Knowledge Update

​Tokyo, Jan 28 (IANS) Japan-based Kyocera has introduced a new "rafre" washable smartphone that features resistance to hot water and a touchscreen that be can be used even when the user's hands are wet or when wearing gloves. The product will be available from March 2017 in Japan and will be offered in three colours -- pale pink, clear white and light blue. "The smartphone is a successor to the orignal DIGNO rafre, which launched in December 2015 as the world's first hand-soap-washable smartphone. In addition to resistance against foaming hand soap, the second-generation model possesses resistance to foaming body soap," the company said in a post on Friday. Furthermore, the new handset is equipped with a special cooking app which allows users to scroll through recipes, set timers and answer calls through hand gestures without having to touch the display. Equipped with phase detection auto-focus and auto HDR, the device sports 13MP rear camera, 2GB of RAM, 16GB internal memory, 3,000mAh battery and runs on Android 7.0 Nougat operating system.

​Beijing, Jan 28 (IANS) China witnessed a surge in tourist numbers on Friday, the first day of the week-long Lunar New Year holiday, official data showed on Saturday.

The number of tourists jumped 10.4 per cent year on year to 50.5 million, Xinhua news agency said. 

Tourist-generated income climbed to 59 billion yuan (around 8.67 billion US dollars), up 13.3 per cent from one year earlier, according to data from the China National Tourism Administration.

In Beijing alone, 294,000 tourists visited the city's 160 key scenic spots on Friday.

China's northwestern Gansu Province received 860,500 travellers, up 22.1 per cent year on year. The province reaped tourist revenues of 520 million yuan, up 25.9 per cent year on year.

In terms of outbound tourism, Phuket and Bangkok in Thailand, Nha Trang in Vietnam, Bali in Indonesia and Singapore were among the most popular destinations.

It is estimated that over six million Chinese people will travel abroad during the holiday. 

Washington, Jan 28 (IANS) NASA scientists in an unprecedented study have found that space travel may alter gene expression.

The study involved astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent a year in space and his identical twin Mark who stayed on Earth. 

From the lengths of the twins' chromosomes to the microbiomes in their guts, "almost everyone is reporting that we see differences", Christopher Mason, a geneticist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, was quoted as saying to scientificamerican.com. 

The changes that are likely attributable to Scott's time in orbit include alterations to gene expression, DNA methylation -- the reversible addition of a chemical marker that can affect gene expression -- and other biological markers. 

DNA methylation decreased in Scott during flight and increased in Mark over the same period. 

Levels for both men returned close to pre-flight levels after Scott came back to Earth, according to the preliminary results published in the journal Nature. 

"What this means isn't yet clear," said Andrew Feinberg, a geneticist at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, US.

The researchers also reported changes in gene-expression signatures between the twins. Such changes happen in earthbound people all the time, associated with environmental shifts such as changes in diet and sleep habits. 

However, the changes in Scott seemed to be larger than normal - perhaps due to the stress of eating frozen food and trying to sleep while floating in space, Mason said.

But, because the Kelly twins are just two people, the results may not be generalised, the study said.

Scott spent 340 days in space during 2015-2016, giving him a lifetime total of 520 days, while Mark, also an astronaut, had previously flown in space for a total of 54 days over four space-shuttle missions between 2001 and 2011.

New York, Jan 28 (IANS) If you are a creative person, chances are you may face more trouble in getting good quality sleep although you may sleep more often, researchers say.

In the study, the researchers sought to understand how two types of creativity -- visual and verbal -- influence objective aspects of sleep such as duration and timing and subjective aspects -- sleep quality.

The findings showed that both have different sleep patterns. Visual creativity is activated by different cerebral mechanisms than verbal creativity.

"Visually creative people reported disturbed sleep leading to difficulties in daytime functioning," whereas, "in the case of verbally creative people, the study found that they sleep more hours, go to sleep late and get up later," Neta Ram-Vlasov, doctoral student at University of Haifa in Israel, said in a statement.

"This strengthens the hypothesis that the processing and expression of visual creativity involves different psychobiological mechanisms to those found in verbal creativity," Ram-Vlasov added.

One possible explanations for the differences can be the that a 'surplus' of visual creativity makes the individual more alert which could lead to sleep disturbances.

"On the other hand, it is possible that it is protracted sleep among verbally creativity individuals facilitating processes that support the creative process while they are awake," Ram-Vlasov said.

​New York, Jan 27 (IANS) To protect users from potential viruses, tech giant Google has announced to restrict Gmail users from sending Javascript files from February 13.

"Gmail currently restricts certain file attachments (e.g. .exe, .msc, and .bat) for security reasons and similar to other restricted file attachments, you will not be able to attach a

​New York, Jan 27 (IANS) To minimise data breach, Facebook has added a new login option with 'security keys' that requires a user to enter a special security code from their phone in addition to the password when they login from a new browser.

​Beijing, Jan 27 (IANS) In a bid to expand online payment business in the US after a successful run in India with Paytm, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba's digital payments arm Ant Financial has bought global money-transfer service MoneyGram for nearly $880 million.

​Tokyo, Jan 27 (IANS) Japan's consumer prices dropped for the first time in four years in 2016 by 0.3 per cent from a year earlier, the government said on Friday.

It shows the country is still grappling with deflationary pressure despite the Bank of Japan (BOJ)'s numerous monetary easing measures, Xinhua news agency cited the Ministry

​New York, Jan 27 (IANS) Riding on its Cloud services, Microsoft on Friday announced revenues of $26.1 billion for the second quarter of fiscal year 2017 which exceeded analysts projections.

New York, Jan 27 (IANS) Facebook is changing the way it ranks videos that appear on the News Feed so that the videos which are more relevant to you surface on the screen.

With this new change, longer videos that people spend time watching may get a boost.