Knowledge Update

Tokyo, Feb 3 (IANS) Examining a molecular cloud with enigmatic motion, a team led by researchers in Japan has found signs of stray black hole hiding in the Milky Way.

It is difficult to find black holes, because they are completely black. In some cases black holes cause effects which can be seen. 

Theoretical studies have predicted that 100 million to one billion black holes should exist in the Milky Way, although only 60 or so have been identified through observations to date. 

"We found a new way of discovering stray black holes," said one of the researchers Tomoharu Oka, Professor at Keio University in Japan.

The researchers used the ASTE Telescope in Chile and the 45-m Radio Telescope at Nobeyama Radio Observatory, both operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, to observe molecular clouds around the supernova remnant W44, located 10,000 light-years away from us. 

A supernova is the explosion of a star -- the largest explosion that takes place in space, according to NASA.

The primary goal of the researchers was to examine how much energy was transferred from the supernova explosion to the surrounding molecular gas, but they happened to find signs of a hidden black hole at the edge of W44, said the study published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

During the survey, the team found a compact molecular cloud with enigmatic motion. 

To investigate the origin of this cloud, named the "Bullet", the team performed intensive observations of the gas cloud.

The data indicated that the Bullet seems to jump out from the edge of the supernova remnant with immense kinetic energy. 

"Most of the Bullet has an expanding motion with a speed of 50 km/s, but the tip of the Bullet has a speed of 120 km/s," Masaya Yamada, a graduate student at Keio University, said.

"Its kinetic energy is a few tens of times larger than that injected by the W44 supernova. It seems impossible to generate such an energetic cloud under ordinary environments," Yamada added.

The researchers believe that a dark and compact gravity source, possibly a black hole, has an important role in the formation of the Bullet.

Washington, Feb 2 (IANS) US Federal Reserve on Wednesday left the benchmark interest rates unchanged and offered no hint on when it might move.

The central bank painted a relatively upbeat picture for the economy. "Labour market continued to strengthen and... economic activity has continued to expand at a moderate

​Tokyo, Feb 2 (IANS) The online payment service for Nintendo Switch, the new console from the Japanese video game giant, will cost between 2,000 and 3,000 yen ($17-$26), company president Tatsumi Kimishima said on Thursday.

Juba, Feb 2 (IANS/MAP) Morocco King Mohammed VI and South Sudan President Salva Kiir Mayardit chaired the signing ceremony of nine bilateral agreements in different areas of cooperation between the two countries at the presidential palace in capital Juba.

Los Angeles, Feb 2 (IANS) Facebook reported net income of $10.2 billion in 2016, up 177 per cent from the previous year's total of $3.7 billion.

The online social media giant headed by Mark Zuckerberg, whose businesses include its signature social networking service and apps such as Messenger, Instagram and

New York, Feb 2 (IANS) If you feel constrained to share multiple photos on Instagram, a new feature will soon make your vacation look beautiful in a single album. According to a report in Droid Life on Thursday, Instagram is testing a new feature, now in beta stage, that lets users share multiple photos as a gallery. Only advertisers are able to share the gallery currently which users can swipe through horizontally, but the beta release of Instagram may make its way to all 600 million users soon. "Users can select up to 10 photos from their galley, slap on filters to each photo they choose, then upload the photos as an album to your timeline. From your followers' perspective, they will see the album and can then slide through the various shots, liking photos as they go," the report noted. However, beta users are currently not able to post the album on their timelines.

​New York, Feb 2 (IANS) Defying the massive fake news scandal that hit the social networking giant during the US presidential election as well as analysts, Facebook has registered strong growth in its mobile advertising business, with total revenue reaching $8.8 billion from $5.84 billion last year. It means $1.41 profit per share instead of the $1.31 that Wall Street was expecting. The quarterly profit was $3.57 billion -- more than double ($1.56 billion) the company reported last year, Fortune reported on Thursday. For the full year, Facebook's revenue climbed by $10 billion or 54 per cent to just over $27.5 billion compared with $17.9 billion in 2015 and the company's net income for the year more than doubled to $10 billion. Mired in controversies like "fake news" and inaccurate advertising, Facebook itself expected a slowdown in the growth rate of its advertising revenue. The one way by which the Menlo Park, California-based company registered the growth was by adding more than 265 million new monthly active users in 2016 -- almost as many users as the micro-blogging website Twitter has in total. Facebook now has more than 1.8 billion users who log on every month and more than 1.2 billion users who do so every day. Daily active users hit 1.23 billion, up from 1.18 billion last quarter and up 18 percent (Year-on-Year), compared to 17 percent last quarter. Another major growth engine for the social media giant was mobile. Over 1 billion of Facebook's daily users access the site primarily on their phones or tablets and that number grew by 23 per cent in the latest quarter. Mobile ad revenue made up about 84 per cent of the company's total ad revenue. Facebook also said it earned $12.4 billion in income from operations last year, nearly double the total from 2015 ($6.2 billion). Mobile now makes up 84 percent of its ad revenue -- the same as last quarter -- signalling that Facebook has successfully shifted to mobile. "During the earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was repeatedly asked about Facebook's video content strategy. He explained that "we're focusing on shorter form content to start", and that the company needs to build a sustainable ad revenue sharing business model to pay professional creators to bring that content to Facebook, Tech Crunch reported.

​New York, Feb 1 (IANS) It is true that money does not grow on trees but electricity might someday, as scientists have developed a prototype biomimetic tree that mimics the branches and leaves of a cottonwood tree and generates electricity when its artificial leaves sway in the wind.

Researchers from Iowa State University found that the technology could spawn a niche market for small and visually unobtrusive machines that turn wind into electricity.

"The possible advantages here are aesthetics and its smaller scale, which may allow off-grid energy harvesting. We set out to answer the question of whether you can get useful amounts of electrical power out of something that looks like a plant," said Michael McCloskey, associate professor at Iowa University.

Cell phone towers in some urban locations, such as Las Vegas, have been camouflaged as trees, complete with leaves that serve only to improve the tower's aesthetic appeal. 

"Tapping energy from those leaves would increase their functionality," McCloskey said.

This prototype device features a metallic trellis, from which hang a dozen plastic flaps in the shape of cottonwood leaves.

"It's definitely doable, but the trick is accomplishing it without compromising efficiency. More work is necessary, but there are paths available," said Curtis Mosher of Iowa State University. 

In a paper published in the journal PLOS ONE, the researchers explained that small strips of specialised plastic inside the leaf stalks release an electrical charge when bent by wind.

​London, Feb 2 (IANS) Scientists have identified new ways to provide vaccines against polio which do not require the growth of live virus for their manufacture, thereby reducing risk of virus escaping into the environment.

Polio is on the verge of being eradicated world-wide, but even when it has been officially declared as extinct as a disease, governments will need to continue to vaccinate to ensure against it recurring.

Using current technology, the production of vaccine requires the growth of enormous quantities of live virus, which is then chemically killed, thus presenting a dangerous security risk of virus escaping into the environment.

"Continuing to vaccinate after polio has been eradicated is essential to ensure against the disease recurring, but there are significant biosafety concerns about current production methods," said co-leader of the study David Rowlands, Professor of Molecular Virology at University of Leeds in Britain.

"Our new method of creating the vaccine has been proven to work in lab conditions and on top of that we've proved it's actually more stable than existing vaccines," Rowlands said.

Despite the success of vaccines produced from 'virus-like particles' (VLPs) for hepatitis B and human papilloma viruses, poliovirus VLPs have proved to be too unstable to make practical vaccines.

The research team found a new way to modify these VLPs, also known as 'empty capsids' by identifying mutations which make their structures sufficiently stable to act as vaccines.

The empty capsids change shape when warmed and become unusable as vaccines, but the mutations identified in this research prevent these damaging changes.

These new stabilised VLPs are suitable as replacements for the current killed poliovirus vaccines and can be produced in ways that do not require the growth of live virus, said the study published in the Journal of Virology.

Using the newly developed stabilised VLPs would be best used after the virus has been eradicated, the researchers said.

This study was a lab experiment, which shows stabilised VLPs to be effective in a controlled environment. 

Further research using animals (rats and mice) is planned, as part of the essential process of making sure the new VLPs are safe and effective for use in humans, the researchers said.

​Tokyo, Feb 2 (IANS) Electronics giant Panasonic has urged its employees to leave office by 8 p.m., during a time when Japan is reviewing its long working hours following the 2015 suicide by a young woman who had put in more than 100 hours of overtime per month.

Panasonic President Kazuhiro Tsuga personally took charge of e-mailing its 100,000 employees in Japan about the decision, a company spokeswoman confirmed to Efe news on Thursday.

The regulation that came into force on February 1, also applies to executive posts, but does not affect the board of directors.

The idea of work-life balance has been gaining momentum in Japan in the light of the suicide case from 2015.

For example, Daiwa Securities Group recently approved a campaign urging employees to leave the office at 7 p.m., while Unicharm, a hygiene products manufacturer, has prohibited overtime after 10 p.m.

Historically, Panasonic has been among those Japanese firms which have paid more attention to such moves; in 1965, it prohibited the 6-day working week amidst the Japanese economic boom, something which most other firms did not change until the 1980s.

The suicide by Matsuri Takahashi in December 2015, after just seven months employment with advertising giant Dentsu, has put the spotlight back on Japanese companies' working hours and "karoshi", or death by excessive work.

The labour ministry has decided to take Takahashi's case to court on the grounds that Dentsu did not comply with labour norms, systematically tampering with their employees' overtime records.