Knowledge Update

​New York, Feb 9 (IANS) Administering a single dose of ketamine -- a drug commonly used as general anaesthetic or a rapid-acting antidepressant -- one week before a stressful event can act as a buffer against a heightened fear response and might prevent post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), researchers have found.

PTSD is an anxiety disorder that occurs in about one-quarter of individuals who experience psychological trauma.

The symptoms include re-living the trauma -- experiencing repeated flashbacks, hyperarousal, and hyperreactivity -- as well as mood changes, psychological numbing, and chronic physical symptoms such as headache.

The likelihood that PTSD symptoms will develop depends on the nature and intensity of the trauma and an individual's response.

"If our results in mice translate to humans, giving a single dose of ketamine in a vaccine-like fashion could have great benefit for people who are highly likely to experience significant stressors, such as members of the military or aid workers going into conflict zones," said lead author Christine A. Denny, Assistant Professor at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) in New York, US.

However, "ketamine is a powerful drug, and we wouldn't advocate widespread use for preventing or reducing PTSD symptoms," Denny added. 

For the study, published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, the team conducted experiments in mice who were given a small dose of ketamine via a drip or a placebo either one month, one week, or one hour before they were subjected to a series of small shocks.

The mice -- conditioned to associate the test environment with the shocks -- were later returned to the same environment and assessed for their freezing behaviour -- a measure of their conditioned fear response.

Only the mice given ketamine one week before the stressor exhibited reduced freezing when they were returned to the test environment, suggesting that timings of administering dose may be important.

​New York, Feb 8 (IANS) Microsoft is making Cognitive Services, a collection of 25 tools that will allow developers to add features such as sentiment detection, speech recognition and language understanding to their applications.

London, Feb 8 (IANS) Using Facebook can be a fun way to while away the hours -- but a new study suggests that updating your status or commenting on a friend's holiday pictures can make us lose track of time as we do it. People who are using Facebook or surfing the web suffer impaired perception of time, said the study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology. "We found evidence that Internet and Facebook related stimuli can distort time perception due to attention and arousal related mechanisms," said the study by researchers from University of Kent in England. The researchers found that the way people perceived time varied according to whether their internet use was specifically Facebook related or more general. Using well-established internal clock models, the researchers attempted to separate the roles of 'attention' and 'arousal' as drivers for time distortion. In the study, Lazaros Gonidis and Dinkar Sharma monitored the responses of 44 people who were shown images for varying degrees of time. While some of the images were associated with Facebook, another set had more general internet associations with yet another set as neutral 'control' images. Those taking part had to say whether the image they had just seen had been visible for a short or long time. The key finding was that people tended to underestimate the time they had been looking at Facebook-related images to a greater extent than other more general internet related images, but that in both cases time was underestimated. This suggests that Facebook-related images affect time by changing how we pay attention to them. The researchers believe that the findings are likely to have implications for future study into addictive behaviour.

​New York, Feb 8 (IANS) Besides keeping you physically fit, a brisk walk or a long swim may be the key to preventing a bad day at the office from spilling over into the home, says a study. "Research shows employees who are mistreated at work are likely to engage in similar behaviours at home," said one of the researchers Shannon Taylor from University of Central Florida in the US. "If they've been belittled or insulted by a supervisor, they tend to vent their frustration on members of their household. Our study shows that happens because they're too tired to regulate their behaviour," Taylor noted. The findings, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, showed that sleep and exercise are intervention points that can be leveraged to prevent the spread of harmful behaviour. Study participants included 118 MBA students with full-time jobs who took a survey and then wore activity monitors for a week. A follow-up survey was then sent to the participants' cohabitants. Tracking participants' sleep patterns and daytime physical movements, the researchers found that employees who recorded an average of more than 10,900 steps each day were less likely to perpetuate abuse at home than those recording fewer than 7,000. "The study gives us a new perspective on the importance of getting an adequate amount of sleep and exercise. It's not just good for you, it's good for your spouse, too," Taylor said.

​New York, Feb 8 (IANS) US tech giant Apple announced that BeatsX wireless earbuds will be available globally later this week. BeatsX earphones deliver up to eight hours of battery life and with "Fast Fuel", a five-minute charge gives you two hours of playback. "The earbuds come with unique flex-form cable that provides all-day comfort and easy pocket portability, while eartip options provide a personalised fit and secure-fit wingtips offer added stability," Apple said in a statement. BeatsX features optimised noise isolation, RemoteTalk allows you to take calls with a built-in mic, play music, adjust volume and activate Siri and also comes with variety of eartip options to offer personalised comfort.

​London, Feb 8 (IANS) If your child is good at maths, chances are that he or she may have an increase in positive emotions, but bad results in maths may trigger negative emotions such as anxiety and boredom, a new study has found.

The findings showed that mathematics -- a subject that is known to trigger strong emotions in students -- impacted their academic performance for years.

"Successful performance in math increased students' positive emotions and decreased their negative emotions over the years," said Stephanie Lichtenfeld from the University of Munich in Germany.

Students with higher intelligence had better grades and test scores, but those who also enjoyed and took pride in math had even better achievement. 

While, students who experienced anger, anxiety, shame, boredom or hopelessness had lower achievements.

"In contrast, students with poor grades and test scores suffered from a decline in positive emotions and an increase in negative emotions, such as math anxiety and math boredom. Thus, these students become caught in a downward spiral of negative emotion and poor achievement," Lichtenfeld added.

For the study, published in the journal Child Development, the team studied 3,425 German students from grades five to nine belonging to different socio-economic backgrounds, whose annual assessments of emotions and achievement in math were evaluated.

While questionnaires measured the self-reported emotions of students, their achievement was assessed by year-end grades and scores on a math achievement test.

Administrators, educators and parents need to strengthen students' positive emotions and minimise negative emotions relating to subjects in school, the researchers recommended.

​London, Feb 8 (IANS) In a first, anonymised data from mobile phones and satellite imagery data can be combined to create high resolution maps to measure poverty.

The researchers from the University of Southampton and the Sweden-based Flowminder Foundation found that by combining mobile data and geospatial data from satellites, they were able to produce poverty predictions which are comparable with those made from traditional sources, but with significant advantages.

"Census and household surveys are normally used as data sources to estimate rates of poverty. However, they aren't regularly updated -- for example, censuses only take place every ten years -- and in low income countries, surveys can be patchy," said Jessica Steele, lead author of the study.

Since the information on mobile phone is continually updated, it can be interrogated in various ways and can track changes on an ongoing basis. 

"Paired with satellite data that has similar features, it can give a much more dynamic view of poverty and its geographic spread," Steele added.

The researchers explained that every time a person uses a mobile it sends information to a receiving tower and gives an approximate location of where they are. 

"It also contains information about levels of data usage, numbers of texts sent, times calls were made and their duration. It can reveal how much and how far people are travelling, as well as the type of phone they're using. This kind of anonymised data helps build a picture of poverty," the paper published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface noted.

For example, monthly credit consumption on mobiles, and the proportion of people in an area using them, can indicate household access to financial resources. While movements of mobiles and their use of networks provide information on individuals' economic opportunities.

"Satellite data can provide us with excellent information about living conditions in rural areas, but in tightly packed cities it's more difficult. It's the reverse for mobiles as more masts in cities means more information, contrasted with the countryside where mobile receiving towers can be thinly spread," Steele said.

The researchers noted that some of the poorest in society may not own a mobile, but even taking this in to account, they were able to identify distinct differences between low income informal settlements and richer areas.

​Beijing, Feb 7 (IANS) Demand for new employees in China's Guangdong province increased after the Spring Festival vacation, when migrant workers return to their hometowns for the holiday, the media reported on Tuesday.

Beijing, Feb 7 (IANS) China announced on Tuesday that it has approved two electric car projects worth 6.15 billion yuan ($896 million).

After completion, the two projects will boast a combined output of 115,000 electric cars, according to a statement by the National Development and Reform Commission.

​London, Feb 7 (IANS) Nearly 250,000 jobs in Britain's public sector could be replaced by websites and artificially intelligent "chat bots" in the near future, leading to higher efficiency in the sector, a new report said.