Knowledge Update | Horizon University UAE – Essential Insights

​London, March 20 (IANS) A team of German scientists has found out what actually happens if we try to remember things that took place years or decades ago?

The study revealed that the neural networks involved in retrieving very old memories are quite distinct from those used to remember recent events.

"For the very first time we were able to show that the retrieval of old and recent memories are supported by distinct brain networks," said Magdalena Sauvage, professor at Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany.

When we remember events which occurred recently, the hippocampus -- the portion of the brain, thought to be the centre of emotion, memory, and the autonomic nervous system -- is activated, said the paper appeared in the journal eLIFE.

Hippocampus contains the cornu ammonis regions 1 and 3 (CA1 and CA3), which plays a major role in retrieving recent memories.

For the study, the team monitored brain activity in mice during the retrieval of memories that are one day to one year old - e.g. up to the mouse-equivalent of 40 human years.

For their study they applied a high-resolution molecular imaging technique, which detects the expression of a particular gene tied to plasticity processes and this way sheds light on cognitive processes.

The CA3 region, believed to be the place of memory storage in the hippocampus, no longer plays a role when we remember very old memories.

Rather, the involvement of the CA1 region persists and the cortical areas -- largest part of the brain -- adjacent to the hippocampus become involved.

The reason for the differential involvement of the hippocampal sub-regions could lie in the mechanisms supported by CA3.

In CA3, memories can be retrieved on the basis of single features of an original memory, which are used as cues. 

"Since the memory for single features degrades over time, we speculate that they might ultimately be of no more use as cues, hence retrieving memory would then essentially rely on CA1 and other processes taking place in the parahippocampal region of the brain," explained Sauvage.​

​Hong Kong, March 21 (IANS) Even as it promotes Hong Kong as the gateway for Indian companies to the Chinese markets, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) is promoting India as an alternative manufacturing base for its industries based in China, states a research report.

​Cape Town, March 20 (IANS) South Africans actively took part in the Earth Hour campaign by switching off lights from 8.30-9.30 p.m., saving an average of 515 mw electricity during the hour, authorities said on Sunday.

As part of its support for the Earth Hour campaign, the country's electricity utility Eskom measured the reduction in electricity used during the hour on Saturday, Xinhua reported.

"We would like to encourage people to take action beyond this one hour, and to make energy efficiency and environmental conservation part of their daily lifestyles," Eskom said.

People are encouraged to reduce their energy consumption every day by using electricity efficiently, and switching off all non-essential lights and household appliances, said the utility.

Commercial customers, particularly shopping centres and office blocks, can also make a big difference by switching off non-essential lights and not leaving office equipment such as computers in standby mode after hours, it added.

Earth Hour is an annual global event, initiated in Sydney, in 2007 to encourage people to switch off lights and unused appliances for an hour as a symbolic demonstration of their commitment to action against climate change.​

​New Delhi, March 22 (IANS) Expanding its presence in the professional projectors solutions category, consumer electronics major Sony has launched five new laser and lamp projectors, an official statement said. The projectors aim to cater to professional users who require higher level of brightness and resolution, with enhanced versatility and affordability for business, academic, large venue or entertainment use, the statement added. The new products include three 3LCD laser models (VPL-FHZ65, VPL-FHZ60 and VPL-FHZ57). The new laser models deliver brightness of 6,000 lumens (VPL-FHZ65), 5,000 lumens (VPL-FHZ60) and 4,100 lumens (VPL-FHZ57). The other two are lamp models. The new laser models are designed to deliver enhanced picture quality with new features such as "reality creation" and "contrast enhancer," both technologies already in use by Sony’s home theatre projection systems for high-end consumer entertainment, the statement added. The new projectors also offer colour space adjustment and colour correction features for more accurate colour reproduction. A laser light source means there is no lamp that needs to slowly warm up or cool down, no lamp to limit tilt angle and no compromise between high brightness and high resolution. Smartly designed, the new laser models’ “quick turn on/off” requires only approximately seven seconds for the brightness to ramp up after turning on, the statement said.​

​London, March 21 (IANS) For mothers-to-be, going for an MRI of the cervix area can give more accurate results than ultrasound to predict if some women will give a preterm birth, say researchers.

Early dilation of the cervix, a neck of tissue connecting the uterus with the vagina, during pregnancy can lead to premature delivery. 

Women in their second trimester of pregnancy with a cervix measuring 15 millimeters or less, as seen on ultrasound, are considered to be at higher risk of preterm birth. 

However, ultrasound has limitations as a predictor of preterm birth, as it does not provide important information on changes in cervical tissue in the antepartum phase just before childbirth.

"A better understanding of the process of antepartum cervical remodeling, loosely divided in two distinct phases called softening and ripening, is critical to improve the diagnosis of cervical malfunction and anticipate the occurrence of birth," explained lead study author Gabriele Masselli from Sapienza University in Rome.

To learn more, researchers used an MRI technique called diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) to examine pregnant women who had been referred for suspected fetal or placental abnormality. 

DWI has been increasingly used for abdominal and pelvic diseases, but has not been tested for the evaluation of the uterine cervix in pregnant patients.

Each of the 30 pregnant women in the study, published in the Journal of Radiology, had a sonographically short cervix and a positive fetal fibronectin test between 23 and 28 weeks of gestation. 

Fetal fibronectin is a glue-like protein that helps hold the fetal sac to the uterine lining and the presence of it before week 35 of gestation may indicate a higher risk of preterm birth.

Of the 30 women, eight delivered within a week of the MRI examination. The other 22 delivered an average of 55 days later. 

The researchers analysed the difference between an MRI and ultrasound method.

"Our results suggest that MRI has emerged as a powerful imaging biomarker in evaluating patients with impending delivery," the authors stated.​

Beijing, March 22 (IANS) Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce company, is preparing to unveil its first internet-connected smart car in April, the People's Daily reported on Tuesday. According to the company's chief technology officer Wang Jian, internet character is one of the car's technological innovations. Details of the sport utility vehicle (SUV) will be unveiled at a launch event in April. This is an energy-saving car whose battery will retain 80 percent of its storage capacity after running 160,000 km. Internet cars adopt technologies including computer, modern sensor, information fusion, telecommunication, artificial intelligence and automatic control. The car jointly developed by Alibaba and Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) is equipped with real car-based smart operation system which has proprietary intellectual property rights. Independent development of smart operation system plays a key role in the process to transform an ordinary car to an internet car. In order to fulfil this task, Alibaba arranged over 800 researchers for the project and invested billions of dollars into the project. Wang added the internet car will not only promote people-to-car communication, it will expand car-to-car, car-to-road, and car-to-infrastructure communication too.​

New York, March 22 (IANS) Not only genes, even jobs may run in some families, and people within a family are proportionally more likely to eventually also choose the same occupation and this is especially true of twins, a Facebook study has revealed.

​Toronto, March 21 (IANS) Astrophysicists from York University have revealed the fastest winds ever seen at ultraviolet wavelengths near a supermassive black hole.

“We’re talking wind speeds of 20 percent the speed of light which is more than 200 million kms per hour. That’s equivalent to a category 77 hurricane,” said Jesse Rogerson who led the research as part of his PhD thesis in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at York. 

"We have reason to believe that there are quasar winds that are even faster," he added.

Astronomers have known about the existence of quasar winds since the late 1960s. At least one in four quasars have them. 

Quasars are the discs of hot gas that form around supermassive black holes at the centre of massive galaxies - they are bigger than Earth’s orbit around the sun and hotter than the surface of the sun, generating enough light to be seen across the observable universe.

“Black holes can have a mass that is billions of times larger than the sun, mostly because they are messy eaters in a way, capturing any material that ventures too close,” added associate professor Patrick Hall.

As matter spirals toward a black hole, some of it is blown away by the heat and light of the quasar. 

"These are the winds that we are detecting," Hall stated.

The team used data from a large survey of the sky known as the "Sloan Digital Sky Survey" to identify new outflows from quasars. 

After spotting about 300 examples, they selected about 100 for further exploration, collecting data with the Gemini Observatory’s twin telescopes in Hawaii and Chile, in which Canada has a major share.

"We not only confirmed this fastest-ever ultraviolet wind, but also discovered a new wind in the same quasar moving more slowly, at only 140 million kilometres an hour," says Hall. 

"We plan to keep watching this quasar to see what happens next, the authors noted in a paper which appeared in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

New York, March 22 (IANS) Researchers from the University of Missouri have developed a method of transferring an energy source to virtually any shape - a technology that can help develop new-age smartphones and other devices.

​London, March 21 (IANS) Have you ever failed to notice your phone vibrating or have been pick-pocketed while searching for a friend's face in a crowded place? It is because you were so much engrossed in the visual task that you actually lost the ability to notice that your own wallet was being picked.

According to a new study, people's ability to notice the sense of touch is reduced when they are carrying out a demanding visual task.

The study pointed out an example of cars that now come fixed with tactile alerts and signals the driver when it begins to drift across lanes. 

However, the researchers said that the drivers are less likely to notice these alerts when engaging in demanding visual tasks such as searching for directions at a busy junction. 

"Our research is particularly important given the growing use of tactile information in warning systems,” said Sandra Murphy of Royal Holloway, University of London, in a paper detailed in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.

For the study, the team asked volunteers to perform a letter search task of either low or high difficulty, as well as respond to the presence or absence of a brief vibration delivered simultaneously to either the left or the right hand. 

Their sensitivity to the clearly noticeable tactile stimulus was reduced when they carried out the more taxing visual search task, the authors reported.