Knowledge Update

​​Washington, July 16 (IANS) The US space agency is ready to proceed with the final design and construction of its next Mars rover, currently targeted to launch in the summer of 2020 and arrive on the Red Planet in February 2021, NASA said.

The Mars 2020 rover will investigate a region of Mars where the ancient environment may have been favourable for microbial life, probing the Martian rocks for evidence of past life.

"This mission marks a significant milestone in NASA’s Journey to Mars - to determine whether life has ever existed on Mars, and to advance our goal of sending humans to the Red Planet,” said Geoffrey Yoder, Acting Associate Administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. 

Throughout its investigation, it will collect samples of soil and rock and cache them on the surface for potential return to Earth by a future mission.

"The Mars 2020 rover is the first step in a potential multi-mission campaign to return carefully selected and sealed samples of Martian rocks and soil to Earth,” Yoder noted.

To reduce risk and provide cost savings, the 2020 rover will look much like its six-wheeled, one-tonne predecessor, Curiosity, which landed on Mars in 2012, but with an array of new science instruments and enhancements to explore Mars as never before, NASA said in a statement.

The Mars 2020 rover will use the same sky crane landing system as Curiosity, but will have the ability to land in a more challenging terrain with two enhancements, making more rugged sites eligible as safe landing candidates, the US space agency pointed out.

The Mars 2020 mission has already passed an extensive review process and a major development milestone.

Once a mission receives preliminary approval, it must go through four rigorous technical and programmatic reviews -- known as Key Decision Points (KDP) to proceed through the phases of development prior to launch. 

Phase A involves concept and requirements definition, Phase B is preliminary design and technology development, Phase C is final design and fabrication, and Phase D is system assembly, testing, and launch. Mars 2020 has just passed its KDP-C milestone.

"Since Mars 2020 is leveraging the design and some spare hardware from Curiosity, a significant amount of the mission's heritage components have already been built during Phases A and B,” George Tahu, Mars 2020 Programme Executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington said. 

"With the KDP to enter Phase C completed, the project is proceeding with final design and construction of the new systems, as well as the rest of the heritage elements for the mission," Tahu added.​

​London, July 16 (IANS) Nearly half of the parents in Britain think heavy social media use is hampering their children's moral development, a British poll revealed on Saturday.

Only 15 per cent of parents thought that popular social media websites such as Facebook provided a positive influence on a young person’s character, said the poll from the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, University of Birmingham.

The team of researchers found that 40 per cent of parents were "concerned" or "extremely concerned" about the negative and potentially harmful impact of social media.

"There are some surprising findings in the poll, not the least the low level of agreement that social media can enhance or support a young person's character or moral development," lead researcher Dr Blaire Morgan said in a university statement.

According to the report, 24 percent of the respondents said forgiveness and self-control were the qualities that were least present in them, followed by honesty (21 per cent), fairness (20 per cent) and humility (18 per cent).

"Sixty percent of parents named anger and hostility as the most negative trait displayed, followed by arrogance (51 per cent), ignorance (43 per cent), bad judgment (41 per cent) and hatred (36 per cent)," the report noted.

Meanwhile, the top five character strengths promoted at least once a month on social media sites were identified as humour (52 per cent), appreciation of beauty (51 per cent), creativity (44 per cent), love (39 per cent) and courage (39 per cent).​

​New York, July 16 (IANS) Turtles developed shells as a tool for burrowing underground to escape harsh climatic conditions, a study has found, contradicting the traditional belief that they used their shells for their protection.

The study was conducted on new fossil material, a 15 cm long specimen of the 260- million-year-old, partially shelled, proto turtle or stem turtle, Eunotosaurus Africanus from the Karoo Basin of South Africa, which indicated that the initiation of rib broadening was an adaptive response to fossoriality. 

Numerous fossorial animal -- one that is adapted to digging and life underground such as the badger -- correlates are expressed throughout Eunotosaurus' skeleton.

These stem turtles indicate that the shell did not evolve for protection, rather adaptation related to digging was the initial impetus in the origin of the shell.

"The earliest beginnings of the turtle shell was not for protection but rather for digging underground to escape the harsh South African environment where these early proto turtles lived," said lead author Tyler Lyson, Paleontologist Denver Museum of Nature & Science in Colorado, US.

The adaptations related to fossoriality likely facilitated movement of stem turtles into aquatic environments early in the groups' evolutionary history, and this ecology may have played an important role in stem turtles surviving the Permian/Triassic extinction event that occurred about 252-million-years ago, said the paper published in the journal Current Biology.

Further, the developmental and fossil data showed that one of the first steps toward the shelled body plan was broadening of the ribs.

The distinctly broadened ribs -- that play a crucial role in ventilating the lungs and are used to support the body during locomotion -- has a serious impact on both breathing and speed in these quadrupedal animals. 

These broadened ribs stiffen the torso, which shortens an animals stride length and slows it down, interfering with breathing.

"We knew from both the fossil record and observations how the turtle shell develops into modern turtles that one of the first major changes toward a shell was the broadening of the ribs," Lyson added.

The broad ribs of Eunotosaurus provide an intrinsically stable base on which to operate a powerful forelimb digging mechanism.

Most of these features are widely distributed along the turtle stem and into the crown clade, indicating the common ancestor of Eunotosaurus and modern turtles possessed a body plan significantly influenced by digging, the researchers concluded.​

​Istanbul, July 15 (IANS) China's Zuojiang Huashan rock-art cultural landscape was on Friday added to the World Heritage List at the 40th session of World Heritage Committee held in Istanbul.

The World Heritage Committee cited the site's uniqueness in combining the landscape and rock art with the vivid and deep social life of the Luoyue people, who lived along the Zuojiang river, Xinhua news agency reported.

The landscape was formed 200 million years ago, according to a report presented at the meeting.

The images on the rocks depicting drums and related elements are symbolic records directly associated with the bronze drum culture once widespread in the region, the report said.

The rock art landscape is the first of its kind for China's heritage, and raises to 49 the number of the Chinese properties on the World Heritage List.

During the evaluation of the site, the Turkish representative drew the attention to the natural risks that have been threatening the outstanding universal value of Huashan rock art.

The representative urged the committee to create a risk cover strategy.

At its meeting until Sunday, the World Heritage Committee will review the nominations of 26 other sites to the prestigious World Heritage List.

Among them are nine natural, 13 cultural and four mixed ones submitted from across the world.​

New York, July 16 (IANS) Soon after technology giant Apple reported its first-ever quarterly drop in iPhone sales in April, a new report has found that "the outlook for iPhone demand keeps getting murkier" as other leading smartphone brands like Samsung make inroads in the market. The number of iPhone units sold would tumble 12 per cent from 2015 and the upcoming iPhone 7 would be "a marginal cycle at best", New York Post reported, quoting a Wall Street analyst on Friday. Recently, retail data insights and consulting business Kantar Retail reported that Samsung’s Galaxy 7 line of smartphones grabbed 16 per cent of total sales in the US during the three months ended May 31, exceeding the 14.6 per cent of sales for the iPhone 6s. As the momentum of the 6s has slowed down, investors are worried about iPhone 7 that the device might not be a significant upgrade. Mark Moskowitz of Barclays forecast that this year’s iPhone unit sales would total 203.7 million down from 231.5 million last year. The report by Kantar not only mentioned the threat to Apple but to its biggest rival Samsung as well by the increasing competition from lower-priced rivals, most notably China-based Xiaomi and Huawei. “Apple and Samsung should stop worrying so much about each other and take a look around them,” Kantar analyst Lauren Guenveur was quoted as saying, noting that Huawei aims to overtake Apple as the second-largest smartphone seller by 2020. Guenveur also noted that “rumours are swirling” that Google will soon introduce a handset of its own. Earlier this week, research firm IDC said Apple’s share of the worldwide PC market shrank to 7.1 per cent from 7.4 per cent as customers hold out for a long-awaited refresh to the MacBook Pro line. Apple is slated to give an update on recent demand when it reports results on July 26.​

​New York, July 15 (IANS) Dietary restriction or limited food intake without malnutrition has beneficial effects on longevity in species, including humans, a new study has found.

The study published in the journal PLoS Genetics reveals understanding on how dietary restriction leads to increase in lifespan and impacts autophagy in the intestine.

Autophagy which plays a role in lifespan extension involves breaking down of the cell's parts -- its protein-making, power-generating and transport systems into small molecules.

"In this study, we used the small roundworm C. elegans as a model to show that autophagy in the intestine is critical for lifespan extension," said Malene Hansen, Associate Professor at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute.

The researchers found that the gut of dietary-restricted worms has a higher rate of autophagy, which appears to improve fitness in multiple ways like preserving intestinal integrity and maintaining the animal's ability to move around.

“We found that blocking autophagy in their intestines significantly shortened their lifespans, showing that autophagy in this organ is key for longevity,” said Sara Gelino, Researcher at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute.

While normal worms' gut barriers become leaky as they get older, those of eat-2 type of worms remain intact. Preventing autophagy indicated that a non-leaky intestine is an important factor for long life, suggested the study.

The research team also observed that turning off autophagy in the intestine made the slow-eating, long-lived worms move around less.

The decrease in physical activity indicates that autophagy in one organ can have a major impact on other organs, in this case probably muscle or motor neurons, suggested the study.​

New York, July 16 (IANS) The popular Pokemon GO that requires you to keep the screen on all the time may drive smartphone manufacturers to insert a large battery, making smartphones thicker.

​New York, July 15 (IANS) New York, July 15 (IANS) US tech giant IBM on Friday announced a new cloud service for organisations which require a secure environment for blockchain networks allowing clients to test and run projects that handle private data.

​Toronto, July 15 (IANS) After analysing Kepler space telescope data, astronomers from the University of Toronto, Canada, have found a clear understanding yet of a class of exoplanets called 'Warm Jupiters', showing that many have unexpected planetary companions.

The analysis provides strong evidence of the existence of two distinct types of 'Warm Jupiters', each with their own formation and dynamical history.

The two types include those that have companions and thus, likely formed where we find them today and those with no companions that likely migrated to their current positions.

“Our findings suggest that a big fraction of 'Warm Jupiters' cannot have migrated to their current positions dynamically and that it would be a good idea to consider more seriously that they formed where we find them,” said Chelsea Huang, a Dunlap Fellow at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto.

Warm Jupiters are large, gas-giant exoplanets -- planets found around stars other than the Sun.

They are comparable in size to the gas-giants in our solar system.

But unlike the Sun's family of giant planets, “Warm Jupiters” orbit their parent stars at roughly the same distance that Mercury, Venus and the Earth circle the Sun.

They take 10 to 200 days to complete a single orbit.

Because of their proximity to their parent stars, they are warmer than our system's cold gas giants -- though not as hot as “Hot Jupiters” which are typically closer to their parent stars than Mercury.

Instead of finding "lonely", companion-less “Warm Jupiters”, the team found that 11 of the 27 targets they studied have companions ranging in size from Earth-like to Neptune-like.

“The number of 'Warm Jupiters' with smaller neighbours may be even higher. We may find that more than half have companions,” Huang noted in a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal.​

London, July 15 (IANS) Levels of global biodiversity loss are no longer within the safe limit and this may negatively impact the ecosystem function and the sustainability of human societies, a new study has revealed.

According to the study, levels of biodiversity loss are so high that if left unchecked, they could undermine efforts towards long-term sustainable development.

"We know biodiversity loss affects ecosystem function but how it does this is not entirely clear. What we do know is that in many parts of the world, we are approaching a situation where human intervention might be needed to sustain ecosystem function," said Tim Newbold of the University College of London.

The researchers found that grasslands, savannas and shrublands were most affected by biodiversity loss, followed closely by many of the world's forests and woodlands. 

The ability of biodiversity in these areas to support key ecosystem functions such as growth of living organisms and nutrient cycling has become increasingly uncertain, suggested the study published in the journal Science.

For 58.1 per cent of the world's land surface which is home to 71.4 per cent of the global population, the level of biodiversity loss is substantial enough to question the ability of ecosystems to support human societies, revealed the study.

"It's worrying that land use has already pushed biodiversity below the level proposed as a safe limit," said Andy Purvis, Professor at the Imperial College, London.

The team used data from hundreds of scientists to analyse 2.38 million records for 39,123 species at 18,659 sites which were then applied to estimate how biodiversity in every square kilometre land has changed since before humans modified the habitat.

They found that biodiversity hotspots are facing threat, showing a decline. Other high biodiversity areas, such as Amazonia, which have seen no land use change have higher levels of biodiversity and more scope for proactive conservation.​