Introduction & Purpose
Knowledge update and Industry update at Skyline University College (SUC) is an online platform for communicating knowledge with SUC stakeholders, industry, and the outside world about the current trends of business development, technology, and social changes. The platform helps in branding SUC as a leading institution of updated knowledge base and in encouraging faculties, students, and others to create and contribute under different streams of domain and application. The platform also acts as a catalyst for learning and sharing knowledge in various areas.
Super User
Lifestyle and Trends
New York, May 23 (IANS) Researchers have developed the first flexible wearable device that has the potential to monitor both biochemical and electric signals in the human body.
The device, which includes a flexible suite of sensors and a small electronic board, is known as the "Chem-Phys" patch and records electrocardiogram (EKG) heart signals and tracks levels of lactate -- a biochemical that is a marker of physical effort -- in real time.
"One of the overarching goals of our research is to build a wearable tricorder-like device that can measure simultaneously a whole suite of chemical, physical and electrophysiological signals continuously throughout the day," said Patrick Mercier, professor at University of California-San Diego.
The tiny device -- made by screen printing on to a thin, flexible polymer sheet -- can be applied directly to the skin and communicates wirelessly with a phone, smart watch or laptop
The device can also transmit the data from biochemical and electrical signals via Bluetooth.
Combining information about heart rate and lactate -- a first in the field of wearable sensors -- could be especially useful for athletes wanting to improve their performance, the researchers noted.
The teams' biggest challenge was making sure that signals from the two sensors didn't interfere with each other.
In the study, detailed in the journal Nature Communications, the "Chem-Phys" patch was tested on three male subjects who wore the device on their chest, near the base of their sternum, while doing 15 to 30 minutes of intense activity on a stationary bike.
Two of the subjects also wore a commercial wristband heart rate monitor.
The data collected by the EKG electrodes on the patch closely matched the data collected by the commercial wristband.
The device can also be helpful for physicians to monitor patients with heart disease.
"The ability to concurrently assess EKG and lactate could also open up some interesting possibilities in preventing and/or managing individuals with heart diseases," explained Kevin Patrick, a physician.
Super User
Lifestyle and Trends
London, May 23 (IANS) Britons are spending almost an entire day in a week online scrolling through social networking site Facebook and watching video streaming service Netflix -- driven mainly by a fear of "missing out" on what friends and colleagues are getting up to, says a study.
The study, conducted by gadget insurance provider www.row.co.uk, found that Britons spend a whopping 21 hours browsing the internet each week with over six of those solely using Facebook, Mirror.co.uk reported.
British visitors to Facebook spent 850 million hours in March this year. Of the country's 32 million Facebook users, that works out to a massive 26.5 hours per visitor every month, the report added.
"We spend hours scrolling through our timelines and catching up with what’s happening in our friends’ and families’ worlds," Zoe Cairns, founder of ZC Social Media, was quoted as saying by the website.
“Checking our phone is a new life habit. We have a fear of logging off and missing out with what’s going on,” Cairns added.
The researchers collected data from 2,000 people for the study.
It also revealed that the average Briton spends over nine hours on Google and related services and 7.5 hours on Netflix each month.
The study also revealed that users spent an average of 58 hours 39 minutes each month browsing or using apps on smartphones, compared to 31 hours 19 minutes browsing on laptops and desktop computers.
The majority of internet users said they have happily controlled their finances on the internet.
SUC Editing Team
Accounting & Finance
Phnom Penh, May 20 (IANS) The World Bank has approved $130 million worth of fresh loans to Cambodia following a five-year freeze sparked by the forced evictions of a Phnom Penh community.
Super User
From Different Corners
New York, May 24 (IANS) An international team of scientists has detected and confirmed the faintest early-universe galaxy ever -- a finding that can help explain how the "cosmic dark ages" ended.
Using the WM Keck Observatory on the summit on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, the researchers detected the galaxy as it was 13 billion years ago.
According to Tommaso Treu, professor of physics and astronomy at University of California-Los Angeles, the discovery could be a step toward unraveling one of the biggest mysteries in astronomy -- how a period known as the "cosmic dark ages" ended.
According to the Big Bang theory, the universe cooled as it expanded. As that happened, Treu said, protons captured electrons to form hydrogen atoms, which in turn made the universe opaque to radiation -- giving rise to the cosmic dark ages.
“At some point, a few hundred million years later, the first stars formed and they started to produce ultraviolet light capable of ionizing hydrogen," Treu said.
"Eventually, when there were enough stars, they might have been able to ionize all of the intergalactic hydrogen and create the universe as we see it now,” he added.
That process, called cosmic reionization, happened about 13 billion years ago but scientists have so far been unable to determine whether there were enough stars to do it or whether more exotic sources, like gas falling onto supermassive black holes, might have been responsible.
“Currently, the most likely suspect is stars within faint galaxies that are too faint to see with our telescopes without gravitational lensing magnification," Treu said.
The new study, published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, exploits gravitational lensing to demonstrate that such galaxies exist, and is thus an important step toward solving this mystery.
Gravitational lensing was first predicted by famous theoretical physicist Albert Einstein.
The effect is similar to that of an image behind a glass lens appearing distorted because of how the lens bends light.
Super User
From Different Corners
New York, May 23 (IANS) Cue-based reminders can offer a no-cost, low-effort strategy to help people remember to complete the tasks that tend to fall through the cracks in daily life, say researchers.
Whether it is paying the electricity bill or taking the clothes out of the dryer, there are many daily tasks that we fully intend to complete and then promptly forget about.
New research suggests that linking these tasks to distinctive cues that we'll encounter at the right place and the right time may help us remember to follow through.
“People are more likely to follow through on their good intentions if they are reminded to follow through by noticeable cues that appear at the exact place and time in which follow-through can occur," explained psychological scientist Todd Rogers from Harvard Kennedy School.
Rogers and co-author Katherine Milkman from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania hypothesised that “reminders through association” may be a tool for remembering and following through.
By design, these cue-based reminders don't depend on any technology other than the human mind and they are delivered exactly when we need them.
Data collected from customers at a coffee shop suggest that the "reminders through association" approach may also be useful for organisations that want to help their clients remember to follow through on intentions.
Over the course of one business day, 500 customers were given a coupon that would be valid at the coffee shop two days later.
Only some customers were told that a stuffed alien would be sitting near the cash register to remind them to use their coupon.
About 24 percent of the customers who were given a cue remembered to use their coupon compared to only 17 percent of the customers who received no cue - a 40 percent increase in coupon usage.
Rogers and Milkman hope to build on this research to explore whether reminders through association might also be useful for boosting adherence to medical and other health-related regimens.
The research was published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Super User
From Different Corners
Toronto, May 23 (IANS) A constantly crying baby can not only hamper your peace, it can also rattles your brain functions and alter the way you think and act to make daily decisions, a study has found.
The brain data revealed that the infant cries reduced attention to the task and triggered greater cognitive conflict processing than infant laughs.
"Parental instinct appears to be hardwired yet no one talks about how this instinct might include cognition," said David Haley from the University of Toronto.
The team looked at infant vocalisations -- in this case, audio clips of a baby laughing or crying -- and its effect on adults who completed a cognitive conflict task.
They asked participants to rapidly identify the colour of a printed word while ignoring the meaning of the word itself.
Brain activity was measured using electroencephalography (EEG), which took place immediately after a two-second audio clip of an infant vocalisation.
Cognitive conflict processing is important because it controls attention -- one of the most basic executive functions needed to complete a task or make a decision.
A baby's cry has been shown to cause aversion in adults but it could also be creating an adaptive response, "switching on" the cognitive control parents use in effectively responding to their child's emotional needs while also addressing other demands in everyday life, Haley added in a paper published in the journal PLOS ONE.
"If an infant's cry activates cognitive conflict in the brain, it could also be teaching parents how to focus their attention more selectively," he added.
The findings add to a growing body of research suggesting that infants occupy a privileged status in our neurobiological programming, one deeply rooted in our evolutionary past.
But, as Haley noted, it also reveals an important adaptive cognitive function in the human brain.
Super User
Retail and Marketing
New York, May 21 (IANS) Google plans to start selling its mobile phones with modular, replaceable parts - the first phone ever that the tech giant is manufacturing - by next year, according to a media report.
The Project Ara team, involved in developing the product, confirmed that the modular phones would be available to consumers next year, technology website The Verge reported on Friday.
The Google modular phones will work on a simple concept - once a basic model is bought all the bits can be pulled off and swapped as the consumer sees fit.
For instance, if a user fancies a more powerful camera module he can buy one through Google's dedicated store and replace the existing one with it.
The same can be done with other components as well including memory, battery, display panels, keyboards, sensors and scanners.
"It's a system that will allow more space for modules," The Verge reported after taking a look at the prototype of the modular mobile at Google headquarters in California.
"They let me try saying 'Okay Google, eject the camera module' and it straight-up worked: a tiny latch inside the phone body moved when I set the phone on the table (face down) and the module released," the report said quoting the website's executive editor Dieter Bohn.
"There's still work to do here - Google needs to ship, it needs to get module partners on board, it needs to make the whole thing a little thinner and nicer looking," he added
Super User
Lifestyle and Trends
New York, May 21 (IANS) Just adopting a healthy lifestyle by refraining from drinking alcohol and smoking, maintaining a healthy body weight and exercising regularly can help you keep deadly cancer at bay, new research reaffirms.
About 20-40 percent of cancer cases could potentially be prevented through modifications to adopt a healthy lifestyle, the study found.
A large proportion of cancer cases and deaths can be prevented if people quit smoking, avoided heavy drinking, maintained a body mass index (BMI) between 18.5 and 27.5, and got moderate weekly exercise for at least 150 minutes or vigorous exercise for at least 75 minutes, the study said.
The research, published online in the journal JAMA Oncology, analysed data from two study groups of White individuals to examine the associations between a "healthy lifestyle pattern" and cancer incidence and death.
Mingyang Song and Edward Giovannucci from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, conducted the study that included 89,571 women and 46,399 men.
A "healthy lifestyle pattern" was defined as never or past smoking; no or moderate drinking of alcohol -- one or less drink a day for women, two or less drinks a day for men; BMI of at least 18.5 but lower than 27.5; and weekly aerobic physical activity of at least 150 minutes moderate intensity or 75 minutes vigorous intensity.
Individuals who met all four criteria were considered low risk and everyone else was high risk, the researchers advised.
The results revealed that 16,531 women and 11,731 had a healthy lifestyle pattern (low-risk group) and the remaining 73,040 women and 34,608 men were high risk.
The researcehrs estimated that about 20 percent to 40 percent of cancer cases and about half of cancer deaths could potentially be prevented through modifications to adopt the healthy lifestyle pattern of the low-risk group.
"These findings reinforce the predominate importance of lifestyle factors in determining cancer risk. Therefore, primary prevention should remain a priority for cancer control," the authors noted.
SUC Editing Team
Information Systems
New York, May 22 (IANS) A team of US scientists has created a new material, called "rewritable magnetic charge ice", that permits an unprecedented degree of control over local magnetic fields and could pave the way for new computing technologies.
SUC Editing Team
International Business
Tokyo, May 21 (IANS) Finance chiefs of the Group of Seven (G7) remained apart over the foreign exchange rate and coordinated steps to boost public spending to improve world economic growth after their two-day meeting in Sendai in northeast Japan ended on Saturday.