Knowledge Update

Beijing, Jan 15 (IANS) Beijing, one of the most polluted cities of the world, will spend $2.6 billion to curb deadly air pollution.

The city of about nearly 22 million has been grappling with suffocating smog for years thanks to unbridled industrialisation in and around the capital city. 

Beijing will spend 18.2 billion yuan ($2.6 billion) to fight air pollution in 2017, officials were quoted by Xinhua news agency. 

This year, Beijing will replace coal with clean energy for 700 villages and phase out 300,000 high-polluting old vehicles. 

It will close or upgrade 2,570 polluting factories, said acting mayor Cai Qi Cai said Beijing will take tougher measures to improve the city's air quality in 2017. 

Acts of excessively or secretly discharging pollutants will be severely punished, Cai added. 

Beijing will also set up environment police thie year. 

The environment police squad can detain suspects in serious environment-related cases, the official told municipal lawmakers. 

The environment police will work with the city's environmental protection authorities to crack down on violations in environmental protection, Fang Li, head of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau. 

​London, Jan 15 (IANS) Want to make your New Year resolution successful? Try relocating, as it may help to overcome the things one wants to change in themselves, a new study says.

The study showed that the time for successful habit change is not based on the calendar, but on big changes in our everyday lives like moving to a new home."Changing your habits is very difficult, including finding the right moment to make a change," said Bas Verplanken, Professor at the University of Bath in Britain.

New Year may be a nice moment to mark the start of a new phase, but "the change in behaviour is embedded in other changes," Verplanken explains."In the case of moving to a new home for instance, people may need to find new solutions for how to do things in the new house, where and how to shop, commute, and so on. All of these aspects are absent when talking about New Year resolutions," Verplanken added.

For the study, the researchers studied the behaviours of over 800 people, half of whom had recently moved and the rest who had been at the same home for several years.The participants responded to questions on 25 environment related behaviours including water and energy use, commuting choices, and waste (food waste, recycling).

The result showed that people who recently relocated reported more change eight weeks later on a composite of twenty-five environment-relevant behaviours compared to participants who had not recently relocated.These results were consistent in spite of the strength of previous habits and views, and are consistent with research from others. The study was presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) Annual Convention in the US.

​London, Jan 14 (IANS) The risk of death by cardiovascular diseases due to depression may be just as great as that posed by high cholesterol levels and obesity, a study has found. Worldwide 350 million people are affected by depression, according to the World Health Organisation. "Our study shows that the risk of a fatal cardiovascular disease due to depression is almost as great as that due to elevated cholesterol levels or obesity," said Karl-Heinz Ladwig, professor at Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Germany. Depression accounted for nearly 15 per cent of the cardiovascular deaths. "That is comparable to the other risk factors, such as hypercholesterolemia, obesity and smoking," Ladwig said, noting that these factors cause 8.4 to 21.4 per cent of the cardiovascular deaths. In the study, the team included 3,428 male patients between the ages of 45 and 74 years and observed their development over a period of 10 years. The researchers analysed the relationship between depression and other risk factors like tobacco smoke, high cholesterol levels, obesity or hypertension and how big a role does each factor play? The results show that only high blood pressure and smoking are associated with a greater risk. The study was recently published in the journal Atherosclerosis.

Dubai, Jan 14 (IANS) The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has inaugurated its first "robot pharmacy" at Rashid Hospital in Dubai, a media report said on Friday.

This smart pharmacy is deploying a robot for the first time in the UAE to dispense prescribed medication, which would be done at a click of button based on a bar code,

Beijing, Jan 14 (IANS) Chinese internet and technology conglomerate LeEco has secured over $2 billion in investment from real estate developer Sunac China Holdings, media reports said.

​New York, Jan 14 (IANS) Owing to the Microsofts commitment in providing government customers the most complete, trusted and secure Cloud results, the US Department of Defense granted accreditation for Azure and Office 365 to handle controlled unclassified information (CUI).

New York, Jan 14 (IANS) Wish to live longer? Eating hot red chilli peppers with cholesterol lowering properties may help, researchers say.

The findings showed that consumption of hot red chilli peppers can lead to a 13 per cent reduction in total mortality, primarily in deaths due to heart disease or stroke.

People who were regular consumers of hot red chilli peppers showed lower cholesterol.

Although the researchers are not certain about the mechanism by which peppers could delay mortality, "transient receptor potential (TRP) channels, which are primary receptors for pungent agents such as capsaicin -- the principal component in chilli peppers -- may in part be responsible for the observed relationship," said Mustafa Chopan from University of Vermont in the US. 

Capsaicin is believed to play a role in cellular and molecular mechanisms that prevent obesity and modulate coronary blood flow and also possesses anti-microbial properties that "may indirectly affect the host by altering the gut microbiota," Chopan said.

Peppers and spices have been for centuries thought to be beneficial in the treatment of diseases.

For the study, the team examined more than 16,000 Americans who were followed for up to 23 years. 

The results found that consumers of hot red chilli peppers tended to be "younger, male, white, Mexican-American, married, and to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol and consume more vegetables and meats... had lower HDL-cholesterol, lower income, and less education," in comparison to participants who did not consume red chilli peppers. 

The study was published in the journal PLoS ONE.

​London, Jan 14 (IANS) People who suffer with early schizophrenia may also be at risk of developing diabetes, even before being prescribed anti-psychotic drugs and a poor lifestyle -- poor diet and sedentary behaviour -- associated with prolonged period of illness, a study has found.

Schizophrenia -- a brain disorder in which people interpret reality abnormally -- is known to be associated with a reduced life expectancy of up to 30 years. 

This is largely due to the onset of Type 2 diabetes, which increases the risk of physical health disorders such as heart attack or stroke, the researchers said.

"Our findings tell us that people with early schizophrenia have already started down the road to developing diabetes, even if they haven't been diagnosed with diabetes yet," said lead author Toby Pillinger from King's College London.

The findings showed that people with long-term schizophrenia are three times more likely than the general population to have diabetes, something which has previously been attributed to poor diet and exercise habits in this group, as well as the use of antipsychotic medication.

For the study, the team examined data from 16 studies comprising 731 people with a first episode of schizophrenia and 614 people from the general population. 

Blood tests revealed that people with schizophrenia had higher higher levels of insulin and insulin resistance, which increased their risk of developing Type 2 diabetes compared with healthy controls.

Other factors that may raise the risk of developing diabetes include, premature birth, low birth-weight and the stress associated with developing schizophrenia that increases the levels of cortisol -- the stress hormone.

"Our study highlights the importance of considering physical health at the onset of schizophrenia and calls for a more holistic approach to its management, combining physical and mental health," Pillinger noted.

The study was published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry. 

​Beijing, Jan 13 (IANS) China has established cooperation ties in science and technology with 158 countries and regions in the world, the Ministry of Science and Technology said on Friday.

 

​New York, Jan 13 (IANS) Apple has announced a change in App Store policy increasing the tvOS apps size limit from 200MB to 4GB.

"With the increased data size, developers can include more media in their submission and provide a complete, rich user experience upon installation," Apple said in a post on