Knowledge Update

London, April 22 (IANS) Gender stereotyping in baby boys and girls may start as young as three months and men recognise gender of the new-born babies based on the pitch of their cries, researchers reveal.

Adults often wrongly assume babies with higher-pitched cries as females and lower-pitched cries are males.

The findings revealed that inspite of no actual difference in pitch between the voices of girls and boys before puberty, the study found that adults make assumptions about the gender of babies based on their cries.

"It is intriguing that gender stereotyping can start as young as three months, with adults attributing degrees of femininity and masculinity to babies solely based on the pitch of their cries,” said David Reby from the University of Sussex in Britain. 

The team recorded the spontaneous cries of 15 boys and 13 girls who were on average four months old and the participating adults were a mixture of parents and non-parents.

They synthetically altered the pitch of the cries while leaving all other features of the cries unchanged to ensure they could isolate the impact of the pitch alone. 

When told the gender of the baby, adults make assumptions about the degree of masculinity or femininity of the baby based on the pitch of the cry.

The results also indicate that men assume that boy babies are in more discomfort than girl babies with the same pitched cry which may indicate that this sort of gender stereotyping is more ingrained in men.

"The research shows that we tend to wrongly attribute what we know about adults -- that men have lower pitched voices than women -- to babies, when, in fact, the pitch of children's voices does not differ between sexes until puberty,” added Nicolas Mathevon from Hunter College in the US in the paper published in the journal BMC Psychology.​

New York, April 20 (IANS) What if you can watch the Earth -- its blue-and-white marbling stark against a black interstellar backdrop -- from space? The experience will sure evoke an intense awe like it happens with astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS).

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania's positive psychology centre are now studying the phenomenon called the "overview effect" to better understand the emotions astronauts commonly recount when they look at the Blue Marble from space.

“We watch sunsets whenever we travel to beautiful places to get a little taste of this kind of experience. These astronauts are having something more extreme,” said lead researcher David Yaden. 

“By studying the more-extreme version of a general phenomenon, you can often learn more about it,” he added.

To understand the “overview effect”, Yaden and colleagues analysed excerpts from astronauts from all over the world who documented viewing the Earth from space. 

Themes emerged from the quotes, ideas like unity, vastness, connectedness and perception -- in general the sense of an overwhelming, life-changing moment.

The effort is to look at implications for space flight as the aeronautical community heads toward years-long missions to places like Mars and to understand how to induce a similar sensation for non-astronauts.

“We think of people who do a lot of meditation or climb mountains, people who are awe junkies, having these experiences. We don't [often] think of these very strict scientists reporting these blissful moments,” said Yaden in a paper appeared in the journal Psychology of Consciousness. 

They are now planning a follow-up experiment using virtual reality that gives participants the chance to Earth-gaze which could result in an experience similar to the "overview effect".

“In the end, what we care about is how to induce these experiences. They help people in some ways be more adaptive, feel more connected and reframe troubles,” the authors noted.​

​New York, April 21 (IANS) In one of the largest studies on the genes involved in human behaviour, a team of over 190 researchers from 140 institutions in 17 countries has found genetic variants associated with our feelings of well-being, depression and neuroticism.

The researchers, however, advise caution when interpreting the results as genetic variants do not determine whether someone develops depressive symptoms, neuroticism or has a poor sense of wellbeing.

“In this paper, we applied advanced statistical analyses and meta-analysed or combined, results across a large number of studies which is the most powerful way to conduct this type of genetics research," said Dr Alexis Frazier-Wood, assistant professor of pediatrics and nutrition at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital.

“We found three genetic variants associated with subjective well-being -- how happy a person thinks or feels about his or her life. We also found two genes harboring variants associated with depressive symptoms and 11 genes where variation was associated with neuroticism,” explained Dr Frazier-Wood.

How people think and feel about their lives depends on multiple factors, including genes.

“Genetics is only one factor that influences these psychological traits. The environment is at least as important, and it interacts with the genetic effects,” added Dr Daniel Benjamin, associate professor at University of Southern California Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and corresponding author.

The information in this report allows researchers to look at possible ways to study these conditions.

“We can start studying the functions of these genes to begin to understand why biologically some people are more predisposed to feel this way than others," said Frazier-Wood in a paper published in the journal Nature Genetics.​

New York, April 21 (IANS) A team of US scientists has invented a new way to create three-dimensional (3D) human heart tissue from stem cells that offers cheaper and faster method to create heart tissue for testing drugs and modelling disease.

The tissue also opens the door for a precision medicine approach to treating heart disease.

"We have bioengineered micro-scale heart tissues with a method that can easily be reproduced, which will enable scientists in stem cell biology and the drug industry to study heart cells in their proper context," said Nathaniel Huebsch, postdoctoral fellow at San Francisco-based at the Gladstone Institutes.

"In turn, this will enhance our ability to discover treatments for heart disease," Huebsch added.

Creating heart cells from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) that are derived from a patient's skin cells is inadequate for drug testing because they do not properly predict how a drug will affect adult heart cells.

Additionally, heart cells created from iPSCs are challenging to make and work with, so creating large quantities can be difficult.

The micro-heart muscle addresses these concerns. Forcing the cells to organise and stretch into 3D tissue helps spur development and coaxes them into resembling more mature cells that can better predict how a drug will affect adult heart cells.

The new method, published in the journal Scientific Reports, requires a thousand-fold fewer cells to grow the tissue than other tissue engineering techniques.

Using fewer cells allows the scientists to do many more experiments with the same amount of resources.

"The beauty of this technique is that it is very easy and robust and still allows you to create three-dimensional miniature tissues that function like normal tissues," said senior author Bruce Conklin, senior investigator at Gladstone.

"We think that the micro-heart muscle will provide a superior resource for conducting research and developing therapies for heart disease," he noted.​

Toronto, April 21 (IANS) While planning a visual task, your brain initially reflects the visual goal accurately but errors accumulate during a memory delay and further escalate during the final action, say scientists from York University.

“Think of all the times you see something and plan to act on it but after only a short delay, you make a mistake," said professor Doug Crawford. 

“For example, before my morning coffee kicks in, I'm great at making silly mistakes like putting the honey away in the fridge instead of the peanut butter,” he added.

For the study, led by Amirsaman Sajad in Crawford's visuomotor neuroscience lab, researchers recorded signals in the frontal cortex area of the brain during the delay between target-related visual activity and intended gaze-related motor activity. 

The visual response and memory activity for the time in between was then analysed.

“We looked at what happens from vision to memory to action and how the spatial code changes through time in the frontal cortex,” said Sajad.

“In the Olympics tennis analogy, when a high degree of accuracy is required, a one-second delay in frontal cortex processing could make the difference between an Olympic gold and silver,” Crawford noted.

The findings, published in the journal eNeuro, are of particular significance to research in diseases affecting frontal cortex function “because if errors accumulate in healthy individuals, the accumulations would be much worse with diseases that affect frontal cortex function,” the authors noted.​

​Washington, April 21 (IANS) The International Space Station (ISS) is providing researchers a unique opportunity to study muscle loss and to investigate means for muscle preservation for people on the Earth.

"Rodent Research-3", a study sponsored by US-based pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Company and the Centre for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), focuses on assessing the ability of a novel compound to prevent skeletal muscle wasting and weakness in mice exposed to long-duration spaceflight.

The investigation was launched aboard the eighth SpaceX resupply mission to the space station this month.

The astronauts on the space station follow rigorous exercise programmes that apply forces to their musculoskeletal systems and help them stay strong throughout their missions.

Mice exposed to spaceflight have proved to be valuable research models to understand, target and treat causes of human muscle atrophy.

"This includes modelling serious diseases that involve muscle wasting such as muscular dystrophy, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, cancer cachexia and even ageing-related musculoskeletal frailty," said Rosamund Smith, research fellow at Eli Lilly and Company.

The ability to expose all muscles of an organism to conditions that induce muscle atrophy is not easily achieved on Earth.

"Lilly is excited to have the opportunity to conduct this investigation in space," Smith added in a NASA statement.

Loss of muscle function, rather than just a decrease in muscle size, is the critical aspect that leads to problems with physical performance in patients suffering from muscle-wasting conditions.

"The 'Rodent Research-3' study is unique not only in the experimental compound that will be tested but also because, for the first time, muscle function of the mice will be assessed during spaceflight," noted Janet Beegle, Rodent Research-3 project manager at NASA.

Although the primary research focus of "Rodent Research-3" is skeletal muscle, the investigators are studying other organ systems such as bone, both at the tissue and molecular levels.

The goal is to characterise tissue responses to spaceflight and observe how these changes vary with the length of time spent in microgravity.

"The findings will advance our understanding of the risks that long-term space exploration poses to astronauts, and can be applied towards the development of countermeasures to protect astronaut health," the researchers pointed out.

Results will be applied to ongoing discovery efforts at Eli Lilly and Company, seeking treatments for serious muscle-wasting diseases and conditions that may potentially help patients afflicted with degenerative diseases to stay strong.​

Washington, April 20 (IANS) Three solar observatories have captured the most comprehensive observations of an electromagnetic phenomenon called a "current sheet", strengthening the evidence that the understanding of solar flares is correct.

A "current sheet" is a very fast and flat flow of electrically-charged material, defined in part by its extreme thinness compared to its length and width.

"Current sheets" form when two oppositely-aligned magnetic fields come in close contact, creating very high magnetic pressure.

The multi-faceted view of the December 2013 flare was made possible by three solar-watching missions: NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), NASA's Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) and Hinode, a collaboration between the space agencies of Japan, the US, Britain and Europe.

Solar flares are intense bursts of light from the sun. They are created when complicated magnetic fields suddenly and explosively rearrange themselves, converting magnetic energy into light.

"The existence of a 'current sheet' is crucial in all our models of solar flares," said James McAteer, astrophysicist at New Mexico State University.

"These observations make us much more comfortable that our models are good," he added.

The strongest solar flares can impact the Earth's atmosphere and interfere with our communications systems and also disrupt onboard satellite electronics.

Unlike other space weather events, solar flares travel at the speed of light, meaning we get no warning that they are coming.

Better models lead to better forecasting, said Michael Kirk, space scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

"These complementary observations allowed unprecedented measurements of magnetic reconnection in three dimensions. This will help refine how we model and predict the evolution of solar flares," Kirk added.

Because "current sheets" are so closely associated with magnetic reconnection, observing a "current sheet" in such detail backs up the idea that magnetic reconnection is the force behind solar flares.

"You have to be watching at the right time, at the right angle, with the right instruments to see a current sheet," said McAteer in the study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The new study is unique in that several measurements of the current sheet -- such as speed, temperature, density and size -- were observed from more than one angle or derived from more than method.​

​London, April 20 (IANS) As the world gets prepared to build smart cities, new research led by an Indian-origin scientist has highlighted the dangerous effects of indoor pollution on human health and has called for policies to ensure closer monitoring of air quality.

According to Prashant Kumar from the University of Surrey, the research offers insight into "Sick Building Syndrome" and how new smart cities could help combat air quality issues.

When we think of the term "air pollution", we tend to think of car exhausts or factory fumes expelling grey smoke.

"However, there are actually various sources of pollution that have a negative effect on air quality, many of which are found inside our homes and offices. From cooking residue to paints, varnishes and fungal spores the air we breathe indoors is often more polluted than that outside," explained Kumar.

In 2012, indoor air pollution was linked to 4.3 million deaths globally, compared with 3.7 million for outdoor air pollution.

Urban dwellers typically spend 90 percent of their time indoors and this has been linked to "Sick Building Syndrome" where people exhibit a range of ill-health effects related to breathing indoor air.

"It is essential that we are able to effectively monitor indoor air pollution so that we can better understand when and where levels are worst, and in turn offer solutions to make our air healthier," added Kumar in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

"Our work looks at the use of small, low-energy monitoring sensors that would be able to gather real-time data and tell families or workers when levels of pollutants are too high," he continued.

With this research, we are calling for greater importance to be placed on ensuring buildings are built with indoor pollution monitoring in mind. As we enter the age of smart cities this is one way in which technology will actively benefit health, the authors noted.

A collaborative effort of European, Australian and British researchers led by the University of Surrey, the study assesses the harmful effects of indoor pollution in order to make recommendations on how best to monitor and negate these outcomes.

In another paper published earlier in the journal Environmental Pollution, Kumar and PhD student Anju Goel also found that outdoor air pollution was at a high where buildings were located at traffic intersections.

Even where there was low traffic volume, traffic intersections with densely built up surroundings showed twice the concentration than at open junctions.

Exposure to these concentrations showed that ground floor dwellings in these areas were exposed to twice as many harmful particles.

"This has important implications for town planning and we should consider whether we really want schools, offices or hospitals to be built within these environments," Kumar noted.​

​New York, April 20 (IANS) Using the low-tech material coal, engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have built a simple electrical heating device that can be used for defrosting car windows or airplane wings or as part of a biomedical implant.

They have also for the first time characterised in detail the chemical, electrical and optical properties of thin films of four different kinds of coal - anthracite, lignite, and two bituminous types. 

“When you look at coal as a material and not just as something to burn, the chemistry is extremely rich," said lead researcher Jeffrey Grossman from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) at MIT. 

The question he wanted to ask is: "Could we leverage the wealth of chemistry in things like coal to make devices that have useful functionality?" 

The answer, he says, is a resounding yes.

Part of the challenge was to figure out how to process coal.

The researchers developed a series of steps to crush the material to a powder put it in solution then deposit it in thin uniform films on a substrate -- a necessary step in fabricating many electronic devices - from transistors to photovoltaics.

Even though coal has been one of the most widely used substances by human beings for centuries, its bulk electronic and optical properties had never really been studied for the purpose of advanced devices.

The simple heating device the team made provides an end-to-end demonstration of how to use the material - from grinding the coal to depositing it as a thin film and making it into a functional electronic device. 

The doors are now opened for a wide variety of potential applications through further research.

The big potential advantage of the new material, Grossman says, is its low cost stemming from the inherently cheap base material, combined with simple solution processing that enables low fabrication costs. 

The findings were reported in the journal Nano Letters.​

​London, April 20 (IANS) Savouring positive memories and images is likely to generate positive emotions in the human mind and can prove to be effective in treating individuals with anxiety or depression, reveals a new research.

A team of researchers from University of Liverpool investigated individuals' emotional reactions using a social technique called social broad-minded affective coping (BMAC) technique -- an intervention that aims to elicit positive affect or emotion through the use of mental imagery of a positive memory. 

"The findings suggest that the BMAC has the potential to be a practical and effective method for boosting mood amongst individuals with specific mental health problems such as anxiety or depression," said lead researcher Peter Taylor from University of Liverpool in Britain.

The findings showed that following the social BMAC, the participants showed an increase in feelings of social safeness, warm positive affect and relaxed positive affect, whilst the negativity decreased.

The results, which provide preliminary support for the effectiveness of the social BMAC in activating specific types of emotion, have been detailed in the journal Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice.

As part of the study 123 participants, recruited online, completed self-report measures of self-attacking (thinking mean, diminishing, insulting, and shaming thoughts about oneself), social safeness (feelings of warmth and connectedness) and pleasure.

The participants were encouraged to engage all the senses, think about the meaning of the memory to them, savour the positive feelings they experienced, and consider the positive feelings in the mind of another before reflecting upon the feelings they experience as well as what this means to them. 

Participants completed state measures of positive and negative affect and social safeness/pleasure before and after the intervention.​