Knowledge Update | Horizon University UAE – Essential Insights

​Beijing, Jan 4 (IANS) China plans to conduct some 30 space launch missions in 2017, a record-breaking number in the country's space history, said China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.

Long March-5 and Long March-7 rockets would be used to carry out most of the space missions, the China News Service reported.

Long March-5 is China's largest carrier rocket. The successful test launch of the vehicle in November in Hainan would pave the way for space station construction, analysts said.

Wang Yu, general director of the Long March-5 program, said 2017 is a critical year for China's new generation of carrier rockets and the Long March-5 rockets would carry Chang'e-5 probe to space. 

The probe would land on the moon, collect samples and return to Earth.

On the other hand, Long March-7, the more powerful version of Long March-2, would send China's first cargo spacecraft Tianzhou-1 into the space in the first half of 2017, according to Wang Zhaoyao, director of China Manned Space Engineering Office. 

Tianzhou-1 was expected to dock with Tiangong-2 space lab and conduct experiments on propellant supplement, People's Daily reported.

China conducted 22 launch missions in 2016 and 19 in 2015. The country successfully tested its Long March-7 rocket in June 2016, and has gradually shifted to new generation rockets that reduce the use of toxic rocket fuels.

​Kathmandu, Jan 3 (IANS) Nepal's trade deficit surged by 87.44 per cent during the first five months of the current fiscal year compared to same period the last year as imports increased substantially.

​New York, Jan 3 (IANS) Apple's upcoming iOS 10.3 beta operating system is rumoured to be coming with 'Theater mode' which will be accessible via a 'popcorn-shaped' icon in control centre, a media report said.

​Tokyo, Jan 3 (IANS) Japan wants to speed up negotiations for an early signing of a free trade agreement (FTA) with the European Union, official sources said on Tuesday.

The aim is to achieve such an agreement as early as possible, before 2017 ends, added the sources.

London, Jan 3 (IANS) Digital security giant Gemalto is supplying American telecommunication giant AT&T with a remote subscription management solution that will enable its customers to deploy a secure Internet of Things (IoT) applications in the US and globally.

​New York, Jan 3 (IANS) In its Chinese New Year promotion, Apple has announced an one-day sale to offer free Beats Solo3 wireless headphones to all customers who purchase a select Mac or iPhone in some Asian markets on January 6. "The sale will begin on January 6 and will be available in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan," appleinsider.com reported on Monday. Users need to purchase an iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or Mac Pro excluding 2016 MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar to get free Beats headphones. Eligible iPhones include the iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 6s, and iPhone 6s Plus. "In addition to the Beats Solo3 headphones, Apple is showcasing a litany of red themed accessories on its digital storefront, including iPhone cases, audio products, toys and more," the report noted.

​New York, Jan 3 (IANS) A modest increase in dietary zinc - about four milligrams - can help reduce everyday wear and tear on our DNA, says a study. While most DNA damage is harmless, some can have serious ramifications and a decrease in the body's ability to fix this wear and tear may be an important component of ageing. "We were pleasantly surprised to see that just a small increase in dietary zinc can have such a significant impact on how metabolism is carried out throughout the body," said lead researcher Janet King, Senior Scientist at Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute in California. "These results present a new strategy for measuring the impact of zinc on health and reinforce the evidence that food-based interventions can improve micronutrient deficiencies worldwide," King noted. Zinc is ubiquitous in our body and facilitates many functions that are essential for preserving life. It plays a vital role in maintaining optimal childhood growth, and in ensuring a healthy immune system. Zinc also helps limit inflammation and oxidative stress in our body, which are associated with the onset of chronic cardiovascular diseases and cancers. Around much of the world, many households eat polished white rice or highly refined wheat or maize flours, which provide energy but do not provide enough essential micronutrients such as zinc. In the absence of sufficient zinc, our ability to repair everyday wear and tear on our DNA is compromised. In the six-week study, the scientists measured the impact of zinc on human metabolism by counting DNA strand breaks. They used the parameter of DNA damage to examine the influence of a moderate amount of zinc on healthy living. The findings -- published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition -- showed that a modest increase in dietary zinc reduces oxidative stress and damage to DNA.

​New York, Jan 3 (IANS) Researchers have developed a new non-invasive retinal imaging technique that could prevent vision loss in diseases like glaucoma -- the second leading cause of acquired blindness worldwide.

The new technique called multi-offset detection, which images the human retina -- a layer of cells at the back of the eye that are essential for vision -- was able to distinguish individual retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), which bear most of the responsibility of relaying visual information to the brain. The death of these RGCs causes vision loss in glaucoma, the researchers said.

Glaucoma is currently diagnosed by assessing the thickness of the nerve fibres projecting from the RGCs to the brain.

However, by the time retinal nerve fibre thickness has changed detectably, a patient may have lost 100,000 RGCs or more.

"You only have 1.2 million RGCs in the whole eye, so a loss of 100,000 is significant," said David Williams from the University of Rochester in New York, US.

"The sooner we can catch the loss, the better our chances of halting the disease and preventing vision loss," Williams added.

For the study, the team modified an existing technology -- known as confocal adaptive optics scanning light ophthalmoscopy (AOSLO). They collected multiple images, varying the size and location of the detector they used to gather light scattered out of the retina for each image, and then combined those images.

The results showed that the technique not only enabled to visualise individual RGCs, but even the structures within the cells like nuclei could also be distinguished in animals.

If this level of resolution can be achieved in humans, it may be possible to assess glaucoma before the retinal nerve fibre thins -- and even before any RGCs die -- by detecting size and structure changes in RGC cell bodies.

"This technique offers the opportunity to evaluate many cell classes that have previously remained inaccessible to imaging in the living eye," Ethan Rossi, Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburg in the US, noted in the paper appearing in the journal PNAS.

​New York, Jan 3 (IANS) People who can notice misinformation that is inconsistent with the original event may have better memory compared with people who never saw the misinformation, a study has found.

The findings showed that although exposure to misinformation seemed to impair memory for the correct detail, detecting and remembering misinformation in the narrative seemed to improve participants' recognition later on.

Details that were less memorable, relatively speaking, were more vulnerable to the misinformation effect, the researchers said.

"Our study shows that misinformation can sometimes enhance memory rather than harm it," said lead author Adam Putnam.

"These findings are important because they help explain why misinformation effects occur sometimes but not at other times -- if people notice that the misinformation isn't accurate then they won't have a false memory," Putnam, who is a psychological scientist at Carleton College in Minnesota, US added.

The study suggests that the relationship between misinformation and memory is more complex than we might have thought -- mere exposure to misinformation does not automatically cue the misinformation effect, the researchers noted.

"Classic interference theory in memory suggests that change is almost always bad for memory, but our study is one really clear example of how change can help memory in the right circumstances," Putnam explained.

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science.

​Washington, Jan 3 (IANS) Contradicting a prevalent perception, a new study says that our brain enlargement and dental reduction did not happen in lockstep.

The findings suggest that evolution of brain and tooth size in humans were likely influenced by different ecological and behavioural factors.

"Once something becomes conventional wisdom, in no time at all it becomes dogma," said study co-author Bernard Wood, Professor at George Washington University, US.

"The co-evolution of brains and teeth was on a fast-track to dogma status, but we caught it in the nick of time," Wood noted.

This research challenges the common view that reduction of tooth size in hominins is linked with having a larger brain. 

The reasoning is that larger brains allowed hominins to start making stone tools and that the use of these tools reduced the need to have such large chewing teeth. 

But recent studies by other authors found that hominins had larger brains before chewing teeth became smaller, and they made and used stone tools when brains were still quite small, which challenges this relationship.

The new study -- published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences -- evaluated this issue by measuring and comparing the rates at which teeth and brains have evolved along the different branches of the human evolutionary tree.

"The findings of the study indicate that simple causal relationships between the evolution of brain size, tool use and tooth size are unlikely to hold true when considering the complex scenarios of hominin evolution and the extended time periods during which evolutionary change has occurred," lead author Aida Gomez-Robles from George Washington University noted.

For the study, the researchers analysed eight different hominin species. 

They identified fast-evolving species by comparing differences between groups with those obtained when simulating evolution at a constant rate across all lineages, and they found clear differences between tooth evolution and brain evolution.