Knowledge Update | Horizon University UAE – Essential Insights

San Francisco, Oct 4 (IANS) Instant mobile messaging app WhatsApp on Tuesday introduced new ways to customise and enhance the photos and videos you share with friends and family around the world.

Toronto, Oct 3 (IANS) The world's tallest wood building at 18 storeys -- about 174 feet -- is set to be completed four months ahead of schedule, showcasing the advantages of building with wood, officials in Canada said.

"This remarkable building, the first of its kind in the world, is another shining example of Canadian ingenuity and innovation, an apt demonstration of how Canada's forest industry is finding new opportunities through technology and innovation -- opening up a world of possibilities for our forest and construction industries," said Jim Carr, Canada's Minister of Natural Resources.

The mass wood structure and facade is for the University of British Columbia's Brock Commons student residence.

The structure was completed less than 70 days after the prefabricated components were first delivered to the site. Construction will now focus on interior elements, with completion expected in early May 2017 -- 18 per cent (or four months) faster than a typical project, a university statement said.

Brock Commons is the first mass wood, steel and concrete hybrid project taller than 14 storeys in the world. The building is expected to welcome more than 400 students in September 2017, the statement added.

The building has a concrete podium and two concrete cores, with 17 storeys of cross-laminated-timber floors supported on glue-laminated wood columns. 

The cladding for the facade is made with 70 per cent wood fibre.

"Brock Commons is living proof that advanced wood products are a terrific material to build with and support efficient assembly," Steve Thomson, Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, said.

New York, Oct 4 (IANS) Facebook has launched Messenger Lite, a stand-alone version of Messenger for Android that offers core features of Messenger for markets with slower than average internet speeds.

​London, Oct 2 (IANS) Holidays are not just for relaxing but can also help to improve your health and should be prescribed for sick people, says a study.

According to the study, being in an environment that stimulates curiosity could turbo-charge the immune system, quoted the Daily Mail.

For the study, the researchers took mice which were given a two-week stay in a large cage packed with toys and the exciting environment appeared to boost their white blood cells, which fight off infections.

"This effect is remarkable because we haven't given them any drugs, all we've done is change their housing conditions," said Fulvio D'Acquisto, Professor at Queen Mary University, London.

"You could say that we've just put them in their equivalent of a holiday resort for two weeks and let them enjoy their new surroundings," D'Acquisto added.

White blood cells are key to auto-immune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis.

The researcher suggested that prescribing a holiday could help the sick recover more quickly -- and even give worn-out office workers a new lease of life.

"We could boost the effects of standard drug treatments that deal with the mechanics of infection, by also offering something environmental that improves a patient's more general well-being. That might be a promising approach for treating chronic diseases," D'Acquisto said.

The study is published in the journal Frontiers in Immunology.

​New York, Oct 3 (IANS) Companies that do invest in building their innovative capacity are rewarded over the long run by higher stock market returns and profits, say researchers including one of Indian-origin.

New York, Oct 2 (IANS) Just as persistent negative thinking is a common trait that characterises most emotional disorders, researchers have found that underlying brain abnormalities in such disorders also have a lot to share.

"This study provides important insights into mechanisms shared across multiple emotional disorders, and could provide us with biomarkers that can be used to more rapidly diagnose these disorders," said study senior author Scott Langenecker, Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the US.

Those disorders, he said, can sometimes take many years to be diagnosed accurately.

The most common difference in white matter structure that Langenecker's group found -- present in every emotional disorder they looked at -- was disruption in a region of the brain that connects different parts of the "default-mode network", which is responsible for passive thoughts not focused on a particular task.

That area is the left superior longitudinal fasciculus or SLF, which also connects the default-mode network and the cognitive control network, which is important in task-based thinking and planning and tends to work in alternation with the default-mode network.

The constant negative thoughts or ruminations associated with most emotional disorders appear to be due to a hyperactive default-mode network, Langenecker said.

"If the part of the brain that helps rein in the default-mode network isn't as well-connected through the SLF, this could explain why people with emotional disorders have such a hard time modulating or gaining control of their negative thoughts," he said.

The findings were published in the journal NeuroImage: Clinical.

​London, Oct 3 (IANS) The pound sterling was the worst performer among major currencies on Monday, after British Prime Minister Theresa May said Britain would kick off the process of separating from the European Union (EU) by the end of March 2017.

​London, Oct 3 (IANS) For people with Type 2 diabetes, heart failure is a common condition. According to a new study, individuals with Type 2 diabetes who had undergone coronary artery surgery prior to their heart failure diagnosis have better chances of survival in the long term.

Over 90 per cent of the patients with Type 2 diabetes have one or more other precursors of heart failure, such as high blood pressure, COPD or atrial fibrillation, diseases to which effective treatments are available that improve the chances of long-term survival, the study said.

Heart failure in people with Type 2 diabetes is often attributable to atherosclerotic coronary artery disease (CAD) -- damage or disease in the heart's major blood vessels, and such people are given either a bypass operation or catheter balloon dilation. 

"Our study indicates that revasculising coronary artery surgery can do much to improve the prognosis," said Isabelle Johansson, doctoral student at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.

The risk of death within eight years of heart-failure onset was much higher if the patient also had Type 2 diabetes, with those who also had CAD showing the worst prognosis. 

However, the prognosis for long-term survival was better for the patients who had undergone coronary artery surgery before developing heart failure, an observation that held even when controlling for factors such as old age or other diseases, which might have affected the decision to perform revasculising surgery, the researchers explained.

"A decision must be taken as to whether this is possible should be made without delay for all patients with combined Type 2 diabetes and heart failure," Johansson added.

For the study, published in the Journal of American College of Cardiology, the team studied data of over 35,000 heart failure patients, over a quarter of whom had Type 2 diabetes.

​New York, Oct 4 (IANS) US tech giant Microsoft is discontinuing its wearable fitness tracker called "Band" and the company has no plans to release "Band 3". "The Band 2 has been wiped completely from Microsoft's online store and is no longer available from Best Buy either," technology website The Verge reported on Tuesday. Consumers can still buy it from Amazon through its remaining inventory. The team behind the "Band" was recently dissolved and the company has also removed the device's software development kit that allows apps to be created for the device from its site. Micrsoft, however, will still support existing "Band 2" owners. The device was criticised for its uncomfortable design. Microsoft introduced a second-generation model with added features last year but it also carried forward many of the original's flaws, the report added.

​New York, Oct 3 (IANS) Meditation can help tame your emotions even if you are not a mindful person, suggests a new study

Mindfulness, a moment-by-moment awareness of one's thoughts, feelings and sensations, has gained worldwide popularity as a way to promote health and well-being. 

"Our findings not only demonstrate that meditation improves emotional health, but that people can acquire these benefits regardless of their 'natural' ability to be mindful," said lead investigator Yanli Lin, a graduate student at the Michigan State University. 

For the study, the team assessed 68 participants for mindfulness using a scientifically validated survey. 

The participants were then randomly assigned to engage in an 18-minute audio-guided meditation or listen to a control presentation of how to learn a new language, before viewing negative pictures (such as a bloody corpse) while their brain activity was recorded.

The participants who meditated -- they had varying levels of natural mindfulness -- showed similar levels of "emotion regulatory" brain activity as people with high levels of natural mindfulness. 

In other words, their emotional brains recovered quickly after viewing the troubling photos, essentially keeping their negative emotions in check, the researchers said.

Further, some of the participants were instructed to look at the gruesome photos "mindfully" while others received no such instruction. 

The people who viewed the photos "mindfully" showed no better ability to keep their negative emotions in check.

According to Jason Moser, Associate Professor at Michigan State University, this suggests that for non-meditators, the emotional benefits of mindfulness might be better achieved through meditation, rather than "forcing it" as a state of mind.

"If you're a naturally mindful person, and you're walking around very aware of things, you're good to go. You shed your emotions quickly," Moser said. 

"If you're not naturally mindful, then meditating can make you look like a person who walks around with a lot of mindfulness," Moser observed. 

But for people who are not naturally mindful and have never meditated, forcing oneself to be mindful 'in the moment' doesn't work. You'd be better off meditating for 20 minutes, the researchers concluded in the paper published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.