Knowledge Update

​New Delhi, Jan 30 (IANS) Ending months of speculation, Vodafone on Monday confirmed it is in talks with the Aditya Vikram Birla group for the merger of its Indian entity and Idea Cellular in what will be the largest such deal in the country's telecom space once it materialises.

​Kathmandu, Jan 30 (IANS) Senior officials of the eight member states of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) will meet here this week to attend the Programming Committee.

Amman, Jan 30 (IANS) Jordan signed a $14.1 million grant agreement with the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development.

Jordan's Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Imad Fakhoury on Sunday, who signed the agreement, said the agreement will finance projects in the field of

​New Delhi, Jan 30 (IANS) Hit by a high-profile exit amid falling numbers in China, Xiaomi -- once touted as the Apple of China -- will not showcase any product at the upcoming Mobile World Congress (MWC), the telecom industrys largest event in Barcelona, Spain next month. First Hugo Barra, Xiaomi's high-profile head of international operations, quit and announced joining Facebook to lead its virtual reality (VR) efforts last week and then came fresh figures from China for 2016 where the company slipped to fourth spot as the demand for its smartphones declined 22 per cent annually in the country. According to a report in Tech Crunch, a company spokesperson has confirmed that Xiaomi will skip the MWC event entirely. "The move is an unexpected one since it was widely assumed Xiaomi would attend. Barcelona-based Mobile World Congress is one of the largest events for the global mobile industry, attracting over 100,000 attendees, and it has a reputation as the place to show off the latest developments in mobile," the report added. There are reports that Xiaomi doesn't have new devices to showcase during the MWC show. Xiaomi used last year's event to introduce Mi5, its flagship smartphone, through a press event that was live-streamed. On its slump in the Chinese market, the key reason is Xiaomi's rivals racing ahead with key features, innovation, bigger marketing budgets and wider online and offline distribution channel during the year, said the report by market analytics firm Counterpoint Research. Huawei, Oppo and Vivo emerged as clear winners with Oppo and Vivo registering significant growth. Hit by the Note 7 fiasco and a delay in Galaxy 8 launch, Samsung is another big player which will not roll out a new device at MWC.

​Tokyo, Jan 30 (IANS) Toyota Motors lost its title as the highest selling automaker in 2016 to German carmaker Volkswagen, a position the Japanese company had enjoyed since 2011, the media reported. According to figures published on Monday by the Toyota group, which includes its subsidiaries Daihatsu Motor and Hino Motors, the company sold a total of 10.175 million units in 2016, Efe news reported. Although the figure is 0.2 per cent higher than 2015, it is lower than Volkswagen's 10.3 million units (growth of around 3.8 per cent) sold in 2016 despite the German manufacturer's recent emissions scandal. The last time Toyota was world's No. 2 annual car seller was in 2011, when Japan's northeastern part was struck by an earthquake and a tsunami, severely affecting the firm's operations and cutting significantly its supply chains. Toyota was also trailing Volkswagen in the first half 2015. However, Volkswagen's emissions scandal in September severely affected its last quarter sales.

​Dubai, Jan 30 (IANS) Russian travelers will get visas on arrival in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) under a cabinet decree approved on Sunday, media reports said.

Under the decree approved by Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Russian citizens are granted an entry visa for 30 days for the first time, renewable one time only for another 30 days, Xinhua news agency reported.

The decree will "enhance strategic cooperation and the common ambitions" of the two countries, said the report.

The UAE is considered the 10th largest foreign investor in Russia, with projects valued at 66 billion dirham ($17.98 billion) up to 2014.

In 2015, non-oil trade between the two countries reached 9 billion dirham.

The UAE has also received more than 600,000 Russian tourists in the past two years.

​London, Jan 30 (IANS) An international team of scientists has found the first observational and substantial evidence that our universe could be a vast and complex hologram.

A holographic universe, an idea first suggested in the 1990s, is one where all the information, which makes up our 3-D 'reality' (plus time) is contained in a 2-D surface on its boundaries.

"Imagine that everything you see, feel and hear in three dimensions (and your perception of time) in fact emanates from a flat two-dimensional field, said Kostas Skenderis, Professor at the University of Southampton in Britain. 

"The idea is similar to that of ordinary holograms where a three-dimensional image is encoded in a two-dimensional surface, such as in the hologram on a credit card. However, this time, the entire universe is encoded!" Skenderis added.

Although holographic properties could be thought of as rather like watching a 3-D film in a cinema -- for example we see the pictures as having height, width and crucially, depth -- when, in fact, it all originates from a flat 2-D screen.

However, the difference in our 3-D universe is that we can touch objects and the 'projection' is 'real' from our perspective, the researchers said, in the paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

"Holography is a huge leap forward in the way we think about the structure and creation of the universe. Scientists have been working for decades to combine Einstein's theory of gravity and quantum theory. Some believe the concept of a holographic universe has the potential to reconcile the two. I hope our research takes us another step towards this," Skenderis explained. 

The scientists now hope that their study will open the door to further our understanding of the early universe and explain how space and time emerged.

​New York, Jan 30 (IANS) NASA scientists have developed a simple method that could aid search for signs of life on other planets by analysing amino acids, the structural building blocks of all life on Earth.

The test uses a liquid-based technique known as capillary electrophoresis to separate a mixture of organic molecules into its components. 

The method is 10,000 times more sensitive than current methods employed by spacecraft like NASA's Mars Curiosity rover, according to a study published in the journal Analytical Chemistry. 

While capillary electrophoresis has been around since the early 1980s, this is the first time it has been tailored specifically to detect extraterrestrial life on an ocean world, said lead author Jessica Creamer, a postdoctoral scholar at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California.

"Our method improves on previous attempts by increasing the number of amino acids that can be detected in a single run," Creamer noted.

"Additionally, it allows us to detect these amino acids at very low concentrations, even in highly salty samples, with a very simple 'mix and analyse' process," Creamer said.

The researchers used the technique to analyse amino acids present in the salt-rich waters of Mono Lake in California. 

The lake's exceptionally high alkaline content makes it a challenging habitat for life, and an excellent stand-in for salty waters believed to be on Mars, or the ocean worlds of Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Europa.

The researchers were able to simultaneously analyse 17 different amino acids. These amino acids were chosen for study because they are the most commonly found on Earth or elsewhere.

"Using our method, we are able to tell the difference between amino acids that come from non-living sources like meteorites versus amino acids that come from living organisms," said the project's principal investigator Peter Willis of JPL.

"One of NASA's highest-level objectives is the search for life in the universe," Willis said. 

"Our best chance of finding life is by using powerful liquid-based analyses like this one on ocean worlds," Willis noted.

Washington, Jan 30 (IANS) Researchers have developed a reconfigurable radio that could help air traffic controllers see in real-time the location of every plane in the air -- even those flying across oceans.

To design and develop the new reconfigurable, higher-bandwidth radio, NASA worked with Palm Bay, Florida-based Harris Corporation.

With real-time global tracking, planes could fly with less space between them and take more direct routes. 

"It tremendously improves public safety and potentially saves a lot of fuel costs, because you no longer have to remain in the particular airline traffic lanes," said Jeff Anderson from Harris Corporation. 

The biggest selling point of the new device, which Harris sells as the AppSTAR, turned out to be its flexibility. 

With hardware and software both fully reconfigurable, the company could quickly and cheaply redesign the radio to fit any customer's needs, Harris programme manager Kevin Moran explained.

The company has already entered into contracts with Virginia-based Aireon LLC that will use the radios to create the first space-based global air traffic control system.

With Aireon flight tracking, powered by a radio developed by Harris Corporation, researchers hope that air traffic control agencies will be able to see in real time the location and heading of every plane in the air.

For decades, airplanes have relied on radar surveillance via land-based radar stations. That has left huge gaps ? particularly over oceans ? where air traffic controllers have no real-time information. 

To compensate, pilots file detailed flight plans and are required to remain within prescribed lanes at different altitudes so air traffic controllers can estimate where they are and work to ensure there are no mid-air collisions.

But that could change when a constellation of 66 satellites, owned by Iridium Communications Inc., goes into orbit equipped with AppSTAR radios. 

The radios are programmed to receive signals from new airplane transceivers called ADS-B, which automatically send out a flight's number, location, heading and other details.

"Within seconds you can keep track of all the aircraft in the world," Anderson noted. 

Aireon has already signed contracts with a number of air traffic control agencies to integrate the space-based system into their flight tracking when the system goes live in 2018. 

A reconfigurable is also useful for NASA engineers.

"A reconfigurable radio lets engineers change how the radio works throughout the life of (any space mission)," Thomas Kacpura, Advanced Communications Programme Manager at NASA's Glenn Research Center, explained in an official statement.

"It can also be upgraded to work better with future missions or to enhance performance, just by adding new software," Kacpura added.

New York, Jan 30 (IANS) Using a mechanism similar to the one used by the organ that allows pit vipers to sense their prey, researchers have developed an artificial skin capable of detecting temperature changes.

The material could be grafted onto prosthetic limbs to restore temperature sensing in amputees. 

It could also be applied to first-aid bandages to alert health professionals of a temperature increase -- a sign of infection -- in wounds.

While fabricating synthetic woods in a petri dish, a team led by California Institute of Technology's Chiara Daraio created a material that exhibited an electrical response to temperature changes in the laboratory. 

It turned out that the component responsible for the temperature sensitivity was pectin, a long-chain molecule present in plant cell walls.

"Pectin is widely used in the food industry as a jellifying agent; it's what you use to make jam. So it's easy to obtain and also very cheap," said Daraio.

Intrigued, the team shifted its attention to pectin and ultimately created a thin, transparent flexible film of pectin and water, which can be as little as 20 micrometres thick (equivalent to the diameter of a human hair). 

Pectin molecules in the film have a weakly bonded double-strand structure that contains calcium ions. 

According to a paper published in the journal Science Robotics, the film senses temperature using a mechanism similar -- but not identical -- to the pit organs in vipers, which allow the snakes to sense warm prey in the dark by detecting radiated heat. 

In those organs, ion channels in the cell membrane of sensory nerve fibres expand as temperature increases. 

This dilation allows calcium ions to flow, triggering electrical impulses, the researchers explained.