News Analysis India

Tag: mute

  • Neanderthal Protein Offers Protection Against Mutant Virus Strain, Says Study

    Scientists have identified a gene that can possibly provide protection against the new, more severe strain of COVID-19 currently circulating in the United Kingdom. According to a study reported in the medical journal medRxiv, people with a protein called OAS1, which has been passed down to them by the early Neanderthals, are more likely to survive the new strain of COVID-19. The study is awaiting to be reviewed by peers before it can be published on medRxiv.

    Neanderthals are a group of extinct homo sapiens, who lived across Euroasia some 40,000 years ago. It is believed that Neandertals went extinct because of competition with modern-day humans, a great change in climate, unknown disease, or a combination of all these factors. People living in the sub-Saharan region are believed to have been carrying the gene and the protective protein OAS1. The protein was lost after present-day Europeans migrated out of Africa, but is believed to have returned through mating with Neanderthals.

  • WhatsApp working on mute video, read later options

    Last week, WhatsApp rolled out three new features and now, the Facebook-owned company is planning to add two more. The messaging service is working on a new feature called mute videos. As the name suggests, the messaging app will let you mute videos before sending them to any contact or adding it to status updates. Wabetainfo has shared a screenshot of the feature, which shows that the mute option will be visible when you select a video.

    If you tap on the mute video option, then the receiver will get the video without audio. This could be useful as sometimes you record a video and doesn’t want the receiver to listen to unnecessary background sound. To cut background noise or voices, you often need to rely on an editing app, which takes extra efforts. If your smartphone gallery has the option to remove the audio, then that is great.

    The mute video feature might seem like a tiny addition, but a lot of people will appreciate WhatsApp for offering it. The cited source says that this option will first be rolled out to Android users. WhatsApp is expected to release this feature very soon via an update.