|By Arabian Post Staff| Marya Group, headquartered in Abu Dhabi, announced an increase to its investment portfolio, bringing the total invested to more than $ 1 billion. Marya Group focuses on making private and public equity investments in cash-generating business with strong fundamentals across core economic sectors that are resilient: education, health care, food and beverage processing as well as real estate. Its investments are centered on […]
Eyeing the opportunity to grow its e-commerce sales, Walmart today announced it will shell out $3.3 billion to acquire the online retailer Jet. Since launching a year ago, Jet has grown rapidly to reach $1 billion in merchandise sales. While Walmart dominates the brick-and-mortar retail ecosystem in the U.S., its online sales trail that of its greatest e-commerce competitor, Amazon. In 2015, Amazon reported net sales of […]
ABU DHABI // A pilot scheme to allow Filipinos working overseas to apply for an exit clearance each time they return home on holiday is to begin next month, officials announced on Monday. Those returning to the same employer and job site and listed on the electronic data base of the Philippine overseas employment administration (Poea) will no longer be required to secure an overseas employment certificate, […]
Quantum computing remains mysterious and elusive to many, but USC Viterbi School of Engineering researchers might have taken us one step closer to bring such super-powered devices to practical reality. The USC Viterbi School of Engineering and Information Sciences Institute is home to the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center (QCC), a super-cooled, magnetically shielded facility specially built to house the first commercially available quantum optimization processors — […]
BREMEN, Germany — Believing he was answering a holy call, Harry Sarfo left his home in the working-class city of Bremen last year and drove for four straight days to reach the territory controlled by the Islamic State in Syria. He barely had time to settle in before members of the Islamic State’s secret service, wearing masks over their faces, came to inform him and his German […]
INTERNATIONAL. New research from Long Finance, sponsored by PwC and conducted by Z/Yen, shows the wholesale insurance* market is enthusiastic about implementing blockchain solutions**. The report is based on interviews with brokers, insurers, reinsurers, regulators and trade bodies from across the global wholesale insurance market. As well as cost reduction and improved efficiency, blockchain could be a transformative technology changing the way the industry operates, enabling revenue […]
DUBAI // Nutritionists have poured cold water on the Kinder chocolate scare that erupted after a watchdog said an ingredient was carcinogenic. Parents who were worried that mineral oil aromatic hydrocarbons were being passed on to children through the chocolate are being reassured after the alarm was raised by German watchdog Foodwatch. While advising against overindulging in chocolate, health experts say the risk from hydrocarbons is low […]
KEFLAVIK, Iceland Marco Streng is a miner, though he does not carry a pick around his base in south-western Iceland. Instead, he keeps tens of thousands of computers running 24 hours a day in fierce competition with others across the globe to earn bitcoins. In the world of the web-based digital currency, it is not central banks that add new money to the system, but rather computers […]
Tech giant Google made a bid to expand its cloud services offerings to big media companies yesterday with the announcement that it has acquired Anvato. The company provides a software platform that automates the encoding, editing, publishing, and distribution of video content across multiple platforms. The Mountain View, Calif. startup has already won over some major media companies on its own, including NBC Universal, Fox Sports, and […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|The coordinated militant attack on the eve of Eid is the biggest challenge yet to Saudi Arabia’s internal security since it crushed an al-Qaeda insurgency a decade ago, according to Bloomberg. With no claims of responsibility, suspicion has fallen on Islamic State, which has vowed to overthrow Gulf rulers they see as betraying Islam. One of the bombings on Monday, near the Prophet’s Mosque […]
Chipmaker Qualcomm is expanding its support for Google’s new mobile virtual reality technology, Project Tango, with today’s announcement that the technology will be supported on its popular Snapdragon 820 processor, along with future processors in the Snapdragon 600 and 800 tier. “Tango is an excellent example of the innovative thinking that delivers valuable next-generation mobile experiences today,” Brent Sammons, senior marketing manager at Qualcomm, wrote on the […]
In a small study looking at pain assessments in adults with sickle cell disease, researchers at Johns Hopkins says overall, those treated long-term with opioids often fared worse in measures of pain, fatigue and curtailed daily activities than those not on long-term opioids. In a report on the new research, published online on June 15 in a special sickle cell disease supplement of the American Journal of […]
During its annual SugarCon conference last week, customer relationship management (CRM) firm SugarCRM unveiled a new machine learning-based offering that’s currently in development: Sugar Intelligence Service. The service, which will be delivered through a Siri- or Cortana-like artificial intelligence (AI) agent called “Candace,” will combine companies’ in-house data with other outside sources to provide predictive analytics and a more 360-degree view of customers. No release date or […]
After relishing a cocktail of cheap crude mixed with profits from fuel sales, Asia’s oil processors are facing their reckoning over a lack of restraint. Profits from turning crude into fuel in Asia since the beginning of April have averaged almost a third lower than levels over the previous six months, and are down 40 percent from the same period a year earlier. That’s already prompted some […]
Living cells are capable of performing complex computations on the environmental signals they encounter. These computations can be continuous, or analogue, in nature — the way eyes adjust to gradual changes in the light levels. They can also be digital, involving simple on or off processes, such as a cell’s initiation of its own death. Synthetic biological systems, in contrast, have tended to focus on either analogue […]
A new 10-core processor from Intel debuted at Computex yesterday, one of four new CPUs the company unveiled. While ostensibly designed for the desktop market, the chips might have more in common with their server-level cousins, both in terms of price and computing power. The 10-core model alone will set you back a cool $1,723, more than enough to buy your own system. The company is promoting […]
Big Blue is teaming up with cloud communication platform Twilio to introduce two new offerings, IBM Watson Message Sentiment and IBM Watson Message Insights. Twilio, which functions as a communication tool for developers and businesses, will make both offerings available as add-ons through its recently announced marketplace, according to IBM. Developers who currently access Watson technology via Bluemix, IBM’s cloud platform, can also use the two new […]
The latest acquisition by Intel could give it a big leg up in the race to develop Internet of Things (IoT) and autonomous driving technology. The chipmaker signed an agreement yesterday to acquire computer vision software company Itseez Inc. The 11-year-old San Francisco-based firm will become part of Intel’s IoT Group (IOTG). “Intel is focused on delivering end-to-end IoT solutions addressing devices, wired and wireless networks and […]
A rare institution in this country, the Future Centre for Special Needs in Abu Dhabi has succeeded in integrating 100 special needs pupils into mainstream schools since it opened its doors in 2000. Children begin trickling into Abu Dhabi’s Future Centre for Special Needs at 8am. Early arrivals play or receive some individual attention. Thirty minutes later, they begin the first group session. “Circle time is different […]
Big Blue has announced that it is now offering the Nvidia Tesla M60 GPU accelerator to enterprise clients in the cloud. IBM said it is the first company to do so, giving companies of all sizes easier and more affordable access to virtual desktop applications without having to skimp on performance. The Tesla M60 (pictured above) is the latest in a line of Nvidia GPUs available through […]
At its I/O Developers Conference this week, Google announced a new product that had been an open secret for several months. The Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) is named after the TensorFlow software it uses for its machine learning programs. In announcing the chip, Google referred to the TPU as an accelerator chip, able to speed up a given task, like data analysis or voice translation. When he […]
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags have proved useful for things like tracking inventory, but they haven’t worked in games and other applications that require fast information processing — until now. A team of researchers from Disney and Carnegie Mellon University have developed a way to use RFID tags for near-real-time interactions with a wide variety of objects. The new system, called RapID, uses probabilistic models to enable computers […]
German tech giant SAP said that it will be expanding the enterprise offerings available on its HANA Cloud Platform for Internet of Things (IoT). Making the announcement at the IoT World 2016 conference being held in Santa Clara, Calif., this week, SAP said the new offerings will be focused on helping enterprises provide new customer outcomes. “SAP is helping customers map their journeys through digital transformation, and […]
DUBAI // New routes will soon open up around conflict zones for flights across the Middle East in an aim to redesign and improve the region’s airspace. With crises raging in Syria and Iraq, commercial flights have been affected with longer routes and more heavier traffic on those routes to avoid war-zones. “The Civil Aviation Authority has weekly meetings to table issues between civilian and military aircraft […]
