Knowledge Update

New York, Sep 8 (IANS) Risk of death from sudden loss of heart function is significantly greater in patients with high thyroid hormone levels, according to a study.

"Our results indicate that thyroid hormone levels may be useful for assessing risk to prevent sudden cardiac death," said Layal Chaker, researcher at the Erasmus University Medical Center, at Rotterdam in the Netherland, in the study, published in the journal Circulation.

Although the link between abnormal levels of thyroid hormone and cardiovascular disease is well established, the hormone's relationship with sudden cardiac death is unclear.

Researchers analysed 10,318 patients with an average age of 65 and more than half were women for the study and linked the association of thyroid-stimulating hormone and free thyroxine thyroid hormone levels in blood samples with sudden cardiac deaths listed on medical records and death certificates.

They found that participants with free thyroxine hormone levels at the high end of the normal range were 2.5 times more likely to die of sudden cardiac death, compared to patients with levels at the lower end.

The ten-year risk of sudden cardiac death was four times greater among patients with higher free thyroxine levels compared to those with lower levels.

The increased risk persisted even after controlling for other risk factors such as high cholesterol and high blood pressure.

"The study suggests more caution is warranted in the treatment of thyroid hormone replacement. Replacement therapy is often aimed at the high normal range which carries a risk of over-treatment," Chaker added. 

​San Francisco, Sep 8 (IANS) Ending round-the-clock rumours that had sent the world of technology into a tizzy for quite some time now, Apple CEO Tim Cook on Wednesday unveiled stunning iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus along with next-generation 'Apple Watch Series 2' at the jam-packed Bill Graham Civic Auditorium here. iPhone 7 will cost the same as iPhone 6s, starting at $649 (US price) and comes in three variants: 32GB, 128GB, and 256GB (16 GB variant no more). iPhone 7 Plus will start at $769. Pre-orders for the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus begins from September 9 and the shipping will start from September 16 at first in 28 countries, with 30 more countries one week later, Tech Crunch reported. So, this is what iPhone 7 finally has: Water and dust resistance, dual-lens camera (in iPhone 7 Plus), 4.6-inch retina HD display, a new home button, 7 MP HD front camera and 12 MP rear main camera, no traditional 3.5 mm headphone jack, iOS 10, A10 fusion chip and and longest battery life to date. The phone will come in rose gold, gold, silver, black, and jet black colours. "Optical image stabilisation in all new iPhones, allowing for up to 3x longer exposure," Tech Crunch said. Apple's twin lens setup is wide angle and telephoto in the iPhone 7 Plus. For actual, optical zoom, one lens handles 1x zoom; the other handles 2x, the report added. iPhone 7 Plus now has 10x zoom. The camera app is getting a "portrait" mode that'll use the dual-lenses and depth mapping to simulate the DSLR visual quality. "We're not saying that iPhone replaces your DSLR. We're saying this is the best camera we've ever built in any iPhone. For many customers, it'll be the best camera they've ever owned," said Philip W. Schiller, Senior Vice President (Worldwide Marketing) at Apple. Starting at $369, the 'Apple Watch Series 2' will be water resistant to 50 metres and the speaker will literally repel the water like a piston. Pre-orders for 'Series 2' will open on September 9 and the shipment will start from September 16. The device will have a dual core processor with GPU that is up to two times faster. The second generation watch will have the brightest display ever (1,000 nits so that users can see it in full sunlight) and runs watchOS 3. "If you've used a GPS Watch before, you know that sometimes it can take a while to connect to satellites. With Apple Watch, you just hit start and it's ready," Jeff Williams, Apple's Chief Operating Officer, told the gathering. The company also launched wireless headphones called Airpods that will cost $159. Infrared sensors will detect when the AirPods are in your ear. It comes with a compact charging case with 24 hours of additional battery charge. Apple also unveiled Apple Watch Nike+ -- a watch built with runners in mind. "Selling in just eight months of 2015, we became the second most popular watch brand [behind Rolex]," Williams said earlier. "Since its launch, Apple Music has grown to 17 million subscribers. Seventeen million Apple Music subscribers compared to 39 million for digital music service Spotify," Apple CEO Tim Cook announced. "140 billion apps have been downloaded from the iOS App Store till date. In the last two months, we've seen [downloads] grow by 106 per cent year over year," Cook told the audience, adding that Apple App Store has seen two times as much revenue as our closest competitor. Apple also debuted a 'Notify' option on the App Store for a brand new "Super Mario Run" game. The GPS-powered Pokemon Go game has also arrived on Apple Watch. Apple has sold over one billion iPhones till date.

​New Delhi, Sep 7 (IANS) As the world's largest technology merger between EMC and Dell formally came into being on Wednesday, the driving force behind the $67 billion marriage, Michael Dell, said that this was just the beginning and "the real show is just getting started," in the coming digital revolution.

​New York, Sep 7 (IANS) Imagine being greeted by a humanoid robot which answers your queries and tells you directions. Chihira Junco, a robot, does that when it welcomes and meets tourists at a shopping mall in Tokyo.

​London, Sep 7 (IANS) Aimed at making the task of predicting renewable output easier for the industry, researchers have created an interactive web tool to estimate the quantum of energy that could be generated by wind or solar farms at any location.

The researchers have already used the tool, called Renewables.ninja, to estimate current Europe-wide solar and wind output.

"Renewables.ninja has already allowed us to answer important questions about the current and future renewable energy infrastructure across Europe and in the UK, and we hope others will use it to further examine the opportunities and challenges for renewables in the future," said Stefan Pfenninger from ETH Zurich in Switzerland.

To test the model, Pfenninger and Iain Staffell from College London used the tool to estimate the productivity of all wind farms planned or under construction in Europe for the next 20 years. 

Wind and solar energies have a strong dependence on weather conditions, and these can be difficult to integrate into national power systems that requires consistency. If there is excess power generated by all energy sources, then some supplies have to be turned off.

Currently, wind and solar power generators are the easiest to switch on and off, so they are often the first to go, meaning the power they generate can be wasted.

Renewables.ninja uses 30 years of observed and modelled weather data from organisations such as NASA to predict the wind speed likely to influence turbines and the sunlight likely to strike solar panels at any point on the Earth during the year, the researchers said in a paper published in the journal Energy.

These figures are combined with manufacturer's specifications for wind turbines and solar panels to give an estimate of the power output that could be generated by a farm placed at any location.

​Johannesburg, Sep 7 (IANS) Scientists, including researchers from India, have predicted the existence of a new boson that might aid in the understanding of dark matter in the universe.

Using data from a series of experiments that led to the discovery of Higgs boson at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in 2012, the team led by the High Energy Physics Group (HEP) of the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg established what they call "Madala boson".

The experiment was repeated in 2015 and 2016, after a two-and-half years' shut-down of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN.

The data reported by the LHC experiments in 2016 have corroborated the features in the data that triggered the Madala hypothesis in the first place.

The Wits Madala project team consists of approximately 35 young South African and African students and researchers, along with theorists such as Professor Alan Cornell and Dr Mukesh Kumar.

Some of these scientists include Dr Deepak Kar and Dr Xifeng Ruan, two new academic staff in the group, who have years of expertise at the LHC.

"Based on a number of features and peculiarities of the data reported by the experiments at the LHC and collected up to the end of 2012, the Wits HEP group in collaboration with scientists in India and Sweden formulated the Madala hypothesis," says Professor Bruce Mellado, team leader of the HEP group at Wits, in a statement.

The hypothesis describes the existence of a new boson and field, similar to the Higgs boson.

Boson is a subatomic particle, such as a photon, which has zero or integral spin and follows the statistical description given by theoretical physicists Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein.

However, where the Higgs boson in the Standard Model of Physics only interacts with known matter, the Madala boson interacts with dark matter, which makes about 27 per cent of the universe.

The theory that underpins the understanding of fundamental interactions in nature in modern physics is referred to as the Standard Model of Physics.

With the discovery of the Higgs boson at the LHC in 2012, for which the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded in 2013, the Standard Model of Physics is now complete.

However, this model is insufficient to describe a number of phenomena such as dark matter.

"With the Madala hypothesis predictions of striking signatures are made, that is being pursued by the young scientists of the Wits HEP group," the authors noted.

Hanoi, Sep 7 (IANS) The Vietnamese capital city of Hanoi is considering the construction of a software park with a total investment of over $1 billion, which will create over 40,000 jobs, officials said on Wednesday.

San Francisco, Sep 7 (IANS) Google has started bringing online a new high-speed fibre optic undersea cable to speed up its services in Asia.

​Colombo, Sep 7 (IANS) Yoga can contribute to resilience against non-communicable diseases and can be used for preventing and controlling many other lifestyle diseases, Health Minister J.P. Nadda said on Wednesday.

"Major non-communicable diseases like cancer, diabetes, cardio-vascular diseases, stroke and chronic obstructive lung disease are to a great extent due to unhealthy lifestyle. If the body is a temple of the mind, yoga creates a beautiful temple," said Nadda, who is leading the yoga session at 69th World Health Organisation (WHO) Southeast Asia region office (SEARO) summit.

According to the minister, yoga can bring together body, soul and mind for a holistic approach to health and wellbeing, including the physical, mental and spiritual realms of the human being.

"Yoga is not just a set of exercises. Rather, yoga is a philosophy of discipline and meditation that transforms the spirit and makes the individual a better person in thought, action, knowledge and devotion."

Nadda, at the session here, articulated the vision of the Indian government in the area of universal health care and its road map for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

The minister also received the certificate for Maternal and Neonatal Tetanus Elimination (MNTE) and Yaws-free India from the WHO.

India was declared MNTE-free country in August last year and Yaws-free in May this year.

​New York, Sep 7 (IANS) As commercial speech recognition systems are derived largely from adult speech, Disney researchers have developed a new speech technology system that could make playing certain video games or interactions with robots more fun for kids.

The new technology sorts through the overlapping speech, social side talk and creative pronunciations of young children to help them better control a video game called Mole Madness that require kids to say say just two words - "jump" and "go".

The multi-keyword-spotting system, developed by Disney Research, could make it possible to design any number of speech-based game or entertainment applications for children, including interactions with robots, the study said.

"Speech recognition applications have become increasingly commonplace as the technology has matured, but understanding what kids say when they play remains difficult," said Jessica Hodgins, vice president at Disney Research - an international network of research labs in US.

"Kids don't necessarily pronounce words quite like adults and when they are playing together, as they like to do, they often engage in side banter, or exclamations of excitement, or simply talk over each other," Lehman said. 

In the cooperative Mole Madness - a two-player video game, kids needed to say just two words - "jump" and "go" while moving an animated mole through its environment, gathering rewards as they avoid obstacles. 

During game play, the players often say their commands simultaneously. In other cases, they make statements to each other, such as "Don't say 'go' yet," that can be misinterpreted by the system. 

"This technology can be reproduced with other vocabulary, allowing designers and developers to build novel children's applications that use limited speech as an input method," Lehman said.

The findings were presented at the Workshop on Child Computer Interaction in San Francisco.