Knowledge Update

​London, Jan 14 (IANS) People who suffer with early schizophrenia may also be at risk of developing diabetes, even before being prescribed anti-psychotic drugs and a poor lifestyle -- poor diet and sedentary behaviour -- associated with prolonged period of illness, a study has found.

Schizophrenia -- a brain disorder in which people interpret reality abnormally -- is known to be associated with a reduced life expectancy of up to 30 years. 

This is largely due to the onset of Type 2 diabetes, which increases the risk of physical health disorders such as heart attack or stroke, the researchers said.

"Our findings tell us that people with early schizophrenia have already started down the road to developing diabetes, even if they haven't been diagnosed with diabetes yet," said lead author Toby Pillinger from King's College London.

The findings showed that people with long-term schizophrenia are three times more likely than the general population to have diabetes, something which has previously been attributed to poor diet and exercise habits in this group, as well as the use of antipsychotic medication.

For the study, the team examined data from 16 studies comprising 731 people with a first episode of schizophrenia and 614 people from the general population. 

Blood tests revealed that people with schizophrenia had higher higher levels of insulin and insulin resistance, which increased their risk of developing Type 2 diabetes compared with healthy controls.

Other factors that may raise the risk of developing diabetes include, premature birth, low birth-weight and the stress associated with developing schizophrenia that increases the levels of cortisol -- the stress hormone.

"Our study highlights the importance of considering physical health at the onset of schizophrenia and calls for a more holistic approach to its management, combining physical and mental health," Pillinger noted.

The study was published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry. 

​Beijing, Jan 13 (IANS) China has established cooperation ties in science and technology with 158 countries and regions in the world, the Ministry of Science and Technology said on Friday.

 

​New York, Jan 13 (IANS) Apple has announced a change in App Store policy increasing the tvOS apps size limit from 200MB to 4GB.

"With the increased data size, developers can include more media in their submission and provide a complete, rich user experience upon installation," Apple said in a post on

​New York, Jan 13 (IANS) Your smart watch may not only measure your steps and physiological parameters but also detect when you are falling sick, a new study has revealed. Researchers from the Stanford University found that smart watches and other personal biosensor devices can help detect when people have colds and even signal the onset of complex conditions like Lyme disease and diabetes. "We want to tell when people are healthy and also catch illnesses at their earliest stages," said Michael Snyder, Professor at the Stanford University, US. The study collected a myriad of measurements from participants for up to two years to detect deviations from their normal baseline for measurements such as heart rate and skin temperature. "Because the devices continuously follow these measures, they potentially provide rapid means to detect the onset of diseases that change your physiology," the study noted. It was found that many of these deviations coincided with times when people became ill. For example, heart rate and skin temperature tends to rise when people become ill, said Snyder. To detect these deviations, the researchers wrote a software programme for data from a smart watch called 'Change of Heart'. The devices detected common colds and also detected the presence of Lyme disease in the researcher involved in the study. "This research paves the way for the smart phone to serve as a health dashboard, monitoring health and sensing early signs of illness, likely even before the person wearing it does," the study published in PLOS Biology added.

​Tokyo, Jan 13 (IANS) Nintendo's new gaming console Switch is set to launch worldwide, the gaming giant announced on Friday. Although Switch's price will vary from country to country, it will cost $299 in the US and 29,960 yen (around $260) in Japan, the company said. The console, which will be available in the US, Canada, Japan and several European countries on March 3, seems to have disappointed Japanese investors due to its price, which is higher than that of Sony's Playstation 4 and Microsoft's Xbox One, as Nintendo's shares fell 3.2 per cent one hour before the Tokyo Stock Exchange closed, Efe news reported. Nintendo revealed in October last year that the games machine would be a handheld device that doubles as a home console. Previously code-named NX, the Switch looks like a tablet computer with controllers that attach to its sides, the BBC reported.

Sharjah, Jan 13 (IANS/WAM) The fifth edition of the highly-anticipated Sharjah Children Biennial (SCB) will begin on Sunday and will showcase 376 artworks created by 785 children from across the world.

Held under the banner "A World as Big as Your Imagination", the event will run til February 15th. The competition would be having three categories: Environment, Architecture Design and Fantasy and Reality.

The ceremony will also feature a number of artistic workshops and interactive activities for children under the supervision of expert artists from various genres of architectural, visual and fine arts.

The workshops will be held throughout SCB to enhance children's love of the arts, and provide them with the opportunity to challenge and develop their capabilities further.

Beijing, Jan 13 (IANS) The Chinese New Year, the world's most crowded travel season and the country's most important holiday, began on Friday.

Beijing, Jan 13 (IANS) An oil-electricity hybrid locomotive, the most powerful of its kind, was started in an experiment in extreme cold weather in northeast China, said manufacturing company CRRC Ziyang Co Ltd.

The experiment was conducted in Hulunbuir in the north of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, on Thursday morning when the local temperature was minus 40 degrees Celsius, Xinhua news agency reported.

Despite the extreme cold weather, the temperature in the cab was 25 degrees Celsius and the batteries showed a temperature of 12 degrees Celsius, suitable for the operation.

The experiment marked the end of a series of experiments for the hybrid locomotive, said Xiang Jun, chairman of the company based in southwest China's Sichuan Province.

On January 7, the locomotive carried out a successful small operation experiment in environment of minus 30 degrees Celsius in northeast China.

In August 2016, the same locomotive had operated in high temperatures in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Hybrid locomotives are environment friendly, energy-saving and less noisy, according to Xiang. 

The successful experiments in both extreme cold and hot weather showed the world's largest-power hybrid locomotive can run in environment with different temperatures, he said.

New York, Jan 13 (IANS) It is very likely that you have a namesake who is very distinct from your personality. To disambiguate you two, a new method has been developed that can tell you from your namesake.

This ambiguity often occurs in bibliographic, law enforcement and other areas.

Computer scientists from the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) have developed a novel machine-learning method to provide better solutions to this perplexing problem. 

"We can teach the computer to recognise names and disambiguate information accumulated from a variety of sources -- Facebook, Twitter and blog posts, public records and other documents -- by collecting features such as Facebook friends and keywords from people's posts using the identical algorithm," explained Mohammad al Hasan, Associate Professor, IUPUI. 

The new method, unlike the existing methods, can perform non-exhaustive classification so that it can tell whom a new record, which appears in streaming data, belongs to.

"Our method grows and changes when new persons appear, enabling us to recognise the ever-growing number of individuals whose records were not previously encountered. While working in non-exhaustive setting, our model automatically detects such names and adjusts the model parameters accordingly," added Hasan.

The researchers trained computers by using records of different individuals with that name to build a model that distinguishes between individuals with that name, even individuals about whom information had not been included in the training data previously provided to the computer.

The researchers focused on three types of "features" -- bits of information with some degree of predictive power to define a specific individual.

"Relational or association features to reveal persons with whom an individual is associated; text features, such as keywords in documents; and venue features to determine memberships or events with which an individual is currently or was formerly associated," the study noted.

The study was published in proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management.

​London, Jan 13 (IANS) Spending hours in front of digital screen may be harmful for adolescents. However, but moderate use may not harm but increase their well-being, researchers say.

"Digital screens are now an inextricable part of modern childhood. Our findings suggest that adolescents' moderate screen use has no detectable link to well-being and levels of engagement above these points are modestly correlated with well-being," said lead researcher Andrew Przybylski, psychological scientist at the University of Oxford.

The findings showed that as a result of a digital "sweet spot" between low and high technology use, moderate screen time can increase teenagers' well-being.

This sweet spot benefits teenagers' well-being by providing opportunities to develop social connections and skills, the researchers said.

For the study, the researchers examined data measuring screen time and well-being collected from 120,115 teenagers, with an average of 15 year olds. 

Nearly all of the participating adolescents reported spending time using at least one type of digital technology on a daily basis.

The also reported spending more time engaging in digital activities on weekend days than on weekdays and that they spent more time using smartphones in overall compared with watching TV.

Using statistical methods to determine the tipping point for each type of activity, the researchers found that on weekdays, teenagers' well-being peaked at about 1 hour and 40 minutes of video-game play, about 1 hour 57 minutes of smartphone use, about 3 hours and 41 minutes of watching videos, and about 4 hours and 17 minutes of using computers.

However, above these tipping points, screen time turned potentially harmful and was associated with decreased well-being.

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science.