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(Current Affairs) Science & Technology, Defence, Environment | September : 2017

Science & Technology, Defense, Environment

New perspective about the cosmos (Free Available)
Scientific evidence of copper vessel’s antibacterial property (Free Available)
NASA’s Mars 2020 rover mission will use smart X-ray techniques (Free Available)
Diagnosing kidney and liver disorders with the help of ultrasound scanning devices (Free Available)
New tool can help detect human papilloma virus (HPV) (Only for Online Coaching Members)
Scientists have repaired a disease-causing mutation in the DNA (Only for Online Coaching Members)

New perspective about the cosmos

Information is a quantity that springs up very naturally in the study of the universe as it is tied up with gravity.
For example, the information available to an observer looking at a black hole from far is limited by the event horizon of the black hole, beyond which even light cannot escape— so the information inside the black hole is not available to them.
Their approach, moreover, explains two fundamental puzzles in cosmology — one related to the early universe and one to its present state — and, in fact, connects the two. Their theory is just published online in the journal Physics Letters B.
From the observation of distant galaxies, it is known that the universe is expanding at a faster rate than it is expected to. This is explained by invoking the presence of “dark energy”.
But for this to work, the cosmological constant, which is a term that appears in the gravitational field equations, has to be very small and have a positive value. Explaining why this constant is required to have a tiny positive value is an important puzzle in cosmology.
The authors argue that the total cosmic information transferred from the early, quantum gravitational phase to the late, classical phase must be equal to four times pi.
This allows them to relate the size of the seed fluctuations to the cosmological constant, thereby tying together the early universe with the present.

Diagnosing kidney and liver disorders with the help of ultrasound scanning devices

A team of researchers from IIT Hyderabad has been working to use the Internet of Things (IoT) to accurately diagnose kidney and liver disorders with the help of ultrasound scanning devices.
What started off as a project to develop a system that will validate the data and do a preliminary scanning of the organ — whether the organ is normal or not — has now developed into technology that can identify kidney stones and cysts and also grade a “fatty liver” classification.
Diagnosing problems using Internet-enabled scanning systems is fraught with many disadvantages.
In the traditional way of processing data, after the patient is scanned, a radiologist usually picks out the most relevant portions or even captures screenshots and makes these available for diagnosis by the specialist.
In the IoT-enabled remote scanning, if the scans are uploaded to the cloud without being first analysed, there is a possibility that the doctor sees a huge amount of data, which they may find difficult to interpret.
Therefore, it is crucial that internet-enabled scanning devices must work more intelligently and do a preliminary classification of images.This was the starting point of the research in 2014.
The research however, went beyond this goal and they now have a deep-learning algorithm which can differentiate between cysts and stones in the kidney images.
In fact, they also have trained the software to look at the liver images and classify fatty livers into different grades through an automated recognition process.
The algorithm that the researchers have developed can be integrated into any platform and is flexible from the point of view of the hardware being used.
They have also included a cloud-based authentication feature that allows identification of the operator by means of iris and fingerprint scans.

New tool can help detect human papilloma virus (HPV)

Testing menstrual blood present on menstrual cloth can help detect human papilloma virus (HPV), which is one of the main causes of cervical cancer, researchers have found.
The study was carried out on over 550 women aged 30 to 50 years at two rural populations in Maharashtra. The results were published in the journal European Journal of Cancer Prevention.
Cervical cancer is a major public health problem in India, and although there are cervical cancer screening tests, most rural Indian women fear the test and see it as an unpleasant experience.
Over 190 eligible women were recruited for the study from two villages close to Jamkhed Tahsil of Maharashtra. The women who consented underwent HC2 testing to detect HPV.
All the women, whether positive or negative for HPV, were asked to store their cloth pad used on the first day of period and immediately hand it over to the health worker. The collected menstrual cloth samples were sent to NIRRH for testing.
The DNA extracted from the dried menstrual blood was amplified and tested for HPV. Over 3% positive HPV cases were detected from this area (both HC2 and DNA study showed positive).
From this population, 4.9% cases were diagnosed as HPV positive using DNA tests. The HPV positive women and a few HPV negative women underwent vaginal examination, HC2 test and PAP smear test (another cervical cancer test).
The sensitivity of the menstrual pad HPV testing in the first and second area was 83% and 67%, respectively, and the specificity was 99% and 88% in the two areas.
The reduced sensitivity at second area could be due to electricity failure in the health centre as the samples need to be continuously stored at -20°C.
By developing a simple method to mail the pads to the lab by participants itself, menstrual pad test can become a stress-free cervical cancer screening method, the authors write.

Scientists have repaired a disease-causing mutation in the DNA

Scientists in the United States have repaired a disease-causing mutation in the DNA of early-stage human embryos, taking a step closer to engineering babies free of inherited disorders.
The team’s successful use of the CRISPR “gene editing” tool in viable embryos was hailed as a technical feat by outside experts, who called at the same time for deeper debate on the ethics of altering human DNA.
The lab-created, edited embryos were not allowed to develop beyond a few days, when they comprised a handful of cells.
Just over 72% of the embryos — 42 out of 58 — ended up being free of a heart disease-causing mutation carried in the DNA of the sperm used to create them, a team reported in the journal Nature .