ABU DHABI // Pupils at Indian curriculum schools in the UAE outperform those in Kerala but are less able to handle stress, and less socially active and independent, a new study suggests. Psychologists Dr Sreethi Nair and Dr Smitha Dev interviewed and observed more than 400 pupils in their final years of high school in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Umm Al Quwain and Ajman, and youngsters from […]
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduces a new messenger platform at the F8 summit in San Francisco, California, on March 25, 2015 Facebook on Monday began letting interactive “bots” inside its Messenger service tap into analytic capabilities once reserved for the social network, ramping up the potential to earn money from e-commerce. The move comes as Facebook is under pressure to profit from services such as Messenger, WhatsApp […]
India’s transport ministry has proposed allowing drivers to sign up for organ donation in case they become some of the hundreds of thousands of people who die after being caught up in accidents on the country’s roads. The South Asian nation has a huge gap in demand and supply of organs. Many people are unwilling to donate relatives’ organs due to religious beliefs, because they don’t understand […]
By Se Young Lee and Hyunjoo Jin | SEOUL SEOUL The heads of nine of South Korea’s top conglomerates controlling revenue equivalent to half the country’s economy face an unprecedented televised grilling by lawmakers on Tuesday, as the glare from a widening political scandal falls on Korea Inc. A parliamentary panel is investigating whether the so-called chaebol, which include the heavyweight Samsung and Hyundai Motor Groups, were […]
Mercedes will not punish triple world champion Lewis Hamilton for defying orders at the season-ending Abu Dhabi Formula One Grand Prix, the team’s non-executive chairman Niki Lauda has said. In the wake of team mate Nico Rosberg’s dramatic retirement five days after winning the title, the Austrian recognised the situation had changed. “There is no need to say anything to Lewis,” he told the Mail on Sunday. […]
The cashless society is catching up to all of us. As SHTFPlan.com’s Mac Slavo notes, Most of Europe has shifted that way, and now India is forcing the issue. In the United States, people are being acclimated to it, and may soon find that no other option is practical in the highly-digitized online world. Once that takes hold, the banksters, bureaucrats and hackers will have total […]
By Nichola Saminather and Wayne Cole | SINGAPORE/SYDNEY SINGAPORE/SYDNEY The euro was under the gun on Monday, skidding to a 20-month low after Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said he would resign following a stinging defeat on constitutional reform that could destabilise the country’s shaky banking system. The single currency, which slumped to as low as $1.0505 EUR= in early Asian trade after opening at around $1.0685, […]
Don’t worry about the robots, worry about the humans. Image: iStock There’s a huge difference between the modest aims of the artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning being used today, and the grand ideas of creating an artificial general intelligence that could match — and then rapidly exceed – the capabilities of a human mind As they develop, AI and machine learning will be able to […]
Italians and Austrians headed to the polls in closely watched votes on Sunday that will gauge the strength of Europe’s populist and extreme right political parties. Italy’s constitutional referendum on Sunday will determine the political future of prime minister Matteo Renzi and test anti-establishment parties in the eurozone’s third-largest economy. The plebiscite on Mr Renzi’s flagship overhaul — which would shrink the powers of the Italian senate […]
Bizarrely enough, it’s difficult to determine what constitutes a “small business” in the United States. The US Small Business Administration has a table of standards [PDF] that ranges from about 250 to over a thousand employees. On the other hand, the Affordable Care Act kicks in certain requirements for businesses with over 50 employees. So, what exactly is small? When I researched my book, How To Save […]
Shortly after Marvel vs. Capcom 3 developer Ryota Niitsuma said that the next installment in the crossover fighting game franchise is not in the works, rumors surfaced that Marvel vs. Capcom 4 would be announced at Sony’s PlayStation Experience 2016. It seems that the rumors turned out to be true. The next game is not titled Marvel vs. Capcom 4 though, as it will instead be released as Marvel vs. […]
Sennheiser’s new MB 660 UC wireless headset is a serious piece of kit in many respects. A chunky headset with large ear cups and a solid, no-nonsense headband, it’s designed to take a few knocks — both in the office and at home. When it needs to travel, the MB 660 UC sits in a tough, zippable carry case. The package will consume a fair amount of […]
By Yun Hwan Chae and Nataly Pak | SEOUL SEOUL As protesters march through Gwanghwamun Square in downtown Seoul, the centre stage of huge weekly demonstrations calling for South Korean President Park Geun-hye to step down, nearby restaurants hustle to prepare for a busy night. Many bars and restaurants in the area, home to government offices and near the presidential Blue House, have been doing roaring business […]
In June, speaking at a former steelworks in western Pennsylvania that now processes scrap aluminium, Donald Trump promised a bright future for US steel if he became president. “It will be American steel that will fortify American’s crumbling bridges. It will be American steel that sends our skyscrapers soaring into the sky,” he said. “We are going to put American-produced steel back into the backbone of our […]
It’s becoming an increasingly difficult chore trying to scour the App Store for decent apps given its very saturated library. A plethora of excellent apps intermingle with shovelware, and it’s often a tall order to sort the ones worthy of downloading from the ones that aren’t. A tall order, sure, but not impossible. Here’s a chief list of the best iPhone apps for 2016. Evernote Evernote has struggled […]
Apple has for the first time publicly acknowledged its plans to develop self-driving cars, with a letter that urges the US highways regulator to promote “fair competition” between newcomers to the automotive industry and traditional manufacturers. In an unusually direct statement accompanying the letter, an Apple spokesman confirmed its work on autonomous systems that could be used to transform “the future of transportation”. Apple’s letter touts the […]
In London last month, Arabian Business was treated to a behind-the-scenes explanation of how in March Google’s AlphaGo computer programme thrashed the world’s best player at the ancient board game Go. The match represented a breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) research being undertaken by Google’s DeepMind since the start-up was acquired for a reported $400m in 2014. Go involves two contestants moving black and white stones on […]
Dining in the dark Eating without looking first hit the culinary scene in 1999 when a blind man in Switzerland opened Blindekuh in Zurich, the world’s first restaurant where diners ate their meals in the dark. Usually, eating is an act that involves all the senses. When you lose one of the most important ones – sight – the others are heightened, leading to an extraordinary dining […]
By Brad Haynes | CHAPECO, Brazil CHAPECO, Brazil The Brazilian town of Chapeco, its buildings draped in the green colors of its devastated soccer club, prepared on Saturday to receive the bodies of victims of an air disaster in Colombia that killed 71 people and wiped out the team. The crash on Monday night shocked soccer fans the world over and plunged Brazil, South America’s biggest nation, […]
First, write out the numbers one to 100 in 10 rows. Cross out the one. Then circle the two, and cross out all of the multiples of two. Circle the three, and do likewise. Follow those instructions, and you’ve just completed the first three steps of an algorithm, and an incredibly ancient one. Twenty-three centuries ago, Eratosthenes was sat in the great library of Alexandria, using this […]
A digital battle is being waged over the huge amount of technical data that will be stored in autonomous vehicles Just like credit cards, smartphones or search engines, autonomous cars will carry a trove of information about their owners as they make driving more comfortable, raising new concerns about privacy. Automakers are engaged in a fierce race to develop the first driverless car, which experts say should […]
This week was full of Big Data news, including new releases, a brand new product, a new acquisition and an update to one of the major Hadoop distros. Let’s get a survey of what was announced and then see if we can’t draw a conclusion or two. A big driver for much of the news was this week’s Amazon Web Services re:Invent conference, providing an opportunity for […]
Starbucks Chief Executive Howard Schultz’s decision to step down is unlikely to hamper growth at the world’s biggest coffee chain as his successor Kevin Johnson is well suited to take the helm, analysts said. Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O) said on Thursday that Schultz would step down as CEO on April 3 to focus on new high-end coffee shops, handing the top job to Chief Operating Officer Johnson, a […]
The notion of machine-powered facial recognition is one that predates today’s actual technology for it by many years, thanks to robot POV shots from sci-fi films such as The Terminator and Robocop. But while many advances have been made, facial recognition software is far from infallible, as researchers from Carnegie Mellon University recently found. Here are the details from a report in Quartz: Researchers showed they could […]
