Knowledge Update

​New York, Jan 4 (IANS) Yahoo on Wednesday rolled out "read receipts" and typing indicator features -- similar to WhatsApp -- on its Messenger to allow users to be sure when their friends are checking their messages.

Las Vegas, Jan 4 (IANS) Chip manufacturer Qualcomm has introduced its newest mobile platform Snapdragon 835 processor with X16 LTE modem, which will provide high performance and enhanced power efficiency.

New Delhi, Jan 4 (IANS) Apple's iPhone has been named as Indias most reputed mobile phone brand, followed by Samsung and domestic brand Micromax. According to a report "India's Most Reputed Mobile Phone Brands 2017" by media analytics company BlueBytes, in association with business intelligence company TRA Research, Apple's iPhone has the highest positive media appearances in terms of sheer volume. "In a cluttered space like the mobile phone industry, with diverse brands attempting to capture consumer attention, customers buy and recommend on the basis of reputation, making it the most important influencer of buying decisions," said Pooja Kaura, Chief Spokesperson for "India's Most Reputed Brands". China's Xiaomi and Finland's Nokia secured fourth and fifth position respectively. Seventy two mobile phone brands were listed from 12 different countries in the report, of which Indian origin brands held 29 positions. Chinese brands Lenovo, Huawei, and Motorola -- now owned by Lenovo -- ranked sixth, seventh and eighth respectively. LG (South Korea) and Intex Technologies (India) figure last in the list.

Las Vegas, Jan 4 (IANS) Printing and personal computer major HP Inc. unveiled new PCs at Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2017)-- world's biggest annual electronics event. Designed for work at home or on the go, the new PCs include HP EliteBook x360, HP Spectre x360 and HP ENVY Curved All-in-One 34. HP EliteBook x360 features 4K UHD display with Windows Hello, pen support and has a battery life of up to 16 hours and 30 minutes. Following the success of HP's 13.3-inch diagonal model, the second generation of HP's 15.6-inch diagonal x360 powers a micro-edge 4K display, Intel Core processors, NVIDIA GeForce 940MX graphics, adds two new front facing speakers tuned by Bang & Olufsen and an IR camera for Windows Hello. HP ENVY Curved All-in-One 34 features a 34-inch diagonal ultra-WQHD micro-edge display and packs four-speaker sound bar tuned by Bang & Olufsen. To better meet the needs of commercial customers, HP also introduced the new Sprout Pro, the second generation immersive all-in-one PC. It incorporates a grounds-up redesign with a 2.2mm thick, 20-point capacitive Touch Mat display with a sharper, near 1080p projected resolution. It also now features an Intel Core i7 processor, 1TB of SSHD storage, up to 16GB of RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M graphics for faster 3D scanning. OMEN X by HP is now bringing gamers closer to their virtual worlds with the new OMEN X 35 Curved Display. As the first OMEN display with NVIDIA G-Sync technology, the device provides higher refresh rates that result in a more natural, realistic, and true-to-life gaming experience, the company said.

​New York, Jan 4 (IANS) Apart from physical problems, people with an impoverished lifestyle in childhood are also likely to suffer significant psychological damage during adulthood.

The findings showed that impoverished children had more anti-social conduct such as aggression and bullying and increased feeling of helplessness, than kids from middle-income backgrounds.

Poor kids also have more chronic physiological stress and more deficits in short-term spatial memory.

"What this means is, if you're born poor, you're on a trajectory to have more of these kinds of psychological problems," said lead author Gary Evans, Professor and child psychologist at the Cornell University in New York, US.

The reason is stress, researchers said.

"With poverty, you're exposed to lots of stress. Everybody has stress, but low-income families, low-income children, have a lot more of it," Evans said. "And the parents are also under a lot of stress. So for kids, there is a cumulative risk exposure."

For the study, Evans tracked 341 participants over a 15-year period, and tested them at ages 9, 13, 17 and 24.

The results revealed that the adults who grew up in poverty had a diminished ability to recall the sequences, tend to be more helpless and had the tendency to give up easily as well as had a higher level of chronic physical stress throughout childhood and into adulthood.

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

New York, Jan 4 (IANS) Mothers' early and chronic depression may increase the risk of children developing social-emotional problems as well as impact their brain's empathic response to others' distress, a study has found.

The findings showed that in children of depressed mothers, the neural reaction to pain stops earlier than in controls, in an area related to socio-cognitive processing. 

As a result, these children seem to reduce mentalising-related processing of others' pain, perhaps because of difficulty in regulating the high arousal associated with observing distress in others, said lead author Ruth Feldman, Professor at Bar-Ilan University in Israel.

However, when mother-child interactions were more synchronous, that is, mother and child were better attuned to one another and when mothers were less intrusive, these children showed higher mentalising-related processing in this crucial brain area.

"It is encouraging to see the role of mother-child interactions. Depressed mothers are repeatedly found to show less synchronous and more intrusive interactions with their children and so it might explain some of the differences found between children of depressed mothers and controls," Feldman added. 

Apart from reduced empathy to others, children exposed to maternal depression may also have increased social withdrawal and poor emotion regulation, the researchers said.

For the study, the team followed mother-child pairs -- 27 children of mothers with depression and 45 controls -- from birth to age 11. 

Since 15-18 per cent of women in industrial societies and up to 30 per cent in developing countries suffer from maternal depression, it is of clinical and public health concern to understand the effects of maternal depression on children's development, the researchers noted. 

The study was published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP). 

​New York, Jan 4 (IANS) Green innovations must be developed and spread globally 10 times faster than in the past if we are to limit warming to below the Paris Agreement's two degrees Celsius target, says a study.

"Based on our calculations, we won't meet the climate warming goals set by the Paris Agreement unless we speed up the spread of clean technology by a full order of magnitude, or about ten times faster than in the past," said lead researcher Gabriele Manoli from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, US.

"Radically new strategies to implement technological advances on a global scale and at unprecedented rates are needed if current emissions goals are to be achieved," Manoli said.

The study used delayed differential equations to calculate the pace at which global per-capita emissions of carbon dioxide have increased since the Second Industrial Revolution -- a period of rapid industrialisation at the end of the 19th century and start of the 20th. 

The analysis showed that per-capita CO2 emissions have increased about 100 per cent every 60 years -- typically in big jumps -- since then. 

The researchers then compared this pace to the speed of new innovations in low-carbon-emitting technologies.

Using these historical trends coupled with projections of future global population growth, Manoli and his colleagues were able to estimate the likely pace of future emissions increases and also determine the speed at which climate-friendly technological innovation and implementation must occur to hold warming below the Paris Agreement's two degrees Celsius target.

"It's no longer enough to have emissions-reducing technologies," Manoli said. 

"We must scale them up and spread them globally at unprecedented speeds," he added.

The findings were published in the journal Earth's Future.

​London, Jan 4 (IANS) Irish scientists have recently identified a new human organ that has existed in the digestive system for hundreds of years.

Named as the mesentery, the organ connects the intestine to the abdomen and had for hundreds of years been considered a fragmented structure made up of multiple separate parts. 

However, researchers led by J Calvin Coffey, Professor at University of Limerick (Ireland), describe the mesentery as an undivided structure and outlined the evidence for categorising the mesentery as an organ in the paper published in the journal The Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

Mesentery is a fold of the peritoneum which attaches the stomach, small intestine, pancreas, spleen, and other organs to the posterior wall of the abdomen.

During the initial research, the researchers found that the mesentery, which connects the gut to the body, was one continuous organ. 

"Up till then it was regarded as fragmented, present here, absent elsewhere and a very complex structure. The anatomic description that had been laid down over 100 years of anatomy was incorrect. This organ is far from fragmented and complex. It is simply one continuous structure," Coffey explained.

Better understanding and further scientific study of the mesentery could lead to less invasive surgeries, fewer complications, faster patient recovery and lower overall costs.

"When we approach it like every other organ...we can categorise abdominal disease in terms of this organ," Coffey said.

According to Coffey, mesenteric science is a separate field of medical study in the same way as gastroenterology and others.

"Up to now there was no such field as mesenteric science. Now we have established anatomy and the structure," Coffey noted.

​Beijing, Jan 4 (IANS) China plans to conduct some 30 space launch missions in 2017, a record-breaking number in the country's space history, said China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.

Long March-5 and Long March-7 rockets would be used to carry out most of the space missions, the China News Service reported.

Long March-5 is China's largest carrier rocket. The successful test launch of the vehicle in November in Hainan would pave the way for space station construction, analysts said.

Wang Yu, general director of the Long March-5 program, said 2017 is a critical year for China's new generation of carrier rockets and the Long March-5 rockets would carry Chang'e-5 probe to space. 

The probe would land on the moon, collect samples and return to Earth.

On the other hand, Long March-7, the more powerful version of Long March-2, would send China's first cargo spacecraft Tianzhou-1 into the space in the first half of 2017, according to Wang Zhaoyao, director of China Manned Space Engineering Office. 

Tianzhou-1 was expected to dock with Tiangong-2 space lab and conduct experiments on propellant supplement, People's Daily reported.

China conducted 22 launch missions in 2016 and 19 in 2015. The country successfully tested its Long March-7 rocket in June 2016, and has gradually shifted to new generation rockets that reduce the use of toxic rocket fuels.

​Kathmandu, Jan 3 (IANS) Nepal's trade deficit surged by 87.44 per cent during the first five months of the current fiscal year compared to same period the last year as imports increased substantially.