Knowledge Update
Horizon University College UAE – Essential Insights
Knowledge update and Industry update at Horizon University College (HUC) is an online platform for communicating knowledge with HUC stakeholders, industry, and the outside world about the current trends of business development, technology, and social changes. The platform helps in branding HUC 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
Accounting & Finance
Berlin, Nov 15 (IANS) The German economic growth rose slightly in the third quarter of 2016, official data showed on Tuesday.
Germany's gross domestic product (GDP) increased by 0.2 per cent quarter on quarter, Xinhua news agency quoted German federal statistics office Destatis as saying.
SUC Editing Team
Information Systems
San Francisco, Nov 16 (IANS) At a time when governments and enterprises the world over are brainstorming over ways to secure their data on the Cloud platform, a right mix of security in both hardware and software is the key to ward off hackers and minimise cyber attacks, a top security expert has reiterated.
SUC Editing Team
International Business
London, Nov 16 (IANS) Brexit could be delayed by months, even as long as two years, after a Supreme Court judge of Britain suggested that "comprehensive" legislation was required to trigger Article 50.
SUC Editing Team
Information Systems
San Francisco, Nov 16 (IANS) In a move to "democratise" artificial intelligence (AI) and making it accessible to everyone, Microsoft has teamed up with OpenAI, a non-profit AI research organisation co-founded by Elon Musk.
SUC Editing Team
Accounting & Finance
New York, Nov 16 (IANS) Set to become one of the highest-profile stock debuts along with Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba and social media giant Facebook, photo and video sharing app Snap Inc has filed paperwork for an initial public offering (IPO) that may value the messaging platform at as much as $25 billion, media reported.
SUC Editing Team
Information Systems
New York, Nov 16 (IANS) Researchers at The Rockefeller University in New York said they discovered two promising new antibiotics by sifting through the human microbiome with the help of a software.
Super User
Lifestyle and Trends
London, Nov 16 (IANS) Love to binge on fatty foods such as oily samosas and cheese-laden pizzas? Beware, as a new study warns that such children may be at risk of developing cognitive and psychiatric problems such as schizophrenia or Alzheimer's disease in their adulthood.
According to the study, diets rich in fat deplete the levels of a key protein known as reelin which help synapses in the brain to work properly. This hampers behavioural flexibility and memory. Low levels of reelin have been associated with a higher risk of developing Alzheimer's disease in later life.
"These changes from a young age onwards are more the result of the fatty foods themselves, and the impact they have on young brains, rather than arising from the mere fact of being obese," said Urs Meyer from ETH Zurich in Switzerland.
The authors focused on a prefrontal cortex -- a brain region -- associated with the planning of complex actions and decision making, expressing one's personality and controlling one's social behaviour.
Adolescents eating high-fat diets were found to have cognitive deficits due to the immature character of the prefrontal cortex during this time frame.
"We saw that plasticity in the prefrontal cortex was impaired in animals fed high-fat foods during adolescence and quite remarkably we then observed that when restoring reelin levels, both synaptic plasticity and cognitive functions went back to normal," explained Pascale Chavis from the INMED Institute in France.
A careful nutritional balance during this sensitive period is pivotal for reaching the full capacity of adult prefrontal functions, the researchers said, in the paper published in the journal "Molecular Psychiatry".
SUC Editing Team
Travel and Tourism
Abu Dhabi, Nov 16 (IANS/WAM) The United Arab Emirates and France will cooperate to protect cultural heritage during armed conflicts.
This initiative will be launched by Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, and Francois Hollande, President of France, it was announced at the Safeguarding Endangered Cultural Heritage Conference here.
The conference is being organised in response to the growing threats to some of the world's most important cultural resources arising from sustained periods of armed conflicts, acts of terrorism and illicit trafficking of cultural property.
The systematic destruction or looting of historic sites and monuments representing civilisations that go back millennia, like in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Mali, and throughout the world, are among the cases that have motivated the UAE and France to partner and to support Unesco's global mandate to protect cultural heritage during armed conflicts, according to Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority.
Super User
From Different Corners
Toronto, Nov 16 (IANS) Depressive symptoms in women during and after pregnancy are linked to reduced thickness of the cortex -- the outer layer of the brain responsible for complex thought and behaviour -- in preschool-age kids, says a new study.
"Our findings underscore the importance of monitoring and supporting mental health in mothers not just in the post-partum period, but also during pregnancy," said lead researcher Catherine Lebel of the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada.
The findings, published in the journal Biological Psychiatry, suggest that a mother's mood may affect her child's brain development at critical stages in life.
Eighteen percent of women experience depression some time during pregnancy, and both peri-natal and post-partum depression have been associated with negative outcomes in children.
But the associations between maternal depression and abnormal brain structure in kids at this age was not known.
For the study, the researchers screened 52 women for depressive symptoms during each trimester of pregnancy and a few months after the child was born.
The women ranged in the presence of symptoms, some with no or few symptoms, and some meeting the screening criteria for depression.
When the children reached about 2.5 to 5 years of age, the researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure their brain structure.
Women with higher depressive symptoms tended to have children with thinner frontal and temporal areas, cortical regions implicated in tasks involving inhibition and attention control.
The researchers also found an association between depressive symptoms and abnormal white matter in the frontal area, the fiber tracts connecting the region to other areas in the brain.
These associations were only found when symptoms occurred during the second trimester and post-partum, suggesting these periods are particularly critical times for child brain development.
Abnormalities in brain structure during critical periods in development have often been associated with negative outcomes, such as learning disabilities and behavioural disorders, the researchers said.
Super User
From Different Corners
Toronto, Nov 16 (IANS) Exercise may help improve gait, balance and reduce risks of falls in individuals living with Parkinson's disease, researchers say.
Parkinson's Disease -- a neurodegenerative disease that impacts movement, often including tremors -- affects nearly seven to 10 million persons around the world, according to the Parkinson's Disease Foundation.
Despite the progressive nature of the disease, people living with Parkinson's disease can expect to improve their physical condition by being more physically active, the researchers said.
"Exercise should be a life-long commitment to avoid physical and cognitive decline, and our research shows that this is also true for individuals with Parkinson's disease," said Christian Duval, Professor at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal in Canada.
The study found that exercise in Parkinson's disease patients majorly benefitted physical capacities -- strength, flexibility --, physical and cognitive functional capacities -- gait, mobility, cognitive functions.
The physical activity was also effective for limb strength, endurance, flexibility or range of motion, motor control, and metabolic function in patients with Parkinson's disease.
Exercise showed nearly 67 per cent improvement in upper limb strength, the researchers explained.
However, physical activity seems less efficient at improving clinical symptoms of Parkinson's disease -- rigidity, tremor, posture alterations -- and psychosocial aspects of life -- quality of life and health management --, with only 50 per cent or less of results reporting positive effects.
The impact of physical activity on cognitive functions and depression also appeared weaker, the researchers reported the in the paper published in the Journal of Parkinson's Disease.