Knowledge Update

​New York, Sep 29 (IANS) Apple and Deloitte on Thursday joined hands to help companies accelerate their work via solutions available on iPhones and iPads across platforms.

Deloitte is creating a first-of-its-kind Apple practice with over 5,000 strategic advisors focused on helping businesses change the way they work across enterprise, retail, field

​Ontario, Sep 28 (IANS) After failing to revive its smartphone business despite several efforts, BlackBerry on Wednesday announced it will cease internal hardware development and will focus on software and services.

​London, Sep 29 (IANS) What will you do to find yourself at complete rest: Reading, being with nature, being on your own, listening to music or doing nothing in particular? Better choose one fast for your own well-being as you grow old.

According to the world's largest survey of more than 18,000 people from 134 different countries on this topic, over two thirds (68 per cent) of the public would like more rest.

Nearly a third (32 per cent) of respondents said they need more rest than the average person, while 10 per cent think they need less.

"The survey shows that people's ability to take rest, and their levels of well-being, are related. These findings combat a common, moralising connection between rest and laziness," said lead researcher Felicity Callard, social scientist at Durham University in Britain.

Rest -- a much broader category than sleep -- has physical, mental and spiritual components, the study said.

The online survey -- rest test -- found that those who felt they needed more rest scored lower in terms of well-being.

Similarly, those who responded saying they think they get more rest than average or do not feel the need for more rest, had well-being scores twice as high as those who wanted more rest.

This suggests that the perception of rest matters, as well as the reality, the researchers observed.

In addition, people found reading (58 per cent), being in the natural environment (53.1 per cent), being on their own (52.1 per cent), listening to music (40.6 per cent), doing nothing in particular (40 per cent) as the top five most restful activities that is often done alone.

"It's intriguing that the top activities considered restful are frequently done on one's own," Callard said

"Perhaps it's not only the total hours resting or working that we need to consider, but the rhythms of our work, rest and time with and without others," he added.

The survey asked respondents to state how many hours of rest they had within the last 24 hours.

On average, being younger and having a higher household income was associated with having fewer hours of rest.

Further, those with caring responsibilities or in shift work which included nights also reported fewer hours of rest.

"These survey shows just how crucial it is to our well-being to ensure people do have time to rest. We can begin to try to work out what the optimum amount of rest might be and how we should go about resting," explained Claudia Hammond, presenter of Radio 4's All in the Mind and associate director of Hubbub -- an international team of scientists, humanists, artists and broadcasters in London.

The survey was presented during BBC Radio 4's programme -- The Anatomy of Rest.

​New York, Sep 28 (IANS) Facebook is set to launch its enterprise communication and collaboration network "Facebook At Work" globally in a few weeks on a per seat pricing model for businesses to make it easier for employees to exchange ideas easily, a media report said on Wednesday.

​New York, Sep 28 (IANS) A team of Indian-American engineers has devised a way to send secure passwords through the human body using smartphone fingerprint sensors and laptop touchpads -- rather than over the air where they're vulnerable to hacking.

Madrid, Sep 28 (IANS) Spain is above the European Union average for people who have never used the Internet, a study published on Tuesday revealed.

Data collected by Eurostat for the Instituto de Estudios Economicos (IEE) in Madrid, showed that 19 per cent of Spaniards had never used the Internet, meaning Spain is below

​Geneva, Sep 27 (IANS) Global trade growth figures for 2016 have fallen short of estimates, according to the World Trade Organization (WTO).

In a report released by the WTO on Tuesday, global trade grew by 1.7 per cent so far in 2016, much less than the 2.8 per cent forecast last April, Efe news reported.

London, Sep 26 (IANS) Researchers in New Zealand have restored the "true sound" in the earliest known recording of computer-generated music that British mathematician Alan Turing's pioneering work in the late 1940s helped create.

New York, Sep 26 (IANS) Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a computer system that can automatically screen young children for speech and language disorders and potentially even provide specific diagnoses.

​Tokyo, Sep 26 (IANS) Financial assets held by Japanese have lost value between March and June due to the effects of Brexit on the markets, marking two consecutive quarters of decline, according to data released by the Bank of Japan (BOJ) on Monday.