Knowledge Update

Sydney, Feb 21 (IANS) Australia's New South Wales state will focus on better preparing students for university and employment in a major overhaul of its school curriculum.

New South Wales on Tuesday unveiled changes to its high school syllabus for the first time in 18 years, the BBC reported.

The new focus eschews "social context" teaching -- which had drawn criticism -- for more in-depth, critical thinking.

It comes after an international study in December showed Australia's maths and science ranking had tumbled.

The changes address recent criticism over a lack of rigour, said Tom Alegounarias, the head of the state's Education Standards Authority.

"We reviewed the whole (syllabus), we looked at what the community is demanding for now and in the future," Alegounarias told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"The major shift is towards greater depth, rigour, and mastery of content learning."

However, education officials said the concerns were addressed.

Maths will now include more statistics and algorithms, such as those used by internet search engines.

In English, texts will no longer be studied through themes like "journey" or "discovery" but examined for their individual merit.

In history, subjects such as the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution will be explored in depth, rather than focusing on a breadth of topics.

The new curriculum will be introduced from next year, the BBC added.

New York, Feb 21 (IANS) Adolescents suffering from trauma and stress are likely to have impairment in the ability to recognise facial expressions that is critical for social functioning and communicating emotions, researchers say.

The findings showed that adolescents with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms are more likely to misidentify sad and angry faces as fearful.

"Our findings suggest that exposure to stress and trauma can have acute emotional impacts that simply translate to misidentification of important affective cues," said lead author Shabnam Javdani, Assistant Professor at New York University - Steinhardt in the US.

"Fear is particularly relevant for understanding PTSD, as the disorder has been associated with a 'survival mode' of functioning characterised by an overactive fight-or-flight response and increased threat perception," Javdani added.

In contrast, teens with conduct disorder -- a group of behavioural and emotional problems characterised by callousness or aggression towards others -- were more likely to misidentify sad faces, but did not have trouble recognising angry or fearful faces. 

Conduct disorder symptoms were associated with mistaking sadness for anger, suggesting that youth with higher levels of conduct disorder interpret sad faces as angry and may be less effective at recognising others' sadness, pain and suffering.

"Difficulty interpreting displays of sadness and misidentifying sadness as anger may contribute to the impaired affective bonding, low empathy, and callous behaviour observed in teens with conduct disorder," Javdani said.

For the study, published in the journal Child and Adolescent Mental Health, the team examined 371 teens, ages 13-19, to understand the effects of PTSD and conduct disorder symptoms on how youth with emotional and behaviour problems process facial expressions. 

Enhancing the accuracy of recognising facial expressions may be an important treatment goal for youth with symptoms of PTSD and conduct disorder, the researchers said.

​London, Feb 21 (IANS) Offering a glimmer of hope for people suffering from chronic nerve pains, researchers have found that a novel substance inhibits the pain effectively and is well tolerated.

The standard treatment for this chronic nerve pain, known as trigeminal neuralgia, a condition that can lead to acute pain in the teeth or facial area, is associated with burdening side effects. 

In this study, published in the journal Lancet Neurology, the substance, BIIB074, was found to reduce the pain to a tolerable level.

"Unlike conventional drugs, which often cause tiredness and concentration problems, BIIB074 was not only effective, but also very well tolerated," said one of the researchers, Dominik Ettlin, a dental specialist at University of Zurich in Switzerland. 

"We will now test the new substance in a lot more subjects during the next study phase, which will reveal whether the new hope for more effective pain relief is justified," he added.

Bouts of pain in people with trigeminal neuralgia can be triggered by touch, such as shaving, putting on make-up, showering, talking and tooth brushing, or even a gust of wind. 

The cause is usually an irritation of the trigeminal nerve, the cranial nerve responsible for the sensory innervation of the facial area, parts of the scalp, and the oral cavity.

Pain signals reach the brain via the activation of sodium channels located in the membranes of nerve cells. 

The sodium channel "1.7" is frequently expressed on pain-conducting nerves and higher pain intensity is linked to higher channel activity. 

Blocking this sodium channel inhibits the pain. 

In trigeminal neuralgia, the nerve damage is presumed to be at the base of the skull. However, this region is hard to reach by local injections and therefore requires drug treatment.

In this study, the researchers found that the more active this sodium channel gets, the stronger it is blocked by the novel substance BIIB074. 

By contrast, currently available medications block the sodium channel irrespective of the nerve activity, which commonly results in burdening side effects, the study said.

New York, Feb 21 (IANS) Popular messaging platform WhatsApp has updated to "Status" feature that allows users to share images and videos with their contacts on WhatsApp in a secure way.

​New York, Feb 21 (IANS) US tech giant Apple is reportedly working on Siri-powered speaker just like Amazon Echo -- an artificial intelligence (AI)-based speaker that can be controlled by voice.

​Beijing, Feb 21 (IANS) China is close to completing construction of its second aircraft carrier, which will begin service by 2020, a media report said on Tuesday.

The People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy's Type 001A class aircraft carrier's scaffold has been removed and red undercoat has been painted below the ship's waterline in Dalian,

London, Feb 21 (IANS) HSBC announced on Tuesday a fall of 89.67 per cent in net profit for 2016, amounting to $1.3 billion, a statement said.

Its pre-tax profit was down by 62.3 per cent to $7,122 million, the company added in the statement, Efe news reported.

​Beijing, Feb 21 (IANS) China's Trade Minister on Tuesday said talks on the proposed Asia-Pacific free trade agreement are progressing well, after the US withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement last month.

​New York, Feb 21 (IANS) When your computer crashes or your smartphone freezes, most likely you blame the manufacturer. In many instances, however, these failures may be caused by the impact of electrically charged particles generated by cosmic rays that originate outside the solar system, a study says.

​Seoul, Feb 21 (IANS) Hyundai Motor, South Korea's biggest car manufacturer, launched new research centres to develop core technologies, the company announced on Tuesday.