|ARABIAN POST SPECIAL| On April 13 this year, Emaar Properties disclosed to the Dubai Financial Market (DFM) that the company has agreed to take steps for a demerger of Emaar and Emaar MGF, the premier Dubai developer’s Indian joint venture. Beginning next week, the Arabian Post launches an investigative series on Emaar’s botched India experiment, which has cost the company billions in write-offs, embarrassing prosecution of the […]
FUJAIRAH // Commuters are contending daily with roadworks, diversions and traffic jams as the emirate proceeds with upgrading its road infrastructure. As part of the Fujairah 2040 Plan, busy streets and motorways are being refurbished, uneven surfaces relaid, and lanes and traffic signals added to cope with the population growth and the increase in the number of vehicles that accompanies it. Although the work meant short trips […]
Are you ready for a smartphone battery that lasts twice as long as your current one? According to researchers, that battery is coming. MIT News reported this week that a new kind of lithium battery is on the way to being commercialized. Called lithium metal batteries, they can reportedly pack the same energy as standard lithium-ion cells in half the size — or put twice as much […]
By Eveline Danubrata and Glenys Kirana | JAKARTA JAKARTA Asian fans of smartphone game Pokemon Go are hunting out the best telecom providers and network gear to overcome the hurdle posed by patchy network signals in their race to capture virtual cartoon characters. From Indonesia to Hong Kong and Cambodia, the wild popularity of Nintendo’s (7974.T) augmented reality app is also driving lifestyle changes for many gamers, […]
UAE. A new study released today by global strategy and management consulting firm A.T. Kearney concludes that autonomous driving will trigger the 21st century’s first major wave of growth. Key findings from the report, ‘How Automakers Can Survive the Self-Driving Era’, are based on interviews with more than 150 automotive decision-makers around the world. A.T. Kearney consultants sought to identify the products, services and partner strategies with […]
INTERNATIONAL. Nearly all of the Chief Strategy Officers (CSOs) surveyed by Accenture (NYSE: ACN) around the world acknowledge that digital disruption will reshape their industries, but very few are equipped to navigate the change. Those who feel most prepared are embracing new strategic alliances, devising more collaborative ways of operating with partners, and making themselves indispensable within a broader ecosystem. For the report ‘Thriving on Disruption’, the Accenture […]
CAIRO — Seven people were killed in Saudi Arabia when a missile fired from Yemen struck a commercial district in the city of Najran, the kingdom’s official news media confirmed on Wednesday. The attack, on Tuesday evening, appeared to have been carried out by Houthi militias in northern Yemen in retaliation for a series of deadly airstrikes by the Saudi-led military coalition on Monday and Tuesday. Those […]
As anyone who has driven a car or crossed a busy street knows, colors play a significant role in influencing people’s interactions with the world around them. And the color red, in particular, elicits the highest level of compliance for conformity with social norms. But according to new research co-written by a University of Illinois expert in product development and marketing, under certain conditions, the color red […]
At some point in their lives, 15 percent of people with diabetes will develop a painful and hard-to-treat foot ulcer. Twenty-four percent of those affected will require a lower-leg amputation because of it. And, in some instances, what seems like a harmless sore might even lead to death. A Northwestern University team has developed a new treatment for this severe and potentially deadly complication of diabetes. Called […]
MOSCOW — Russia launched a fleet of bombers bound for Syria on Tuesday from an Iranian air base, becoming the first foreign military to operate from Iran’s soil since at least World War II. Russian use of the base, with Iran’s obvious support, appeared to set back or at least further complicate Russia’s troubled relations with the United States, which has been working with Russia over how […]
Scientists sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) have genetically modified a common soil bacteria to create electrical wires that not only conduct electricity, but are thousands of times thinner than a human hair. As electronic devices increasingly touch all facets of people’s lives, there is growing appetite for technology that is smaller, faster and more mobile and powerful than ever before. Thanks to advances in […]
As more and more enterprises give up license-based software in favor of faster, more convenient cloud services, the software industry itself is changing dramatically, according to a recent report from the advisory firm PwC (formerly known as PricewaterhouseCoopers). Although legacy software companies that have moved into the cloud are reaping the benefits of the growing “as-a-service” ecosystem, they are also facing some risks. The “PwC Global 100 […]
Engineers at the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland (UMD) demonstrate in a new study that windows made of transparent wood could provide more even and consistent natural lighting and better energy efficiency than glass. In a paper just published in the peer-reviewed journal Advanced Energy Materials, the team, headed by Liangbing Hu of UMD’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering and […]
The long hindwing tails sported by many moths have long been suspected as a strategy to confound predators. The moths are active mainly at night, so they don’t need a visual disguise — they need to avoid nocturnal hunters that navigate by sound. Researchers at the University of Washington and Johns Hopkins University took a detailed look at the acoustics of the common luna moth, to see […]
Apparently, Google is working on a new operating system called Fuchsia but not much is known about it. Early evidence indicates that the new operating system might be a catchall OS that can run on computers, mobile devices and even Internet of Things devices. So far, Fuchsia consists of some work on Google’s code repository and on the GitHub code-sharing Web site. News of the new OS […]
UAE. Based on a new report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) titled Self-Driving Vehicles, Robo-Taxis, and the Urban Mobility Revolution—and prepared in collaboration with the World Economic Forum—consumers around the world are surprisingly knowledgeable about Self-Driving Vehicles (SDVs) and their potential benefits, and, by and large, they are more than willing to give them a try. In fact, the study shows that 70% of consumers in […]
INTERNATIONAL. What would your ideal robot be like? One that can change nappies and tell bedtime stories to your child? Perhaps you’d prefer a butler that can polish silver and mix the perfect cocktail? Or maybe you’d prefer a companion that just happened to be a robot? Certainly, some see robots as a hypothetical future replacement for human carers. But a question roboticists are asking is: how […]
SHARJAH // More than 1,100 fines were issued to taxi drivers in the emirate in the first six months of the year for offences such as failing to turn the meter on and poor personal hygiene. The Sharjah Road and Transport Authority levied 1,179 fines between January and June, up from 801 for the same period last year. Cabbies’ offences included improper parking, dirty uniforms, and failing […]
By SHUAIB ALMOSAWA and ROD NORDLAND August 13, 2016 SANA, Yemen — Airstrikes carried out by warplanes from a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia killed at least 19 people, mostly children, on Saturday in a residential area and a school in northern Yemen, witnesses and hospital officials said. One bombardment in the village of Birken in the Razih District, near Yemen’s northern border with Saudi Arabia, struck the home of […]
Humans have evolved a disproportionately large brain as a result of sizing each other up in large cooperative social groups, researchers have proposed. A team led by computer scientists at Cardiff University suggest that the challenge of judging a person’s relative standing and deciding whether or not to cooperate with them has promoted the rapid expansion of human brain size over the last 2 million years. In […]
By ISABEL KERSHNER August 12, 2016 KIBBUTZ SDE BOKER, Israel — The rare, intimate and reflective interview with Israel’s founding prime minister was filmed nearly 50 years ago, but it never aired. David Ben-Gurion, at 82 and five years out of office, spoke in the six-hour interview of state-building and the biblical prophets that guided him; the security imperative of his young nation and Israel’s quest for spiritual and […]
UAE. While cybersecurity is one of the most prevalent issues of our time, the resulting impact of a cyber incident is still largely unproven. Recognizing the need of business leaders to have clarity around the enterprise-wide effect of such events, Deloitte the global leader in cyber risk advisory services, released: “Beneath the surface of a cyberattack: A deeper look at business impacts,” a risk-based report outlining the […]
INTERNATIONAL. The future for many young people across the Middle East and North Africa looks bleak. The World Bank records that 54% of the working age population in the Middle East and North Africa is unemployed with little prospect of any positive immediate change. An average of 28.7% of 15 to 24-year-olds in the Middle East and 30.6% of those in North Africa are unemployed according to […]
Bomb-blasted roads, frequent blackouts, shortages of basic equipment and an untested consumer market are hardly conditions that make for natural entrepreneurial opportunities. But three Army veterans and one civilian who all served in Afghanistan have taken on those challenges in their new venture. Their company, Rumi Spice, buys saffron from Afghan farmers and sells it to international customers. Their business is part of a small crop of […]
