NASA announced the first all-female spacewalk will take place Friday and unveiled a new spacesuit for the moon and Mars.

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London, March 1 (IANS) Researchers have developed electronic films that can be bent and stretched up to four times their original length.

The researchers believe that the new films that are almost as flexible as rubber could be used in artificial skin, connected clothing and on-body sensors.

The invention was described in the journal Advanced Materials.

Both solid and flexible, this new metallic and partially liquid film offers a wide range of possible applications.

It could be used to make circuits that can be twisted and stretched -- ideal for artificial skin on prosthetics or robotic machines.

It could also be integrated into fabric and used in connected clothing.

And because it follows the shape and movements of the human body, it could be used for sensors designed to monitor particular biological functions.

"We can come up with all sorts of uses, in forms that are complex, moving or that change over time," said one of the study authors Hadrien Michaud from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland.

To develop the stretchable electronics the researchers used an alloy of gold and gallium.

"Not only does gallium possess good electrical properties, but it also has a low melting point, around 30 degree Celsius," Study co-author Arthur Hirsch from EPFL said.

"So it melts in your hand, and, thanks to the process known as supercooling, it remains liquid at room temperature, even lower," Hirsch noted.

The layer of gold ensures the gallium remains homogeneous, preventing it from separating into droplets when it comes into contact with the polymer, the researchers explained.

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London, March 1 (IANS)

The findings showed percentage of older people with multiple conditions, including Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and arthritis steadily increased from 31.7 percent in 2002-03 to 43.1 percent in 2012-13.

"The prevalence of multimorbidity, where people have more than one chronic condition, in older adults is steadily increasing over time," said Kamlesh Khunti from the University of Leicester in London.

"However, given the increase in multimorbidity over the past 10 years and the complex needs of these patients, clinical guidelines need to address the challenges in management of multi-morbidity and formulate best practices to guide clinical decision making for these patients," Khunti added.

Researchers examined more than 15,000 people in England over 10 years.

The study showed there was an increasing trend in people aged over 50 developing a second or third disease adding further strain on health budgets amid a rise in long-term conditions and people living longer.

"Multimorbidity has become one of the main challenges in the recent years for patients, health care providers and the health care systems globally," said another researcher, Nafeesa Dhalwani, in the paper published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity.

"Physical activity is recommended as one of the main lifestyle changes in the prevention and management of multiple chronic diseases worldwide, however, the evidence on its association with multimorbidity remains inconclusive," Dhalwani said.

Chronic conditions on rise in people over 50: Study

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New York, March 1 (IANS) Researchers have developed a new technology called “device fingerprinting” that could help address the unique security challenges of the electrical grid and other cyber-physical systems.

"Device fingerprinting is a unique signature that indicates the identity of a specific device, or device type, or an action associated with that device type," said one of the researchers Raheem Beyah, associate professor at Georgia Institute of Technology in the US.

Just as human voices are individually recognisable because they are generated by the unique components of each person's voice box, and other physical structures, researchers used the same principle to identify devices on electrical grid control networks.

The research was presented at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium in San Diego, US.

The approach has been successfully tested in two electrical substations.

"We have developed fingerprinting techniques that work together to protect various operations of the power grid to prevent or minimise spoofing of packets that could be injected to produce false data or false control commands into the system," Beyah noted.

"This is the first technique that can passively fingerprint different devices that are part of critical infrastructure networks. We believe it can be used to significantly improve the security of the grid and other networks," Beyah said.

The researchers set out to develop security techniques that take advantage of the unique physical properties of the grid and the consistent type of operations that take place there.

To develop the device fingerprints, the researchers built computer models of utility grid devices to understand how they operate.

Information to build the models came from "black box" techniques - watching the information that goes into and out of the system - and "white box" techniques that utilise schematics or physical access to the systems.

"We can use physics and mathematics to analyse and build a model using first principles based on the devices themselves. Schematics and specifications allow us to determine how the devices are actually operating," Beyah explained.

Device 'fingerprint' technique to protect power grid

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Sydney, March 1 (IANS)

The research showed that Fitbit-Flex is a dependable device for checking activity specific to predicted attainment of physical activity guideline recommendations, that is, step counts and minutes of Moderate to Vigorous Physical Activity.

It is also useful for monitoring physical activity in cardiac patients and for comparison among individuals.

Further, it is capable of continuously monitoring free-living conditions and for providing valuable physical activity data for clinicians, individuals and researchers to track physical activity levels, the researchers noted in the study published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.

"Accurate activity tracking devices offer researchers and clinicians the potential to influence physical activity behaviour change, make a direct and real-time impact on self-management of physical activity and offer clinicians real world assessments of their patients' daily activity patterns," said researchers from the University of Sydney in Australia.

To ascertain and evaluate the effectiveness for monitoring the physical activity of cardiac patients, the researchers evaluated 48 patients and family members participating in community-based exercise programmes.

The 48 participants wore the device over four days to monitor daily step counts and minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA).

The use of such devices offers significant promise to scientists working in cardiac rehabilitation programme to evaluate, monitor and encourage physical activity that is integral to recovery, the researchers concluded.

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Acoustic-gravity waves are very long sound waves that cut through the deep ocean at the speed of sound. These lightning-quick currents are typically triggered by violent events in the ocean, including underwater earthquakes, explosions, landslides and even meteorites.

The researchers have now identified a less dramatic though far more pervasive source of acoustic-gravity waves: surface ocean waves such as those that can be seen from a beach or the deck of a boat.

These waves, known as surface-gravity waves, do not travel nearly as fast, far or deep as acoustic-gravity waves but under the right conditions, they can generate the powerful, fast moving, and low-frequency sound waves.

“Severe sea states such as tsunamis, rogue waves, storms, landslides and even meteorite fall, can all generate acoustic-gravity waves," said Usama Kadri, visiting assistant professor and a research affiliate in MIT's department of mathematics.

“We hope we can use these waves to set an early alarm for severe sea states in general and tsunamis in particular, and potentially save lives,” Kadri added.

The researchers have developed a general theory that connects gravity waves and acoustic waves.

They found that when two surface-gravity waves, heading toward each other, are oscillating at a similar but not identical frequency, their interaction can release up to 95 percent of their initial energy in the form of an acoustic wave, which, in turn, carries this energy and travels much faster and deeper.

This interaction may occur anywhere in the ocean, in particular in regions where surface-gravity waves interact as they reflect from continental shelf breaks, where the deep-sea suddenly faces a much shallower shoreline.

Kadri derived a wave equation that includes compressibility and gravity as well as higher-order nonlinear terms.

The newly derived wave equation allowed Kadri to study the behaviour of both acoustic and gravity waves.

Kadri and his colleague Triantaphyllos Akylas, professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, have published their results in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics.

According to them, the results may help scientists connect interactions between not only surface and deep ocean waters but also with the atmospheric forces that affect surface waves.

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New York, March 1 (IANS) An Indian-origin scientist has developed a new one atom-thick flat material that could upstage the wonder material graphene for having properties allowing it to be used in advance digital technology.

Discovered by Madhu Menon, physicist at the University of Kentucky in the US, the new material is made up of silicon, boron and nitrogen - all light, inexpensive and abundant elements. The material is stable, a property many other graphene alternatives lack.

“We used simulations to see if the bonds would break or disintegrate - it didn't happen. We heated the material up to 1,000 degree celsius and it still didn't break,” said Menon, physicist in the centre for computational sciences. The discovery is reported in a paper in Physical Review B.

Using state-of-the-art theoretical computations, Menon and his collaborators demonstrated that by combining the three elements, it is possible to obtain a one atom-thick, truly 2D material with properties that can be fine-tuned to suit various applications beyond what is possible with graphene.

Menon's colleagues were Ernst Richter from Daimler in Germany and Antonis Andriotis from Institute for Electronic Structure and Laser (IESL) in Greece.

While graphene is touted as being the world's strongest material with many unique properties, it has one downside: it isn't a semiconductor and therefore disappoints in the digital technology industry.

The three elements forming the new material all have different sizes; the bonds connecting the atoms are also different.

As a result, the sides of the hexagons formed by these atoms are unequal, unlike in graphene.

The new material is metallic but can be made semiconducting easily by attaching other elements on top of the silicon atoms.

“We know that silicon-based technology is reaching its limit because we are putting more and more components together and making electronic processors more and more compact," Menon said adding "but we know that this cannot go on indefinitely; we need smarter materials.”

He said they were anxious for this to be made in the lab. "The ultimate test of any theory is experimental verification, so the sooner the better!” Menon added in a paper.

This discovery opens a new chapter in material science by offering new opportunities for researchers to explore functional flexibility and new properties for new applications.

Indian-origin physicist Madhu Menon discovers material better than graphene

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London, March 1 (IANS) While electrical stimulation has been used for years to treat patients suffering from conditions such as stroke, depression and bipolar disorder, new research suggests that the method can also be used to boost memory.

In experiments with mice, the researchers were able to boost memory and mental performance through electrical stimulation.

The researchers believe that the implications of this research also have great potential to strengthen learning and memory in both healthy people and those with cognitive deficits such as Alzheimer's.

"We already have promising results in animal models of Alzheimer's disease," said lead researcher Claudio Grassi from San Raffaele Pisana Scientific Institute for Research, Hospitalisation and Health Care in Rome, Italy.

The findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

The study involved the use of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation, or tDCS, on the mice. A non-invasive technique for brain stimulation, tDCS is applied using two small electrodes placed on the scalp, delivering short bursts of extremely low-intensity electrical currents.

After exposing the mice to single 20-minute tDCS sessions, the researchers saw signs of improved memory and brain plasticity - the ability to form new connections between neurons when learning new information -- which lasted at least a week.

This intellectual boost was demonstrated by the enhanced performance of the mice during tests requiring them to navigate a water maze and distinguish between known and unknown objects.

Using data gathered from the sessions, Grassi's team discovered increased synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus, a region of the brain critical to memory processing and storage.

"In the near future, we will continue this research and extend analyses of tDCS to other brain areas and functions," Grassi noted.

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London, March 1 (IANS) Children with frequent snoring and breathing problems during sleep are prone to an increased risk of poor concentration level and learning abilities, finds a study.

The study showed that while periodic snoring is usual in children, persistent snoring can lead to sleep apnea where the quality of sleep is affected, which in turn, can be linked with daytime tiredness, concentration and learning difficulties, bedwetting and delayed growth.

"Children with persistent snoring often have a reduced quality of life. In particular, this applies to children who have sleep apnea," said Gunnhildur Gudnadottir, researcher at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

However, the researchers pointed out that many parents of children who snore are not aware of the possible risks associated with frequent snoring in children.

The most common reason for snoring are enlarged tonsils or adenoids, that can often be cured or reduced with surgery, the researchers said.

In the study, published in the Journal of Laryngology and Otology, the researchers examined the occurrence of snoring and sleep apnea in 1,300 Swedish children ranging in age from 0-11 years and found that approximately 5 percent of the examined children snored several times a week.

Despite pronounced snoring, only about one third of the snoring children had sought medical help for their problem revealing low awareness regarding the negative effects of breathing disturbances during sleep on children's health, the researchers concluded.

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New York, March 1 (IANS)

According to a new study, lack of sleep not only leads to increased caloric intake but also stimulates changes in the hedonic aspects of food consumption.

The study showed that sleep loss initiates the process of overeating, poor food choices and leads to weight gain.

It amplifies and extends blood levels of a chemical signal that enhances the joy of eating, particularly the guilty pleasures gained from sweet or salty, high fat snack foods.

Sleep-restricted study subjects reported higher scores for hunger and stronger desire to eat. When given access to snacks, they ate nearly twice as much fat as when they had slept for eight hours.

"We found that sleep restriction boosts a signal that may increase the hedonic aspect of food intake, the pleasure and satisfaction gained from eating," said Erin Hanlon, research associate at the University of Chicago in the US.

The effects of sleep loss on appetite were most powerful in the late afternoon and early evening, times when snacking has been linked to weight gain, the researchers noted.

The researchers designed the study, published in the journal SLEEP, to help understand how the endocannabinoid system -- a group of endogenous cannabinoid receptors located in the mammalian brain and involved in the regulation of appetite -- connects short sleep and weight gain.

They recruited 14 healthy men and women in their 20s and monitored their hunger and eating habits in two situations: one four-day stay during which they spent 8.5 hours in bed each night (averaging 7.5 hours of sleep), and another four-day stay when they spent only 4.5 hours in bed (4.2 hours asleep).

After the period of restricted sleep, study subjects reported a significant increase in hunger levels. This was prominent soon after their second meal of the day, the time when endocannabinoid levels were the highest.

This increase in circulating endocannabinoid levels could be a mechanism by which recurrent sleep restriction results in excessive food intake, particularly in the form of snacks, despite minimal increases in energy need, the researchers maintained.

Obesity and sleep restriction have become extremely common. According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, about a third of Americans get less than seven hours of sleep a night and more than a third of adults in the US are obese.

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Washington, March 1 (IANS)

In late November and early December 2015, NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission made a series of close approaches to the Martian moon Phobos, collecting data from within 500 kms of the moon.

Among the data returned were spectral images of Phobos in the ultraviolet.

The images will allow MAVEN scientists to better assess the composition of this enigmatic object whose origin is unknown.

Comparing MAVEN's images and spectra of the surface of Phobos to similar data from asteroids and meteorites will help planetary scientists understand the moon's origin - whether it is a captured asteroid or was formed in orbit around Mars.

The MAVEN data, when fully analysed, will also help scientists look for organic molecules on the surface.

Evidence for such molecules has been reported by previous measurements from the ultraviolet spectrograph on the Mars Express spacecraft.

The observations were made by the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph instrument aboard MAVEN.

MAVEN's principal investigator is based at the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics while NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the MAVEN project.

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The new station is being built at the same place as the old one, in King George Island, near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.

Construction work is being carried out by China National Electronics Imports and Exports Corporation (CEIEC), which is on a bidding process to build the station costing about $99.6 million, Xinhua reported citing Agencia Brasil news agency.

The first Brazilian Antarctic station began operating in 1984. Various research programmes have been carried out by scientists there.

On February 25, 2012, the base was completely destroyed in a fire, which caused the deaths of two soldiers. Since then, Brazilian scientists have used temporary locations to continue their research.

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Title: Chilled - How Refrigeration Changed the World and Might Do So Again; Author: Tom Jackson; Publisher: Bloomsbury; Pages: 272; Price: Rs. 499

What one measure can bring down the modern civilisation? It is not a military attack, or more indirect means like blocking the internet and telephone lines (though that will leave many people wondering what to hold or what to do with their thumbs) or disrupting the financial system. It can be as simple as shutting down the refrigerators.

How the fridge, many will ask. What is unique in the device standing quietly in a corner of most homes, and does not seem much before more flashier appliances, including those in the kitchen itself, like microwaves, ovens, or kettles. But there is one crucial difference. All of them heat things but it cools (and preserves) them. So to use a contemporary idiom, it succeeds by being cool.

As author Tom Jackson says, the fridge is something of a "Boo Radley" character, a significant character from the late Harper Lee's iconic "To Kill a Mockingbird", as "it's normally pale, frequently indoors, seldom though about much but always there, and in the end (spoiler alert) we need it to make everything all right".

But how, you will ask again. As this book shows, this is because a fridge is only a visible embodiment of a crucial technology - which not only enables it, or freezers down at the supermarkets, or air conditioners, but makes it capable of being "a gas factory, a rocket engine, a server farm and even a fusion bomb" and be "used to dig holes, make dams, track subatomic particles, image the brain and feed half the world (without chilling food, either)".

But this technology didn't happen automatically or overnight - as we learn, it involves a long tale of the human endeavour to make sense of what heat and cold are, discover they are opposing phenomenon (it may now seem obvious but wasn't far from easy) and enable techniques to employ them at will. Heat and light may have been under human control for now but the battle over cold is just a century old - which makes it "clearer why paleolithic man had little trouble torching a wooden stick, but had to wait several dozen millennia before he could put an ice-lolly on it".

The complicated story is told here with compelling insight but simply and accessibly - and with characteristic British wit (as the above quote indicates) - by Jackson, a Bristol-based science writer who "specialises in recasting science and technology into lively historical narratives".

This is above all not a history of the fridge - which doesn't appear till chapter 8 of the book's 12 chapters - and though the book begins with cooling technologies used in the ancient Middle East, Southeast and East Asia, it deals more with chemistry and thermodynamics, or understanding matter and energy, and entropy, or the constant universal struggle between order and chaos.

And Jackson ably brings out the intelligence and the perseverance that marked man's attempts to understand his world and master its environment, despite the missteps, and involves a veritable galaxy of profound thinkers, alchemists and scientists - Plato and Aristotle, Paracelsus, Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Rene Descartes, Galileo, Blaise Pascal, Issac Newton, Joseph Priestley, Antoine Lavoiser, Gay-Lussac (of the gas laws), Michael Faraday, Fritz Haber and many others.

Even Albert Einstein makes an appearance, inventing a new (but complicated) type of refrigerator, along with Leo Szilard, otherwise known for playing a crucial role in figuring out the chain reaction of nuclear fission that made the atom bomb possible and Jackson dryly remarks that "never has a pair of novice refrigerator salesmen had such an impact".

But the author doesn't limit himself to famous scientists, also showcasing more obscure thinkers and inventors, businessmen like American "Ice King" Frederick Tudor, and historical characters like medieval French kings and popes that were involved with refrigeration. Even Swami Vivekananda turns out to have a connection.

Don't get overawed by all the science promised - it is explained most lucidly, and leaves you impressed with the human intellect's achievements. It might also make you treat fridges with more respect!

(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)

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This is the first in a series of "X-planes" in NASA's New Aviation Horizons initiative, introduced in the agency’s fiscal year 2017 budget.

“NASA is working hard to make flight greener, safer and quieter - all while developing aircraft that travel faster, and building an aviation system that operates more efficiently,” said NASA administrator Charles Bolden at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, on Monday.

Aeronautics company Lockheed Martin will receive about $20 million over 17 months for the Quiet Supersonic Technology (QueSST) preliminary design work.

The Lockheed Martin team includes subcontractors GE Aviation of Cincinnati and Tri Models Inc. of Huntington Beach, California.

Lockheed Martin will develop baseline aircraft requirements and a preliminary aircraft design, with specifications, and provide supporting documentation for concept formulation and planning.

Performance of this preliminary design also must undergo analytical and wind tunnel validation.

“We are continuing supersonic X-plane legacy with this preliminary design award for a quieter supersonic jet with an aim toward passenger flight,” Bolden announced.

The work will be conducted under a task order against the Basic and Applied Aerospace Research and Technology (BAART) contract at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

After conducting feasibility studies, NASA asked industry teams to submit design concepts for a piloted test aircraft that can fly at supersonic speeds, creating a supersonic "heartbeat" -- a soft thump rather than the disruptive boom currently associated with supersonic flight.

“Developing, building and flight testing a quiet supersonic X-plane is the next logical step in our path to enabling the industry's decision to open supersonic travel for the flying public," said Jaiwon Shin, associate administrator for NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission.

In addition to design and building, this Low Boom Flight Demonstration (LBFD) phase of the project also will include validation of community response to the new, quieter supersonic design.

The New Aviation Horizons X-planes will typically be about half-scale of a production aircraft and likely are to be piloted.

Design-and-build will take several years with aircraft starting their flight campaign around 2020, depending on funding, the US space agency said in a statement.

-Indo-Asian News Service
na/rd

( 390 Words)

2016-03-01-10:35:33

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Among them, a total of 15 launches are significant projects or first flights, People's Daily quoted the official as saying.

The country will send several rockets in space, including Tiangong-2, an orbiting space lab and Shenzhou-11, a manned spacecraft with two people on board.

The year 2016 is a big year for China's aerospace industry, as two new types of rockets will also be launched in 2016.

Long March-7, scheduled to be launched in June, will put the country's first cargo ship, Tianzhou-1, into space in the first half of 2017 to dock with Tiangong-2 and conduct experiments.

Furthermore, Long March-5 is slotted to be sent into space in September 2016.

This type of rocket has the largest carrying capacity among the new generation of rockets in China, with a maximum payload capacity of 25 tons to low Earth orbit and 14 tons to geosynchronous transfer orbit.

China will also send several experimental satellites into space in 2016. The country's retrievable Shijian-10 satellite will be launched in April at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre.

It will also send a Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope, an X-ray space observatory, and a quantum communication satellite. The country plans to launch its first ever carbon-tracking satellite into space in August.

China launched the first of a new generation of navigation satellites for its BeiDou navigation system in 2015. The next of these satellites is set to be launched this year.

Gaofen-3 satellite, a Chinese civilian remote sensing satellite, will also be sent into space in 2016.

In addition, China sent a Belarusian communications satellite into space, and will also help the country with its commercial sensing satellites.

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Seoul, Feb 29 (IANS) Scientists from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have developed a stronger version of a smart glass that allows users to text a message or type in key words for internet surfing by offering a virtual keyboard for text and even one for a piano.

The team upgraded its K-Glass -- smart glasses reinforced with augmented reality -- with a low-power multicore processor to employ stereo vision and deep-learning algorithms, making the user interface and experience more intuitive and convenient

The latest version called “K-Glass 3” is equipped with a stereo camera, dual microphones, a Wi-Fi module, and eight batteries to offer higher recognition accuracy and enhanced augmented reality experiences than previous models.

Currently, most wearable head-mounted displays (HMDs) suffer from a lack of rich user interfaces, short battery lives, and heavy weight.

Some HMDs, such as Google Glass, use a touch panel and voice commands as an interface, but they are considered merely an extension of smartphones and are not optimised for wearable smart glasses.

Recently, gaze recognition was proposed for HMDs including K-Glass 2, but gaze is insufficient to realise a natural user interface (UI) and experience (UX), such as user's gesture recognition.

As a solution, professor Hoi-Jun Yoo and his team developed “K-Glass 3” with a low-power natural UI and UX processor to enable convenient typing and screen pointing on HMDs with just bare hands.

"We have succeeded in fabricating a low-power multi-core processer that consumes only 126.1 milliwatts of power with a high efficiency rate,” said Yoo.

“It is essential to develop a smaller, lighter, and low-power processor if we want to incorporate the widespread use of smart glasses and wearable devices into everyday life,” he added.

The new processor is composed of a pre-processing core to implement stereo vision, seven deep-learning cores to accelerate real-time scene recognition within 33 milliseconds, and one rendering engine for the display.

The stereo-vision camera, located on the front of K-Glass 3, works in a manner similar to three dimension (3D) sensing in human vision.

The results were presented at the “2016 IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) conference in San Francisco, California, recently.

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The team of international researchers from universities of Kent and Indianapolis used 3D microscopic imaging to safely reconstruct the diet of children who would have lived next door to Canterbury Cathedral when Geoffrey Chaucer, one of the greatest English poets of the middle ages, was writing his famous tales.

The study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, involved measuring microscopic changes in the surface topography of the teeth.

According to Dr Patrick Mahoney, a biological anthropologist from Kent, the applications of new technique will pioneer a new era in anthropological studies, opening up the dietary secrets of ancient children and our fossil ancestors.

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New York, Feb 29 (IANS)

Researchers from US-based HRL Laboratories used transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to show that the technique can be effectively used to improve skills of pilots learning to fly.

"We measured the brain activity patterns of six commercial and military pilots and then transmitted these patterns into novice subjects as they learned to pilot an airplane in a realistic flight simulator," said Dr Matthew Phillips from HRL's information and system sciences Laboratory.

The team found that participants who received brain stimulation via electrode-embedded head caps improved their piloting abilities.

"We measured the average g-force of the plane during the simulated landing and compared it to control subjects who received a mock brain stimulation," added Dr Phillips in a paper published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

While a previous research demonstrated that tDCS can both help patients more quickly recover from a stroke and boost a healthy person's creativity, HRL's study is one of the first to show that tDCS is effective in accelerating practical learning.

According to the researcher, the potential to increase learning with brain stimulation may make this form of accelerated learning commonplace.

"As we discover more about optimizing, personalizing, and adapting brain stimulation protocols, we'll likely see these technologies become routine in training and classroom environments," he noted.

"It's possible that brain stimulation could be implemented for classes like drivers' training, SAT prep, and language learning," Dr Philips noted.

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"When sea levels rise, damage costs rise even faster," said lead author Markus Boettle from Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany.

The researchers developed a method to measure the monetary losses from coastal floods under sea-level rise.

"Our study illustrates that the flood damage can be disentangled by surprisingly simple mathematical functions to provide estimates of the average annual costs of sea-level rise over a longer time period," Boettle added.

The method can translate the occurrence probability of flood events into the probability of inundation damage in coastal cities like Mumbai, New York, Hamburg -- Pacific, Atlantic or North Sea.

The researchers applied the method to the city of Copenhagen in Denmark and found that a moderate mean sea level rise of 11 centimetres until mid-century would in the same period double economic losses in this city, given no action is taken.

Expected regional sea level rise was taken into account by separating two components, namely the increasing number of events and the increasing severity of each one.

Moreover, potential flood defence measures like dikes or sea walls can be included into the calculations as they prevent or mitigate damages from storm surges.

Climate change pose a greater risk for coastal regions as it leads to rise in sea-level which, in turn, produces more frequent and intense coastal flood events.

The severity of flood impacts is not only determined by environmental factors but also to a significant extent by human decisions. Flood defence measures can counteract the increasing flood risk, the researchers elicited in the study published in the journal Natural Hazards and the Earth System.

Sea levels will continue to rise and shape our coastlines for future generations. But additional preventive measures need to be considered in addition to the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, to help coastal regions especially in transition and developing countries to adapt and to limit damage cost, they concluded.

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Washington, Feb 29 (IANS)

In a harsh environment with very little water and intense ultraviolet radiation, most life in the extreme Atacama Desert in Chile exists as microbial colonies underground or inside rocks.

According to researchers at NASA, the same may be true if life exists on Mars.

The Atacama Rover Astrobiology Drilling Studies (ARADS) project has just completed its first deployment after one month of fieldwork in the hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert.

Despite being considerably warmer than Mars, the extreme dryness the soil chemistry in this region is remarkably similar to that of the Red Planet.

“Putting life-detection instruments in a difficult, Mars-analog environment will help us figure out the best ways of looking for past or current life on Mars, if it existed,” said Dr Brian Glass, NASA space scientist and principal investigator of the ARADS project.

“Having both subsurface reach and surface mobility should greatly increase the number of biomarker and life-target sites we can sample in the Atacama,” Glass added in a NASA statement.

The cold and dry conditions on Mars open the possibility that evidence for life may be found below the surface where negative effects of radiation are mitigated -- in the form of organic molecules known as biomarkers.

But until humans set foot on the Red Planet, obtaining samples from below the surface of Mars will require the ability to identify a location of high probability for current or ancient life, place a drill, and control the operation robotically.

More than 20 scientists from the US, Chile, Spain and France worked in extremely dry conditions with high winds during the first ARADS field deployment.

Their work was primarily conducted at Yungay Station, a mining ghost town at one of the driest places in the Atacama, owned by the University of Antofagasta in Chile.

During this initial deployment, scientists put several technologies under harsh and unpredictable field conditions that included a Mars-prototype drill, a sample transfer arm, the Signs of Life Detector (SOLID) instrument a prototype version of the Wet Chemistry Laboratory (WCL) which flew on the Phoenix Mars mission in 2007.

Engineers and scientists were successful in using the ARADS drill and sample transfer robot arm at Yungay to acquire and feed sample material to the SOLID and WCL instruments under challenging environmental conditions.

The analyses of the drilled samples help set a yardstick for interpreting future results from these two instruments and will be compared to results obtained from the same samples in some of the best laboratories.

Additionally, researchers from Johns Hopkins University and NASA collected samples for laboratory investigations of the extreme microorganisms living inside salt habitats in the Atacama.

These salt habitats could be the last refuge for life in this extremely dry region that is otherwise devoid of plants, animals and most types of microorganisms.

“We are excited to learn as much as we can about these distinctive, resilient microorganisms, and hope that our studies will improve life-detection technology and strategies for Mars,” noted Mary Beth Wilhelm, NASA researcher.

Over the next four years, the ARADS project will return to the Atacama to demonstrate the feasibility of integrated roving, drilling and life-detection.

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London, Feb 28 (IANS)

"If this proves effective, we'll have a very cost-effective solution that can ease everyday life for many patients with back pain," said Paul Jarle Mork, a professor at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

Named selfBACK, the project recently received a five million euro funding from the European Union.

By combining the scientific understanding of back pain with cutting-edge technology, researchers are trying to create a decision support system based on data collected via a wristband and a smartphone app, according to NTNU.

"The wristband captures an individual's physical activity, heart rate, and number of steps taken. Based on the data generated from the band and the app, we can advise the patient on physical activity and sleep, for example, which are two critical aspects related to back problems," said Mork, who is the main coordinator of the project.

Kerstin Bach, a researcher at NTNU is the driving force on the data side, while professor Agnar Aamodt is the head of research.

The project mission is to implement a form of artificial intelligence. This will be built using open source code, and will collect critical data from the patient. This continuous data collection forms the entire basis for the decision support system that will provide personalised advice to each individual.

"Patients should be able to go into the app and see how and why they should follow the advice given. These suggestions are based on the patient's background information and all the information collected by the individual's wristband and app," Bach said.

Over the next five years, a team of international researchers will be working on the selfBACK project.

New app to help patients with back pain

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New York, Feb 28 (IANS)

The tool, developed by a team of engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), sifts through data from surrounding waves to spot clusters of waves that may develop into a rogue wave.

Depending on a wave group's length and height, the algorithm computes a probability that the group will turn into a rogue wave within the next few minutes, according to the study published recently in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics.

"It's precise in the sense that it's telling us very accurately the location and the time that this rare event will happen," said Themis Sapsis, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT.

"We have a range of possibilities, and we can say that this will be a dangerous wave, and you'd better do something. That's really all you need," Sapsis added.

The researcher's team used the statistical data to quantify the range of wave possibilities, for a given body of water. They then developed a novel approach to analyse the nonlinear dynamics of the system and predict which wave groups will evolve into extreme rogue waves.

Sapsis said the algorithm is able to predict rogue waves several minutes before they fully develop.

To put the algorithm into practice, he said ships and offshore platforms will have to utilise high-resolution scanning technologies such as LIDAR and radar to measure the surrounding waves.

New algorithm can warn sailors about rogue waves

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New York, Feb 28 (IANS) US researchers have developed an inexpensive prototype of a biomedical device that can detect anaemia simply by running a blood sample from a finger prick under a smartphone.

The device consists of 3-D printed clear plastic slides containing microfluidics that attach to a smartphone. The user adds a drop of their blood to a slide, which is used for a colour scale-based test.

The test results are produced in less than 60 seconds and can be read using a smartphone.

"Anaemia is a very prevalent condition in developing countries even though it is easily treated with iron supplements or vitamins and can be prevented with a healthy diet," said Kim Plevniak from the Kansas State University's Olathe campus, who spent nearly a year designing the device and test that taps into smartphone access.

According to the Kansas State University, Plevniak and assistant professor Mei He are now developing a companion app with Steve Warren from the same university that could manage data from the blood sample and even send the results to a doctor.

Anaemia is a condition in which the blood does not have enough healthy red blood cells to transport oxygen to the body's organs.

It affects about two billion people worldwide, including more than half of preschool children and pregnant women in developing countries and at least 30 percent of children and women in industrialised nations.

3-D printed biomedical device to rapidly detect anaemia

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London, Feb 28 (IANS) A new programming method previously used in manufacturing can be applied to control a swarm of robots to make use of robotics advantageous in areas where safety is a concern, says a new study.

A team of researchers from the University of Sheffield applied the novel method to experiments using up to 600 of their 900-strong robot swarm, one of the largest in the world.

Swarm robotics studies how large groups of robots can interact with each other in simple ways to solve relatively complex tasks cooperatively.

In the study, published recently in Swarm Intelligence journal, the researchers used the supervisory control theory for the first time with a swarm of robots to reduce the need for human input and, therefore, error.

The researchers used a graphical tool to define the tasks they wanted the robots to achieve, a machine then automatically programmed and translated this to the robots.

This programme used a form of linguistics, comparable to using the alphabet in the English language. It allowed the robots use their own alphabet to construct words, with the 'letters' of these words relating to what the robots perceived and to the actions they chose to perform.

The supervisory control theory helped the robots to choose only those actions that eventually resulted in valid 'words'. Hence, the behaviour of the robots was guaranteed to meet the specification.

A previous research used "trial and error" methods to automatically program groups of robots, which can result in unpredictable, and undesirable, behaviour. Moreover, the resulting source code was time-consuming to maintain, which made it difficult to use in the real-world.

However, the new research showed that the new method could be used in a situation where a team is needed to tackle a problem and each individual robot is capable of contributing a particular element, which could be hugely beneficial in a range of contexts -- from manufacturing to agricultural environments.

"Our research poses an interesting question about how to engineer technologies we can trust -- are machines more reliable programmers than humans after all? We, as humans set the boundaries of what the robots can do so we can control their behaviour, but the programming can be done by the machine, which reduces human error," said Dr Roderich Gross from Sheffield.

Reducing human error in programming also has potentially significant financial implications.

The global cost of debugging software is estimated at $312 billion annually and on average and software developers spend 50 percent of their programming time finding and fixing bugs.

New programming method can control swarm of robots

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London, Feb 28 (IANS)

The research showed that women who are attracted to dominant men generally feel more at risk of being victimised, even when their risk of victimisation is actually low.

PPFDM appears to be associated with women's self-assessed vulnerability. Women with strong PPFDM feel relatively more at risk, fearful, and vulnerable to criminal victimisation compared to their counterparts, regardless of whether there are situational risk factors present, explained the researchers.

"Our research suggests that the relationship between feelings of vulnerability, as measured by fear of crime, and women's preference for physically formidable and dominant mates is stable, and does not update according to environmental circumstances or relative level of protection needed," said Hannah Ryder, researcher from the University of Leicester in Britain.

Further, women's fear of crime significantly changed in response to crime signals -- for example location and time of day -- and that overall fear of crime was related to PPFDM.

However, the relationship between PPFDM and fear did not vary in relation to risk situation, perpetrator gender, or crime type, suggesting that the psychological mechanisms underlying the relationship between perceived risk of victimisation and PPFDM are general in nature.

The study, published in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour, involved assessing whether the relationship between fear of crime and PPFDM was higher for crimes that cause relatively higher physical and psychological pain, such as sexual assault.

Across two studies in the lab and field, women observed images and real life situations that varied in the risk of crime, such as crime hotspots and safespots, and were asked to rate their perceived risk of victimisation -- a measure of fear of crime -- of various crimes.

This included male -- and female -- perpetrated physical assault and robbery and male-perpetrated rape.

In both studies, the research team also administered a scale that measured women's PPFDM, and assessed the association between women's PPFDM score and their risk perception scores.

Women who prefer dominant partner more at risk of crime

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New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses during the Akhil Bharatiya Prachaarya Sammelan, in New Delhi on Feb 12, 2016. (Photo: IANS)

New Delhi, Feb 28 (IANS) India has decided to establish a Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) where gravitational waves can be studied, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on Sunday.

In his monthly radio programme Mann ki Baat, Modi said Indian scientists were also in the research team that studied gravitational waves.

The laboratory will be third of its kind in the world after Hanford in Washington and Livingston in Louisiana, both in the US.

"Recently the Gravitational Waves have been discovered by the scientific community of the world, which is indeed a major achievement. We should be proud of the fact that Indian scientists were also part of it. Keeping this in mind, we have taken a decision to open a LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) in India," said Modi.

LIGO is a national facility for gravitational-wave research, providing opportunities for the broader scientific community to participate in detector development, observation, and data analysis.

The prime minister announced that within its limited resources India will also participate and contribute in the research through the LIGO.

India to establish lab to study gravitational waves: Modi

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New York, Feb 28 (IANS) US researchers have identified a peculiar behaviour of singing duet in Red-backed Fairywrens, a promiscuous bird specie found in Australia, to keep up with a mate.

The scientists discovered a queer habit of crooning duets in the fairywrens when they notice an intruder. The male and female will immediately fly together and perch on a branch right next to each other and start belting out duets.

Those who reacted quickly and sang duets more are said to have a "strong" duet-singing response. Others were slower on the uptake.

"We found that pairs with a strong duet response had lower rates of cuckoldry," said study author Emma Greig, scientist at Cornell Lab of Ornithology in US.

The pair with a strong duet response were also found less likely to mate outside of their pair bond when they sang together more, the researchers explained.

"If the males are particularly riled up, they will do this 'puff-back' display, raising the orange or red feathers on their back to the intruder. While singing duets, their heads are thrown back to the sky with their beaks wide open," pointed out one of the researchers, Daniel Baldassarre.

Even when pairs have a strong duet response, sometimes the mates still stray, but it does increase the likelihood that they're raising mostly their own genetic offspring.

The results of the study published in the journal Biology Letters suggested that the females decide what males to cuckold. Male Fairywrens, whether aggressive or not, are often cuckolded by the females.

"Our results suggest the females are deciding what males to cuckold. Females are either being influenced by their mate's songs, or females are indicating their own choice by singing with their mates more. We need more detailed work to distinguish these alternatives," Greig added.

Famous for their legendary courtship and mating behaviours, the Fairywrens are known to be among the least faithful birds in the world, with an extra-pair mating commonplace, resulting in eggs often fathered by various different birds.

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New York, Feb 28 (IANS)

The findings, published in the journal Infectious Agents and Cancer, showed the bacteria Porphyromonas gingival is present in 61 percent patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC).

"These findings provide the first direct evidence that P. gingivalis infection could be a novel risk factor for ESCC and may also serve as a prognostic biomarker for this type of cancer," said Huizhi Wang from the University of Louisville's school of dentistry in the US.

"These data, if confirmed, indicate that eradication of a common oral pathogen may contribute to a reduction in the significant number of people suffering with ESCC," Wang added.

The esophagus is a muscular tube, critical to the movement of food from the mouth to the stomach.

For the study, researchers tested tissue samples from 100 patients with ESCC and 30 normal controls.

The results showed both the bacteria-distinguishing enzyme and its DNA were significantly higher in the cancerous tissue of ESCC patients than in surrounding tissue or normal control sites.

The researchers also found the presence of P. gingivalis correlated with other factors, including cancer cell differentiation, metastasis and overall survival rate.

There are two likely explanations: either ESCC cells are a preferred niche for P. gingivalis to thrive or the infection of P. gingivalis facilitates the development of esophageal cancer, Wang explained.

If the former is true, Wang said, simple antibiotics may prove useful or researchers can develop other therapeutic approaches for esophageal cancer utilizing genetic technology to target the P. gingivalis and ultimately destroy the cancer cells.

"It would suggest that improving oral hygiene may reduce ESCC risk; screening for P. gingivalis in dental plaque may identify susceptible subjects; and using antibiotics or other anti-bacterial strategies may prevent ESCC progression," Wang added.

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By Sahana Ghosh

Kolkata, Feb 28 (IANS) Extensive groundwater extraction in the Indo-Gangetic Plain over the last five decades has "significantly" contributed to the killer April 25, 2015, Nepal temblor and "probably all earthquakes" in the region beneath the Himalayan arc, Indian scientists claim.

Researchers at NIT Rourkela; CSIR-National Geophysical Research Institute, Hyderabad; and National Centre for Seismology (NCS), ministry of earth sciences, New Delhi, have gathered evidence of the far-reaching consequences of human actions: how groundwater depletion can "advance the clock" of temblors occurring in the Main Himalayan Thrust (MHT), under the Himalayan arc where earthquakes originate.

"Plate tectonics is the prime driving force behind earthquakes but in the past decade there is a new trend of research.

"The focus is also on surface and sub-surface activities such as underground mining, fluid injection and reservoir construction due to hydropower projects as possible contributing factors to seismic activity," Bhaskar Kundu of the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, NIT Rourkela, told IANS.

Earlier it was considered that small magnitude earthquakes are influenced by the seasonal loading and unloading (removal process of groundwater) of the Indo-Gangetic Plain in summer and winter, said NCS director Vineet Gahalaut, one of the authors of the study.

"We have shown that great and major Himalayan earthquakes are influenced by the anthropogenic groundwater unloading process in the Indo-Gangetic Plain, which is probably the most intensely irrigated region in Southeast Asia," Gahalaut said.

Comprising about 250 million hectares of fertile land (most of northern and eastern part of India) the Indo-Gangetic Plain is the most populated region of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

It is also home to 40 percent of India's population. Population density is highest in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in India and northern Bangladesh, leading to very high irrigation activities.

Kundu and his colleagues carried out a novel stress modulation study in the area, through hydrological and satellite-based observation of ground water depletion by human activity.

"Around seven percent of this process (anthropogenic ground water depletion) has contributed to advancement of the clock, that is, the timing of the earthquakes. The saturation level for stress is attained early due to depletion of groundwater. This is quite significant," Kundu pointed out.

In 2014, geophysicists in the US reported the depletion of groundwater in the San Joaquin Valley, modulating stress levels on the San Andreas Fault and thereby heightening the risk for earthquakes.

"It is interesting to note that groundwater unloading (removal) rate is about six times more in the Ganga basin in comparison to that in the San Joaquin Valley," N.K. Vissa, one of the authors, pointed out.

The recent study published in Geophysical Research Letters implies that the "Nepal earthquake and probably all earthquakes occurring on the MHT beneath the Himalayan arc are influenced by the anthropogenic modulation process related to groundwater extraction in the Indo-Gangetic Plain".

But veteran scientist B.K. Rastogi, former director general of the Gandhinagar-based Institute of Seismological Research (ISR) maintained such effects are accountable for minor stress change.

"Such effects, if any, may at the most cause minor stress change. The normal tectonic stress is too large," Rastogi said.

Geophysicist C.P. Rajendran said although the work is a "fresh approach", he found the model validation "problematic".

"The groundwater depletion in the Indo-Gangetic Plain goes back more than 40 years. We do not find any change in rate of seismicity in the Himalayas during this period. In other words, the frequency of large earthquakes originating from the Himalaya should have gone up if the model is right. We don't see that. Thus, their model lacks this fundamental validation," Rajendran of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bengaluru, told IANS via email.

(Sahana Ghosh can be contacted at sahana.g@ians.in)

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New York, Feb 28 (IANS) Children born by pre-labour caesarean section delivery are at an increased risk of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), a type of blood cancer characterised by an overproduction of immature white blood cells.

"Our goal was to determine if there was an association between caesarean deliveries and ALL, to identify potential new targets for research into cancer prevention if there is a correlation," said one of the lead researchers Erin Marcotte, assistant professor at University of Minnesota Medical School in the US.

"While the link between overall caesarean delivery and childhood leukaemia was not statistically significant, it was notable to find an association between pre-labour caesarean delivery and ALL," Marcotte noted.

A potential correlation between pre-labour caesarean delivery (PLCD) and acute lymphoblastic leukaemia could offer new targets for cancer prevention research.

The study was published in the journal The Lancet Haematology.

The analysis looked at 33,571 participants overall, including 23,351 control participants and 8,655 cases of ALL.

After looking most closely at deliveries where the reason for caesarean were available, the analysis showed a 23 percent increase in risk of ALL in children born by pre-labour caesarean delivery.

The reason for the increased risk of ALL with pre-labour caesarean section delivery is not known. Several mechanisms may be at play, including the stress response in the foetus caused by labour and the colonisation of microbiota a newborn experiences during a vaginal delivery that is missed during birth by a caesarean section.

"The most plausible explanation for the association between ALL and pre-labour delivery by caesarean section is in the cortisol, or stress-related mechanism," Marcotte said.

"Because ALL is not associated with all caesarean deliveries, it seems less likely the microbiota colonisation is a significant factor in this phenomenon. We believe further investigation into this cortisol mechanism link is warranted due to these findings," Marcotte noted.

Pre-labour caesarean section delivery linked to childhood leukaemia

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Toronto, Feb 28 (IANS) Scientists have created an energy efficient biological supercomputer that is able to process information very quickly and accurately using parallel networks in the same way that massive electronic supercomputers do.

The model of bio supercomputer, which opens doors to creation of biological supercomputers that are not only small but also more sustainable, was created by an international team of researchers led by professor Dan Nicolau from Canada's McGill University.

According to an article, published recently in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the supercomputer is a whole lot smaller than current supercomputers, uses much less energy, and uses proteins present in all living cells to function.

"We've managed to create a very complex network in a very small area," said professor Nicolau.

He began working on the idea with his son, Dan Jr., more than a decade ago and was then joined by colleagues from Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands, some seven years ago.

"This started as a back of an envelope idea, after too much rum I think, with drawings of what looked like small worms exploring mazes," professor Nicolau added.

The model bio-supercomputer uses a combination of geometrical modelling and engineering knowhow (on the nano scale). It is a first step, in showing that this kind of biological supercomputer can actually work.

The circuit the researchers have created looks a bit like a road map of a busy and very organised city as seen from a plane.

Instead of the electrons that are propelled by an electrical charge and move around within a traditional microchip, short strings of proteins (which the researchers call biological agents) travel around the circuit in a controlled way.

Their movements are powered by ATP, the chemical that is, in some ways, the juice of life for everything from plants to politicians.

Since it is run by biological agents, and as a result hardly heats up at all, the model bio supercomputer that the researchers have developed uses far less energy than standard electronic supercomputers do, making it more sustainable.

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New York, Feb 28 (IANS) Scientists from a US university have created the thinnest, lightest solar cells ever produced which could be placed on almost any material or surface including your hat, shirt, or smartphone, or even on a soap bubble.

Although it may take years to make such solar cells commercially available, the laboratory proof-of-concept shows their potential in helping power the next generation of portable electronic devices, believe researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who created it.

The process is described in a paper by MIT professor Vladimir Bulovi, research scientist Annie Wang, and doctoral student Joel Jean, in the journal Organic Electronics.

The key to the new approach is to make the solar cell, the substrate that supports it, and a protective over-coating to shield it from the environment, all in one process.

"The innovative step is the realisation that you can grow the substrate at the same time as you grow the device," Bulovi said.

In this initial proof-of-concept experiment, the team used a common flexible polymer called parylene as both the substrate and the over-coating, and an organic material called DBP as the primary light-absorbing layer.

Parylene is a commercially available plastic coating used widely to protect implanted biomedical devices and printed circuit boards from environmental damage.

The entire process takes place in a vacuum chamber at room temperature and without the use of any solvents, unlike conventional solar-cell manufacturing, which requires high temperatures and harsh chemicals. In this case, both the substrate and the solar cell are "grown" using established vapour deposition techniques.

The team said different materials could be used for the substrate and encapsulation layers, and different types of thin-film solar cell materials, including quantum dots or perovskites, could be substituted for the organic layers used in initial tests.

To demonstrate just how thin and lightweight the cells are, the researchers draped a working cell on top of a soap bubble, without popping the bubble.

Although cells may be too thin to be practical, but researchers said that parylene films of thicknesses of up to 80 microns can be deposited easily using commercial equipment, without losing the other benefits of in-line substrate formation.

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As part of the country's space lab programme, China also plans to launch the Shenzhou-11 spacecraft, which will carry two astronauts on board, in the fourth quarter of this year to dock with Tiangong-2, Xinhua news agency reported.

After its first test flight in the Wenchang satellite launch centre in Hainan province, a next-generation Long March-7 rocket will put the country's first cargo ship Tianzhou-1, which literally means "heavenly vessel" into space in the first half of 2017 to dock with Tiangong-2 and conduct experiments.

During the process, China will verify key technologies including cargo transportation, on-orbit propellant resupply, astronauts' medium-term stay, as well as conduct space science and application experiments on a relatively large scale.

China's multi-billion-dollar space programme aims to put a permanent manned space station into service around 2022.

China already launched its first space lab, Tiangong-1, in September 2011 and has conducted two dockings with the module in the following two years.

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Kolkata, Feb 27 (IANS) Expressing faith in India's ability to prove development and sustainable energy solutions can go hand in hand, Ramon Magsaysay recipient and social entrepreneur Harish Hande here on Saturday called for research linked to the field instead of paper, as is the norm.

"We need to come up with a research culture where research is linked to field. Today research is linked to paper. Professors are into publishing more papers. How many of your innovations have actually happened on the field? We should be benchmarked on that," Hande said in an interaction with media persons here.

Recognised for his efforts to put solar power technology in the hands of the poor, Hande, an IIT-Kharagpur alumnus, lamented the gap in tapping into the regional rural banking sector.

"What India has which many developing countries do not have is the fantastic infrastructure of financial institutions in rural area. Somewhere it will be efficient, somewhere not," he said on the sidelines of the Innovation 2016 conference here organised by business chamber CII.

Hande highlighted the need to "piggyback" on the RRBs and ITIs (Industrial Training Institutes) to trigger an energy revolution.

About energy, finance and market linkage, the founder of Solar Electric Light Company (SELCO) India stressed on the need for the country to adopt an aggressive stance in international negotiations.

"It is the only country which can create innovations where it can prove development and sustainable energy can go hand in hand without sacrificing each other. India should (rather than being defensive saying the West has been polluting) be aggressive and say awe are innovative, we can show how poverty can be removed in a sustainable way," Hande added.

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Tokyo, Feb 27 (IANS) A new dinosaur fossil has been found in Japan's Fukui prefecture, bringing the number of species discovered in the country to seven, the media reported on Saturday.

According to fossil analysis, the new creature was a small theropod that had both primitive and derived features, according to the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum. It has been named Fukuivenator paradoxus, or “paradoxical hunter of Fukui”, The Japan Times reported.

Fukuivenator is a species that existed when theropods began to evolve into birds. Fukuivenator “failed to become a bird”, an expert said.

Fukuivenator was about 2.5 metres long and weighed about 25 kg.

The discovery emerged from a study of some 160 fossil fragments from an animal found in August 2007 in a stratum from the Lower Cretaceous period, some 120 million years ago. Some 70 percent of its body parts were left in very good condition.

Fukuivenator, which was covered with feathers, had two-forked cervical vertebrae, which are not found in any other theropod. Its hearing was equivalent to that of birds, and the shapes of its scapula and thighbones are similar to those of the primitive Coelurosaur, from which flying animals originated.

In general, theropods, including Tyrannosaurus, are carnivorous. But Fukuivenator, which had a long neck, is believed to have been omnivorous.

Fossils of four new dinosaur species were found in the same stratum where those of Fukuivenator were excavated.

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