Knowledge Update

​Tel Aviv, Jan 10 (IANS) A team of Israeli researchers has developed a smartphone-based system to assess obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) severity while a patient is awake and analyse the sleep-wake activity.

Currently, patients are diagnosed using polysomnography (PSG) to record brain waves, blood oxygen level, heart rate, breathing and eye and leg movements overnight. 

The new system, which does not require contact sensors, can be installed onto a smartphone or other device that utilises ambient microphones. 

It both analyses speech while the user is awake and records and evaluates overnight breathing sounds using new technology that is simpler to use and significantly less expensive than PSG, said the team from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU).

"We've developed technology that could help diagnose OSA and sleep disorders in a convenient way," said Dr Yaniv Zigel, head of BGU's biomedical signal processing research lab (BSP) in a statement.

"The audio-analysis application can record speech signals from awake subjects. Now, we will be able to get a fast, OSA severity estimation without an overnight sleep study," added professor Ariel Tarasiuk, head of the sleep-wake disorders unit at Soroka University Medical Center in Beer-Sheva. 

Researchers tested the new speech and breathing sound analysis systems on more than 350 subjects, along with PSG, in laboratory and at-home settings. 

They were able to reliably evaluate sleep quality parameters such as sleep-wake activity, snoring severity and OSA using this system.

"We are excited about this non-contact sleep tracking system which does not require patients to wear uncomfortable monitoring equipment on their body," Tarasiuk added. 

The application can also be very useful for CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine users who want to check the effectiveness of their sleep apnea therapy.

Abu Dhabi, Jan 10 (IANS/WAM) The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations has lauded the decision of UAE Vice President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, to fight hunger and food waste by launching the Food Bank initiative.

Nabil Gangi, FAO Representative to the UAE, said the initiative "reflects the true spirit of giving, which has always characterised the UAE communities, and the vision of the founder of the country, late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan".

Gangi praised the initiative to turn Dubai into the first city in the region, and probably in the world, to achieve zero food waste. 

He also confirmed the FAO's readiness to continue working hand-in-hand with the United Arab Emirates government and stakeholders to ensure the success of the initiative within a sustainable food diversification strategy.

The newly-established UAE Food Bank will bring together several stakeholders to collect excess food from hotels, supermarkets, restaurants and farms. 

It will then store and package the food for distribution, while the inedible food will be recycled for different usage, including but not limited to, animal feed and fertilisers.

Beijing, Jan 9 (IANS) High-income earners in China, who have emerged since the reforms of 1978, number over 80 million, a media report said on Monday.

Forty-eight million of these are managers or technicians at private and foreign-funded companies, 14 million are from intermediary and social organisations, 11 million are

​Beijing, Jan 9 (IANS) Fast food giant McDonald's will set up its largest franchisee outside the US in China.

The US food chain on Monday announced it would partner with a group of investors, making the new company the largest franchisee outside America, Xinhua news agency

London, Jan 9 (IANS) The final three months of last year saw the strongest quarterly growth in British consumer spending in two years, according to payment card company Visa.

​New York, Jan 9 (IANS) At Macworld 2007 in San Francisco, Steve Jobs introduced the world to iPhone as three products in one -- a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone and a breakthrough internet communications device. January 9 marks the tenth anniversary of Apple's iPhone. In the 10 years since, iPhone has enriched the lives of people around the world with over one billion units sold. It quickly grew into a revolutionary platform for hardware, software and services integration and inspired new products, including iPad and Apple Watch, along with millions of apps that have become essential to people's daily lives. "iPhone is an essential part of our customers' lives and today more than ever it is redefining the way we communicate, entertain, work and live," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO. Last year, the company introduced iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus that came with A10 Fusion chip, most powerful chip ever in a smartphone, with processing performance 120 times faster and the graphics performance 240 times faster in iPhone 7 than the original iPhone. The smartphone sports a 12MP lens, optical image stabilisation, an f/1.8 aperture that captures 50 per cent more light as well as wide colour capture, all allowing for more vibrant colours with more detail even in low light, while iPhone 7 Plus also offers a dual-lens. iOS 10 was the biggest iOS release ever, with innovations including -- bringing the power of the App Store to Messages, a Memories feature in Photos, SiriKit for developers so apps can talk to Siri, an improved Maps app that is even simpler and more intuitive to use, support for breaking news notifications and paid subscriptions in the News app. "iPhone set the standard for mobile computing in its first decade and we are just getting started. The best is yet to come," Cook added.

​New York, Jan 9 (IANS) What if you can remotely charge your smartphone with the flat-screen TV in your living room? If we believe a team of US engineers, turning your living room into a wireless charging station is not a far-fetched dream.

The flat-screen technology can produce a wide-range, wireless power transfer devices, say engineers from Duke University and University of Washington, adding that the technology already exists to build such a system and it is only a matter of time to design it.

"Whether its headphones, cell phones, watches or even your mouse and keyboard, a major irritation for consumers is the hassle of being tethered to cords to recharge batteries," said David Smith, professor at Duke. 

"They always run dry at the worst possible moment. Our proposed system would be able to automatically and continuously charge any device anywhere within a room, making dead batteries a thing of the past," Smith wrote in a paper posted on the arXiv pre-print e-repository. 

Some wireless charging systems already exist to help power speakers, cell phones and tablets. The problem to date has been that the antennas in a wireless power transfer system would need to be able to focus on any device within a room. 

The solution proposed by Smith and his colleagues relies on metamaterials -- a synthetic material composed of many individual, engineered cells that together produce properties not found in nature.

"Imagine you have an electromagnetic wave front moving through a flat surface made of thousands of tiny electrical cells," said Smith. 

"If you can tune each cell to manipulate the wave in a specific way, you can dictate exactly what the field looks like when it comes out on the other side," he explained.

According to the results, a flat metamaterial device no bigger than a typical flat-screen television could focus beams of microwave energy down to a spot about the size of a cell phone within a distance of up to 10 metres. 

It should also be capable of powering more than one device at the same time.

"The ability to safely direct focused beams of microwave energy to charge specific devices, while avoiding unwanted exposure to people, pets and other objects, is a game-changer for wireless power," said co-author Matt Reynolds from the University of Washington. 

Smith has used this principle to create the world's first cloaking device that bends electromagnetic waves around an object held within.

To achieve this on a big scale, a powerful, low-cost electromagnetic energy source would need to be developed. 

"I think building a system like this, which could be embedded in the ceiling and wirelessly charge everything in a room, is a very feasible scheme," Smith noted.

​London, Jan 9 (IANS) A team of researchers at King's College London has discovered a new method of stimulating the renewal of living stem cells in tooth pulp using an Alzheimer's drug.

The novel, biological approach encourages natural tooth repair rather than using cements or fillings which are prone to infections and often need replacing a number of times. 

Currently, dentists use man-made cements or fillings, such as calcium and silicon-based products, to treat larger cavities and fill holes in teeth. 

This cement remains in the tooth and fails to disintegrate, meaning that the normal mineral level of the tooth is never completely restored.

In the new method, one of the small molecules used by scientists from the Dental Institute at King's College London to stimulate the renewal of the stem cells included Tideglusib, a drug to treat neurological disorders including Alzheimer's disease. 

"The simplicity of our approach makes it ideal as a clinical dental product for the natural treatment of large cavities, by providing both pulp protection and restoring dentine," said Professor Paul Sharpe.

In addition, using a drug that has already been tested in clinical trials for Alzheimer's disease provides a real opportunity to get this dental treatment quickly into clinics, he added in a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Toronto, Jan 9 (IANS) If you know two or more languages, chances are that you will save more brain power as you age compared to those who missed out.

A team of researchers has established that years of bilingualism change how the brain carries out tasks that require concentrating on one piece of information without becoming distracted by other information. 

This makes the brain more efficient and economical with its resources.

"After years of daily practice managing interference between two languages, bilinguals become experts at selecting relevant information and ignoring information that can distract from a task," said Dr Ana Inés Ansaldo from the University of Montreal.

To arrive at this conclusion, Ansaldo's team asked two groups of seniors (one of monolinguals and one of bilinguals) to perform a task that involved focusing on visual information while ignoring spatial information. 

The researchers compared the networks between different brain areas as people did the task. 

They found that monolinguals recruited a larger circuit with multiple connections, whereas bilinguals recruited a smaller circuit that was more appropriate for the required information. 

In a nutshell, bilinguals showed higher connectivity between visual processing areas located at the back of the brain. 

"These data indicate that the bilingual brain is more efficient and economical, as it recruits fewer regions and only specialised regions," explained Ansaldo in a paper published in the Journal of Neurolinguistics.

The results may explain why the brains of bilinguals are better equipped at staving off the signs of cognitive ageing or dementia.

"We now need to study how this function translates to daily life, for example, when concentrating on one source of information instead of another, which is something we have to do every day," Ansaldo noted.

​Beijing, Jan 8 (IANS) China's digital economy is predicted to create over 400 million jobs by 2035, a report has revealed.

Internet-based economy could be worth $16 trillion by then, according to a Boston Consulting Group report, released at a new economy summit sponsored by Alibaba Group on