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 […]
While it already offers several ways for users to make video calls over various platforms, Google today launched a new phone-based app called Duo that’s designed for simplicity. Available for both Android and iOS smartphones, Google Duo doesn’t require anything more than a phone number to launch once the app is downloaded. Unlike Google’s Hangouts messaging, voice and video calling tool, people don’t even need Google accounts […]
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 […]
By HWAIDA SAAD and ROD NORDLAND August 14, 2016 BEIRUT, Lebanon — Fighting in Aleppo, Syria, killed dozens of civilians over the weekend, a high toll even for a city that has been the scene of intense fighting recently, a monitoring group said on Sunday. Government and Russian airstrikes and artillery bombardment of opposition neighborhoods and the outskirts of the city on Saturday killed 46 civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory […]
DUBAI // A man who raped a 32-year-old British teacher in her flat in the early hours of New Year’s Day will spend the next 10 years in jail. The woman was returning home at 3am when she met the Nigerian salesman, 30, near the lift of the building. “At first I thought he was a tenant,” said the woman, who added that he asked which floor […]
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 […]
|Arabian Post Special| Sale of gold jewellery for cash is emerging as one of the major sources of gold supply and is accounting for almost a third of total supplies to the market this year. According to the World Gold Council, the high price level of gold in recent times has taken its toll on the jewellery sector and conversely recycling has sparked into life. Jewellery consumers […]
Well-understood physical and chemical processes can easily explain the alleged evidence of a secret, large-scale atmospheric spraying program, commonly referred to as “chemtrails” or “covert geoengineering,” concludes a new study from Carnegie Science, University of California Irvine, and the nonprofit organization Near Zero. Some groups and individuals erroneously believe that the long-lasting condensation trails, or contrails, left behind aircraft are evidence of a secret large-scale spraying program. […]
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 […]
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 […]
BAGHDAD — If there were one safe place in Iraq, it should be a hospital nursery, locked down for the night with dozens of babies nestled inside. But here, not even that is a given. When a fire started late Tuesday night in the maternity wing of one of Baghdad’s main hospitals, it quickly engulfed the babies’ room. And then, in another Iraqi tragedy in a horrifying […]
Despite recently weakening consumer sales for both the iPhone and iPad, Apple devices and software have enjoyed a growing presence in business enterprises. Out of net sales of nearly $234 billion in 2015, some $25 billion came through sales to large business customers, according to Apple’s most recent annual report, released in October. While those sales were just a small fraction of the company’s overall revenues, they […]
Normally, individual molecules of genetic material repel each other. However, when space is limited DNA molecules must be packed together more tightly. This case arises in sperm, cell nuclei and the protein shells of viruses. An international team of physicists has now succeeded in artificially recreating this so-called DNA condensation on a biochip. Recreating important biological processes in cells to better understand them currently is a major […]
A solar storm that jammed radar and radio communications at the height of the Cold War could have led to a disastrous military conflict if not for the U.S. Air Force’s budding efforts to monitor the sun’s activity, a new study finds. On May 23, 1967, the Air Force prepared aircraft for war, thinking the nation’s surveillance radars in polar regions were being jammed by the Soviet […]
JERUSALEM — Israeli prosecutors on Tuesday charged a Palestinian employee of the United Nations in the Gaza Strip with providing material assistance to Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the territory, including helping to build a jetty for its military wing. The accusations against the employee, Waheed Al Bursh, came after Israel leveled charges Thursday against a Palestinian employee of World Vision in Gaza, saying he had […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Uzbekistan’s banking system recently received Moody’s endorsement when the agency acknowledged that the country’s banks continue to benefit from a growing economy with well-diversified export revenues. “As a result, banks in Uzbekistan are somewhat shielded from the volatility characteristic of some other countries in CIS,” Olga Ulyanova, a Vice President – Senior Analyst at Moody’s, said in a report. The International Monetary Fund […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|After a period of near desperation, oil is once again getting into the limelight, with crude trading near the highest close in two weeks in the wake of OPEC plans for informal talks to control supply. Qatar Oil Minister Mohammed Al Sada said the other day that OPEC members are in “constant deliberations” on stabilizing the market, although it is not clear if there […]
A man uses a mobile phone in front of an advertisement board bearing the image of Pokemon Go at an electronic shop in Tokyo, Japan, July 27, 2016. Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo SAN FRANCISCO Top video game companies, caught off-guard by the runaway success of Pokemon Go, are wrestling with how to play catch-up to the augmented reality app that has become a worldwide phenomenon. Nearly a dozen […]
A magnifying glass is held in front of a computer screen in this picture illustration taken in Berlin May 21, 2013. Reuters/Pawel Kopczynski/Illustration/File Photo SYDNEY Australia has set up a cyber-intelligence unit to identify terrorism financing, money laundering and financial fraud online, the government said on Tuesday, because of “unprecedented” threats to national security. The measure expands on a major platform of conservative Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, […]
INTERNATIONAL. Wealth-X today released key highlights from its 2015-2016 Billionaire Census revealing a record number of billionaires, globally. The third edition of this preeminent report indicates that there are 2,473 total billionaires in the world, representing a combined wealth of US$7.7 trillion. These figures illustrate a 6.4% and 5.4% increase since 2014, respectively. Driven by Wealth-X’s unparalleled collection of hand curated dossiers on the ultra high net […]
A general view of a Wal-Mart store in Mexico City, April 24, 2012. Reuters/Edgard Garrido/Files Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N), vying to better challenge Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), will pay about $3 billion for internet retailer Jet.com and its innovative pricing software in the largest-ever deal for an e-commerce startup. The deal disclosed on Monday follows a five-year e-commerce acquisition spree in which Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest traditional retailer, […]
When Shahram Amiri emerged from the shadows into the spotlight six years ago, he was a young Iranian scientist who suddenly appeared on YouTube from a safe house, telling a bizarre story of having been kidnapped by the Central Intelligence Agency. Then, in another video that quickly followed, his story changed: He had come to the United States voluntarily to study, but desperately missed his son back […]
LEBANON. Byblos Bank issued today, in cooperation with the Olayan School of Business at the American University of Beirut, the results of the Byblos Bank/AUB Consumer Confidence Index for the second quarter of 2016. The results show that the Byblos Bank/AUB Consumer Confidence Index improved by 5.3% in each of April and May, while it regressed by 1% in June 2016. The Index averaged 36.1 in the […]
