Knowledge Update

​Beijing, May 8 (IANS) China's exports rose 4.1 percent year on year in April while imports dipped 5.7 percent, customs data showed on Sunday.

It led to a monthly trade surplus of 298 billion yuan ($45 billion), up from March's 194.6 billion yuan, according to figures from the General Administration of Customs, reports

​London, May 8 (IANS) Researchers have developed a set of algorithms that could help teach computers to process and understand human languages better.

While mastering natural language is easier for humans, it is something that computers have not yet been able to achieve. Humans understand language through a variety of

​Rome, May 6 (IANS) World food prices rose slightly in April, marking a third consecutive monthly increase after four years of decline, but they remained almost 10 percent lower than a year earlier, the UN food agency said.

​Beijing, May 6 (IANS) China's annual luxury goods trade show opened in Beijing on Friday with dancing robots, porcelain cream-and-marigold British high tea sets and classic handbuilt roadster automobiles. Held at the Beijing Exhibition Centre and anticipated to draw a crowd of 50,000 people, the three-day fair features a range of globally-renowned luxury brands for technology, fashion and leisure, according to organisers from the Beijing Zhenwei Exhibition Company. "Luxury China 2016 will also specially invite entrepreneurs of large enterprises, high-end consumer groups from specific cities to pay a special visit to the exhibitions, offering various enterprises the greatest opportunity of meeting supply and demand," said Beijing Zhenwei on the event-listing site China Exhibition. With a middle class that has surged to some 109 million people last year, adding 43.4 million new urban middle class arrivals since 2000, according to financial services company Credit Suisse, the appetite for luxury goods has surged, EFE news reported. Globally, Chinese buyers now account for some 20 percent of the total consumers of the luxury goods market, says global management firm McKinsey and Company. The interest in robotics has also gained momentum in 2016 with the unveiling of security robot AnBot earlier this week, last month's creation of the lifelike humanoid robot 'Jia Jia' and Friday's mini-bot synchronised dance show to the tune of Michael Jackson's 1982 Grammy-nominated song, "Beat it". The trade show runs until Sunday.​

​London, May 9 (IANS) In the race to capture the burgeoning global smartphone market, British automotive brand Jaguar Land Rover, currently owned by Tata Motors, is all set to launch smartphones and accessories by early 2017. For this, Land Rover has tied up with consumer electronics company Bullitt Group to develop a bespoke smartphone and range of accessories. “Incorporating iconic Land Rover design and innovative technology into the mobile phone sector with Bullitt Group presents an exciting challenge and fantastic opportunity to take the brand into a new dimension,” said Lindsay Weaver, director of licensing and branded goods at Jaguar Land Rover, in a statement recently. “An engineering and design team from Jaguar Land Rover special operations will be assigned to the partnership and subsequently deliver a number of bespoke applications tailored to Land Rover brand and product values,” Weaver added. According to Bullitt Group, the firm will partner with Land Rover to define and develop a groundbreaking portfolio of mobile devices and peripherals which will take the brand into a new and exciting commercial terrain. “With a combination of durability and elegance, the new range will be designed to be an active lifestyle partner, aimed at people who like to take on new challenges and go 'above and beyond' the ordinary,” said a statement. The portfolio will launch in early 2017 and will embody the core values of the Land Rover brand, featuring some truly innovative capabilities and technology. “We are confident the new range of products will perfectly encapsulate everything that Land Rover represents, appealing to those who already love the brand and providing an introduction to those who are yet to discover it,” noted Peter Stephens, CEO of Bullitt Group. Bullitt Group has been working with various clients on their tough and rugged smartphones in the past.​

​New York, May 6 (IANS) Although India managed to counter a steep decline in its vulture population in mid-1990s, these efficient scavengers are in danger of disappearing in many parts of the world primarily due to the presence of toxins in the carrion they consume.

Poisoning is the greatest extinction risk facing vultures, and impacts 88 percent of threatened vulture species, the study said.

Now, the center of the vulture crisis is in sub-Saharan Africa, the researchers noted.

In the mid-1990s India experienced a precipitous vulture decline, with more than 95 percent of vultures disappearing by the early 2000s. 

"That was a massive collapse that led a lot of people to really focus more attention on vultures," said one of the researchers Evan Buechley from University of Utah in the US.

The cause was eventually traced to diclofenac, a veterinary anti-inflammatory drug that relieved pain in cattle, but proved highly toxic to vultures. 

Hundreds of vultures would flock to each cattle carcass. And if the cow had recently been treated with diclofenac, hundreds of vultures would die. 

Because of this highly gregarious feeding behaviour, less than one percent of cattle carcasses contaminated with diclofenac could account for the steep vulture decline. 

Fortunately, international cooperation led to a total ban on veterinary diclofenac use. 

The numbers of vultures have stabilised, and are now showing signs of slowly increasing, Buechley said.

Losses of vultures can allow other scavengers to flourish, Buechley pointed out in a report published in the journa Biological Conservation.

For example, following the decline of vultures, India experienced a strong uptick in feral dogs --by an estimated seven million. 

The increase in dogs, potentially feeding on disease-ridden carcasses, is thought to have at least partially caused the rabies outbreak that was estimated to have killed 48,000 people from 1992-2006 in India -- deaths that may have been avoided if not for the disappearance of vultures.

Members of the Parsi sect of Zoroastrianism experienced a different impact. For thousands of years, the Parsi people have placed their dead on exposed mountaintops or tall towers for vultures to consume. The practice is called "sky burial."

But with few vultures and unable to properly handle their dead, the Parsis experienced a crisis within the faith. ​

Some constructed captive vulture aviaries. Others talked about desiccating bodies using focused solar mirrors. The Parsis' plight exemplifies the vultures' role in south Asian society -- and the various impacts if the vultures are not there.

Although the vulture crisis in Africa is ongoing, the researchers can predict what the outcome will be, based on previous experiences in India. 

Crows, gulls, rats and dogs will boom. And the rabies outbreak in India may just be a prologue, because several sub-Saharan Africa countries already have the highest per-capita rabies infection rates in the world, the researchers noted.

​New York, May 6 (IANS) Researchers have developed a miniature camera that can be mounted onto the eyeglasses of people who are legally blind -- vision with 20/200 or worse in the better eye -- and dramatically improve their ability to read an email or a newspaper article.

Made using optical character-recognition technology, the artificial vision device can be easily mounted onto the eyeglasses and works either by pointing at an item, tapping on it, or pressing a trigger button.



A wire attaches the device to a small pack containing its battery and computer. It recognises text and reads it to the user using an earpiece that transmits sound, and can also be programmed to recognise faces and commercial products.

The camera device offers hope to patients with age-related macular degeneration -- leading cause of permanent impairment of reading and fine or close-up vision in the elderly -- who are beyond medical or surgical therapy for the condition, researchers said.

“The device offers new hope for the large and growing number of individuals with age-related macular degeneration or advanced-stage glaucoma, two of the leading causes of vision loss among the elderly,” said one of the researchers Mark Mannis, professor at University of California in the US.

The device, which can be carried, fit into a pocket or attached to a belt, can also help older adults who are struggling with vision loss to better perform daily activities and could potentially bring greater independence, the researchers added in the paper published online in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology.

The team conducted a pilot study and analysed 12 participants with low vision, six men and six women, with an average age of 62. 

Using the device, the study participants were significantly better able to perform activities of daily living. 

"Our results show that it can be a very useful aid for patients with low vision in performing activities of daily living, and increase their functional independence," said another researcher Elad Moisseiev.​

​Washington, May 7 (IANS) Scientists have detected atomic oxygen in the Martian atmosphere for the first time since the last observation 40 years ago.

Atomic oxygen -- an elemental form of oxygen that does not exist in Earth's atmosphere -- affects how other gases escape Mars and therefore has a significant impact on the planet's atmosphere. 

An instrument onboard the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) - a joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center - helped detect these atoms in the upper layers of the Martian atmosphere known as the mesosphere, NASA said in a statement.

"Atomic oxygen in the Martian atmosphere is notoriously difficult to measure," said SOFIA project scientist Pamela Marcum. 

"To observe the far-infrared wavelengths needed to detect atomic oxygen, researchers must be above the majority of Earth’s atmosphere and use highly sensitive instruments, in this case a spectrometer. SOFIA provides both capabilities," Marcum noted.

The scientists could detect only about half the amount of oxygen expected, which may be due to variations in the Martian atmosphere. 

The Viking and Mariner missions of the 1970s made the last measurements of atomic oxygen in the Martian atmosphere. 

These more recent observations were possible thanks to SOFIA’s airborne location, flying between 37,000-45,000 feet, above most of the infrared-blocking moisture in Earth’s atmosphere, NASA said.

The advanced detectors on one of the observatory’s instruments, the German Receiver for Astronomy at Terahertz Frequencies (GREAT), enabled astronomers to distinguish the oxygen in the Martian atmosphere from oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere.

The findings were presented in a paper published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

SOFIA is a Boeing 747SP jetliner modified to carry a 100-inch diametre telescope.​

​London, May 7 (IANS) Most people feel that friendship is a two-way street, but only half of your buddies would actually consider you their friend, a study has found, adding that this limits their ability to influence them and further impacts on human behaviour.

Companies and social groups that depend on social influence for collective action, information dissemination and product promotion could improve their strategies and interventions.

"It turns out that we're very bad at judging who our friends are and difficulty in determining the reciprocity of friendship significantly limits our ability to engage in cooperative arrangements," said Erez Shmueli from Tel Aviv University.

“We learned that we can't rely on our instincts or intuition. There must be an objective way to measure these relationships and quantify their impact," Shmueli added in a paper published in the journal PLoS One.

The team conducted extensive social experiments and examined six friendship surveys from some 600 students in Israel, Europe and the United States to assess friendship levels and expectations of reciprocity.

They then developed an algorithm that examines several objective features of a perceived friendship -- the number of common friends or the total number of friends and then distinguish between unidirectional and reciprocal.

The findings showed that 95 percent of participants think that their relationships were reciprocal.

"If you think someone is your friend, you expect him to feel the same way. But in fact that's not the case -- only 50 percent of those polled matched up in the bidirectional friendship category."

"Reciprocal relationships are important because of social influence as influence is the name of the game," Shmueli stated.​

New York, May 7 (IANS) Researchers have developed a new antibody-based drug that has the potential to slow down the replication of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the body and may also provide a better strategy for long-term control of the deadly infection.

Anti-retroviral therapy -- a combination of drugs that slows the replication of HIV in the body -- currently used to treat HIV has drawbacks. If a person discontinues his or her treatment, even missing a few doses, the level of the virus in the body is able to rebound quickly.

In the antibody therapy, the researchers used 3BNC117 -- a molecule -- also called as a broadly neutralising antibody because it has the ability to fight a wide range of HIV strains.

The findings of the first clinical trial showed that using the antibody could greatly reduce the amount of virus that is present in an individual's blood.

"This study provides evidence that a single dose of an antibody stimulates patients' immune response, enabling them to make new or better antibodies against the virus," said lead author Till Schoofs, postdoctoral fellow at The Rockefeller University in the US. 

For the study, published in the journal Science, the team included 15 patients, in the clinical trial, who had high levels of the virus in their blood, and 12 other patients whose virus levels were being controlled with antiretroviral therapy (ART). 

The patients were infused with a single dose of 3BNC117 and were monitored over a six-month period.

In 14 out of 15 patients who had higher levels of the virus at the time they were given the antibody were seen making new antibodies that could neutralise a number of different strains of HIV.

It usually takes several years for the body to begin to make good antibodies against HIV. So there might be an even better effect later on, especially if patients are given more than one dose of 3BNC117, the researchers added.

To determine further benefits of treatment with 3BNC117, the researchers conducted another study, also published in the journal Science, in a mouse model. 

The results revealed that 3BNC117 was able to engage the animals' immune cells and accelerate their clearance of HIV-infected cells. 

"This shows that the antibody not only can exert pressure on the virus, but also can shorten the survival of infected cells," first author of the study Ching-Lan Lu, doctoral student at The Rockefeller University, noted. 

Further, the researchers plan to test 3BNC117 in combination with other antibodies that target HIV, to determine whether an even stronger antiviral effect can be found.