Technology

By DPA Hamburg : A new function in Google Earth has opened up the cosmos to Internet viewers. The new "sky" portion of the software allows users to view the starry skies, navigating through the galaxies with the click of a mouse, says Google spokesman Stefan Keuchel from the company's Hamburg offices. Constellations, planets, and nebulae are all offered alongside information about their position, size and orbits.

By IANS, London : A perfectly preserved 5,500-year-old leather shoe has been found by a team of international archaeologists in a cave in Armenia. The cow-hide shoe dates back to 3,500 BC (the Chalcolithic period) and is in perfect condition. It was made of a single piece of leather and was shaped to fit the wearer's foot.

By IANS,

By IANS, Sydney : Mars may have been a seething cauldron for nearly a 100 million years after its formation, thwarting evolution of life on the planet, according to an analysis of meteorites. The research has shown that the red planet remained excessively hot - with temperatures over 1,000 degrees Celsius - for 100 million years following its formation.

Tehran: Tehran will continue supporting Baghdad in its fight against terrorism as Iraq's security was intertwined with that of Iran, President Hassan Rouhani has...

By Xinhua, Moscow : A Russian spaceship, carrying tonnes of food, water and fuel was on its way to the International Space Station (ISS) Wednesday, Itar-Tass news agency reported. The Progress M-65 spaceship took off from the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan at 11.50 p.m. (1950 GMT) Wednesday, the report said. The unmanned spaceship will deliver two tonnes of food, water, fuel and equipment, to the ISS. The spaceship is to dock at the ISS Sep 13, the report said. The ISS's orbit was adjusted Aug 13 to prepare for the docking of the cargo module.

By IANS, London : Scientists are a step closer to resurrecting extinct animals after successfully cloning living mice from the cells of frozen animals, according to findings published Wednesday. A team of Japanese scientists at the Centre for Developmental Biology, at the RIKEN research institute in Kobe, produced the clones after thawing mice that had been frozen at minus 20C for up to 16 years, British newspapers reported.

By IANS, New Delhi: With less than a month to go before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh goes to the US, the government is planning to introduce the contentious Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill in the Lok Sabha Monday. The bill is likely to be introduced in the Lok Sabha Monday, said government sources here. The passing of the bill, which seeks to limits damages to American nuclear companies in case of an accident, is a crucial step India is required to complete under the 123 civil nuclear agreement with the US.

Singapore: Singapore welcomes the agreement reached by Iran and the major world powers over the Islamic republic's nuclear programme, the ministry of foreign affairs...

By Xinhua, Beijing : China has started a new round of selection for taikonauts and five to seven of them will be part of the final list, said an official of the country's space programme Thursday. "The new taikonauts will mainly take missions related to China's planned space station," said Zhang Jianqi, deputy chief commander of the manned space project, on the sidelines of the annual session of China's parliament.

By IANS, Chennai : The Indian and French space agencies have sought research proposals on data to be generated from a payload on a satellite to be launched next year. Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), the French space agency have called for research proposals on the data to be generated from AltiKA, a payload in Satellite with ARgos and AltiKa (SARAL).

By Anil Sharma, IANS,

By IANS, Beijing : China Friday asked the US to "respect facts and stop unreasonable accusations in the name of so-called Internet freedom". Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu made the remarks while responding to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's comment in Washington. "Countries or individuals that engage in cyber attacks should face consequences and international condemnation," DPA quoted Clinton as saying in a speech on internet freedom.

By IANS

Washington : Think twice if you are about to forge a signature. A newly developed technology will help forensic specialists find out when you signed a cheque, the pen you used, and the origin of the ink.

The technology that is used at present can only trace the ink if a piece of the document is soaked in certain solutions.

By IANS, Washington : Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have entered the danger zone and must be reduced if climate disasters are to be averted, according to researchers. US, British and French scientists, including two from Yale, said in a study that optimum CO2 level should be less than 350 parts per million (ppm) - a dramatic change from most studies that have pegged the danger level for CO2 at 450 ppm or higher. Atmospheric CO2 is currently 385 ppm and is increasing by about two ppm every year from the burning of coal, oil, gas and forests.

By Venkatachari Jagannathan, IANS, Chennai : M.Y.S. Prasad, associate director, Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, has something common with Telugu movie stars Chiranjeevi and Krishnam Raju. All three are from Mogaltur village in West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh. While Chiranjeevi and Krishnam Raju are movie stars turned politicians, Prasad sends rockets towards the stars. As the man in charge of launch operations for India's first lunar mission that blasts off Wednesday, Prasad, 55, is now busy checking everything is in place, as the final countdown ticks on.

By IANS, London : Computer scientists in the US are developing technology that will transform cars into intelligent vehicles fitted with aircraft-style black boxes that can record information about driving behaviour during accidents. The car, which is being developed by researchers at computer chip giant Intel, will record information about the vehicle speed, steering and braking along with video footage from inside and outside the vehicle, The Telegraph reported.

By IANS Washington : Terrorism is not rooted in poverty as popularly perceived but could be caused by political freedom and geographic factors, says a new study. "There is no significant relationship between a country's wealth and level of terrorism once factors like political freedom are taken into account," according to Harvard University's Alberto Abadie, author of the study. "Nations with very high or very low levels of political freedom tend to experience little terrorism," said Abadie in a press release.

By DPA, Washington : The solar wind is at a 50-year low, potentially opening up the solar system to more dangerous rays from outer space, researchers have said. Data from the joint NASA and European Space Agency Ulysses solar mission show the cyclical wind - as the plasma and magnetic fields sent out by the sun are called - are at their lowest level since scientists first gathered information on the matter.

By IANS, Hyderabad : GVK Biosciences, a leading contract research organisation, Wednesday said it has received approval from Turkey to conduct bioequivalence studies. A three-member delegation from Turkey's ministry of health inspected the GVK Bio clinical pharmacology unit (CPU) here and carried out a detailed audit of the facility for systems and processes. This approval enables GVK Bio to cater to generic drug manufacturers in Turkey as well as to those who intend to market their products in the country, said a statement from GVK Bio.

By IANS, Washington : An Indian-American researcher is working with a team of Utah University engineers to design cheaper, lighter and better solar cells. Dinesh Rakhwal, doctoral student in mechanical engineering, said: "We're coming up with a more efficient way of making germanium wafers for solar cells - to reduce the cost and weight of these solar cells and make them defect-free."

By DPA

Washington : The planned launch of the Phoenix Mars lander has been pushed back, according to NASA.

Phoenix is now scheduled to be fired into space from Florida's Kennedy Space Centre aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket Saturday at either 5.26.34 a.m. or 6.02.59 a.m.

Poor weather at the space centre kept NASA from fuelling the rocket Tuesday afternoon and led to the decision to delay the launch.

By IANS New York : The Kerala Information Technology Alliance (KITA) has been launched here to make Kerala a premier global technology hub. Ommen Chandy, a former chief minister of Kerala, inaugurated KITA at the Kerala Centre in the presence of over 150 IT professionals and community leaders. Kerala Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan said in a message: "I hope KITA will provide a platform for IT professionals of Kerala origin to share best practices, ideas and thereby influence and accelerate the growth of Kerala in key industries."

By IANS, London : The human brain possesses a unique navigation system, much like satellite navigation, with in-built maps, grids and compasses, according to neuroscientist Hugo Spiers. This mechanism resides in the brain's hippocampus area, which is responsible for learning and memory, famously shown to be different in a London taxi drivers' study carried out by Eleanor Maguire at University College, London. The study showed that a region of the hippocampus was enlarged in London taxi drivers compared to the general population.

By IANS/RIA Novosti, Moscow : Russia's Proton-M carrier rocket with US telecom satellite Intelsat-23 blasted off Sunday from the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan.

By Arul Louis United Nations : India has called for transparency and accountability in internet security surveillance and for striking balance between human rights and...

By IANS London : Extreme cold conditions enable electronics to work better and with less thermal noise, according to Srinivas Vanapalli, a Dutch researcher of Indian origin. Vanapalli has explored the possibilities of cooling components at the chip level, to temperatures 150 degrees Celsius below zero, which also boosts its speed and reliability, ScienceDaily reported. Vanapalli, of the University of Twente, has constructed a proof-of-principle cooler, which cools more effectively than conventional ones and holds promising commercial applications.

AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA AND THE INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY FOR THE APPLICATION OF SAFEGUARDS TO CIVILIAN NUCLEAR FACILITIES download the pdf version of the text. RECOGNIZING the significance India attaches to civilian nuclear energy as an efficient, clean and sustainable energy source for meeting global energy demand, in particular for meeting India's growing energy needs; WHEREAS India is committed to the full development of its national three-stage

By IANS Kuala Lumpur : Malaysia's space hero Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor Sheikh Mustapha, sent on a space flight last year, is not averse to joining politics, media reports said Thursday, in the run-up to the general election. "If joining politics is a way of making this world a better place, then I will never hesitate to be a part of it," said Mustapha, hailed as the country's first "angkasawan," who is now pulling crowd at election rallies of the ruling coalition Barisan Nasional (BN).

By IANS, Sydney : Scientists have for the first time discovered gold nanoparticles, setting to rest speculation about whether they existed at all. Scientists of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) said they discovered these particles in western Australia. “In the southern areas of the state, groundwater is very salty and acidic. This water dissolves primary gold and re-deposits it as pure gold crystals on fracture surfaces and in open pore spaces,” said Rob Hough, who led the search for the nanoparticles.

By IANS, New Delhi: India's defence establishment has recorded only one breach of security by hackers from outside in the last three years, parliament was informed Wednesday.

By Sharon Thambala Bengaluru : A key part of the "Digital India" initiative of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the free government scheme that...

By IANS, Thiruvananthapuram : The Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), a unit of the country's premier Indian space research programme, plans to send two humans into space by 2015, an official said here Sunday. Speaking to IANS, director of the VSSC unit here K. Radhakrishnan said the project is awaiting a final clearance from the central government. "The pre-project approval of Rs.95 crore ($19 million) has already come and the approval of the main project is being awaited," said Radhakrishnan.

By IANS, London : A European satellite has discovered the smallest planet outside of our solar system, which is twice as large as earth and orbiting a star slightly smaller than the sun. The planet is believed to be composed of rock and water, and takes 20 hours to orbit its host star, the shortest orbital period of all exoplanets found so far. Astronomers infer its temperature over 1,000 degree Celsius, hot enough to make it covered in lava or superheated water vapour.

By Sam Pitroda, IANS, This month marks the 25th anniversary of what is now widely acknowledged to be India's first defining steps towards an information and communications revolution. It was in August 1984 that the Centre for Development of Telematics or C-DOT was set up with the specific intention of indigenising digital switching technology to meet India's unique requirements.

By IRNA, New Delhi : A rare celestial treat, the century’s longest “Annular Solar Eclipse” will occur Friday. The 21st century’s longest annular solar eclipse occurs on January 15, apart from India, will be visible across Africa, the Indian Ocean, Maldives, Sri Lanka and south-east Asia.

By IANS, London : The personal details of 100 million users of social networking website Facebook are now available for download after they were leaked online. Ron Bowles, an online security consultant, used a code to scan Facebook profiles, collected data not hidden by users' privacy settings, and compiled a list, which is now available as a downloadable file, containing the URL of every "searchable" Facebook user's profile, their name and unique ID, the BBC reported Thursday.

By IANS/RIA Novosti, Moscow : Russia Monday launched a Soyuz-U carrier rocket with a Cosmos class military satellite on board, an official said.

By IANS For minutes after the precisely timed landing, fire spewed from the spacecraft's engines - a standard phenomenon that often goes unremarked by ordinary viewers during the more common daylight landings. The shuttle landed at 0039 GMT Thursday. A crewmember called the mission "rewarding and exciting from start to ending", according to the audio transmission from the landing monitored in Washington.

By IANS, Ahmedabad : Engineering firm Electrotherm, which manufactures the electric bike YO Byke, Tuesday launched another battery-operated two-wheeler, the Yoelectron. Addressing the media at the launch, Electrotherm chairman and managing director Mukesh Bhandari said the success of its YOSmart in the 250W category goaded the company to come out with another premium model.

By IANS, Bhubaneswar : Those who had hoped to witness the century's longest solar eclipse in Orissa were disappointed Wednesday as the sky remained overcast in most parts of the state. Thousands of people woke up early in the morning and were armed with special glasses to see the phenomenon. However, clouds spoiled the party although there was a partial eclipse in the state. The solar eclipse was only visible for three minutes at the Pathani Samant Planetarium in Bhubaneswar, where thousands of people gathered to watch the rare sight.

By IRNA, New Delhi : Australian-led scientists say they've replicated a key photosynthesis process that may lead to using sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. According to 'Terra Daily - News about Planet Earth' report, the scientists, led by Professor Leone Spiccia, Robin Brimblecombe and Annette Koo of Monash University, developed a system they say might revolutionize the renewable energy industry by making hydrogen cheaper and easier to produce on a commercial scale.

By IANS, Washington : Automakers have been crashing test dummies to gain insight into how safety systems protect or fail to protect people during car accidents. But these dummies made out of plastic and steel, not tissue and bone, have their limitations. Now a virtual dummy being developed by two engineering teams with University of Virginia (UVa) Centre for Biomechanics, will make driving much safer.

By IANS, Thiruvananthapuram : The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) symbolises nothing less than rockets, satellites and moon missions but when it comes to a professional need as simple as uploading contents on the website, the presitigious organisation seems to have bungled. The 97th edition of the Indian Science Congress, organized by the ISRO and the Kerala University, was inaugurated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Sunday.

By NNN-KUNA, Riyadh : Saudi Arabians will observe later tonight a partial eclipse of the moon, which will be the second and last one this year, according to a professor at King Fahad University on Saturday. In a statement to the local "Al-Watan" newspaper, physics professor Dr. Ali Al-Shukri explained that a lunar eclipse occurred when the moon passed through the earth's shadow. Thus, the sun, earth, and moon must be aligned with the earth between them, he said.

By RIA Novosti, Washington : NASA officials said the STS-124 space shuttle launch to the ISS from Cape Canaveral in Florida is scheduled for May 31. The 14-day mission will see the Discovery shuttle deliver its heaviest payload to the International Space Station, the Japanese Pressurized Module (JPM) which is the second unit of the massive Kibo laboratory complex. The first unit, an experimental logistics module, was delivered to the ISS in March.

By Xinhua Seoul : South Korea's Science Ministry announced Monday that it has decided to change the country's first-ever astronaut candidate under Russia's request. Following the decision, South Korean female Yi So-yeon, 29, will be sent into the space on the Soyuz spacecraft on April 8 and stay on the space station orbiting the Earth for seven to eight days instead of her colleague Ko San. Yi will become South Korea's first astronaut and first woman going into space.

By Xinhua Taiyuan (China) : China launched the third earth resources satellite jointly developed with Brazil Wednesday with the two nations pledging to develop two more satellites in future. The satellite, named 02B, was launched on a Chinese Long March-4B carrier rocket, which blasted off at 11.26 a.m. from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre in north China's Shanxi province. The satellite separated from the rocket 12 minutes after lift-off, entering its preset sun-synchronous orbit, at a perigee of 738 km and an apogee of 750 km.

By IANS, London : A life-sized female robot, known as HRP-4, has been taught to sing just like a real pop star.

By Xinhua Beijing : NASA will broadcast next Monday the Beatles' song "Across the Universe" across the galaxy to Polaris, the North Star, to celebrateds the 40th anniversary of the song and the 50th anniversary of NASA, according to media reports Saturday.

By IANS, New Delhi : Scientists, students, corporate executives and housewives -- almost everyone is excited about watching the total solar eclipse Wednesday. But the weather may play spoilsport in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and New Delhi -- cloudy skies and the possibility of rain might make viewing the celestial spectacle difficult. The national capital experienced showers Tuesday afternoon, bringing smiles to people's faces but at the same time narrowing the possibilities of clear skies on the eclipse day Wednesday.

By DPA, San Francisco : Microsoft said Tuesday that it will debut its new operating system Oct 22 as it seeks to block a growing challenge from Google, Apple, and the open-source Linux operating system. The world's largest software company is releasing Windows 7 just 33 months after launching Windows Vista which has been widely panned for its demanding hardware requirements and slow response time.

By Prashant K. Nanda, IANS, New Delhi : Indian scientists have made history by developing transgenic sperms to help mice give birth to genetically modified (GM) pups - an effort that is expected to boost clinical research and drug development across the world. Scientists at the National Institute of Immunology (NII) here have been successful in inserting human genes inside the testes of male mice and integrating it with the chromosome of the germ cells. Thus they have created transgenic sperms in a natural manner.

By IANS, Bangalore : India's first probe into moon landed on the lunar surface Friday night after riding on Chandrayaan-1, the country's first unmanned spacecraft to the moon, after travelling around 384,000 km in 24 days days after blasting off from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh Oct 22. Soon after the launch at 6.22 a.m. the spacecraft carrying 11 scientific payloads was put in an orbit of 22,860 km apogee (farthest point to the earth) and 225 km perigee (nearest point to the earth).

By Xinhua, Washington : NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has taken the first image of a particle of Mars' ubiquitous dust, using its atomic force microscope, mission scientists have reported. The particle - shown at higher magnification than anything ever seen from another world - is a round particle about one micrometre, or one millionth of a metre across, the scientists at the US space agency said Thursday.

By IANS, Toronto : While most people have gut reactions to websites, a group of scientists is developing software that can actually measure those emotions and more. Aude Dufresne, professor at the University of Montreal (UofM) Department Of Communications, led a team of researchers that are designing a new software to evaluate the biological responses of Internet users. Simply put, the new software measures everything in web users from body heat to eye movements to facial expressions and analyses how they relate to online activities.

Thiruvananthapuram (IANS) : A Swedish team visiting the country is holding talks with companies in Technopark campus here to explore possibilities of business deals between IT firms of the two countries. The Swedish team consisted of Maria Johansson of Aurorum Science Park, and Michael Nilsson of Centre for Distance-Spanning Technology (CDT) of the Lulea University of Technology in Sweden. Speaking to IANS, Johansson said that they held exploratory talks with a few IT companies in Technopark and have been impressed with the outcome.

By IANS, Washington : There are limits to how big super gigantic black holes can grow, according to the latest research led by an Indian-American astrophysicist of Yale University. These "ultra-massive" black holes have been shown to have masses upwards of one billion times that of our own Sun, which is where they have set the limit on themselves. Priyamvada Natarajan, associate professor of astronomy at Yale and Ezequiel Treister, a postdoctoral fellow at Hawaii University, have shown that even the biggest of these gravitational monsters can't keep growing forever.

BY IANS, New Delhi: India recorded a 2.63 percent growth in the number of new telecom subscribers, adding 12.03 million new connections in June, official data released Thursday said. With this, the total tally has reached 464.82 million, compared to 452.91 million a month before. The overall tele-density has reached 39.86 percent, said sector regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said in a statement.

By Richa Sharma, IANS, Bhopal : How would animals and birds behave during a total solar eclipse? Experts at the Van Vihar National Park in this Madhya Pradesh capital will study animal behaviour during the phenomena July 22. The eclipse Wednesday will be the longest solar eclipse of the century. Lasting six minutes and 39 seconds, it would be visible across Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific.

By IANS, New Delhi : India will launch a dedicated satellite by 2012 for measuring greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and aerosols, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said Tuesday. "India needs to have an aggressive domestic method to check emissions as this will benefit us while negotiating at the international forum. We are planning to launch a satellite to study GHG emissions," Ramesh told reporters. India is also planning to launch a satellite by 2013 for assessment of forest cover in the country.

By IANS/EFE,

By IANS, Mountain View (California) : Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley have devised a way to squeeze light into tighter spaces than ever thought possible, potentially opening doors to new technology in the fields of optical communications, miniature lasers and optical computers.

By IANS, New Delhi : Take out some time from new year eve revelry Thursday and look at the sky to catch a glimpse of a rare celestial phenomenon - a blue moon. A partial lunar eclipse will also be observed early Jan 1, 2010. The full moon on Thursday will be a "blue moon". A blue moon has nothing to do with the colour of the moon but when two full moons occur within the same month, the second full moon of the month is called a "blue moon", a term used metaphorically to describe the rarity of an event, as in the idiomatic expression -- once in a blue moon.

By IANS, Washington : Scientists have decoded the genome of one of the most unusual creatures in existence - the duck-billed platypus. And now they know why it is part bird, part reptile and part mammal. The platypus represents the earliest offshoot of mammalian lineage - a branch-out that occurred 166 million years ago from primitive ancestors with both mammalian and reptilian features. "At first glance, the platypus appears as if it was the result of an evolutionary accident," said Francis S. Collins of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

By IANS,

By IANS, Sydney : A Museum Victoria team announced its latest and the most remarkable find Thursday -- a 375 million-year-old fossil of placoderm fish with intact embryo and mineralised umbilical cord. The fossil, one of the most significant discoveries ever made by scientists, also happens to be that of the world's oldest known vertebrate mother. It provides the earliest evidence of vertebrate sexual reproduction, wherein the males (possessing clasping organs similar to modern sharks and rays) internally fertilised females.

By IANS, Washington : Scientists have discovered a lake-like feature on Saturn's satellite Titan, the second body in the solar system to posses a liquid surface, apart from the Earth. Astronomers detected the presence of the ethane lake with the help of the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer or VIMS, on board NASA's Cassini orbiter. The instrument, run by Arizona University (AU), identifies the chemical composition of objects by the way matter reflects light.

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, Sydney : An ultra sensitive technique for detecting toxic heavy metals in water has opened the way for safer use of groundwater and recycling water. The breakthrough is significant given how arsenic poisoning in India and Bangladesh through polluted water supply potentially affects tens of millions of people. The technology for detecting toxic metals like lead and cadmium in water was developed by Erica Ji and Zuliang Chen of the Collaborative Research Centre for Contamination Assesment and Remediation of Environment (CRC-CARE) and University of South Australia.

By IANS, New Delhi : Showing no signs of any slowdown and backed by heavy rural demand, India added a record 15.87 million new phone connections in March, to take its telecom density to nearly 40 percent, fresh data said Wednesday. India, which already boasts of the second-largest telecom user base in the world after China's and ahead of the US, now has 429.72 million telecom subscribers, both in the wireless and mobile segments, with a record growth of 59.48 percent last fiscal.

By Devirupa Mitra, IANS Bogota : Colombia will soon have a sophisticated software programme to prepare, implement and monitor its national budget, thanks to an Indian software company. From his office inside the finance ministry building opposite the Colombian Presidential Palace in Bogota, Subramanian Ravishankar is leading a global team of 350 Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) employees working exclusively on this major government project.

By Nabeel A. Khan, IANS, New Delhi : Did you know that through the Internet you can access your computer from almost anywhere? Relatively few of us have taken advantage of facilities like Google Document, Zoho Offline Office or Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia's Live Document. These provide softwares like Word, Excel or Power Point. You can use them without having MS office installed in your PC.

By Madhusree Chatterjee, IANS, New Delhi : Can ideas change a nation? Co-founder of Indian software giant Infosys and author Nandan Nilekani believes that they can, even if it takes a long time for them to become embedded in the collective psyche of the country.

By IANS, Washington : People with severe disabilities will soon be able to operate a computer or control a powered wheelchair simply by moving their tongues, thanks to a new magnetic device. This device could help individuals "with high-level spinal cord injuries, return to rich, active, independent and productive lives", said Maysam Ghovanloo of Georgia Tech School who developed the new system with graduate student Xueliang Huo.

By IANS London : A computer that can interact with humans and react to their non-verbal gestures is being developed by a European team. Known as SEMAINE, the project will build a sensitive artificial listener (SAL) system, which will perceive user's facial expression, gaze, and voice and then engage with the user. When engaging with a human, the SAL will be able to adapt its own performance and pursue different actions, depending on the non-verbal behaviour of the user, reports Sciencedaily.

By IANS London : The mocker swallowtail butterfly's unique ability to hoodwink predators by sporting wing patterns and colours mimicking those of poisonous species is thanks to a developmental gene, say scientists. In a new study, biologists contend that an understanding of how these mimic patterns evolved may shed new light on whether such evolutionary changes occurred in small gradual steps, or in sudden leaps. A team of biologists used molecular tags and DNA sequencing to pinpoint the part of its genetic code that determines wing pattern and colour.

By IANS, Washington : A Princeton-led team of researchers has discovered an entirely new mechanism for making common electronic materials emit laser beams. The finding could lead to lasers that operate more efficiently and at higher temperatures than existing devices, and find applications in environmental monitoring, homeland security, medical diagnostics and other areas that require extremely sensitive detection of different chemicals.

By IANS, London : Two high-level Indian technology delegations are to visit Britain next week amid a bid by both countries to deepen their technology ties. Members of the Indian Semiconductor Association are to visit from Sep 29 to Oct 2 for seminars and networking events organised with Silicon South West, South West Regional Development Agency and East of England International. The second delegation is from NASSCOM, which is bringing 14 of its members covering a variety of areas, including e-learning and healthcare, for one-to-one meetings with British companies.

By IANS Washington : NASA astronomers have created a striking and detailed ultraviolet image of an entire galaxy "ablaze with star birth" by combining 39 individual frames, taken over 11 hours of exposure. The image shows the giant star-forming region NGC 604 as a shiny spot to the lower left of the galaxy's nucleus. With a diameter of 1,500 light-years, it is the largest stellar nursery in the "local group" that includes our Milky Way and Andromeda.

By Venkatachari Jagannathan and Fakir Balaji, IANS, Sriharikota (Andhra Pradesh) : India's first lunar spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 started to cruise around the earth in its designated orbit Wednesday morning, minutes after a copybook liftoff launched the country into the elite club that has sent missions to the moon. Other members of the club are the US, former Soviet Union, European Space Agency, China and Japan. The US returns to lunar exploration aboard Chandrayaan-1, which is carrying two NASA instruments in its payload.

By IANS, Washington : Our planet has a fever. But global warming's effects on farming and water resources is still a mystery. Now an invention may provide a new diagnostic tool for assessing the health of the earth's soil. A Tel Aviv University (TAU) invention, the Optical Soil Dipstick (OSD) designed by Eyal Ben-Dor will help scientists, urban planners and farmers understand the changing health of the soil, as well as its agricultural potential and other associated concerns. It could be used as a whistle-blower to catch polluters.

By IANS, Beijing : Chinese web portal Goojje has said it "will not change" its logo despite US search giant Google's threat to sue it over copyright infringement, according to a media report Wednesday. Goojje's logo resembles the logo of Google Inc and also bears a paw print sign like that of Baidu Inc, the biggest Internet search engine in China and Google Inc's arch rival in the country.

By Venkatachari Jagannathan, IANS, Sriharikota (Andhra Pradesh) : India successfully launched its 16th remote-sensing satellite Oceansat-2 and six small Europeans satellites on board a rocket that blasted off from here at 11.51 a.m. Wednesday. The 44.4-metre tall, 230-tonne Indian rocket Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) freed itself from the launch pad at the spaceport and lifted itself up, lugging the 960-kg Oceansat-2 and the six nano satellites all together weighing 20 kg.

By T. V. Padma, IANS New Delhi : The deepening and strengthening scientific collaboration between India and Germany, that included the setting up of a joint science and technology centre here, was in some ways overshadowed by the media focus on the nuclear deal during Chancellor Angela Merkel's visit this week. The two nations have agreed to enhance collaboration and networking across a range of issues, with a focus on reducing the impact of climate change and developing clean energy technologies, according to the science portal www.scidev.net.

By DPA Washington : The Dawn space probe's five billion km journey to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter will begin a day later than planned, the US space agency NASA announced. The spacecraft's launch aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket has been postponed from Wednesday until Thursday morning. The blastoff is now scheduled for a launch window of 7.20 a.m. to 7.49 a.m. Thursday.

By ANTARA News Washington : Astronomers using robotic cameras said on Wednesday they had found 10 new planets outside our solar system, while a second team said they had found the youngest planet yet. The findings add to a growing list of more than 270 so-called extrasolar planets, they told a meeting of astronomers in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

By Bernama, Beijing : China will launch its third geostationary meteorological satellite, the Fengyun-2-06, some time next week, the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) told Xinhua on Friday. It will take off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwestern Sichuan Province. According to the CMA, Fengyun-2-06 will copy meteorological data from preceding satellites after orbit operation trials. It is designed to replace Fengyun-2-C which has outlived its service.

By RIA Novosti Washington : U.S. space shuttle Atlantis docked with the International Space Station Saturday but a spacewalk to install a European science laboratory was delayed for a day due an astronaut health problem, NASA said Sunday. "With no impact to the overall mission objectives, the first spacewalk Monday will be conducted by Rex Walheim and Stan Love, who replaces Hans Schlegel," NASA said but did not specify the health problem.

By IANS, Bangalore : Leading chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Thursday unveiled a more powerful chip based on 45 nm (nanometre) quad-core Opteron processor, codenamed 'Shanghai', for server platform. "The Opteron processor gives 35 percent more performance consuming 35 percent less power. Our Indian team made significant contribution to the design and development of the new chip working with the Austin R&D centre," AMD India managing director Dasaradha Gude told reporters at a preview of the product here.

By IANS, New Delhi : Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Saturday said the role of technology in supporting India's counter terrorism and internal security efforts was not being given adequate emphasis and there was need for greater investment in security technologies.

By IANS, Washington : Seeing into the remotest reaches of space, way beyond the capacity of the most powerful existing (Hubble) telescope, may now be possible with MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument detectors) cameras. "The MIRI is one of four science instruments aboard the James Webb telescope that is designed to record images and spectra at the longest wavelengths that the Webb can observe," said Matt Greenhouse, NASA project scientist.

By RIA Novosti, Moscow : Russia Saturday launched a rocket carrying a US communication satellite into space from the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan, Russian space agency Roscosmos said. "The launch of the Proton-M rocket fitted with a Breeze-M booster and carrying a ProtoStar-2 telecommunication satellite went ahead at the scheduled time," a spokesperson of the Roscosmos said. ProtoStar Ltd is a private company based in Bermuda. Its US operations are based in San Francisco and California, while its Asian operations are conducted from Singapore.

Washington, Feb 14 (DPA) Checking your e-mail has become a dangerous business. The number and types of e-mail borne threats that can cause harm to your computer or your privacy are growing. Sometimes the actual danger imposed by these threats can be over hyped, but you still need to know what could constitute a dangerous e-mail message and how to respond to the threat. Q: Can I get a virus just by reading an e-mail message?

By IANS, New Delhi : Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Saturday gave away the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Awards to 21 scientists, institutions and to Mahindra and Mahindra for their flagship vehicle Scorpio. The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Awards for 2007 went to 11 scientists, including Narayanaswamy Srinivasan of Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Science for his contributions in the area of computational genomics.

By IANS, Washington : Taking already proven technology to grow carbon nanotubes of record lengths, researchers have now found new applications in communications for these fibres by spinning them into strong threads. David Mast, an associate professor of physics at the University of Cincinnati's (UC) McMicken College of Arts and Sciences, took a 25-micron carbon nanotube thread and created a dipole antenna using double-sided transparent tape and silver paste. He was immediately successful in transmitting radio signals.

By Xinhua, Beijing : China will launch the first of eight satellites to monitor environment and natural disasters from the country's north Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center this week, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC). The satellite "Environment 1", an optical satellite, will be sent into orbit by a Long March 2C carrier.

By Venkatachari Jagannathan and Fakir Balaji, IANS, Sriharikota (Andhra Pradesh) : India was Tuesday set to launch its historic unmanned flight to the moon, the sixth to do so after the US, former Soviet Union, European Space Agency, China and Japan. The skies cleared Tuesday evening after a heavy downpur, cheering scientists counting down to the early Wednesday morning launch.

Kolkata: Say goodbye to confusing roadmaps and guidebooks! A new app will ensure residents and visitors to West Bengal's New Town suburb -- nominated...

By IANS, Kolkata: To help the seafarers in distress, VXL Technologies has launched a global positioning system (GPS) based search-and-rescue beacon, called Distress Alert Transmitter (DAT), a company official said Thursday. "By pressing a button of this transmitter, fishermen can save themselves when they are in danger," the company's executive director B.D. Bose told reporters here.

By IANS, Washington : Hardening of arteries detected in Egyptian mummies as early as 3,500 years shows that heart attacks and strokes had ancient origins. "Atherosclerosis... despite differences in ancient and modern lifestyles... was rather common in ancient Egyptians of high socio-economic status living as much as three millennia ago," says Gregory Thomas, co-principal investigator. "The findings suggest that we may have to look beyond modern risk factors to fully understand the disease," says Thomas, University of California-Irvine (UC-I) professor of cardiology.

Durban(IANS) : South African scientists have sequenced the entire genome of a strain of extremely drug-resistant mycobacterium tuberculosis (XDR-TB). They hope the information will contribute to developing better diagnostics and treatments for the disease. The bacteria analysed were taken from a patient in Durban's King Edward VIII Hospital in KwaZulu Natal, science site SciDev.Net reported.

By Xinhua Washington : NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft will make a flyby of Mercury on Jan. 14, which makes it the first to visit the planet in almost 33 years, NASA announced on Thursday. MESSENGER will explore and snap close-up images of never-before-seen terrain of Mercury. These findings could open new theories and answer old questions in the study of the solar system, said NASA scientists.

By IANS, Amsterdam : Dutch engineers have developed a miniature remote-controlled aircraft that flies by flapping its wings like a dragonfly, has an on-board camera and weighs just three grams. Delfly Micro, made by engineers at Delft University of Technology, can fly for approximately three minutes and has a maximum speed of five meters per second, reports Eurekalert.

By IANS, Sydney : Coral communities in Australia's Great Barrier Reef might not be able to recover from bleaching as easily as previously presumed, says a new study. A two-year study by a University of Queensland team has found that contrary to perception, it is not possible for bleached corals to recover or become more resistant to bleaching by taking up more heat tolerant species of their micro-algae partners.

By Xinhua, Berlin : New measurements adopted by an international team of researchers have revealed a much "slimmer" Milky Way compared with previous estimates. According to a press release from Germany's Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) on Tuesday, the research led by Xiangxiang Xue of the National Astronomy Observatories of China has put the mass of the Milky Way at slightly under one trillion times the mass of the sun.

By IANS, Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh is targeting the third place in Information Technology exports in the country, a state government official said Wednesday. K. Ratna Prabha, principal secretary, IT, said the state, though started late in IT exports, has reached the fourth position. "Next year the state will reach third position," she told a programme organised to announce that Hyderabad will host eINDIA 2010, India's largest event on Information and Communication Technology. Karnataka tops in the IT exports in the country followed by Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.

By Rajat Rai, IANS, Lucknow : About 50,000 pirated DVDs of Microsoft Windows 7 are estimated to have been sold here since the official launch on Oct 22, generating unaccounted business of around Rs.50 lakh (nearly $100,000). The reason for the allure of the pirated versions: These cost Rs.40-Rs.250 in Naza Market in Hazratganj here, drawing buyers from not only the rest of Uttar Pradesh and neighbouring states like Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Uttarakhand but also Nepal and Bangladesh.

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London, Dec 10 (IANS) A new software will soon help airport staff maintain strict vigil and promptly track unauthorised persons and objects. The airport apron is a beehive of activity. Ground staff drive baggage trolleys to the aircraft, load air freight containers in the hold and refuel the aircraft. But which persons, vehicles and objects are moving around on the apron? Are all the people authorised? Are people getting into hazardous situations? For the security staff who have to supervise the terrain on the monitor, it is almost impossible to keep track of everything.

By DPA, Washington : A large piece of space junk flew past the International Space Station (ISS) Friday without posing any threat, US space agency NASA said. A piece of a European Ariane-5 rocket passed within 1.3 km of the ISS, but not close enough to pose a risk to the station or its crew. "The flight control team is continuing to monitor that debris, but again it did pass as expected and is no concern to the orbiting complex," said a NASA spokesperson.

By IANS New Delhi : Exports from the IT and ITeS sector is expected to reach $80 billion by 2011, Information Technology and Communications Minister A. Raja said here Wednesday. "Our IT exports were a few million dollars in the early 90s and now it is around $37 billion. We are confident that our exports will boom despite the perceived odds against outsourcing and increasing competition," Raja said at an award function organised by the Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council (ESC).

By IANS, Lucknow : Imagine preserving the colour and shape of a flower for nearly 15 years! A team of researchers at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) museology department claims to have developed a technique that can do just that. The technique, according to the researchers, will benefit the flower business across the globe and help scientists preserve and conserve endangered, vulnerable and useful species of plants for study purposes.

By DPA, Washington : Computers hate heat. So this summer, be sure to think about keeping your computer cool. Computer components themselves run hot, and yet they're not designed to operate above a certain temperature. When the temperature outside gets uncomfortable for humans, you can be sure that your computer isn't liking the situation any better. So for a trouble-free summer of computing, take steps now to ensure that your PC stays cool.

By IANS, Washington : The yellow spice turmeric, that evokes associations with weddings and other auspicious occasions in India, has potent medicinal properties as well, India-American scientist Krishnan Dhandapani and a colleague have found. The active ingredient in turmeric not only cuts down one's chances of getting cancer and Alzheimer's disease, but may also reduce the size of a haemorrhagic stroke, said Medical College of Georgia (MCG) researchers. Timing is critical for patients who often don't know they have had a stroke and may not be seen by a physician for several hours.

By IANS, Toronto : A fossilised dinosaur bone unearthed in New Mexico shows that dinosaurs survived mass extinction by 700,000 years, according to a new dating method.

By Xinhua, Beijing : Chinese experts Monday announced that the country's space scientists have completed the world's highest-resolution three-dimensional map of the moon. The map, covering the whole surface of the moon, is based on image data obtained by a charge-coupled device (CCD) stereo camera carried by Chang'e-1, China's first lunar probe vehicle, launched Oct 2007. The spatial resolution of the map - measured by the distance of two features within an image that can be clearly defined - is 500 meters.

New York : Women who go to college intending to become engineers stay in the profession less often than men, as a result of...

New York, Nov 5 (IANS) A robotic car built by university students won a $2 million US military-sponsored race in California, it was announced Sunday. Backed by General Motors (GM), a team called Tartan Racing -- formed by Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania -- built the robotic car nicknamed 'Boss'. It won Saturday by covering a distance of about 85 km in less then six hours on a simulated town created on a disused US Air Force base in Victorville, California.

By IANS, Beijing : China has finished construction of its first module of an unmanned space station and is testing it for a launch in 2011, a military official has said. The 8.5-tonne Tiangong-1 space module will be put into orbit in 2011 and experts are testing its electronic, mechanical and thermal properties, the unnamed official was quoted as saying by China Daily. A carrier rocket named Long March II-F will launch the Tiangong-1 into space, the official said, adding that a group of Chinese astronauts, including two women, is undergoing training for the purpose.

By IANS, Bangalore : Wipro Infotech has developed an integrated software for the police to combat crime and terror, the IT bellwether announced here Friday. “The software application, which is in a pilot stage, will help the police and other law enforcement agencies to combat the fast emerging hi-tech world of crime and terror,” the company said in a statement.

By IANS, London : A team of British engineers plans to build a car that will run at the speed of 1,600 km an hour, outracing a handgun bullet. The ambitious project comes from the team that holds the world's land speed record and has the full backing of the Science Minister Lord Drayson, who believes it will be an inspiration to young people looking for a career in science or engineering, The Independent daily reported Thursday.

By IANS, London: Scientists have synthesised a molecule that targets and destroys a key protein responsible for development of cervical and other cancers, says a study.

By IANS, San Francisco: Google has announced Compute Engine, a cloud-computing service that allows businesses to run their applications on servers in the tech giant's data center.

By IANS, London : A new generation of service robots will soon be able to relieve us of heavy, dirty, monotonous or irksome tasks at home, according to scientists. They would work long hours, efficiently, tirelessly and without ever complaining and virtually for free after an initial investment. Named Care-O-bot 3, the one-armed wonder can even pick up an apple juice bottle and placed it next to the glasses on the tray and serve them to guests.

By Wang Aihua, Xinhua, Shanghai : Astronomers from China, Japan and South Korea are building the world's largest radio telescope array to study the Milky Way Galaxy and black holes as well as to determine the orbits of lunar probes such as China's Chang'e-1. The array, called the East Asia Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) consortium, consists of 19 radio telescopes from China, Japan and South Korea that cover an area with a diameter of 6,000 km from northern Japan's Hokkaido Island to western China's Kunming and Urumqi regions.

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By DPA Vienna : Google, the world's largest Internet search engine, is on several fronts a danger that has to be stopped, a study released by Austria's Graz University claims. A research team led by Prof. Hermann Maurer, chairman of Graz University's Institute for Information Systems and Computer Media, argues that Google is turning into a new version of George Orwell's "Big Brother" - creating unacceptable monopolies in many areas of the worldwide web.

By IANS, Hamilton (New Zealand) : Seventy million-year-old dinosaur footprints have been found in New Zealand, a geologist said. The footprints were found in the South Island region of Nelson - the first evidence of the dinosaur's existence in the country. Geologist Greg Browne of the New Zealand government-owned research organisation, G.N.S. Science, found the footprints while he was investigating rock and sediment formations in Whanganui inlet at Golden Bay, said a press release of Tourism New Zealand here.

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By IANS, New Delhi : The power sector accounts for around 60 percent of the conuntry's carbon dioxide emissions, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said Wednesday. "The power sector approximately accounts for 60 percent of the total carbon dioxide emissions generated in the country," Ramesh told the Lok Sabha in a written reply. He said thermal power generation accounts for around 64 percent of the total power generation in the country. Coal, gas and diesel-based power generation contribute approximately 82 percent, 17 percent and one percent of the thermal power generation.

By IANS, Tehran : Iran is preparing to launch five to six satellites into the space as part of its aerospace development programme. "We are currently carrying out a project which will see the design, production and launch of 5 to 6 satellites. We hope to send one satellite into space in the first half of the coming year," Iranian Telecommunications Minister Reza Taqipour said. "Iran has laid the foundation for the development of its aerospace industry in the past three to four years," Taqipour told Fars News Agency.

By IANS, Beijing : China has installed the country's first domestically-made supercomputer capable of doing 1,000 trillion operations per second. Tianhe-1 is scheduled to begin operations this month, according to the National Supercomputing Centre in Tianjin. The supercomputer, developed by the National University of Defence Technology in 2009, enabled China to become only the second country after the US capable of developing a device with a speed of 1,000 trillion operations per second.

By IANS, Washington : As a car accelerates up and down the hill then slows down to follow a hairpin bend, the airflow around it cannot keep up and detaches from the vehicle. This aerodynamic separation creates a drag that slows the car and forces the engine to work harder, using more fuel. The same phenomenon affects airplanes, boats, submarines, even your golf ball.