improve | Common News Update

Sep72021 by adminNo Comments

Nanofibers improve face mask filtration, but must be replaced often

Science

Sept. 7 (UPI) -- New research, published Tuesday in the journal Physics of Fluids, suggests the use of nanofibers can improve the filtration efficiency of face masks, but they must be replaced fairly frequently. With COVID-19 case and hospitalization rates spiking across the United States, health officials are once again encouraging people to wear face masks indoors, regardless of vaccination status. Since the pandemic began, health experts and material scientists have been trying determine the best ways to filter out viral particles. While N95 masks remain the standard for healthcare workers, single-use masks aren't always practical for the general public. While several studies have shown multiple cloth layers -- or combinations of cloth, silk and chiffon -- provide significa...

Apr32021 by adminNo Comments

Individual loan business continues to improve in Jan-Mar: HDFC

Finance

Mortgage lender HDFC Ltd on Saturday said the company's individual loan business continued to exhibit improvement in the January-March quarter 2021 and loans worth Rs 7,503 crore were assigned to its banking subsidiary. "The individual loan business continued to see strong improvements during the quarter ended Match 31, 2021. "During the quarter, pursuant to the buyback option embedded in the home loan arrangement between the Corporation and HDFC Bank, the Corporation assigned loans to the bank amounting to Rs 7,503 crore," HDFC said in a regulatory filing. In the year ago same quarter ended March 2020, such loan assigned to HDFC Bank stood at Rs 5,479 crore. The individual loans sold in the preceding 12 months (April-March) amounted to Rs 18,980 crore (previous year Rs 24,127 crore), it s...

Feb112021 by adminNo Comments

Law enforcement diversity may improve policing, study shows

Technology

CHICAGO -- In the last decade, high-profile police killings — including George Floyd in 2020 — have shaken the nation and led to widespread protests and calls for reform, including hiring more nonwhite and female officers.But there was little research to back that up. Now, a new study published Thursday in the journal Science, suggests that diversity in law enforcement can indeed lead to improvements in how police treat people of color.“It’s a system that very clearly needs reforming,” said study co-author Dean Knox, an assistant professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “We just haven’t had good data on what reforms work.”For the paper, Knox and his colleagues analyzed data on nearly 3 million Chicago Police Department patrol assignments. They found that ...

Dec162020 by adminNo Comments

Quantum insulators could improve speed, efficiency of digital information transfer

Science

Dec. 16 (UPI) -- The phenomenon known as the quantum anomalous Hall effect describes the ability of electrons to move freely along at the outer edges of materials. Electrons propelled by the QAH effect can travel at high speeds without losing energy. For the first time, researchers have generated the QAH effect in a multilayered insulator, creating a kind of multilane highway, across which electrons can travel. Advertisement The breakthrough, described Wednesday in the journal Nature, could be used to build more energy efficient electronic devices. "Increasing the number of electrons in most metals results in a sort of traffic jam because electrons moving in different directions get scattered and repel each other," lead researcher Cui-Zu Chang said in a news release. "But in QAH insulato...

Nov92020 by adminNo Comments

Japan’s SoftBank back in the black as investments improve

Technology

Japanese technology company SoftBank Group Corp. has reported it bounced back to profitability in the last quarter as its investments improved in valueBy YURI KAGEYAMA AP Business WriterNovember 9, 2020, 9:45 AM• 2 min readShare to FacebookShare to TwitterEmail this articleTOKYO -- Japanese technology company SoftBank Group Corp. said Monday it bounced back to profitability in the last quarter as its investments improved in value.The Tokyo-based company reported a 627 billion yen, or about $ 6.1 billion, profit in July-September, compared with a loss of 700 billion yen in the same quarter of 2019.SoftBank said its quarterly sales rose nearly 5% to 1.35 trillion yen, or $ 13 billion, from 1.29 trillion yen.SoftBank's Vision Fund also has become profitable recently.SoftBank, which invests in...