Knowledge Update

Jakarta, April 21 (IANS) US-based travel reviewer website TripAdvisor presented its 2017 "World's Best Destination" Award to Indonesia's resort island of Bali.

​New York, April 21 (IANS) New genetic evidence confirms a long-held hypothesis that our earliest mammalian ancestors indeed had powerful night-time vision.

The findings published in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that adapting to life in the dark helped the early mammals find food and avoid reptilian predators that hunted by day. 

The research team examined genes involved in night vision in animals throughout the evolutionary tree, looking for places where those genes became enhanced.

"This method is like using the genome as a fossil record, and with it we've shown when genes involved in night vision appear," said lead researcher Liz Hadly, Professor of Biology at Stanford University in the US.

"It's a very powerful way of corroborating a story that has been, up to now, only hypothesized," Hadly said.

Mammals and reptiles share a common ancestor, with the earliest mammal-like animals appearing in the Late Triassic about 200 million years ago. 

Fossil evidence suggests that early mammals had excellent hearing and sense of smell and were likely also warm-blooded. 

All of these features are common in their descendants, the living mammals, most of whom are nocturnal. 

Therefore, experts have hypothesised that early mammals were also nocturnal. 

This study offers direct, genetic evidence for that hypothesis.

To trace the evolution of nocturnality, the researchers studied genes that the researchers had previously found associated with night vision in certain birds, such as owls. 

The team members examined those night-vision genes in many mammals and reptiles, including snakes, alligators, mice, platypuses and humans.

Using what they know about how those animals are related, they figured out when in their evolutionary histories, if ever, the function of these genes was enhanced.

From this, they deduced that the earliest common ancestor did not have good night vision and was instead active during the day. 

However, soon after the split, mammals began enhancing their night vision genes, allowing them to begin to roam at night, thus avoiding the reptiles that hunted during the day, the study said.

The researchers said thatr in the millions of years that have elapsed since mammals and reptiles diverged, natural selection and evolution haven't stopped. 

Not all mammals are still nocturnal. Some groups of mammals have reoccupied the day, adapting in various ways to daylight activity. 

These animals include cheetahs, camels, elephants, and, of course, humans.

​New York, April 21 (IANS) Traditional clinical hearing tests often fail to detect patients with a common form of inner ear damage that might otherwise be detected by more challenging behavioural tests, new research has found.

Such tests may not be able to diagnose those facing problems in certain situations, like hearing speech in a noisy room, said the study published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience.

This type of "hidden hearing loss" presents itself as essentially normal hearing in the clinic, where audiograms -- the gold-standard for measuring hearing thresholds -- are typically conducted in a quiet room.

The reason some forms of hearing loss may go unrecognised in the clinic is that hearing involves a complex partnership between the ear and the brain. 

It turns out that the central auditory system can compensate for significant damage to the inner ear by turning up its volume control, partially overcoming the deficiency, said the study's lead author Richard Salvi, Director, Centre for Hearing and Deafness at University at Buffalo, New York.

"You can have tremendous damage to inner hair cells in the ear that transmit information to the brain and still have a normal audiogram," he said. 

"But people with this type of damage have difficulty hearing in certain situations, like hearing speech in a noisy room. Their thresholds appear normal. So they're sent home," Salvi said.

Ear damage reduces the signal that goes the brain. That results in trouble hearing, but that's not what's happening here, because the brain "has a central gain control, like a radio, the listener can turn up the volume control to better hear a distant station", Salvi added.

​New York, April 20 (IANS) Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a powerful tool and Facebook is leveraging it to build amazing visual experiences for people, including an AI-infused camera across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger.

​New York, April 20 (IANS) Giving a glimpse of what is going on at its secret "Building 8" research group, Facebook has said it is working on a way to let people type with their brains -- at speeds faster than physical typing -- via a brain-computer interface.

New York, April 20 (IANS) With an aim to help put an end to mining on earth, Apple has said it is planning to use 100 per cent recycled material to manufacture its products.

Citing concern for the planet's future, the tech titan made this announcement on Wednesday, just ahead of the annual Earth Day celebration in its "2017 Environment

​Canberra, April 20 (IANS) Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has announced major changes to citizenship laws, making it tougher for foreign nationals to become Australian citizens.

​Tokyo, April 20 (IANS) Japan achieved a trade surplus of $5.638 billion in March, its second consecutive month of surplus since the beginning of the year, the government reported on Thursday.

​New York, April 20 (IANS) Facebook aims to develop technology that will help everyone build a global community, the social media giant's Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer said at the annual F8 developers conference at San Jose.

Colombo, April 20 (IANS) Sri Lanka will upgrade the standards of its Adventure Tourism in accordance with international levels, a statement issued by the Prime Minister's Office said here on Thursday.