Knowledge Update

New York, April 12 (IANS) In a first, a team of US researchers has created a bio-solar panel that can generate 5.59 microwatts of energy - a big step in the evolution of bacteria-powered energy to run small devices in remote areas where regular battery replacement is not possible.

"Once a functional bio-solar panel becomes available, it could become a permanent power source for supplying long-term power for small, wireless telemetry systems as well as wireless sensors used at remote sites where frequent battery replacement is impractical," said study co-author Seokheun "Sean" Choi from Binghamton University. 

The researchers connected nine biological-solar (bio-solar) cells in a 3x3 pattern to make a scalable and stackable bio-solar panel. 

The panel continuously generated electricity from photosynthesis and respiratory activities of the bacteria in 12-hour day-night cycles over 60 hours.

"This research could also enable crucial understanding of the photosynthetic extracellular electron transfer processes in a smaller group of microorganisms with excellent control over the microenvironment, thereby enabling a versatile platform for fundamental bio-solar cell studies," Choi noted.

A typical "traditional" solar panel on the roof of a residential house, made up of 60 cells in a 6x10 configuration, generates roughly 200 watts of electrical power at a given moment. 

The cells from this study, in a similar configuration, would generate about 0.00003726 watts. So it isn't efficient just yet but the findings open the door to future research of the bacteria itself.

"The metabolic pathways of cyanobacteria or algae are only partially understood, and their significantly low power density and low energy efficiency make them unsuitable for practical applications," noted Choi in a paper published in the journal Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical.

"There is a need for additional basic research to clarify bacterial metabolism and energy production potential for bio-solar applications," he added.​

New York, April 12 (IANS) Young smokers please take note! Smokers face more problems in finding a job and when they do find a job, they earn considerably less than their non-smoker peers, says an interesting study.

The findings showed that at 12 months, only 27 percent of smokers had found jobs compared with 56 percent of non-smokers. Among those who had found jobs by 12 months, smokers earned on average 5 US dollars less per hour than non-smokers.

"We found that smokers had a much harder time finding work than non-smokers," said lead study author Judith Prochaska from Stanford University Medical Center in the US.

The team surveyed 131 unemployed smokers and 120 unemployed non-smokers at the beginning of the study and then at six and 12 months. 

"The health harms of smoking have been established for decades and our study here provides insight into the financial harms of smoking both in terms of lower re-employment success and lower wages," Prochaska added in a paper published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

They used survey questions and a breath test for carbon monoxide levels to classify job seekers into either daily smokers or non-smokers. 

Smokers were on average younger, less educated and in poorer health than non-smokers. 

"Such differences might influence job seekers' ability to find work," Prochaska stated.

After controlling for these variables, smokers still remained at a big disadvantage. After 12 months, the re-employment rate of smokers was 24 percent lower than that of non-smokers.

"We designed the analysis so that the smokers and non-smokers were as similar as possible in terms of the information we had on their employment records and prospects for employment at baseline," added co-author Michael Baiocchi.

Those who successfully quit smoking will have an easier time getting hired, the authors suggested.​

London, April 13 (IANS) If you drink five-six cups of coffee daily, here come some good news. According to researchers, increase in coffee consumption can provide protective effect against non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

Daily dose of coffee can check non-alcoholic fatty liver disease by reducing permeability of the gut, the team reported after conducting the research on mice.

They found that a daily dose of coffee (equivalent to six cups of espresso coffee for humans) improved several key markers of the disease in mice who were fed a high-fat diet. 

The mice also gained less weight than others fed the same diet without the dose of caffeine.

“Previous studies have confirmed how coffee can reverse the damage of NAFLD but this is the first to demonstrate that it can influence the permeability of the intestine,” said Vincenzo Lembo from the University of Napoli, Italy.

The results also show that coffee can reverse NAFLD-related problems such as ballooning degeneration, a form of liver cell degeneration.

The scientists showed how coffee protects against NAFLD by raising levels of a protein called Zonulin (ZO)-1 which lessens the permeability of the gut. 

Experts believe that increased gut permeability contributes to liver injury and worsens NAFLD. 

People suffering from NAFLD can develop scarring of the liver - also known as fibrosis - which can progress to a potentially life threatening condition known as cirrhosis.

The results suggest that coffee supplementation could cause variations in the intestinal tight junctions which regulate the permeability of the intestine.

“The study offers insights that can help future research into and understanding of the therapeutic role coffee can play in combating NAFLD,” added professor Laurent Castera, secretary general of The European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL).

The findings were presented at the International Liver Congress 2016 in Barcelona, Spain, recently.​

​London, April 13 (IANS) Researchers have for the first time found it possible to generate simultaneous immune response against diseases such as Hepatitis C virus and HIV, raising the possibility of a combined vaccination.

An estimated 2.3 million people globally are co-infected with HIV and HCV. HCV is the leading cause of non-AIDS deaths in co-infected individuals.

"While we have drugs to treat both HIV and HCV, these are out of reach for many and do not prevent reinfection," said lead researcher Lucy Dorrell, professor at University of Oxford in London. 

“Knowing that it may be possible to vaccinate a single individual against both diseases opens up huge possibilities for rolling back epidemics of disease and co-infection," added one of the researchers Ellie Barnes, professor. 

The findings showed that vaccine priming against HCV and HIV induced immune response in the body, measured by the number of HIV and HCV specific T-cells found in a sample of blood. 

These immune responses were further increased following the boost vaccination.

In addition, co-administration of HCV and HIV components of the boost did not impair the magnitude or breadth of either HCV or HIV specific T-cell responses compared to each alone. 

All vaccines were given as an intramuscular injection and both were well tolerated.

The study showed that the 'prime boost' approach is compatible with co-administration of vectors encoding for HIV and HCV antigens -- molecules capable of inducing an immune response to the immune system.

Following this, booster vaccinations are given with the same combination of HCV and HIV fragments.

The Phase 1 study enrolled 32 healthy volunteers in three groups. Group one received only HCV investigational vaccines at weeks 0 and 8. 

The second group received only HIV investigational vaccines following the same dosing schedule. 

The final group received both HCV and HIV investigational vaccines that were co-administered.

The study was presented at The International Liver Congress 2016 in Barcelona, Spain.​

New York, April 13 (IANS) Not just youngsters, senior citizens are turning out to be Facebook's fastest growing community, say researchers including an Indian-origin team member, suggesting that the elderly are joining Facebook for the same reasons that prompted teenagers to join it over a decade ago.

According to S Shyam Sundar, professor at Pennsylvania State University, older adults who are motivated by social bonding and curiosity tend to use Facebook as a form of social surveillance. 

"Surveillance is the idea that you're checking out what people are up to. This is something that many older adults do. They want to see how their kids are doing and, especially, what their grand children are doing," said Sundar.

Earlier studies suggest a positive relationship between bonding and bridging social capital and Facebook use among college students. 

"Our study extends this finding to senior citizens," added Eun Hwa Jung, mass communication researcher at Penn State.

The researchers found that the desire to stay connected to family and keep in touch with old friends or social bonding was the best predictor of Facebook adoption and use, followed closely by the desire to find and communicate with like-minded people or social bridging.

Curiosity is another motivation for senior Facebook users, Jung added.

The study, published in the journal Computers in Human Behaviour, found that senior citizens were not motivated to actively participate on Facebook when family and friends prod them to use the website.

"When senior citizens respond to requests to join Facebook, that tends to be a negative predictor of use," Sundar said. "In other words, they are not intrinsically motivated to participate when someone else requests that they join."

Older adults also tend to use Facebook features that their younger counterparts favour.

According to the findings, seniors visited Facebook 2.46 times a day and stayed on it for a little over 35 minutes each day.

"This isn't just a fast-growing market, but also a lucrative one. Older adults have much more disposable income than teens and college students and would be more desirable for advertising," Sundar noted. 

The team suggests that designers of social media sites should emphasise on simple and convenient interface tools to attract older adult users. 

​New York, April 13 (IANS) A team led by an Indian-origin professor at Columbia University has created a novel sheet camera that can be wrapped around everyday objects to capture images that cannot be taken with one or more conventional cameras.

"Cameras today capture the world from essentially a single point in space. While the camera industry has made remarkable progress in shrinking the camera to a tiny device with ever increasing imaging quality, we are exploring a radically different approach to imaging," said Shree K Nayar, computer science professor at Columbia University. 

"We believe there are numerous applications for cameras that are large in format but very thin and highly flexible," added Nayar who graduated from the Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi, in 1984.

Nayar's team designed and fabricated a flexible lens array that adapts its optical properties when the sheet camera is bent. 

This optical adaptation enables the device to produce high quality images over a wide range of sheet deformations.

If such an imaging system could be manufactured cheaply -- like a roll of plastic or fabric -- it could be wrapped around all kinds of things, from street poles to furniture, cars, and even people's clothing, to capture wide, seamless images with unusual fields of view. 

"The adaptive lens array we have developed is an important step towards making the concept of flexible sheet cameras viable," Nayar noted. 

"The next step will be to develop large-format detector arrays to go with the deformable lens array. The amalgamation of the two technologies will lay the foundation for a new class of cameras that expand the range of applications that benefit from imaging," he said.

The novel technology is set to be presented at the international conference on computational photography (ICCP) at Northwestern University, in Illinois from May 13 to 15.​

​New York, April 14 (IANS) Love to binge on burgers, pizzas and French fries? Beware, as consuming fast food can expose you to higher levels of potentially harmful chemicals known as phthalates, which are used in food packaging, warns a new study.

Phthalates belong to a class of industrial chemicals used to make food packaging materials, tubing for dairy products, and other items used in the production of fast food.

The findings showed that people who ate the most fast food had phthalate levels in their urine that was 24 percent to 40 percent higher than those who rarely ate junk food.

"Our findings raise concerns because phthalates have been linked to a number of serious health problems in children and adults," said lead author Ami Zota, assistant professor at George Washington University in US.

The study, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, analysed the effect of two phthalates di(2-ethylexyl) phthalate (DEHP) and diisononyl phthalate (DiNP) in use despite concerns that they leach out of products and get into the human body.

Exposure to these chemicals can damage the reproductive system and may even lead to infertility, the authors warned.

They also discovered that grain and meat items were the most significant contributors to phthalate exposure.

The grain category contained a wide variety of items including bread, cake, pizza, burritos, rice dishes and noodles.

The team looked at data on 8,877 participants who had answered detailed questions about their diet in the past 24 hours, including consumption of fast food.

They also took urinary samples that could be tested for the breakdown products of two specific phthalates -- DEHP and DiNP.

In addition, the researchers also looked for exposure to another chemical found in plastic food packaging -- Bisphenol A or BPA.

Exposure to BPA can lead to health and behaviour problems, especially for young children, but the study found no association between total fast food intake and BPA.

However, the result so revealed that people who ate fast food meat products had higher levels of BPA than people who reported no fast food consumption​

New York, April 14 (IANS) Imagine shirts that act as antennas for smartphones or tablets, workout clothes that monitor fitness level or even a flexible fabric cap that senses activity in the brain!

All this will soon be possible as the researchers working on wearable electronics have been able to embroider circuits into fabric with super precision -- a key step toward the design of clothes that gather, store or transmit digital information.

"A revolution is happening in the textile industry. We believe that functional textiles are an enabling technology for communications and sensing and one day, even for medical applications like imaging and health monitoring," said lead researcher John Volakis from Ohio State University.

The milestone achieved by the Ohio researchers has the potential to allow integration of electronic components such as sensors and computer memory devices into clothing with 0.1 mm precision.

With further development, the technology could also lead to sports equipment that monitor athletes' performance or a bandage that tells doctors how well the tissue beneath it is healing.

Volakis' team created the functional textiles, also called "e-textiles," on a typical tabletop sewing machine. 

Like other modern sewing machines, it embroiders thread into fabric automatically based on a pattern loaded via a computer file. 

The researchers substituted the thread with fine silver metal wires that, once embroidered, feel the same as traditional thread to the touch.

"For the first time, we've achieved the accuracy of printed metal circuit boards, so our new goal is to take advantage of the precision to incorporate receivers and other electronic components," added Volakis in a paper published in the journal IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters.

The shape of the embroidery determines the frequency of operation of the antenna or circuit.

"Shape determines function. And you never really know what shape you will need from one application to the next. So we wanted to have a technology that could embroider any shape for any application," noted Asimina Kiourti, co-author of the study.

She also incorporated some techniques common to microelectronics manufacturing to add parts to embroidered antennas and circuits.​

​New York, April 14 (IANS) In a fresh bid to connect the world better, Facebook has announced a new research lab to build hardware products based on its software and has hired a former top Google executive to achieve its goal.

Beijing, April 12 (IANS) Over 80 percent of groundwater in China is polluted and not fit for human consumption.

In its most recent monthly report, published on Monday, the water resources ministry said that of 2,103 monitored wells, water from 691, or 32.9 percent, was defined as Class