Knowledge Update

​New York, Jan 18 (IANS) Twitter has finally shut down the Vine app service, revamping it into Vine Camera that will let users shoot 6.5 seconds looping videos which can be later uploaded.

​London, Jan 18 (IANS) A month after photo-sharing app Instagram launched live video streaming in the US, the feature has now been expanded to Britain.

According to a report in Engadget, people in Britain can now swipe across into the camera and select "Live" mode.

​New York, Jan 18 (IANS) Microsoft has acquired Sweden-based company Simplygon to accelerate innovation in enabling 3D for everyone.

Developer of automatic 3D data-optimisation solutions, Simplygon was developed by Donya Labs AB, a privately-held company based in Sweden.

​Agartala, Jan 18 (IANS) The railways will launch a train for religious tourists on February 17 that will originate in Guwahati and cover shrines in West Bengal and Odisha, it was announced on Wednesday.

The Aastha Circuit Tourist Train will be jointly operated by the Northeast Frontier Railway and the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corp.

It will "take travellers to a mix of popular pilgrimage destinations across the eastern part of the country at affordable rates", a railway official said.

The train will cover Gangasagar in West Bengal, Sri Swami Narayan temple, Kalighat and Birla temple in Kolkata, Jagannath temple and Konark temple in Puri district and Lingaraj temple in Bhubaneswar.

The train will run from Guwahati and will return in six nights and seven days. A round trip will cost Rs 6,161.

Beijing , Jan 17 (IANS) China on Tuesday announced more measures to attract foreign investment, promising easier access and better environment.

Foreign firms will face fewer restrictions when entering service, manufacturing and mining sectors, said a State Council document, according to Xinhua news agency.

​London, Jan 18 (IANS) British Prime Minister Theresa May said Britain was to leave the European Union's single market but would pursue ambitious new trade agreements.

During her eagerly-awaited Plan for Britain speech at Lancaster House in London on Tuesday, the Conservative leader outlined the government's 12-point program of goals they

​The relationship between gender and language had been one of the most debated topics since the beginning of women`s movement in the late 1960s. The movement that had tried to look at the representation of gender in different fields. More specifically, the concept of gender and language is always associated with the differences between women and men in terms of the way the speech is structured and the way language is used. Thus, and because of the social norms and what every society dictates on its individuals, these differences between men and women`s speech were omnipresent across a range of languages. In this article an attempt will be made to inspect some of the gender differences common in men`s and women`s speeches.

​New York, Jan 18 (IANS) Vision deterioration in astronauts is likely owing to the lack of a day-night cycle in intracranial pressure, say scientists, adding that using a vacuum device to lower pressure for part of each day might prevent the problem.

To study how zero-gravity conditions affect intracranial pressure, researchers from University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre recruited volunteer patients who had had a port permanently placed in their head as part of treatment for cancer. 

The ports provided a way for researchers to measure intracranial pressure. 

NASA flights then flew the eight volunteers one by one on steep up-and-down maneuvers (parabolic flights) that created 20-second intervals of weightlessness. 

The researchers measured intracranial pressure during the zero-gravity intervals and compared these with intracranial pressure during standard times of sitting, lying face upward (supine), and lying with head inclined downward.

The findings showed that intracranial pressure in zero-gravity conditions, such as exists in space, is higher than when people are standing or sitting on Earth, but lower than when people are sleeping on Earth. 

"These challenging experiments were among the most ambitious human studies ever attempted and changed the way we think about the effect of gravity - and its absence - on pressure inside the brain," said senior author Dr Benjamin Levine, Professor of Internal Medicine.

It suggests that the constancy of pressure on the back of the eye causes the vision problems astronauts experience over time.

"The information from these studies is already leading to novel partnerships with companies to develop tools to simulate the upright posture in space while astronauts sleep, thereby normalising the circadian variability in intracranial pressure," added Dr Levine.

"The idea is that the astronauts would wear negative pressure clothing or a negative pressure device while they sleep, creating lower intracranial pressure for part of each 24 hours," noted first author Dr Justin Lawley in a paper appeared in the Journal of Physiology.

​New York, Jan 18 (IANS) Fungal infections that are often poorly diagnosed worldwide causes doctors to over-prescribe antibiotics, increasing harmful resistance to antimicrobial drugs, resulting in 1.5 million deaths a year, according to a study.

Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to global health, according to the World Health Organization. 

The study showed that inadequate attention by physicians to fungal infection is the major cause failure of antibacterial treatment. 

"If we're trying to deliver globally on a comprehensive plan to prevent antimicrobial resistance and we're treating blindly for fungal infections that we don't know are present with antibiotics, then we may inadvertently be creating greater antibiotic resistance," said lead author David Perlin, Rutgers University in New Jersey, US.

Fungal infections, often undiagnosed, result in 1.5 million deaths a year, said researchers from the Global Action Fund for Fungal Infections (GAFFI) - a Britain-based organisation to promote global awareness of fungal disease.

"Fungal disease diagnostics are critical in the AMR fight and will improve survival from fungal disease across the world," added David Denning, Professor at the University of Manchester.

Inexpensive, rapid diagnostic tests are available for important fungal infections but are not being widely used.

Better training is needed to encourage health care practitioners to test for fungal infections so the correct drugs are administered.

Paying closer attention to underlying fungal infections is necessary to reduce drug resistance, Perlin said.

The study was published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

​London, Jan 17 (IANS) The Bank of England is keeping a close watch on Britain's consumer spending amid signs of households dipping into their savings and amassing debts to keep spending in the face of rising inflation, media reports said.