Knowledge Update

​New Delhi, Oct 19 (IANS) Chinese smartphone manufacturer Zopo on Wednesday launched its latest Color F5 model that comes with Multi-account Application and PiP video Integration (floating video) technology. Available in gold colour, the device comes with fingerprint scanning technology, allowing users to control the device's camera, gallery, app lock and other features. "The Color series has been our most successful product chain in India. Therefore, with the launch of our Color F5 smartphone, we hope to maintain our position in the Indian market as a brand that provides innovative products at competitive prices," the company said in a statement. Apart from the fingerprint scanning feature, ZOPO Color F5 smartphone is equipped with a 64Bit Quad-core CPU, 2GB RAM and 16GB Storage. The 4G LTE dual-SIM smartphone has Android Marshmallow OS, 5-inch 2.5D glass display and dual LED flash for both 8MP rear and 5MP front camera.

​New Delhi, Oct 19 (IANS) The grandeur of Benaras' exquisite food and the beautiful ambience of its ghats have been brought alive at an ongoing festival here that recreates a spread of the city's specialties and street snacks for the capital's food lovers.

The third segment of the "The Grand Trunk Culinary Journey", which began from Amristar and passed through old Delhi, at the Dilli 32 outlet at The Leela Ambience Convention Hotel here, will take you through the delightful dishes of Benaras till October 29.

To bring out the flavours of each mouth-watering delicacy, Executive Chef Rohit Tokhi and Chef de Cuisine Ashwani Kumar Singh travelled to Benaras to gather the secrets of the food geniuses hidden in the lanes of the Hindu holy city.

"The menu comprises of things from all the three meals that are served across the day in Benaras. There is chudda matar that people take for breakfast; there is batti chokha for lunch and dinner and other snacks available in the market throughout the day," Chef Tokhi told IANS. 

The lip-smacking dishes that are specially prepared by incorporating authentic influences and divine flavours from the city include tamater ki chat, bhaji and jalebi, besan ki katli, fresh thandai and more.

It would be best to start with one of the three drinks -- thandai, pista pan and lassi malai maar ke -- that are served in clay pots called purvas. The fresh thandai tastes absolutely heavenly, far superior to any of the ready-made mixes available.

The spicy, sour and flavoursome tamatar ki chaat was tasty and different from the street food in Delhi.

"In Benaras, people get this chaat from street food shops and avoid preparing it at home," Tokhi said.

Quite unlike the dahi vada here, its Benarasi version was sugared and thus failed to impress.

The vegetarian thali comprises of hare channe ka bhabhra, tarua, baingan kalonji, dum aloo Banarasi, paneer butter masala and kadi bhari threw up some unfamiliar dishes with different flavours.

What really stood apart was the the dum aloo Banarasi. Not all that juicy with no gravy, it was yum to eat with the five kinds of rotis on offer: sheermal, khamiri, ulta tawa, roomali and missi roti

However, the kadi bhari and paneer butter masala with unusual flavours didn't impress at all.

The most surprising element about the menu was the few non-vegetarian dishes, because when you imagine Benaras, you usually only think of vegetarian food going hand-in-hand with the city's sacred Hindu interests.

In reality, the non-vegetarian counter has the most palatable dish on the entire menu. Very different from the Chinese version, there was a chilli chicken that was an absolute delight to feast upon. It was succulent with an amazing Indian touch to it and an apt amount of spices.

Then, there was the gutwa kabab for those who enjoy kababs with a twist.

And finally, the desserts. These include madgal, launglata, kheer mohan, parval ki mithai and gur ki kheer. Of these, the kheer mohan was an irresistible concoction made from cottage cheese. The parval mithai with a stuffing of khoya was good but the gur ki kheer did not intrigue much.

​New Delhi, Oct 19 (IANS) When it comes to building Smart Cities, Internet of Things (IoT) and Cloud are two key components to make things work. For Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins, these two components are now part and parcel of his life as the networking major turns its focus towards IoT and Cloud for delivering connected cities.

​New York, Oct 11 (IANS) Being angry, emotionally upset or engaging in heavy physical exertion may significantly increase risk of a heart attack, warns a large international study.

The researchers found an association (more than twice the risk) between anger or emotional upset and the onset of heart attack symptoms within one hour.

The same was true for heavy physical exertion during the hour before their first heart attack, according to the study published in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation.

However, the association was stronger (more than triple the risk) in those patients who recalled being angry or emotionally upset while also engaging in heavy physical exertion.

"Previous studies have explored these heart attack triggers; however, they had fewer participants or were completed in one country, and data are limited from many parts of the world," said study lead author Andrew Smyth from Population Health Research Institute at McMaster University in Canada.

"This is the first study to represent so many regions of the world, including the majority of the world's major ethnic groups," Smyth said.

For the study, the researchers analysed data from 12,461 patients (average age 58) participating in INTERHEART, a study consisting of patients with first-ever heart attacks across 52 countries.

The researchers said that extreme emotional and physical triggers can raise blood pressure and heart rate, changing the flow of blood through blood vessels and reducing blood supply to the heart.

"This is particularly important in blood vessels already narrowed by plaque, which could block the flow of blood leading to a heart attack," Smyth said.

"Regular physical activity has many health benefits, including the prevention of heart disease, so we want that to continue," he said.

"However, we would recommend that a person who is angry or upset who wants to exercise to blow off steam not go beyond their normal routine to extremes of activity," Smyth noted.

New York, Oct 19 (IANS) Something must be going on in the brains of older adults that causes them to struggle to follow speech amid background noise, even when their hearing would be considered normal, researchers from University of Maryland have determined.

Researchers Samira Anderson, Jonathan Z. Simon and Alessandro Presacco found that adults aged 61-73 with normal hearing scored significantly worse on speech understanding in noisy environments than adults aged 18-30 with normal hearing.

The researchers studied two areas of the brain. They looked at the more 'ancestral' midbrain area which does basic processing of all sounds.

They also looked at the cortex which is particularly large in humans and part of which specialises in speech processing.

In the young group, the midbrain generated a signal that matched its task in each case - looking like speech in the quiet environment, and speech clearly discernable against a noisy background in the noise environment.

But in the older group, the quality of the response to the speech signal was degraded even when in the quiet environment, and the response was even worse in the noisy environment.

"For older listeners, even when there isn't any noise, the brain is already having trouble processing the speech," said Simon.

Neural signals recorded from cortex showed that younger adults could process speech well in a relatively short amount of time.

But the auditory cortex of older test subjects took longer to represent the same amount of information.

"Part of the comprehension problems experienced by older adults in both quiet and noise conditions could be linked to age-related imbalance between excitatory and inhibitory neural processes in the brain," Presacco added.

This imbalance could impair the brain's ability to correctly process auditory stimuli and could be the main cause of the abnormally high cortical response observed in the study.

"Older people need more time to figure out what a speaker is saying. They are dedicating more of their resources and exerting more effort than younger adults when they are listening to speech," Simon noted in a paper published by the Journal of Neurophysiology.

This eroding of brain function appears to be typical for older adults and a natural part of the ageing process.

The researchers are now looking into whether brain training techniques may be able to help older adults improve their speech comprehension.

​Washington, Oct 19 (IANS) In a major step towards faster and convenient delivery of medical tests, Washington State University researchers have developed a low-cost, portable laboratory on a smartphone that can analyse several samples at once to catch a cancer biomarker, producing lab quality results.

At a time when patients and medical professionals expect always faster results, researchers are trying to translate biodetection technologies used in laboratories to the field and clinic, so patients can get nearly instant diagnoses in a physician's office, an ambulance or the emergency room.

The research team created an eight channel smartphone spectrometer that can detect human interleukin-6 (IL-6), a known biomarker for lung, prostate, liver, breast and epithelial cancers.

A spectrometer analyses the amount and type of chemicals in a sample by measuring the light spectrum.

"The spectrometer would be especially useful in clinics and hospitals that have a large number of samples without on-site labs, or for doctors who practice abroad or in remote areas," said lead researcher Lei Li, Assistant Professor in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering.

"They can't carry a whole lab with them. They need a portable and efficient device," Li noted.

Although smartphone spectrometers exist, they only monitor or measure a single sample at a time, making them inefficient for real world applications. 

The multichannel spectrometer can measure up to eight different samples at once using a common test called ELISA that identifies antibodies and colour change as disease markers, according to a study published in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics.

"With our eight channel spectrometer, we can put eight different samples to do the same test, or one sample in eight different wells to do eight different tests. This increases our device's efficiency," said Li, who has filed a provisional patent for the work.

Although the system currently works with an iPhone 5, the researchers said they are creating an adjustable design that will be compatible with any smartphone.

​London, Oct 16 (IANS) Swedish scientists in a breakthrough research have found a highly cost-effective technology which can examine individual cells in leukemia and can eventually transform treatment for patients suffering from the cancer.

The new method helped researchers to examine individual tumour cells in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) -- a cancer of blood-forming tissues, hindering the body's ability to fight infection. 

The finding showed that leukemia tumours are comprised of cells having entirely different gene expressions.

"The study found that CLL cells do not consist of a single cell type, but of a number of sub-clones that exhibit entirely different gene expression," said Joakim Lundeberg, Professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.

Typically, RNA sequencing will provide information about what RNA molecules are present in a biological sample, but not where or in which cells they are active, the researcher said.

"With this new, highly cost-effective technology, we can now get a whole new view of this complexity within the blood cancer sample. Molecular resolution of single cells is likely to become a more widely-used therapy option," Lundeberg observed.

The method provides analysis of all mRNA molecules in individual cells by binding a location tag to the molecules.

Individual cells are sorted on a specially-made glass surface and using analysis of RNA molecules with next-generation sequencing, one can tell which genes are active. 

"With the new method we can study thousands of cells in a day," Lundeberg said, in the paper reported in the journal Nature Communications.

Washington, Oct 10 (IANS) The US space agency has successfully maneuvered its spacecraft on way to asteroid Bennu, fine-tuning its trajectory to reach it and bring back samples from a potentially dangerous asteroid that could collide with the Earth.

The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft is on a journey that could revolutionise our understanding of the early solar system.

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft fired its Trajectory Correction Maneuver (TCM) thrusters for the first time last weekend in order to adjust its trajectory on the outbound journey.

"We're very excited about what this mission can tell us about the origin of our solar system, and we celebrate the bigger picture of science that is helping us make discoveries and accomplish milestones that might have been science fiction yesterday, but are science facts today," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.

The $800 million mission's main goal is to collect a small sample of rocks and surface soil from Bennu that finds a place in NASA's list of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids.

Asteroids like Bennu are remnants from the formation of our solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago. Scientists suspect that asteroids may have been a source of the water and organic molecules for the early Earth and other planetary bodies.

Although the odds are low, scientist have calculated that Bennu -- which is the size of a small mountain -- may impact Earth sometime between 2175 and 2199.

If all goes according to plan, OSIRIS-REx will arrive in August 2018 and spend the next two years photographing and mapping the asteroid's surface to better understand its chemical and mineralogical composition, including selecting the sample site.

Then, in July 2020, the spacecraft will touch the asteroid for only three seconds to collect at least 60 grams of loose rocks and dust using a device called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism and store the material in a sample return capsule.

OSIRIS-REx will return the sample to Earth in September 2023, when it will then be transported to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston for examination.

​Beijing, Oct 7 (IANS) China may be the only space station in service when the International Space Station (ISS) retires in 2024, an official of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) said on Friday.

China plans to launch the experimental core module of its space station around 2018 with a Long March-5 heavyload carrier rocket, and the 20 tonne combination space station will be sent into orbit around 2022, Xinhua news agency quoted Chairman of CASC Lei Fanpei as saying.

CASC is a major space developer.

When the International Space Station, China's space station may be the only one left in service, Lei said.

China's space station will include a core module and two lab modules, with ports that will allow multiple spacecraft to dock, according to Lei.

Following this, a manned spacecraft and cargo spacecraft will travel between the space station and the Earth to provide supplies. Taikonauts -- Chinese astronaut -- can stay at the space station for over one year.

The space station has a designed life of 10 years in orbit which is 400 km above the Earth's surface.

With this space station, China will become the second country after Russia to have developed a space station, Lei said.

China in 1992 made a three-step strategy for its manned space program, the large-scale manned space station being the last step.

In mid October, the Shenzhou-11 spacecraft would transport two taikonauts to Tiangong-2. They would stay there for 30 days.

​New York, Oct 6 (IANS) Researchers at Stanford University have developed a smartphone microscope that allows kids to play games or make more serious observations with miniature light-seeking microbes called Euglena.

"Many subject areas like engineering or programming have neat toys that get kids into it, but microbiology does not have that to the same degree," said Ingmar Riedel-Kruse, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering. 

"The initial idea for this project was to play games with living cells on your phone. And then it developed much beyond that to enable self-driven inquiry, measurement and building your own instrument," Riedel-Kruse noted.

Riedel-Kruse named his device the LudusScope after the Latin word "Ludus," which means "play," "game" or "elementary school". 

The LudusScope consists of a platform for the microscope slide where the Euglena swim freely, surrounded by four LEDs. 

Kids can influence the swimming direction of these light-responsive microbes with a joystick that activates the LEDs.

Above the platform, a smartphone holder positions the phone's camera over a microscope eyepiece, providing a view of the cells below.

On the phone, children can run a variety of software that overlay on top of the image of the cells. 

One looks like the 1980s video game Pac-Man, with a maze containing small white dots. Kids can select one cell to track, then use the LED lights to control which direction the cell swims in an attempt to guide it around the maze and collect the dots. 

Another game looks like a soccer stadium. 

Kids earn points by guiding the Euglena through the goal posts.

Other non-game applications provide microscope scale-bars, real-time displays of swimming speed or zoomed-in views of individual cells. 

These let kids collect data on Euglena behaviour, swimming speed and natural biological variability. 

The details of the LudusScope were published in the journal PLOS ONE