Knowledge Update

​Beijing, June 23 (IANS) China launched its first "dark sky reserve" for astronomical observation in the Tibetan prefecture of Ngari, bordering Nepal and India, officials said on Thursday.

The reserve covers an area of 2,500 sq.km and aims to limit light pollution by stepping up protection of dark-sky resources for education and tourism development, the China Daily reported.

It was jointly launched by the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation and the regional government of Tibet.

Wang Wenyong, head of the legal affairs department with the foundation, said in a news briefing that the launch of the preserve is only the first step in protecting the area from light pollution.

The reserve will also try to seek accreditation from the International Dark-Sky Association, a non-profit organisation based in the US that is devoted to preserving and protecting the night time environment and dark skies globally.

Wang Xiaohua, head of the Chinese branch of the International Dark-Sky Association and a leader of the Ngari reserve programme, said such areas were important for promoting astronomy.

Ngari is among the best sites for astronomical observation on earth, due to its high altitude and large number of cloudless days throughout the year.

However, the recent inflow of people from other areas has given rise to increasing urbanisation, and thus the associated risk of more light pollution.

"If we do not take action now to preserve the area, we risk losing one of the best astronomical sites on earth," said Wang.

The foundation has also signed an agreement with authorities in Tibet's Nagchu prefecture to establish a night sky park, which will feature limited lighting facilities and a special area for astronomical observation.​

New York, June 23 (IANS) Bosses please take note. If you find an employee looking at Facebook, it may actually means a break for him or her from tiredness at work. According to a new survey, workers use social media at work for many reasons and taking a mental break is one of the most common one.

Nearly 34 percent of the people surveyed said they use social media at work to take a mental break from their job, revealed a Pew Research Centre survey of 2,003 US adults.

“These digital platforms offer the potential to enhance worker productivity by fostering connections with colleagues and resources around the globe,” the survey said.

At the same time, employers might worry that employees are using these tools for non-work purposes while on the job or engaging in speech in public venues that might reflect poorly on their organisation.

“While 27 per cent use social media to connect with friends and family while at work, 24 per cent use it to make or support professional connections,” the findings showed.

Twenty per cent go to social media to get information that helps them solve problems at work while 17 percent use it to build or strengthen personal relationships with coworkers.

“Some 14 per cent of workers have found information on social media that has improved their professional opinion of a colleague; at the same time, a similar share (16 per cent) have found information on social media that has lowered their professional opinion of a colleague,” the survey said.

Younger workers are more likely to find information on social media that changes their opinion of a coworker.

Some 23 percent of workers ages 18 to 29 report that they have discovered information on social media that improved their professional opinion of a colleague.

Many workers report that their employers have policies about social media use on the job, or about how employees may present themselves in various online spaces.

Half of all full-time and part-time workers (51 per cent) say their workplace has rules about using social media while at work (45 per cent say their employer does not have these policies), while 32 percent report that their employer has policies about how employees may present themselves on the internet in general (63 per cent say their employer does not have these policies).

Workers whose employers have at-work social media policy are less likely to use social media for personal reasons while on the job, the findings showed.

Seventy-eight per cent of workers who use social media platforms for work-related purposes say social media is useful for networking or finding new job opportunities.

“In the end, a majority (56 per cent) of these workers believe that using social media ultimately helps their job performance. One-in-five (22 per cent) believe that it mostly hurts, 16 per cent feel that it doesn’t have much impact either way and 4 per cent see both the benefits and the drawbacks,” the researchers noted.

Indeed, some 17 per cent of workers report that they “hardly ever” use the internet on a typical day for work-related tasks while 25 per cent report that they “never” use the internet for this reason.​

​Seoul, June 23 (IANS) South Korea-based educational startup BeNative has launched CashEnglish, an app that rewards users with real cash for playing educational games.

The app is available in Hindi, English, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese and Korean, with more languages coming up soon, the company said in a statement on Thursday.

London, June 22 (IANS) Children who focus more on physical activities, especially outdoor games, will have improved academic successes and reduced obesity level in an early age, new research says.

The findings showed that the physical activity levels of children are continuing to fall well short of recommended levels, which can harm their health as well as academic attainment.

They are spending far more time in front of the screens than the maximum recommendation of only two hours a day, which needs to be reduced, the study said.

"The amount of time children spend in front of screens has had an impact on their wellbeing for many years. The popularity of computer games and the emergence of the internet, smartphones and social media have contributed further to this problem,” said lead author John Reilly, Professor at University Of Strathclyde in Scotland.

Strategies to promote physical activity and reduce screen time should place a higher emphasis on playing actively outdoors, something children could potentially do 365 days a year, the researchers suggested.

"Playing benefits children in helping them to develop socially and emotionally, so promoting active outdoor play would have many benefits in addition to improving physical activity, improving academic attainment and reducing obesity," Reilly noted.​

​Stockholm, June 23 (IANS) Sweden on Wednesday inaugurated a test stretch of an electric road, making it one of the first countries in the world to conduct tests with electric power for heavy transports on public roads.

The test will be conducted on parts of road E16, and involves a current collector on the roof of the truck cab feeding the current down to a hybrid electric motor in the truck, according to a press release from the country's transport administration Trafikverket, Xinhua reported.

"Electric roads will bring us one step closer to fossil fuel-free transports, and has the potential to achieve zero carbon dioxide emissions. This is one way of developing environmentally smart transports in the existing road network. It could be a good supplement to todays road and rail network," said Lena Erixon, director general of Trafikverket.

"Electric roads are one more piece of the puzzle in the transport system of the future, especially for making the heavy transport section fossil fuel-free over the long term. This project also shows the importance of all the actors in the field cooperating," said Erik Brandsma, director general of the Swedish Energy Agency.

The tests will continue up through 2018. They will provide knowledge of how electric roads work in practice, and whether the technology can be used in the future. The experiment is based on the governments goal of energy efficiency and a fossil fuel-free vehicle fleet by 2030, and will contribute to strengthening Swedens competitiveness.

Three government agencies, Swedish Transport Administration, Swedish Energy Agency, and the country's innovation agency Vinnova, are partially funding the project, while the participants are paying for the rest. ​

​Brasilia, June 22 (IANS) The full Chamber of Deputies of Brazil on Wednesday approved an executive order allowing foreign investors up 100 per cent ownership of Brazilian airlines, compared to the current 20 per cent limit.

​New Delhi, May 23 (IANS) IBM will provide its expertise to help Aditya Birla Group-owned online fashion retailer abof.com target millennials by providing them customised style tips, fashion content and trends, the US tech giant announced on Monday. IBM has delivered customer engagement and order fulfillment capabilities to abof.com that will allow the portal to constantly refresh the e-commerce experience and seamlessly add new content catering to the dynamic demands of the young consumers. In the first three months of operation, IBM-powered solutions have helped abof.com reach more than three million visits. abof.com fashion portal now reaches out to more than 500 cities in India. "We aim to grow our market share by offering a curated range of merchandise that goes beyond conventional boundaries to deliver quality service to our customers," said Prashant Gupta, president and CEO, abof.com, in a statement. "With IBM's global expertise and local experience in eCommerce space, we are optimistic that the company will emerge as the most admired player in online fashion segment," he added. The company needed a well-integrated e-commerce solution that would help it create a dynamic and interactive online platform that could better target consumers and increase brand loyalty. ​

​New York, June 22 (IANS) Ever received a friend request from your mother, father or math teacher? It may sound weird, but adding adults, from teachers to parents, to a teenager's social media can fundamentally shift his or her online behaviour, a new study says.

"Interactions between adults and teenagers, can be opportunities to model appropriate social media behaviour or for teenagers to build beneficial connections with people who are different from themselves," said lead author Andrea Forte, Assistant Professor at Drexel University in the US.

The presence of adults also leads teenagers' to think before they post.

Learning this sort of self-censoring behaviour at a young age could, be just as important as creating better privacy management tools, the researchers said.

Further, establishing healthy relationships with adults on social media can help teenagers understand where the boundary for appropriate interaction lies.

Many of the students consider this to be an awkward melding of social circles, calling interactions with "big brother" "creepy" and "embarrassing." 

However, they recognise the presence of adult authorities in their social media as a sign of caring and compassion.

"When family, friends, teachers, romantic interests and coworkers mix and mingle, the result is social awkwardness," Forte added.

In addition, this uncomfortable mix can also give rise to a level of access to information that might not be achievable within the familiar confines of a tight circle of friends.

"Weak ties are often connections to people who are less like you and who can provide access to diverse kinds of information and resources," Forte noted adding, "in other words, being connected to others who are very similar to yourself can throttle information flow.”

Schools need to take a closer look at their social media policies and allow for positive interactions between teachers, administrators and their students, the researchers suggested.

The findings are based on surveys and interviews of students in two public high schools in the US -- one with a policy that strictly limits social media interaction between teachers and students and one that with a policy that is more leniently enforced and social media interaction is publicly embraced.

The study will be published in the proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery's Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP).​

​Sydney, June 22 (IANS) Consuming high-fibre diet consisting of a bowl of bran and some dried apricots in the morning and intake of Vitamin A can help reduce food allergies, finds a new study.

The findings showed that mice allergic to peanuts were protected against the allergy when fed on a high-fibre diet. 

Food products rich in fibre reshapes the gut and colon microbiota and helps to fight against food allergies, said the study, led by Jian Tan, professor at the Monash University in Australia.

The immune system works with the good bacteria in the gut to help protect against life threatening allergic responses, the researchers said.

The microbiota in the gut was found to assist the immune system in resisting allergies through the breaking down of fibre into short-chain fatty acids. 

These short-chain fatty acids boosted a particular subset of the immune system called dendritic cells, which control whether an allergic response against a food allergen happens or not.

Increased levels of short-chain fatty acids switched these cells to stop the allergic response.

Further, deficiency in vitamin A levels could promote food allergies, especially in infants and children, the researchers noted.

The study opens a potential route for drug therapy for allergies by delivering short-chain fatty acids as a treatment, said the paper published in the journal Cell Reports.

Washington, June 22 (IANS) In a first, astronomers have discovered a vast cloud of high-energy particles called a wind nebula around a rare ultra-magnetic neutron star, or magnetar.

The find offers a unique window into the properties, environment and outburst history of magnetars, which are the strongest magnets in the universe.

A neutron star is the crushed core of a massive star that ran out of fuel, collapsed under its own weight, and exploded as a supernova. 

Neutron stars are most commonly found as pulsars, which produce radio, visible light, X-rays and gamma rays at various locations in their surrounding magnetic fields. 

Typical pulsar magnetic fields can be 100 billion to 10 trillion times stronger than Earth's. Magnetar fields reach strengths a thousand times stronger still, and scientists don't know the details of how they are created. 

Of about 2,600 neutron stars known, to date only 29 are classified as magnetars.

The newfound nebula surrounds a magnetar known as Swift J1834.9-0846 -- J1834.9 for short -- which was discovered by NASA's Swift satellite in 2011, during a brief X-ray outburst. 

"Right now, we don't know how J1834.9 developed and continues to maintain a wind nebula, which until now was a structure only seen around young pulsars," said lead researcher George Younes, postdoctoral researcher at George Washington University in Washington. 

"If the process here is similar, then about 10 percent of the magnetar's rotational energy loss is powering the nebula's glow, which would be the highest efficiency ever measured in such a system," Younes said.

A month after the Swift discovery, a team led by Younes took another look at J1834.9 using the European Space Agency's (ESA) XMM-Newton X-ray observatory, which revealed an unusual lopsided glow about 15 light-years across centreed on the magnetar. 

New XMM-Newton observations coupled with archival data from XMM-Newton and Swift, confirmed this extended glow as the first wind nebula ever identified around a magnetar. 

A paper describing the analysis will be published in a forthcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

"It represents a unique opportunity to study the magnetar's historical activity, opening a whole new playground for theorists like me," team member Jonathan Granot from Open University in Ra'anana, Israel, said.​