Knowledge Update

​Singapore, Dec 23 (IANS) A four-day festival to mark the 350th birthday of Guru Gobind Singh opened here on Friday.

Thousands of Sikhs from around the region were expected to attend the "Naam Ras Kirtan Darbar", a biennial event which started in 2002, said a report in the Strait Times on Friday. 

Guru Gobind Singh was the 10th Sikh guru and was known as a literary genius.

The free event will feature music performances and an exhibition on the history of Sikhism. It will also offer free vegetarian food made by volunteers at gurdwaras in Singapore.

The festival will also have on display a sacred relic - a 300-years-old pitcher used by Guru Gobind Singh. Another highlight is a miniature paper replica of the Golden Temple of Amritsar. 

More than 20,000 people are expected to attend the festival, which is one of largest Sikh gatherings outside South Asia. A live feed of the event will be streamed on Facebook.

For many Sikhs the event will be an opportunity to meet members of their community living in different countries.

"Singapore has always been our home base. It is a good chance to come back home, see each other and be part of the community again," said Shanghai-based Ashmit Singh who has come to attend the event.

Guramrit Singh, an IT designer, said that apart from learning more about the religion, he enjoys the sense of community that the festival provides.

​Washington, Dec 23 (IANS) The US government began asking select foreign visitors to provide their Facebook, Twitter and other social media accounts upon arriving in the country, a move designed to spot potential terrorist threats, a media report said.

Since Tuesday, foreign travellers arriving in the country on the visa waiver programme have been presented with an "optional" request to "enter information associated with your online presence", a government official confirmed on Thursday. 

The prompt includes a drop-down menu that lists platforms including Facebook, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube, as well as a space for users to input their account names on those sites, Politico reported.

According to the official, the new policy comes as Washington tries to improve its ability to spot and deny entry to individuals who have ties to terrorist groups like the Islamic State. 

But the government has faced a barrage of criticism since it first floated the idea last year.

The Internet Association, which represents companies including Facebook, Google and Twitter, argued that the draft policy threatened free expression and posed new privacy and security risks to foreigners.

A spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection, who said the government approved the change on December 19, told Politico on Thursday that the new policy is meant to "identify potential threats". 

Previously, the agency had said it would not prohibit entry to foreigners who did not provide their social media account information.

The question itself is included in what is known as the Electronic System for Travel Authorisation (ESTA), a process that certain foreign travellers must complete to come to the US. 

ESTA and a related paper form specifically apply to those arriving here through the visa-waiver programme, which allows citizens of 38 countries to travel and stay in the US for up to 90 days without a visa.

​London, Dec 23 (IANS) The extra kilos you gain during the holidays would not only show up on your hips but could also affect your DNA, leading to changes in the expression of inflammatory genes, results of a large-scale international study suggest. The scientists examined the blood samples of over 10,000 women and men from Europe, a large proportion of whom were inhabitants of London of Indian ancestry, who according to the authors are at high risk for obesity and metabolic diseases. The study, published in the journal Nature, showed that a high BMI (body mass index) leads to epigenetic changes at nearly 200 loci of the genome -- with effects on gene expression. "In particular, significant changes were found in the expression of genes responsible for lipid metabolism and substrate transport, but inflammation-related gene loci were also affected," said group leader Harald Grallert from Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen - German Research Centre for Environmental Health, Neuherberg, Germany. While our genes do not change in the course of life, our lifestyle can directly influence their surroundings. Scientists spoke here of the epigenome, which refers to everything that happens on or around the genes. Up to now there has not been much research on how the epigenome is altered as a result of being overweight. "This issue is particularly relevant because an estimated one and a half billion people throughout the world are overweight," first author Simone Wahl of the Research Unit Molecular Epidemiology (AME) at Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen, noted. From the data, the team was also able to identify epigenetic markers that could predict the risk of Type-2 diabetes. "Our results allow new insights into which signaling pathways are influenced by obesity", said Christian Gieger, head of the AME. "We hope that this will lead to new strategies for predicting and possibly preventing Type-2 diabetes and other consequences of being overweight," Gieger said.

​New York, Dec 23 (IANS) Children born to women who smoked during their pregnancy were more likely to show signs of kidney damage by the age of three, compared to those born to non-smoking mothers, a research has warned.

The study showed that maternal smoking during pregnancy was one of the risk factors of childhood proteinuria -- abnormal amount of protein in urine -- a sign of kidney disease.

The effects on kidney health were evident in 3-year-old children.

"Maternal smoking during pregnancy is known to be associated with preterm birth, low birth weight, and neonatal asphyxia. The findings from this study suggest an additional adverse effects of maternal smoking during pregnancy," said Koji Kawakami from Kyoto University, in Japan. 

For the study, the team looked for the presence of proteinuria in urinary tests from 44,595 children from pregnancy to three-years of age. 

The results showed that the prevalence rates of proteinuria in children at age three in the maternal smoking groups -- none, past, and current -- were 78.9 per cent, 4.4 per cent and 16.7 per cent, respectively. 

Maternal smoking during pregnancy was associated with a 1.24-times increased risk of child proteinuria compared with no exposure to maternal smoking during pregnancy.

"Prevention of child proteinuria is important since child proteinuria can lead to development of chronic kidney disease in adulthood and ultimately end stage renal disease," Kawakami said.

The findings is forthcoming in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN). 

New York, Dec 23 (IANS) Exposure to a common plastic compound found in baby bottles and personal care products may increase the risk of pregnant women and lactating mothers developing negative behavioural changes and impairment in brain regions, researchers have warned.

The study, conducted in mice, showed that the exposure to bisphenol S (BPS) -- a replacement chemical for Bisphenol A (BPA) -- impaired the maternal care of pups, including mothers' ability to adjust to the needs of their young during early development. 

"BPS affects maternal behaviour as well as maternally relevant neural correlates," said Mary Catanese, doctoral student at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst. 

The effects differ based on dose, postpartum period and generational timing of exposure, Catanese said.

Further, BPS exposure was found to increase the infanticide thoughts in a brain region sensitive to estrogen or estrogen-mimicking chemicals as well as important in maternal behaviour in mice. 

"Although these same effects were not seen at the higher dose, more than 10 per cent of females exposed to two microgram BPS/kg per day either killed their pups or provided such poor instrumental maternal care that one or more pups needed to be euthanised. 

While not statistically significant, the neglect and poor maternal care we observed were striking," explained Laura Vandenberg, assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts.

In addition, BPS exposure may also impair a mother to adjust to the changing needs of her pups, the researchers observed.

BPS-exposed mothers showed significantly shorter latency to retrieve their first pup and significantly shorter latency to retrieve their entire litter, which may not represent improved care but instead "may indicate hyperactivity, compulsivity-like behaviour, heightened stress response to scattered pups, or a displaced form of retrieval," Vandenberg noted.

The details of the study appeared in the journal Endocrinology.

New York, Dec 23 (IANS) You can literally lose sleep over discrimination as a new study has found that people who perceive more unfairness in daily life have higher rates of sleep problems.

"Discrimination is an important factor associated with sleep measures in middle-aged adults," according to the study by Sherry Owens of West Virginia University in the US, and colleagues. 

The research included 441 adults from a study of health and well-being in middle age and beyond (the MIDUS Study). The participants' average age was 47 years. 

Participants wore an activity monitor device for one week to gather data on objective sleep measures -- for example, sleep efficiency, calculated as the percentage of time spent in bed that the person was asleep. 

They also completed subjective sleep ratings -- for example, how often they had sleep problems.

Perceived experiences of discrimination were assessed using a validated "Everyday Discrimination Scale." 

For example, participants were asked how often they were treated with less courtesy or respect than others, or how often they were insulted or harassed.

Participants who perceived more discrimination had increased sleep problems, according to the study published in Psychosomatic Medicine: Journal of Biobehavioral Medicine.

Higher discrimination scores were associated with 12 per cent higher odds of poor sleep efficiency and a nine percent increase in the odds of poor sleep quality. 

Discrimination was also related to (objective) time spent awake after falling asleep and (subjective) overall sleep difficulties.

While poor sleep has previously been linked to higher perceived discrimination, the researchers said that the new study is the first to look at how discrimination affects both objective and subjective sleep measures.

"The findings support the model that discrimination acts as a stressor than can disrupt subjective and objective sleep," the study said.

New York, Dec 23 (IANS) Researchers have developed a new tattoo ink that glows only under certain light conditions and disappears later. It can better help in surgical treatment of patients with a form of skin cancer much more than the commercially available tattoo pigments.

Tattoos may not be just for body art, but are also used by the medical community for precisely demarcating future treatment landmarks. 

This is especially important for identifying biopsy sites of nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC) patients as they typically have to wait up to three months between a biopsy confirming their condition and treatment. 

However, the commercially available tattoo pigments inks can cause discomfort and inflammation.

The new ink developed by researchers led by Kai Chen University of Southern California is time-limited. Under ambient lighting, the nanoparticles are invisible, which would avoid unwanted markings in a patient's skin, and is a safer, more patient-friendly option. 

Testing in mice showed that tattoos created with these nanoparticles did not cause inflammation and lasted for three months. 

The study was published in the journal ACS Nano.

​London, Dec 23 (IANS) In a large human trial led by the World Health Organisation (WHO), an experimental Ebola vaccine was found highly protective against the deadly virus, promising an effective weapon against any future outbreak.

The vaccine is the first to prevent infection from one of the most lethal known pathogens, according to the results published in The Lancet journal. 

"While these compelling results come too late for those who lost their lives during West Africa's Ebola epidemic, they show that when the next Ebola outbreak hits, we will not be defenceless," said Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO's Assistant Director-General for Health Systems and Innovation, and the study's lead author.

In the most recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa that started in late 2013, more than 11,000 people lost their lives. The WHO removed the global emergency tag for the disease early this year.

The vaccine, called rVSV-ZEBOV, was studied in a trial involving 11,841 people in Guinea during 2015. 

Among the 5,837 people who received the vaccine, no Ebola cases were recorded 10 days or more after vaccination. 

In comparison, there were 23 cases 10 days or more after vaccination among those who did not receive the vaccine.

The trial was led by the World Health Organization, together with Guinea's Ministry of Health and other international partners.

The vaccine's manufacturer, Merck, Sharpe & Dohme, this year received Breakthrough Therapy Designation from the United States Food and Drug Administration and PRIME status from the European Medicines Agency, enabling faster regulatory review of the vaccine once it is submitted.

Since Ebola virus was first identified in 1976, sporadic outbreaks have been reported in Africa. 

But the 2013-2016 West African Ebola outbreak, which resulted in more than 11,300 deaths, highlighted the need for a vaccine.

The trial took place in the coastal region of Basse-Guinée, the area of Guinea still experiencing new Ebola cases when the trial started in 2015. 

To assess safety, people who received the vaccine were observed for 30 minutes after vaccination, and at repeated home visits up to 12 weeks later. 

Approximately half reported mild symptoms soon after vaccination, including headache, fatigue and muscle pain but recovered within days without long-term effects. 

Two serious adverse events were judged to be related to vaccination (a febrile reaction and one anaphylaxis) and one was judged to be possibly related (influenza-like illness). 

All three recovered without any long term effects, the study reported.

Amman, Dec 22 (IANS/WAM) Japan has signed an agreement for a $254 million grant to Jordan to enhance its financial situation and support development policies to reform public services in the country.

​Brussels, Dec 22 (IANS) The European Police Office (Europol) has signed an agreement with EURid, the European Commission-appointed internet registry manager, to enhance internet security cooperation.