Technology

By IANS, Shirdi (Maharashtra) : Hindu and Muslim pilgrims visiting the shrine of Sai Baba in this town will be served food cooked with the help of a solar steam system, inaugurated by New and Renewable Energy Minister Farooq Abdullah Thursday, that officials say is the world's largest. The solar steam system can generate 3,500 kg of steam every day - enough to cook food for 20,000 people. It has been designed for cooking food for devotees visiting the shrine devoted to Sai Baba, a 19th century Sufi saint who was revered by Hindus and Muslims alike.

By IANS, London: Photographers will soon be able to charge their camera batteries with the rays of the sun. A team of Chinese researchers are developing solar panels to straps that would make the charging easy. Inventor Weng Jie’s idea, of which a prototype may be ready in months, could spell the end of wall-socket charging, reports dailymail.co.uk. But there is a downside: In case there is not enough sunlight, regular batteries can not be used as a substitute.

By IANS, Beijing: China will bring third generation nuclear reactors to service in 2013, a top Chinese nuclear company official has said.

By Mohammed Abdul Jawad, O, what a blessed month is this! Yea, of course, I mean ‘Ramadan’—the month of sublime patience, repentance, forgiveness and generous spending. It carries its unique beauty, virtues and rewards. We ought to know the reality of fasting, the acts of worship, the manners of supplications, the essence of piety, the ways to achieve steadfastness and protection from deviations, the etiquettes of night prayer, the virtues of Laylatul Qadr (Night of Revelation) and the significance of charity.

By Soumya Sarkar, IANS New Delhi : Half a century after he died in ignominy in a US prison, physician-scientist Wilhelm Reich - best known for his claim of a cosmic life force associated with sexual orgasm - is on his way to being rehabilitated by the scientific community. On the 50th anniversary of his death, the Jewish Museum in Vienna, Austria, is holding a major retrospective of his life and works beginning Thursday.

By IANS, London : Researchers have developed a new laser tool to to peer into the microscopic activity within single cells in real time. The cutting edge technology could help contribute to the creation of new drugs to treat diseases like asthma and arthritis with fewer side effects. The researchers from Nottingham University Schools of Biomedical Science (Steve Hill and Steve Briddon) and Pharmacy (Barrie Kellam) are concentrating on a type of specialised cell receptor that recognises and responds to a chemical within the body called adenosine.

New Delhi : Twitterati took to the micro-blogging site to express their individual views about the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts accused Yakub Memon's...

Hindon (Uttar Pradesh), Aug 19 (IANS) Two intrepid Indian Air Force (IAF) pilots flew in here Sunday after creating two new world records for circumnavigating the globe in a microlight aircraft. Flying over 16 countries and touching 81 destinations, Wing Commanders Rahul Monga and Anil Kumar completed their journey in 80 days, shaving 19 days off the existing mark of 99 days held by Britain's Colin Bodil since 2001. They also bettered Bodil's airspeed record of 16.53 km per hour by recording 21.09 km per hour.

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By IANS Toronto : Dogs greet their masters with the same warmth after a five-minute absence - or five hours. Does this mean they do not possess a sense of time? This question led William Roberts of the University of Western Ontario to experiment with rats. And he found that the rodents did keep track of time after discovering a piece of cheese, but without forming memories of its discovery. These results suggest that episodic-like memory in rats is qualitatively different from human episodic memory, which involves retention of the point in past time when an event occurred.

By IANS, Thingalur (Tamil Nadu) : A temple in this Tamil Nadu town dedicated to the moon god conducted special prayers Tuesday for the successful launch of Chandrayaan, India's first lunar mission. "Since this temple itself is meant for propitiation of the moon god, we conducted prayers for the success of Chandrayaan as it is bound for the moon tomorrow (Wednesday) from Sriharikota," N. Govindarajan, an official of the temple, told IANS. "The omens during the worship were good and we are sure the mission will be a success," he said.

By IANS, Panaji : Noted astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar has urged that the moon be scanned for micro-organisms in its environment, especially in areas where traces of water have been found. Speaking during a lecture on 'Searching for micro-life in the earth's atmosphere' in Goa Sunday, Narlikar said that the discovery of water on the moon called for a fresh perspective on the issue of life on the moon.

By IANS, Mumbai : Tarang Software Technologies, a leading provider of point of sale (PoS) and mobile payment solutions, Thursday announced that it has acquired Saudi Arabia-based software major Intersoft. Headquartered in Riyadh, Intersoft is a specialised provider of PoS solutions, a fully integrated software package for retailers, and has branches spread all over the Middle East. Earlier, Intersoft had partnered with Tarang to develop several mobile payment solutions in Saudi Arabia.

By IANS, London : Sunlight doesn't just damage your skin, it can also ruin your eyes and increase the risk of cataract and damage to the retina. The best way of protecting eyes is always to wear quality sunglasses, reports express.co.uk. A research in Britain has, however, found that over 60 percent of Britons are influenced by fashion and price rather than whether or not the glasses are effective. Protecting children's eyes is especially important, yet nearly half of parents put cost ahead of protection.

By Richa Sharma, IANS, New Delhi : They gave up plush jobs to jump into politics two years ago - something not too many Indian professionals do. The party that 20 alumni of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) floated has now fielded two candidates in the Nov 29 Delhi assembly polls. After all, both techies and politicians are harbingers of change, say the founder members of Bharat Punarnirman Dal, or India Rejuvenation Force.

By IANS, London : The Garden of Eden, a strip of land off Africa's southern coast, had provided shelter to a handful of humans who survived mass extinction on earth during the ice age, say scientists. Researchers believe the small patch of land at 384 km east of Cape Town was the only place that remained habitable during the devastating ice age 195,000 years ago when sudden change in earth's temperature wiped out many species. Some scientists believe the population of human race may have fallen to a few hundred who managed to survive in one location, according to Daily Mail.

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By IANS, London : How much spam you get depends on the first letter in your e-mail address, a Cambridge study reveals. Analysis of more than 500 million junk messages has found that addresses that began with more common letters were likely to receive 40 per cent of their mail from spammers. Those starting with less common letters, by contrast, would receive less than a fifth of their mail as spam.

TwoCircles.net presents “Agenda for India”. Series editor is Charu Bahri. Challenges & Solutions Information technology professionals Amin Ismaili and his wife Shahin Ismaili, both of whom work as Assistant Systems Engineers with TATA Consultancy Services Ltd., identify India’s heavy dependence on markets in the USA as the greatest challenge presently facing the Information Technology (IT) and IT enabled services (ITES, more commonly spoken of as outsourcing) industries.

By Ras H. Siddiqui, TwoCircles.net, San Francisco: The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) held its annual conference known as TiEcon in Silicon Valley, the technology world way beyond just the South-Asian Diaspora noticed. Over 4000 people attended TiEcon 2014 at the Santa Clara Convention Center with many of the heavyweights in the technology arena present. Those who presented Grand Keynotes included Steve Mollenkopf (CEO Qualcomm), Michael Rhodin and Manoj Saxena (IBM), Steve Lucas (President SAP), Romesh Wadhawani (Chairman & CEO Symphony Technology Group), Sanjay Poonen (EVP and GM of VMware) and Shahid KhanPresident of Flex-N-Gate and owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL football team.

Kharagpur : The Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur (IIT-Kgp) will start a collaborative programme with Britain-based Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) to promote the 'Make...

Hyderabad: Facebook on Friday launched a training programme for rural self-help groups (SHGs) in Telangana to equip them with technological knowledge to promote their...

TwoCircles.net presents “Agenda for India”. Series editor is Charu Bahri. Challenges & Solutions “I would cite the issue of spectrum allocation and management as one of the foremost challenges of India’s telecom sector,” says Yusuf Motiwala, Founder & CEO, TringMe. “The government must wake up to the losses accumulating on account of under-utilization of spectrum and due to the delay in rolling out 3G services.”

By Sinikka Tarvainen, DPA, Madrid : Thousands of years ago, the original inhabitants of Spain's Canary Islands are thought to have worshipped the Roque de los Muchachos mountain as having magical powers. On Friday, the mountain will officially become home to a telescope billed as the world's biggest time machine. The instrument will allow scientists to seek new answers to the origin of the universe. The Grantecan or GTC, which are abbreviations for "large telescope of the Canary Islands", is the biggest among only about a dozen comparable telescopes in the world.

By IANS, Toronto : Canadian and US scientists want to block the sun to cool the earth and limit global warming. Research and field-testing on what they call "geo-engineering" of the earth's atmosphere to limit risk of climate change must begin quickly, say scientists from the University of Calgary in Canada, and the University of Michigan and Carnegie Mellon University in the US. Studies on geo-engineering or solar radiation management (SRM) should be undertaken collectively with government funding, rather that unilaterally by nations, argue the scientists.

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Dubai: A 21-year-old student in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) city of Sharjah, has received the country's first artificial heart transplant, a media report...

New York : Recently approved antiviral medications for hepatitis C could reduce the prevalence of the blood-borne infection by more than 80 percent, researchers...

By IANS, Chennai : Private lender Axis Bank has implemented Polaris Software's solution for trade finance, cards and cheque truncation processes, the city-based banking software company said Monday. The solution, "Intellect Business Process Studio", will enable Axis Bank to eliminate the paper-based cheque clearing activity, Polaris said in a statement.

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Washington : On the third anniversary of the Mars landing of NASA’s Curiosity rover, the US space agency has unveiled two new online tools...

By IANS Patna : Scientists from the National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) are conducting a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) survey in Bihar's Nalanda district to trace the location of the buried ancient structures. Officials of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Patna circle, said Thursday a five-member team of scientists from the NRSA has begun a four-day GPR survey in Nalanda. The GPR survey is being conducted for the first time in Bihar. GPR survey has proved beneficial across the world in exploration of archaeological structures.

By IANS Hyderabad : City-based Goose Technologies has introduced Procon, a risk management solution. Procon enables global enterprises to have real-time visibility and predictability of key performance indicators (KPI) at different levels and function areas. Goose Technologies founder and CEO Debasish Pattnaik told a news conference here Wednesday that Procon was uniquely designed to offer real-time visibility of KPIs across all levels and also offers aggregation at both organisation and enterprise levels.

By IANS, Washington : Scientists have discovered microscopic, magnetic fossils resembling spears and spindles, among sediment layers deposited during an ancient global-warming event along the Atlantic coastal plain. The researchers were led by geobiologists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and McGill University. Fifty-five million years ago, earth warmed by more than nine degrees Fahrenheit after huge amounts of carbon entered the atmosphere over a period of just a few thousand years.

By Xinhua, Abu Dhabi : A senior official of the Defense Ministry of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) said that the ministry plans to launch a joint remote-sensing satellite with other member countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), local newspaper Gulf News reported on Tuesday. The plan was revealed by Brigadier Khalifa Mohammad Al Rumaithi, Chief of Military Works of the UAE Armed Forces, at the Defense Geospatial Intelligence Middle East opened on Monday in Dubai.

By IANS, Gandhinagar: The second phase of the placement process at the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) is going on well with over 20 offers made Sunday. Deloitte made 10 offers (including lateral offers) for consulting roles while other regular recruiters like TAS and Feedback ventures offered general management and consulting roles and hired six students each.

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By IANS/RIA Novosti, Moscow: Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor of AK-47 assault rifle, has been hospitalised, his assistant Nikolai Shklyaev said Tuesday.

Hyderabad: Mobile phone manufacturer Micromax will set up its manufacturing plant in Hyderabad with an investment of Rs.400 crore to Rs.500 crore, a Telangana...

New Delhi : A.P.J. Abdul Kalam backed the nuclear deal India inked with the United States in 2005 and it is a "total...

By IANS, New York : Chandrayaan is on its way to the moon, regarded by many Indians as a god, but "devout Hindus - many of them, no doubt, rocket scientists - see no disharmony between ancient Vedic beliefs and contemporary scientific practice", according to a New York Times opinion article. A week before India's moon mission was launched Oct 22, millions of Hindu women embarked on a customary daylong fast of Karva Chauth, meant to ensure a husband's welfare, broken at night on the first sighting of the moon's reflection in a bowl of oil, Tunku Varadarajan wrote in the NYT Wednesday.

By Arun Kumar, IANS, Washington : An India-born rocket scientist has lifted the veil off Bloom Box fuel-cell, a revolutionary new technology that holds the promise to supply the world with abundant clean, cheap energy. "The core of our technology is simply sand," said K.R. Sridhar, 49, founder of the Silicon Valley clean tech start-up Bloom Energy at Wednesday's unveiling of his invention in San Jose, California on the campus of eBay, one of Bloom's first customers.

By IANS/RIA Novosti, Moscow : Russia Saturday launched a Proton-M rocket to put a US telecommunications satellite into space, the defence ministry said. The rocket blasted off from the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan at 11.19 GMT. The satellite was due to separate from the carrier rocket at around 20.19 GMT. The 2.6-tonne satellite has a lifespan of about 15 years. The satellite will provide digital television services for customers in the US and the Caribbean. This was the fifth Proton-M rocked launched by Russia this year.

By IANS, New Delhi: All India rural GSM subscribers increased 4.14 million in January 2014, which was 1.5 percent up from previous month, according to...

Bengaluru: Low-cost carrier Air Pegasus will begin flying from here to Tamil Nadu's Madurai from June 26, spreading its footprint to the fourth city...

Ghaziabad : Social media was to blame for sensational spontaneous crimes in Uttar Pradesh, Director General of Police (DGP) Jagmohan Yadav said on...

By IANS Thiruvananthapuram : From three-year-old Unnikuttan to 95-year-old Gangadharan, a dozen elephants queued up as the Kerala government Saturday launched its programme of implanting a microchip in them in place of registration papers. The chip is placed under the skin of the elephant by way of an injection. The initiative, the first for Kerala that has almost 1,000 captive elephants, was launched from the capital district.

By IANS, New York : Indian and Japanese engineers have developed a "microneedle" that causes no pain on being inserted in the skin as it mimics the way a female mosquito sucks blood. Contrary to popular belief, a mosquito bite does not hurt. It is the anticoagulant saliva that the creature injects to stop the blood from clotting that causes inflammation and pain. The new biocompatible microneedle has been designed by Suman Chakraborty of the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur and Kazuyoshi Tsuchiya of Tokai University in Kanagawa, New Scientist reported.

Lucknow : In Lucknow 'Alvida Namaaz' at major Uttar Pradesh mosques on Friday will be closely watched with the help of drones and CCTV...

By RIA Novosti Voronezh (Russia) : A cockroach called Nadezhda (Hope) has given birth to the first creatures ever conceived in space, Russian scientists said. Nadezhda conceived during the Foton-M bio-satellite Sep 14-26 flight. "We recently received the first batch of 33 cockroaches conceived in micro-gravity," Dmitry Atyakshin said in Voronezh Tuesday. Though the newborn creatures already eat and drink, micro-gravity conditions may have had an impact on the natural darkening of their chitinous carapace, a part of a cockroach's exoskeleton.

By IANS, New Delhi : Biotechnology provides a viable solution to almost every form of environmental damage and the government must pay more attention to it, says Biocon head Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw. Delivering the seventh Darbari Seth Memorial Lecture organised by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) here Tuesday evening, Mazumdar-Shaw made a strong pitch for development of biofuels in India without compromising food production in any way.

By IANS, Washington : Textile engineering students have thought up of an answer to one of the prime threats bedevilling NASA space missions: radiation. The students of North Carolina State University (NCSU) have designed a 'blanket' that could shield lunar outposts and astronauts' living quarters from radiation, while generating and storing power. The 'lunar texshield' is made from a lightweight polymer material that has a layer of radiation shielding that deflects or absorbs the radiation so astronauts are only exposed to a safe amount.

Washington : Pakistan might purchase weapons and military equipment from Russia and counts on cooperation with Moscow in the energy sphere, a senior...

Washington : A pockmarked, icy landscape looms beneath NASA's Cassini spacecraft in new images of Saturn's moon Dione taken during the mission's last close...

New Delhi : Women would soon be inducted as fighter pilots in the Indian Air Force, Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha said here...

Agartala : The much awaited passenger train service between Tripura and the rest of India is likely to start in April, a railway official...

By IANS, Washington : A byproduct of steel industry, that also emits huge volume of carbon dioxide, could be used to absorb greenhouse gas and control global warming. Mourad Kharoune, professor at cole de Technologie Suprieure, Montreal Canada and colleagues pointed out that production of a tonne of steel releases almost an equal amount of CO2. With global steel production standing at 1.34 billion tonnes in 2007, that adds up to a substantial contribution of carbon dioxide.

By Syed Azwan Syed Ali, NNN-Bernama, Darwin, Australia : Thirty-two solar- powered cars including Solar Ranger1 from Universiti Tenaga Nasional (Uniten) on Sunday start long the trek across Australia in the World Solar Challenge 2009. The solar cars representing teams from 15 countries were flagged off at Darwin parliament house at 8.30am watched by hundreds of spectators and world media representatives who gathered as early as 7am. The Netherlands Nuon Solar team with the car Nuna5 was the race favourite.

By Fakir Balaji, IANS,

By IANS, Washington : The amazing versatility of an insect's compound eye has inspired researchers worldwide into working on ultra-thin imaging systems. Features of these compound eyes, optimised over millions of years of evolution, are being adapted for present-day imaging equipment. Accordingly, scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering, are working on the development of an ultra-thin image sensor. For example Andreas Brückner, working on his doctoral thesis, improved the imaging properties of these sensor applications.

By IANS, Thiruvananthapuram : Hafeez Contractor, one of the best-known architects of India, will build the third phase of an IT park in Kerala. Kerala-based architectural firm Iyer and Mahesh will partner with Hafeez to construct the 300-million square feet third phase of the 11.5 million Technopark campus, officials said Thursday. An agreement was signed and handed over to the Technopark CEO R.K. Nair by Hafeez and Iyer and Mahesh Wednesday evening, after a competitive bidding process.

By IANS, London : Social networking site Facebook temporarily disabled its chat system after a serious security flaw was revealed which allowed people to view chats and pending friend requests of their Facebook friends. The security flaw, discovered Wednesday by technology website TechCrunch, related to a feature on Facebook that allows users to preview their own privacy settings, telegraph.co.uk reported.

By Xinhua Hangzhou (China) : A new diagnostic technology to detect epidemic diseases has entered the phase of clinical experiments, claimed a Chinese scientist. Different from traditional methods that rely on antigen or antibody test, the new technology is based on genetic substances of the viruses, namely DNA or RNA, to confirm epidemic diseases such as hepatitis or AIDS, said Charlie Xiang, chief scientist of the Microarray Centre of US National Institutes of Health (NIH).

By IANS Hyderabad : Scientists at a Laboratory for the Conservation of Endangered Species (LaCONE) here are continuing their efforts to clone a rabbit and hope to get assistance from Iran to fulfil their ambitious goal - to clone a cheetah. This is the country's first animal cloning bid, and the LaCONE scientists, of the prestigious Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), want to clone a laboratory animal before working on their dream project.

Washington : Facebook cancelled an Indian-origin student's internship after he exposed a serious privacy flaw in the social media giant's messenger service, a media...

By IANS New York : Whether you are a Mac person or a PC person, even a brief exposure to the Apple logo may make you behave more creatively, according to a new study. Most people are exposed to thousands of brand images daily and it is assumed this does not affect those exposed in any way. But the new study has demonstrated that even fleeting glimpses of logos can affect people quite dramatically, ScienceDaily reported. The study, by Duke and Waterloo University researchers, has been published in the forthcoming issue of the Journal of Consumer Research.

By Alexander Peslyak, RIA Novosti, Moscow : A Russian scientist has said that a mosquito had managed to survive in the outer space for 18 months. Anatoly Grigoryev, vice president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said: "We brought him (mosquito) back to Earth. He is alive, and his feet are moving." The mosquito did not get any food and was subjected to extreme temperatures ranging from minus 150 degrees Celsius in the shade to plus 60 degrees in the sunlight.

By IANS, Tehran: Iran will not retreat "an iota" from its right to develop nuclear energy despite Western-led sanctions, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said.

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By IANS/RIA Novosti, Moscow: Wikipedia, the world's largest online encyclopedia, has launched a new project enabling registered users to post videos, according to the portal's press service.

California : It is time to thank your stars. A 1,000-feet wide "beast" at a speed of 50,400 km per hour - that could...