Introduction & Purpose
Knowledge update and Industry update at Skyline University College (SUC) is an online platform for communicating knowledge with SUC stakeholders, industry, and the outside world about the current trends of business development, technology, and social changes. The platform helps in branding SUC as a leading institution of updated knowledge base and in encouraging faculties, students, and others to create and contribute under different streams of domain and application. The platform also acts as a catalyst for learning and sharing knowledge in various areas.
SUC Editing Team
Information Systems
New York, April 19 (IANS) Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during the two-day annual F8 developer conference launched a platform for developers to encourage augmented reality (AR) camera effects.
SUC Editing Team
Accounting & Finance
Tokyo, April 19 (IANS) The Japanese conglomerate Toshiba plans to split most of its main business branches, in addition to its memory chip unit, in order to improve its financial health, media reports said on Wednesday.
SUC Editing Team
Accounting & Finance
Washington, April 18 (IANS) Citing the impact of demonetisation, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday cut Indias 2017 GDP growth forecast by 0.4 percentage points to 7.2 per cent.
Super User
From Different Corners
Thiruvananthapuram, April 19 (IANS) A component of the skin mucus secreted by a frog species found in India can be harnessed to kill influenza viruses, new research has found.
In their experiment, the researchers found that when delivered intranasally, one of the antiviral peptides found in skin secretions from the Indian frog Hydrophylax bahuvistara can kill H1 variety of influenza viruses that can affect humans.
The research, carried out by researchers from Emory University in the US and Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology in Thiruvananthapuram, also showed that the compound can protect unvaccinated mice against a lethal dose of some flu viruses.
The researchers believe that the compound has the potential to contribute to first-line anti-viral treatments during influenza outbreaks.
Frogs' skins were known to secrete "host defense peptides" that defend them against bacteria.
The new finding, published in the journal Immunity, suggests that the peptides represent a resource for antiviral drug discovery as well.
Anti-flu peptides could become handy when vaccines are unavailable, in the case of a new pandemic strain, or when circulating strains become resistant to current drugs, said senior author Joshy Jacob, Associate Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Emory Vaccine Center and Emory University School of Medicine in in Atlanta, Georgia, US.
Jacob and his colleagues named the antiviral peptide they identified urumin, after a whip-like sword called "urumi" used in southern India centuries ago.
Urumin was collected for the study after mild electrical stimulation of the frog.
Peptides are short chains of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Some anti-bacterial peptides work by punching holes in cell membranes, and are thus toxic to mammalian cells, but urumin was not.
Instead, urumin appeared to only disrupt the integrity of flu virus, as seen through electron microscopy.
It binds the stalk of hemagglutinin, a less variable region of the flu virus that is also the target of proposed universal vaccines, the study said.
This specificity could be valuable because current anti-influenza drugs target other parts of the virus, Jacob said.
Urumin was specific for H1 strains of flu, such as the 2009 pandemic strain, and was not effective against other current strains such as H3N2, the study pointed out.
Super User
From Different Corners
New York, April 19 (IANS) Space missions are likely to encounter a growing threat of more debris, scientists warned on Tuesday at the 7th European Conference on Space Debris.
The four-day meeting was held in the southern German city of Darmstadt, where the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) is located.
Since 1957, over 4,900 space launches have led to an on-orbit population of more than 18,000 tracked objects, Xinhua news agency reported.
Of those, only 1,100 are functional spacecraft and the remaining are space debris, according to European Space Agency (ESA), an intergovernmental organisation consisting of 22 European member states.
As regards tiny objects larger than one millimetre, which are hard to be tracked but able to harm spacecraft in a collision, the amount of those objects has risen to ca. 150 million.
In addition, around 20,000 orbiting fragments with sizes over 10 centimetres have been found nowadays, 12,000 more than the total amount in 1993.
"We are very much concerned," said Rolf Densing, director of operations at the ESA.
In the coming days, experts will further discuss different aspects of space debris research including measurement techniques, environment modelling theories, risk analysis techniques, and protection designs.
Super User
From Different Corners
Washington, April 19 (IANS) NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has captured a region of Mars sprayed with mysterious secondary craters.
"Secondary craters form from rocks ejected at high speed from the primary crater, which then impact the ground at sufficiently high speed to make huge numbers of much smaller craters over a large region," NASA said in a statement on Tuesday.
"In this scene, however, the secondary crater ejecta has an unusual raised-relief appearance like bas-relief sculpture," NASA added.
So how did that happen?
One idea is that the region was covered with a layer of fine-grained materials like dust or pyroclastics about one to two metres thick when the Zunil impact occurred (about a million years ago), and the ejecta served to harden or otherwise protect the fine-grained layer from later erosion by the wind, NASA scientists said.
Super User
From Different Corners
Hyderabad, April 13 (IANS) The Nuclear Fuel Complex (NFC), part of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), on Thursday said it has set a new world record with production of 1512 Ametric tonnes (MT) of nuclear fuel in 2016-17, surpassing its own record
NFC in Hyderabad, which produces fuel assemblies required for all the operating nuclear power reactors in the country, became world's highest producer of nuclear fuel with the production of 1503 MT of pressurised heavy-water reactor (PHWR) fuel bundles during 2015-16.
NFC is the only organisation in the world today having a comprehensive nuclear fuel manufacturing cycle - from ore to core, involving processing of both Uranium and Zirconium streams all under a single roof, it said in a statement.
The organisation made a modest beginning with 100 MT per year Aand went on augmenting it's capacity to cater to the fuel requirement of all the operating Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) and Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs).
NFC attributed the increased production to process improvement and automation, besides the dedicated efforts by its employees.
It also achieved the highest production of 1154 MT of Zirconium Oxide powder and 759 MT of Zirconium Sponge from its production units at Hyderabad and at Zirconium Complex (ZC), Pazhayakayal to meet the Zircaloy requirements of the PHWRs and BWRs.
The Complex is also engaged in the manufacturing of various Zirconium alloy reactor core structurals for PHWRs and BWRs, apart from manufacture of all the sub-assemblies and special requirement of Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) being set up at Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu.
NFC over the years has mastered the technology of manufacturing seamless tubes and has been meeting critical requirements of the departments of atomic energy, space and defence, be it for the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), battle tanks, missiles, supercritical boilers or the BrahMos, it added.
NFC is expanding its facilities to meet the future requirement of twenty, 700 MWe PHWRs, proposed to be established in a phased manner across the country.
As part of NFC-Kota project with an outlay of Rs 2400 crore is being executed and further augmentation of the existing facilities at Hyderabad campus and Zirconium Complex, Pazhayakayal are also in the offing, the statement said.
SUC Editing Team
Information Systems
New Delhi, April 18 (IANS) Most of us may not realise this but as cyber security threats rise globally, even a non-secure, multi-function printer can fall prey to hackers who can break into an organisation's network to steal confidential information, global PC and printer major HP India said on Tuesday.
SUC Editing Team
International Business
Helsinki, April 18 (IANS) Among a series of documents signed by Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Finnish counterpart Sauli Niinisto here in April, the innovation partnership impressed Nokia's head Risto Siilasmaa the most.
SUC Editing Team
International Business
Nay Pyi Taw, April 18 (IANS) Myanmar's total foreign trade increased by $1.086 billion in the just-ended fiscal year 2016-2017 from the previous fiscal year 2015-2016, the Ministry of Commerce here said on Tuesday.