Knowledge Update

New York, Oct 7 (IANS) Just like us, apes can grasp complex mental states and have the ability to guess what others might be thinking, suggests new research.

Apes can correctly anticipate that humans will look for a hidden item in a specific location, even if the apes know that item is no longer there, a new study revealed. 

The results, which show that apes can grasp what others know even when it differs from their own knowledge, demonstrate that nonhuman primates can recognise others' beliefs, desires, and intentions -- a phenomenon called "theory of mind" (ToM), and one that has generally been believed as unique to humans. 

"This is the first time that any nonhuman animals have passed a version of the false belief test," said one of the lead researchers Christopher Krupenye from Duke University in Durham, US.

The capacity to tell when others hold mistaken beliefs is seen as a key milestone in human cognitive development. Such skills are essential for getting along with other people and predicting what they might do. 

The new findings, published in the journal Science, suggest the ability is not unique to humans, but has existed in the primate family tree for at least 13 to 18 million years, since the last common ancestors of chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans and humans.

"If future experiments confirm these findings, they could lead scientists to rethink how deeply apes understand each other," Krupenye said.

In the study, the apes watched two short videos. In one, a person in a King Kong suit hides himself in one of two large haystacks while a man watches. Then the man disappears through a door, and while no one is looking the King Kong runs away. In the final scene, the man reappears and tries to find King Kong.

The second video is similar, except that the man returns to the scene to retrieve a stone he saw King Kong hide in one of two boxes. But King Kong has stolen it behind the man's back and made a getaway.

The researchers teased out what the apes were thinking while they watched the movies by following their gaze with an infrared eye-tracker installed outside their enclosures.

To pass the test, the apes must predict that when the man returns, he will mistakenly look for the object where he last saw it, even though they themselves know it is no longer there.

In both cases, the apes stared first and longest at the location where the man last saw the object, suggesting they expected him to believe it was still hidden in that spot.

Their results mirror those from similar experiments with human infants under the age of two.

The apes' correct anticipation of where the human expected the object to be suggests that they understand that person's perspective.

​New York, Oct 6 (IANS) Leisure time spent at home with family may not only satisfy individuals but also become a more effective route to happiness, says a study.

The best predictor of happiness for families may be spending quality time together in familiar activities inside the home, the researchers said.

"That may be because when the brain is focused on processing new information -- such as taking part in an unfamiliar activity with unfamiliar people in a new location -- less 'brain power' is available to focus on the family relationships," said lead author Karen K. Melton, Assistant Professor at Baylor University in Texas, US.

On the other hand, while quality time together contributes to satisfaction with family life, "all family leisure is not equal", Melton added. 

Melton also said the catchy expression, "The family that plays together, stays together!" carries two misconceptions: that all family leisure brings positive results and that all family activities are equal.

"Family members can also express stress and conflict as well as pleasure during leisure time. The activities alone will not heal the scars of hurting families," she noted. 

While stating that one-size may not fit all families, Melton said: "for some families, quality togetherness is having dinner together or playing games; for others, it may be hobbies, videos or TV, music," Melton said. 

For the study, researchers used a sample of 1,502 individuals in 884 families in Britain. Each family unit taking part in the online research had at least one child between the age of 11 and 15. 

Participants answered questions about whether they took part in family leisure in the past years, and if so, what activities they did, how much time they spent doing them and how frequently they did so.

The study was published in World Leisure Journal.

London, Oct 6 (IANS) Researchers have developed a simple device that can act as a virtual physiotherapist and improve the ability of patients with arm disability to exercise using physiotherapy-like computer games.

Arm weaknesses impairs people's ability to carry out daily activities and requires expensive long-term care.

The low-cost device, with the trade name gripAble, consists of a lightweight electronic handgrip, which interacts wirelessly with a standard PC tablet to enable the user to play arm-training games. 

"The use of mobile-gaming could provide a cost-effective and easily available means to improve the arm movements of stroke patients," said lead researcher Paul Bentley, senior lecturer at Imperial College, London. 

To use it, patients squeeze, turn or lift the handgrip, and it vibrates in response to their performance whilst playing. 

The device uses a novel mechanism, which can detect the tiny flicker movements of severely paralysed patients and channel them into controlling a computer game, the researchers said.

The device improves arm and cognitive function of patients who have mild to severe arm weaknesses and can also be used unsupervised in hospitals and independently by patients at home, Bentley added. 

Researchers have shown that the device enabled more than half of the severely disabled patients in the study to engage with the arm-training software, whereas none of the patients were able to use conventional control methods such as swiping and tapping on tablets and smartphones.

Using the device increased the proportion of paralysed stroke patients able to direct movements on a tablet screen by 50 per cent compared to standard methods. 

Further, the study showed that 93 per cent of patients were able to make meaningful movements to direct the cursor as a result of using gripAble. 

The potential of gripAble as a means of delivering cost-effective physiotherapy was also recognised by a NHS England Innovation Challenge Prize in early 2016.

The findings appear in the paper published in the journal PLOS ONE. 

​London, Oct 6 (IANS) Nearly from the moment of birth, human beings possess the capacity to distinguish between speakers of their native language and other language.

Thus, they pay more attention to native language cues in deciding where to place their focus as well as adopt to the native speakers' cultural behaviour, a study has found. 

"The study reveals the great importance of cultural and linguistic similarity in how infants choose to direct their attention," said Hanna Marno from the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. 

The findings show how infants and young children are tuned to quickly acquire the knowledge of their society and adapt to their cultural environment, Marno added.

In the study, the researchers determined to know whether young babies would selectively pay attention to different speakers in their environment, even when they do not understand the meaning of the words.

They conducted an experiment that included forty 12-month-old infants, who first listened to two adult female speakers -- one in their native language of Italian, the other in Slovenian -- for two minutes. 

The infants then observed movies of both women -- the native and non-native speaker separately -- gazing at two colorful objects.

The results showed that the infants focused on the object that had first been presented by the native speaker for a longer period of time. 

Even though language was not directly related to the objects, infants appeared to be making linguistic distinctions in their object preferences.

The experiment proved that listening to native speakers affects infants' behaviour, the study observed.

Humans have a hard-wired preference for own language patterns, so much so that the cries of very young infants reflect the melodies of their native language, the researchers said, in the paper recently published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

​London, Oct 6 (IANS) Vitamin E supplementation may reduce the risk of pneumonia in elderly men who are not smokers, new research has found.

Administration of 50 mg per day of vitamin E decreased the risk of pneumonia in elderly male smokers by 72 per cent after they quit smoking, the findings, published in the journal Clinical Interventions in Aging, showed.

For the study, Harri Hemila from University of Helsinki, Finland, explored whether vitamin E supplementation might influence the risk of community-acquired pneumonia. 

He analysed the data of the randomised trial (Alpha-Tocopherol Beta-Carotene Cancer Prevention [ATBC] Study) which was conducted in Finland and included male smokers aged from 50 to 69 years.

The age when the participant had started to smoke significantly modified the effect of vitamin E on pneumonia. 

Vitamin E decreased the risk of pneumonia by 35 per cent in 7,469 participants who had started smoking at a later age, at 21 years or older, whereas the vitamin had no apparent effect on pneumonia for those who had started to smoke at a younger age.

Among the 7,469 participants who started to smoke at a later age, vitamin E supplementation reduced the incidence of pneumonia by 69 per cent in a subgroup of 2,216 light smokers who exercised in their leisure time. 

In this subgroup, vitamin E prevented pneumonia in 12.9 per cent of the participants by the time they reached the age of 74 years, which corresponds to one in eight getting a benefit from the vitamin. 

The vitamin did not have a significant effect on participants who smoked heavily or had not been exercising.

The incidence of pneumonia was 72 percent lower in the vitamin E participants who had quit smoking, and this benefit from vitamin E was also seen among those who smoked heavily or did not exercise.

New York, Oct 5 (IANS) Medication-resistant bacteria are making it more difficult to treat a common but severe kidney infection, says a study.

Pyelonephritis -- infection of the kidney usually caused by E. coli bacteria and which can start as a urinary tract infection -- causes fever, back pain and vomiting. 

About half of people infected require hospitalisation. If not treated with effective antibiotics, it can cause sepsis and death.

"This is a very real example of the threat posed by the emergence of new antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, which greatly complicates treatment of infection," said the study's lead author David Talan, Professor at David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California, Los Angeles. 

In an earlier study based on data from 10 large hospital emergency departments in the US, almost 12 per cent of people diagnosed with pyelonephritis had infections resistant to the standard class of antibiotic used in treatment -- fluoroquinolone. That is up from four per cent in a similar study conducted a decade ago. 

The new study -- published in the jurnal Emerging Infectious Diseases -- also documents the emergence of infections caused by a specific strain of E. coli that is resistant to additional types of antibiotics, severely limiting treatment options. 

That strain, dubbed ESBL for the antibiotic-destroying enzymes it produces (extended-spectrum beta-lactamases), was not detected in the previous study. 

Currently, there are only a few intravenous antibiotic options to treat ESBL-related infections, and no oral antibiotics that are consistently effective.

The study included 453 people diagnosed with kidney infection. The study participants were diagnosed between July 2013 and December 2014 in 10 emergency departments at large hospitals in the US.

The rates of ESBL-related infections varied from zero per cent to more than 20 per cent, depending on the location of the emergency room and patient risk factors.

About three of every four people infected with ESBL-producing E. coli were initially treated with antibiotics ineffective against that particular strain of bacteria, placing them at risk for poor outcomes, the researchers reported.

​Mumbai, Oct 5 (IANS) Although 48 per cent of companies have invested in big data in 2016 -- up three per cent from 2015 -- those who plan to invest within the next two years fell from 31 to 25 per cent in 2016, a new Gartner survey has found.

​Washington, Oct 4 (IANS) The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday maintained its forecast for global growth in 2016 at 3.1 per cent, saying the subpar trend will continue without determined policy action.

New York, Oct 5 (IANS) After the popular mobile messaging platform WhatsApp, parent company Facebook has reportedly rolled out end-to-end encryption for its Messenger users.