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China Mobile Provides Cheaper International Roaming Package In 63 Countries And Regions

Chinese telecom operator China Mobile unveiled last week a CNY18 daily international roaming package in 63 countries and regions frequented by Chinese travelers.

Meanwhile, the company will include 62 countries and regions, including Canada and Russia, into its CNY1, CNY2, and CNY3 international roaming fee zones. So far, all the 242 countries and regions where China Mobile has opened its international roaming services are included in these three zones.

Prior to this, China Mobile announced that starting from February 1, 2013, the company would launch a CNY1, CNY2, and CNY3 new international roaming fee charging system in countries and regions such as the U.S., South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong. In these countries and regions, China Mobile's users only need to pay CNY0.99, CNY1.99 or CNY2.99 per minute to dial a call.

At that time, China Mobile said that 57 other countries and regions would join this system in July 1, 2013, and China Mobile's international roaming services would be no more than CNY3 per minute by then.

In addition, China Mobile plans to optimize its international long-distance IP service and lower the fee to CNY0.39 per minute.

Dell Eyes Four Units To Enhance Software Business In Greater China

Dell's Greater China focus has enlarged as the company has reportedly created four business units, including an enterprise solutions group and the Dell software group.

According to reports in Taiwanese media, Dell's software group was established earlier this year, while the service unit was founded three years ago. With those four units, Dell will be able to provide complete solutions and consulting services to its enterprise customers in Greater China.

Since 2010, Dell has been acquiring various solutions suppliers, such as Kace, SonicWall, and Quest. With the help of these mergers and acquisitions, Dell's Taiwanese software solutions business has gained over 1,000 enterprise customers.

At present, Dell Greater China has about 50 service consultants and the company plans to hire more people to support the information and data management service demands of customers in this region.

Terence Liao, president of Dell Taiwan, said that in 2012, Dell's global operating revenue was about USD50 billion, including about 1.5 billion contributed by the software business. For the Greater China region, the contribution rate of software was at the same level.

Liao predicted that in the future, the operating revenue growth of Dell Taiwan will be mainly from cloud computing and security and data protection services; therefore, the company will promote these services via its channels.

Robot Manufacturing Plant Heads For Eastern China

Yaskawa Electric Corporation, a Japanese manufacturer of servo motors, controllers, AC drives and industry robots, has announced plans to build the world's largest robot manufacturing plant in China's Jiangsu province.
According to Japanese media reports, this new plant will be Yaskawa's first overseas robot plant. With an investment of JPY4 billion, which is about CNY300 million, the plant is located in Changzhou, Jiangsu. The plant will have the largest production scale in the world and it will use the latest equipment to make automobile manufacturing related robots. By 2015, it is expected to reach the monthly production capacity of 1,000 robots.
The labor costs in China have been rapidly increasing and the manufacturing industry has started introducing industry robots to work sites to replace human labor. China will become one of the largest industry robots market in the world as it tries to tap this opportunity.
Yaskawa will make China a robot manufacturing hub to enlarge its manufacturing and sales system.       

Beyond the beat-em-up: video games are good for young people

Research and media attention has usually focused on possible negative impacts of video games. But a clear case to support such links is yet to emerge and even people who argue that video games have a negative impact acknowledge that any such effect size is relatively small.

Now, there’s an emerging body of research focusing on the potential positive influences of video games.

Our research group conducted a comprehensive review of research papers and reports from around the world to explore the role of video games in young people’s lives.

We are interested in both gaming and positive psychology, so our aim was to investigate the current research linking video game play and flourishing mental health. We reviewed over 200 papers and mapped relevant connections and associations.

We found that playing video games positively influences young people’s emotional state, vitality, engagement, competence and self-acceptance. And that it’s associated with higher self-esteem, optimism, resilience, healthy relationships and social connections and functioning.

Clearly excessive video game play and technology use is not good for mental health and we acknowledge that excessive play is associated with negative outcomes, such as anxiety and insomnia.

But the overall picture turns the view that playing video games makes us socially isolated, aggressive, and lazy, on its head. Instead, our research suggests that, in the majority of cases, video games can actually contribute to three different aspects of young people’s well-being – emotional, social and psychological.

Here are some of our key findings:

• moderate (non-excessive) levels of playing are associated with positive emotions and improved mood, improved emotion regulation and emotional stability and the reduction of emotional disturbances;
• playing video games is a healthy means of relaxation, stress reduction and socialising; and
• people who play video games in moderation have significantly less depressed mood and higher self-esteem (compared to those who don’t play or who play excessively).

Emerging research suggests that how young people play, as well as with whom they play, may be more important in terms of well-being than what they play.

Feelings of relatedness or flow while playing, and playing with people you know are better predictors of well-being than the genre of game played.

Our research opens the door to using video games in approaches to well-being. Translating this research into practical guidelines about gaming and well-being that can be used by parents and professionals is critical.

There are several ways of doing this. One is a “well-being rating system” that we are developing for games.

In contrast to existing rating systems, which highlight negative aspects of games, such as violence or offensive language, our rating system identifies their likely positive influences, such as which games are likely to foster teamwork and connections with others.

We know that video games captivate their audience, with more than 95% of Australian homes with children under the age of 18 owning a device for playing them.

Our research provides an opportunity to use video games as a way to empower young people to manage their own mental health and well-being, and potentially circumvent psychological distress.

Key questions remain for future research including identifying what constitutes a healthy or moderate amount of play for people at different stages of their lives and how best to leverage the well-being benefits of video games in a therapeutic setting.

Daniel Johnson teaches in the Bachelor of Games and Interactive Entertainment at Queensland University of Technology and has conducted consulting work for videogame development companies in the past.

Christian Jones has previously consulted for video game development companies.

Stuttering kids do just fine

Stuttering may be more common than previously thought, but preschool stutterers fair better than first thought, a study by The University of Melbourne, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute and The University of Sydney has found. 

A study of over 1600 children, which followed the children from infancy to four years old, found the cumulative incidence of stuttering by four years old was 11 per cent, more than twice what has previously been reported.

However, the study refutes the long held view that suggests developmental stuttering is associated with a range of poorer outcomes in the preschool period.  Interestingly, the study found the reverse was true, with stuttering associated with better language development, non-verbal skills with no identifiable effect on the child’s mental health or temperament at four years old.  


Surprisingly, researchers found that recovery from stuttering was low, 6.3 per cent, 12 months after onset.  Rates of recovery were higher in boys than girls, and in those who did not repeat whole words at onset than those who did.  The study boys were more likely to develop stuttering.  

Lead researcher, Professor Sheena Reilly said parents could be happy in knowing that they can take a ‘watch and wait’ approach to their child’s stuttering and it won’t be causing harm to their child’s language skills or social and emotional development. 

“Current best practice recommends waiting for 12 months before commencing treatment, unless the child is distressed, there is parental concern, or the child becomes reluctant to communicate. It may be that for many children treatment could be deferred slightly further,” she said.    

“Treatment is effective but is intensive and expensive, this watchful recommendation would therefore help target allocation of scarce resources to the small number of children who do not resolve and experience adverse outcomes, secure in the knowledge that delaying treatment for a year or slightly longer has been shown not to compromise treatment efficacy.”

Due to the low rates of recovery in the study, researchers were unable to determine what predicts which kids will recover from stuttering, but say this will be the focus of research moving forward. 

The study was published in Pediatrics.

Ocean acidification affects microbes

Disrupting just one process in the important relationship between microbes and bigger plants and animals that live in ocean floor sediment may have knock-on effects that could reduce the productivity of coastal ecosystems, according to international research published online in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

Dr Bonnie Laverock, an Indian Ocean Marine Research Centre Research Fellow associated with The University of Western Australia, is the lead author of the paper which outlines the effects of ocean acidification on marine microorganisms.

Dr Laverock and her team from the UK and the US are the first to investigate the impacts of ocean acidification - caused by increasing concentrations of dissolved carbon dioxide - on the interactions between macro and micro-organisms in sediments.

"There has been very little work done so far on the microbial responses to ocean acidification in the benthic (sea floor) zone," she said.  "In particular, little is known about how microbial processes may be affected by the responses of larger animals or plants.

"We show that the presence of the mud shrimp can perform the useful task of increasing nitrification rates in coastal sediments, but that this enhanced ecosystem function is inhibited by ocean acidification.  Our results indicate the importance of multi-species interactions in determining how individual organisms or groups of organisms will respond to environmental change." 

Dr Laverock said previous studies had suggested that burrowing mud shrimp spent more time beating their pleopods (walking legs) to try to increase their oxygen supply in seas that are increasingly acidic.  The shrimps' distress - and consequent alteration of their relationship with the nitrogen-cycling microbes that live in their sediment burrows - was just one example of an interwoven system breaking down.

Dr Laverock carried out the practical work for the study at Plymouth Marine Laboratory and is now investigating the microbial processes contributing to ocean productivity in Western Australia.

"WA's coastlines support the highest diversity of seagrasses in the world, as well as a great diversity of kelps and seaweeds and a number of iconic species - such as dugongs and turtles - which rely on benthic productivity for food and/or shelter," she said.

"My work at UWA's Oceans Institute aims to examine these processes and the relationship between microbes and coastal productivity in WA now and in future oceans."