Technology

By IANS, Chennai : Scientists of the Indian space agency are working to fix a power snag that switched off 12 transponders of the INSAT-4B comunication satellite Wednesday night, affecting services of some television channels and telecom operators. "An expert team is looking at the possibilities of partial utilisation of some of the transponders that were switched off. The team is working to restore the services at the earliest," S. Satish, director (Publications and Public Relations), Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), told IANS from Bangalore over phone.

By DPA Ahrensburg (Germany) : Many things end up in the garbage can even though they are still in fine working condition because the search for a recipient of used objects can be toilsome. Yet, online swap sites are riding to the rescue, helping people find a new home for grandma's quirky dresser, an old aquarium or even a broken down computer. "Offering super good-looking male iguana for a laptop" - that was one user's attempt to make a deal on the online swap site Bambali.

By IANS, Sydney : Technology being developed by the University of New South Wales could offer new hope to farmers in drought-hit areas by enabling them to grow crops by using salty groundwater. Greg Leslie, of University's UNESCO Centre for Membrane Science and Technology, is working with the University of Sydney on technology which uses reverse-osmosis membranes to turn previously useless, brackish groundwater into a valuable agricultural resource.

By IANS, Chandigarh : The Punjab Police Monday announced that a state-of-the-art cyber crime police station and forensic science laboratory would be set up in the state. Laying the foundation stone of the new project Monday, Director General of Police N.S. Aulakh said that the cyber crime police station was required to cater to technology related crimes committed in the state. The cyber crime police station and the forensic lab to be set up in Mohali town, 10 km from here, will cost Rs.80 million, Aulakh said.

By DPA Berlin : People spend hours in front of countless PC monitors nowadays. Usually those monitors go dark when work ends. That could soon change in some households. Monitors have other uses apart from word processing and spreadsheets. They can also show movies and soap operas. But a few problems still remain when converting your monitor into a desktop TV.

By Prasanto K. Roy, IANS, You're a Delhi-based wannabe terrorist needing to communicate with your handlers. What do you do? Invisible-ink notes are passe, as are carrier pigeons. You will, of course, use electronic options. Like e-mail. Walk into a cyber cafe, log into a G-mail or Yahoo account. Don't use an account in your own name. And don't send e-mail. Simply read instructions left for you in an unsent mail, saved as a draft in your account. Then, to reply, just edit the unsent e-mail, and save it back as a draft. If e-mail isn't travelling, it can't be intercepted.

By V. Vijayalakshmi, IANS, Pune : One tour of Pune's Big Animation studio makes you realise that the Indian animation industry has come of age. And the man behind this set-up is Ashish Kulkarni, a pioneer in the field. Kulkarni has created this massive studio with a built-up area of 60,000 sq ft, which will focus on original Indian content in animation. "It was in 1995 that animation channels were first seen in India and there were no Indian stories. When our kids go to foreign universities they should have some knowledge of Indian epics," Kulkarni told IANS.

By Dipankar De Sarkar, IANS, London : A leading international space scientist says there is now clear evidence of life on Mars but that American authorities are hesitating from announcing it for political reasons. "The discovery of liquid water on Mars combined with earlier discoveries of organic substances in a meteorite that came from Mars, and also of methane in the Martian atmosphere all point to the existence of life - contemporary life - on the Red Planet," said Chandra Wickramasinghe, a globally renowned astrobiologist.

By IANS, Washington : Youngsters are using popular networking websites like Facebook and MySpace to create flattering self-images, one that they would like to be but are not. "People can use these sites to explore who they are by posting particular images, pictures or text," said University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) psychology graduate Adriana Manago, researcher with the Children's Digital Media Center, Los Angeles (CDMCLA), and co-author of the study.

By Jay Dougherty, DPA, Washington : Who's in control of your Windows 7 desktop - you or the operating system? With applications and icons scattered all over the place, constant pop-up notifications, and programmes hidden deep within the Start menu, you might feel like Microsoft has done its best to hinder your productivity rather than enhance it. But with a little know-how and a few free tools, you can take charge of your desktop like never before.

By IANS London : Peanut husk, one of the largest waste products of the food industry, may be of some use after all -- it can help improve water quality, says a new study. According to researchers at Turkey's Mersin University, peanut husk can be used to extract toxic copper ions from wastewater, offering a useful alternative to simple disposal of this food industry by-product. Findings of the study have been published in the latest edition of the International Journal of Environment and Pollution.

By IANS, London : A British scientist who helped design a camera on board India's Chandrayaan-1 says he hopes images from it will help answer two tantalising questions about the Moon. “Where did the Moon come from? And could it ever sustain human life?” Maneul Grande of Aberystwyth Universtiy told the Times newspaper. “After the Apollo landings, people thought they knew a fair bit about the Moon - they'd seen people walking around up there,” said Grande, who helped to design the European Space Agency's camera that will take X-ray images of the Moon's surface.

By Prashant K. Nanda, IANS New Delhi : The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Indian universities have become "white elephants" and need to be revamped to achieve successes in science, says eminent space scientist K. Kasturirangan. Many of the laboratories in CSIR, the country's biggest scientific body, need a complete overhaul and their mission, organisational set-up and infrastructure need to change for the better, Kasturirangan said in an interview.

By DPA, Frankfurt : Dell has released two new laptops from the nascent ULV class. The 13z and 15z are members of the Inspiron series and cost $550 and $580 respectively. ULV stands for Ultra Low Voltage and refers to processors designed to work at lower voltages and use less power. In the case of the new Dell laptops, that translates into respective battery lives of 11 hours (13z with a 13.3 inch monitor) and 10 hours (15z with 15.6 inch monitor).

By IANS Washington : The meteorite linked to the mass extinction of dinosaurs and other life forms 65 million years ago was four to six kilometres in diameter. That's the conclusion of a team of Hawaii University researchers who have evolved a mechanism to measure the size of meteorites that have rammed into earth over millennia. François Paquay and his team used isotopes of the rare element osmium in sediments at the bottom of the ocean to estimate the meteorite sizes and also the frequency with which they hit earth.

By EuAsiaNews Brussels : Indian environmental scientist Rajendra Pachauri has said that Europe can set an example for the world in tackling climate change if it follows what it preaches. "Within Europe itself the most apt philosophy or guiding principle would be what Mahatma Gandhi said, "be the change in what you want to see in the world,'' Pachauri told a session of the Climate Change Committee of the European Parliament in Brussels Wednesday evening.

By IANS, Washington : Not all soil bacteria are bad. Some of them act as good Samaritans as they "inhale" toxic metals, strip them of their toxicity and then "exhale" them, say researchers. In the foreseeable future, they might potentially clean-up toxic chemicals left over from nuclear weapons production decades ago. Using a unique combination of microscopes, researchers at Ohio State University were able to glimpse how the Shewanella oneidensis bacterium breaks down metal to extract oxygen.

By IANS, Washington : Sentry, an unmanned submersible, operating on its own in harsh environments, has helped scientists pinpoint and finalise the best locations for two sites of a proposed pioneering seafloor lab. Successful site selection is a vital step in developing an extensive sensor network above and below the seafloor on the Juan de Fuca Plate, according to John Delaney, University of Washington oceanographer and chief scientist for a two-week mapping expedition.

By Xinhua Beijing : Scientists are debating whether the sulfur dioxide found in the atmosphere of Venus is the product of relatively recent volcanic eruptions or lingers from eruptions as old as 10 million years. "Volcanoes are a key part of a climate system," said Fred Taylor, a Venus Express scientist from Oxford University. Sulfur compounds don't stay long in Earth's atmosphere because they eventually react with the planetary surface, but they may take longer to react with surface rocks on Venus.

By IANS Hyderabad : For the first time in the world, scientists here have succeeded in artificial insemination of a black buck by non-invasive method, leading to the birth of a live fawn. Scientists at the Laboratory for Conservation of Endangered Species (LaCONES) of the prestigious Centre for Cellular Molecular Biology (CCMB) here are excited about their success.

By IANS, Washington : Over 350 new species, including the world's smallest deer, a "flying frog" and a 100 million-year-old gecko, have been discovered in the Eastern Himalayas, according to a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report. A decade of research carried out by scientists in remote mountain areas endangered by rising global temperatures brought exciting discoveries such as a bright green frog that uses its red and long webbed feet to glide in the air.

By IANS, London : The 3D revolution has so far been all about Hollywood blockbusters and major sporting events. But now, the cutting-edge technology is coming closer to home. Treasured moments such as a child's first steps or a university graduation can be captured in 3D with the arrival of the first camcorder - capable of filming in more than two dimensions, says the Daily Mail. Unveiled by Panasonic Wednesday, the 1,300 pound HDC-SDT750 3D model works using a sophisticated double lens.

By IANS New Delhi : The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is going to get Rs.35 million to fight cyber-related crimes, Minister of Communications and Information Technology A. Raja said here Friday. "We will provide Rs.3.5 crore (Rs.35 million) to the CBI for developing advanced software and procuring latest software and tools to fight cyber crimes more efficiently," Raja said at the closing ceremony of the seventh Interpol cyber crime conference here.

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 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.

By IANS, New York : Pitched as the world's latest, largest and swiftest search engine, Cuil was launched Monday with 120 billion pages or 'thrice' the volume of the Google index. Described as a 'super-stealth search project', it has been founded and developed by the highly respected husband-wife duo of Stanford professor Tom Costello and former Google search architect Anna Patterson.

By IANS Chennai : India's new multipurpose scientific vessel is ready for deployment and will be at the forefront of the country's sea research. Named Sagar Nidhi, it is parked off the east coast of Tamil Nadu. Sagar Nidhi will be dedicated to the nation after Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal returns from Australia, officials at a scientists' meet here said. It is expected to provide logistical support in India's Antarctic II and Arctic missions, which are on the cards in the next five years.

By Xinhua, Moscow : South Korea's first astronaut Yi So-yeon left the International Space Station (ISS) to return to earth on Saturday. The Soyuz spaceship carrying Yi, U.S. astronaut Peggy Whitson and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko is expected to touch down at 12:31 Moscow time (0931 GMT). The landing capsule of the Soyuz TMA-11 spaceship is to land inthe Kazakh steppe 80 km north of the Kazakh city of Arkalyk, Valery Lyndin, a spokesman for the Mission Control Centre based near Moscow, was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying.

Hyderabad, Sep 28 (IANS) American astronaut of Indian origin Sunita Willams drove into Cyberabad Friday on the outskirts of this city to a rousing reception by hundreds of delegates participating in the 58th International Astronautical Congress (IAC).

By DPA Washington : The last time space shuttle Endeavour flew to the International Space Station (ISS) was November 2002 - the last mission before the accident that destroyed shuttle Columbia in February 2003, killing seven astronauts including Indian born Kalpana Chawla. Since the tragedy, Endeavour has remained on the ground - a time US space agency NASA used to outfit the shuttle with all available safeguards. Now the newly equipped Endeavour is getting ready for its premiere.

By Xinhua, Beijing : With the Saturday launch of the shuttle Discovery already underway, a NASA employee is rushing back from Russia with a special pump to fix a malfunctioning toilet on the International Space Station. The space station's Russian-built toilet has been acting up for the past week. The three male residents have temporarily bypassed the problem, which involves urine collection and not solid waste.

By DPA, San Francisco : All the fuss about tweeting, texting, Facebook pokes and various other cutting-edge forms of communication can obscure the fact that old-fashioned telephone calls are still a pretty effective way of conveying information. But the 560 million people who are registered users of internet phone pioneer Skype have never forgotten the value of talk, and now it seems that Google is realizing it, too.

By IANS Chandigarh : Farmers in Haryana are using the SMS (short messaging service) facility on their mobile phones to get answers to their agriculture-related queries. A free SMS service started by the state's agriculture department in Feb this year has become quite a hit with farmers of the state. They can get answers to all their queries by sending an SMS to a number assigned by the state government.

By DPA Tokyo : Who hasn't felt the urge, when jolted awake by a peace-shattering alarm clock, to hurl the thing against the nearest wall? For morning grumps in Japan, there is now an alarm that allows them to let off some steam: a clock that looks like a hand grenade. As soon as the grenade look-alike with a built-in digital clock sounds off in the mornings, its user can feel free to fire it into a corner. A motion sensor 'disarms' it, and its soft shell minimizes damage to the alarm and the owner's belongings

By IANS/RIA Novosti, Moscow : A team of Russian biophysicists has successfully grown ancient plants from tissue material that stayed frozen in the Siberian region for about 30,000 years.

By IANS, London : Scientists claim to have discovered the first intact skeleton of a dinosaur that is an ancestor to the sauropod, the largest creature ever to walk the planet.

By Xinhua, Beijing : While the best observation place in China for Friday's solar eclipse is a small county in the far-away Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous region, most people can also see it in all its glory on their laptop. The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) will broadcast the total solar eclipse, the first in China this century, live on the Internet, the Division of Information Technical Sciences (ITS) said on Tuesday.

By IANS New Delhi : India has a mere 130,000 scientific researchers against seven times that number in China, and the government is taking steps to address the imbalance, parliament was told Wednesday. "We have just 130,000 researchers against some 700,000 to 800,000 in China," Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibil said during question hour in the Rajya Sabha. "The Scandinavian countries have 7,000 researchers per million of population. In India, the figure is 156," he added.

By IANS Washington : The ocean has an "odour" that affects global climate and also attracts reef fish to feed as they "eavesdrop" on events that might lead them to food. The odour, traced to DMSP (Di-methyl-sulfoniopropionate), is given off when either tiny animals in the plankton are feeding on the algae, or during an algal bloom, said Jennifer DeBose of the University of California at Davis who conducted a study on ocean odour.

By IANS, Washington : NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has spotted its first never-before-seen near-Earth object (NEO), the first of hundreds it is expected to find during its mission to map the whole sky in infrared light. NEOs are asteroids and comets with orbits that pass relatively close to Earth's path around the sun. In extremely rare cases of an impact, the objects may devastate the Earth's surface. An asteroid, about 10 km wide, is thought to have plunged into our planet 65 million years ago, triggering a global disaster and obliterating dinosaurs.

By Madhusree Chatterjee, IANS, New Delhi : If the universe seems mysterious to you, try becoming a 'cosmic detective'! For, nature has left behind many clues to unravel its mystery, says US-based award-winning scientist Mani Bhaumik who has just penned a children's novel on the subject. "The study of the universe is a mystery - fortunately nature has left behind some telltale clues around us and like a detective we can pick up the clues and follow the trail to solve the mystery," Bhaumik told IANS in an informal chat in the capital.

By IANS, Sydney : Microscopic tooth-like fossils have helped scientists correlate cooling climate and increasing biodiversity in ancient oceans 500 million years ago. An international team led by Julie Trotter of Australian National University (ANU) Research School of Earth Sciences (RSES) measured the oxygen isotope ratio of the fossils, less than two mm long, from extinct eel-shaped sea creatures called conodonts. The oxygen isotope ratio in a conodont depends on the temperature of the water which the creature inhabited.

By RIA Novosti, Moscow : Online games inspired by the Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at US President George W. Bush in Baghdad last week have taken the Internet by storm. Ever since Muntazer al-Zaidi, a reporter for the Cairo-based al-Baghdadiya TV, threw both his shoes at the outgoing US president Sunday, online games have begun to spring up giving players the chance to succeed where the Iraqi journalists failed.

By DPA Los Angeles : Apple has released a new operating system for its ever more popular Mac computers. The upgraded OS 10.5, nicknamed Leopard, was released Friday and includes some 300 improvements including a 'time machine' that tracks and resurrects lost data, and improved video-conferencing abilities. The eagerly awaited system was delayed by several months while the company's engineers worked on developing the iPhone. Rival Microsoft, whose software powers 90 percent of the world's computers, released its newest operating system, Vista, in January.

By IANS, London : It was the breathtaking solar event that sparked spectacular displays of Northern Lights across much of the northern hemisphere.

By IANS New Delhi : India has launched a mission to screen and develop antibiotic molecules to tap the over $25 billion global antibiotics market. The department of biotechnology under the ministry of science and technology Friday said it has launched a network project called "screening for bio-molecules from microbial diversity collected from different ecological niches".

By IANS Rio de Janeiro : Brazil and Argentina have "successfully" launched a rocket carrying scientific experiments, the first joint space mission ever undertaken by the two countries, authorities said. The launch was conducted at 6.15 a.m. (0915 GMT) Sunday from the Boca do Inferno Launch Centre in the northeastern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Norte, Andreia Araujo, spokesperson of Brazilian Space Agency (AEB), told the Spanish news agency EFE.

New Delhi : Truecaller, an app that helps identify unknown numbers and also block spam calls launched a new app on Tuesday that offers...

By IANS, Washington : Social networking website Facebook, which offers its subscribers only a "like" button for anyone's updates, is now faced with a fake "dislike" button, which is spreading like a virus across the site. The fake dislike button is followed with a link that takes people to a fake application. Instead of installing a dislike button, the application uses the person's network to continue spreading the fake programme. Graham Cluley of the British security firm Sophos wrote in a blog that the fake dislike buttons "are going viral" on Facebook.

By IANS/RIA Novosti, Moscow: A memorial to renowned tech innovator and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was unveiled in Russian city of St. Petersburg Wednesday.

By IANS, Washington : The ability to work together and capture larger prey has allowed social spiders to flourish beyond the strength of their numbers, according to a new study. The surface area of the three-dimensional webs social spiders use to capture prey does not grow as fast as the number of spiders in the nests. So the number of incoming prey per spider declines with colony size.

By Heiko Haupt, DPA, Hamburg : One identical image appears on 20 computer monitors scattered across Germany: a dragon, with a group of figures in the foreground preparing to face off against him. Yet the scene is frozen, since the "heroes" are off taking care of other issues: Gnygnyg and Shavon are just standing around because the people normally behind the keyboard have headed off to walk the dog. This kind of scene has become commonplace for more and more people, reflecting how the online gaming "raids" have developed into a popular sport.

By DPA, New York : Want to take a photo immediately? No photo opportunity will be lost if you have a pair of sunglasses with an integrated digital camera. A tiny lens has been built into the frame of the $100 sunglasses and uses 1.3 mega pixels to take still images. Fans just have to press a button to take a photo or use the remote control which can be kept in your pocket.

By RIA Novosti, Washington : The launch date for space shuttle Atlantis to service the Hubble Space Telescope has been postponed from October 10 to 14, NASA said in a statement. The 11-day mission, originally scheduled for launch on August 28, was previously postponed until October 10-11 to complete work on an external fuel tank. This time NASA said the final preparations for the mission were hampered by hurricane Ike.

By IANS, Washington: Chinese phone-maker Huawei Technologies havs unveiled two phones, terming them the world's "biggest" and the "most powerful" smartphones.

By IANS, Washington : Microscopic, chemically triggered robotic "hands" developed by biomolecular engineers, led by an Indian American, can move ultra-tiny components. These chemically triggered microscopic devices or 'hands', that manipulate particles smaller than a grain of sand, can be used in lab-on-a-chip applications and micro-manufacturing, the researchers say.

Hyderabad, Sep 25 (IANS) A glimpse into the rich cultural heritage of India, complete with dance and music, evoked more excitement among foreign delegates at the ongoing 58th International Astronautical Congress than the speeches on space. The delegates were treated to a cultural feast at the inaugural ceremony of the five-day Congress at the majestic Hyderabad International Convention Centre (HICC) near Hitec City here.

By IANS, Washington : Global levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the primary driver of climate change, increased by 0.6 percent or 19 billion tonnes last year. Additionally methane rose by 27 million tonnes after nearly a decade with little or no increase. National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists released these and other preliminary findings as part of an annual update on agency's greenhouse gas index, which tracks data from 60 sites worldwide.

By IANS, Sydney : A study led by a scientist of Indian-origin has decoded the tricky art of landing by honey bees, a finding that can have huge implications in making better robot planes. An automatic landing system for an aircraft is expensive and complex. And it is just one of many systems that is required to make a truly robotic aircraft. But a bee can take off, find targets, fly through tunnels, navigate home and land without any of that complexity.

By IANS, New Delhi: Google turned 14 Thursday and celebrated its birthday with a doodle of a rich chocolate cake.

By Xinhua 　Beijing : The charge-coupled device (CCD) camera on Chang'e-1, China's first lunar orbiter, has started imaging probes on the dark side of the moon and captured photos of parts of this region, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced Tuesday. The CNSA said that the orbiter is operating normally in terms of flying, probing, land control and communication, as well as data transmitting and processing.

By DPA Erlangen (Germany) : German scientists have developed a way of harnessing heat from the body to generate electricity. The method uses the difference between the body's surface temperature and that of the surrounding environment, the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits said. Energy produced this way can be used to power medical equipment, such as sensors attached to the body of a patient in an intensive care ward, the institute said.

By IANS, Washington : Disorders such as depression or Parkinson's may be helped by stimulating certain areas of the brain with controlled precision, says a study, encouraging scientists to create a pacemaker for the brain. But because controlling that stimulation presently lacks precision, over-stimulation is a serious concern -- losing some of its therapeutic benefits for the patient over time.

By IANS, Sydney : Australian scientists have successfully used an electronic 'ear' to track and control a drill operating 300 metres below the earth's surface. The successful trial has demonstrated that use of 'microseismics' can potentially cut down costs and improve drilling process for exploration and mining. The trial was carried out at a coalfield test site in Queensland as part of a programme to develop and exploit coal seam gas.

By RIA Novosti, Moscow : The Progress M-65 cargo spacecraft, which undocked from the International Space Station on September 17 and served as a temporary space lab, has been "buried" in the Pacific Ocean, Russia's Mission Control said Sunday. "The cargo spacecraft's remaining fragments fell into the ocean after re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere is 11:49 a.m. Moscow time [8:49 GMT] on Sunday," Mission Control said.

By IANS, New Delhi : The level of sulphur dioxide (SO2), a major pollutant, has decreased in the national capital, data released by the environment ministry revealed Friday. While the sulphur dioxide levels are within the norms, the nitrogen oxide (NO) and particulate matter 10 (PM10) levels exceed the prescribed norms. "Decreasing trend of sulphur dioxide may be due to various interventions that have taken place in recent years such as reduction of sulphur in diesel and the use of cleaner fuel such as CNG," a ministry official said.

By IANS, New Delhi: India and Russia will Friday intensify their strategic and economic ties by signing over a dozen agreements, including an umbrella civil nuclear pact and another accord fixing the cost of the refurbished aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov at $2.35 billion. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will Friday evening holds talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, who touches down in India close to midnight Thursday for a brief visit lasting less than 24 hours.

By NNN-APP New Delhi : India has planned to launch its maiden mission to the moon, Chandrayaan-I on April nine next year. Media reports said the mission planned by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will be launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Hyderabad. Quoting Mylswamy Annadurai, Project Director of Chandrayaan-I, the reports said “a launch windows are available for the next two days in case the launch does not happen on that day.”

By IANS Chennai : Targeting a higher share in the $8 billion Indian offshore testing opportunity, Chennai-based independent software testing company Maveric Systems Limited has come out with an automated software testing tool. Developed at an investment of around $1 million, the proprietary software tool called Testac promises to reduce software testing time by 30 percent, CEO Ranga Reddy told reporters. According to him, Maveric Systems is the only Indian software testing company to have such a proprietary tool.

By IANS, Varanasi : Two people were killed here Wednesday morning when thousands of people gathered at the banks of the Ganges to watch the solar eclipse. "One person died because of drowning and the other got crushed in a stampede. The names of the deceased are yet to be determined" said P.C. Meena, deputy inspector general of police (DIG).

By IANS, London : A supernova millions of light years away from the Earth has become visible with a pair of binoculars.

By Xinhua Washington : Global warming will speed up in the next decade and at least half of the years after 2009 will be warmer than 1998, the warmest year on record, reported a UK team of scientists in their climate predictions. The next-decade prediction results by scientists at Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research in the UK is published Thursday in the U.S. academic journal Science.

By IANS/RIA Novosti, Moscow : A 400-metre-wide asteroid will Tuesday fly past earth, closer to it than the moon's orbit.

Berlin, Sep 13 (DPA) Motorists should not immediately panic when the warning lamp lights up indicating that the fuel tank is empty because most cars have an adequate reserve to last for a stretch of 50 km, according to a test by the German magazine AUTO/Strassenverkehr. The magazine tested 10 different car models with some vehicles even managing to drive a distance of 150 km before coming to a standstill after the warning lamp lit up.

By IANS, Dubai : Leading American chip maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has spun off its manufacturing facilities to a United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based company to create a new semiconductor manufacturing firm. Advanced Technology Investment Co (ATIC) of Abu Dhabi and AMD Tuesday announced the creation of a new US-headquartered company, temporarily named The Foundry Co (TFC), to meet demand for independent and leading-edge foundry production capabilities.

By DPA Hanoi : Scientists have discovered 11 plant and animal species in tropical forests in central Vietnam and believe that more species remain unknown here, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said. The new species were a snake, five orchids, two butterflies and three other plants new to science and exclusive to the Annamites Mountain Range, the conservation group said.

By Xinhua Beijing : Evidence of a powerful volcano, which erupted under the ice sheet of West Antarctica around 325 BC and might still be active now, has been confirmed by British scientists, according to media reports Monday. A layer of volcanic ash and glass shards frozen within an ice sheet in West Antarctica was identified in an article published in the journal Nature Geosciences by Hugh F. J. Corr and David G. Vaughan.

By Xinhua Washington : Atlantis shuttle astronauts wrapped up nearly eight hours of spacewalk Monday after successfully attaching Europe's Columbus Laboratory to the orbiting International Space Station (ISS). Astronauts Rex Walheim and Stanley Love spent almost eight hours working to help attach the 10-ton Columbus laboratory to the ISS and add a new room to the high-flying outpost.

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 IANS, London: The chilling possibility of a rogue nation using climate change to carry out disastrous geoengineering to modify or minimise its impact could not be ruled out, warn experts.

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 SPA, Washington : The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said it destroyed an unmanned suborbital rocket shortly after a launch failure early Friday from an island off the Virginia coast. There were no injuries or property damage, NASA said in a statement, but the agency warned that debris from the explosion could be dangerous. NASA believes most of the wreckage fell into the Atlantic Ocean off the Virginia coast. The rocket, made by Alliant Tech Systems, was carrying two experiments. NASA said it is investigating why the rocket failed.

By Asit Srivastava, IANS, Lucknow : Seventy years old and still glowing. It's a light bulb, which has recently become the most prized possession of Lucknow resident Girish Chandra Gupta, who now aims to enter the record books, claiming to have a "rare bulb". "It was only last month that I came to know the importance of the bulb after coming across an article in a Hindi daily," says Gupta, who runs a grocery shop from his small house located in a congested lane in the Hussainganj locality of this Uttar Pradesh capital.

By IANS Hyderabad : Intel Corporation Thursday launched the industry's first quad-core processors designed for multi-processor servers and high-end desktops to give higher performance at lesser power. The six new processors in the quad-core Xeon 7300 series, deployed to run multiple applications in data centres, businesses and small and medium enterprises (SMEs), perform two times faster than dual cores with three times more output per watt.

By IANS,

By IANS, Moscow: Russia and France will jointly develop a new armoured vehicle soon, Russian state arms exporter Rosoboronexport said.

By IANS Toronto : New research has uncovered how some squirrels, like their human counterparts, can be born with silver spoons in their mouths. Using 15 years of data from a North American red squirrel population, researchers discovered that female babies born into fortunate circumstances with more food, warmer spring weather and a lower population, experienced long-lasting positive effects on reproductive success, producing more offspring over the remainder of their lives.

By IANS, London : The earth's temperature may be 30 to 50 percent more sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) than has previously been estimated, says a new study. The results show that components of the earth's climate system that vary over long timescales - such as land-ice and vegetation - have an important effect on this temperature sensitivity, but these factors are often neglected in current climate models.

Hyderabad: With the central government set to launch its ambitious 100 smart cities project later this month, Telangana plans to develop a national repository...

By Nayanima Basu, IANS New Delhi : Want to send an SMS for free? Just click www.160by2.com. "On one side were users who wanted free SMS and on the other side were brands and media companies trying to reach these consumers. Initially we ignored them but as the number increased, we realised that there was a genuine opportunity here, waiting to be exploited," said Satya Kalyan Yerramsetti, CEO, SMSCountry Networks Pvt. Ltd. For sending an SMS from 160by2.com, one needs to only fill up a simple registration form.

By Fakir Balaji, IANS Hyderabad : Indian space programmes for education, healthcare, management of natural resources and weather forecast and disaster management are in great demand the world over due to their domino effect on living standards, a top Indian space agency official said here Thursday. "Nations across Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia-Pacific are making a beeline to seek our expertise and resources for replicating the success of our space programmes and applications.

By IANS Chennai : India would focus on Arctic and Antarctic missions, study climate change and send new satellites into space to study oceans and the atmosphere over the next five years, an official said here Wednesday. "India will develop new capability to drill deep into the ocean and by 2011, try to place a manned submersible into the dark depths of the ocean," P.S. Goel, secretary, ministry of earth sciences, told IANS on the sidelines of an advanced engineering conference here. "Ocean, atmosphere and seismology will be the areas of action for us," he said.

By DPA, San Francisco : The open source internet browser Firefox marked its fifth anniversary Monday, celebrating its rise from an unknown challenger to Microsoft's Internet Explorer to a formidable competitor that has been downloaded over one billion times by 330 million users around the world. "Over the last five years we've been setting ourselves up for the next five. The web is moving faster, not slower, and modern browsers are set to handle it," said Chris Blizzard of the Mozilla Foundation.

By Ridhi D Cruz, IANS Mumbai : They call it an "unconference", and it's a small but growing rage among techies wanting to share ideas in town. BarCamps are an international network of "user generated conferences" that involve open, participatory workshop events. Some 200 people from diverse spheres took part in Mumbai's latest BarCamp, where content is provided by participants - often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related free software or open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.

By IANS Hyderabad : The International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) has selected Rajya Sabha member and former Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman K. Kasturirangan for the prestigious Theodore Von Karman award for this year. The award will be presented to Kasturirangan, one of the country's top scientists, here Monday on the first-day of the 58th International Astronautical Congress. The Theodore Von Karman award is the highest distinction of the IAA given annually to recognise outstanding lifetime achievements in any branch of science.

By DPA Karlsruhe (Germany) : After seven months of writing day and night, a robot in Germany clutching a fountain pen has completed a "manuscript" Bible in cursive handwriting. The exercise was a piece of performance art by the Centre for Art and Media in the German city of Karlsruhe, which uses state funds to explore new art ideas. The machine, dubbed "Bios (Bible)", began copying the Bible in June onto a 900-metre-long roll of paper, with its arm forming each letter with the pen after all 66 books of scripture had been loaded into its memory.

By Hitesh Raj Bhagat, Microsoft Thursday launched the next version of Windows, dubbed Windows 7. The problem is: a majority of current Windows users still use XP, which is getting to be nine years old now. After the launch of Windows Vista, people had no option but to buy PCs pre-loaded with Vista. Some paid extra to "downgrade" to Windows XP. The main issues with Vista? Widespread reports of sluggishness, frequent hangs and crashes, and incompatibility with certain software and hardware. Vista was basically a troublesome experience.

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By IANS, Washington : The human eye has inspired a new technology that is likely to push the limits of photography by producing vastly better images over a wider field of view. The remarkable imaging device has been made possible by combining stretchable optoelectronics and biologically inspired design like the layout of the eye. University of Illinois and Northwestern University researchers have developed a high-performance, hemispherical "eye" camera using an array of single-crystalline silicon detectors and electronics, configured in a stretchable, interconnected mesh.

By Bernama Los Angeles : Yahoo has become the first major search engine to let people search the Internet by talking to a mobile device, China's XINHUA news agency quoted a newspaper, as saying on Thursday. Through the technology from a Massachusetts start-up, Yahoo's mobile search engine, known as oneSearch, could allow users of popular PDAs like BlackBerry Curves, Pearls or the 8800 series to scour the Web with their voice, the San Jose Mercury News daily reported.

By IANS, Toronto : In an amazing breakthrough, a Canadian researcher has located the Soviet-era rover Lunokhod-2 stuck on the moon 37 years ago. Phil Stooke, a professor at departments of physics & astronomy and geography at the University of Western Ontario at London near here solved the 37-year-old mystery using lunar images released Monday by NASA and maps from his own atlas of the moon.

By DPA, San Francisco: Amazon wants to start giving away its Kindle electronic reader to thwart the threat posed by Apple's new iPad, according to a report Friday by the influential technology site TechCrunch.com. The report said that Amazon would start by providing the $259 device to subscribers of Amazon Prime, a $79 per year service that gives customers free two-day shipping on everything they buy from the web retail giant.

By IANS, London : German scientists have hit upon a novel yet cost-effective idea to revive reforestation in the tropics - by using bats as seed dispersers. They have designed bat roosts - replicating large, hollow trunks - to boost seed dispersal of a range of tropical plants. "So far we have found 10 bat species using the roosts, and several of these are common and important seed dispersers," said Detlev Kelm of the Institute of Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin.

By IANS, Washington : Tissue engineering has long held promise for building new organs to replace damaged livers, blood vessels and other body parts. However, a major obstacle is getting cells grown in a lab dish to form 3-D shapes instead of flat layers. Scientists have now come up with a new way to overcome this challenge. Researchers at the MIT-Harvard Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) are encapsulating live cells in cubes and arranging them into 3-D structures, just as a child would construct buildings out of blocks.

Beijing: The Tehran nuclear deal has finally been done, yet this is "not a time to celebrate as Iran and the international community should...

By Saurabh Yadav, IANS, New Delhi : After the much-awaited launch of Apple's 3G iPhone Friday and announcements by Vodafone and Airtel regarding its introduction in India in September, the Indian customer is waiting eagerly for what is currently the world's most wanted gizmo. So what does Apple's new baby have that its peers don't? An important thing about the iPhone is that it stands out in comparison with other smartphones not for what it does, but how it does it.

By Xinhua, Beijing : Finished with its four-year primary mission to Saturn, the Cassini orbiter has turned its cameras upon the ringed planet's mysterious moons as it kicks off a two-year extended mission.

By IANS, London : Specially-designed robotic hands would soon allow friends and family to hold hands over the internet and help them experience the sensation of touch. It plugs into a computer and communicates with an electronic wristband to allow people talking over the internet to experience the sensation of touch. Not only can it grip and shake, but also give the signs for 'OK' and 'peace'. The robotic hand, which was unveiled at an international technology expo in Hong Kong this week, is expected to go on sale later this year, Daily Mail reported.

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By IANS Sriharikota : Israeli satellite Polaris was successfully launched by India's space agency ISRO from this launch centre in southern Andhra Pradesh Monday morning. "The Israeli satellite was launched at 0915 hours using Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV)," a top official of the Indian Space Research Organisation told IANS over phone from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, about 80 km north of the Tamil Nadu capital Chennai. "It was a perfect launch in fine weather," the official added. The satellite has a payload of 340 kg.

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 Xinhua Paris : The European Space Agency on Sunday launched its first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) into space, French media reported. The ATV blasted into the skies at 1:03 a.m. (0403 GMT) aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The launch was initially scheduled for Saturday but was delayed for technical checks. The ATV is scheduled to separate from the Ariane rocket at 0535 GMT and reignite its propulsion system 30 minutes later.

By Xinhua, Washington : At least one of the large lakes observed on Saturn's moon Titan contains liquid hydrocarbons, NASA scientists have said. They have also identified presence of ethane. This makes Titan the only body in the solar system beyond Earth known to have liquid on its surface, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) reported Wednesday. Scientists made the discovery using data from an instrument aboard the Cassini spacecraft. Earlier, scientists had thought Titan would have oceans of methane, ethane and other light hydrocarbons.

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By IANS, Washington : Researchers are examining 3-D imaging to reveal correlations in facial features and brain structures of autistic children, in a bid to develop a formula for the condition's earlier detection. Autism is a brain disorder characterised by a complex of social, communication and behavioural difficulties.

By IANS, London : Mammals cannot share their habitat with closely-related species because the need for the same kind of food and shelter would lead them to compete to the death, a new study has said. The finding - the best evidence so far for an old Darwinian prediction - is important because habitat destruction and climate change could inadvertently force closely-related species to live closer together than before.

By NAK, Srinagar : True but hard to believe that Polythene is a degradable substance if a particular chemical extracted from an herb is applied on it before burning it. This was scientifically proved by Nasira Akhter , 35 ,a 12th class pass out housewife an innovator from Kanipora, Kulgam south Kashmir, who demonstrated a new method for degradation of polythene, at University Science Instrumentation Centre (USIC) meeting hall today.

New Delhi : India's second lunar probe, Chandrayaan-2, is planned to be launched in 2017, the parliament was told on Thursday. "The Chandrayaan-2, India's second...

By Xinhua, Beijing : Honeybees are able to understand different "languages" communicated through the dances of bees from different continents, a team of scientists from China, Australia and Germany have found. Songkun Su of Zhejiang University's College of Animal Sciences, who headed the study, said the research team found the Asian honeybee, Apis cerana cerana (Acc), could quickly grasp the distinctive dance of the European Apis mellifera ligustica (Aml) subspecies, as they conveyed information on the locations of food sources.

By DPA Washington : With Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system now on store shelves around the world, lots of PC users are wondering whether their machines are up to the task of running it. One way to find out is to read the "minimum requirements" notes on the side of the Windows Vista box. But few take these seriously. So what do you really need in your computer to be a happy Windows Vista user?

By RIA Novosti Al-Fayum (Egypt) : Russian archaeologists have found well-preserved mummies in Egypt, dating back to the Ptolemaic era, the head of the Russian Academy of Science's Egyptology department has announced. "Well-preserved mummies of this period are extremely rare," Galina Belova said. The discoveries were made in the Egyptian oasis of Al-Fayum, where several mummies, combining traits of Hellenic and Egyptian traditions, have previously been found.

By DPA, New York : Internet powerhouse Google is muscling in on New York. The web search giant confirmed Wednesday that it had bought one of the most prestigious office buildings in Manhattan.

By James Jose, IANS, New Delhi : The $60-billion information technology industry in India will continue to attract overseas business, despite competition from other emerging markets that also offer lower costs, says the India head of global software giant Computer Associates. "Our costs will still be competitive. There are markets like China, Singapore, and the Philippines which offer lower costs. But they are not in the same league as India," said the software gian't India chairman Saurabh Srivastava.

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By IANS, Washington : NASA scientists will fabricate the biggest ever telescopes on the lunar surface with a mixture of carbon and plenty of moon dust. "We could make huge telescopes on the moon relatively easily, and avoid the large expense of transporting a large mirror from Earth," said Peter Chen of NASA. "Since most of the materials are already there in the form of dust, you don't have to bring very much stuff with you, and that saves a ton of money."

By IANS, Mumbai : Indian electronic equipment recycling major Infotrek Syscom Ltd Friday announced that it has acquired European e-waste management technology for its subsidiary Eco Recycling ltd (Ecoreco). The Mumbai-based firm said that the facility for managing both electrical and electronic waste is based on the "dry process technology" and the unit has been geared to recycle e-waste generated across the country.

By Zofeen T. Ebrahim, IANS, Karachi : A new song, "Mein Ne Uss Se Yeh Kaha", which has taken the Pakistani music scene by storm, is neither the usual crooning for a lost love nor does it take the usual cynical view of society. The song is a satirical poem by the late Habib Jalib, a poet with leftist leanings, written some time in the 1960s, when Pakistan was reeling under the rule of its first dictator, Ayub Khan. Jalib was incarcerated and put behind bars many times for his verses.

By DPA, Isfahan (Iran): Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Thursday inaugurated the country's first nuclear fuel manufacturing plant (FMP) located near this central Iranian city. The FMP, reportedly based solely on work by Iranian experts, is to provide the Arak 40-megawatt research reactor with fuel, producing nuclear fuel tablets, rods and assemblies for the plant, which is to be launched within the next two or three years. Iran says that with the launch of the FMP, it has de-facto mastered the final stage of the nuclear fuel production process.

By DPA, Washington : Two NASA astronauts from the space shuttle Endeavour began a spacewalk Tuesday to replace a nitrogen tank on the International Space Station and begin repair of a joint on a key solar panel. Heide Stefanyshyn-Pieper and Steve Bowen began the planned six-and-a-half hour walk at 18:09 GMT. The nitrogen tank will be installed with help for the station's robotic arm and will include the replacement of a device that moves the coolant through the station.

By RIA Novosti, Beijing : China plans to launch its third manned space flight in October, the Xinhua news agency said on Thursday. The Shenzhou-VII spacecraft will be manned by a crew of three Chinese astronauts or 'taikonauts,' two of which who will carry out China's first spacewalk. Six people have been chosen for the mission - three main crew members and three back up crew.

By IANS, Washington : Researchers have discovered a new way that electrons behave in materials, which could spur the development of futuristic electronic devices. A team led by N. Phuan Ong, professor of physics at Princeton University, has shown that electrons in an element like bismuth display a highly unusual pattern - a dance of sorts - when subjected to a powerful magnetic field at ultra-low temperatures.

By DPA Beijing : China Mobile has successfully tested a mobile signal station built on Mount Everest at 6,500 metres ahead of next year's Olympic torch relay on the highest peak of the world. The world's highest mobile telecommunications station was tested Tuesday on the 8,844-metre-high mountain, the official China Daily quoted the country's main mobile service provider, China Mobile, as saying.

By Parveen Chopra, IANS New York : A faster version of Scrabulous, developed by two Kolkatans, has been uploaded on Facebook that sees half a million daily users of the Scrabble-like game. The US social networking site has also opened up the game and other plug-in applications to its competitors. Released by brothers Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla, two software developers, on Facebook in June, the game's popularity prompted the new version to make match uploads faster for the online players.

By Xinhua London : The amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed by the world's oceans has reduced, British scientists who carried out a decade-long study said. Researchers from University of East Anglia gauged carbon dioxide absorption through more than 90,000 measurements from merchant ships equipped with automatic instruments and the results of their 10-year study in the North Atlantic show carbon dioxide uptake halved between the mid-90s and 2000 to 2005, the BBC reported Saturday.

By IANS, London : A life-like robot, which speaks more than a dozen languages and has a pawky sense of humour, has been bought by NASA to become a robotic tour guide.

By IANS Washington : Researchers have turned the spotlight on a fascinating community of bloggers who exchanges ideas, information and knowledge on the web. A University of California team examined the reading habits of 15 bloggers of various ages to determine how they consume content and interact with blogs and other blog writers. Previous studies typically centred on blog writers, largely overlooking those who go online to read, comment and participate. Blog readers feel a responsibility to make insightful contributions.

By IANS, New Delhi : The world has just five years to initiate a low carbon industrial revolution before runaway climate change becomes almost inevitable. But the good news is that it can be done and that the long-term benefits will be immense, according to the WWF. Climate Solutions 2 is the first analysis to put timetables to the industrial transformations needed to limit global carbon emissions below the two degrees Celsius level. Scientists say beyond that there would be unacceptable risks of runaway climate change.

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