Knowledge Update

​New York, April 17 (IANS) Google is reportedly building an overhauled version of its Google Earth that will be unveiled during an Earth Day event in New York City on April 18, a media report said.

According to a report in Express.co.uk on Monday, Google has sent invitations for an Earth Day-themed event to be held at Whitney Museum of Art in New York City.

Google Earth is a virtual globe that allows users to trawl satellite images of the planet's surface. It uses image resolutions that range between 15m to 15cm. One can search any area on the earth through Google Earth. 

It is assumed that the new version of Google Earth would replace its Google Maps app.

In 2008, Google included its Street View feature that offers a panoramic view from eye-level of streets across the world, in Google Maps.

A dramatically revamped version of Google Earth could bring in more functionality from Google Maps, including traffic reports and local listings, the report said.

​New Delhi, April 16 (IANS) It's best to wear natural fabrics to beat the heat and to keep skin problems at bay, say experts. Vandana Anurag, Founder of The Parisian Boudoir and Salesh Grover, Business Head at OSL Luxury Collections, have shared ways in which you can deal with sweat: * Loose clothes don't touch your body and allow your body to breathe. Believe it or not, but loose fitting apparel like peplum tops, flowy tops or loose pants will always keep you cooler than a pair of skin tight tank and fit denims. * Keep yourself cool by switching to breathable and sweat absorbing fabrics. Always dress up in clothes with natural fabrics it will keep your temperature low. * Avoid wearing dresses with embellishments as they weigh down your clothes and leads the fabric to touch your skin, trapping the body heat. Embellishments also don't let air pass through the fabric, thus causing sweating. * Wearing a light coloured and relaxed fit T-shirt can save you from sweating. They can be played around in different styles. * Summer style is incomplete without chinos and denim shorts. When it comes to shorts, fit and length is the key. You can pair up denim shorts with cotton Polo T-shirt to get the comfort and style.

​New York, April 16 (IANS) Customers who need to replace their fourth generation iPad will now get a newer and more capable iPad Air 2 as a substitute from Apple Stores and authorised service providers, a media report said. Apple is doing this because the company has no stock left of the aging and now discontinued fourth generation iPad, 9to5Mac website reported on Saturday. Apple has also asked its staff to inform customers of the replacement unit's colour and capacity. The iPad Air 2 introduced a new gold colour option, and has 32GB and 128GB storage options while 16GB and 64GB models were discontinued. For that reason, the users may receive a slight upgrade in storage when getting a replacement in addition to the device's newer and more powerful internals overall.

​London, April 16 (IANS) Turning 25? This may be the best time of your life, as according to a study, 25 is the golden age when humans can outsmart computers.

The study showed that people's ability to make random choices or mimic a random process, such as coming up with hypothetical results for a series of coin flips, peaks around age 25.

At their peak, humans outcompete many computer algorithms in generating seemingly random patterns, an ability that arises from some of the most highly developed cognitive processes in humans and may be connected to abilities such as human creativity, the researchers said, in the paper published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology.

"This experiment is a kind of reverse Turing test for random behaviour, a test of strength between algorithms and humans," said Hector Zenil from the Algorithmic Nature Group in France.

"25 is, on average, the golden age when humans best outsmart computers," added Nicolas Gauvrit from the Algorithmic Nature Group.

Previous studies have shown that ageing diminishes a person's ability to behave randomly. However, it had been unclear how this ability evolves over a person's lifetime, nor had it been possible to assess the ways in which humans may behave randomly beyond simple statistical tests.

For the study, the team assessed more than 3,400 people aged four to 91 years old, who were asked to perform a series of online tasks that assessed their ability to behave randomly.

The scientists analysed the participants' choices according to their algorithmic randomness, which is based on the idea that patterns that are more random are harder to summarise mathematically.

After controlling for characteristics such as gender, language, and education, they found that age was the only factor that affected the ability to behave randomly. This ability peaked at age 25, on average, and declined from then on, the researchers noted.

​New York, April 16 (IANS) A team led by an Indian-origin engineer has built a camera prototype that can capture a detailed micron-resolution image from a distance and does that without using a long lens.

The prototype built and tested by engineers at US-based Rice and Northwestern universities uses a laser and techniques borrowed from holography, microscopy and "Matrix"-style bullet time.

It reads a spot illuminated by a laser and captures the "speckle" pattern with a camera sensor. 

Raw data from dozens of camera positions is fed to a computer programme that interprets it and constructs a high-resolution image.

The system known as SAVI -- "Synthetic Apertures for long-range, subdiffraction-limited Visible Imaging" -- only works with coherent illumination sources such as lasers.

"Today, the technology can be applied only to coherent (laser) light," said Ashok Veeraraghavan, a Rice University Assistant Professor of electrical and computer engineering, in a statement.

"That means you cannot apply these techniques to take pictures outdoors and improve resolution for sunlit images -- as yet. Our hope is that one day, maybe a decade from now, we will have that ability," he added.

The technology is the subject of an open-access paper in Science Advances.

Labs led by Veeraraghavan tested the device that compares interference patterns between multiple speckled images.

Veeraraghavan explained the speckles serve as reference beams and essentially replace one of the two beams used to create holograms. 

When a laser illuminates a rough surface, the viewer sees grain-like speckles in the dot. That's because some of the returning light scattered from points on the surface has farther to go and throws the collective wave out of phase. 

SAVI's "synthetic aperture" sidesteps the problem by replacing a long lens with a computer programme that resolves the speckle data into an image. 

"You can capture interference patterns from a fair distance. How far depends on how strong the laser is and how far away you can illuminate," Veeraraghavan added.

 

​New Delhi, April 15 (IANS) The number of people who are concerned about their security and are ready to protect themselves against cyberthreats has increased in the second half of 2016, Kaspersky Lab's updated index has revealed.

​New York, April 15 (IANS) US scientists have created a revolutionary digital three dimensional (3D) bio-printed patch that can help heal scarred heart tissue in patients after a heart attack.

During a heart attack, a person loses blood flow to the heart muscle, causing the cells to die. 

As the human body cannot replace those heart muscle cells so it forms scar tissue in that area of the heart, which puts the person at risk of compromised heart function and future heart failure, the study said.

Using laser-based 3D bio-printing techniques, the researchers led by the University of Minnesota, incorporated stem cells derived from adult human heart cells on a matrix that began to grow and beat synchronously in a dish in the lab.

When the cell patch was placed on a mouse following a simulated heart attack, the researchers saw significant increase in functional capacity after just four weeks. 

Since the patch was made from cells and structural proteins native to the heart, it became part of the heart and absorbed into the body, requiring no further surgeries.

"Given the complexity of the heart, we were encouraged to see that the cells had aligned in the scaffold and showed a continuous wave of electrical signal that moved across the patch," said Brenda Ogle, Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota in the US. 

The patch, modelled after a digital, 3D scan of the structural proteins of native heart tissue, is made into a physical structure by 3D printing with proteins native to the heart and further integrating cardiac cell types derived from stem cells, the researchers said, in the paper published in the journal Circulation Research.

"We feel that we could scale this up to repair hearts of larger animals and possibly even humans within the next several years," Ogle noted. 

​Santiago, April 15 (IANS) Nearly 300 million years ago, the frozen, inhospitable Antarctica was covered by lush subtropical forests, according to scientists.

"That Antarctica was once green is a matter of consensus among scientists, but still unknown to many people," Marcelo Leppe, a paleontologist who works with the Chilean Antarctic National Institute, told Efe news on Friday.

Leppe, Chile's representative to the international Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, has spent his professional life searching for fossils that offer clues to the origins of the flora and fauna of the White Continent.

Forests began to appear in Antarctica some 298 million years ago during the Permian geologic period, as glaciers retreated and the global climate entered a warming phase, Leppe said.

Fossils from the subsequent Jurassic period reveal the existence of fern and conifer forests where the Cryolophosaurus species of dinosaur thrived.

But the golden age of vegetation in Antarctica was the Cretaceous period, which began 145 million years ago and lasted until around 66 million years ago.

"Roughly 80 million years ago, walking in Antarctica was like walking today in a tropical or subtropical forest, something like what we could encounter in south-central Chile or in New Zealand," Leppe said.

One thing that still puzzles scientists is how the forests survived the six-month-long Antarctic night.

"We know that some dinosaurs migrated before the arrival of winter, but in the case of plants, the matter continues to be an enigma," the paleontologist said.

While the plants would have received as much as 22 hours of light per day during the Antarctic summer, "that doesn't necessarily imply that they had the capacity to carry out photosynthesis for longer hours than now," he said.

The tundra that was the last vestige of the forests disappeared 15 million years ago, leaving Antarctica a frozen desert.

Now, however, scientists see grass and wild oats growing in the areas of Antarctica where the ice has retreated due to global warming, Leppe said.

Climate change, the introduction of invasive plants, and the retreat of the glaciers are creating the conditions for the White Continent to turn green again.

​San Francisco, April 14 (IANS) Aiming to secure a stable supply of memory chips for its iPhones, US tech giant Apple may invest billions of dollars to obtain a substantial stake in struggling Japanese conglomerate Toshiba's chip business, media reported on Friday.

New York, April 14 (IANS) Facebook's photo-sharing app Instagram has surpassed Snapchat in daily active users of "Stories" feature, though the format was first launched by Snapchat in 2013. According to a report in Forbes on Thursday, Instagram's "Stories" feature is now used by more than 200 million people every day -- an increase of 50 million since January. On the other hand, Snapchat who launched the "Stories" format in October 2013, had 161 million daily active users in February. "Stories" feature is an ephemeral chain of photo and video clips with filters and special effects. More recently, Facebook and WhatsApp also introduced the feature, imitating Snapchat. "Instagram Stories appears to have directly hampered Snapchat's user growth since its debut. Snapchat attributed its slowing pace in part to issues with Android updates and increasing competition. However, Instagram's impact on the chat app seems undeniable," the report noted. On May 10, the focus will be on Snapchat's user growth when Snap reports first quarter earnings.