Knowledge Update

New York, Feb 10 (IANS) Scientists using NASA's Hubble space telescope have discovered a white dwarf star whose atmosphere is rich in materials that are the basic building blocks for life -- carbon, nitrogen, as well as oxygen and hydrogen, the components of water.

The white dwarf is approximately 200 light years from the Earth and is located in the constellation Bootes, said the study.

White dwarf stars are dense, burned-out remnants of normal stars.

The study presents evidence that the planetary system associated with the white dwarf contains materials that are the basic building blocks for life, said study co-author Benjamin Zuckerman, Professor at University of California, Los Angeles. 

And although the study focused on this particular star -- known as WD 1425+540 -- the fact that its planetary system shares characteristics with our solar system strongly suggests that other planetary systems would also.

"The findings indicate that some of life's important preconditions are common in the universe," Zuckerman said.

Many scientists believe the Earth was dry when it first formed, and that the building blocks for life on our planet -- carbon, nitrogen and water -- appeared only later as a result of collisions with other objects in our solar system that had those elements.

The research, published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, described how the white dwarf came to obtain carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen. 

The scientists reported that a minor planet in the planetary system was orbiting around the white dwarf, and its trajectory was somehow altered, perhaps by the gravitational pull of a planet in the same system. 

That change caused the minor planet to travel very close to the white dwarf, where the star's strong gravitational field ripped the minor planet apart into gas and dust. 

Those remnants went into orbit around the white dwarf -- much like the rings around Saturn, Zuckerman said -- before eventually spiraling onto the star itself, bringing with them the building blocks for life.

The researchers think these events occurred relatively recently, perhaps in the past 100,000 years or so.

This was the first time that nitrogen was detected in the planetary debris that falls onto a white dwarf, said Siyi Xu of the European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany.

"Nitrogen is a very important element for life as we know it," Xu, who led the team that made the discovery, explained. 

"This particular object is quite rich in nitrogen, more so than any object observed in our solar system," Xu said.

​New York, Feb 9 (IANS) Social media giant Facebook has announced an update to Safety Check, called Community Help, that lets people find and give help such as food, shelter and transportation after a crisis.

​New York, Feb 9 (IANS) Facebook has rolled out a new feature that shows full weather forecast on its mobile app and desktop site.

According to a report in TechCrunch, within the new Weather section, users can view a full forecast for a week ahead, powered by data from Weather.com.

Washington, Feb 9 (IANS) International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde said that greater data transparency could help increase the resiliency of the economy.

"Greater data transparency -- promoted through the IMF data standard initiatives-leads to a 15 percent reduction in the spreads on emerging market sovereign bonds," Lagarde

Washington, Feb 9 (IANS) Intel CEO Brian Krzanich after a meeting with US President Donald Trump, announced that the tech giantt will invest $7 billion in a new factory employing up to 3,000 people, the media reported.

​New York, Feb 9 (IANS) If you are planning a visit to the US, you could be asked to hand over Facebook and other social media passwords as part of an enhanced security process, media reports said.

According to a report in NBC News on Wednesday that quoted Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, this step was one of several being considered to vet refugees and visa applicants from seven Muslim-majority countries.

"We want to get on their social media, with passwords: What do you do, what do you say? If they don't want to cooperate then don't come in," Kelly was quoted as saying. 

Kelly reportedly made these remarks on the same day when judges in US heard arguments over President Donald Trump's executive order temporarily banning the entry of refugees from seven Muslim-majority nations.

Kelly believes that under the existing vetting process, "officials don't have a lot to work with, except relying on the applicant's documentation and asking them questions about their background".

"When someone says, 'I'm from this town and this was my occupation', (officials) essentially have to take the word of the individual. I frankly don't think that's enough, certainly President Trump doesn't think that's enough. So we've got to maybe add some additional layers," Kelly added.

Apart from social media passwords, Kelly said he was mulling obtaining people's financial records.

"We can follow the money, so to speak. How are you living, who's sending you money? It applies under certain circumstances, to individuals who may be involved in or on the payroll of terrorist organisations," he said.

​Beijing, Feb 9 (IANS) Foreign nationals will have to submit to fingerprinting when they enter China, the Ministry of Public Security said on Thursday.

During this year, exit-entry departments across the country will begin to collect the fingerprints of foreign nationals aged between 14 and 70, Xinhua news agency reported. 

Those holding diplomatic passports or under reciprocal conditions will be exempted.

The new system will first be tested at Shenzhen Airport from Friday, said the ministry. 

​New York, Feb 9 (IANS) Toddlers who regularly take naps may develope better language skills than those who do not take a nap, researchers say.

The findings showed that three-year-olds who napped within about an hour of learning a new verb performed better than those who stayed awake for at least five hours after learning, regardless of whether they were habitual nappers.

While an infant between birth and six months old may take up to six naps a day, many children are down to one nap or no naps a day by preschool.

The learning benefit of napping could come from what is known as slow-wave sleep, the researchers said.

"There's a lot of evidence that different phases of sleep contribute to memory consolidation, and one of the really important phases is slow-wave sleep, which is one of the deepest forms of sleep," said Rebecca Gomez, Associate Professor at University of Arizona in the US. 

"During this phase, what the brain is doing is replaying memories during sleep, so those brain rhythms that occur during slow-wave sleep and other phases of non-REM sleep are actually reactivating those patterns -- those memories -- and replaying them and strengthening them," Gomez added, in the paper published in the journal Child Development. 

Preschool-age children should be getting 10 to 12 hours of sleep in a 24-hour period, whether it's all at night or a combination of nighttime sleep and napping. 

If they do not get enough sleep it can have long-term consequences including deficits on cognitive tests, Gomez said.

For the study, the team tested 39 typically developing 3-year-olds, divided into two groups: habitual nappers and non-habitual nappers. 

Parents may want to consider maintaining regular naptimes for preschoolers, who are at an age at which naps have a tendency to dwindle, the researchers suggested. 

​Melbourne, Feb 9 (IANS) The city of Melbourne will soon be home to Australia's tallest building after a 90-storey, six-star hotel was approved by the Victoria state government on Thursday.

The 323-metre building, which will form part of the Crown Casino complex on Melbourne's Southbank, will cost $1.3 billion to build and will feature 388 hotel rooms and 708 apartments, Xinhua news agency reported.

Daniel Andrews, Victoria's Premier, said the plans were approved after Crown agreed to spend $75 million improving street level amenities near the site of the new tower.

The tower would transform Melbourne's skyline and increase the city's capacity to host major events, Andrews told reporters on Thursday.

The project's ability to create jobs for Victoria was another key factor in the approval, he said.

"What we're really approving is 4,000 jobs ... for construction workers and for those in the hospitality sector, in the construction phase and for the future," he said.

Todd Nisbet, Crown Resorts executive vice-president of strategy and development, said Crown's three existing Melbourne hotels were currently running at over 90 per cent occupancy.

"The proposed addition of this luxury hotel will also assist Melbourne to meet its future tourist accommodation demands, with Crown being able to offer over 2,000 guest rooms and suites upon completion," Nisbet said.

Melbourne, Feb 9 (IANS) Australian researchers have developed a mobile application to monitor and improve the mental health of taxi drivers.

Researchers from the University of Melbourne developed the app after a study discovered that taxi drivers were among the most stressed people in a workplace, Xinhua news agency reported.

The studyh found that two in three taxi drivers reported high levels of psychological distress due to long working hours and the prospect of being assaulted by passengers.

Nearly a third of drivers surveyed rated their physical health as poor, twice the average for Australian men.

"We're all used to messages about cutting the road toll, but there's another road toll that is unique to taxi drivers -- the mental and physical health hazards they face on the job," Sandra Davidson from the University of Melbourne's Department of General Practice said on Thursday.

"Taxi drivers are mostly male, shift workers, recently arrived in Australia, and either too time poor or reluctant to seek help," Davidson said.

"The biggest challenge is enabling taxi drivers themselves to make small but important changes to their routines, given that they have lots of 'dead' time that they can't do much with, because they have to get their next fare."

Davidson said the idea for the app came from survey findings that taxi drivers were spending large amounts of time on their smartphones but were unlikely to seek mental health help.