Knowledge Update

New Delhi, Jan 4 (IANS) Aiming to give a technological edge to the small and medium businesses (SMBs) in India, Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Wednesday announced two initiatives 'Digital Unlocked' and 'My Business Website'.

​Las Vegas, Jan 4 (IANS) With the world's biggest annual electronics event -- Consumer Electronics Show (CES-2017) -- commencing here on Tuesday, people expect to see a large range of Artificial Intelligence (AI) devices, robots and self-driving cars open a new window to the future of our increasingly technology-driven world.

​New York, Jan 4 (IANS) As everyone is talking about their new year resolutions, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday resolved to meet people in real life in every US state by the end of the year.

​New York, Jan 4 (IANS) A new technology can wireless charge almost any device including those without in-built wireless charging capabilities, such as Apple's iPhone and iPad.

The wireless charger developed by a French start-up, called Energysquare, was witnessed by CNET during the on-going CES trade show in Las Vegas.

​New York, Jan 4 (IANS) Yahoo on Wednesday rolled out "read receipts" and typing indicator features -- similar to WhatsApp -- on its Messenger to allow users to be sure when their friends are checking their messages.

Las Vegas, Jan 4 (IANS) Chip manufacturer Qualcomm has introduced its newest mobile platform Snapdragon 835 processor with X16 LTE modem, which will provide high performance and enhanced power efficiency.

Las Vegas, Jan 4 (IANS) Printing and personal computer major HP Inc. unveiled new PCs at Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2017)-- world's biggest annual electronics event. Designed for work at home or on the go, the new PCs include HP EliteBook x360, HP Spectre x360 and HP ENVY Curved All-in-One 34. HP EliteBook x360 features 4K UHD display with Windows Hello, pen support and has a battery life of up to 16 hours and 30 minutes. Following the success of HP's 13.3-inch diagonal model, the second generation of HP's 15.6-inch diagonal x360 powers a micro-edge 4K display, Intel Core processors, NVIDIA GeForce 940MX graphics, adds two new front facing speakers tuned by Bang & Olufsen and an IR camera for Windows Hello. HP ENVY Curved All-in-One 34 features a 34-inch diagonal ultra-WQHD micro-edge display and packs four-speaker sound bar tuned by Bang & Olufsen. To better meet the needs of commercial customers, HP also introduced the new Sprout Pro, the second generation immersive all-in-one PC. It incorporates a grounds-up redesign with a 2.2mm thick, 20-point capacitive Touch Mat display with a sharper, near 1080p projected resolution. It also now features an Intel Core i7 processor, 1TB of SSHD storage, up to 16GB of RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M graphics for faster 3D scanning. OMEN X by HP is now bringing gamers closer to their virtual worlds with the new OMEN X 35 Curved Display. As the first OMEN display with NVIDIA G-Sync technology, the device provides higher refresh rates that result in a more natural, realistic, and true-to-life gaming experience, the company said.

New Delhi, Jan 4 (IANS) Apple's iPhone has been named as Indias most reputed mobile phone brand, followed by Samsung and domestic brand Micromax. According to a report "India's Most Reputed Mobile Phone Brands 2017" by media analytics company BlueBytes, in association with business intelligence company TRA Research, Apple's iPhone has the highest positive media appearances in terms of sheer volume. "In a cluttered space like the mobile phone industry, with diverse brands attempting to capture consumer attention, customers buy and recommend on the basis of reputation, making it the most important influencer of buying decisions," said Pooja Kaura, Chief Spokesperson for "India's Most Reputed Brands". China's Xiaomi and Finland's Nokia secured fourth and fifth position respectively. Seventy two mobile phone brands were listed from 12 different countries in the report, of which Indian origin brands held 29 positions. Chinese brands Lenovo, Huawei, and Motorola -- now owned by Lenovo -- ranked sixth, seventh and eighth respectively. LG (South Korea) and Intex Technologies (India) figure last in the list.

​New York, Jan 4 (IANS) Apart from physical problems, people with an impoverished lifestyle in childhood are also likely to suffer significant psychological damage during adulthood.

The findings showed that impoverished children had more anti-social conduct such as aggression and bullying and increased feeling of helplessness, than kids from middle-income backgrounds.

Poor kids also have more chronic physiological stress and more deficits in short-term spatial memory.

"What this means is, if you're born poor, you're on a trajectory to have more of these kinds of psychological problems," said lead author Gary Evans, Professor and child psychologist at the Cornell University in New York, US.

The reason is stress, researchers said.

"With poverty, you're exposed to lots of stress. Everybody has stress, but low-income families, low-income children, have a lot more of it," Evans said. "And the parents are also under a lot of stress. So for kids, there is a cumulative risk exposure."

For the study, Evans tracked 341 participants over a 15-year period, and tested them at ages 9, 13, 17 and 24.

The results revealed that the adults who grew up in poverty had a diminished ability to recall the sequences, tend to be more helpless and had the tendency to give up easily as well as had a higher level of chronic physical stress throughout childhood and into adulthood.

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

New York, Jan 4 (IANS) Mothers' early and chronic depression may increase the risk of children developing social-emotional problems as well as impact their brain's empathic response to others' distress, a study has found.

The findings showed that in children of depressed mothers, the neural reaction to pain stops earlier than in controls, in an area related to socio-cognitive processing. 

As a result, these children seem to reduce mentalising-related processing of others' pain, perhaps because of difficulty in regulating the high arousal associated with observing distress in others, said lead author Ruth Feldman, Professor at Bar-Ilan University in Israel.

However, when mother-child interactions were more synchronous, that is, mother and child were better attuned to one another and when mothers were less intrusive, these children showed higher mentalising-related processing in this crucial brain area.

"It is encouraging to see the role of mother-child interactions. Depressed mothers are repeatedly found to show less synchronous and more intrusive interactions with their children and so it might explain some of the differences found between children of depressed mothers and controls," Feldman added. 

Apart from reduced empathy to others, children exposed to maternal depression may also have increased social withdrawal and poor emotion regulation, the researchers said.

For the study, the team followed mother-child pairs -- 27 children of mothers with depression and 45 controls -- from birth to age 11. 

Since 15-18 per cent of women in industrial societies and up to 30 per cent in developing countries suffer from maternal depression, it is of clinical and public health concern to understand the effects of maternal depression on children's development, the researchers noted. 

The study was published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP).