Knowledge Update

​Washington, Oct 20 (IANS) US economic activity continues to expand at a modest to moderate pace from late August through early October, with most districts expecting positive outlook, the latest survey result released by the Federal Reserve showed on Wednesday.

​New York, Oct 20 (IANS) Facebook on Thursday introduced new features to allow you to order food, request an appointment with a local spa, get a quote and even book movie tickets with your friends' recommendations as you travel to a new place.

Now if you are in the US, write a Facebook post looking for advice on local places or services and you will have the option to turn on "Recommendations" for that post.

If you turn on the feature, your friends can comment on your post with suggestions, and you'll see all of them mapped out and saved in one place.

You can also go to your "Recommendations" bookmark on Facebook to ask a new question or help your friends.

"We're starting to introduce a variety of new features that help you ... to discover new things in the world around you, decide what to do or where to go, and connect with local businesses in easier and faster ways," Facebook said in a blog post.

Users can now order food from restaurants directly from Facebook pages. Simply click "Start Order" on any restaurant's Facebook page that uses Delivery.com or Slice.

"For local businesses..., such as spas and salons, you can now request a time via the business' Facebook page and view their entire slate of services and offerings. They'll then get back to you on Messenger to confirm your appointment," the post read.

Some local business Pages will now have a "Get Quote" button at the top that lets users easily and quickly request a quote from the business.

"You can buy movie tickets straight from Facebook pages via Fandango. In partnership with Ticketmaster and Eventbrite," the post read.

"We're also making it possible for people to get tickets to other events -- free or paid -- directly from the event page on Facebook," it further read.

To make exploring events better, Facebook has revamped the "Events" bookmark on Facebook.

You can catch up on the latest events activity from friends and hosts and browse event recommendations based on what's popular with friends or events you've connected with in the past.

The features will start to roll out in the US in the coming weeks.

​Clayton Christensen, a professor at the Harvard Business School, wrote in the Harvard Business Review in 1995 about the concept of 'disruptive innovation'. He described it as "a process that takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves up market, eventually displacing established practices".

The term has since then gone beyond just business and the markets and engulfed the whole gamut of the societal and environmental transformation. It is now termed the process that disrupts the well-established practices by game-changing operations that move from bottom to the top of society for sustainable and better living. 

Last week delegates from 197 countries in an international negotiating conference on the Montreal Protocol -- a multilateral environmental agreement (MEA) -- sparked such disruptive innovation at an unlikely place -- Kigali, the Rwandan capital -- and under the auspices of an environmental off-shoot of the UN more known for its glacial speed of responses to the global crises.

The disruptive innovation stems from the fact that the treaty under which the commitment was agreed was not originally sculpted to reduce emissions of green house gases (GHGs). Thus, 'The Montreal Protocol on Substances that deplete the Ozone Layer' was virtually enshrined with a new tag: 'The Montreal Protocol on substances that do not deplete the ozone layer'.

This signals not only a name change but also a game-changing operation for the betterment of the planet. It has heralded disruptive innovation in the well-established UN practice of never-crossing-the-mandate. Never ever before in the history of a MEA and even in the history of the UN has such social and environmental innovation taken place that stemmed from bottom up from countries.

MEAs are global treaties negotiated to address global environmental issues. Scientific postulations, observations, degrees of environmental and economic impacts as well as threat to the habitat are the drivers of such global negotiations. Differing abilities to perceive the environmental crisis and the unequal capability to deal with its impact as well as transformation to alternative policies and technologies are the major stumbling blocks in the negotiations. The suspicion or the real existence of hidden agendas, mistrust and politics complicate the negotiations, which become notoriously and excruciatingly slow. Each agreement is confined to its mandate and countries zealously guard this.

Even worse, a final agreement is arrived at after long serpentine multilateral negotiations and compromises are no assurance for its effective implementation as amply exemplified by the Kyoto Protocol of 1997.

The Montreal Protocol radiates exceptional success that stands out as one of the rare examples of what the UN is capable of achieving. Copy-book style negotiations under the Montreal Protocol, closely supported by global scientific assessments by top-notch irrefutable scientists, were strengthened with principles of common but differentiated responsibility, precautionary approach and polluter-to-pay issues.

Convened under the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Protocol, signed in 1987 which entered into force in 1989, has succeeded in wiping out nearly two million tons of man-made ozone depleting substances (ODS) that were being produced and consumed annually in the 1990s.

Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used in refrigeration, air-conditioning, hair sprays, insulating foams and fire protection, along with more than 90 other ozone depleting chemicals, have been wiped out from planet Earth within a space of one generation. Mildly ozone depleting chemicals -- HCFCs (hydrochlorofluorocarbons) -- which constitute less than one percent of total ODS remain to be phased out.

A MIT study says there already are early signs that the ozone layer has started recovering and is likely to come to its pre-depletion level by 2050. The world has created an example of 'handing over the natural heritage to the next generation, in same state as was received from our earlier generation'.

In Kigali, countries have decided to use the Montreal Protocol along with its mechanisms as a vehicle to phase-down HFCs and went beyond the mandate of the original Protocol and accepted the legally binding agreement to mitigate the emissions of GHGs. They expect the Protocol to deliver much needed reduction of 0.5 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century, bringing the maximum total warming of 1.5 degrees within reach. It is virtually impossible to deliver that under the Paris Agreement.

The countries also want to derive the benefit from this transformation away from HFCs to get more energy-efficient and even super-efficient air-conditioners to save energy, save costs, reduce pollution and derive health benefits.

To that end, Kigali has demonstrated that Silicon Valley, where the concept originated, doesn't have a monopoly on disruptive innovation.

​Bengaluru, Oct 19 (IANS) US-based technology company IBM and Indian Angel Network (IAN) on Wednesday announced a partnership to accelerate technology innovations in the start-up and entrepreneurial ecosystem in India.

​New Delhi, Oct 19 (IANS) Indian drug major Sun Pharmaceutical Industries on Wednesday said it has entered into an agreement with the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) to develop a novel dengue vaccine for India and global markets.

Bengaluru, Oct 19 (IANS) By providing technology and tools, chip maker Intel Corporation mentored 17 Indian start-ups to innovate products in diverse areas, said the US-based company on Wednesday. (21:10)

​San Francisco, Oct 19 (IANS) Microsoft on Wednesday announced that software and technology firm SAP will make its "SuccessFactors" Cloud-based human capital management (HCM) service available on Microsoft's Azure over the next five years.

​New York, Oct 6 (IANS) Six days after Microsoft received reports of a cumulative update that failed to install on some computers, the company has now released a "fix-it" tool.

"The update which tries to install and then rolls back repeatedly, affects PCs that previously ran a build delivered through the Windows Insider Programme," technology website

​New York, Oct 19 (IANS) In a major breakthrough in the field of speech recognition, Microsoft researchers have created a technology that accurately recognises the words in a conversation like humans do.

Beijing, Oct 19 (IANS) China's economy grew 6.7 per cent in the third quarter of 2016, holding steady with the second quarter and strengthening hope that the Chinese government will achieve its annual GDP target.