Knowledge Update | Horizon University UAE – Essential Insights

New York, July 20 (IANS) In addition to environmental benefits, shifting away from inefficient and polluting fuel-based lighting -- such as candles, firewood, and kerosene lanterns -- to solar-LED systems can spur economic development as well -- to the tune of two million potential new jobs, a study says.

The researchers analysed how the transition from polluting fuel-based lighting to solar-LED lighting would impact employment and job creation.

"People like to talk about making jobs with solar energy, but it's rare that the flip side of the question is asked -- how many people will lose jobs who are selling the fuels that solar will replace," said researcher Evan Mills from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the US Department of Energy's Office of Science.

"We set out to quantify the net job creation. The good news is, we found that we will see many more jobs created than we lose," Mills noted.

The findings were published in the journal Energy for Sustainable Development.

There are about 274 million households worldwide that lack access to electricity.

But Mills' study focused on the "poorest of the poor", or about 112 million households, largely in Africa and Asia, that cannot afford even a mini solar home system, which might power a fan, a few lights, a phone charger, and a small TV.

Mills found that fuel-based lighting today provides 150,000 jobs worldwide. 

Because there is very little data in this area, his analysis is based on estimating the employment intensity of specific markets and applying it to the broader non-electrified population. He also drew on field observations in several countries to validate his estimates.

He did a similar analysis for the emerging solar-LED industry and found that every one million of these lanterns provides an estimated 17,000 jobs.

These values include employees of these companies based in developing countries but exclude upstream jobs in primary manufacturing by third parties such as those in factories in China. 

Assuming a three-year product life and a target of three lanterns per household, this corresponded to about two million jobs globally, more than compensating for the 150,000 jobs that would be lost in the fuel-based lighting marke, the study said.

Furthermore, Mills' research found that the quality of the jobs would be much improved. 

"With fuel-based lighting a lot of these people are involved in the black market and smuggling kerosene over international borders, and child labour is often involved in selling the fuel," he said. 

"These new solar jobs will be much better jobs -- they're legal, healthy, and more stable and regular," he added.

The new jobs span the gamut, from designing and manufacturing products to marketing and distributing them.

​Tokyo, July 19 (IANS) The 'Pokemon Go' fever that has gripped smartphone users across the globe has led Japanese videogame giant Nintendo to double its value at the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Tuesday.

​Beijing, July 20 (IANS) China will expand its rail network to 150,000 km, including 30,000 km of high speed rail, by 2020, the country's top economic planner said on Wednesday.

​New York, July 19 (IANS) Combining tissues from a sea slug with flexible 3D printed components, researchers have built a "cyborg" robot that may one day help them probe the depths of fresh and saltwater with ease.

​New York, July 20 (IANS) People are 1.3 times more likely to interact with celebrities on photo and video sharing website Instagram than its parent social media platform Facebook, suggests a new survey.

New York, July 17 (IANS) Is your kid finding it difficult to memorise lessons at school? Worry not, as feeding cinnamons, a delicious addition to toast, coffee and breakfast rolls might help improve learning ability, says a study led by an Indian-origin researcher.

The findings showed that the poor learning mice had improved memory and learning at a level found in good learning mice.

"This would be one of the safest and the easiest approaches to convert poor learners to good learners," said lead researcher Kalipada Pahan, professor at Rush University in Chicago, US.

Some people are born naturally good learners, some become good learners by effort, and some find it hard to learn new tasks even with effort.

"Understanding brain mechanisms that lead to poor learning is important to developing effective strategies to improve memory and learning ability," Pahan added.

However, the study did not find any significant improvement among good learners by cinnamon.

"Individual difference in learning and educational performance is a global issue," Pahan said adding, "we need to further test this approach in poor learners. If these results are replicated in poor learning students, it would be a remarkable advance."

The key to gaining that understanding lies in the hippocampus, a small part in the brain that generates, organises and stores memory, the researchers said in the work published online in the Journal of Neuroimmune Pharmacology.

Further, the hippocampus of poor learners showed less CREB -- a protein involved in memory and learning -- and more GABRA5 -- a protein that generates tonic inhibitory conductance in the brain -- than good learners.

The mice in the study were fed ground cinnamon, which their bodies metabolised into sodium benzoate -- a chemical used as a drug treatment for brain damage.

When this sodium benzoate entered their brains, it showed an increased in the levels CREB and decrease in GABRA5 leveld. This, then stimulated the plasticity -- the ability to change -- of hippocampal neurons.

These changes in turn led to improved memory and learning among the mice, the researchers said.

"We have successfully used cinnamon to reverse biochemical, cellular and anatomical changes that occur in the brains of mice with poor learning," Pahan added.​

​New York, July 20 (IANS) A child's brain should get enough and healthy activation even before they enter pre-school for the proper development of learning as well as memory functions, suggests a study.

The research reveals the significance of learning experiences over the first two-to-four years of human life, also known as "critical periods". 

In these periods memories are believed to be quickly forgotten in a phenomenon known as infantile amnesia -- the inability of adults to retrieve episodic memories that took place during the first two-to-four years of life.

"Our findings reveal us that children's brains need to get enough and healthy activation even before they enter pre-school," said lead author Cristina Alberini, Professor at New York University in the US.

"Without this, the neurological system runs the risk of not properly developing learning and memory functions," Alberini added.

Focussing on the brain's hippocampus -- a region of the brain necessary for encoding new episodic memories, the researchers found that the mechanisms of "critical periods" are fundamental for establishing these infantile memories.

During this critical period the hippocampus learns to become able to efficiently process and store memories for long-term.

If the hippocampus was inactive, the ability of younger rats to form latent memories and recall them later by reminders as they got older was diminished. 

"Early in life, while the brain cannot efficiently form long-term memories, it is 'learning' how to do so, making it possible to establish the abilities to memorise long-term," Alberini explained. 

"However, the brain needs stimulation through learning so that it can get in the practice of memory formation -- without these experiences, the ability of the neurological system to learn will be impaired," Alberini noted.

In the study, which appears in the journal Nature Neuroscience, the team compared rats' infantile memory with that when they reached 24-days-old -- when they are capable of forming and retaining long-term memories and at an age that roughly corresponded to humans at six to nine years old.

The infantile memory formation in rats pointed out to the importance of critical periods in early-life learning on functional development of the brain.

Using learning and environmental interventions during a critical period in life may significantly help to address learning disabilities, the researchers concluded.

​London, July 20 (IANS) Last month was the hottest June ever recorded worldwide, and the 14th straight month that global heat records were broken, scientists say.

Global sea temperatures were fractionally higher than for June last year while land temperatures tied, BBC quoted the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as saying.

Its global temperature records date back 137 years, to 1880.

Most scientists attribute the increases to greenhouse gas emissions.

They also say climate change is at least partially to blame for a number of environmental disasters around the world.

The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for June was 0.9 C above the 20th Century average of 15.5 C, the NOAA said in its monthly report.

Last year was the hottest on record, beating 2014, which had previously held the title.​

​Washington, July 17 (IANS) A malicious gaming app called Pokemon Go Ultimate, the first "lockscreen" app has made its way onto the Google Play store, said software security company ESET. The app when downloaded and run is not installed as Pokemon Go but as "PI Network", a report published in the Fortune said. Anyone who ran that app would find their phone completely frozen, forcing them to restart the phone by removing the battery. After rebooting, the PI Network app seemed to disappear, but in fact continued running in the background and generating fake ad clicks, stated Fortune. The Pokemon Go gaming app uses the Global Positioning System (GPS) capabilities of the device in conjunction with Google Maps to place virtual creatures in real world locations, which one then tries to find using your device as a guide. Once in proximity to the placed creature, one then needs to use device's camera to view the creature and try to capture it. ESET also spotted several other malicious apps, including Install Pokemongo and Guide & Cheats for Pokemon Go. The plague of malicious tricks surrounding the augmented-reality game highlights the security risk posed by Android's relatively open app ecosystem. Though the specific apps highlighted by ESET seem to have been removed from Google Play Store, a search found several apps named with variations on Install Pokemon Go. The app, however, has been pulled off from Google Play, ESET reported. One can uninstall the app manually by going to their phone's application manager. The Pokemon Go is available on Google Playstore and Apple's App Store in the US, Japan and Australia, Philippines, New Zealand, Britain and Germany and is coming soon to India, Singapore, Taiwan and Indonesia.

​New York, July 18 (IANS) As the GPS-based Pokemon Go mobile game takes the world by storm, an expert in the US has found that there are health benefits from playing the augmented Reality (AR) smartphone game.

According to Matt Hoffman, clinical assistant professor at the Texas A&M College of Nursing, this quest to "catch 'em all" is great as it pokes people to travel across the land, searching far and wide for a pokemon resulting in regular exercising.

To progress in the game, players known as "trainers" must walk around to find and catch Pokemon and access specific locations called Pokestops -- where Pokéballs and other useful items are collected. Poke eggs are among the things that can be collected at these locations.

Getting to Pokestops, catching different Pokemon and hatching the Poke eggs requires a lot of walking.

"What began as just playing the game has now become a hobby for me that provides certain health benefits," Hoffman said in a university statement.

"I've spent an hour or two at a time venturing around the community to find Pokestops. And, to hatch one egg, a trainer must walk anywhere from one-six miles. There's no doubt about it, I am exercising more as a result of playing the game, and I am enjoying it," added Hoffman who has been affectionately dubbed the "Pokémon Professor" by co-workers.

Hoffman said the game also brings trainers at a certain place in search of Pokemon at Pokestops.

"The game is bringing people together, providing opportunity for social interaction and increasing our sense of belonging which can have a positive impact on our emotional and mental health," Hoffman noted.

Since Pokemon Go is a non-violent game, it also pushes families to walk around playing the game together.

"It encourages parents to go outside with their children while they play. Pokemon Go has the ability to transport families away from an evening on the couch to walking around the neighbourhood," the author added.

Playing the game has also helped people discover new experiences and areas.

Hoffman emphasised players to watch where they walk and be aware of surroundings when playing. "Remember, you should never play Pokemon Go while driving. It's also important to avoid playing in dark, isolated areas -- there have been reports of trainers being robbed and attacked," he noted.​