Knowledge Update

​New York, Jan 17 (IANS) Aiming to cater to the needs of professional users, Apple is predicted to offer up to 32GB of "potentially desktop-class" RAM in its high-end MacBook Pro models in 2017 and 16GB of RAM in its 12-inch MacBook. According to the report in AppleInsider, Apple's 2017 laptop line will focus on internal component updates, notably platform-wide adoption of Intel's Kaby Lake architecture. Essentially, the Intel Skylake CPUs used in Apple's MacBook Pro only support up to 16GB of LPDDR3 RAM. Apple is also predicted to start manufacturing of a 15-inch MacBook Pro with up to 32GB of RAM in the fourth quarter. Beyond the high-end 15-inch model, Apple is expected to start production of new 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pros in the third quarter of 2017. Cupertino-based Apple in October introduced the thinnest and lightest MacBook Pro ever with Touch Bar. The MacBook Pro features sixth-generation quad-core and dual-core processors, up to 2.3 times the graphics performance over the previous generation, super-fast SSDs and up to four Thunderbolt 3 ports. The new 15-inch MacBook Pro, at just 15.5 mm thin, is 14 per cent thinner and has 20 per cent less volume than before, and weighing just 1.83 kg is nearly half a pound lighter. The 15-inch MacBook Pro, also features Touch Bar and Touch ID, a 2.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.5GHz, 16GB of memory and 256GB of flash storage. The 13-inch MacBook Pro features a 2.0GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.1GHz, 8GB of memory and 256GB of flash storage. The 13-inch MacBook Pro with the Touch Bar and Touch ID features a 2.9GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.3GHz, 8GB of memory and 256GB of flash storage.

New York, Jan 17 (IANS) At a time when existing LEDs are helping to keep electricity bills low, a group of scientists has developed a more efficient and low-cost alternative to the materials used in traditional LEDs.

Princeton engineering researchers refined the manufacturing of light sources made with crystalline substances known as perovskites that provide more efficiency, lower-cost and long life to the new LEDs.

In this technique, nanoscale perovskite particles self-assemble to produce more efficient, stable and durable perovskite-based LEDs and the working was published in journal Nature Photonics.

"Our new technique allows these nanoparticles to self-assemble to create ultra-fine grained films, an advance in fabrication that makes perovskite LEDs look more like a viable alternative to existing technologies," said lead researcher Barry Rand. 

Rand's team and others researchers are exploring perovskites as a potential lower-cost alternative to gallium nitride (GaN) and other materials used in LED manufacturing. Lower-cost LEDs would speed the acceptance of the bulbs, reducing energy use and environmental impacts.

Perovskite is a mineral originally discovered in the mid-1800s in Russia and named in honour of the Russian mineralogist Lev Perovski. 

Sydney, Jan 17 (IANS) Australian astrophysicists have come a step closer to solving a galactic murder mystery on Tuesday when they studied the effects of dark matter in 11,000 galaxies, a media report said.

They saw that when gas was rapidly stripped from a galaxy, the building block of stars was lost and the galaxy was "effectively killed", said study leader Toby Brown of Melbourne's Swinburne University of Technology.

The study was conducted by researchers from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, a joint venture between Curtin University and The University of Western Australia, Xinhua news agency reported. 

"Galaxies are embedded in clouds of dark matter that we call dark matter halos. During their lifetimes, galaxies can inhabit halos of different sizes, ranging from masses typical of our own Milky Way to halos thousands of times more massive," Brown said.

"As galaxies fall through these larger halos, the superheated intergalactic plasma between them removes their gas in a fast-acting process called ram-pressure stripping. 

"You can think of it like a giant cosmic broom that comes through and physically sweeps the gas from the galaxies," Brown explained.

The study combined the world's largest galaxy survey -- the Sloan Digital Sky Survey -- with the largest ever set of radio observations for atomic gas -- the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA survey in order to solve the case.

But according to Brown, ram-pressure stripping is not the only way a galaxy can die, galaxies can also be "strangled."

"Strangulation occurs when the gas is consumed to make stars faster than it's being replenished, so the galaxy starves to death," he said.

"It's a slow-acting process. On the contrary, what ram-pressure stripping does is bop the galaxy on the head and remove its gas very quickly -- of the order of tens of millions of years -- and astronomically speaking that's very fast." 

​Beijing, Jan 17 (IANS) China will launch a satellite this year to gather electromagnetic data which may be used in monitoring and forecasting earthquakes.

According to China's earthquake administrative agencies on Tuesday, the satellite will be launched in the latter half of this year, Xinhua news agency reported. 

Movements of the Earth's crust generate electromagnetic radiation which can be observed from space.

By collecting data on the Earth's electromagnetic field, ionosphere plasma and high-energy particles, the satellite will be used in real-time monitoring of earthquakes and possible seismic precursors in China and neighbouring regions.

The satellite will be China's first space-based platform for earthquake monitoring, providing a new approach for research.

According to Shen Xuhui, deputy chief of the mission, it is designed to remain in orbit for five years and record the electromagnetic situation of earthquakes above 6 magnitude in China and quakes above 7 magnitude all over the world.

Scientists are expecting to find common factors that may be used to develop earthquake forecasting technology, Shen said.

​Beijing, Jan 16 (IANS) China will quadruple its new energy vehicle annual output to 2 million by 2020, a Cabinet Minister said.

Citing a government plan, Industry and Information Technology Minister Miao Wei said at a Beijing forum over the weekend that by 2025, at least one in every five cars sold in

​London, Jan 16 (IANS) As members of the European Union back a draft resolution to grant legal status to robots, in order to understand this proposal one needs to look at corporations which carry legal responsibility but aren't recognised as having human rights or seen as individuals, say experts.

​Beijing, Jan 16 (IANS) The Airbus is expected to deliver its first A330 aircraft in September 2017, a company statement said on Monday.

According to Airbus, by 2019 the Airbus China site in Tianjin, which is next to Beijing, will reach stable production capacity, completing and delivering two A330 wide-body

​Rome, Jan 16 (IANS/AKI) The world's largest glasses maker Luxottica has agreed to a 46 billion euro merger with rival French eye wear firm Essilor to create a global colossus with revenues of more than 15 billion euros, the firms said on Monday.

​London, Jan 16 (IANS) Channel 4 and Cancer Research UK have teamed up to air a colonoscopy being performed live on a patient in what the two organisations claim is the world's first TV ad showing a live surgical procedure.

The 90-second TV ad, which will rather incongruously air at 3.25 p.m. on Wednesday during the property programme "A Place In The Sun", will demonstrate an operation to remove two bowel polyps from inside Philip McSparron, the Guardian reported on Monday.

McSparron, who started getting regular screenings for cancer after his brother's bowel cancer was spotted in early 2010, said he hoped the live broadcast of his procedure would show people that it is "not something to be frightened of".

"Hopefully people will be interested in seeing the live footage and it will encourage them to be more willing to talk about cancer and think about taking up regular screening," he said. McSparron is not being paid for his appearance in the ad.

The surgery will be performed at the Cardiff and Vale University hospital, who will give a running commentary on what viewers are seeing.

The TV ad, titled Live from the Inside, will be promoted from Monday with 10-second teaser trails on Channel 4.

The charity will simultaneously stream the ad on Facebook, with a cancer nurse to field questions posted by social media users. 

Channel 4 will also simultaneously broadcast the event across its social media accounts.

In 2008, 2.2 million viewers watched the live broadcast of a team skydive in a three-minute ad for Honda. 

Almost 170,000 viewers tuned in just to watch the TV advert. It was the first live ad broadcast on UK TV.

New York, Jan 16 (IANS) Researchers from Harvard University have developed a multiregional brain-on-a-chip that models the connectivity between three distinct regions of the brain.

The in-vitro model was used to extensively characterise the differences between neurons from different regions of the brain and to mimic the system's connectivity.

"The brain is so much more than individual neurons. When modelling the brain, you need to be able to recapitulate that connectivity because there are many different diseases that attack those connections," said Ben Maoz, a postdoctoral fellow in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). 

Researchers from the Disease Biophysics Group at SEAS and the Wyss Institute modelled three regions of the brain most affected by schizophrenia - the amygdala, hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.

They began by characterising the cell composition, protein expression, metabolism, and electrical activity of neurons from each region in vitro.

"It's no surprise that neurons in distinct regions of the brain are different but it is surprising just how different they are," added Stephanie Dauth, co-first author of the paper.

"We found that the cell-type ratio, the metabolism, the protein expression and the electrical activity all differ between regions in vitro. This shows that it does make a difference which brain region's neurons you're working with," Dauth noted.

The team then looked at how these neurons change when they're communicating with one another. 

"When the cells are communicating with other regions, the cellular composition of the culture changes, the electrophysiology changes, all these inherent properties of the neurons change," said Maoz in a paper published in the Journal of Neurophysiology. 

The team doped different regions of the brain with the drug Phencyclidine hydrochloride -- commonly known as PCP -- which simulates schizophrenia. 

The brain-on-a-chip allowed the researchers for the first time to look at both the drug's impact on the individual regions as well as its downstream effect on the interconnected regions in vitro.

"The brain-on-a-chip could be useful for studying any number of neurological and psychiatric diseases, including drug addiction, post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury," the authors wrote.