Knowledge Update

​London, Sep 14 (IANS) In a bid to address the challenges faced by digital news stakeholders, the European Commission on Wednesday unveiled new proposals to protect the copyright of news organisations, web publishers, authors and others.

​Munich, Sep 14 (IANS) German automaker BMW Group reported on Tuesday that it has achieved best-ever August sales. According to a statement of BMW Group, a total of 165,431 vehicles were delivered to customers around the world in August, an increase of 5.7 per cent year on year, Xinhua news agency reported. As a result, a total of 1,508,659 vehicles have been sold since the beginning of 2016, up by 5.5 per cent compared to the same period in 2015, marking the first time ever to have sold over one and a half million vehicles in the first eight months of a year. The Bavarian company has sold 329,972 vehicles so far this year in the Chinese mainland, the biggest market in Asia, representing a year-on-year increase of 9.4 per cent. "Sales are increasing across the range and our electrified models are proving extremely popular. We've already sold more alternative drive vehicles this year than in the whole of 2015," Ian Robertson, member of the board of management responsible for sales and marketing, said.

New Delhi, Sep 14 (IANS) Domestic mobile manufacturer Videocon smartphone recently introduced a panic button app with its newly launched smartphone Videocon Cube 3 to get help in any emergency. The app named 'SOS-Be Safe' comes with highly responsive and ingenious features including alert, walk with me, and reach on time. The users can click these features from their smartphone status bar and set security preferences like time, distance and contacts. "With smartphones impacting our lives in many ways, emergency response system or panic button is certainly the need of the hour. We are confident that 'SOS-Be Safe' app will assist smartphone users during different kind of emergency situations," said Akshay Dhoot, Head - Technology and Innovation, Videocon in a statement. The new app also makes the best use of GPS and provides a map view of nearby police stations and hospitals for any critical situation.

​San Francisco, Sep 14 (IANS) Tech giant Apple on Wednesday announced that Swift Playgrounds, a new iPad app that makes learning to code easy and fun for everyone, is now available on the App Store.

​New York, Sep 14 (IANS) Facebook and Twitter have joined a network of more than 30 international media companies and organisations in an effort to filter out fake news stories and to improve the quality of information found online.

New York, Sep 14 (IANS) The free apps and web-based services that you downloaded on Android or iOS mobile devices may have in turn leaked your personal information, including names, gender, phone numbers, and e-mail, a study has found.

​New York, Sep 10 (IANS) Now its time to be a bit more lazy as micro-blogging website Twitter has unveiled an app for Amazon's voice platform Alexa so she can just read your tweets on your Echo speaker or other Alexa-powered device.

​New York, Sep 14 (IANS) Taking smiling selfies with your smartphone and sharing them with your friends can help make you a happier person, say computer scientists at the University of California, Irvine.

"This study shows that sometimes our gadgets can offer benefits to users," said senior author Gloria Mark, Professor of Informatics.

"Our research showed that practicing exercises that can promote happiness via smartphone picture taking and sharing can lead to increased positive feelings for those who engage in it," lead author Yu Chen, a post-doctoral scholar, added.

By conducting exercises via smartphone photo technology and gauging users' psychological and emotional states, the researchers found that the daily taking and sharing of certain types of images can positively affect people.

Chen and her colleagues designed and conducted a four-week study involving 41 college students.

The participants -- 28 female and 13 male -- were instructed to continue their normal day-to-day activities (going to class, doing schoolwork, meeting with friends, etc.) while taking part in the research.

Each was invited to the informatics lab for an informal interview and to fill out a general questionnaire and consent form. The scientists helped students load a survey app onto their phones to document their moods during the first "control" week of the study.

Participants used a different app to take photos and record their emotional states over the following three-week "intervention" phase.

The project involved three types of photos to help the researchers determine how smiling, reflecting and giving to others might impact users' moods.

The first was a selfie to be taken daily while smiling. The second was an image of something that made the photo taker happy. The third was a picture of something the photographer believed would bring happiness to another person (which was then sent to that person). Participants were randomly assigned to take photos of one type.

Researchers collected nearly 2,900 mood measurements during the study and found that subjects in all three groups experienced increased positive moods.

Some participants in the selfie group reported becoming more confident and comfortable with their smiling photos over time, said the study published in the journal Psychology of Well-Being.

The students taking photos of objects that made them happy became more reflective and appreciative.

And those who took photos to make others happy became calmer and said that the connection to their friends and family helped relieve stress.

​New York, Sep 13 (IANS) Playing music during biopsy for breast cancer diagnosis and treatment helps patients to reduce pre-operative anxiety, a research has found.

The study published in the journal AORN provided insights into the impact of implementing a music therapy programme for surgical patients.

The paper is based on the effect of live and recorded music on the anxiety of 207 women undergoing a biopsy for breast cancer diagnosis and treatment and randomised patients into a control group (no music), a live music group, or a recorded music group. 

The researchers presented patients in the experimental groups with a live song performed by a music therapist at bedside or a recorded song played on an iPod through earphones.

Participants in both live and recorded-music groups experienced a significant reduction in pre-operative anxiety of 42.5 per cent and 41.2 per cent, respectively, when compared to the control group.

"During our two-year trial, we gained information on potential benefits, challenges and methods of facilitating a surgical music therapy program," said Jaclyn Bradley Palmer, Music Therapist at the University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center, US.

The researcher said that a music therapist may be highly beneficial in the surgical setting, and music therapy may be a means of enhancing the quality of patient care in collaboration with perioperative nurses.

"As an interdisciplinary surgical staff member, the music therapist may help nurses achieve patient-related goals of anxiety reduction, pain management, effective education and satisfaction. And by having professional music therapists facilitate surgical music therapy programs, nursing workloads also may be reduced," Palmer added.

New York, Sep 13 (IANS) Researchers have developed a new technology that can help read brain signals directly and may also aid people with movement disabilities to better communicate their thoughts and emotions.

The technology involves a multi-electrode array implanted in the brain to directly read signals from a region that ordinarily directs hand and arm movements used, for example, to move a computer mouse.

The algorithms translate those signals and help to make letter selections. 

"Our results demonstrate that this interface may have great promise for use in people as it enables a typing rate sufficient for a meaningful conversation," said Paul Nuyujukian, postdoctoral student at Stanford University in California, US.

In an experiment conducted with monkeys, the animals were able to transcribe passages from the national daily New York Times, and Hamlet, a tragedy drama written by William Shakespeare, at a rate of up to 12 words per minute.

Using these high-performing algorithms, the animals could type more than three times faster than with earlier approaches.

However, people using this system would likely type more slowly, the researchers said, while they think about what they want to communicate or how to spell words. 

People might also be in more distracting environments and in some cases could have additional impairments that slow the ultimate communication rate.

Despite that, even a rate lower than the 12 words per minute achieved by monkeys would be a significant advance for people who are not otherwise able to communicate effectively or reliably, Nuyujukian said.

Earlier versions of the technology have already been tested successfully in people with paralysis, but the typing was slow and imprecise. 

The latest work tests improvements to the speed and accuracy of the technology that interprets brain signals and drives the cursor, the researchers said.

"The interface we tested is exactly what a human would use. What we had never quantified before was the typing rate that could be achieved," Nuyujukian added. 

Other technologies for helping people with movement disorders involve tracking eye movements or tracking movements of individual muscles in the face. 

However, these have limitations, and can require a degree of muscle control that might be difficult for some people. 

While some approaches may not enable use of eye-tracking software due to drooping eyelids and others may be too tiring in some people.

Directly reading brain signals could overcome some of these challenges and provide a way for people to better communicate their thoughts and emotions, the researchers noted, in the paper published in the journal Proceedings of the IEEE.