Knowledge Update

​July 12 (IANS) Pomegranates are found with a potential to boost muscle strength and help to counteract the ageing, say researchers.

The findings showed that when we drink the pomegranate juice, our body produces Urolithin A -- a molecule.

When this molecule gets transformed by microbes in the gut, it enables the muscle cells to protect themselves against ageing and also increases the muscle mass.

As we age, our cells increasingly struggle to recycle the mitochondria -- the powerhouse of the cells -- and are no longer able to carry out their vital function and thus gets accumulated in the cell.

This degradation affects the health of many tissues, including muscles, which gradually weaken over the years and leads to age-related various diseases.

Urolithin A has been found to re-establish the cell's ability to recycle the components of the defective mitochondria.

"It's the only known molecule that can relaunch the mitochondrial clean-up process, otherwise known as mitophagy," said Patrick Aebischer, President, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne -- a research institute in Switzerland.

"It's a completely natural substance, and its effect is powerful and measurable," Aebischer added.

For the study, the team tested their hypothesis on the nematode C.elegans - roundworm - which is considered elderly, after just 8-10 days.

The lifespan of worms exposed to urolithin A increased by more than 45 per cent compared with the control group.

In the rodent studies, older mice, around two years of age, exposed to urolithin A showed 42 per cent better endurance while running than equally old mice in the control group.

However, pomegranate itself doesn't contain the miracle molecule, but rather its precursor, the researchers said.

Depending on the species of animal and the flora present in the gut microbiome, the amount of urolithin A produced can vary widely.

For those without the right microbes in their guts, urolithin A are not produced, they noted.

"For urolithin A to be produced in our intestines, the bacteria must be able to break down what we're eating. When, via digestion, a substance is produced that is of benefit to us, natural selection favours both the bacteria involved and their host," explained Chris Rinsch, CEO of Amazentis -- a life sciences company in Switzerland.

Rinsch also said precursors to urolithin A are found not only in pomegranates, but also in smaller amounts in many nuts and berries.

The findings, published in the journal Nature Medicine, are under trail in humans.​

​London, July 11 (IANS) Apart from reducing the risk of cancer and heart attacks, consuming up to eight portions of more fruit and vegetables a day can substantially increase people's happiness levels in life, finds a new study.

"Eating fruit and vegetables apparently boosts our happiness far more quickly than it improves human health,” said Andrew Oswald, professor at the University of Warwick in London.

The findings showed that happiness increased incrementally for each extra daily portion of fruit and vegetables up to eight portions per day.

People who changed from almost no fruit and vegetables to eight portions of a day showed an increase in life satisfaction.

Usually people's motivation to eat healthy food is weakened by the fact that these were predictive of alterations in happiness and satisfaction later in life.

“However, well-being improvements from increased consumption of fruit and vegetables are closer to immediate," Oswald added.

Large positive psychological benefits were found within two years of an improved diet consisting of more fruit and vegetables, the researchers said.

"There is a psychological payoff now from fruit and vegetables -- not just a lower health risk decades later," noted Redzo Mujcic, researcher at University of Queensland in Australia.

The results could be used by health professionals to persuade people to consume more fruit and vegetables, particularly in the developed world where the typical citizen eats an unhealthy diet, said the paper to be published in the American Journal of Public Health.

For the study, the team followed food diaries of 12,385 randomly selected people.

The authors adjusted the effects on incident changes in happiness and life satisfaction for people's changing incomes and personal circumstances.

​London, July 7 (IANS) Grouping young tennis players according to their physical maturity rather than their chronological age could help us develop future tennis champions, suggests new research.

Boys and girls can vastly vary in their rates of growth and maturity during adolescence.

Those who mature early are taller, quicker, bigger and stronger, giving them a significant advantage over their late maturing peers. 

"Tennis is a sport that favours youth who are taller and mature earlier than their peers. Our data show that this selection bias impacts girls from the age of 10 and boys from the age of 12,” said Sean Cumming, Senior Lecturer in Health at University of Bath in England.

"Every extra inch in height of a player increases the velocity of their serve by five per cent. At the elite level, it is quite common to find junior players, especially adolescent boys, who are six foot or greater in height," Cumming noted.

This means that later maturing players are often overlooked in the elite tennis selection process.

"While early maturing boys and girls have initial advantages, the pressure to win can lead them to play to their physical strengths at the expense of their technical development,” Cumming said.

"In contrast, talented, yet late maturing players might be excluded or overlooked by talent spotters on the basis of physical characteristics that are not fully realised until adulthood," Cumming explained.

The research team, which includes mathematicians from Bath's Institute for Mathematical Innovation, is developing new statistical methods to allow practitioners to better assess and account for individual differences in biological maturity and help ensure players are evaluated on the basis of their physical development, and not just their chronological age.

The team published its research in the journal Pediatric Exercise Science.

"The challenge for those working with young tennis players is to look beyond differences in maturity, and recognise those players who may have the greatest potential for success as an adult,” Cumming said.

Now the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), the governing body for the game of tennis in Great Britain, is collaborating with scientists at the University of Bath to use statistics to avoid selection bias towards early maturing players, a university statement said.

Gill Myburgh, a Strength and Conditioning coach at the LTA also sees potential benefits in periodically matching players by maturity status, rather than age, in training and competition.​

​New York, July 13 (IANS) The micro-blogging website Twitter and Bloomberg Media have signed a deal to live stream several media company's TV news shows on Twitter platform.

​London, July 10 (IANS) Scientists at Finland's Aalto University have set a new world record in microwave detection, breaking the old record by fourteen-fold -- a feat that may lead to manufacturing of ultrasensitive cameras and accessories for the emerging quantum computer.

The record was made using a partially superconducting microwave detector. The first of the two key enabling developments is the new detector design consisting of tiny pieces of superconducting aluminum and a golden nanowire.

This design guarantees both efficient absorption of incoming photons and very sensitive readout. The whole detector is smaller than a single human blood cell, according to the scientists.

"For us size matters. The smaller the better. With smaller detectors, we get more signal and cheaper price in mass production," said Mikko Mottonen, the leader of the record-breaking Quantum Computing and Devices research group.

The European Research Council (ERC) has recently awarded Mottonen a prestigious proof of concept grant to develop the detector towards commercial applications.

The new detector works at a hundredth of a degree above absolute zero temperature. Thermal disturbances at such low temperatures are so weak that the research team could detect energy packets of only a single zeptojoule. That is the energy needed to lift a red blood cell by just a single nanometre.

The second key development concerns the amplification of the signal arising from the tiny the energy packets. To this end, the scientists used something called positive feedback, which means that there is an external energy source that amplifies the temperature change arising from the absorbed photons.

Microwaves are currently used in mobile phone communications and satellite televisions, thanks to their ability to pass through the walls. 

More sensitive microwave detectors may lead to great improvements of the present communication systems and measurement techniques.

"Existing superconducting technology can produce single microwave photons. However, detection of such travelling photons efficiently is a major outstanding challenge. Our results provide a leap towards solving this problem using thermal detection," said Joonas Govenius, the first author of the work.​

​New York, July 12 (IANS) Micro-blogging website Twitter has increased its animated GIF (graphics interchange format) size limit from 5MB to 15MB if uploaded on the web from a desktop, a media report said on Tuesday.

​New Delhi, July 11 (IANS) India has the most transparent companies because of a strong regulation system firmly in place, a new report revealed on Monday, adding that China on the other hand has weak or non-existent anti-corruption policies and has the most opaque firms.

​New York, July 10 (IANS) Rats, humans and cockroaches have a system similar to the Global Positioning System (GPS) in their heads that allows them to navigate new surroundings, researchers have discovered.

A team of researchers from Case Western Reserve University in the US recorded the activity in the brain of a restrained cockroach and found that insects use sight and a vestibular-like system to track direction and angle.

The finding, published in journal Current Biology, is an example of convergent evolution -- distinct animals developed similar systems to manage the same problems.

"We've known that a mammal can come into a new area and, after a short period of being disoriented, find its way around," said Roy Ritzmann, a Biology Professor at Case Western Reserve and an author of the new study.

Humans and other mammals rely on head-direction, place and grid cells in their brains to process, integrate and update sensory information. The cues come from the direction they look, what they see and motion, he said.

"Orienting contributes to spatial memory, so they can return to point A or navigate to something they like or away from something they don't like," said PhD student Adrienn G. Varga, lead author of the study.

By repeating experiments that uncovered head-direction cells in rats, Ritzmann and Varga found head-direction-like activity and evidence of contextual cue processing in cockroaches.

When the researchers closely examined the activity of central complex cells, they found that some neurons appear to encode head direction like a compass, while others appeared to encode the relative direction of the rotation after each stop, storing navigational context.

"The fact we found these cell activities that are very similar to those in mice and rats and us strongly indicates insects rely on the same sensory inputs we need to orient ourselves and their brains process these inputs in a similar manner," Varga said.

Ritzmann said either humans and cockroaches have a common ancestor and this capability was retained or, more likely, represents convergent evolution.​

​New York, July 8 (IANS) Micro-blogging website Twitter started streaming from Wimbledon, one of the most-watched tennis tournaments of the year, a media report said.

Wimbledon's official Twitter account tweeted the live feed early Wednesday morning, opening up Twitter plans to stream live sports more broadly.

​New York, July 10 (IANS) If you are having problems at work then there is a likelihood that your parents might be responsible to some extent for your troubles, a new research has startlingly revealed.

According to the study published in the journal Human Relations, the researchers studied manager-employee relationships in the workplace and found a link between parenting styles and workplace behaviours.

"It seems cliché, but, once again, we end up blaming mom for everything in life. It really is about both parents, but because mothers are typically the primary caregivers of the children, they usually have more influence on their children," said Peter Harms, Researcher, University of Alabama.

A mother or father figure later in life can provide that needed love and support, even in the context of the workplace, suggested the study.

The research was based on the work of John Bowlby, an early psychoanalyst, who argued that the way parents treat their offspring could have long-term implications for how their children approach relationships.

Babies learn over time that when they feel abandoned or threatened they can either count on their parent to come to their rescue right away or they need to escalate to high levels of distress in order to get attention.

Individuals with reliable parents view others as potential sources of support. Those individuals with unreliable parents tend not to see them as sources of support. These people are often categorized as having anxious or avoidant attachment depending on the style they adopted to cope with distress.

"Essentially, we figured that bosses would matter less to individuals with secure or avoidant attachment styles. Avoidant individuals just simply don't care. It was the anxiously attached individuals we were most interested in," added Harns.

The researchers speculated that individuals may transfer this pattern of thinking into the workplace and in particular that it may influence one's relationship with one's boss.

The research also finds that the way bosses treated their subordinates impacted some, but not all, employees.

The study showed that when anxious followers were paired with supportive leaders, they were perfectly fine. But when they were paired with distant, unsupportive leaders, the anxiously attached employees reported higher levels of stress and lower levels of performance.​