Knowledge Update

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

​New York, Jan 8 (IANS) Simply changing your eating schedule like taking the last meal of the day by the mid-afternoon can help burn fat and lose weight, suggests new research. The study that tested early time-restricted feeding (eTRF) on humans found that this meal-timing strategy reduced swings in hunger and altered fat and carbohydrate burning patterns, which may help with losing weight. With eTRF, people eat their last meal by the mid-afternoon and do not eat again until breakfast the next morning. "Eating only during a much smaller window of time than people are typically used to may help with weight loss," said one of the researchers Courtney Peterson, Associate Professor at University of Alabama at Birmingham in the US. The human body has an internal clock, and many aspects of metabolism are at their optimal functioning in the morning. Therefore, eating in alignment with the body's circadian clock by eating earlier in the day may positively influence health. Previous animal studies showed that early time-restricted feeding helped rodents burn more fat. During the current study, Peterson and her colleagues followed a small group of men and women with excess weight over four days of eating between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m., and four days of eating between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Researchers then tested the impact of the meal timing strategy on calories burned, fat burned and appetite. Participants tried both eating schedules, ate the same number of calories both times and completed all testing under supervision. Researchers found that, although eTRF did not affect how many total calories participants burned, it reduced daily hunger swings and increased fat burning during several hours at night. It also improved metabolic flexibility, which is the body's ability to switch between burning carbohydrates and burning fats. Whether early time-restricted feeding helps with long-term weight loss or improves other aspects of health is still unknown. Because the study involved only a small number of participants, a larger, more comprehensive study will need to take place to confirm the finding, Peterson said. The results were presented recently at the annual meeting of The Obesity Society held in New Orleans, Louisiana.

​Tokyo, Jan 8 (IANS) If you are an infrequent internet user, then mere presence of a smartphone can adversely affect your cognitive performance, a study has found. "The mere presence of a mobile phone was a distraction among infrequent internet users," said Jun-ichiro Kawahara, Associate Professor at Hokkaido University, Japan. The researchers also found that people who are often glued to a screen are not easily distracted by the presence of a cell phone. In presence of a mobile phone, people are automatically drawn to it and then the individual differences decide how they attempt to ignore it. Researchers measured the effect of mobile phones on the ability to pay attention of 40 undergraduate students divided into two groups. The researchers placed a mobile phone next to a computer monitor, asked the participants of one group to search for a target character amongst other characters that appeared on the monitor screen. For the another group, a memo pad of the same size as the phone was placed by the monitor, and the same experiment was conducted. The participants were asked about how frequently they use and how attached they are to the internet. The researchers found that people who infrequently used the internet took longer to find the target character than the control group. On the other hand, it was found that heavy users were not distracted by the phone and rather more efficient to notice the target when it appeared on the side of the monitor where the mobile phone was placed. The study -- published in the journal Japanese Psychological Research -- also suggests that the influence of a mobile phone on users' cognitive performance differed depending on the degree of their internet usage.

​New York, Jan 8 (IANS) Symptoms of agitation among patients with dementia can be managed safely by using tablet computers, a new study has found.

The study, published in The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, builds upon previous studies demonstrating that art, music, and other similar therapies can effectively reduce symptoms of dementia without medication.

By using tablet devices to employ these therapies, however, patients and providers also benefit from a computer's inherent flexibility, the study noted.

"Tablet use as a nonpharmacologic intervention for agitation in older adults, including those with severe dementia, appears to be feasible, safe, and of potential utility," said Ipsit Vahia from McLean Hospital, Massachusetts, US.

"We know that art therapy can work, music therapy can work. The tablet, however, gives you the option of switching from one app to another easily, modifying the therapy seamlessly to suit the individual. You do not need to invest in new equipment or infrastructure," Vahia added.

The use of tablet is safe for every patient, regardless of the severity of their dementia, according to the study that noted that the use of tablets significantly reduced symptoms of agitation among patients with milder forms of dementia.

Citing an example of a Romanian-speaking patient, Vahia explained, "We started showing him Romanian video clips on YouTube, and his behaviour changed dramatically and instantaneously. His mood improved. He became more interactive. He and his medical support team also started using a translation app so that staff could ask him simple questions in Romanian, facilitating increased interaction."

​Toronto, Jan 8 (IANS) The very few people who do not like music at all may have reduced brain connectivity between two regions of the brain linked to sound processing and reward.

The findings showed that people who lacked joy from music -- a condition described as specific musical anhedonia -- had reduced functional connectivity between cortical brain regions responsible for processing sound and subcortical regions related to reward.

The inability to experience pleasure from music affects three-to-five per cent of the world's population, the study said.

For the study, the team led by researchers at McGill University in Quebec, Canada, recruited 45 healthy participants who listened to musical excerpts inside an fMRI machine while providing pleasure ratings in real-time.

To control their brain's response to other reward types, the participants also played a monetary gambling task in which they could win or lose real money.

The results revealed that while listening to music, people with the specific musical anhedonics did show reduced functional connectivity between cortical regions associated with auditory processing and the activity of the nucleus accumbens -- a key subcortical structure of the reward network.

In contrast, individuals with high sensitivity to music showed enhanced connectivity.

Moreover, when the participants won money in the gambling task, their nucleus accumbens showed increased activity.

The fact that subjects could be insensible to music while still being responsive to another stimulus like money suggests different pathways to reward for different stimuli.

This finding may pave the way for the detailed study of the neural substrates underlying other domain-specific anhedonias and, from an evolutionary perspective, help us to understand how music acquired reward value.

"These findings not only help us to understand individual variability in the way the reward system functions, but also can be applied to the development of therapies for treatment of reward-related disorders, including apathy, depression, and addiction," said Robert Zatorre, neuroscientist at McGill University, Quebec.

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science