Knowledge Update

A group of international academics has condemned the UN convention banning child labour as "harmful", saying the policy ignores benefits and reflects Western prejudice.

New York, Dec 18 (IANS) Apple customers, who pre-ordered the tech giant's wireless earphones AirPods, have started receiving a pair of the product after the sales went live recently, a media report said. Customers received a word that their orders had been shipped and were scheduled to arrive as promised on December 21, a report on AppleInsider said. Apple announced its first branded wireless headphones with iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus in September 2016 and the product went up for sale on December 13. AirPods are priced at Rs 15,400 in India. According to the report, AirPods were regarded as a highly anticipated item and the initial supply was quickly depleted, pushing back shipment estimates to four weeks mere hours after release. Alongside pre-order shipments, AirPods are rumoured to land in Apple retail stores, as well as mobile carrier outlets and authorised Apple resellers by as early as next week. AirPods are automatically on and always connected. They can sense when they are in ears and pause when taken out. They are driven by the custom-designed Apple W1 chip for efficient wireless connection and improved sound. The W1 chip manages battery life which lets the product deliver five hours of listening time on a single charge. Just 15 minutes of charging can give three hours of listening time. To check the battery, user can hold the AirPods next to an iPhone or ask Siri "How's the battery on my AirPods?"

​Abu Dhabi, Dec 18 (IANS/WAM) The UAE has signed an open skies agreement with Sweden to boost investment and tourism in the country.

The agreement was signed by Saif Mohammed Al Suwaidi, Director-General of the General Civil Aviation Authority, and Jan Thesleff, Sweden Ambassador to the UAE, at a ceremony here.

"Conducting air transport agreements with other countries helps boost investment and tourism and strengthens business ties with countries across the globe," Al Suwaidi said.

The agreement enables both parties full flexibility on routes, capacity, frequency and types of aircraft.

​London, Dec 18 (IANS) If you are a morning person, working in night shifts may affect you more, a study said. According to the study, morning persons demonstrate a quicker reaction time when solving unusual attention-related tasks when working at night, but are more prone to make errors. This may be the result of sleep deprivation and a relative increase in the time spent awake which negatively impacts the brain's attention system, the researchers said. The study showed that morning persons completed their tasks quicker than the night persons, but with errors. On the contrary, night persons were found to spend more time finishing than tasks. But, their level of accuracy in completing the task was higher, the researcher noted. "To deal with the most difficult test -- resolving a conflict of attention -- it was necessary not only to concentrate on the main visual stimulus, but at the same time to ignore accompanying stimulus that distract from the core task," said Andriy Myachykov from Oxford University. Though night people turned out to be slower, they were more efficient compared to the early risers. "Our study demonstrated how night owls working late at night 'sacrifice' speed for accuracy," Myachykov added. The results of this study may be useful for people who work night shift and could challenge the education system and human resources management in certain areas. For pilots, air traffic controllers, drivers, etc., attention, the ability to deal with large sets of data, and reaction time are all very important. During emergencies, these features could play a vital role. The study is available in the journal Experimental Brain Research.

​Washington, Dec 18 (IANS) Scientists have claimed to figured out how the world's biggest and most-valuable diamonds formed, media reported on Sunday.

In a study published this week in the US journal Science, the scientists said large gem-quality diamonds, like the world-famous Cullinan or Lesotho Promise, may be born in metallic liquid deep inside the Earth's mantle, Xinhua news agency reported.

The research team, led by Evan Smith of the Gemological Institute of America, reached the conclusion after examining so-called "offcuts" of massive diamonds, which are the pieces left over after the gem's facets are cut for maximum sparkle.

They found tiny metallic grains trapped inside in more than 30 exceptionally large stones, which are made up of a mixture of metallic iron and nickel, along with carbon, sulfur, methane, and hydrogen.

These inclusions led the researchers to conclude that these diamonds formed, like all diamonds, in the Earth's mantle, but they did so under conditions in which they were saturated by liquid metal.

Most diamonds formed at depths of 150 to 200 km under the continents and shoot to the surface in volcanic eruptions.

"Pure carbon crystallised in this mix of molten metallic liquid in Earth's deep mantle to form diamonds," the team explained in a statement.

"Small droplets of this metallic liquid were occasionally trapped within the diamonds as they grew," offering useful clues that may help "advance our understanding of Earth's deep mantle, hidden beneath tectonic plates and largely inaccessible for scientific observation," the statement added.

The findings may tell scientists about oxygen availability in different parts of the mantle.

Near the surface, the mantle chemistry is more oxidized, which scientists can tell from the presence of carbon in the form of carbon dioxide in magmas erupted in volcanoes.

"Previous experiments and theory predicted for many years that parts of the deep mantle below about 250 km depth contain small amounts of metallic iron and have limited available oxygen," Smith said.

Sydney, Dec 18 (IANS) People who leave school without a school certificate are more than twice as likely to have a heart attack as those with a university degree, researchers said.

New York, Dec 18 (IANS) Recreation activities in protected areas such as hiking impact wildlife mostly in negative ways, a study said.

Nature-based outdoor recreation is the most widespread human land use in protected areas and is permitted in more than 94 per cent of parks and reserves globally, the researchers said.

Hiking, a common form of outdoor recreation in protected areas, can create a negative impact by causing animals to flee, taking time away from feeding and expending valuable energy, the study said.

"People generally assume that recreation activities are compatible with conservation goals for protected areas," said lead author Courtney Larson from Colorado State University in the US.

"However, our review of the evidence across wildlife species and habitat types worldwide suggests otherwise," Larson noted.

Protected areas include national parks, wilderness areas, community conserved areas, nature reserves and privately-owned reserves.

The researchers reviewed 274 scientific articles published between 1981 and 2015 on the effects of recreation on a variety of animal species across all geographic areas and recreational activities.

More than 93 per cent of the articles reviewed, indicated at least one impact of recreation on animals, the majority of which or 59 per cent were negative.

Decreased species diversity, survival, and behavioural or physiological disturbance such as decreased foraging or increased stress are among the negative effects of outdoor recreation in protect areas, according to the study published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Surprisingly, studies of hiking and other non-motorised activities found negative effects on wildlife more frequently than studies of motorised activities.

However, since motorised activities generally cover a larger area, their influence on animals can also be widespread.

"They can also result in other environmental impacts, such as soil loss and vegetation disturbance," Larson said.

Toronto, Dec 18 (IANS) An international team of scientists has discovered a planetary system with a host star similar to Earth's sun, which could tell the history and connections between stars and their planets.

The team, which included researchers from the University of Chicago, said that unlike the artificial planet-destroying Death Star in the movie "Star Wars", this natural version could provide clues about how planetary systems evolve over time.

"It does not mean that the sun will 'eat' the Earth any time soon," Jacob Bean, co-author of an Astronomy and Astrophysics article on the research, said in a university statement.

"But our discovery provides an indication that violent histories may be common for planetary systems, including our own," Bean added.

Astronomers discovered the first planet orbiting a star other than the sun in 1995 and since then, more than two thousand exoplanets have been identified.

Rare among them are planets that orbit a star similar to Earth's sun. Due to their extreme similarity to the sun, these so-called solar twins are ideal targets for investigating the connections between stars and their planets.

It's tricky to draw conclusions from a single system, cautioned Megan Bedell, co-author of the research and the lead planet finder for the collaboration.

She said the team plans "to study more stars like this to see whether this is a common outcome of the planet formation process".

​San Francisco, Dec 16 (IANS) Responding to criticism from all quarters over the spread of fake news, Facebook has asked its users to flag fake news stories which will be verified by third party fact-checkers.

​New York, Dec 17 (IANS) Microsoft has released a set of 100,000 questions and answers that artificial intelligence (AI) researchers can use to create systems that can read and answer questions as precisely as a human.