Scientists have identified a neutron star that is consuming material so fast it emits more x-rays than any other. Its extreme brightness can only be explained if the star has a complex multipolar magnetic field, the researchers say. (via WSJ)
The US Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday issued sweeping new rules for border security and deportations as part of President Donald Trump’s promised crackdown on illegal immigration. In a pair of memorandums, homeland security secretary John Kelly detailed steps “designed to stem illegal immigration and facilitate the detection, apprehension, detention and removal of aliens who have no lawful basis to enter or remain in the United States”. Mr […]
By recycling silicon sawdust, researchers have created a high performance anode material. (via WSJ)
Whatever route the government chooses for Brexit it will need to cooperate with other countries, especially our EU neighbours, to combat tax avoidance, tax evasion and money laundering. Yet the signs are not very good as the government seems to have chosen non-cooperation. It has snubbed the EU inquiry into the Panama Papers. Last year, a leak of 11.5m documents and 2.6 terabytes of information from the […]
While it’s possible to anticipate the color of light or the pitch of sound, odor defies prediction. New research has taken an important step toward decoding smell, by linking a scent back to a molecule’s chemistry. (via WSJ)
By Robin Emmott | BRUSSELS BRUSSELS U.S. President Donald Trump sent top U.S. officials to Europe with a familiar warning from Washington that allies must spend more on defence, this time with the ultimatum “or else”. But Europeans have tried to deflect the threats with the argument that a commitment to security is not just about spending targets, which diplomats said that U.S. officials did not challenge, […]
Sound travels more slowly than light. Then why do sounds of meteors entering Earth’s atmosphere precede or accompany the sight of them? Researchers believe they have an answer. Source
At least 180 Chinese listed companies will be forced to cancel or scale back planned rights offerings worth $97bn in response to regulations that target excessive fundraising used for dubious acquisitions and financial speculation. The rules come as Chinese regulators are increasingly concerned about the trend of “exit the real, enter the fake” — a phrase used to denote companies abandoning real economic activity in favour of […]
Using super-resolution microscopy, an international research team has revealed, for the first time, how cadherin-based cell-cell contacts are organized. (via WSJ)
By Sumeet Chatterjee and Lawrence White | HONG KONG/LONDON HONG KONG/LONDON HSBC Holdings (HSBA.L) reported a 62 percent slump in annual pre-tax profit that fell way short of analysts’ estimates as the British bank took hefty writedowns from restructuring and pointed to brakes on revenue growth. HSBC shares slid more than 6 percent after the company reported revenues fell by a fifth from 2015, underscoring the challenge […]
Tuesday 08:45 GMT Overview European stocks are easing back after a mixed Asia session as Wall Street looks to re-enter the fray at record levels. The dollar is stronger and Treasury yields are moving up as expectations build of tighter US monetary policy, a scenario that is hurting gold. Hot topic European government bond markets remain a focal point for investors after an opinion poll showed Marine […]
21 February 2017 Dubai – Auerbach Grayson & Company, LLC, a New York-based brokerage firm specializing in global trade execution and exclusive in-depth research on developed, frontier and emerging markets, announced today that it has partnered with Dubai-based Arqaam Capital, the specialist emerging markets investment bank, to provide U.S. investors with greater access to the Middle East and South Africa. Through its exclusive partnership with Arqaam Capital, […]
Researchers were intrigued that living organisms emit small amounts of light resulting during oxidative metabolism, when oxygen is used to create energy by breaking down carbohydrates. The researchers began to think about how detecting this light could have potential for biomedical diagnostics. (via WSJ)
Submitted by David Stockman via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity, General Flynn’s tenure in the White House was only slightly longer than that of President-elect William Henry Harrison in 1841. Actually, with just 24 days in the White House, General Flynn’s tenure fell a tad short of old “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too”. General Harrison actually lasted 31 days before getting felled by pneumonia. And the circumstances were considerably more benign. It seems that […]
Allura Red, a synthetic food and pharmaceutical color widely used within the U.S., boasts special properties that may make it and other food dyes appropriate as sensors or edible probes to monitor foods and pharmaceuticals. A team of researchers recently made this discovery during an extension of their work identifying and characterizing molecules in foods or food ingredients that might provide signals of food quality, stability or […]
Abu Dhabi, February 20, 2017 His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE, in his capacity as Ruler of Abu Dhabi, issued a law to establish the Khalifa University of Science and Technology. The decree renames the university as “Khalifa University of Science and Technology”. The new entity will have an independent legal personality, financial and administrative independence, and full legal competence to […]
Researchers have created an atomic force microscope on a chip, dramatically shrinking the size — and, hopefully, the price tag — of a high-tech device commonly used to characterize material properties. (via WSJ)
A number of seminal papers appeared towards the end of the 20th century calling for more attention to be paid to the human in the security loop. For example, Anne Adams and Angela Sasse’s “Users are not the Enemy” and Mark Ackerman and Lorrie Cranor’s “Privacy critics: UI components to safeguard users’ privacy.” The research field of Usable Security was thereby launched, and quickly garnered interest amongst […]
Does Uber worship business performance at the expense of ethics? That question flared up again at the start of this week, after a former programmer complained about sexual harassment at the car-booking company — and a culture she claimed turned a blind eye to misbehaviour in order to protect high-performing employees. As the world’s most valuable private technology company, Uber is the most prominent start-up to emerge […]
ABU DHABI // Abu Dhabi will increase protected habitats by thousands of square kilometres and rehabilitate dozens of endangered species in a plan to tackle the most pressing environmental issues. By 2020, more than 15 per cent of the emirate’s land and 13 per cent of its water will be legally protected natural reserves. The Environment Agency Abu Dhabi, or Ead, plans to triple rehabilitation and breeding […]
The quaint cobblestone streets of the historic Gastown district of Vancouver belie its status as a fast-growing technology hub. Drawing on links with nearby Seattle, and San Francisco further south, a tech boom in Canada’s third-largest city has pulled in tens of thousands of skilled workers and start-up entrepreneurs in recent years, sparking a fierce fight for the limited supply of office space. Now the commercial centre […]
As the world’s oil traders descend on London this week, the hot subject will be how to keep North Sea Brent, the benchmark for the global oil price, fit for purpose. S&P Global Platts , the oil pricing agency, is trying to execute the biggest overhaul of North Sea oil trading in a decade, with plans to rejig how prices in the region are set ahead of […]
A tourist bus ferrying mostly college students on a camping trip on Monday lost its brakes and hurtled downhill in Tanay, Rizal province, rammed an electric post and left 13 of its passengers and the driver dead, authorities said. Ten of the victims were killed on the spot and four others died in two hospitals, said Tanay disaster response officer Berlito Bati Jr. More than 40 others […]
Some of the world’s biggest sovereign wealth funds are increasingly striking their own private equity deals rather than relying on external fund managers, in a drive to cut costs and gain more control. With some $6.5 trillion in assets, sovereign investors already account for 19 percent of capital committed to private equity, according to data from research firm Preqin. But mega-funds such as the Abu Dhabi Investment […]
