Knowledge Update

​New York, March 9 (IANS) San Francisco-based Pinterest has acquired Twitter co-founder Biz Stone's "human powered" search engine start-up Jelly.

"This is the best decision for the future of human powered search and discovery. Jelly plus Pinterest is an exceedingly powerful match. A new adventure begins!" Stone, Co-

San Francisco, March 9 (IANS) Google on Thursday announced a strategic partnership with European multinational software corporation SAP to develop and integrate Googles best cloud and machine learning solutions into SAP enterprise applications.

​San Francisco, March 9 (IANS) Global average internet connection speed has increased 12 per cent to 7.0 Mbps in the fourth quarter of 2016 -- a 26 per cent increase year-over-year, a new report said on Thursday.

​Canberra, March 9 (IANS) Neanderthals have been revealed to have had complex vegetarian diets, while some also used plant-based medicines to treat illnesses, an Australian research revealed on Thursday.

Often thought of by many as simple "cave men" with only weak links to modern humans, Laura Weyrich from the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA has said analysis of Neanderthal dental plaque has revealed a varied and "modern-looking" vegetarian diet, Xinhua news agency reported.

"It's a very, very different picture from the grunting, club-toting Neanderthal that we like to think about," Weyrich told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Thursday.

"They were probably very intelligent, communicative and very in tune with what was going on around them."

Weyrich revealed that some families of Neanderthal, such as the El Sidron group from modern Spain, ate a diet comprised mostly of plants and vegetables available in the forest.

She said there was evidence of pine nuts, mushrooms, grass and moss in the plaque analysis from the El Sidron Neanderthals.

"So that's the true palaeo diet," Weyrich said. "That's what people would have been eating in palaeolithic times if they lived in a forest like the El Sidron Neanderthal did."

In addition, Weyrich said the research uncovered evidence that Neanderthals used specific plants to try and treat a variety of illnesses, including using poplar bark - which happens to contain an active ingredient in Penicillium and aspirin - to counter the effects of gastrointestinal issues such as diarrhoea.

"So it is likely he would have been trying to self-medicate," Weyrich added.

​Washington, March 9 (IANS) NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope was hit by a cosmic ray event during a recent campaign to observe TRAPPIST-1, a star system that hosts at least seven Earth-sized planets only 40 light-years away.

"During Campaign 12, a cosmic ray event reset the spacecraft's onboard software causing a five-day break in science data collection," NASA said in a statement on Wednesday.

"The benign event is the fourth occurrence of cosmic ray susceptibility since launch in March 2009. The spacecraft remains healthy and is operating nominally," the US space agency added while announcing the release of the data Kepler gathered about TRAPPIST-1.

On February 22, astronomers announced that the ultra-cool dwarf star, TRAPPIST-1, hosts a total of seven Earth-size planets that are likely rocky, a discovery made by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope in combination with ground-based telescopes. 

Kepler space telescope also has been observing this star since December 2016. 

During the period of December 15, 2016 to March 4, the Kepler spacecraft, operating as the K2 mission, collected data on the star's minuscule changes in brightness due to transiting planets. 

These additional observations are expected to allow astronomers to refine the previous measurements of six planets, pin down the orbital period and mass of the seventh and farthest planet, TRAPPIST-1h, and learn more about the magnetic activity of the host star.

"Scientists and enthusiasts around the world are invested in learning everything they can about these Earth-size worlds," said Geert Barentsen, K2 research scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California. 

"Providing the K2 raw data as quickly as possible was a priority to give investigators an early look so they could best define their follow-up research plans. We're thrilled that this will also allow the public to witness the process of discovery," Barentsen said.

The release of the raw, uncalibrated data collected will aid astronomers in preparing proposals due this month to use telescopes on Earth next winter to further investigate TRAPPIST-1, NASA said.

New York, March 9 (IANS) The preliminary results of an experiment confirm what the 2015 Hollywood science fiction film "The Martian" showed: potatoes can grow on Mars.

The International Potato Centre (CIP) in Lima, Peru, launched a series of experiments to discover if potatoes can grow under Mars atmospheric conditions and thereby prove they are also able to grow in extreme climates on Earth. 

The new phase of CIP's experiment to grow potatoes in simulated Martian conditions began on February 14 last year.

Based upon designs and advice provided by the NASA's Ames Research Centre in California, a tuber was planted in a specially constructed CubeSat contained environment built by engineers from the University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC) in Lima.

"If the crops can tolerate the extreme conditions that we are exposing them to in our CubeSat, they have a good chance to grow on Mars. We will do several rounds of experiments to find out which potato varieties do best," said Julio Valdivia-Silva from UTEC. 

"We want to know what the minimum conditions are that a potato needs to survive," he said in a statement released by CIP.

The CubeSat houses a container holding soil and the tuber. Inside this hermetically sealed environment, the CubeSat delivers nutrient-rich water, controls the temperature for Mars day and night conditions, and mimics Mars air pressure, oxygen and carbon dioxide levels. 

Live streaming cameras recording the soil showed potato sprouting in the simulated Martian conditions.

The results so far have been positive, the researchers said.

​London, March 9 (IANS) Far from being limited to a gifted few, the ability to perform astonishing feats of memory, such as remembering lists of several dozen words, can be learned, say researchers.

In a study published in the journal Neuron, the researchers showed that after 40 days of daily 30-minute training sessions using a strategic memory improvement technique, individuals who had typical memory skills at the start and no previous memory training more than doubled their memory capacity.

From recalling an average of 26 words from a list of 72, the participants were able to remember on an average 62 words, the findings showed. 

Brain scans before and after training showed that strategic memory training altered the brain functions of the trainees, making them more similar to those of memory champions. 

"After training we see massively increased performance on memory tests," said study first author Martin Dresler, Assistant Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Radboud University Medical Centre in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. 

"Not only can you induce a behavioural change, the training also induces similar brain connectivity patterns as those seen in memory athletes," Dresler said.

To explore the effects of training on the brain, Dresler and his colleagues recruited 51 individuals with typical memory skills and no previous memory training. 

They were split into three groups -- two training groups and one group that did not train. The researchers scanned participants' brains before and after training.

The two training methods were short-term memory training and strategic memory training. 

During short-term memory training, an individual practices remembering sequences, a bit like playing the game Concentration. 

Strategic memory training provides trainees with a systematic way to remember lists.

In this study, the strategy Dresler chose was memory of loci training, which is employed by most world champion memory athletes. 

Using this strategy, items on a list are associated with a remembered place, and users navigate that remembered place as they recall the list. 

Those who trained using method of loci showed substantial improvement in their ability to recall lists of words. 

Before training, individuals could recall on average between 26 and 30 words. 

Afterwards, those with strategic memory training could recall 35 more words on average. 

Those who trained short-term memory could recall 11 more words. Those with no training recalled seven more words.

A day later, those who had trained still showed improvements in recall. 

Four months later, only those with strategic training continued to show substantial gains, still recalling over 22 more words than prior to training. 

"Once you are familiar with these strategies and know how to apply them, you can keep your performance high without much further training," Dresler said.

​New York, March 9 (IANS) Eating yogurt rich in lactobacillus -- a probiotic bacteria -- may help alleviate symptoms of depression and anxiety, a finding that could lead to new strategies for treating psychiatric conditions, researchers have found.

Depression is a huge problem and the treatments are not very good, because they come with huge side effects.

"The study will help us not to bother with complex drugs and side effects when we can just play with the microbiome. It would be magical just to change your diet, to change the bacteria you take, and fix your health -- and your mood," said lead researcher Alban Gaultier from the University of Virginia in the US.

In the study, conducted on mice, the researchers have discovered a specific mechanism for how the lactobacillus bacteria affect mood, providing a direct link between the health of the gut microbiome and mental health. 

For the study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, the team induced depression symptoms in mice to analyse their composition of the gut microbiome and found that the major change was the loss of lactobacillus. 

With the loss of lactobacillus came the onset of depression symptoms. Conversely, feeding the mice lactobacillus with their food returned them to almost normal, the researchers said. 

"A single strain of lactobacillus, is able to influence mood," Gaultier observed. 

In addition, the study found that the amount of lactobacillus in the gut affects the level of a metabolite in the blood -- called kynurenine -- which has been shown to drive depression.

When lactobacillus was diminished in the gut, the levels of kynurenine went up -- and depression symptoms set in.

While there is no harm in people with depression eating yogurt, people receiving treatment for depression should not stop taking their medications without consulting their physicians, the researchers suggested.

Based on the findings, the researchers plan to begin studying the effect in humans as soon as possible.

​New York, March 8 (IANS) Micro-blogging website Twitter has introduced Moments analytics for all its users on web that allows to see how favourite Moments are performing.

"This will allow Moments' creators to track how well their content is working on Twitter, by offering details on opens, likes, shares and more," tech website techcrunh.com

​New York, March 8 (IANS) In yet another copycatting of Snapchat, photo-sharing app Instagram now allows users to use geostickers to tag images and videos in its Stories feature just like Snapchat Stories, media reported on Wednesday.