San Francisco, April 16 (IANS) Facebook on Monday announced to inform millions of its users who have interacted with harmful COVID-19 claims on its platform, by showing messages in their News Feed in the coming weeks. People who have liked, reacted or commented on harmful misinformation about COVID-19 that Facebook have since removed will have such messages landing in their News Feed - connecting them to COVID-19 myths debunked by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the compan

Washington, April 16 (IANS) Social distancing measures such as restrictions on public gatherings may have to remain in lace intermittently for at least a couple of more years to contain the spread of COVID-19 in the absence of vaccine against the virus or dramatic increase in critical care capacities, researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health have warned. These tough measures which have already pushed the world economy into recession may be necessary because th

New York, April 15 (IANS) Long-duration space travel could lead to permanent brain volume changes as well as pituitary gland deformation in astronauts, warns a study. For the study, published in the journal Radiology, the researchers performed brain MRI on 11 astronauts, including 10 men and one woman, before they traveled to the International Space Station (ISS). The researchers followed up with MRI studies a day after the astronauts returned, and then at several intervals

San Francisco, April 12 (IANS) A team from Facebook AI Research (FAIR) has developed a novel low-dimensional design space called 'RegNet' that outperforms traditional available models like from Google and runs five times faster on GPUs. RegNet produces simple, fast and versatile networks and in experiments, it outperformed Google's SOTA EfficientNet models, said the researchers in a paper titled 'Designing Network Design Spaces; published on pre-print repository ArXiv. The r

New Delhi, April 10 (IANS) The downswing in smartphone industry had already started before lockdowns in countries like India and with retail stores now shut, online channels selling essential items like groceries and consumers in no mood for device replacement, the slowdown will be deep and last longer than in China, a new report said on Friday. The smartphone market in China saw a sharp hit in January and February but was already recovering before the end of March as supply ch

San Francisco, April 10 (IANS) Microsoft has announced three-months paid parental leave for its workers are schools are shut and parents are learning to cope with children taking online classes at home. According to a CNN report on Friday, the tech giant has given two options to its workforce: Take a 12-week leave at one go or few days in a week. Microsoft has called this initiative "12-Week Paid Pandemic School and Childcare Closure Leave" which is meant to "give our employ

San Francisco, April 9 (IANS) In a weird move apparently to bring in more ad dollars, Twitter has rolled back a privacy setting that allowed users to stop sharing some personal data with its advertisers, saying the update will help the company "continue operating as a free service." Users in India and elsewhere received the pop-up message late Wednesday, which said that "the control you have over what information Twitter shares with its business partners has changed." "Speci

New Delhi, April 8 (IANS) Leveraging the power of "Smart Tech" -- 5G, Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0 -- can help India create an efficient crisis management system which can ensure minimal impact due to any man-made or natural crisis, a new report from market research firm techARC said on Wednesday. These technologies can help create an automated end-to-end supply chain for consumers with minimal failure chances, said the report. "No one can afford to pause a coun

San Francisco, April 7 (IANS) In a strong message for tech giants as new coronavirus continues its unabated growth globally particularly in the US, Microsoft is planning to make all its events – internal as well as external – digital-only till July 2021.   According to a report in The Verge on Tuesday, the online-only focus is now extending to far more events over the next year.   "In light of the challenges presented by COVID-19, Microsoft has been closely mo

San Francisco, April 7 (IANS) A team of US scientists has found a new way to kill pancreatic cancer cells by disrupting their cellular pH equilibrium – a discovery that can herald a new approach to treat the deadliest form of cancer. The study, published in Cancer Discovery, reports how depleting an ion transport protein lowers the pH to a point that compromises pancreatic cancer cell growth. Pancreatic cancer cells have a constant need for energy to support their growth a

New Delhi, April 7 (IANS) Most organisations have seen a rise in security threats and attacks during the coronavirus pandemic, a new survey by cybersecurity firm Check Point said on Tuesday. While 71 per cent of those IT and security professionals who were surveyed reported an increase in security threats or attacks, 61 per cent of respondents said they were concerned about security risks of changes made to enable remote work. Phishing attempts (55 per cent) and websites cla

A 3D printed Facebook logo is seen in front of displayed coronavirus disease (COVID-19) words in this illustration taken March 24, 2020. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration   SAN FRANCISCO, April 7 (Reuters) - Facebook Inc said on Monday it would start surveying some U.S. users about their health as part of a Carnegie Mellon University research project aimed at generating "heat maps" of self-reported coronavirus infections.   The social media giant will display a link

San Francisco, April 6 (IANS) Apple has sourced 20 million face masks which it will donate to the governments at all levels starting this week, CEO Tim Cook said on Monday, adding that the company is also working on designing and producing face shields for use by front-line medical workers. In a video posted on Twitter, Cook said this is a truly global effort and Apple is working continuously and closely with governments at all levels, to ensure these are donated to places of t

London, April 5 (IANS) The COVID-19 lockdowns globally have not only made air breathable or rivers clean but have also resulted in the way our Earth moves, as researchers now report a drop in seismic noise (the hum of vibrations in the planets crust) because transport networks, real estate and other human activities have been shut down. According an article in the journal Nature, efforts to curb the spread of coronavirus mean that the planet itself is moving a little less, whic

New York, April 5 (IANS) To meet the critical shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare and other front line workers battling the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers in the US have designed low-cost plastic face shields which are being made available to manufacturers. K+K Thermoforming, a company based in Southbridge, Massachusetts, is now producing the first order of 80,000 shields placed by the Face Shield COVID-19 Response Team at University of Massachusetts

New York, April 4 (IANS) To help panic attack sufferers during the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, researchers have developed an application 'PanicMechanic' that adapts biofeedback-like monitoring so it can be used on a mobile phone to manage their anxiety. Biofeedback is the process of gaining greater awareness of many physiological functions of one's own body, commercially by using electronic or other instruments, and with a goal of being able to manipulate the body's

Hyderabad, April 3 (IANS) Vaccine maker Bharat Biotech is developing a unique intranasal vaccine for Coronavirus. An international collaboration of virologists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the vaccine companies FluGen along with Bharat Biotech has begun the development and testing of a unique vaccine against Covid-19 called CoroFlu, Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech announced on Friday. CoroFlu will build on the backbone of FluGen's flu vaccine candidate known as

San Francisco, April 2 (IANS) Slammed for the lack of users privacy and security by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and cybersecurity experts, video meeting app Zoom is also prone to hacking, a new report has claimed, saying an unpatched bug can let hackers steal users Windows password. The �Zoom client for Windows' is vulnerable to the 'UNC path injection' vulnerability that could let remote attackers steal login credentials for victims' Windows systems, repo

A woman wearing a protective mask uses her mobile phone, as a coronavirus outbreak continues to grow in northern Italy, in Turin, Italy on February 27, 2020. (REUTERS File Photo)   BERLIN, April 1 (Reuters): A group of European experts said on Wednesday they would soon launch technology for smartphones to help trace people who had come into contact with those infected with coronavirus, helping the health authorities act swiftly to halt its spread.   The

Varanasi, April 1 (IANS) Women researchers at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) have developed a new testing method for COVID-19. The team has already patented the method. According to reports, a group of women scientists at the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, Institute of Science, Banaras Hindu University, have developed a novel test method-based on RT PCR (Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction) for COVID-19 with 100 per cent accuracy. Geeta Rai, the