Knowledge Update

​New York, June 16 (IANS) Wearing a specifically designed compression collar around the neck may prevent or reduce the devastating effects of head collisions in sports, researchers have found.

Inspired by woodpeckers and bighorn sheep, the neck device, called a Q-Collar, is designed to press gently on the jugular vein to slow blood outflow increasing the brain's blood volume.

The resulting effect of the increased blood volume helps the brain fit tighter within the skull cavity, reducing the energy absorbed by the brain during collisions.

The analysis of neurophysiological and neuroanatomical data from the brain showed athletes in the non-collar wearing group had significant functional and structural changes to white matter regions of the brain but these changes were not evident in those who did wear the Q-Collar during play, findings from two studies showed.

"White matter of the brain essentially connects all the pathways including structure and function,” explained lead author of both studies Greg Myer, director of sports medicine research at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center in Ohio, US.

In the preliminary study published in Frontiers in Neurology, 15 high school hockey players took part. 

Half wore the collar for the hockey season and the other half did not. 

Each of the helmets for the athletes was outfitted with an accelerometer to measure every head impact. 

Results from the imaging and electrophysiological testing indicated that athletes in the non-collar wearing group had a disruption of microstructure and functional performance of the brain. 

Athletes wearing the collar did not show a significant difference despite similar head impacts.

In a follow-up study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, 42 football players from two Greater Cincinnati high schools participated. 

While half of the participants wore the collar, the other half did not. 

The results of this larger study showed similar protective effects of collar wear during the football season.

"The results of the studies demonstrate a potential approach to protecting the brain from changes sustained within a competitive football and hockey season, as evidenced by brain imaging," Myer said. 

​New York, June 15 (IANS) Researchers have found that injecting a hormone secreted by bones can help the ageing muscles become youthful as well as increase the capacity of exercise in the elderly, finds a new study.

Osteocalcin, a bone hormone produced during exercise, tends to decline with age in women at the age of 30 and in men at age 50.

The findings showed that during exercise in mice and humans, the level of osteocalcin in the blood increases depending on how old the organism is.

Osteocalcin increased the capacity of exercise in the older mice. 

Also, the bone-derived hormone was found powerful enough to reconstitute, in older animals, the muscle function of young animals. 

"Our bones are making a hormone called osteocalcin that provides an explanation for why we can exercise," said Gerard Karsenty, Geneticist at the Columbia University Medical Center in the US.

For the study, published in the journal Cell Metabolism, the team tested mice that were genetically engineered to investigate whether osteocalcin levels were affecting exercise performance. 

In three-month-old adult mice, osteocalcin levels spiked approximately four times the amount that the levels in 12-month-old mice did when the rodents ran for 40 minutes on a treadmill. 

The three-month-old mice could run for about 1,200 meters before becoming exhausted, while the 12-month-old mice could only run half of that distance.

However, when old mice whose osteocalcin levels had naturally decreased with age were injected with osteocalcin, their running performance matched that of the healthy three-month-old mice. 

The older mice were able to run about 1,200 meters before becoming exhausted. 

"Osteocalcin is the only known bone-derived hormone that increases exercise capacity. This may be one way to treat age-related decline in muscle function in humans," Karsenty noted.​

​Washington, June 15 (IANS) Drinking coffee at “normal” temperature would not increase your risk of contracting cancer, says a new report by the World Health Organisation's cancer research arm.

The WHO classified coffee as a possible carcinogen in 1991, for its potential link to bladder cancer.

Based on a review of more than 1,000 studies, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the WHO, said on Wednesday that coffee cannot be classified as a carcinogen.

But the agency cautioned that drinking “very hot” drinks could probably cause cancer.

Though consuming coffee at "normal serving temperatures" carries no cancer risk, drinking very hot beverages likely causes cancer of the esophagus, according to the agency, The Verge reported.

The IARC brought together 23 scientists to review studies on the cancer-related properties of both coffee and maté herbal tea, and determined that there is "inadequate evidence" that either are a carcinogen, the report said.

But the WHO cancer research arm said there is evidence to suggest that drinks consumed at temperatures above 65 degree Celsius can cause cancer of the esophagus, classifying them as "probably carcinogenic to humans." ​

​London, June 15 (IANS) The answer to the question is both yes and no as researchers have found that listening to sad music is associated with three types of experiences - pleasure, comfort and pain.

For the study, the musicologists looked at the emotional experiences associated with sad music of 2,436 people across three large-scale surveys in Britain and Finland.

The researchers said that the majority of people surveyed highlighted the enjoyable nature of such experiences, which in general lead to clear improvement of mood.

Listening to sad music led to feelings of pleasure related to enjoyment of the music in some people, or feelings of comfort where sad music evoked memories in others, the findings showed.

However, a significant portion of people also reported painful experiences associated with listening to sad music, which invariably related to personal loss such as the death of a loved one, divorce, breakup, or other significant adversity in life.

"Previous research in music psychology and film studies has emphasised the puzzling pleasure that people experience when engaging with tragic art,” said lead researcher Tuomas Eerola, Professor at Durham University in England. 

"However, there are people who absolutely hate sad-sounding music and avoid listening to it. In our research, we wanted to investigate this wide spectrum of experiences that people have with sad music, and find reasons for both listening to and avoiding that kind of music,” he said.

The findings were detailed in the journal PLOS ONE.

"The results help us to pinpoint the ways people regulate their mood with the help of music, as well as how music rehabilitation and music therapy might tap into these processes of comfort, relief, and enjoyment,” Eerola noted.​

Paris, June 15 (IANS) Prices in France rose 0.4 per cent in May, mainly because of fresh food and oil prices that contributed to getting inflation out of negative territory and reaching zero per cent, the National Statistics Institute announced on Wednesday.

New York, June 15 (IANS) South Korean smartphone giant Samsung sold the most number of smartphones worldwide in the first quarter of the year and is expected to sell 320 million smartphones by the end of the year, a new report said on Wednesday. According to US-based market research company IC Insights, buoyed by the strong sales growth of Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, Samsung sold 81.5 million smartphones, followed by Apple with 51.6 million smartphones -- in the first quarter. Although the list of top 12 smartphone makers is dominated by China-based smartphone suppliers -- taking eight spots in the list -- Indian smartphone supplier Micromax broke into the list for the first time. It sold five million devices in the first quarter of the year and is projected to sell 25 million smartphones by the end of the year -- 74 per cent increase from last year. “Among the Chinese players, Huawei is at number three, OPPO at number four, Xiaomi at number five, Vivo at number six, ZTE at number eight, Lenovo at number nine and TCL and Meizu are at spots 10 and 11, respectively,” androidheadlines.com said, quoting the report. Sony, Microsoft and Coolpad who were in the top 12 list dropped out this year. Lenovo, which was at fourth spot last year, dropped to ninth place this year - selling only 10.9 million smartphones in the first quarter of 2016. Their sales for the year are expected to drop 26 per cent from 2015. According to IC Insights, total global smartphone sales will increase by 5 percent from 1.43 billions units in 2015 to 1.5 billion in 2016. Samsung Galaxy Note 5 device has also topped the 2016 American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) poll. According to the annual poll comprising 12,710 people, Samsung Galaxy Note 5 phablet has a rating of 86 out of 100, 9to5mac.com reported recently. iPhone 6 Plus is one notch behind at 85. In last year's satisfaction index, Apple and Samsung were neck-to-neck at 80.​

​New Delhi, June 15 (IANS) Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry has been named a leader in the "Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Mobility Management" (EMM) Suites, research and advisory firm Gartner announced on Wednesday. The "Magic Quadrant" market research report aims to provide a qualitative analysis into a market and its direction, maturity and participants. "We believe our positioning in the 'Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Mobility Management Suites' is proof that we are delivering on our enterprise roadmap and providing the most complete EMM solution on the market," said Billy Ho, Executive Vice President, Enterprise Products, BlackBerry, in a statement. "Our leading productivity apps combined with our enterprise-level mobile security provides organizations the ability to optimise their mobile journey while protecting both corporate and private data across multiple endpoints," he added. The new "Good Secure" EMM Suites from BlackBerry provide simple and flexible options for customers to deploy security across devices, apps, content and data.​

​New Delhi, June 15 (IANS) E-commerce major Flipkart on Tuesday announced the launch of laptop sale event "Lap it Up!" on its website in collaboration with Intel India. The campaign will offer latest laptop brands at some exciting prices with EMI option. “Around 50 per cent of our demand comes from tier II and III cities as a lot of the new models are not available in these cities. Our latest campaign has been designed in line with this trend to make latest laptops and technology accessible to our customers across geographies,” Adarsh K. Menon, Vice President (electronic and auto) Flipkart, said in a statement. “Our endeavour has always been to make technology affordable and accessible, especially for the first-time buyers,” added Anand Ramamoorthy, Director (consumption sales) South Asia, Intel.​

​New York, June 15 (IANS) Micro-blogging website Twitter has invested $70 million in popular music streaming service SoundCloud, a move that may push Twitter's stalled growth and engagement with its over 300 million users.

New York, June 15 (IANS) Older people struggle to remember important details because their brains cannot resist the irrelevant "stuff" they soak up subconsciously, thereby making them less confident in their memories, a study says.

Using bio-sensors to look at brain activity, the researchers saw that older participants wandered into a brief "mental time travel" when trying to recall details. 

This journey into their subconscious veered them into a cluttered space that was filled with both relevant and irrelevant information. 

This clutter led to less confidence, even when their recollections were correct, the study said.

Cluttering of the brain is one reason older people are more susceptible to manipulation, the researchers said. 

"This memory clutter that's causing low confidence could be a reason why older adults are often victims of financial scams, which typically occur when someone tries to trick them about prior conversations that didn't take place at all," said lead researcher Audrey Duarte, associate professor of psychology at Georgia Institute of Technology in the US.

The findings appeared online in the journal Neuropsychologia.

For the study, the researchers showed that older adults (60 years and up) and college students a series of pictures of everyday objects while electroencephalography (EEG) sensors were connected to their heads. 

Each photo was accompanied by a colour and scene. Participants were told to focus on one and ignore the other. An hour later, they were asked if the object was new or old, and if it matched the colour and the scene.

Neither age group was very good at recalling what they were told to ignore. Both did well remembering the object and what they were supposed to focus on.

"But when we asked if they were sure, older people backed off their answers a bit. They weren't as sure," Duarte said.

The researchers noticed differences in brain activity between the young and old. Older adults' brains spent more time and effort trying to reconstruct their memories.

"While trying to remember, their brains would spend more time going back in time in an attempt to piece together what was previously seen," she said. 

"But not just what they were focused on -- some of what they were told to ignore got stuck in their minds," Duarte said.​