Knowledge Update

​Mumbai, April 11 (IANS) India's first industrial-articulated robots in different sizes targeted at micro, small and medium enterprises besides large-scale manufacturers, to help increase their efficiency, were launched by Tata Motors Ltd here on Tuesday.

​New York, April 11 (IANS) Software giant Microsoft has bought startup Deis that specialises in containers -- a modern way to develop and deploy software.

The deal is seen as a boost to Microsoft's cloud because software containers are termed as the new building blocks of cloud-based applications.

Beijing, April 11 (IANS) Boeing on Tuesday said its Boeing Business Jet variants for the corporate jet market have seen continuous growth in China with a fleet of 29 aircraft in operation.

Washington, April 11 (IANS) The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has underlined the importance of sustaining growth in emerging markets and developing economies, as they face less supportive external environment.

Washington, April 4 (IANS) Apart from undertaking various expeditions beyond Earth, scientsts at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida have joined a partnership created to develop self-driving cars using radar, lasers, the Global Positioning System and computer vision.

​New Delhi, April 11 (IANS) Alibaba Group's news app UC News has crossed 100 million monthly active users (MAUs) in India and Indonesia, the company said on Tuesday.

UC News was launched in June 2016 and since then it has grown rapidly in the Indian and Indonesian markets.

​Gurugram, April 11 (IANS) Global networking giant Cisco and leading fashion retailer Shoppers Stop on Tuesday announced to implement Cisco wireless solution across 80 Shoppers Stop stores in India.

​Accra, April 11 (IANS) Falling crude oil prices hit trade between India and Nigeria last year as imports from the African nation dwindled to $9.94 billion from the previous year's $13.68 billion, down by 27 per cent, the Indian High Commission said.

New York, April 11 (IANS) Astronomers have discovered a faint, incredibly distant galaxy, about 13.1 billion years in the past, just about 700 million years after the Big Bang.

The new object, named MACS1423-z7p64, was detailed in a study published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

The researchers used the Hubble space telescope to find the galaxy and confirmed its age and distance with instruments at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii.

"Other most distant objects are extremely bright and probably rare compared to other galaxies," said lead author Austin Hoag from University of California, Davis in the US. 

"We think this is much more representative of galaxies of the time," Hoag said.

These ultra-distant galaxies, seen as they were close to the beginning of the universe, are interesting because they fall within the "Epoch of Reionisation," a period about a billion years after the Big Bang when the universe became transparent.

After the Big Bang, the universe was a cloud of cold atomic hydrogen, which blocks light. 

The first stars and galaxies condensed out of the cloud and started to emit light and ionising radiation. 

This radiation melted away the atomic hydrogen like a hot sun clearing fog, and the first galaxies spread their light through the universe. But much remains lost in the fog of reionisation.

To find the faint faint, distant object, the astronomers took advantage of a giant lens in the sky.

As light passes by a massive object such as a galaxy cluster, its path gets bent by gravity, just as light gets bent passing through a lens. 

When the object is big enough, it can act as a lens that magnifies the image of objects behind it.

While it is similar to millions of other galaxies of its time, z7p64 just happened to fall into the "sweet spot" behind a giant galaxy cluster that magnified its brightness ten-fold and made it visible to the team, using the Hubble space telescope. 

They were then able to confirm its distance by analysing its spectrum with the Keck Observatory telescopes in Hawaii.

The team plans to continue their survey of candidate galaxies with the Hubble and Keck telescopes, and later with James Webb space telescope, set for launch in 2018.

It is expected that the Webb telescope, which is bigger than Hubble, will allow astronomers to look at even more distant parts of the universe, which will help astronomers answer the question of where did we come from.

​New York, April 11 (IANS) Scientists have found a way to create an HIV-resistant cell population which can quickly replace diseased cells, thereby potentially curing the disease in an infected person.

"This protection would be long-term," said Jia Xie, senior staff scientist at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in the US and first author of the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers found a way to tether HIV-fighting antibodies to immune cells, thereby creating a cell population resistant to the virus. 

Their experiments under lab conditions showed that these resistant cells can replace diseased cells.

The new technique offers a significant advantage over therapies where antibodies float freely in the bloodstream at a relatively low concentration, the researchers said.

Instead, antibodies in the new study hang on to a cell's surface, blocking HIV from accessing a crucial cell receptor and spreading infection.

The researchers said they plan to collaborate with investigators at City of Hope -- an independent research and treatment centre for cancer, diabetes and other life-threatening diseases in the US -- to evaluate this new therapy in efficacy and safety tests, as required by federal regulations, prior to testing in patients.