Knowledge Update

​Tokyo, June 29 (IANS) Japanese tech giant Sony announced on Wednesday that it was working on developing a robot which can connect emotionally with people, and expects to launch it soon.

​Colombo, June 28 (IANS) The Sri Lankan government on Tuesday said it will focus more on Asia, particularly India and China, to boost the local economy after Britain, in a historic referendum, decided to pull out from the European Union.

​Beijing, June 28 (IANS) A continental market with China, Russia and India as key stakeholders can be formed to reshape the global energy sector, a Chinese expert has said.

The three countries can also insist on an Asian pricing system, Xinhua news agency quoted Ren Zhihong of the Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences as saying.

​New York, June 28 (IANS) Ever surprised by finding a person whose face you remember but not the name until the "People you may know" feature on Facebook told you about him/her? This is probably because Facebook stalked you and used your phone's location to suggest new people you could befriend.

​New York, June 29 (IANS) Computer scientists have developed a video privacy software that helps prevent inadvertent disclosure of trade secrets and other restricted information within a camera's field of view by letting users specify what others can see.

​London, June 28 (IANS) A team of researchers has developed a new approach to find natural researves of helium -- a key element in MRI scanners, welding, industrial leak detection and nuclear energy -- the known reserves of which are quickly running out.

The first use of this method, developed by scientists at Oxford and Durham universities, has resulted in the discovery of a world-class helium gas field in Tanzania.

Until now helium has never been found intentionally -- being accidentally discovered in small quantities during oil and gas drilling. 

The study, presented recently at the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in Yokohama, Japan, shows that volcanic activity provides the intense heat necessary to release the gas from ancient, helium-bearing rocks.

"We show that volcanoes play an important role in the formation of viable helium reserves. Volcanic activity likely provides the heat necessary to release the helium accumulated in ancient crustal rocks," said Diveena Danabalan of Durham University.

"However, if gas traps are located too close to a given volcano, they run the risk of helium being heavily diluted by volcanic gases such as carbon dioxide, just as we see in thermal springs from the region (Tanzanian East African Rift Valley)," she added.

Danabalan and her team are now working to identify the "goldilocks-zone" between the ancient crust and the modern volcanoes where the balance between helium release and volcanic dilution is "just right".

The discovery of helium gas field in Tanzania using the new approach is being considered as a game changer for the future security of society's helium needs.

​New York, June 28 (IANS) Scientists have built a "bionic" cardiac patch that could act similarly to a pacemaker and monitor as well as respond to cardiac problems.

The researchers from Harvard University constructed nanoscale electronic scaffolds that can be seeded with cardiac cells to produce a bionic cardiac patch -- the engineered heart tissue with ability to replace heart muscle damaged during a heart attack. 

"I think one of the biggest impacts would ultimately be in the area that involves replaced of damaged cardiac tissue with pre-formed tissue patches," said Charles Lieber, who along with colleagues described the work in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

"Rather than simply implanting an engineered patch built on a passive scaffold, our works suggests it will be possible to surgically implant an innervated patch that would now be able to monitor and subtly adjust its performance," he added.

Once implanted, the "bionic" patch could act similarly to a pacemaker -- delivering electrical shocks to correct arrhythmia.

Unlike traditional pacemakers, the "bionic" patch -- because its electronic components are integrated throughout the tissue -- can detect arrhythmia far sooner, and operate at far lower voltages.

"Even before a person started to go into large-scale arrhythmia that frequently causes irreversible damage or other heart problems, this could detect the early-stage instabilities and intervene sooner," Lieber said. "It can also continuously monitor the feedback from the tissue and actively respond," he added.

The patch might also find use as a tool to monitor the responses under cardiac drugs, or to help pharmaceutical companies to screen the effectiveness of drugs under development.

​Beijing, June 28 (IANS) A new study has pinned down an overlooked source of outdoor pollution in Beijing -- residential cooking and heating -- which according to scientists contributes more to the city's choking smog than do the transportation sector and power plants combined.

"Coal and other dirty solid fuels are frequently used in homes for cooking and heating," said Denise Mauzerall from Princeton University who was part of the research team. 

"Because these emissions are essentially uncontrolled they emit a disproportionately large amount of air pollutants which contribute substantially to smog in Beijing and surrounding regions," she added.

According to the team from Princeton, the University of California-Berkeley, Peking University and Tsinghua University, households account for about 18 per cent of total energy use in the Beijing region but produce 50 per cent of black carbon emissions and 69 per cent of organic carbon emissions. 

In the Beijing area, households contribute more pollutants in the form of small soot particles (which are particularly hazardous to human health) than the transportation sector and power plants combined. In the winter heating season, households also contribute more small particles than do industrial sources.

The high levels of air pollutant emissions are due to the use of coal and other dirty fuels in small stoves and heaters that lack the pollution controls in place in power plants, vehicles and at some factories, according to the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The region in the study included the cities of Beijing and the surrounding Tianjin and Hebei provinces.​

New York, June 29 (IANS) Scientists have discovered a new way to potentially treat muscle regeneration in patients with severe burns.

Severe burns results in profound skeletal muscle atrophy -- wasting away of muscles. This persistent muscle loss combined with weakness are major complications that hamper recovery from burn injury.

The findings showed that satellite cells -- the resident stem cell in skeletal muscle cells -- responsible for maintaining and regenerating skeletal muscle following injury was reduced in burn patients.

Further, while a severe burn injury causes cell death in the muscles, it also induces the muscle regeneration properties of satellite cells.

Satellite cells undergo concurrent cell death and activation acutely following a burn, with a net reduction in satellite cell content compared to healthy controls. 

The activation and death of satellite cells likely impacts the recovery of lean tissue following a severe burn, contributing to prolonged frailty in burn survivors.

"Our results highlight the therapeutic potential of satellite cells to aid regeneration and preservation of muscle mass following a severe burn injury," said lead researcher Celeste C. Finnerty, Associate Professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch in the US.

Additionally, a significant percentage of satellite cells in burn patients expressed protein Ki67, a marker for cellular proliferation

"We found a very high amount of the marker protein Ki67, which indicates that the burn injury activates satellite cells and thus stimulates skeletal muscle regeneration," added lead author Christopher S. Fry, Assistant Professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch. 

For the study, published in The Journal of Physiology, the team collected tissue samples from 12 patients with severe burn injuries and 12 healthy subjects. 

They used immunohistochemical -- the process of detecting antigens in cells of a tissue section -- techniques to analyse and compare the satellite cell content, activation and cell death (apoptosis), as well as muscle fibre regeneration in the tissue samples. 

“Future studies can now investigate therapies that can prevent satellite cells from cell death and promote their activity to regenerate skeletal cells, improving the recovery of severe burns patients," Finnerty noted.​

​London, June 29 (IANS) Researchers have developed a new method to calculate your 10-year risk for heart attack with greater precision than traditional risk factors alone.

Levels of cholesterol and triglycerides, body mass index (BMI), smoking habits and blood pressure are considered as traditional risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

There are several risk prediction calculators available today.

However, the use of risk prediction calculators has declined in the primary care setting because the currently available calculators only explain a modest proportion of the incidence.

For myocardial infarction or heart attack, it is estimated that 15-20 per cent of the patients had none of the traditional risk factors and would be classified as "low risk".

"Our study showed that by measuring a combination of five different microRNAs and adding this information to the traditional risk factors for cardiovascular disease, we could identify those that were going to experience a myocardial infarction with considerably improved precision", said study first author Anja Bye from Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). 

The study was published in Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology.

The researchers designed this study to explore the possibility of a new type of bio marker called circulating microRNAs, to predict 10-year risk for myocardial infarction.

They included 212 participants (40-70 years) from the Nord-Trondelag Health Study 2 (HUNT2, blood collected in 1996) who either died from heart attack within 10 years or remained healthy at the time of HUNT3 (2006).