Knowledge Update

​Beijing, Dec 24 (IANS) After 28 years of talks between Beijing and Moscow, construction has finally started on a modern highway bridge connecting China and Russia across the Heilongjiang river, the first between the two countries.

​San Francisco, Dec 24 (IANS) Amid the escalating patents row with Finnish smartphone maker Nokia, Apple has reportedly pulled all products made by Withings -- a French company and now a Nokia subsidiary -- from Apple Stores, be it online or retail. Several Withings iOS-compatible products -- mostly health-related connected accessories -- have been available at Apple Stores for nearly two years as part of a retail alliance, AppleInsider reported on Saturday. The Withings product sales continued even after the company was acquired by Nokia in April for nearly $190 million. The Withings brand was integrated into Nokia's Digital Health unit. "Now, the devices made by the Nokia subsidiary are no longer listed on Apple's website. Previously, Apple carried a wide range of iOS-compatible Withings devices in its retail stores, including the 'Body Cardio Scale' and 'Wireless Blood Pressure Monitor,'" the report added. Five years after Apple and Nokia settled a lawsuit, the tech giants have again locked horns over patents with Apple filing an anti-trust lawsuit against third-party companies Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs) that act on Nokia's behalf, and the Finland-based firm suing Apple directly earlier this week. Nokia filed a suit in Europe and the US, claiming Apple is still infringing on Nokia patents. The lawsuit covers 32 patents, including display, user interface, software and video-coding technology. Nokia said that since settling the initial case, Apple has "declined subsequent offers made by Nokia to license other [parts] of its patented inventions, which are used by many Apple products." In its lawsuit, Apple argued that Nokia already has agreements to license its patents for fair and reasonable terms, also know as "FRAND" (Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory). "But Nokia is transferring these patents to PAEs in order to aggressively pursue money," Apple argued. According to the Cupertino-based tech giant, Nokia has been conspiring with PAEs patent assertion entities (Acacia Research and Conversant Property Management) in an "illegal patent transfer scheme" to wring money out of Apple because Nokia's cell phone business is failing. According to the AppleInsider report, Apple has now "expunged all mention of Withings and its product line from the Apple.com online retail database". "Whether or not the recent Withings removal is related to Nokia's shady legal dealings has yet to be confirmed, but Apple has in the past used its retail might as a retaliatory weapon," the report added. In 2011, the two companies settled a patent fight over smartphone technology through a licensing agreement that committed Apple to make a one-time payment to the company and to pay regular royalties in the future, media reported. The companies also agreed to withdraw complaints against each other with the International Trade Commission over the use of intellectual property.

​New York, Dec 24 (IANS) Studying a diverse group of solitary, desert bees, researchers have reported identification of nine new species of the genus Perdita, including two ant-like males.

These solitary bees are not major pollinators of agricultural crops, but fill an important role in natural ecosystems of the American Southwest, including the sizzling sand dunes of California's Death Valley.

In a study published in the journal Zootaxa, the researchers described curious ant-like males of two of the species, which are completely different in appearance from their mates.

"It's unclear why these males have this unique form, but it could indicate they spend a lot of time in the nest," said entomologist Zach Portman from Utah State University in the US.

"We may find more information as we learn more about their nesting biology," Portman noted.

Portman tracked the tiny elusive bees by watching for their buzzing shadows in the blinding, midday sunlight the diminutive insects tend to favour.

"Their activity during the hottest part of the day may be a way of avoiding predators," Portman said.

"They appear to be important pollinators of desert plants commonly known as 'Crinklemats'" Portman explained.

Crinklemats, flowering plants of the genus Tiquilia, grow low to the ground and feature ridged, hairy leaves and small, trumpet-shaped blue blossoms.

"Like the bees, Tiquilia flowers are very small," Portman said. 

"The bees must squeeze into the long, narrow corollas and dunk their heads into the flowers to extract the pollen," he added.

The scientists reported that the female bees use pollen collected from the flowers to build up a supply to nourish their young. 

Once they have completed a pollen provision, the bees lay their eggs on the stash and leave their offspring to fend for themselves.

Though declines in bee populations have heightened awareness of the importance of pollinating insects to the world's food supply, numerous bee species remain undescribed or poorly understood, the researchers pointed out.

New York, Dec 24 (IANS) Researchers have found that centuries-old herbal medicine, discovered by Chinese scientists to treat malaria, can aid in tuberculosis (TB) treatment and even slow drug resistance.

One-third of the world's population is infected with TB, which killed 1.8 million people in 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) -- the TB-causing bacteria -- needs oxygen to thrive in the body and the immune system starves this bacterium of oxygen to control the infection. 

The study found that artemisinin -- the ancient remedy -- stopped the ability Mtb to become dormant -- a stage of the disease that often makes the use of antibiotics ineffective.

"When TB bacteria are dormant, they become highly tolerant to antibiotics. Blocking dormancy makes the TB bacteria more sensitive to these drugs and could shorten treatment times," said Robert Abramovitch, Assistant Professor at Michigan State University in the US.

Artemisinin attacks a molecule called heme, which is found in the Mtb oxygen sensor. 

By disrupting this sensor and essentially turning it off, the medicine stopped the disease's ability to sense how much oxygen it was getting, the researchers said.

"When the Mtb is starved of oxygen, it goes into a dormant state, which protects it from the stress of low-oxygen environments. If Mtb can't sense low oxygen, then it can't become dormant and will die," Abramovitch said. 

TB takes up to six months to treat and is one of the main reasons the disease is so difficult to control, the researchers said.

They also said that the finding could be key to shortening the course of therapy because it can clear out the dormant, hard-to-kill bacteria.

The paper was published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.

​London, Dec 24 (IANS) Our decision-making is heavily influenced by the world around us, a study has found, challenging the traditional idea that thinking takes place strictly in the head.

The idea that thinking is done only in the head is a convenient illusion that doesn't reflect how problems are solved in reality, said Gaelle Vallee-Tourangeau, Professor at Kingston University in Britain.

"When you write or draw, the action itself makes you think differently. In cognitive psychology you are trained to see the mind as a computer, but we've found that people don't think that way in the real world. 

"If you give them something to interact with they think in a different way," Vallee-Tourangeau added.

In the study, the researchers explored how maths anxiety -- a debilitating emotional reaction to mental arithmetic that can lead sufferers to avoid even simple tasks like splitting a restaurant bill -- could potentially be managed through interactivity.

The study involved asking people to speak a word repeatedly while doing long sums at the same time. 

The results showed that the mathematical ability of those asked to do the sums in their heads was more affected than those given number tokens that they could move with their hands.

"We found that for those adding the sums in their head, their maths anxiety score predicted the magnitude of errors made while speaking a word repeatedly. If they're really maths anxious, the impact will be huge," Vallée-Tourangeau explained. 

"But in a high interactivity context -- when they were moving number tokens -- they behaved as if they were not anxious about numbers," Vallée-Tourangeau said.

Understanding how we think and make decisions by interacting with the world around us could help businesses find new ways of improving productivity -- and even improve people's chances of getting a job, the researches noted.

The study was published in the journal Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications.

​New York, Dec 24 (IANS) Researchers have developed a new test that can identify hearing loss or deficits in some individuals considered to have normal or near-normal hearing in traditional tests.

Many adults report difficulties hearing in everyday situations, despite having their physicians or audiologists tell them that the results of their hearing tests are normal or near-normal.

"We now have a validated technique to identify 'hidden' hearing deficits that would likely go undetected with traditional audiograms," said Leslie Bernstein, Professor at University of Connecticut School of Medicine in the US.

Their newly developed hearing test measures a person's ability to detect across-ears (binaural) changes in sounds presented at levels of loudness that are close to those experienced in normal conversations.

The binaural system plays a fundamental and predominant role in the ability to localise sounds, to understand conversation in places such as busy restaurants, and to attend to one of multiple, simultaneous sounds.

The researchers studied 31 adults between ages 30 to 67 with normal or near-normal audiograms.

The results of the study published in the Journal of the Acoustic Society of America showed that listeners who have essentially normal clinical hearing test results may exhibit substantial deficits in binaural processing. 

"Our study shows that our novel binaural hearing test can help early identify vulnerable populations of listeners, and perhaps help determine when critical interventions are warranted," Constantine Trahiotis, Emeritus Professor at University of Connecticut School of Medicine, noted.

Acquired hearing loss from excessive noise exposure has long been known to produce significant, and sometimes debilitating, hearing deficits, Bernstein pointed out.

The new research suggests that hearing loss may be even more widespread than was once thought.

New York, Dec 24 (IANS) If you closely followed the recently concluded US presidential election, you might have already realised what a new study confirms - providing contradictory evidence to change one's political beliefs may actually backfire.

People become more hard-headed in their political beliefs when provided with counter-evidence because the brain may perceive the challenges to political beliefs in the same way it perceives threat and anxiety, the study suggests.

"Political beliefs are like religious beliefs in the respect that both are part of who you are and important for the social circle to which you belong," said lead author Jonas Kaplan from University of Southern California in the US.

"To consider an alternative view, you would have to consider an alternative version of yourself," Kaplan said.

To determine which brain networks respond when someone holds firmly to a belief, the neuroscientists compared whether and how much people change their minds on nonpolitical and political issues when provided counter-evidence.

They discovered that people were more flexible when asked to consider the strength of their belief in nonpolitical statements -- for example, "Albert Einstein was the greatest physicist of the 20th century".

But when it came to reconsidering their political beliefs, such as whether the US should reduce funding for the military, they would not budge.

"I was surprised that people would doubt that Einstein was a great physicist, but this study showed that there are certain realms where we retain flexibility in our beliefs," Kaplan said.

For the study, the neuroscientists recruited 40 people who were self-declared liberals. 

The scientists then examined through functional MRI how their brains responded when their beliefs were challenged.

The study - published in the journal Scientific Reports - found that people who were most resistant to changing their beliefs had more activity in the amygdalae (a pair of almond-shaped areas near the center of the brain) and the insular cortex, compared with people who were more willing to change their minds.

"The activity in these areas, which are important for emotion and decision-making, may relate to how we feel when we encounter evidence against our beliefs," Kaplan said.

"The amygdala in particular is known to be especially involved in perceiving threat and anxiety," Kaplan added. 

"The insular cortex processes feelings from the body, and it is important for detecting the emotional salience of stimuli. That is consistent with the idea that when we feel threatened, anxious or emotional, then we are less likely to change our minds," Kaplan explained.

He also noted that a system in the brain, the Default Mode Network, surged in activity when participants' political beliefs were challenged.

"These areas of the brain have been linked to thinking about who we are, and with the kind of rumination or deep thinking that takes us away from the here and now," Kaplan said.

​New York, Dec 23 (IANS) Apple has listed top five grossing movies of all time on iTunes in the US with "Elf", starring Will Ferrell as "Buddy the Elf" as the all-time best-selling holiday movie. In the list that was released on Wednesday on company's website, "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation", Originally released in 1989, figures on the second place. The movie stars Chevy Chase as Clark W. Griswold. Dr Seuss' "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" from 2000, starring Jim Carrey as the Grinch and "Home Alone" starring Macaulay Culkin, directed by Chris Columbus figure on number three and four respectively. While "The Polar Express" starring Tom Hanks in multiple roles is on the fifth number in the Apple's top five grossing movies. The movie is directed by Robert Zemeckis. Apple said that users can ask Siri on iPhone or iPad or on Apple TV using the Siri remote, to play these holiday favourites or other popular holiday titles of this season, including "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York", "The Night Before", "A Christmas Story" and others. Users can also gift iTunes movies to friends and family.

​New York, Dec 23 (IANS) The wait of hatching eggs on the wrist is now over as Pokemon Go is finally available on Apple Watch.

The announcement of the Apple Watch version of the game by the end of the year was made in September by US-based software company and developer of the gaming app

​Singapore, Dec 23 (IANS) A four-day festival to mark the 350th birthday of Guru Gobind Singh opened here on Friday.

Thousands of Sikhs from around the region were expected to attend the "Naam Ras Kirtan Darbar", a biennial event which started in 2002, said a report in the Strait Times on Friday. 

Guru Gobind Singh was the 10th Sikh guru and was known as a literary genius.

The free event will feature music performances and an exhibition on the history of Sikhism. It will also offer free vegetarian food made by volunteers at gurdwaras in Singapore.

The festival will also have on display a sacred relic - a 300-years-old pitcher used by Guru Gobind Singh. Another highlight is a miniature paper replica of the Golden Temple of Amritsar. 

More than 20,000 people are expected to attend the festival, which is one of largest Sikh gatherings outside South Asia. A live feed of the event will be streamed on Facebook.

For many Sikhs the event will be an opportunity to meet members of their community living in different countries.

"Singapore has always been our home base. It is a good chance to come back home, see each other and be part of the community again," said Shanghai-based Ashmit Singh who has come to attend the event.

Guramrit Singh, an IT designer, said that apart from learning more about the religion, he enjoys the sense of community that the festival provides.