Knowledge Update

Beijing, July 26 (IANS) Chinese smartphone manufacturer Gionee on Tuesday unveiled its much-awaited flagship smartphones M6 and M6 Plus. M6 is equipped with a front fingerprint scanner, privacy protection and malware destruction although it lacks the hardware encryption feature. While M6 is packed with 5000mAh battery, M6 Plus houses 6020mAh battery unit. M6 features a 5.5-inch full HD AMOLED display, 4GB RAM, 64GB in-built memory that can be expanded up to 128GB and runs on Amigo 3.2 operating system on top of Android 6.0. M6 sports 13MP rear camera and a 8MP front camera. "Gionee M6 has outstanding performance via the breakthrough software and hardware which will make every consumer smile from their heart," said William Lu, President, Gionee, in a statement.​

​Beijing, July 26 (IANS) Chinese smartphone maker Oppo is now the leader in the home smartphone market with 23 per cent market share, followed by Huawei with 17.4 per cent and Vivo with 12 per cent, a media report said on Tuesday. Oppo's market share right now is also more than both Apple and Samsung combined in China. Apple's share in China has shrunk to 2014 levels at nine per cent and Xiaomi is at a three-year low with 6.8 per cent. Back in 2014, Oppo was responsible for less than two per cent of the smartphones sold in China. By June 2015, Oppo's share has grown up to 6.1 per cent and now in June this year, its up to a historic high at 22.9 per cent, tech website GSMArena reported. Prior to this, Huawei and Xiaomi were leading the way. In fact, Xiaomi appears to only make 6.8 per cent of China’s smartphones, down from 15.1 per cent in the previous year. Oppo R9, sold elsewhere as Oppo F1 Plus, is the best-selling device in June with five per cent market share. Oppo will be launching its next selfie-focused smartphone, the Oppo F1s, a successor to the popular Oppo F1 device, on August 3. Billed as a "selfie expert," the device can have some improvements in the camera compared to that of its predecessor but it's still not confirmed exactly what will be better this time around.​

​Beijing, July 26 (IANS) Riding on smartphone sales like its flagship H1 device, Chinese smartphone maker Huawei has posted a 40 per cent half-yearly profit.

"We are confident that Huawei will maintain its current momentum, and round out the full year in a positive financial position backed by sound ongoing operations,"

​Washington, July 26 (IANS) India has discovered large, highly enriched accumulations of natural gas hydrates in the Bay of Bengal that has the potential to be tapped, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS), which participated in the discovery efforts.

​New York, July 26 (IANS) Making official the $4.8 billion acquisition of Yahoo's core internet business by US wireless company Verizon, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said on Tuesday that the deal "presents exciting opportunities to accelerate Yahoo's transformation" and that she plans to stay to "see Yahoo into its next chapter".

​New York, July 26 (IANS) If you are tired of wearing those goofy glasses for a 3D movie experience, here comes some good news. Scientists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science have developed a display that lets you watch 3D films in a theatre without eyewear.

New York, July 27 (IANS) Although it added three million users -- one million more that what analysts had expected -- the not-so-promising second quarter earnings results led to the shares of micro-blogging website Twitter tumbling on Tuesday which wiped out nearly 10 per cent from its share price in after-market trading.

New York, July 26 (IANS) In a first, a team of astronomers has found that the Milky Way's halo is spinning in the same direction and at comparable speed as the galaxy's disk -- providing a potential explanation for the "missing" mass of our galaxy.

"This flies in the face of expectations. People just assumed that the disk of the Milky Way spins while this enormous reservoir of hot gas is stationary -- but that is wrong. This hot gas reservoir is rotating as well, just not quite as fast as the disk," said Edmund Hodges-Kluck from the University of Michigan.

The new knowledge sheds light on how individual atoms have assembled into stars, planets and galaxies like our own, and what the future holds for these galaxies.

The researchers used the archival data obtained by XMM-Newton -- a European Space Agency telescope. The results of their analysis was recently published in the Astrophysical Journal.

According to the team, our galaxy's hot gaseous halo is several times larger than the Milky Way disk and composed of ionised plasma.

Because motion produces a shift in the wavelength of light, the U-M researchers measured such shifts around the sky using lines of very hot oxygen. 

What they found was groundbreaking: The line shifts measured by the researchers show that the galaxy's halo spins in the same direction as the disk of the Milky Way and at a similar speed -- 643737.6 kmph for the halo versus 869045.76 kmph for the disk.

Scientists have long puzzled over why almost all galaxies, including the Milky Way, seem to lack most of the matter that they otherwise would expect to find. 

Astronomers believe that about 80 per cent of the matter in the universe is the mysterious "dark matter" that, so far, can only be detected by its gravitational pull. But even most of the remaining 20 per cent of "normal" matter is missing from galaxy disks. 

According to the researchers, learning about the direction and speed of the spinning halo can help us learn both how the material got there in the first place and the rate at which we expect the matter to settle into the galaxy.​

​Washington, July 23 (IANS) Showing empathy comes more out of careful reasoning instead of gut intuition, new research has revealed.

According to the study, systematic reasoning appears to beat intuition for recognising emotions in others.

"Cultivating successful personal and professional relationships requires the ability to accurately infer the feelings of others - that is, to be empathically accurate. Some are better at this than others, a difference that may be explained in part by mode of thought," said Jennifer Lerner, Researcher, Harvard University in the study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 

According to the researcher, individuals process information and make decisions in different ways. Some choose to follow their instincts and go with what feels right to them (i.e., intuitive), while others plan carefully and analyse the information available to them before deciding (i.e., systematic).

The researchers conducted four studies, involving over 900 participants, to examine the relationship between the two modes of thought and empathetic accuracy. 

The first determined that most people believe intuition is a better guide than systematic thinking to accurately infer other's thoughts and feelings. 

However, the other three studies found that the opposite is true, revealed the study.

"These findings are important because they show that commonly held assumptions about what makes someone a good emotional mind reader may be wrong," added Lerner.​

​Toronto, July 23 (IANS) In a first, Canadian veterinary researchers have successfully produced three wood bison calves using in vitro fertilisation.

Indigenous to Canada, the wood bison are threatened both by disease and loss of habitat.

Between 5,000 and 7,000 wood bison remain in the wild -- less than five per cent of their original numbers. 

Scientists hope that this reproductive breakthrough by researchers from the University of Saskatchewan will help retain genetic diversity and eventually rebuild the depleted wild herds.

"The babies look great," said Gregg Adams, Professor at Western College of Veterinary Medicine (WCVM), University of Saskatchewan.

"They're keeping up with mom, and I'm really happy about it," Adams said in a university statement.

Researchers produced them in a laboratory, then transferred the embryos into surrogate mothers more than nine months ago. The bison cows gave birth to the calves earlier this month, the statement added.

A fourth calf was produced from a frozen embryo that was taken from a bison cow in 2012 and transferred to a surrogate mother in 2015 -- another reproductive first for the bison species, the researchers said.

"The whole objective of our programme is to conserve the species. I think what we're doing with advanced reproductive technologies is really designed to preserve the genetic diversity (of the animals)," Adams said. 

"If we can preserve the genetic diversity, I'll feel like I've done my job. That will benefit both the wild populations as well as any livestock producers," Adams noted.​