Tag Archives: Globally

Technology

Resident Evil 7 And Skyrim Are Among The Most-Played PlayStation VR Titles Globally

Leave a comment

Sony has revealed some interesting stats about PlayStation VR as it celebrates its fifth anniversary.

According to PlayStation, the top five most played games on the platform since its inception are Rec Room, Beat Saber, PlayStation VR Worlds, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR, and Resident Evil 7 biohazard. Sony also provided a breakdown of the top five titles played in different regions as well. Europe has the exact same list as the global one, while North American players really enjoyed Job Simulator and Firewall: Zero Hour. In Japan, Gran Turismo Sport was quite popular.

“Since the PS VR launch, we have seen a diverse range of unique experiences that showcase a sense of presence we set out to achieve with this platform,” says senior director Isabelle Tomatis.

PlayStation has also reiterated its dedication to virtual reality, highlighting upcoming games such as Moss: Book II, Wanderer, After the Fall, Humanity, Puzzling Places, and Zenith: The Last City. The company also announced that it will be offering three free PlayStation VR games to PlayStation Plus subscribers next month.

Sony is currently working on its next-generation virtual reality headset, which is reportedly using OLED screen technology and launching sometime in late 2022.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

Read original article here

Health

More than 41m dementia cases globally are undiagnosed – study | Dementia

Leave a comment

More than 41 million people living with dementia worldwide have not yet been diagnosed, according to a report by Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI).

Experts say getting diagnosed with the disease is vital, enabling those affected to receive support and treatment, which is more effective the earlier it begins, and to take part in clinical trials.

However, research by McGill University in Montreal, Canada, shows that in some countries as many as 90% of people with dementia have not been diagnosed. The stark findings, revealed in a report published by ADI, suggest that more than 41 million cases globally remain undiagnosed.

Dementia is one of the world’s biggest health challenges. Globally, the number of people living with it is expected to exceed 130 million by 2050.

Paola Barbarino, the chief executive of ADI, said a lack of awareness and stigma within healthcare systems was severely hampering efforts to support people living with dementia.

“This misinformation in our healthcare systems, along with a lack of trained specialists and readily available diagnosis tools, have contributed to alarmingly low diagnosis rates,” said Barbarino, who also serves as a board member of the World Dementia Council.

She said her chief concern was that governments are still unprepared for the predicted future increase in cases. “Frankly, progress has been too slow,” she said.

Prof Serge Gauthier, of the neurology and neurosurgery department at McGill University, said he was expecting a “tsunami of demand for diagnosis”, a trend that would put “extreme pressure” on healthcare systems.

Responding to the report, Richard Oakley, the head of research at the Alzheimer’s Society, said a failure to diagnose all those with dementia had left many people “unable to get the support they so crucially need”.

He said: “Low dementia diagnosis rates were already a global problem, but these new figures show the scale of the crisis. For those who don’t get a diagnosis, this can cause stress, confusion, and leave them vulnerable to the effects of their condition.

“However, current diagnostic tests are expensive, often inaccessible and to make matters worse there’s still stigma around getting dementia, creating additional barriers particularly in some cultures. This has been exacerbated by the pandemic.”

Researchers have developed a two-minute computer test that could enable Alzheimer’s disease to be diagnosed up to five years earlier than by current methods. This would enable patients to begin taking disease-modifying drugs sooner, researchers said.

“The tests we currently use to diagnose Alzheimer’s miss the first 20 years of the disease, which means we are missing huge opportunities to help people,” said Dr George Stothart, of the University of Bath, who led the research.

The new technique involves participants looking at a series of flashing images on a computer screen while wearing an electrode cap. The cap detects subtle changes in brainwaves that occur when remembering an image, which are different in people with Alzheimer’s disease.

Research published in the journal BRAIN suggests the test is able to discriminate between healthy older adults and those with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s with a high degree of accuracy.

“The holy grail of a tool like this would be a dementia screening tool used in middle age for everyone, regardless of symptoms, in the same way we test for high blood pressure,” said Stothart. “We are a long way from that, but this is a step towards that goal.”

Read original article here

Health

Number of people with high blood pressure has doubled globally, large study finds

Leave a comment

That’s even though many cheap and easy treatments exist — from healthier diet and exercise to pills that safely lower blood pressure using a variety of mechanisms.

It’s also easy to measure, but many people are evidently not getting even this basic level of care in rich and poor countries alike, the study published in the Lancet medical journal finds. The result: 8.5 million deaths every year, according to the World Health Organization. High blood pressure causes stroke, heart failure and failure of other organs such as the kidneys.

“We used data from 1990 to 2019 on people aged 30-79 years from population-representative studies with measurement of blood pressure and data on blood pressure treatment,” the global team, led by Majid Ezzati, a global health specialist at Imperial College London, wrote.

“We defined hypertension as having systolic blood pressure (the top number of a blood pressure reading) 140 mm Hg or greater, diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number of a reading) 90 mm Hg or greater, or taking medication for hypertension.”

The researchers looked at data covering 184 countries. The number of people with high blood pressure doubled from 648 million in 1990 to nearly 1.3 billion by 2019, they found.

“Policies that enable people in the poorest countries to access healthier foods—particularly reducing salt intake and making fruit and vegetables more affordable and accessible—alongside improving detection by expanding universal health coverage and primary care, and ensuring uninterrupted access to effective drugs, must be financed and implemented to slow the growing epidemic of high blood pressure in low- and middle-income countries,” Ezzati said in a statement.

Many high-income countries, including Canada, Switzerland, the UK and Spain reported their numbers of people with hypertension at all-time lows, but low- and middle-income countries such as Paraguay and central European countries including Hungary, Poland, and Croatia had high rates. Canada and Peru had the lowest rates of high blood pressure. “Hypertension prevalence was highest throughout central and eastern Europe, central Asia, Oceania, southern Africa, and some countries in Latin America and the Caribbean,” the team wrote.

Overall, just under a third of men and women globally ages 30 to 79 had high blood pressure, the study found.

“The pandemic of cardiovascular disease has received less attention in the last 18 months but reflects concerning worldwide trends in unhealthy lifestyle choices such as high fat, sugar, salt and alcohol intake, sedentary lifestyles with avoidance of exercise, and smoking, all of which lead to higher blood pressure and bad cholesterol levels that cause damage to the blood vessels that supply the heart and brain,” said Robert Storey, a professor of cardiology at the University of Sheffield who was not involved in the study.

Read original article here

World

Malaysia daily cases per million people among highest globally

Leave a comment

A man wearing a face mask as a preventive measures against Covid-19 walks along an empty street in Chinatown.

Wong Fok Loy| SOPA Images | LightRocket via Getty Images

The Covid-19 outbreak in Malaysia has become one of the worst globally.

On a seven-day moving average basis, Malaysia recorded 483.72 confirmed Covid infections per million people on Wednesday — the eighth highest globally and top in Asia, according to the latest data compiled by online repository Our World in Data.

Meanwhile, the country’s daily reported deaths relating to Covid were around 4.90 per million people on Tuesday on a seven-day moving average basis. That’s the 19th highest globally and third highest in Asia, the data showed.

Our World in Data is a collaboration between researchers at the University of Oxford and U.K. non-profit organization Global Change Data Lab.

Malaysia managed to keep the number of infections low for much of 2020. But the country has struggled to tame a surge in cases despite implementing multiple rounds of restrictions and a state of emergency.

Political analysts blame the government’s mishandling of the outbreak as it worsened.

“Malaysia’s response is being hampered by chaotic governance and persistent political infighting,” Joshua Kurlantzick, senior fellow for Southeast Asia at think tank Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in a report.

Malaysia’s political crisis

The Southeast Asian country plunged into political turmoil when former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad unexpectedly resigned in February last year. It paved the way for Muhyiddin to form a government by cobbling together a fragile coalition.

Political opponents have long challenged Muhyiddin’s claim of majority support in the country’s 222-seat parliament. Calls for the prime minister’s resignation — even among his allies — grew louder after Malaysia’s king on Thursday issued a rare rebuke over the government’s handling of the state of emergency.

The king had consented to Muhyiddin’s request for a state of emergency from January to August 1 to manage the country’s surging Covid infections.

Many analysts considered the move an attempt by the embattled prime minister to preserve his political standing, especially when parliament was suspended under the emergency and elections cannot be held.

When parliament reconvened this week, the government surprised the nation by announcing that it had decided to end the emergency effective July 21. The king said the government’s unilateral revocation did not follow constitutional procedure.

Since coming to power, Muhyiddin has sought to avoid parliamentary votes that his political opponents could use as a proxy to a no-confidence vote against his leadership. The Malaysian parliament has never voted on a no-confidence motion.

Covid vaccinations picking up

Despite the political tussle, Malaysian authorities have accelerated the pace of vaccinations in recent weeks. More than 18% of the country’s 32 million population have been fully vaccinated, according to Our World in Data.    

Economists from British bank Barclays estimated that Malaysia — along with Singapore and South Korea — will be among the Asian countries to reach “critical levels” of vaccinations this year.

The Malaysian government said it aimed to inoculate most of the adult population by year-end.

Still, economists said the worsening outbreak and ongoing social-distancing measures have hurt Malaysia’s growth outlook.

Barclays last month cut its 2021 growth projection from 5.5% to 5%. That’s well below the Malaysian central bank’s forecast range of 6% to 7.5%.

Read original article here

Health

COVID deaths, cases rise again globally

Leave a comment

COVID-19 deaths and cases are on the rise again globally in a dispiriting setback that is triggering another round of restrictions and dampening hopes for a return to normal life.

The World Health Organization reported Wednesday that deaths climbed last week after nine straight weeks of decline. It recorded more than 55,000 lives lost, a 3% increase from the week before.

Cases rose 10% last week to nearly 3 million, with the highest numbers recorded in Brazil, India, Indonesia and Britain, WHO said.

The reversal has been attributed to low vaccination rates, the relaxation of mask rules and other precautions, and the swift spread of the more-contagious delta variant, which WHO said has now been identified in 111 countries and is expected to become globally dominant in the coming months.

Sarah McCool, a professor of public health at Georgia State University, said the combination amounts to a “recipe for a potential tinderbox.”

“It’s important that we recognize that COVID has the potential for explosive outbreaks,” warned Dr. David Dowdy, an infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University.

Amid the surge, the death toll in hard-hit Argentina surpassed 100,000. Daily coronavirus deaths in Russia hit record highs this week. In Belgium, COVID-19 infections, driven by the delta variant among the young, have almost doubled over the past week. Britain recorded a one-day total of more than 40,000 new cases for the first time in six months.

In Myanmar, crematoriums are working morning to night. In Indonesia, which recorded almost 1,000 deaths and over 54,000 new cases Wednesday, up from around 8,000 cases per day a month ago, people near Jakarta are pitching in to help gravediggers keep up.

“As the diggers are too tired and do not have enough resources to dig, the residents in my neighborhood decided to help,” Jaya Abidin said. “Because if we do not do this, we will have to wait in turn a long time for a burial.”

In the U.S., with one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, newly confirmed infections per day have doubled over the past two weeks to an average of about 24,000, though deaths are still on a downward trajectory at around 260 a day.

Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the U.S., reported its fifth straight day Tuesday of more than 1,000 new cases.

Tokyo is under a fourth state of emergency ahead of the Summer Games this month, with infections climbing fast and hospital beds filling up. Experts have said caseloads could rise above 1,000 before the Olympics and multiply to thousands during the games.

The spike has led to additional restrictions in places like Sydney, Australia, where the 5 million residents will remain in lockdown through at least the end of July, two weeks longer than planned. South Korea has placed the Seoul area under its toughest distancing rules yet because of record case levels.

Parts of Spain, including Barcelona, moved to impose an overnight curfew. London Mayor Sadiq Khan said masks will be required on buses and trains even after other restrictions in England are lifted next week. Italy warned all those going abroad that they might have to quarantine before returning home.

Chicago announced that unvaccinated travelers from Missouri and Arkansas must either quarantine for 10 days or have a negative COVID-19 test.

Connecticut lawmakers voted Wednesday to again extend Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont’s emergency declarations, despite pushback from Republicans and some Democrats who argued it is time to get back to normal. Among other things, the move keeps in place orders requiring masks in certain settings.

An Alabama military base has ordered troops to show proof of vaccination before they can go maskless as the state sees an uptick in COVID-19 cases, a rise attributed to low vaccination rates. The measure was put in place Tuesday at Fort Rucker, home to the Army’s aviation program.

As troubling as the figures are around the world, they are still well below the alarming numbers seen earlier this year.

Seven months into the vaccination drive, global deaths are down to around 7,900 a day, after topping out at over 18,000 a day in January, according to Johns Hopkins data. Cases are running at around 450,000 a day, down by half since their peak in late April.

WHO acknowledged that many countries are now facing “considerable pressure” to lift all remaining precautions but warned that failing to do it the right way will just give the virus more opportunity to spread.

Pressure is growing worldwide to boost vaccination rates to counter the rise.

“If you have been waiting, if you have been on the fence, sign up and get that shot as soon as possible,” New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Dave Chokshi pleaded.

Eighteen-year-old actress and singer Olivia Rodrigo appeared at the White House on Wednesday as part of an effort by President Joe Biden to persuade more young people. Getting a vaccination is something “you can do more easily than ever before,” she said.

While nearly 160 million Americans have been fully vaccinated, or over 55% of the population, young adults have shown less interest.

Ohio is planning another prize program to encourage vaccinations, and Gov. Mike DeWine urged the government to give the vaccines full approval instead of just emergency authorization to ease people’s doubts.

“The reality is we now have two Ohios,” said Bruce Vanderhoff, the state’s chief medical officer. “An Ohio that is vaccinated and protected on the one hand, and an Ohio that is unvaccinated and vulnerable to delta on the other.”

Michigan already started a COVID-19 vaccine sweepstakes and announced the first four $50,000 winners Wednesday. Bigger prizes, including a $2 million jackpot, are coming.

In Missouri, second only to Arkansas with the worst COVID-19 diagnosis rate over the past week, political leaders in and around St. Louis have stepped up efforts to get people vaccinated through gift cards and by enlisting beauty salons and barbershops to dispense information.

Read original article here

Health

New Covid vaccines needed globally within a year, say scientists | Coronavirus

Leave a comment

The planet could have a year or less before first-generation Covid-19 vaccines are ineffective and modified formulations are needed, according to a survey of epidemiologists, virologists and infectious disease specialists.

Scientists have long stressed that a global vaccination effort is needed to satisfactorily neutralise the threat of Covid-19. This is due to the threat of variations of the virus – some more transmissible, deadly and less susceptible to vaccines – that are emerging and percolating.

The grim forecast of a year or less comes from two-thirds of respondents, according to the People’s Vaccine Alliance, a coalition of organisations including Amnesty International, Oxfam, and UNAIDS, who carried out the survey of 77 scientists from 28 countries. Nearly one-third of the respondents indicated that the time-frame was likely nine months or less.

Persistent low vaccine coverage in many countries would make it more likely for vaccine-resistant mutations to appear, said 88% of the respondents, who work across illustrious institutions such as Johns Hopkins, Yale, Imperial College, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the University of Edinburgh.

“New mutations arise every day. Sometimes they find a niche that makes them more fit than their predecessors. These lucky variants could transmit more efficiently and potentially evade immune responses to previous strains,” said Gregg Gonsalves, associate professor of epidemiology at Yale University, in a statement.

“Unless we vaccinate the world, we leave the playing field open to more and more mutations, which could churn out variants that could evade our current vaccines and require booster shots to deal with them.”

The current crop of vaccines that have received emergency authorisations in different parts of the world is a mix of old and fresh technologies.

Of particular interest is the mRNA approach, employed by the companies Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, which can be tweaked at speed (within weeks or months) to accommodate new variants – however, manufacturing hiccups are always a potential problem.

But crucially, they are unlikely within reach of poorer countries, given that this set of vaccines are far more expensive and have comparatively onerous temperature storage requirements.

Meanwhile, resource-rich countries like the UK and US have administered at least one vaccine dose to more than a quarter of their populations and have secured hundreds of millions of supplies. In contrast, nations such as South Africa and Thailand haven’t even managed to get shots in the arms of 1% of their populations. Some countries are yet to administer their first dose.

Covax – the global vaccine initiative coalition aimed at countering so-called vaccine nationalism – hopes to be able to supply at least 27% of the population of lower-income countries with vaccines in 2021.

“The urgency we see in rich nations to vaccinate their populations, aiming for all adults by the summer, is simply not reflected globally. Instead, we have Covax aiming for perhaps 27% by the end of the year if we possibly can manage it – that is simply not good enough,” said Max Lawson, head of inequality policy at Oxfam and the chair of the People’s Vaccine Alliance, which is calling Covid-19 vaccine developers to openly share their technology and intellectual property to boost production.

“Where is the ambitious global goal? A goal that the science tells us is needed?’ I think that’s the key point – we just don’t see the ambition that would go along with it, widespread recognition that limited vaccination is quite dangerous.”

Read original article here

Business

Alibaba (BABA), Baidu SP (BIDU), International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) – Alibaba’s Ant Leads The Way Globally In Blockchain Patents

Leave a comment

Ant Group, the financial technology affiliate of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA) retained its spot as the largest holder of blockchain patents in 2020, according to a report by International Asset Management that cited data from Clarivate’s Derwent World Patents Index or DWPI.

What Happened: Research published by IAM showed that Ant Group retained its top spot on the index, which aggregates patents filed for both quantity and quality, CoinDesk first reported. The rankings are dominated by Chinese companies, which lead the way in terms of blockchain patent filing volume.

Ant Group filed 586 patents in 2020, which represents a 33% decrease from the 880 patents it filed in the previous year. The company has 2,298 blockchain patents.

Shenzen-based conglomerate Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China Ltd. (OTC:PNGAY) filed 1,215 patents in 2020 to wrest the second spot from Tencent Holdings Limited (OTC:TCEHY).

International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) was the only non-Chinese company in the top ten, taking the fourth spot in the number of blockchain patents last year with 647 filings. Nevertheless, the DWPI score metrics pushed IBM into the second spot behind Ant Group.

Why It Matters: Chinese companies are continuing to expand their research into blockchain technology, which is used in financial technology, supply chain management and the Internet of Things or IoT, among other applications.  

Chinese President Xi Jinping had called for more research and innovation in blockchain technology in 2019. Some of the biggest technology companies in China, including Ant Group, Tencent and Baidu Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU) have representation in the country’s national blockchain committee.
See Also: Jack Ma’s Ant Pledges To Go Carbon Neutral By 2030

Since 2015, Ant Group has been investing significantly in the research and development of blockchain technologies. In July last year, Ant Group unveiled AntChain, a new technology brand for the company’s blockchain-based solutions.

Price Action: Alibaba Group shares closed almost 0.7% lower on Monday at $230.28 and further declined 0.2% in the after-hours session.

Read Next: NFT Sneakers That Don’t Yet Exist Fetched $3.1M In Just Seven Minutes

© 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights
reserved.



Read original article here