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Knowledge Update

Introduction & Purpose
Knowledge update and Industry update at Skyline University College (SUC) is an online platform for communicating knowledge with SUC stakeholders, industry, and the outside world about the current trends of business development, technology, and social changes. The platform helps in branding SUC as a leading institution of updated knowledge base and in encouraging faculties, students, and others to create and contribute under different streams of domain and application. The platform also acts as a catalyst for learning and sharing knowledge in various areas.

Why gamers avoid touchscreens for better experience

London, April 29 (IANS) Serious gamers generally avoid touchscreens because these devices lack physical buttons due to which the key press timing in touchscreen input is unpredictable, a team of Finnish researchers has found.

When timing is made more predictable, performance improves, said the group from Aalto University.

"The common view was that the lack of physical buttons is critical but you also have tactile feedback from the surface of a touchscreen. Another false belief was that touchscreens are slower but that is not the case anymore," said Byungjoo Lee, one of the researchers. 

The team conducted experiments where participants were asked to tap a display when a target would appear. 

The data showed large differences between physical keys and touchscreens in how reliably users could time their presses.

The researchers proposed a new theory explaining that there are three sources of error that make timing very hard with touchscreens.

First, people are not able to keep the finger at a constant distance above the surface. The finger is always moving, and even the slightest movement hampers our ability to time precisely. 

By contrast, when using physical keys, the finger rests on the key, eliminating this source of error.

"Second, when the finger touches the surface, it is hard for the neural system to predict when the input event has been registered. Typically software detects the touch when the finger first touches the display. But users cannot sense this event so it is not predictable for them," the authors explained.

Third, when the event has been registered on the touchscreen, it still needs to be processed in the application and in some cases the time that it takes is longer than in other ones, creating another source of latency.

The new theory implies that users' performance can be improved by making touch events more predictable. 

The paper is scheduled to be presented at the "Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2016" (CHI16 conference) in San Jose, California, in May.​

'Russian Doll' galaxy cluster to decode dark energy

Washington, April 29 (IANS) Using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other optical telescopes, astronomers have developed a powerful new method for investigating dark energy - the mysterious energy that is currently driving the accelerating expansion of the universe.

The technique takes advantage of the observation that the outer reaches of galaxy clusters, the largest structures in the universe held together by gravity, show similarity in their X-ray emission profiles and sizes.

More massive clusters are simply scaled up versions of less massive ones.

“In this sense, galaxy clusters are like 'Russian dolls', with smaller ones having a similar shape to the larger ones,” said Andrea Morandi from University of Alabama in Huntsville.

“Knowing this lets us compare them and accurately determine their distances across billions of light years,” he added.

By using these galaxy clusters as distance markers, astronomers can measure how quickly the universe was expanding at different times since the Big Bang.

According to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, the rate of expansion is determined by the properties of dark energy plus the amount of matter in the Universe, where the latter is mostly made up of unseen material called dark matter.

The latest results confirm earlier studies that the properties of dark energy have not changed over billions of years.

They also support the idea that dark energy is best explained by the “cosmological constant,” which Einstein first proposed and is equivalent to the energy of empty space.

“Although we’ve looked hard at other explanations, it still appears that dark energy behaves just like Einstein's cosmological constant,” added study co-author Ming Sun.

To reach this conclusion, the researchers studied 320 galaxy clusters with distances from Earth that ranged from about 760 million light years to about 8.7 billion light years.

“We think this new technique has the ability to provide a big leap forward in our understanding of dark energy,” the authors noted in a paper appeared in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society journal.​

US economy expands 0.5 percent in Q1, slowest in two years

​Washington, April 28 (IANS) The US economy grew at an annual rate of 0.5 percent in the first quarter of this year, pulled back by slowing consumption, the commerce department said on Thursday.

Facebook can help students connect better

​New York, April 28 (IANS) Not just connecting you with friends, interaction with fellow students on social networking website can help you focus and study better, say researchers.

Gucci warns shops over funeral fakes

​Hong Kong, April 29 (IANS) Italian luxury fashion house Gucci has sent warning letters to Hong Kong shops not to sell paper versions of its branded products as offerings to the dead, a report said on Friday. Paper replicas of items like mansions, cars, iPads and luxury bags are burnt in the belief when people die so they can use them in the afterlife, BBC reported. "We fully respect the funeral context and we trust that the store owners did not have the intention to infringe Gucci's trademark," Gucci Hong Kong said in a statement. "Thus a letter was sent on an informational basis to let these stores know about the products they were carrying and by asking them to stop selling those items," the statement said. In Hong Kong, some shops that had reportedly received the letters have removed their Gucci wares. But other brands, including Louis Vuitton, Saint Laurent, Burberry and New Balance, are still on sale. Demand for these products is highest during the Qingming "tomb-sweeping" festival which took place last month.​

Cancer drug may treat sepsis

New York, April 29 (IANS) Tiny doses of a cancer drug may stop the raging, uncontrollable immune response to infection that leads to sepsis, say researchers.

A small dose of topoisomerase I (Top 1) inhibitor can dampen an acute inflammatory reaction to infection while still allowing the body's protective defense to take place, showed the findings published in the journal Science.

The treatment may help control not only sepsis but also new and brutal assaults on human immunity such as novel influenza strains and pandemics of Ebola and other singular infections, said the study's senior investigator, Ivan Marazzi, assistant professor at Icahn School of medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

Sepsis -- deadly infections often acquired in hospital by patients with a weak immune system -- is caused by an excessive host response to infection, which in turn leads to multiple organ failure and death. 

The team found that use of one to three doses of a Top 1 inhibitor that is one fiftieth the strength of normal chemotherapy was enough to rescue 70-90 percent of mice from an inflammatory storm death due to either acute bacterial infection, liver failure, or virus-bacteria co-infection. 

The treatment did not produce overt side effects.

They also tested the inhibitor in cells infected with influenza, Ebola, and other viral and bacterial microbes that over-stimulate the immune system, and found the drug blunted a dangerous immune reaction.

"Our results suggest that a therapy based on Top 1 inhibition could save millions of people affected by sepsis, pandemics, and many congenital deficiencies associated with acute inflammatory episodes -- what is known as a cytokine, or inflammatory, storm," Marazzi said.

"These storms occur because the body does not know how to adjust the appropriate level of inflammation that is good enough to suppress an infection but doesn't harm the body itself," he said. 

"This drug appears to offer that life-saving correction," Marazzi explained​

China's migrant workforce declining, getting older

Beijing, April 29 (IANS) China's migrant workforce reached 277.5 million in 2015, an annual rise of 1.3 percent, but the year-on-year growth rate has been decreasing since 2011, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

UN body expresses optimism on Bangladeshi economy

​Dhaka, April 28 (IANS) A UN body on Thursday expressed its optimism about Bangladesh's potential though it trimmed its growth forecast for 2015-16 fiscal (July 2015-June 2016) at 6.8 percent.

Nintendo to launch new console in 2017

Tokyo, April 27 (IANS) Japanese videogame company Nintendo will release its new console globally in March 2017, the company announced on Wednesday. "Nintendo is currently developing a gaming platform codenamed 'NX' with a brand-new concept... NX will be launched in March 2017 globally," the company said in its report, without giving any more details. The Kyoto-based company decided to halt production of its Wii U game console, after scanty sales till December 2015 that pushed it to focus on the Nintendo NX, EFE news reported citing the Nikkei daily. The launch of the new console could, however, result in a greater dip in Wii U sales, which dropped 8.4 percent in 2015.​

Fasting not necessary before a cholesterol test: Experts

London, April 27 (IANS) People need not check their cholesterol levels on an empty stomach, suggests new research involving more than 300,000 individuals from Denmark, Canada and the US.

So far, fasting has been required before cholesterol and triglyceride measurement in all countries except Denmark, where non-fasting blood sampling has been used since 2009, the study pointed out.

Fasting is a problem for many patients, and the latest research shows that cholesterol and triglyceride levels are similar whether you fast or not. 

"This will improve patients compliance to preventive treatment aimed at reducing number of heart attacks and strokes, the main killers in the world," said one of the researchers Borge Nordestgaard from Herlev Hospital, University of Copenhagen.

The research was published in the European Heart Journal.

In Denmark, the use of random, non-fasting cholesterol testing at any time of the day irrespective of food intake has been used successfully since 2009. 

Patients, doctors and laboratories have all benefitted from this simplified procedure. For people at work, children, patients with diabetes and the elderly it is particularly beneficial not to have to fast before blood sampling for cholesterol and triglyceride testing.

This is the first international recommendation that fasting is no longer necessary before cholesterol and triglyceride testing. 

These recommendations represent a joint consensus statement from the European Atherosclerosis Society and European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine involving 21 medical experts from Europe, Australia and the US.

"We hope that non-fasting cholesterol testing will make more patients together with their doctors implement lifestyle changes and if necessary statin treatment to reduce the global burden of cardiovascular disease and premature death," Nordestgaard added.​