Knowledge Update

​Beijing, Jan 2 (IANS) China has launched its first freight train to London, railway officials said.

Departing from Yiwu West Railway Station in eastern Zhejiang province on Sunday, the train will travel for about 18 days and more than 12,000 km before reaching its

London, Jan 2 (IANS) The British government will launch a new one pound coin at the end of March and scrap the current one by October.

An announcement from the British Treasury on Sunday said the new 12-sided one pound coin would become legal tender on March 28 and the new coin would be produced by

​Singapore, Jan 1 (IANS) The threat of breaching the Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) tags that help automated identification of your mobile phone, passport, credit cards, access passes and others could soon be mitigated, thanks to the new security features researchers are developing.

​New York, Jan 2 (IANS) As an earlier statement said WhatsApp will stop working on certain phones by the end of 2016, many users of older versions of iPhones and Android handsets are about to find themselves cut off from using the chat app, media has reported.

​Seoul, Jan 2 (IANS) Samsung Electronics on Monday launched the latest Galaxy A series smartphones with the enhanced front and rear 16-megapixel cameras. The device is encased in a metal frame and 3D glass back and offers IP68 water and dust resistance, allowing it to withstand the elements, including rain, sweat, sand and dust. "We integrated our unique approach to design as well as the features Galaxy customers have come to love to provide added performance without compromising on style," said D.J. Koh, President of Mobile Communications Business, Samsung Electronics, in a statement. Of the new series, Galaxy A7 and A5 come with 3GB RAM and an on-board memory of 32GB that can be extended up to 256GB. The Galaxy A3 comes with 2GB RAM and 16GB storage, extendable up to 256GB. The new A series runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow supported by 1.9GHz Octa Core processor, except Galaxy A3 that is powered by 1.6GHz Octa Core processor. The new A series is equipped with reversible USB Type-C port for easy connectivity. The device comes with Samsung Pay that allows users to make safe and secure mobile payments through Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) and Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, and easily back up data and images through Samsung Cloud. Users can separate private data and keep the contents safe in a Secure Folder which supports biometric authentication. The Galaxy A comes in four colour variants and will be available in Russia in early January and will be later expanded to the global market.

​Phnom Penh, Jan 2 (IANS) The National Museum of Cambodia in January will exhibit what is considered by some experts to be the world's oldest zero symbol, a dot in a set of script from the Khmer civilisation carved into a sandstone surface.

"The Chaka era has reached the year 605 on the fifth day of the waning moon," says the restored inscription discovered during the end of the 19th century at the Trapang Prei archaeological site in Kratie province, in northeastern Cambodia.

Archaeologists date this phrase to 687 AD, in pre-Angkor Cambodia, Efe news reported on Monday.

This Khmer inscription was discovered by French archaeologist Adhemard Leclere (1853-1917) in 1891, but his colleague and compatriot George Coedes (1886-1969) later classified it with the name K-127.

The same historian Coedes subsequently divulged the importance of the discovery in the article "About the Origin of Arabic Numbers", published in 1931.

Coedes and American mathematician Amir Aczel (1950-2015) defended the significance of K-127 as it strengthens the idea that the zero symbol's origin in the decimal number system comes from India or, in his word, other "Indianized" East Asian cultures.

The oldest zero that is known of and in the form of a circle, rather than a dot, comes from India and from the year 876 AD, almost two hundred years earlier than the one at the National Museum of Cambodia.

The Indian manuscript Bakhshali also contains zeros that could be prior to K-127, but the experts are unable to determine their antiquity with current technology due to the fragility of the object.

A civilization influenced by the Indian culture that existed in the south of the Indonesian island of Sumatra has also passed on another stone-carved dot equivalent to a zero to us, but it is from the year 688 AD, a few years before the aforementioned Khmer inscription.

The Maya and other pre-Columbian cultures knew this figure and used it in their hieroglyphs and calendars, but their numeral system did not survive the passage of time.

Cambodia has many inscriptions with the zero symbol, "but this one (K-127) is the oldest one," Chea Socheat, deputy director of the restoration department at the National Museum of Cambodia, told Efe news.

Representing the absolute lack of quantity or a null value and being of paramount importance in mathematics, this number entered Europe through the Arabs, who called it "sirf" (void).

The popularization of the Hindu-Arabic numerical system among the Europeans corresponds to the Italian mathematician Leonardo de Pisa (1170-1250), better known as Fibonacci.

"Zero is not just a concept of nothingness, which allows us to do arithmetic efficiently, but is also a place-holding device that enables our base-10 number system to work," Aczel said in his book "Finding Zero: A Mathematician's Odyssey to Uncover the Origins of Numbers."

According to anthropologist Miriam Stark from the University of Hawaii and an expert on Cambodia, the numeral system was fundamental for constructing temples during the Khmer empire or Angkor Empire (802-1431), such as the famous Unesco World Heritage site, Angkor Wat complex, in the city of Siem Reap.

The capital of this empire, Angkor, was the largest urban complex in the pre-industrial world, with a population of about 1 million people living in 1,000 sq.km of territory, according to Damian Evans, Christophe Pottier and other anthropologists.

Inscriptions like the K-127 help us learn about the past, according to Socheat, and the history of the numbers. 

New York, Jan 2 (IANS) Feeling too lazy to hit the gym or follow an exercise routine? Your altered dopamine receptors -- critical for movement -- may be the reason behind your lack of motivation rather than excess body weight, a new study has suggested. The study challenged a common belief that obese animals do less physical activity, because carrying extra body weight is physically disabling. "We know that physical activity is linked to overall good health, but not much is known about why people or animals with obesity are less active," said Alexxai V. Kravitz from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK)- a part of the National Institutes of Health in the US. For the study, mice were fed either a standard or a high-fat diet for 18 weeks. Beginning in the second week, the mice on the unhealthy diet had higher body weight. By the fourth week, these mice spent less time moving and got around much more slowly when they did move. The results showed that the high-fat diet mice slowed down their activity, but they did it before they actually got fat instead of after, suggesting that the excess weight alone was not responsible for the reduced movements. The reason the mice were inactive was due to dysfunction in their dopamine systems. They had deficits in the D2 dopamine receptors, the researchers said. "There are probably other factors involved as well, but the deficit in D2 is sufficient to explain the lack of activity," said Danielle Friend, postdoctoral student at NIDDK. The study appeared in the journal Cell Metabolism.

Sydney, Jan 2 (IANS) The rapid growth in wing length of a common Western Australian bird may be related to climate change, according to a study released on Monday.

Scientists from the University of Notre Dame in Sydney linked the growth in wing length of the Australian ringneck parrot, or Barnardius zonarius, to climate change as the limbs of animals in warm climates tend to be longer, Efe news reported.

The wings of the parrot lengthened 4 to 5 cm in the last 45 years.

As temperatures rise, the increase in the length of wings can help these birds release excess heat and adapt better to their environment, said one of the study's scientists, Dylan Korczynskyj.

Korczynskyj explained that the biggest changes in wing length have occurred since the 1970s, a period that coincides with temperature changes of more than 0.1 to 0.2 degrees Celsius and deforestation carried out in the state of Western Australia.

Although temperature variation appears minimal, the impact on the environment is significant, as evidenced by research on the bird species, he added.

The study examined several specimens from the museum of Western Australia, which has a collection of birds dating back to the early 19th century and includes a ringneck parrot specimen from 1904.

​New York, Jan 1 (IANS) Researchers have designed molecules with the potential to deliver healing power to stressed cells -- such as those involved in heart attacks.

The research, at a cellular level in the laboratory, involves organic molecules that break down to release hydrogen sulphide when triggered by specific conditions such as increased oxidative stress.

Oxidative stress damages cells and is tied especially to heart disease and cancer as well as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

"We have discovered that small organic molecules can be engineered to release a molecule called carbonyl sulphide, which is the most prevalent sulphur-containing molecule in the atmosphere, but more importantly converts rapidly to hydrogen sulphide under biological conditions," said study co-author Michael Pluth, Professor at the University of Oregon in the US.

"We developed and demonstrated a new mechanism to release small molecules that provide therapeutic hydrogen sulphide," Pluth said.

Hydrogen sulphide, a colourless gas, has long been known for its dangerous toxicity -- and its telltale smell of rotten eggs -- in the environment, but it also is produced in mammals, including humans, with important roles in molecular signalling and cardiac health.

One of the goals of developing these small hydrogen sulphide-releasing molecules is the potential for long-term applications in therapeutics, Pluth said.

Separate portions of the research were detailed in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and in an international journal Angewandte Chemie.

​New York, Jan 1 (IANS) A gene mutation linked to Alzheimer's disease and other age-related cognitive declines in our relatively safe and sterile post-industrial setting might have actually helped protect us from cognitive decline in ancient times, a new research suggests.

The findings suggest that a genetic mutation (or allele) that puts populations at risk for illnesses in one environmental setting could manifest itself in positive ways in a different setting.

"It seems that some of the very genetic mutations that help us succeed in more hazardous time periods and environments may actually become mismatched in our relatively safe and sterile post-industrial lifestyles," said lead author Ben Trumble, Assistant Professor at the Arizona State University in the US.

In a paper published in The FASEB Journal, the researchers examined how the apolipoprotein E (ApoE) gene might function differently in an infectious environment than in the urban industrialised settings where ApoE has mostly been examined.

All ApoE proteins help mediate cholesterol metabolism, and assist in the crucial activity of transporting fatty acids to the brain.

But in industrialised societies, ApoE4 variant carriers also face up to a four-fold higher risk for Alzheimer's disease and other age-related cognitive declines, as well as a higher risk for cardiovascular disease.

The goal of this study was to reexamine the potentially detrimental effects of the globally-present ApoE4 allele in environmental conditions more typical of those experienced throughout our species' existence -- in this case, a community of Amazonian forager-horticulturalists called the Tsimane.

"For 99 per cent of human evolution, we lived as hunter gatherers in small bands and the last 5,000-10,000 years -- with plant and animal domestication and sedentary urban industrial life -- is completely novel," Trumble said.

Due to the tropical environment and a lack of sanitation, running water, or electricity, remote populations like the Tsimane face high exposure to parasites and pathogens, which cause their own damage to cognitive abilities when untreated.

As a result, one might expect Tsimane ApoE4 carriers who also have a high parasite burden to experience faster and more severe mental decline in the presence of both these genetic and environmental risk factors.

But researchers discovered the exact opposite when they tested these individuals using a seven-part cognitive assessment and a medical exam.

In fact, Tsimane who both carried ApoE4 and had a high parasitic burden displayed steadier or even improved cognitive function in the assessment versus non-carriers with a similar level of parasitic exposure.

This indicated that the allele potentially played a role in maintaining cognitive function even when exposed to environmental-based health threats.