Knowledge Update

Bengaluru, Oct 19 (IANS) By providing technology and tools, chip maker Intel Corporation mentored 17 Indian start-ups to innovate products in diverse areas, said the US-based company on Wednesday. (21:10)

​San Francisco, Oct 19 (IANS) Microsoft on Wednesday announced that software and technology firm SAP will make its "SuccessFactors" Cloud-based human capital management (HCM) service available on Microsoft's Azure over the next five years.

​New York, Oct 6 (IANS) Six days after Microsoft received reports of a cumulative update that failed to install on some computers, the company has now released a "fix-it" tool.

"The update which tries to install and then rolls back repeatedly, affects PCs that previously ran a build delivered through the Windows Insider Programme," technology website

​New York, Oct 19 (IANS) In a major breakthrough in the field of speech recognition, Microsoft researchers have created a technology that accurately recognises the words in a conversation like humans do.

Beijing, Oct 19 (IANS) China's economy grew 6.7 per cent in the third quarter of 2016, holding steady with the second quarter and strengthening hope that the Chinese government will achieve its annual GDP target.

​New Delhi, Oct 19 (IANS) Chinese smartphone manufacturer Zopo on Wednesday launched its latest Color F5 model that comes with Multi-account Application and PiP video Integration (floating video) technology. Available in gold colour, the device comes with fingerprint scanning technology, allowing users to control the device's camera, gallery, app lock and other features. "The Color series has been our most successful product chain in India. Therefore, with the launch of our Color F5 smartphone, we hope to maintain our position in the Indian market as a brand that provides innovative products at competitive prices," the company said in a statement. Apart from the fingerprint scanning feature, ZOPO Color F5 smartphone is equipped with a 64Bit Quad-core CPU, 2GB RAM and 16GB Storage. The 4G LTE dual-SIM smartphone has Android Marshmallow OS, 5-inch 2.5D glass display and dual LED flash for both 8MP rear and 5MP front camera.

​New Delhi, Oct 19 (IANS) The grandeur of Benaras' exquisite food and the beautiful ambience of its ghats have been brought alive at an ongoing festival here that recreates a spread of the city's specialties and street snacks for the capital's food lovers.

The third segment of the "The Grand Trunk Culinary Journey", which began from Amristar and passed through old Delhi, at the Dilli 32 outlet at The Leela Ambience Convention Hotel here, will take you through the delightful dishes of Benaras till October 29.

To bring out the flavours of each mouth-watering delicacy, Executive Chef Rohit Tokhi and Chef de Cuisine Ashwani Kumar Singh travelled to Benaras to gather the secrets of the food geniuses hidden in the lanes of the Hindu holy city.

"The menu comprises of things from all the three meals that are served across the day in Benaras. There is chudda matar that people take for breakfast; there is batti chokha for lunch and dinner and other snacks available in the market throughout the day," Chef Tokhi told IANS. 

The lip-smacking dishes that are specially prepared by incorporating authentic influences and divine flavours from the city include tamater ki chat, bhaji and jalebi, besan ki katli, fresh thandai and more.

It would be best to start with one of the three drinks -- thandai, pista pan and lassi malai maar ke -- that are served in clay pots called purvas. The fresh thandai tastes absolutely heavenly, far superior to any of the ready-made mixes available.

The spicy, sour and flavoursome tamatar ki chaat was tasty and different from the street food in Delhi.

"In Benaras, people get this chaat from street food shops and avoid preparing it at home," Tokhi said.

Quite unlike the dahi vada here, its Benarasi version was sugared and thus failed to impress.

The vegetarian thali comprises of hare channe ka bhabhra, tarua, baingan kalonji, dum aloo Banarasi, paneer butter masala and kadi bhari threw up some unfamiliar dishes with different flavours.

What really stood apart was the the dum aloo Banarasi. Not all that juicy with no gravy, it was yum to eat with the five kinds of rotis on offer: sheermal, khamiri, ulta tawa, roomali and missi roti

However, the kadi bhari and paneer butter masala with unusual flavours didn't impress at all.

The most surprising element about the menu was the few non-vegetarian dishes, because when you imagine Benaras, you usually only think of vegetarian food going hand-in-hand with the city's sacred Hindu interests.

In reality, the non-vegetarian counter has the most palatable dish on the entire menu. Very different from the Chinese version, there was a chilli chicken that was an absolute delight to feast upon. It was succulent with an amazing Indian touch to it and an apt amount of spices.

Then, there was the gutwa kabab for those who enjoy kababs with a twist.

And finally, the desserts. These include madgal, launglata, kheer mohan, parval ki mithai and gur ki kheer. Of these, the kheer mohan was an irresistible concoction made from cottage cheese. The parval mithai with a stuffing of khoya was good but the gur ki kheer did not intrigue much.

​New Delhi, Oct 19 (IANS) When it comes to building Smart Cities, Internet of Things (IoT) and Cloud are two key components to make things work. For Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins, these two components are now part and parcel of his life as the networking major turns its focus towards IoT and Cloud for delivering connected cities.

​New York, Oct 11 (IANS) Being angry, emotionally upset or engaging in heavy physical exertion may significantly increase risk of a heart attack, warns a large international study.

The researchers found an association (more than twice the risk) between anger or emotional upset and the onset of heart attack symptoms within one hour.

The same was true for heavy physical exertion during the hour before their first heart attack, according to the study published in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation.

However, the association was stronger (more than triple the risk) in those patients who recalled being angry or emotionally upset while also engaging in heavy physical exertion.

"Previous studies have explored these heart attack triggers; however, they had fewer participants or were completed in one country, and data are limited from many parts of the world," said study lead author Andrew Smyth from Population Health Research Institute at McMaster University in Canada.

"This is the first study to represent so many regions of the world, including the majority of the world's major ethnic groups," Smyth said.

For the study, the researchers analysed data from 12,461 patients (average age 58) participating in INTERHEART, a study consisting of patients with first-ever heart attacks across 52 countries.

The researchers said that extreme emotional and physical triggers can raise blood pressure and heart rate, changing the flow of blood through blood vessels and reducing blood supply to the heart.

"This is particularly important in blood vessels already narrowed by plaque, which could block the flow of blood leading to a heart attack," Smyth said.

"Regular physical activity has many health benefits, including the prevention of heart disease, so we want that to continue," he said.

"However, we would recommend that a person who is angry or upset who wants to exercise to blow off steam not go beyond their normal routine to extremes of activity," Smyth noted.

New York, Oct 19 (IANS) Something must be going on in the brains of older adults that causes them to struggle to follow speech amid background noise, even when their hearing would be considered normal, researchers from University of Maryland have determined.

Researchers Samira Anderson, Jonathan Z. Simon and Alessandro Presacco found that adults aged 61-73 with normal hearing scored significantly worse on speech understanding in noisy environments than adults aged 18-30 with normal hearing.

The researchers studied two areas of the brain. They looked at the more 'ancestral' midbrain area which does basic processing of all sounds.

They also looked at the cortex which is particularly large in humans and part of which specialises in speech processing.

In the young group, the midbrain generated a signal that matched its task in each case - looking like speech in the quiet environment, and speech clearly discernable against a noisy background in the noise environment.

But in the older group, the quality of the response to the speech signal was degraded even when in the quiet environment, and the response was even worse in the noisy environment.

"For older listeners, even when there isn't any noise, the brain is already having trouble processing the speech," said Simon.

Neural signals recorded from cortex showed that younger adults could process speech well in a relatively short amount of time.

But the auditory cortex of older test subjects took longer to represent the same amount of information.

"Part of the comprehension problems experienced by older adults in both quiet and noise conditions could be linked to age-related imbalance between excitatory and inhibitory neural processes in the brain," Presacco added.

This imbalance could impair the brain's ability to correctly process auditory stimuli and could be the main cause of the abnormally high cortical response observed in the study.

"Older people need more time to figure out what a speaker is saying. They are dedicating more of their resources and exerting more effort than younger adults when they are listening to speech," Simon noted in a paper published by the Journal of Neurophysiology.

This eroding of brain function appears to be typical for older adults and a natural part of the ageing process.

The researchers are now looking into whether brain training techniques may be able to help older adults improve their speech comprehension.