Knowledge Update

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.​

New York, April 24 (IANS) Despite having extremely underdeveloped muscles and wings, young birds may acquire a mature flight stroke early in life by initially relying more on their legs and wings for power, finds a new study.

Adult birds have large wings and robust interlocking forelimb skeletons that may help meet the demands of flight.

But, the juvenile birds have small "protowings" or "mini wings" and flexible joints that lack many of the hallmarks of advanced flight.

Despite these limitations, young birds can flap their wings as they run up slopes and even briefly fly, challenging longstanding ideas about the origin of flight and flight development, the researchers said.

The team used X-ray analysis to visualise skeletal movement as birds like Chukar partridges, Alectoris flapped their wings while trying to climb steep slopes.

The findings showed that when flap-running at similar levels of effort, juvenile and adult birds showed similar patterns of joint movement.

Despite their undeveloped anatomy, young birds appeared to produce all of the elements of the avian flight stroke and modify their wing stroke for different behaviours, much like adults.

The force generated by flapping may push the birds forward as well as upward, improving traction as they climb.

Understanding flapping behaviour in young birds may provide insight into the possible use of mini-wings by extinct theropod dinosaurs, before flight evolved, the researchers suggested in the study published in the journal PLOS ONE.

"Baby birds anatomically look a lot like some of the dinosaur fossils that we see," said Ashley Heers from American Museum of Natural History in US.

"And so, by studying baby birds and looking at how they actually use these dinosaur-like anatomies, we can get a better sense of how these long-extinct animals might have been using their wings," Heers concluded.​

New York, April 24 (IANS) Fructose, a sugar common in the western diet, can damage hundreds of brain genes in a way that could lead to a range of diseases -- from diabetes to cardiovascular disease, and from Alzheimer's to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder -- warns a new study.

However, the researchers discovered good news as well: An omega-3 fatty acid known as docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) seems to reverse the harmful changes produced by fructose.

"DHA changes not just one or two genes; it seems to push the entire gene pattern back to normal, which is remarkable," said Xia Yang, assistant professor at the University of California - Los Angeles (UCLA).

DHA enhances learning and memory. It is abundant in wild salmon (but not in farmed salmon) and, to a lesser extent, in other fish and fish oil, as well as walnuts, flaxseed, and fruits and vegetables, co-senior author Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, an UCLA professor, pointed out.

The research was published online in the journal EBioMedicine.

To test the effects of fructose and DHA, the researchers trained rats to escape from a maze, and then randomly divided the animals into three groups.

For the next six weeks, one group of rats drank water with an amount of fructose that would be roughly equivalent to a person drinking a liter of soda per day.

The second group was given fructose water and a diet rich in DHA. The third received water without fructose and no DHA.

After the six weeks, the rats were put through the maze again. The animals that had been given only the fructose navigated the maze about half as fast than the rats that drank only water -- indicating that the fructose diet had impaired their memory.

The rats that had been given fructose and DHA, however, showed very similar results to those that only drank water -- which strongly suggests that the DHA eliminated fructose's harmful effects.

Other tests on the rats revealed more major differences: The rats receiving a high-fructose diet had much higher blood glucose, triglycerides and insulin levels than the other two groups.

Those results are significant because in humans, elevated glucose, triglycerides and insulin are linked to obesity, diabetes and many other diseases.

The research team sequenced more than 20,000 genes in the rats' brains, and identified more than 900 genes that were altered by the fructose.

The altered genes they identified, the vast majority of which are comparable to genes in humans, are among those that interact to regulate metabolism, cell communication and inflammation.

Among the conditions that can be caused by alterations to those genes are Parkinson's disease, depression, bipolar disorder, and other brain diseases, Yang said.​

​New York, April 25 (IANS) A team of international tobacco control experts has found that use of e-cigarettes can reduce overall smoking as well as potentially decrease the mortality rates particularly arising out of cigarette smoking.

The findings showed that e-cigarettes have the potential to counteract health risks and may do more benefit than harm.

Also, the evidence suggests a strong potential for e-cigarettes use to improve population health by reducing or displacing cigarette use in countries where cigarette prevalence is still high and smokers are interested in quitting.

"While e-cigarettes may act as a gateway to smoking, much of the evidence indicates that e-cigarette use encourages cessation from cigarettes by those people who would have otherwise smoked with or without e-cigarettes," said lead researcher David Levy, professor at Georgetown University in the US.

However, the experts' estimated that exclusive e-cigarette use is associated with about five percent of the mortality risks of smoking.

Research shows that cigarette smoking rates have fallen more in the last two years than they have in the previous four or five years in the US, Canada and England, and that this trend has coincided with the increase in e-cigarette use.

"We believe that the discussion to date has been slanted against e-cigarettes, which is unfortunate, because the big picture tells us that these products appear to be used mostly by people who already are or who are likely to become cigarette smokers," Levy added.

In the study, published online in the journal Addiction, seven top international tobacco control experts have prompted regulators at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to have a broad "open-minded" perspective when it comes to regulating vaporised nicotine products, especially e-cigarettes.

The team synthesised much of the evidence published to date on e-cigarettes to suggest that use of these products can lead to reduced cigarette smoking overall with a potential reduction in deaths from cigarette smoking.

The team also warned that heavy regulation and taxation of e-cigarettes will counteract the benefit that these products can provide.

"We don't want to encourage e-cigarette use by youth and young adults who would not have otherwise smoked. However, the primary aim of tobacco control policy should be to discourage cigarette use while providing the means for smokers to more easily quit smoking, even if that means switching for some time to e-cigarettes rather than quitting all nicotine use," the researchers noted.​

​London, April 24 (IANS) Far from making you smarter, electrical stimulation of the brain's cells while solving challenging tasks can lead to mental overload, warn researchers.

The researchers wanted to test whether a treatment that sends a very weak electrical current through the skull to the outer layers of the brain, so-called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), can actually make us smarter.

The tasks for the participants were divided into three levels -- simple, medium and difficult.

The researchers found no effect of stimulation when participants performed the simple and medium tasks, yet they found a large negative effect on the most difficult tasks.

"tDCS had a disruptive effect only on the most difficult tasks that demanded a lot of concentration," said one of the lead researchers, James Roe from the University of Oslo in Norway.

"We saw that participants experienced severe problems concentrating when the task was most difficult and the brain was being stimulated," Roe noted.

"It was as though tDCS had completely overloaded a brain region crucial to performing the task, as though it crashed it," Roe explained in a paper published in the journal Neuropsychologia.

In recent times neuroscientists have been showing increased interest for tDCS. Many claim that the device can, among other things, help improve memory, increase self-control and make us more creative.

tDCS is already implemented in the rehabilitation of a range of psychiatric and neurological conditions, such as depression, stroke, Alzheimer's disease, fibromyalgia and tinnitus.

While the researchers acknowledged that tDCS can indeed have a positive impact, they said the study shed light on the effects of tDCS when we solve tasks of varying difficulty.​

​Sydney, April 23 (IANS) If you love apples, so also love the humble banana. Eating a banana daily is likely to boost eye health and prevent vision-related diseases, a study has found.

Researchers have found that bananas have carotenoid -- a compound that turn fruits and vegetables red, orange or yellow and are converted into vitamin A, important precursors for eye health -- in the liver.

According to previous research, foods containing high levels of carotenoids also protect against chronic disease, including certain cancers, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

The study showed that banana rich in provitamin A carotenoids may offer a potential food source for alleviating vitamin A deficiency -- important for sight.

To combat vitamin A deficiency, researchers have been investigating methods to boost carotenoids in bananas. 

Cara L. Mortimer and other researchers from Queensland University of Technology in Australia studied two banana varieties to find out why they make very different amounts of carotenoids. 

They found that the pale yellow, low-carotenoid cavendish variety produces more of an enzyme that breaks down carotenoids. 

In addition, another variety stashes its carotenoids in microscopic sacs during ripening, shifting the chemical equilibrium in the fruit so it can make even higher levels of these substances. 

The findings, published in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, can someday help in the development of banana varieties with enhanced health benefits.

Bananas are ideal food for young children and families for many regions of the world, because of their sweetness, texture, portion size, familiarity, availability, convenience, versatility and cost. ​