilemma game," participants under time and monetary pressure had to decide whether they were willing to risk taking time to help others before reaching their goal or saving themselves in two different situations ? one everyday and one emergency situation. 

After the game, the researchers measured participants' social value orientation -- that is, their concern for others -- and categorised them as having a pro-social or individualistic profile.

The researchers found that many of those categorised as pro-social were more helpful in the emergency situation -- 44 per cent of them were more ready to help in the emergency than in the everyday situation. 

The opposite was true of participants categorised as individualistic, 52 per cent of whom reduced their cooperative behaviour in the emergency situation.

​Sydney, Oct 4 (IANS) Your colleagues at work - and not your spouse or kids -- decide how healthy you will be as you age, as you are likely to spend an average of one third of your day on the job.

According to the researchers, health at work is determined to a large extent by our social relationships in workplace -- and, more particularly, the social groups we form there.

In a new meta-analysis covering 58 studies and more than 19,000 people across the globe, psychologists found out that how strongly we identify with the people or organisation where we work is associated with better health and lower burnout.

"This study is the first large-scale analysis showing that organisational identification is related to better health," said lead researcher Dr Niklas Steffens from University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.

"The results show that both performance and health are enhanced to the extent that workplaces provide people with a sense of 'we' and 'us'," Steffens added.

The team reviewed 58 studies covering people in a variety of occupations, from service and health to sales and military work, in 15 countries.

"Social identification contributes to both psychological and physiological health, but the health benefits are stronger for psychological health," said Steffens.

The positive psychological benefit may stem from the support provided by the work group but also the meaning and purpose that people derive from membership in social groups.

"We are less burnt out and have greater well-being when our team and our organisation provide us with a sense of belonging and community -- when it gives us a sense of 'we-ness'," Steffens pointed out.

The authors also found that the health benefits of identifying with the workplace are strongest when there are similar levels of identification within a group -- that is, when identification is shared.

So if you identify strongly with your organisation, then you get more health benefits if everyone else identifies strongly with the organisation too.

The team was surprised to find that more the women present in a sample, the weaker the identification-health relationship grew.

"This was a finding that we had not predicted and, in the absence of any prior theorising, we can only guess what gives rise to this effect," said Steffens in a paper appeared in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Review.

One of the reasons may relate to the fact that there are still many workplaces that have somewhat "masculine" cultures.

This mean that even when female employees identify with their team or organisation, they still feel somewhat more marginal within their team or organisation.

The team also recommends exploring the role of leadership: how leaders manage teams and groups has a strong influence on the social identification-health connection.

"Leaders play a key role in shaping a sense of group identity in the workplace," Steffens added.

​New York, Oct 4 (IANS) Do you know why some people are better at performing complex duties and multi-tasking? Because their brains are not static and the level of coordination between different parts of their brains seems to ebb and flow.

After analysing the brains of people at rest or carrying out complex tasks, researchers at Stanford University have learnt that the integration between those brain regions also fluctuates.

When the brain is more integrated, people do better on complex tasks.

"The brain is stunning in its complexity and I feel like, in a way, we've been able to describe some of its beauty in this story," said study lead author Mac Shine, post-doctoral researcher in the lab of Russell Poldrack, Professor of psychology.

"We've been able to say, 'Here's this underlying structure that you would never have guessed was there, that might help us explain the mystery of why the brain is organized in the way that it is,"" Shine added.

For the past 100 years, scientists have understood that different areas of the brain serve unique purposes. Only recently have they realised that the organisation isn't static.

In a three-part project, the researchers used open source data from the Human Connectome Project to examine how separate areas of the brain coordinate their activity over time - both while people are at rest and while they are attempting a challenging mental task.

They then tested a potential neurobiological mechanism to explain these findings.

For the resting state condition, the researchers used a novel analysis technique to examine functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data of people who weren't doing any particular task.

They found that even without any intentional stimulation, the brain network fluctuates between periods of higher and lower coordinated blood flow in the different areas of the brain.

The researchers found that the brains of participants were more integrated while working on complicated task than they were during quiet rest.

"This research shows really clear relationships between how the brain is functioning at a network level and how the person's actually performing on these psychological tasks," noted co-author Poldrack in a paper appeared in the journal Neuron.

The researchers plan to further investigate the connection between neural gain and integration in the brain.

They also want to figure out how universal these findings are to other behaviours, such as attention and memory.

This research may also eventually help us better understand cognitive disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's disease.