Knowledge Update

​London, Oct 28 (IANS) Researchers have confirmed an unassuming brown pebble, found more than a decade ago by a fossil hunter in Sussex, as the first example of fossilised brain tissue from a dinosaur.

The tissues resemble those seen in modern crocodiles and birds, said the study reported in a Special Publication of the Geological Society of London.

The fossilised brain, found by fossil hunter Jamie Hiscocks near Bexhill in Sussex in 2004, is most likely from a species similar to Iguanodon - a large herbivorous dinosaur that lived during the Early Cretaceous Period, about 133 million years ago, according to the study.

"The chances of preserving brain tissue are incredibly small, so the discovery of this specimen is astonishing," said study co-author Alex Liu from the University of Cambridge.

According to the researchers, the reason this particular piece of brain tissue has been so well preserved is that the dinosaur's brain was essentially 'pickled' in a highly acidic and low-oxygen body of water -- similar to a bog or swamp -- shortly after its death. 

"What we think happened is that this particular dinosaur died in or near a body of water, and its head ended up partially buried in the sediment at the bottom," David Norman from the University of Cambridge, noted.

"Since the water had little oxygen and was very acidic, the soft tissues of the brain were likely preserved and cast before the rest of its body was buried in the sediment," Norman noted.

Working with colleagues from the University of Western Australia, the researchers used scanning electron microscope (SEM) techniques in order to identify the tough membranes, or meninges, that surrounded the brain itself, as well as strands of collagen and blood vessels.

The structure of the fossilised brain, and in particular that of the meninges, shows similarities with the brains of modern-day descendants of dinosaurs, namely birds and crocodiles, the study said.

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​Mumbai, Oct 28 (IANS) Tata Steel Minerals Canada, a joint venture between Tata Steel Ltd and New Millennium Iron Corp signed definitive agreements with Resources Quebec (RQ) and Investment Quebec (IQ) for concluding investments of Canadian dollar $175 million, the steel producer said on Friday.

San Francisco, Oct 28 (IANS) Apple has released a significant update to its professional video editing app Final Cut Pro X.

The app now comes with new editing features for the Magnetic Timeline, support for the Touch Bar on the new MacBook Pro and a redesigned interface with full support for

Kathmandu, Oct 28 (IANS) State-owned Nepal Airline Corporation (NAC) said it has initiated steps to bring four of the six Chinese aircraft it has contracted for, having received two.

​London, Oct 28 (IANS) Smartphone applications could offer patients with Type 2 diabetes a highly effective method of self-managing their condition, researchers have found in a study.

San Francisco, Oct 28 (IANS) Cupertino-based Apple has introduced the thinnest and lightest MacBook Pro ever, along with a breakthrough interface that replaces the traditional row of function keys with a Retina-quality multi-touch display called the Touch Bar. The MacBook Pro features sixth-generation quad-core and dual-core processors, up to 2.3 times the graphics performance over the previous generation, super-fast SSDs and up to four Thunderbolt 3 ports. The new MacBook Pro sports Apple's brightest and most colourful Retina display yet, the security and convenience of Touch ID, a more responsive keyboard, a larger Force Touch trackpad and an audio system with double the dynamic range. "This week marks the 25th anniversary of Apple's first notebook, through the years each generation has introduced new innovations and capabilities, and it is fitting that this all-new generation of MacBook Pro is the biggest leap forward yet," said Philip Schiller, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Marketing, Apple, in a statement. As thin as a MacBook display at 0.88 mm, the Retina display on the new MacBook Pro at 500 nits of brightness, is 67 per cent brighter than the previous generation, features 67 per cent more contrast and is the first Mac notebook display to support wide colour gamut. And with power-saving technologies like a larger pixel aperture, a variable refresh rate and power-efficient LEDs, the display consumes 30 per cent less energy than before. The new 15-inch MacBook Pro, at just 15.5 mm thin, is 14 per cent thinner and has 20 per cent less volume than before, and weighing just 1.83 kg is nearly half a pound lighter. The 13-inch MacBook Pro features a 2.0GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.1GHz, 8GB of memory and 256GB of flash storage. The 13-inch MacBook Pro with the Touch Bar and Touch ID features a 2.9GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.3GHz, 8GB of memory and 256GB of flash storage. The 15-inch MacBook Pro, also features Touch Bar and Touch ID, a 2.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.5GHz, 16GB of memory and 256GB of flash storage. All the devices will soon be available in the market, the company said.

New York, Oct 28 (IANS) Your smartphone may soon be able to help you avoid an unnecessary trip to the hospital in case of a dental emergency, thanks to a new app developed by researchers in the US.

The novel mobile application enables smartphones to capture and transmit images from inside the mouth, along with details on the dental emergency, to provide the information dentists need to make a decision on what -- and how urgently -- care is needed.

The new app, called DentaCom, guides individuals with real or suspected dental emergencies through a series of questions designed to capture clinically meaningful data via familiar smartphone functions.

"There are many challenges here that our app can help with," said study senior author Thankam Thyvalikakath from Indiana University.

"It is a challenge for the patient to get the dental emergency appropriately managed, and not just treated by painkillers in a busy hospital ER by a clinician who is not a dental specialist. It is also a challenge for the dentist to get details of the problem," said Thyvalikakath, who was at the University of Pittsburgh at the time of the study.

In the study, all participants were able to complete a guided report on their dental emergency and take photos of the problem region within four minutes.

All clinical information was successfully entered by prospective patients via DentaCom, said the study published in The Journal of the American Dental Association.

Dental emergencies frequently occur when dental offices are closed. Patients often turn to hospital emergency departments or urgent care centres.

But most patients who go to these facilities are simply treated for their pain and referred to their dentist for proper care during office hours. Valuable time may be lost before actual treatment is received, and the patient is billed for the emergency or urgent care visit in addition to whatever dental fees will be incurred.

The new app can help patients avoid these problems.

​London, Oct 28 (IANS) Patients could soon be diagnosed with early-stage arthritis several years before the onset of physical and irreversible symptoms, thanks to a new test developed by researchers at the University of Warwick in Britain.

The test can provide an early diagnosis of osteoarthritis (OA) and also distinguish this from early-stage rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and other self-resolving inflammatory joint disease.

"For the first time we measured small fragments from damaged proteins that leak from the joint into blood," said lead researcher Naila Rabbani of Warwick Medical School.

The test, which could be available to patients within two years, identifies the chemical signatures found in the plasma of blood joint proteins damaged by oxidation, nitration and glycation; the modification of proteins with oxygen, nitrogen and sugar molecules.

"The combination of changes in oxidised, nitrated and sugar-modified amino acids in blood enabled early stage detection and classification of arthritis - osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis or other self-resolving inflammatory joint disease," Rabbani noted.

By diagnosing which type of arthritis a patient will develop at an early-stage will allow for appropriate treatment that will provide the best chance for effective treatment and potential prevention, the researchers said.

Patients with early-stage and advanced OA, RA or other inflammatory joint disease were recruited for the study alongside a control group of those with good skeletal health.

The researchers analysed plasma and synovial fluid samples from both groups.

Through their analysis, published in the journal Arthritis Research and Therapy, the researchers detected damaged proteins in characteristic patterns in the samples of those patients with early and advanced OA and RA.

These damages proteins were found at markedly lower levels in the samples of those in the control group -- providing the researchers with the identifiable biomarkers necessary for early detection and diagnosis.

​New York, Oct 28 (IANS) Teachers underrating girls' ability to solve problems in Mathematics will likely contribute to the widening of gender gap in the subject, finds a study.

According to the study, published in the journal AERA Open, beginning in early elementary school boys outperform girls in math -- especially among the highest math achievers. 

This leads to teachers giving lower ratings to girls' math skills while both the genders have similar achievement and behaviour towards the subject. 

"Despite changes in the educational landscape, our findings suggest that the gender gaps observed among children who entered kindergarten in 2010 are strikingly similar to what we saw in children who entered kindergarten in 1998," said Joseph Robinson Cimpian, Associate Professor at the New York University.

Data showed that boys and girls began kindergarten with similar math proficiency, but disparities developed by Grade 3 with girls lagging behind. The gap was particularly large among the highest math achievers.

Research also revealed disparities in teacher perceptions of students, with teachers rating the math skill of girls lower than those of similarly behaving and performing boys.

Finally, the researchers examined gendered patterns of learning behaviours to try and explain why boys are more likely to score as high math achievers. 

They found that girls' more studious approaches to learning pay off by boosting them at the bottom of the achievement distribution, but do not help the persistent gap at the top as much.

The researchers explored the early development of gender gaps in math, including when disparities first appear, where in the distribution such gaps develop, and whether the gaps have changed over the years. 

In addition to math achievement, they examined two potential contributors to gender gaps: students' learning behaviours and teacher expectations.

Overall, the researchers found remarkable consistency across both cohorts. They observed that the gender gap at the top of the distribution (among the highest achievers in math) develops before students enter kindergarten, worsens through elementary school, and has not improved over the last decade.