Knowledge Update

Washington, Jan 7 (IANS) NASA has said two of its astronauts -- Expedition 50 Commander Shane Kimbrough and Flight Engineer Peggy Whitson -- have completed the first of two power upgrade spacewalks at 1:55 p.m. EST (12:25 a.m. Saturday, India time).

During the six-hour-and-thirty-two-minute spacewalk, the two NASA astronauts successfully installed three new adapter plates and hooked up electrical connections for three of the six new lithium-ion batteries on the International Space Station, NASA scientists wrote in a blog post.

They also accomplished several get-ahead tasks, including a photo survey of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.

The new lithium-ion batteries and adapter plates replace the nickel-hydrogen batteries currently used on the station to store electrical energy generated by the station's solar arrays.

Robotic work to update the batteries began in January. 

This was the first of two spacewalks planned to finalise the installation, NASA said.

Kimbrough and Flight Engineer Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency) are scheduled to conduct the second spacewalk on January 13.

Space station crew members have conducted 196 spacewalks in support of assembly and maintenance of the orbiting laboratory. 

Spacewalkers have now spent a total of 1,224 hours and six minutes working outside the station.

​Washington, Jan 6 (IANS) By combining data from several telescopes around the world including India's Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in Pune, astronomers have discovered a cosmic double whammy unlike any ever seen before.

Two of the most powerful phenomena in the Universe, a supermassive black hole, and the collision of giant galaxy clusters, have combined to create a stupendous cosmic particle accelerator, the researchers reported in the journal Nature Astronomy.

"We have seen each of these spectacular phenomena separately in many places," said lead researcher Reinout van Weeren of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US.

"This is the first time, however, that we seen them clearly linked together in the same system," Weeren noted.

This cosmic double whammy is found in a pair of colliding galaxy clusters called Abell 3411 and Abell 3412 located about two billion light years from Earth. 

The two clusters are both very massive, each weighing about a quadrillion or a billion times the mass of the Sun.

This discovery solves a long-standing mystery in galaxy cluster research about the origin of beautiful swirls of radio emission stretching for millions of light years, detected in Abell 3411 and Abell 3412 with the GMRT.

The team determined that as the shock waves travel across the cluster for hundreds of millions of years, the doubly accelerated particles produce giant swirls of radio emission.

"This result shows that a remarkable combination of powerful events generate these particle acceleration factories, which are the largest and most powerful in the Universe," co-author William Dawson of Lawrence Livermore National Lab in Livermore, California, said. 

Besides GMRT, the researchers combined data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the US National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, and other telescopes to find out what happens when matter ejected by a giant black hole is swept up in the merger of two enormous galaxy clusters.

"It is a bit poetic that it took a combination of the world's biggest observatories to understand this," Dawson noted.

"It's almost like launching a rocket into low-Earth orbit and then getting shot out of the Solar System by a second rocket blast," co-author Felipe Andrade-Santos, also of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics.

"These particles are among the most energetic particles observed in the Universe, thanks to the double injection of energy," Andrade-Santos explained.

​Tokyo, Jan 6 (IANS) The shares of Toyota Motor fell on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) on Friday after US President-elect Donald Trump threatened the Japanese car manufacturer with customs duties if it continues the construction of its new vehicle assembly plant in Mexico.

​New York, Jan 6 (IANS) Photo sharing for iPhone users can be more fun as Instagram on Friday rolled out iPhone 7 and 7 Plus-specific features that support wide colour capture and display -- and users don't need to update the app.

New York, Jan 6 (IANS) Apple has announced that its app developers earned over $20 billion, up over 40 per cent from 2015, in 2016 alone and also stated that New Year's Day was the highest single day ever for the App Store with nearly $240 million in purchases.

​London, Jan 6 (IANS) Maintaining London's access to skilled European Union (EU) workers after Brexit is "vital" for the British capital's future prosperity, a report revealed on Friday.

​Las Vegas, Jan 6 (IANS) ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) on Friday unveiled its latest lineup of gaming gear at the ongoing Consumer Electronic Show (CES 2017) in Las Vegas. The Taiwan-based computer hardware company also introduced a router designed specifically for gamers, Rapture GT-AC5300, at the event. The 2017 gaming-gear lineup includes -- GX800VH, G701, G752, GL502, GL702, GL553 and GL753 gaming laptops, and GT51CH, GD30, G20CI and GR8 II gaming desktops. Featuring tri-band Wi-Fi, eight-port gigabit-LAN, 1.8GHz quad-core CPU, GT-AC5300 enables fast and responsive network gaming, the company said in a statement. GX800VH is the world's first gaming laptop with an 18-inch panel and NVIDIA G-SYNC technology for real 4K UHD gaming visuals. It also has the MechTAG mechanical-switch keyboard, which features anti-ghosting with 30-key rollover, and customisable ROG Aura RGB LED effects for each key. G701 boasts HyperDrive RAID 0, NVMe and PCIe technologies for blazing-fast storage speeds, and a 120Hz panel with NVIDIA G-SYNC technology. G752 is driven by Intel Core i7 processor and a VR-ready NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 GPU. GL502 and GL702 are compact and potent gaming laptops that offer good performance, with up to Intel 7th Generation processors, VR-ready NVIDIA GeForce GTX1070/1060 GPUs, 120Hz NVIDIA G-SYNC panels, and backlit anti-ghosting keyboards with 30-key rollover. GT51CH is an powerful gaming desktop PC featuring an overclocked 4.8GHz Intel Core i7-7700K processor, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 2-way SLI graphics, and 64GB of RAM. G20CI is a small-form-factor gaming PC, housed in a compact 9.5-litre chassis, runs whisper-quiet at just 22dB at idle and has an efficient heat-management system, including two internal fans and copper pipes to dissipate heat. GD30 has a customisable design featuring interchangeable black and white front panels and is powered by 7th Generation Intel Core i7 processor with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 graphics. GR8 II is the smallest gaming PC built for VR, has ASUS-customised NVIDIA GeForce 1060 GPU, 7th Generation Intel Core i7 processor, and 32GB of RAM.

​Las Vegas, Jan 6 (IANS) In its bid to redefine personal computing, US-based computer technology company Dell has launched new products at the ongoing Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2017) here. The new products include Dell Canvas, XPS 13 2-in-1, XPS 27 AIO, Precision 7720 mobile workstation, UltraSharp 32 Ultra HD 8K monitor and 12-inch Latitude 7285 2-in-1 notebook. Dell Canvas is a 27-inch QHD smart workspace of its kind with touch, totem and pen capabilities that can be used at an angle or flat on a desk so professionals can create, communicate and express their thoughts and ideas as naturally as they do with pen on paper. Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 offers a 360-degree hinge for multiple productivity and viewing options using Continuum, up to 15 hours of battery life and a QHD+ (5.7M pixels) InfinityEdge touch display. XPS 27 AIO features 4K Ultra HD (3840 x 2160) edge-to-edge touch display supporting 100 per cent Adobe RGB colour gamut, comes with Intel Xeon processors, AMD Radeon Pro graphics capable of powering VR. Dell Precision 7720 mobile workstation is the company's first VR-ready mobile workstation designed specifically for VR content creation. The workstation is powered by latest 7th Gen Intel Core, Intel Xeon processors and NVIDIA Pascal Quadro professional graphics. Dell UltraSharp 32 Ultra HD 8K monitor is the world's first 32-inch 8K resolution display. It has more than one billion colors, 33.2M pixels of resolution, 100 per cent Adobe RGB and sRGB colour gamut and has 280 ppi. Dell will deliver a true wireless experience by incorporating WiTricity magnetic resonance wireless charging technology in the 12-inch Latitude 7285 2-in-1, which will be available later this year. When combined with a charging mat and WiGig wireless dock, users can take the Latitude 2-in-1 with them without disengaging any wires or a physical dock. And when they return to their desk and set the 2-in-1 on the charging mat, it begins charging, automatically reconnects to the WiGig dock and content appears on the external display, the company said.

Las Vegas, Jan 6 (IANS) Chinese technology company Xiaomi started its Consumer Electronics Show (CES) debut here on Thursday with an announcement of Mi TV 4 with a 4.9mm ultra-thin frameless metal body. The 65-inch version is designed with a modular approach, with the separate Mi TV Bar consisting of the mainboard and a sound system that supports Dolby Atmos. Xiaomi also displayed over 70 products from Xiaomi's core range of smartphones, smart TVs, smart routers and dozens of Mi Ecosystem products in the smart home, health & fitness, personal transportation, smart toys and other categories. The company also launched the white version of Mi MIX that has been designed jointly developed with world-renowned designer Philippe Starck. The white version will be available in China later in the year. "We continue to push boundaries with the use of ceramic on smartphones, this time in white, which presents more challenges in terms of yield," Hugo Barra, Vice President, Xiaomi said. Mi TV 4 will be available in China at a later date, with an estimated price well under $2,000 for the 65-inch version that comes with the Dolby Atmos home theater. Mi TV 4 has a 4K display, 4.9mm ultra-thin metal body, Quad-core 64-bit flagship TV processor, Artificial Intelligence (AI) system for intelligent recommendations and is available in 49-inch and 55-inch as well.

Tokyo, Jan 6 (IANS) English road signs are set to debut this year in Japan to make navigation easier for foreigners.

The National Police Agency said some of the new signs introduced from July 2017 will be written in both Japanese and English, public broadcaster NHK reported.

The stop sign will bear the word "STOP" and the slow-down sign will come with the word "SLOW".

The number of accidents involving foreign drivers with international licenses has risen in recent years.

Last year, the agency found that about 20 per cent of the foreign drivers it surveyed did not recognise the Japanese stop sign and nearly 30 per cent could not understand the slow-down sign.

There are 1.7 million stop signs and 1,000 slow-down signs across the country.

According to the agency, the move is also part of the preparations for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.