Technology

By RIA Novosti Washington : The U.S. space shuttle Endeavour has docked with the International Space Station, NASA's mission control center in Houston said. The shuttle has delivered the first part of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) huge Kibo space laboratory, as well as Dextre, a Canadian-built robotic system. During their 16-day voyage, crew members will carry out a total of five spacewalks. The first spacewalk will be made by U.S. astronauts Rick Linneham and Garrett Reisman.

By DPA, Kuala Lumpur : More than 100 government officials and cyber security experts from around the world gathered Tuesday in Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur for a summit aimed at discussing policies to ensure tighter security on the internet. "Just as there are malicious individuals bent on causing harm to societies and nations in the real world, governments around the world must prepare to deal with similar threats in cyberspace," Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said.

By IANS, Bangalore : Networking major Cisco Tuesday unveiled a social learning network platform for the global IT community aimed at talent development to meet the growing demand for networking skills. The platform will enable networking professionals and those aspiring for a career in IT to share, discuss and exchange ideas in an online environment, the company said here in a statement.

By IANS New Delhi : Defence Minister A.K. Antony Saturday inaugurated a Molecular Imaging Research Centre here to undertake high-end research in the development of advanced life support technology. The state-of-the-art centre was inaugurated at the Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences (Inmas) in the capital.

By IANS, Chandigarh : Popular social networking website Facebook has been caught in a 'smoky' row. An anti-tobacco activist here has served a notice to the website, accusing it of "promotion of smoking culture" through its web pages. Anti-tobacco activist Hemant Goswami Tuesday said he has served a notice to Facebook Inc. in California (US) and Facebook Ireland Ltd, which run the social networking website facebook.com, for violation of Indian laws that ban advertisement and promotion of tobacco products.

Mumbai : The annual ‘Khazana - A Festival of Ghazals’ concert, which will bring together renowned ghazal artists like Pankaj Udhas and Rekha Bhardwaj,...

By DPA, Brussels : The European Commission said Thursday it had taken note of Microsoft's plans to improve the compatibility of its word processor with free-of-charge rival softwares. In a statement, the European Union (EU) executive said it hoped that Microsoft's announcement that it would provide support for formats used by other open-source programmes would lead to "better interoperability and allow consumers to process and exchange their documents with the software product of their choice".

By DPA San Francisco : Google Maps are moving from the computer to a place where lost drivers might find them more useful - petrol pumps. The maps, complete with driving directions and information about local facilities, will start appearing on thousands of specially designed petrol pumps across the US beginning early next month, the company announced Wednesday.

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 IANS, Lucknow : A Lucknow-based scientist, who uses cartoons to make complex scientific works easy to understand, has been invited to participate in a European science festival in Spain. At the festival organised by the European Science Events Association (EUSCEA), P.K. Srivastava, a senior scientist with the chemical toxicology division of the Central Drugs Research Institute (CDRI), will make a presentation on 'sceintoons' invented by him in 1988.

By IANS New Delhi : The national capital and 14 cities around it, from Alwar in Rajasthan to Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, are highly quake prone, the ministry of earth sciences said Monday. The 15 cities - Delhi, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Meerut, Hapur, Panipat, Rohtak, Palwal, Bulandsehar, Khurja, Alwar, Bahadurgarh, Kundali and Rewari - fall under seismic zone 4. Seismic zone 4 is considered to be highly prone to earthquakes.

By Venkata Vemuri, IANS, London : Get yourself a Bebo account right away if you want to send a message to outer space. An interstellar radio telescope normally used to detect asteroids that could hit Earth is being taken off duty Oct 9 to transmit messages from Bebo users into space. The messages are expected to reach a recently discovered planet in 2029. They will be sent from a telescope of the Russian National Space Agency in Ukraine.

By IANS, Beijing : China plans to launch an unmanned space module in 2011. It is expected to complete the country's first space docking which is regarded as an essential step toward building a space station, an official said Wednesday. Tiangong-1, or the Heavenly Palace, would be later converted into a manned space lab after experimental dockings with three Shenzhou spacecraft. The spacecraft are expected to be put into space within two years following the module's launch, said Qi Faren, former chief designer of Shenzhou spaceships.

By Arun Kumar, IANS Washington : Google Inc has joined the Internet war by offering its help in any effort to thwart its chief rival Microsoft Corp.'s unsolicited $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo!, the Wall Street Journal reported citing people familiar with the matter. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt called Yahoo! Inc. CEO Jerry Yang to offer his company's help as Yahoo! assessed its options for responding to Microsoft's aggressive "bear hug" bid, which has sent aftershocks through the media and technology industries.

By RIA Novosti Moscow : Russia's Defense Ministry is closely monitoring a U.S. spy satellite that has gone out of control and may have nuclear material on board, a high-ranking defense source said on Friday. "The Defense Ministry is using its space surveillance systems to track the satellite's movement in orbit," he said. Russian military experts suggest the satellite could have an on board nuclear power source, a senior parliament member said.

By IANS, Chandigarh : Enthused by the success of Chandrayaan-I mission, the aero scientists of India are all geared up to discuss advances in aerospace technologies at the two-day national level seminar, 'Aero Tech 2008' that will start here Friday. APJ Abdul Kalam, former president of India, will inaugurate the Aero Tech 2008 Nov 14.

Tehran: Tehran will continue nuclear talks with the six world powers under the guidelines of supreme leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, President Hassan Rouhani...

By DPA, Washington : NASA has launched its Interstellar Boundary Explorer (Ibex) to examine the weakening solar wind, which shields planets in the solar system from dangerous cosmic rays. Over the next two years, the Ibex spacecraft will conduct extremely high-altitude orbits above Earth to investigate and capture first images of processes taking place at the interstellar boundary - the farthest reaches of the solar system.

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 IANS, Washington : A nearby star is bombarding its companion planet with a barrage of X-rays, hundred thousand times more intense than the earth receives from the Sun, a NASA discovery says.

By Xinhua, Los Angeles : Mozilla, the group that oversees scores of volunteer programmers collaborating on the free Firefox Web browser, hopes to attract more visionaries to help change the way people surf the Internet, a newspaper report said on Tuesday.

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

By IANS, London : Social networking website Facebook has said it prevents at least 600,000 attempts every day by hackers trying to break into user accounts, using stolen usernames and passwords.

By IANS, Beijing : China Wednesday night successfully launched a communication satellite into space.

BY RIA Novosti Moscow : Russia Thursday marks the 50th anniversary of the launch of the world's first-ever satellite, Sputnik 1, an event which changed the world forever. The world entered the space age on Oct 4, 1957, when the USSR won the race to put the first satellite into orbit. Sputnik 1 was launched aboard a Soviet R-7 rocket from the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan.

By IANS, Washington : The world's largest computing grid is all set to tackle the biggest ever data challenge from the most powerful accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Three weeks after the first particle beams were injected into the LHC, the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid combines the power of more than 140 computer centres from 33 countries to analyse and manage more than 15 million gigabytes of LHC data every year. A gigabyte has 1,024 megabytes of information and a single megabyte has one million bytes of information.

By RIA Novosti Mexico City : Scientists in northern Mexico have unearthed evidence of a previously unknown species of plant-eating dinosaur that inhabited the Coahuila desert more than 72 million years ago, national media said. The creature had three giant horns, which are thought to have helped it attract females and fight predators.

By Fakir Balaji, IANS, Bangalore : India Friday became the fourth country in the world to land a man-made object on the lunar surface when its moon impact probe (MIP), with the tricolour painted on it, landed on the earth's only natural satellite at 8.31 p.m. after ejecting from the Chandrayaan-I spacecraft. The MIP impacted on the moon's surface 25 minutes after it was separated from Chandrayaan at 8.06 p.m., orbiting at 100 km above.

By IANS Nagpur : Even as the central government is promoting organic farming in a big way, the head of a central research institute in the agriculture sector refused to allow a talk on the subject by an expert at a farmers' fair held at Nagpur in Maharashtra.

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 IANS Washington : A new technique developed by Rice University will block piracy of microchips, something that causes billions of dollars in losses to chipmakers every year. The cutting edge technology will allow designers to lock and remotely activate chips with a unique ID tag. Only the patent-holder can decipher the key and activate the chip, rendering stolen chips worthless. Hardware piracy has worsened as the skyrocketing costs of microchip production have led chip-design companies to get out of the manufacturing business.

By IANS, Chennai : India's second largest commercial vehicle manufacturer Ashok Leyland is looking to spin off its design engineering unit Defiance Technologies into a group company, Defiance Tech Ltd, an official has said. Defiance Technologies offers virtual engineering services, ranging from basic design to high-end predictive analysis for auto makers.

By IANS, London : Scientists working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's biggest particle smasher, have turned masses of data produced by the collider into sound for the first time.

By Arun Kumar,IANS, Washington : Computer spies have broken into the US Defence Department's costliest weapons programme ever, the $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. Similar incidents have also breached the Air Force's air traffic control system in recent months, it said citing unnamed "current and former government officials familiar with the attacks.

By DPA, Washington : Microsoft has kept development of Internet Explorer 8 pretty quiet, but already the next major version of the most widely-used browser is available for downloading in a beta version. While the focus of IE 7 was on security and the incorporation of a tabbed interface, version 8's main features centre on stability and usability.

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

By RIA Novosti, Moscow : The construction of a new space centre in Russia's Far East will start in 2011, a government official said Monday. Russia currently uses two launch sites for space carrier rockets and ballistic missiles tests: the Baikonur space centre in the Central Asian Republic of Kazakhstan, which it has leased since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the Plesetsk space centre in northwest Russia.

By IANS, Washington : Scientists see marine algae as the most promising bet for a green fuel that would help ease the dependence on fossil fuel and power vehicles of the future. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of Californa San Diego (UCSD), scientists along with their counterparts from its division of biological sciences are part of an emerging algal biofuel consortium that includes academic collaborators, CleanTECH, public and private partners.

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

By Xinhua Moscow : A Russian rocket sent a Germany spy satellite into orbit on Thursday night, Itar-Tass news agency reported. The Russian carrier rocket Kosmos-3M lifted off from the Plesetsk space center in the north of European part of Russia at 20:15 Moscow Time (1715 GMT), carrying into orbit the Germany spy satellite SAR-Lupe-4. Lieutenant-Colonel Alexei Zolotukhin, a spokesman for Russia's Space Troops said the satellite is expected to get to the designated orbit at 20:43 Moscow Time.

By IANS London : Venus, considered earth's 'prodigal twin', has a climate that is vastly different. And experts say it is because of the pace of evolution on the two planets. According to Fred Taylor of Oxford University, Venus evolved very rapidly compared to the earth in the initial years - a crucial difference. The new information is being beamed to us from the European Venus Express spacecraft now orbiting Venus.

By IANS, Washington : A rare trace element that helps rainforests trap nitrogen to support their prodigious growth could be the secret of their survival. Most of the nitrogen that supports the rapid, lush growth of rainforests vital to our eco-system comes from tiny bacteria that can turn nitrogen in the air into soil fertiliser. Until now, scientists had thought that phosphorus was the key element supporting the vast expansion of rainforests, according to Lars Hedin, professor of ecology at Princeton University who led the research.

By DPA, Hong Kong : A Hong Kong-based animal welfare charity Thursday criticised China's space programme for serving dog meat to its astronauts. Yang Liwei, China's first man in space, revealed in his recent autobiography that dog meat was included in the special diet for astronauts preparing for missions. The Hong Kong-based charity Animals Asia Thursday hit out at the revelation by Yang, who made history when he orbited earth in the Shenzhou 5 spacecraft in October 2003.

By IANS, Washington : Astronomers have stumbled on the most massive black holes, each as big as 10 billion suns, in two separate galaxies about 300 million light years away from earth.

By IANS, Mumbai : Norway's Telenor has acquired another 15.5 percent stake in Unitech Wireless, the telecom arm of realty major Unitech, for Rs.1,130 crore (Rs.11.3 billion/$237 million), taking its shareholding in the Indian company to 49 percent, it was announced Wednesday. "Unitech Wireless on May 19, 2009, received an amount of Rs.1,130 crore in aggregate from Telenor Asia Pte Ltd for acquisition of further 15.5 percent stake in Unitech Wireless by way of issuance of fresh shares," the Indian telecom operator said in a regulatory statement.

By DPA Garching (Germany) : The Hubble space telescope has discovered methane gas, a useful fuel and precursor of life, on a planet outside the Solar System. The European Hubble Centre at Garching, near Munich, said Wednesday it was the first time any organic molecule had been found on the new class of heavenly bodies, the exo-planets. The orbiting telescope detected methane (chemical formula CH4) by analysing light shining through the atmosphere of exo-planet HD 189733b, which is 63 light years from earth, in the constellation Vulpecula.

By DPA, Washington : US space agency NASA announced a further delay Sunday of the planned landing of the space shuttle Endeavour due to weather conditions, and shifted the landing site from Florida to California. The shuttle is now set to land at 1.25 p.m. (2125 GMT) at Edwards Air Force Base, reported NASA, about three hours later than originally scheduled. Storms and rain at NASA's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida made a landing there too risky, reported the agency.

By Xinhua Washington : Two astronomers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center have identified the smallest known black hole in the universe, according to the Astrophysical Journal on Wednesday. The two astronomers presented their results this week at an American Astronomical Society meeting.

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By Xinhua, Canberra : Astronaut Andy Thomas urged Australia on Friday to get greater involvement in space science and exploration, as a return to the moon is under preparation and a mission to Mars contemplated. Speaking at a Senate inquiry into the space industry in Adelaide, South Australia, Thomas said Australia should establish a dedicated space agency to foster expertise in everything from satellite technology to rocket launching.

By IANS, New Delhi : Indian users can now access a range of multiple utilities on their mobile phones as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Thursday launched the state-run Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd's (MTNL) third generation (3G) service, called 'Jaadu' or magic. "I congratulate MTNL and the communications minister for launching the 3G service," the prime minister said.

By RIA Novosti Mission Control (Moscow Region) : A Soyuz spacecraft with two Russian cosmonauts and Malaysia's first space traveller aboard undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) Sunday. The spacecraft is to bring back to Earth the Russian cosmonauts, Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov, after six months of their stay at the world's sole orbiter as members of the ISS 15th expedition, along with Malaysian Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor who arrived at the station on Oct 12.

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 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, Bangalore : The Indian space agency has raised the orbit of its first unmanned lunar spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 to 200km from the lunar surface for further studies on orbit perturbations and gravitational field variations of the Moon. "With the successful completion of all the mission objectives from 100 km above the moon since November 2008, we have raised the height of the spacecraft to 200 km Tuesday to enable imaging lunar surface with a wider swath," the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said in a statement here Wednesday.

By IANS, London : Scientists have identified the structure of a key component of the bacteria behind such diseases as whooping cough, peptic stomach ulcers and Legionnaires' disease. The research sheds light on how antibiotic resistance genes spread from one bacterium to another. These findings may open the way for development of more effective treatments and curtail spread of antibiotic resistance. Antibiotic resistance spreads when genetic material is exchanged between two bacteria, one of which has mutated to be resistant to the drugs.

By IANS, Sydney : An Australian researcher has developed a camera that can measure distance and generate 3D images. It is likely to impact the video gaming and medical industries. Existing techniques measure distance using a laser that generates a single spot. It measures the distance to that spot and moves to another spot and repeats the action to build up a picture. "Our system, rather than sending out a laser spot, lights up the entire area like a light-bulb and measures it all in one go," Andrew Payne of Waikato University, who designed the camera, said.

By DPA Washington : Experts know that there's no space travel without risk, but in the days leading up to Tuesday's launch of the shuttle Discovery on its next construction mission, the discussion has been unusually overt. Wayne Hale, the manager of the shuttle programme, conceded last week that the shuttle "is not a safe vehicle by any normal standard", but defended the decision that launching the Discovery involved "acceptable risk".

By DPA, Washington : A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying two US astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut arrived Thursday at the orbiting International Space Station (ISS). The Soyuz lifted off Tuesday from the Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan with Americans Doug Wheelock, Shannon Walker and Russian Fyodor Yurchikhin aboard. The 2221 GMT docking occurred over Argentina. It was the combined 100th flight to the ISS by US space shuttles and Russian Soyuz capsules.

By IANS New Delhi : Indian applicants will now have to wait longer to obtain a visa for the United Kingdom, as Britain will start collecting fingerprints and digital photographs of all visa seekers at its application collection centres in the country from Wednesday. While Britain already has biometric data centres in around 130 countries, it encountered a legal problem in India due to restrictions on the transmission of the data electronically.

By IANS, Washington : If your house seems dustier than usual, it may have nothing to do with your housekeeping skills.

By IANS London : A fiery tsunami that raged across the sun last May at nearly 2,800 km per second released the equivalent of two billion times the annual world energy consumption in just a split second. According to researchers, the tsunami, ignited by huge explosions near the sun's atmosphere, covered almost the full disc of the sun-nearly a million kilometre away from the epicentre - in just 30 minutes.

Washington : A software glitch that triggered communication loss with NASA's New Horizon spacecraft has been rectified and the probe is on way for...

By IANS, Sydney : Worried that your child may be spending too much time playing the Nintendo Wii? Fear not, as the latest research reveals that interactive sports video games are better for children than conventional computer games, but it does not solve the widespread prevalence of childhood obesity. The study found that playing virtual sports such as boxing and tennis on the Nintendo Wii burned more than 50 percent energy than playing sedentary computer games such as the Xbox.

By DPA San Francisco : Bending to the will of its legendary enthusiasts, Apple has announced that it will allow outside programmers to write applications for the company's iPhone. Apple chief executive Steve Jobs Wednesday said in a posting on the company's website that a kit for developers will not be available until February, as the company works out how to open up the phone without exposing it to malicious programmes.

By Xinhua, Jiquan (China) : China launched Friday a manned spacecraft carrying three astronauts on its first-ever spacewalk mission. The spacecraft Shenzhou VII blasted off from the Jiuquan space centre in the northwestern province of Gansu at about 9:10 p.m. onboard a Long March-2F carrier rocket. Onboard pilots Zhai Zhigang, Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng are expected to orbit the earth for three days, when one of them will float out of the cabin about 343 km above the earth Friday.

By IANS, Wellington: More than half of New Zealanders are now accessing the internet through their mobile phones, the government statistics agency announced Friday.

By IANS, Sydney : Researchers have come by evidence that protected fish species can bounce back rapidly from the brink, even after heavy fishing has taken its toll. A strict no-fishing policy in 2004 across a third of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), the largest and most complex of marine ecosystems, has ensured spectacular recovery in coral trout numbers by a whopping 31 to 75 percent. These results have major ramifications in a world in which most major fisheries are in decline, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

By IANS Agra : A group of IT students here have developed a device that can enable the blind to hear what they cannot see or read. Called 'E-Netra', it costs Rs.2,000-3,000 and it reads texts through an embedded system and converts them into voice that can be heard through earphones. Right now it can only read text, but later it is likely to pick up prints in Braille script. The Agra College team that took six months to develop the device and the software to go with it was led by R.K. Sharma and included his assistants Karan, Mayank, Akshat, Khalid and Jitendra.

By DPA, San Francisco : The volume of spam on the Internet plunged by about two thirds this week after two US internet service providers cut the internet connections of a company that was using its servers to disseminate billions of unwanted email messages, internet security firms said Friday. Symantec said the number of spam messages had fallen by some 120 billion per day, to around 60 billion. However it warned that many of the spam spewers would probably find new routes to distribute their messages and that the respite was likely only temporary.

By DPA, Garching (Germany) : Scientists in Germany who devised a way to hook up two powerful telescopes in stereo have observed for the first time the details of a star outside our Milky Way galaxy. They trained the two telescopes on a red supergiant named WOH G64 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighbouring galaxy. WOH is about 2,000 times larger than the sun and is 163,000 light years away. Keiichi Ohnaka of the Max Planck Radio-Astronomy Institute in Bonn led the research, which is described in a new science article 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 DPA, Washington : Two US astronauts Monday put the final vital maintenance touches on the Hubble Space Telescope, replacing old insulation and a guidance sensor on the ageing satellite before its scheduled release back into orbit Tuesday. The seven-hour-plus space walk completed a marathon five straight days of work in a risky mission by the Atlantis shuttle that entailed a stand-by shuttle on the launch pad in Florida for a rescue mission if needed.

By IANS,

By IANS, Washington : A new model of mouse behaviour developed by Japanese scientists is likely to help in better diagnosis and evaluation of depressive disorders in people. Researchers from University of Tokyo and Osaka Bioscience Institute evaluated a holistic approach to assess mouse behaviour, and threw up interesting results. For example, a 24-hour monitoring of the rodents by pressure sensors, after a gene regulating the circadian rhythm was removed, was found to be similar to that previously observed by the team in humans suffering from major depressive disorder.

By IANS Bangalore : Leading chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Inc Thursday expanded its research and development (R&D) operations in India by opening a silicon design facility in the country's IT hub. AMD chairman and CEO Hector Ruiz, who inaugurated the new facility, told reporters that its Indian subsidiary plays a critical role in the company's global design network, including development of its most advanced, next-generation processing solutions.

By IANS, Washington : Personal computers may soon save large amounts of energy by "sleep talking". Doctoral researcher Yuvraj Agarwal of the University of California San Diego (UCSD) in collaboration with computer scientists has created a plug-and-play hardware prototype for personal computers (PCs) that induces a new energy saving state known as "sleep talking".

By IANS, Washington : Steroids often used in treating inflammation caused by bacterial meningitis also speed up recovery from pneumonia, according to a new study. University of Texas (UT) Southwestern researchers have showed that mice infected with a type of severe bacterial pneumonia and subsequently treated with steroids and antibiotics recovered faster, with far less inflammation in their lungs than mice treated with antibiotics alone.

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.

Washington : NASA's New Horizon spacecraft has captured stunning coloured images of Pluto as it gets ready for a close flyby of...

Bengaluru : India will launch a dedicated satellite for the eight SAARC countries by December 2016 to provide a range of public services, space...

By IANS, London : In the icy, inky depths of the Atlantic ocean, 800 metres below the surface, lie a range of hills covered with large coral reefs. Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) researcher Furu Mienis studied the formation of these unknown cold-water kins of the better-known tropical corals. These reefs can be found along the eastern continental slope from Morocco to Norway, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and on the western continental slope along the east coast of Canada and the US. Mienis studied the area to the west of Ireland.

By RIA Novosti, Moscow : Russia's Glonass satellite system is expected to become fully operational in 2010, if it receives sufficient financing, the head of the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) said on Saturday. Glonass (Global Navigation Satellite System) is the Russian equivalent of the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS), which is designed for both military and civilian use, and allows users to identify their positions in real time.

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 IANS, Washington : Steroids boost plants just as they do humans, but the molecular signals that activate such genes in plant cells are a lot more complex than in human cells. A new study by Carnegie Institution plant biologists used an emerging molecular approach called proteomics to identify key links in the steroid signalling chain. Zhi-Yong Wang and Wenqinag Tang of the Carnegie Institution conducted the study with seven co-authors. Plant steroids, called brassinosteroids, are key hormones throughout the plant kingdom. They regulate many aspects of growth and development.

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 IANS, Bangalore : "Go green, save planet Earth", "Save planet Earth before it's too late" are some of the appeals a group of Bangalore children has made on a 25-metre long khadi scroll, planned to be sent to the leaders at the ongoing Copenhagen climate summit. "The 25-metre khadi scroll containing messages and signatures of children has been especially designed as an appeal to the world leaders gathered at Copenhagen summit to save the Earth from an imminent environmental crisis," a member of Rotary Green Brigade, a Bangalore-based voluntary organisation, told IANS.

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

By Jay Dougherty, DPA, Washington : Google releases so many products - most of them free - that it's easy to overlook one that's really special. Google Voice qualifies.

By DPA Washington : Everyone knows the story: When Internet Explorer (IE) is first installed, it flies. The browser itself opens quickly, and pages load without incident. But after a while, things start to break down. The browser crashes, freezes, or loads slowly. Sometimes it won't load at all. Typically the blame falls on security holes in IE. But there can be other causes too - plug-ins. You could ditch IE altogether and move to Mozilla's Firefox, but most Firefox users swear by plug-ins, so there's really no escape from plug-in issues there, either.

By IANS, London : A pedestrian chasing a pet dog suddenly steps in the path of your speeding car 15 metres away. There is no way you can avoid hitting him. The string of cars following you crash behind one another. In future, a new software programme will mitigate or even eliminate such an eventuality.

By Xinhua Beijing : Scientists said surface features of the Red Planet hint at a watery past where torrents of groundwater carved out deep canyons, formed sweeping fans of sediment and cemented together huge fault lines, media reported Tuesday. "Groundwater probably played a major role in shaping many of the things we see on the Martian surface," said George Postma, a sedimentologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.