Rationalists munch breakfast during eclipse to fight superstition
By IANS,
Hyderabad : A group of rationalists gathered here Wednesday morning to not just watch the longest solar eclipse of the century but also tuck into breakfast in an attempt to remove superstitious beliefs from the minds of people.
While the dark clouds blocked the view of the partial eclipse, they went ahead with their meal on the banks of the picturesque Hussain Sagar Lake in the heart of the city to prove a point.
The participants, including women and children, had the breakfast arranged by Jana Vignan Vedika (JVV), a group of rationalists fighting against superstition.
China to launch 15 to 16 satellites in 2009: Official
By Xinhua,
Beijing : China plans to launch 15 to 16 satellites this year, an official said here Monday.
"Though the global financial crisis is taking a toll on the world economy, it has no impact on China's space programmes," said Zhang Jianqi, deputy chief commander of the manned space project.
Zhang said China is at present "batch-producing" three spacecraft - Shenzhou-8, Shenzhou-9 and Shenzhou-10.
New ceramic can reduce cooking time, save energy: Indian-American expert
By IANS,
Washington : New ceramic microwave dishes would cut down cooking time, use less energy and also help in organic waste remediation, according to Sridhar Komarneni, an Indian-American minerologist.
Remediation is a process to reduce, isolate, or remove contamination from an environment.
Clouds mar solar eclipse spectacle in Orissa
By IANS,
Bhubaneswar : Those who had hoped to witness the century's longest solar eclipse in Orissa were disappointed Wednesday as the sky remained overcast in most parts of the state.
Thousands of people woke up early in the morning and were armed with special glasses to see the phenomenon. However, clouds spoiled the party although there was a partial eclipse in the state.
The solar eclipse was only visible for three minutes at the Pathani Samant Planetarium in Bhubaneswar, where thousands of people gathered to watch the rare sight.
Bolivia to produce electric-car batteries
By EFE,
La Paz : Bolivia is planning to begin the production of lithium batteries for electric cars by 2018, Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Roger Carvajal said here, according to a report.
Carvajal said that President Evo Morales' government has settled on a basic strategy for exploiting the vast lithium deposits in the Uyuni Salt Flats.
He discussed the plan on the eve of an international forum in La Paz on the industrialisation of lithium, the report added Wednesday.
Watch out for Uranus at its brightest Saturday night
By IANS,
New Delhi : Keep your telescopes handy for a wonderful celestial activity - Uranus will shine at its brightest when it aligns directly with the Sun and the Earth Saturday.
At this time of the year, Uranus comes closest to the Earth. Saturday the planet will be visible through telescopes right from dusk to dawn.
"It is an interesting phenomenon as Uranus and the Earth would be in a straight line. Both the planets come closest at this time of the year and Uranus, in turn, shines at its brightest," said Nehru Planetarium director N. Ratnashree.
German scientists identify world’s oldest dog bone
By DPA,
Tuebingen (Germany) : German scientists have identified the world's oldest dog bone, proving that humans kept dogs more than 14,000 years ago, Tuebingen University said Tuesday.
The canine jaw was found in Switzerland in 1873, but has only just been analysed by researchers across the border in Tuebingen. The findings were reported in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology.
The dog lived between 14,100 and 14,600 years ago, according to archaeologists Hannes Napierala and Hans-Peter Uerpmann.
"At this time, humans were still hunter-gatherers," Napierala said.
Female robot can sing like a pop star
By IANS,
London : A life-sized female robot, known as HRP-4, has been taught to sing just like a real pop star.
U.S. scientists map first nanoscale image of soil
By Xinhua,
Washington : Researchers from Cornell University has looked "closely" at the soil for the first time -- at a scale of 50 nanometers, revealing an incredible variety of organic compounds in it, reported the April issue of Nature Geoscience which is available Monday.
"There is this incredible nanoscale heterogeneity of organic matter in terms of soil," said Johannes Lehmann, lead author of the study, in a statement on Monday. "None of these compounds that you can see on a nanoscale level looks anything close to the sum of the entire organic matter."
Indian space centre plans manned space probe by 2015
By IANS,
Thiruvananthapuram : The Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), a unit of the country's premier Indian space research programme, plans to send two humans into space by 2015, an official said here Sunday.
Speaking to IANS, director of the VSSC unit here K. Radhakrishnan said the project is awaiting a final clearance from the central government.
"The pre-project approval of Rs.95 crore ($19 million) has already come and the approval of the main project is being awaited," said Radhakrishnan.
NASA launches spacecraft to study solar wind
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.
Scientists develop wonder glass that regenerates bones
By IANS,
London : A new kind of glass will enable patients to re-grow bones by dissolving and releasing calcium into the body, possibly making bone transplants redundant.
The porous glass, developed by scientists at Imperial College here, dissolves in the body and stimulates bone growth, without leaving any toxic residue.
Specific concentrations of soluble silica and calcium ions in the glass activate genes that encode proteins controlling the bone cell cycle and differentiation of the cell to form bone matrix and rapid mineralisation of bone nodules.
Wipro joins Google’s cloud platform
By IANS,
Bangalore: Indian IT bellwether Wipro Technologies has joined global search engine Google's cloud platform as its services partner, an official said Monday.
Scientists close to fabricating a practical atom laser
By IANS,
Sydney : Scientists are on the verge of fabricating the first practical atom laser that holds the promise of ever more precise measurement in industry, medical science, navigation and mining.
The breakthrough has been made possible by overcoming a host of theoretical and technical hurdles, allowing for the laser's continuous operation unlike previous versions that drained the source material and switched off.
Pune gears up for two-day international robotic competition
By IANS,
Mumbai/Pune : Pune gears up to see robots co-ordinate as a team as they form a pyramid to enact a high-tech 'dahi handi' (taking butter from a pot hanging high above) sequence at the two-day 7th ABU International Robocon Competition Saturday.
The event is the culmination of a yearlong competition among teams from over two dozen colleges spread across 17 countries of the Asia-Pacific region.
Nirma Institute of Technology, Ahmedabad and Maharashtra Institute of Technology, (MIT) Pune are representing India at the event.
Chinese institute award for Indian at Microsoft
By IANS
Bangalore : Smart Indian techie S. Somasegar, an employee of Microsoft India in Hyderabad, has been honoured with the Asian American Engineer Award, instituted by the US-based Chinese Institute of Engineers (CIE), the global software major said here Tuesday.
According to a company statement, the award recognises Somasegar's contribution to science and engineering.
As senior vice-president (developer division) of Microsoft Corporation and head of its India development centre, Somasegar is responsible for developer-related languages, tools and platforms.
Nandan Nilekani confident of changing India with ideas
By Madhusree Chatterjee, IANS,
New Delhi : Can ideas change a nation? Co-founder of Indian software giant Infosys and author Nandan Nilekani believes that they can, even if it takes a long time for them to become embedded in the collective psyche of the country.
NASA postpones spacewalk due to ‘health issues’
By DPA
Washington : A planned Sunday spacewalk to attach an expansion to the orbiting International Space Station (ISS) has been postponed to Monday due to unspecified "health issues", officials at the US space agency NASA announced.
The spacewalk by astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis, docked late Saturday with the ISS, has been rescheduled.
A NASA spokesman refused to clarify the nature of the health issue or identify any astronaut suffering problems.
Villainous virus turns out to be quite a hero
By IANS
London : Viruses are not such villains after all. They may, in fact, be the reason we are alive, says a new study that contends that half the planet's oxygen is a by-product of bacteria suffering from viral infections.
"Instead of being viewed solely as evolutionary bad guys, causing diseases, viruses appear to be of central importance in the planetary process. In fact, they may be essential to our survival," said Nicholas Mann of the University of Warwick and author of the study.
Indonesia to develop 2nd generation version of satellite
By Xinhua
Jakarta : After successfully launching its LAPAN-TUBSAT satellite last year, the Indonesian National Aeronautics and Space Agency (Lapan) is preparing to construct a second generation version of the earth surveillance satellite for orbit in 2010.
While the construction of the first satellite took place in Germany, the construction of the next, named LAPAN-A2, will take place in Indonesia entirely under Indonesian engineers, the Jakarta Post daily on Friday quoted Lapan's head Adi Sadewo Salatun as saying.
Solar activity could spell more trouble for Earth
By Andrei Kislyakov, RIA Novosti,
Moscow : The Sun is beginning another 11-year cycle of activity and considering that the fiery star is to blame for some unfavourable climate changes on the Earth, the coming decade could spell more trouble for our planet.
The first measuring instruments of the Sun's activity made their appearance 440 years ago. They showed that our nearest star treats the Earth to more than just solar eclipses.
Russian Proton-M carrier rocket orbits U.S. telecoms satellite
By RIA Novosti,
Moscow : A Proton-M carrier rocket put into orbit on Wednesday a U.S. telecommunications satellite, the Russian Federal Space Agency said.
"The foreign satellite has successfully separated from the Breeze-M booster, and control over the satellite has been transferred to the client," the agency said.
Russian-American joint venture International Launch Services (ILS) signed a contract in March to launch two Sirius satellites to expand the existing SIRIUS Satellite Radio constellation.
Radhakrishnan to head Vikram Sarabhai space centre
Bangalore(IANS) : Senior space scientist K. Radhakrishnan has been appointed director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in Thiruvananthapuram, the space agency announced here Saturday.
Radhakrishnan, who was till recently head of the National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) in Hyderabad, will succeed B.N. Suresh.
Chinese firms to make SIMs for iPhone 5
By IANS,
Beijing: Mobile phone companies in China plan to make smaller SIM cards for use in Apple iPhone 5, a media report said Saturday.
Scientists start regional network to study earthquakes in Himalayas
By Sujit Chakraborty, IANS,
Agartala : The Holy Grail for geologists is the ability to predict an earthquake. While they continue their search, the Geological Survey of India (GSI) is putting in place a network by which they can forecast overall seismic activity in the Himalayas, one of the most quake-prone regions of the world.
Bio-waste run generator developed by Agra entrepreneur
By Brij Khandelwal, IANS
Agra : A city-based entrepreneur has successfully developed a biomass-run generator as a major step towards promoting renewable sources of energy.
The generator developer, Rajesh Garg, told IANS: "We have designed, developed and made operational a power generating set run on 100 percent biogas and industrial waste gas-based engines. We have also successfully developed biomass based generators, which can be run by many types of wastes like wood shavings, rice husk, or oil-seed waste."
Young Microsoft director harbours high hopes for IT
By Shyam Pandharipande, IANS
Nagpur : The next twenty years will be revolutionary in IT history and what lies ahead for humanity should be best left to the wonderful ingenuity of mankind, says Rajesh Munshi, one of the youngest directors at Microsoft Corp, on a visit to his hometown here.
A key driver in the world's biggest IT company, Munshi has absolutely no doubt that Bill Gates' vision of personal computers sans keyboards, like his many marvellous dreams, would come true in the foreseeable future "when my generation, in its thirties, is still young".
How does brain zero in on single bit of information?
By IANS,
Washington : How does the brain zero in on a single bit of information, out of the tens of thousands that it is bombarded with daily? Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have discovered a mechanism that the brain uses to filter out distracting thoughts to focus on a single bit of information.
Think of your brain like a radio: You're turning the knob on to find your favourite station, but the knob jams, and you're stuck listening to something that's in between stations.
ISRO to launch more satellites this year
By Venkatachari Jagannathan, IANS,
Sriharikota (Andhra Pradesh) : After successfully placing five satellites in orbit Monday, India's space agency ISRO said it will launch more satellites this year and efforts were on to put two Indians in space orbit.
"We will launch GSat-5, a communication satellite, using GSLV (Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle) rocket. The other launch will be Resourscesat-2, a remote sensing satellite, using the rocket PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle)," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman K. Radhakrishnan said here.
APJ Abdul Kalam to inaugurate ‘Aero Tech 2008’
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.
Lunar landing has Indians over the moon
By IANS,
New Delhi : There was exultation, a feeling that India had arrived, when the national tricolour was placed on the lunar surface Friday night. With India's moon mission Chandrayaan already a reality, people are now wondering if the next step could be a holiday on the moon!
The Indian flag was planted on the lunar surface when the 35-kg box-shaped Moon Impact Probe (MIP) landed on the moon at 8.31 p.m. Friday night after being ejected from Chandrayaan-1, India's first unmanned spacecraft.
India to launch maiden mission to moon on April 9 next year
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.”
Preparations begin for lunar mission countdown
By IANS,
Bangalore : Preparations for the countdown to launch India's first unmanned lunar spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 Oct 22 has begun at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, a top space agency official said here Sunday.
"Launch rehearsal exercises are nearing completion. Preparations for the 52-hour countdown Monday from 02:20 a.m. have been initiated despite inclement weather and heavy rain since morning at Sriharikota (about 80km from Chennai) off the Bay of Bengal," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) director S. Satish told IANS.
Scientists on track to slow down aging in humans
By IANS
Washington : Researchers have identified 25 genes regulating lifespan in two organisms separated by 1.5 billion years - of which 15 are very similar to that of humans.
And thanks to that similarity, it may now be possible for scientists to target the genes to help slow down aging and treat related conditions.
The findings of the study have been published online in the journal Genome Research.
The two organisms are the single-celled budding yeast and the roundworm C. elegans - both commonly used models for aging research.
Avesthagen founder receives top French award
By IANS,
Bangalore : Villoo Morawala Patell, founder-chairperson of India's leading life sciences firm Avesthagen Ltd, was late Wednesday honoured with a top civilian award by the French government for her entrepreneurship and significant contribution in the scientific field.
The Officier de L'Ordre National du Merite" (Officer of the National Order of Merit) award was presented to Patell by French ambassador to India Jerome Bonnafont at a felicitation ceremony here.
Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft moves to higher orbit
By IANS,
Bangalore : Chandrayaan-1, India's first unmanned mission to the moon, is now moving in an orbit of 74,715 km from the earth, making it the first Indian spacecraft to go beyond the 36,000-km-high geostationary orbit, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said Saturday.
ISRO's Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) at Peenya, about 15 km from Bangalore city centre, carried out the second orbit-raising manoeuvre of Chandrayaan Saturday at 5.48 a.m. taking its apogee (farthest point to earth) to 74,715 km and perigee (closest point to earth) to 336 km.
ISRO entering next phase of space vision: Madhavan Nair
By IANS
Hyderabad : The chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) G. Madhavan Nair believes that the organisation is entering the second phase of space vision with components of advanced technologies for low cost access to space planetary exploration and manned mission initiatives in the next few decades.
Addressing the inaugural session of the 58th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) 2007 here Monday, Nair said the proposed launch of the mission to the moon, Chandrayaan-I, is part of this second vision.
Young scientists asked to focus on basic research
By Fakir Balaji, IANS
Visakhapatnam : Young scientists should focus on basic research as India needs more innovation in areas that affect everyone, the government's principal scientific advisor R. Chidambaram said on the second day of the 95th Indian Science Congress (ISC) here Friday.
Chandrayaan enters lunar space for final journey
By IANS,
Bangalore : India's first moon mission Chandrayaan-1 entered the lunar space early Tuesday for its final journey into the lunar orbit Saturday, an official of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said.
"The operation to put Chandrayaan into lunar space went off very well. The complex manouvre was carried out around 5 a.m. by firing the liquid apogee motor (LAM) on board for about 150 seconds to place the unmanned spacecraft 380,000 km away from earth (apogee) and 1,000 km from the moon," ISRO director S. Satish told IANS.
Solar Energy Corp to develop India-centric technology and products
By Venkatachari Jagannathan, IANS,
New tech helps physically impaired enter virtual worlds
By IANS,
Washington : Relying on fleeting brain waves, a futuristic technology enables people with severe muscle disorder to operate computers and enter a 3-D virtual world to chat or stroll.
The technology, demonstrated by Junichi Ushiba of Keio University, opens up a world of possibilities for serious motion-impaired people to communicate with others and to work normally.
This marriage of leading-edge technologies in brain science and the Internet also heralds the world's first successful example to help the physically impaired meet people in the virtual world.
New educational app rewards users with real cash
Seoul : South Korea-based educational startup BeNative has launched CashEnglish, an app that rewards users with real cash for playing educational games.
The app is...
Trees, fungi set unique example in cooperation
By IANS
London : Over millennia, trees and fungi have developed a delicate interdependence that allows both to flourish in adverse conditions, according to a new study.
The study, by researchers at Ghent University, Belgium, also suggests that understanding this interdependence could help us monitor climate change, a university press release said.
Trees grow better and faster when certain specialised micro-organisms interact with their roots. One of them is Laccaria bicolour, a soil fungus that draws on the sugars in the roots.
‘Designing Chandrayaan was like writing lyrics to a set tune’
By Venkatachari Jagannathan, IANS,
Chennai : While building India's first moon craft, Chandrayaan project director Mylswamy Annadurai was reminded of his engineering college days when he wrote lyrics to the tunes of his classmates.
At that time he used to write poetry - some were published in the college magazine.
Computer programme to help witnesses remember criminals
By IANS,
London : Criminals are having a harder time hiding themselves, thanks to new software that helps witnesses recreate images and recognise suspects relying on principles borrowed from the fields of optics and genetics.
The software, known as EFIT-V system, is being used by 15 police departments in Britain, France and Switzerland. In field trials, it led to twice as many identifications of suspects as traditional methods.
Move over Orkut, here comes India’s BigAdda
By Azera Rahman, IANS
New Delhi : Check the scribbles in your phone scrapbook, send friend requests on the wireless, have discussions in as many as eight different languages...all on India's social networking site, BigAdda, which could give Orkut and Facebook a run for its money.
With an estimated 1.24 million users so far, this five-month old networking site is fast catching up among Indian youth, especially in tier 2 cities like Guwahati, Nashik, Surat, Tuticorin, Bhilai and Amritsar.
Facebook, gadgets galore… Indian children take to ‘multi-tasking’
By Madhulika Sonkar, IANS,
New soil tester to assess earth’s health
By IANS,
Washington : Our planet has a fever. But global warming's effects on farming and water resources is still a mystery. Now an invention may provide a new diagnostic tool for assessing the health of the earth's soil.
A Tel Aviv University (TAU) invention, the Optical Soil Dipstick (OSD) designed by Eyal Ben-Dor will help scientists, urban planners and farmers understand the changing health of the soil, as well as its agricultural potential and other associated concerns. It could be used as a whistle-blower to catch polluters.
US to give Iran ‘space’ to mull nuclear fuel deal
By DPA,
Vienna/Tehran, Nov 9 (DPA) The US is willing to give Iran time to come up with a response to a proposed multinational nuclear fuel deal, the US ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Glyn Davies, said Monday.
"We want to give some space to Iran to work through this. It's a tough issue for them, obviously," Davies told reporters in Vienna, adding, however, that Washington hopes for a response soon.
‘ISRO examining business model for industries in satellite, rocket production’
By Venkatachari Jagannathan,
Sriharikota (Andhra Pradesh) : The Indian space agency is working at preparing a business model to partner with industries - public and...
Scientists think of new way of creating synthetic tissues
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.
India starts to develop its heaviest satellite
By Fakir Balaji, IANS,
Bangalore : India will soon design and develop its heaviest communications satellite GSAT-11 to provide advanced telecom services from 2011-12, a senior official of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said here Friday. At 4.5 tonnes, it will weigh more than twice as much as the biggest Indian satellite in orbit now.
"Activities to design and develop GSAT-11 will start immediately, as the project has been cleared by the government at a cost of Rs.5-billion (Rs.500 crore)," ISRO Director S. Satish said.
244,000 Germans log objections to Google’s Street View
By DPA,
Berlin : Some 244,237 German households have so far demanded that images of their homes be removed from Google Inc's Street View geo-data service, the online search giant said Thursday.
S Africa to launch battery car
By Xinhua,
Johannesburg : A South African-designed, battery-operated passenger car is to be unveiled early next year, Deputy Science and Technology Minister Derek Hanekom announced on Friday.
The development of the vehicle -- described as "beautiful" by those who have had a glimpse of the design sketches -- could not have come at a better time, he told MPs during debate in Parliament on the science and technology budget vote, the South African Press Association reported.
Bacterium disables tomato plant’s defences – stealthily
By IANS,
London : A bacterium disables the tomato plant's defences stealthily, activating disease and blight, according to a new study.
The new finding focuses on a pathogen which causes bacterial speck disease in tomato plants. This bacterial invasion causes black lesions on leaves and fruit.
Scientists found the pathogen is very effective at attacking tomato plants because it deactivates and destroys receptors which normally alert the plant to the presence of a dangerous disease - in the same way that an intruder would deactivate the burglar alarm before gaining entry to a house.
Indian students on solar eclipse ‘odyssey’ to China
By IANS,
New Delhi : A group of 10 students from various schools of the country are among the lucky few chosen to watch the 21st century's longest solar eclipse from Anqing in China, one of the best places in the world to view the spectacle July 22, apart from a village in Bihar.
The students will leave for China Saturday on an eight-day scientific expedition called 'heliodyssey' to watch the eclipse that will last for six minutes and 44 seconds, making it the longest eclipse till 2132.
Make no mistake: climate change is for real
By IANS
London : New research has dealt a blow to those sceptics who claimed climate change was caused by a drop in cosmic rays rather than man-made greenhouse gases.
The belief had gained ground last year with the telecast on Channel 4 of a programme titled 'The Great Global Warming Swindle'.
The programme had argued that a discernible drop in cosmic rays over the past century had resulted in the formation of fewer low clouds - and this, in turn, allowed more heat to warm the earth and caused global warming.
Googlephone is coming next week for $530
By DPA,
San Francisco : A day after Google announced a media event for its Android mobile phone system next week, new details leaked out Wednesday about the first ever phone to be sold directly by the web search giant.
According to technology blog Gizmodo the Nexus One will be sold unlocked on a Google website for $530. The phone will work on GSM cellphone networks and will be offered at a subsidised price of $180 in the US by fourth-ranked carrier T-Mobile with a two-year talk and data contract costing $80 a month.
Researchers create world’s first diamond laser
By IANS,
Sydney : Researchers in Australia have built the world's first diamond laser, harnessing its capability to transmit heat and light very effectively.
A research team led by Richard Mildren at Macquarie University in New South Wales built the first laser using a technique based on the Raman effect.
Besides demonstrating a more effective way of generating a powerful beam, it has also shown that synthetic diamonds are of the right size and quality to enable exploration of a new class of laser devices.
9,000-year-old rhino remains found in Russia
By RIA Novosti,
Yekaterinburg (Russia) : Archaeologists in the Sverdlovsk region in Russia's Urals have discovered 9,000-year-old bones of a rhinoceros, a local museum worker said Monday.
The excavations during which the bones were discovered were carried out at a site on the bank of the Lobva River, said Nikolai Yerokhin from the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology department.
It was generally assumed that rhinoceros last wandered the Urals some 15,000 to 20,000 years ago.
Indian space agency aims $60 mn revenue from satellite manufacturing
By Venkatachari Jagannathan, IANS,
Chennai : The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is gearing up to play a major role in satellite manufacturing.
"We are targeting a revenue of around $60 million from manufacturing satellites for others," K.R. Sridhara Murthi, executive director of Antrix Corp Ltd, the commercial arm of the Indian space agency, told IANS.
Chandrayaan orbit raised to 200 km for further Moon probe
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.
India offers space data to manage Asia-Pacific calamities
By IANS
Bangalore : India is ready to offer data from its group of satellites to other countries in the Asia-Pacific region for disaster management.
"India will provide appropriate inputs and near real-time data for Asia-Pacific countries and share its expertise with them in setting up disaster management support systems to deal with floods, cyclones, earthquakes and droughts," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman G. Madhavan Nair said here Thursday at a space conference.
Microsoft buys European shopping site for $486 mn
By DPA,
San Francisco : Hoping to boost its Internet power, Microsoft has bought Greenfield Online Inc, the owner of European price comparison site Ciao GmbH, for about $486 million, the company said in a statement.
The price of $17.50 a share represented a 1.4 percent premium over the previous closing price, but was 32 percent more than Greenfield was worth when it withdrew from a deal with Quadrangle Group LLC for $15.50 a share two weeks ago.
No solution yet to BlackBerry security issue
By IANS,
New Delhi : A solution to the security concerns over BlackBerry services in India has still to be hammered out as its licensor Research-in-Motion (RIM) has sought more time from the Indian government to reach an agreement.
Executives from the Canada-based firm, senior government officials, representatives from security agencies and services met Tuesday here for the second time after India raised concerns that BlackBerry services may be used by terrorist outfits as the e-mails between these cannot be intercepted.
Kerala software park land acquisition complete
By IANS,
Thiruvananthapuram : The Kerala government Monday said all formalities for acquisition of the remaining 245.89 acres for the development of Technocity, the next phase of Technopark software park near here, has been completed.
With this, Technopark's total area will spread across 451 acres, which includes not just space for IT-ITES firms but also residential, commercial, hospitality, medical and educational facilities to make it a complete IT city.
The project is planned as a satellite city that would not strain the resources and infrastructure of the state capital.
Cuba overhauls communications, IT sectors
By IASN/EFE,
Havana: The government has launched an overhaul of Cuba's communications and information technology sectors, the Communist Party daily Granma said.
Google co-founder books space flight in 2011
By Xinhua,
Beijing : Google co-founder Sergey Brin has put down a 5 million U.S. dollar deposit to book a flight into space with the space tourism company Space Adventures.
The company announced Wednesday that Brin will be the founding member of its Orbital Mission Explorers Circle, a group of six individuals who will each make a 5 million dollar down payment to book a seat on a future orbital space flight.
"We believe 99 percent of people want to experience space," Eric Anderson, the head of the Virginia-based company, told a press conference in New York.
Researchers developing technique to image molecule in live cell
By IANS,
Washington : Researchers in the US are working on a new technique to create detailed high-resolution images that will show the atomic structure of cellular molecules.
A research team at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab is collaborating with scientists in Germany and Sweden to utilise high-energy X-ray beams, combined with complex algorithms, to overcome limitations in current technology.
Scientists find strange ring circling dead star
By Xinhua,
Washington : Using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists have found a bizarre ring of material around the magnetic remains of a star that blasted to smithereens, NASA reported Wednesday.
The stellar corpse, called SGR 1900+14, belongs to a class of objects known as magnetars. These are the cores of massive stars that blew up in supernova explosions, but unlike other dead stars, they slowly pulsate with X-rays and have tremendously strong magnetic fields.
Indian device for cancer treatment gets EU certification
By IANS,
Bangalore : Cytotron, a device developed by the city-based medical technology firm Scalene Cybernetics for treatment of cancer and osteoarthritis, has received the European Union (EU) certification from Underwriters Laboratories, a worldwide independent product safety certification organisation.
The Conformity Europa (CE) certificate, a regulatory requirement for compliance, will enable Scalene to sell the 2,400 kilogram medical device to hospitals and institutes in European and other international markets.
Indian scientists developing drought-resistant groundnut
By Rajeev Ranjan Roy, IANS,
New Delhi : Indian farmers will soon get access to a new variety of groundnut that is drought-resistant and can be cultivated even in areas where water is scarce.
"Genetic mapping has discovered certain genes in groundnut that are drought- resistant. The testing of seeds of this variety is at an advanced stage," Rajeev K. Varshney, a senior scientist at Hyderabad's International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), said.
Botanical institute setting up on-line herbarium
By IANS,
Lucknow : The National Botanical Research Institute (NBRI) here is setting up a digital herbarium through which about 250,000 plant specimens would be made available on-line to scientists across the globe.
"In order to facilitate research work, we decided to set up the herbarium that will provide the desired plant specimen at the click of the mouse," Tariq Husain, a scientist in the taxonomy and biodiversity division of the institute, told IANS.
German scientist calls for solar energy as fuel
By Prensa Latina
Madrid : Bio-fuel, far from being a clean choice to fight global warming, emits more carbon dioxide and denudes vast forestlands, a German scientist has said, suggesting solar energy as a credible option.
Chemistry Nobel laureate of 1988 Hertmut Michel told Spanish daily El Pais that large tracts of forests in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil and in Africa were being burnt down, releasing a huge amount of carbon dioxide into the environment.
Besides, large areas of forestlands were being diverted into soybeans cultivation for biomass for fuels.
Former African-American astronaut to head NASA
By DPA,
Washington : US President Barack Obama Saturday named Charles Bolden, a black ex-astronaut, to lead the US space agency into its next chapter that could take it back to the moon.
The retired Marine Corps general, 62, flew four times in the space shuttle in the '80s and '90s - two times as mission commander. His nomination must be approved by the Senate.
Former NASA head Michael Griffin stepped down in January as Obama was entering office.
Other universes exist alongside our own
By IANS,
London : Scientists say they have found evidence that our universe was 'jostled' by other parallel universes in the distant past.
New solar cell technology best suited for India: Inventor
By Rahul Dass, IANS,
Helsinki : India will stand to significantly gain from a new technology on solar power as it is cheap, green and efficient, says Michael Gratzel, winner of this year's Millennium Technology Prize that is often called the Nobel for innovation.
"I am particularly interested in India. Solar energy is a cheap, abundant resource that is importantly also non-toxic," said the Swiss professor who has developed a solar cell that mimics nature, just as plants produce their own food with photosynthesis.
Microsoft, Mammootty to launch Kerala e-literacy programme
By IANS
Thiruvananthapuram : Software giant Microsoft and veteran Malayalam superstar Mammootty are planning to launch an e-literacy programme in Kerala.
Mammootty told IANS Tuesday that he is in discussions with Microsoft for the launch of the statewide education project.
He is also the brand ambassador of the state-sponsored Akshaya IT programme.
Mammootty said he wants to launch the project to help make all sections of the society IT literate.
Freeze your chip, get a faster computer
By IANS
London : Extreme cold conditions enable electronics to work better and with less thermal noise, according to Srinivas Vanapalli, a Dutch researcher of Indian origin.
Vanapalli has explored the possibilities of cooling components at the chip level, to temperatures 150 degrees Celsius below zero, which also boosts its speed and reliability, ScienceDaily reported.
Vanapalli, of the University of Twente, has constructed a proof-of-principle cooler, which cools more effectively than conventional ones and holds promising commercial applications.
Russian spacecraft blasts off to space station
By RIA Novosti
Moscow : A Russian cargo spacecraft, Progress M-62, has lifted off for the International Space Station (ISS) from the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan, Russia's mission control said Sunday.
"The spacecraft was launched in the nominal regime at the designated time (10:12 a.m. Moscow time or 07:12 a.m. GMT)," mission control said.
The Progress vehicle's flight to the station will last three days instead of two days to prepare the spacecraft's systems for docking with the ISS more carefully, mission control said.
Online petitions website launched in Russia
By IANS/RIA Novosti,
Moscow: An online portal to promote public petitions has been launched by the Foundation for Information Democracy in Russia.
Firefox celebrates five years
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.
New language protects home computers
By IANS,
Washington : Scientists have developed a security language to protect home networks from cyber attacks.
Companies, banks and other organisations take internet security very seriously, erecting firewalls and IT departments to protect them from attacks. But domestic and small office networks are just as vulnerable to hacking, malicious computer code, worms and viruses.
Geon Woo Kim of the Electronics and Telecom Research Institute (ETRI) Korea and colleagues who developed the specific codes said home networks have only a single gateway from the internet.
Moon has more water than Great Lakes, Chandrayaan data shows
By Arun Kumar, IANS,
Washington : Scientists have found Moon's minerals may have at least 100 times more water than previously indicated by remote sensing data from the Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 and other lunar sample analysis.
In March 2010, a US space agency NASA radar experiment aboard Chandrayaan-1, India's first lunar spacecraft launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation in October 2008, found thick deposits of water-ice near the Moon's north pole.
Hole in Moon may serve as lunar base for astronauts
By IANS,
London : In a major discovery, geophysicists have identified a vertical hole they believe is a skylight on the surface of the moon that could serve as a lunar base for astronauts.
The dark pit in an intact lava tube is located in the Marius Hills region, a volcanic area on the Moon, a report published in Geophysical Research Letters said.
The discovery was made using images from the moon-orbiting Japanese SELENE (also known as Kaguya) spacecraft. It was led by Junichi Haruyama of the NTT DATA CCS Corporation, Japan.
Stabilising current CO2 emission levels not enough to save coral reefs
By IANS,
Washington : Even if greenhouse gas emission is stabilised at current levels, it would still be enough to cause acidification of oceans and sound the death knell of coral reefs.
Ocean acidification could devastate coral reefs and other marine ecosystems even if atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) stabilizes at 450 parts per million (PPM), a level well below that of many climate change forecasts.
World’s biggest telescope to seek new galaxies
By Sinikka Tarvainen, DPA,
Madrid : Thousands of years ago, the original inhabitants of Spain's Canary Islands are thought to have worshipped the Roque de los Muchachos mountain as having magical powers. On Friday, the mountain will officially become home to a telescope billed as the world's biggest time machine.
The instrument will allow scientists to seek new answers to the origin of the universe.
The Grantecan or GTC, which are abbreviations for "large telescope of the Canary Islands", is the biggest among only about a dozen comparable telescopes in the world.
NASA delays Martian soil gathering due to communication glitch
By Xinhua,
Washington : NASA has delayed gathering of Martian soil samples by the Phoenix Mars Lander due to a communication glitch on a satellite.
The NASA Phoenix team was confident to start delivering soil samples to instruments on the Lander's deck on Wednesday, using its robotic arm after two practice rounds of digging and dumping the clumpy soil at the Martian arctic site this week.
Russia needs $5 bn to complete its space station segment
By RIA Novosti
Moscow : Russia will need an additional $5 billion to complete construction of its segment of the International Space Station (ISS) by 2015, the head of Russia's rocket and space corporation Energia said.
The ISS is a joint project of space agencies from the US, Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan. The orbital station is likely to remain operational until 2020.
Egyptian mummies show heart disease had ancient origin
By IANS,
Washington : Hardening of arteries detected in Egyptian mummies as early as 3,500 years shows that heart attacks and strokes had ancient origins.
"Atherosclerosis... despite differences in ancient and modern lifestyles... was rather common in ancient Egyptians of high socio-economic status living as much as three millennia ago," says Gregory Thomas, co-principal investigator.
"The findings suggest that we may have to look beyond modern risk factors to fully understand the disease," says Thomas, University of California-Irvine (UC-I) professor of cardiology.
Google’s Chrome browser has Windows in its sights
By Andy Goldberg, DPA,
San Francisco : Google released its first ever Internet browser in a long-awaited move that increased pressure on Microsoft and laid a new foundation for a mass transition to web-based computing.
A test version of the new software, named Google Chrome, was made available for download in more than 100 countries Tuesday. The open-source browser had been in secret development for over two years at the search engine giant.
Chandrayaan reaches ‘home’ in lunar orbit
By IANS,
Bangalore : India's first unmanned lunar spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 Wednesday reached its intended operational orbit at about 100 km from the lunar surface for a two-year rendezvous with the moon.
“Chandrayaan has reached its home in the final orbit. The spacecraft is orbiting at an altitude of 100 km above the lunar surface. It will spin around the moon once in two hours,” Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) director S. Satish told IANS here.
Info on Indian diaspora now just a click way
By IANS
New Delhi : The information on groups of professionals of Indian origin based in the US is now just a click away as Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal Wednesday launched a dynamic and interactive website on them.
Launching the portal, www.piousnetwork.com, Sibal said there was a crying need to systematise, diversify and scale up the information available on the diaspora based in the US and this initiative will address the need.
Scientists create wonder alloys for aerospace industry
By IANS,
Washington : Scientists have created titanium based metallic-glass composites - wonder alloys that are not only lighter, tougher and cheaper than existing compounds, but can be bent into any shape and are ideal for use in aerospace applications.
Earlier this year, the work by the same Caltch (California Institute of Technology) group had resulted in "alloys with unrivaled strength and toughness," noted Douglas Hofmann, visiting scientist and co-author of the current study.
Scientists use sunlight to split water
By IRNA,
New Delhi : Australian-led scientists say they've replicated a key photosynthesis process that may lead to using sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
According to 'Terra Daily - News about Planet Earth' report, the scientists, led by Professor Leone Spiccia, Robin Brimblecombe and Annette Koo of Monash University, developed a system they say might revolutionize the renewable energy industry by making hydrogen cheaper and easier to produce on a commercial scale.
2 plus 2 may not always equal 4
When it comes to percentages, consumer calculating errors can be costly
By TwoCircles.net newsdesk
People deal with percentages every day: the performance of a stock portfolio, a sale at the department store, or the performance of a new hybrid car, are all often expressed as percent changes. As an everyday occurrence, calculating percentages should be second nature to the average person. "Not so," says Akshay Rao, professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management.
Europe’s Columbus docks at space station, finally
By DPA
Washington : After four years' delay and last minute space-walk hitches, the Columbus laboratory docked onto the International Space Station, opening a new chapter for Europe in space flight.
"Columbus is now officially a part of the ISS," NASA officials said Monday on the NASA TV transmission of the docking.
In a precision transfer that took about two hours, a robotic arm operated from inside the space station manoeuvred Columbus out of the cargo bay on the Atlantis shuttle and into its permanent place at the Harmony portal that was installed last year.
Chandrayaan-1 has given space exploration a huge boost: Royal Astronomical Society
By Dipankar De Sarkar, IANS,
London : The discovery of water on the moon by Indian maiden lunar craft Chandrayaan-1 is just the breakthrough international space scientists were waiting for in order to kick start the moon exploration programme again, the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) said Thursday.
"This is a massively impressive accomplishment," RAS Secretary Martin Barstow, a leading British astronomer, told IANS after American scientists made the stunning announcement that the Indian mooncraft had sent evidence of water on the lunar surface.
How do bees land on the spot? Indian-origin scientist finds out
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.
Passwords for multiple internet services need not be confusing
By DPA,
Hanover (Germany) : Most computer users realise that their private data is safest, when they use a different password for each website. But keeping track of all those passwords can be a problem and there's always the temptation to use the same password often making it easier for a hacker to guess it.
The German computer c't magazine recommends using variations of a single password for all your internet needs.
Choose a word with at least eight letters, numerals and special characters. Alternate between upper and lower case and then it becomes a user's basic password.
Google encrypts all emails for a spy-free Gmail
Washington: In a bid to stop snooping on its users, Google has overhauled its Gmail service in a big way - encrypting every single...
Volcanic eruption in 1600 caused global disruption
By IANS,
Washington : The eruption of Huaynaputina in Peru in 1600 AD led to global disruption, triggering famines and cold winters in many places, according to a new study of records by geologists.
The eruption is known to have put a large quantity of sulphur into the atmosphere, and tree ring studies show that 1601 was a cold year, but no one had looked at the agricultural and social impact, said Ken Verosub of University of California, Davis.
"We knew it was a big eruption, we knew it was a cold year, and that's all we knew," Verosub said.
Underground barriers to stop toxic waste from contaminating water
By IANS,
Sydney : Thousands of garbage dumps are quietly leaking a toxic brew of old and sometimes deadly chemicals into the water consumed or used by millions of people.
Researchers are developing a solution to one of the most urgent problems faced worldwide -- the poisonous fluids which leach out of old rubbish dumps and enter the groundwater.
Newton’s invention may lead to greener TV screens
By IANS,
Washington : Engineers in the US have developed TV displays based on a telescope design invented by Isaac Newton to reduce the display's electricity consumption.
The rear layer of a conventional liquid crystal display (LCD) used in televisions produces light (backlight), whose brightness is controlled by small liquid crystals that swing round like tiny shutters. However, most of this backlight is wasted and never reaches the viewer.
IT tool helps satellites pinpoint ancient settlements
By IANS,
Washington : A new computer tool that extracts clues about ancient human settlements from satellite imagery has uncovered thousands of sites which might otherwise have been lost.
NASA to beam Beatles’ song “Across the Universe” to Polaris
By Xinhua
Beijing : NASA will broadcast next Monday the Beatles' song "Across the Universe" across the galaxy to Polaris, the North Star, to celebrateds the 40th anniversary of the song and the 50th anniversary of NASA, according to media reports Saturday.
Beijing : NASA will broadcast next Monday the Beatles' song "Across the Universe" across the galaxy to Polaris, the North Star, to celebrateds the 40th anniversary of the song and the 50th anniversary of NASA, according to media reports Saturday.
U.S. space shuttle Discovery moved to launch pad
By Xinhua,
Washington : The U.S. space shuttle Discovery rolled out to its Florida launch pad early Saturday, awaiting for the upcoming flight late May, according to NASA.
"The launch of Discovery on the STS-124 mission is targeted for May 31," NASA announced after the shuttle moved to its launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida.
India to launch multipurpose scientific sea research vessel
By KUNA
New Delhi : India will soon deploy a state-of-the-art multipurpose scientific vessel for conducting sea research.
The vessel, "Sagar Nidhi," is presently located off the coast of Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu and will be launched soon by India's Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal, Indo Asian News Service reported Friday, quoting an official in India's Earth Sciences Ministry.
The vessel would provide logistic support to India's Antarctic II and Arctic missions during the next five years.
ISRO preparing for GSAT 4 launch in two months
By Venkatachari Jagannathan, IANS,
Chennai : While the preparations for launch of India's ocean monitoring satellite Oceansat 2 and six other nano satellites Sep 23 is on, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is getting ready for the bigger launch slated in the next two months -- that of the communications satellite GSAT 4.
12 mn telecom subscribers added in June
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.
NASA Phoenix spacecraft ready for Mars landing
By Xinhua,
Washington : NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is preparing to end its long journey and begin a three-month mission to taste and sniff fistfuls of Martian soil and buried ice.
The lander is scheduled to touch down on the Red Planet on May 25, according to the mission updates released on Tuesday.
HCL sets up development centre in Australia
By IANS,
New Delhi : Information technology services provider HCL Technologies Ltd (HCL) has set up a new global development centre in Sydney as a part of its expansion plan in Australia and New Zealand, the company announced Thursday.
With total staff strength of over 500, the Sydney centre is part of HCL's global delivery strategy to offer customers support from various locations across the globe.
At present, HCL has delivery centres in India, China, Poland, Singapore and Ireland and has recently announced plans to open another in North Carolina, US.
Why fundamental scientific research has not caught on in India
By Narayanan Suresh, IANS,
This can happen only in India! Even as the nation continues to celebrate the success of Chandrayaan, the country's first space mission to moon, this is not something one of the seniormost scientists in India, Chintamani Nagesa Ramachandra Rao, is particularly thrilled about.
NASA develops mirror to look into galactic past
By IANS,
Washington : Once upon a time, shiny surfaces and mirrors were credited with magical powers that could look into the future. Now two centuries later, NASA is relying on them to look into the past.
The agency is developing a primary mirror 21.3 feet across, for use on the James Webb Space Telescope, to tell us about our beginning in the universe.
The primary mirror will serve as the telescope's eye and peer through dusty clouds to see stars forming planetary systems, connecting the Milky Way to our own solar system.
Ancient mineral provides clue to early climate
By IANS,
New York : A new analysis of ancient minerals called zircons suggests that earth's earliest continents were probably destroyed by an extremely harsh climate.
Zircons, the oldest known materials on earth, offer a window in time back as far as 4.4 billion years ago, when the planet was a mere 150 million years old.
As these crystals are exceptionally resistant to chemical changes, they have become the gold standard for determining the age of ancient rocks, ScienceDaily reported.
Making IT play knight in shining armour
By IANS
New Delhi : Can the computer enter the home and the street in a way that helps minimise violence against women? An initiative from Sri Lanka believes that information and communication technology (ICT) can do just that.
The Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) has awarded a grant to the Centre for Women and Development for a project to use technology to document violence against women in the north of the country via a database.
Sea salt worsens coastal air pollution: study
By IANS
Washington : When salty air and sunshine around busy ports mingle with industrial and shipping pollution, they aggravate the problem manifold, according to a study.
Emissions from marine vessels may be polluting the globe to a greater extent than hitherto suspected. The disturbing phenomenon substantially raises the levels of ground-level ozone and other pollutants in coastal areas
"This is a problem everywhere industrial pollution meets the ocean, as is the case in many of the largest cities around the world," said Hans Osthoff of university of Calgary.
Scientists find black hole “missing link” in galaxy
By Xinhua,
Washington : Scientists have found the "missing link" between small and super-massive black holes in a galaxy, according to a study published in Sept. 18 issue of journal Nature.
For the first time researchers from Durham University have discovered that a strong X-ray pulse is emitting from a giant black hole in a galaxy 500 million light years from Earth.
The pulse has been created by gas being sucked by gravity on to the black hole at the center of the REJ1034+396 galaxy.
Kerala students to compete in designing a Mars rover
Kochi: Students of an engineering college in Kerala have been selected to compete in a challenge to design a rover for the US Mars...
Found: the cells that make people fat
By IANS,
Washington : Scientists have identified an important fat precursor cell that may explain how changes in the numbers of fat cells might increase obesity.
The finding could also have implications for understanding how fat cells affect conditions like diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
"The identification of white adipocyte progenitor cells provides a means for identifying factors that regulate the proliferation and differentiation of fat cells," said co-author Jeffrey Friedman, professor at Rockefeller University and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.
3-D glimpse of Shanghai World Expo a mouse click away
By IANS,
Beijing : Now visiting the Shanghai World Expo will be possible through internet as the organiser has decided to launch its new website to display the event with three-dimensional (3-D) vision.
The organising committee is trying to provide a 3-D Shanghai World Expo garden in the virtual world so as to make the 159-year-old traditional exhibition accessible to every netizen across the world.
"The 3-D website is unprecedented in the World Expo history," said Wang Liping, who is in charge of the 3-D Shanghai World Expo website program.
Kolkata scientist punches holes in UFO theory
By IANS
Kolkata : Media reports of a bright spherical object, streaking across the eastern sky have left many Kolkata residents intrigued, but scientists said it could be just an "optical illusion" - a result of cloud reflecting the city's lights.
Singapore Airlines superjumbo A380 rolls off runway
Singapore, January 11, SPA -- Singapore Airlines' A380 superjumbo jet sustained superficial damage when it rolled off a runway in the first glitch for the world's biggest passenger plane since going into service in October, AP quoted the airline as saying today.
The plane was getting ready to depart from Singapore's Changi Airport to Sydney late Thursday. It was carrying 446 passengers who disembarked, and no injuries were reported, the airline said.
Glint of sunlight shows liquid on Saturn’s largest moon
By IANS,
Washington : A glint of sunlight reflected off a lake on Saturn's largest moon Titan has confirmed the presence of liquid on its surface.
The image was captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
Titan has captivated scientists because of its many similarities to the Earth. Scientists have theorised that Titan's cold surface hosts seas or lakes of liquid hydrocarbons, making it the only other planetary body besides the Earth believed to harbour liquid.
Discovery shuttle cleared for landing despite loss of part
By DPA,
Washington : The shuttle Discovery was cleared for landing after NASA concluded Friday that a small part that broke off the spacecraft did not pose any safety concerns, the agency said.
The Discovery crew spotted the small, rectangular object floating away from the shuttle early Friday, NASA officials said.
After analysing the video footage, NASA determined it was a metal clip used to protect the rudder's speed brake during take-off and its loss would not affect landing.
Indian-origin scientist creates first single-molecule device
Washington: A team of Columbia Engineering researchers led by an Indian-American scientist Latha Venkataraman has created a single-molecule electronic device which has a potential...
Cockroaches which conceived in space under observation
By RIA Novosti
Voronezh (Russia) : Russian scientists are expecting two cockroaches, who returned from space onboard the Foton-M bio satellite, to give birth to the first creatures ever conceived in space, the research supervisor has said.
"In the next few days we are expecting two female 'cosmonauts' to give birth to the world's first offspring conceived in microgravity," Dmitry Atyakshin said.
Futuristic telescope to shed light on ‘Dark Ages’ of space
By DPA
Washington : For astronomers the Dark Ages represent the far-flung corners of the universe about which precious little is known, and which could yet hold the key to how planets were first formed. NASA hopes a "next generation" telescope slated for launch in 2013 will shed light on the question.
Astronomers discover new planet in constellation Leo
By Xinhua
London : British and Spanish scientists have discovered a possible terrestrial-type planet orbiting a star in the constellation of Leo, science news weibsite Alpha Galileo reported on Wednesday.
A team of astronomers from the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) working with Jean-Philippe Beaulieu, a visiting astrophysicist at University College London (UCL), made the discovery from model predictions of a new exoplanet (extrasolar planet) orbiting a star in the constellation of Leo.
Messenger craft flies within 200 km of Mercury
By DPA,
Washington : NASA's Messenger spacecraft came within 200 km of Mercury Monday, taking pictures of the rocky planet nearest the sun.
It was the second of three planned flybys for the craft, which is due to settle into orbit around Mercury in 2011, providing what scientists hope will be the most complete picture yet of the solar system's smallest planet.
The 0840 GMT flyby was designed largely to pick up a gravitational boost of energy for the craft. It will begin beaming data back to Earth Wednesday, NASA and university researchers said.
Astronauts Ready Return to Earth
By Prensa Latina
Washington : The astronauts aboard space shuttle Endeavour ready their return to Earth after 12-day stay at the International Space Station where they set a record of five space walks.
The crew will undock at 23:56 GMT to land Wednesday night at Kennedy Space Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Mission STS-123 of NASA installed the first piece of Module Kibo, the largest Japanese grant to the outer space platform and completed the Canadian space robot Dextre that will assume many of today's risky space walks.
Jupiter moon lander project to get first funding in 2014
By IANS/RIA Novosti,
Moscow : Russia's Jupiter research project, which includes a lander mission to its moon Ganymede, will receive its first funding next year, a space agency official said.
Microsoft issues emergency patch for Internet Explorer
By DPA,
San Francisco : Microsoft has issued an emergency patch for its Internet Explorer browser, aiming to fix a critical flaw that allowed hackers to take over computers merely by steering them to infected websites.
Microsoft Wednesday took the rare step of issuing the patch after numerous security experts advised people to switch to rival browsers until Microsoft fixed the problem. Microsoft usually releases patches on a set schedule and this is only the third emergency patch in the last three years.
New technique can lift fingerprints from bombs fragments
By IANS,
Washington : The state-of-the-art forensic method that can identify fingerprints on bullets could now be used to lift them from bomb fragments even after they have been wiped off.
John Bond, scientist at the University of Leicester, who developed the technique with the University chemistry team, said " we have developed a method that enables us to 'visualise fingerprints' even after the print itself has been removed.
After water, check for life on moon: Jayant Narlikar
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.
Wipro projects $905 million from IT services in Q3
By IANS
Bangalore : Wipro Ltd has projected $905 million (Rs.39.97 billion) from its global IT services and products business for the third quarter (Oct-Dec) of this fiscal (FY 2008).
In a notification to the stock exchanges here Friday, the IT bellwether said the robust guidance was based on the flagship IT division's performance in the second quarter (July-Sept) of this fiscal, which at $797 million was $20 million more than the projected $777 million.
Google unveils search by voice for Nokia users
By IANS,
Bangalore : Popular search engine Google has unveiled a unique mobile application for Nokia handset users to seek information on specific needs, the global software major said Monday.
"The application is equipped with speech recognition technology to understand Indian accents. Its software enables users of Nokia S60 handsets to access information on the internet by voice search," Google India said here in a statement.
Chandrayaan’s journey to lunar orbit
By IANS,
Bangalore, Nov 8 (IANS) Chandrayaan-1, India's first unmanned mission to moon, has travelled more than 380,000 km in 12 days after its launch from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh Oct 22 to enter the lunar orbit Saturday.
Soon after the launch at 6.22 a.m. on Oct 22, the spacecraft carrying 11 scientific payloads was put in an orbit of 22,860 km apogee (farthest point to the earth) and 225 km perigee (nearest point to the earth).
This is how Chandrayaan reached the lunar orbit:
Three decades of circling the sky
By IANS,
New Delhi : Thirty-one years back India's first satellite Aryabhatta was launched via Russian space vehicle Intercosmos. Monday India's own rocket created history by placing 10 satellites including eight from other countries in orbit around the earth.
India's space odyssey started in April 1975 as an experiment. Today, it is a multipurpose commercial programme.
Here are the high points of India's space programme:
1975: First Indian satellite Aryabhatta launched on April 19, 1975. It provided technological experience in building and operating a satellite system.
NASA’s new satellite to search for undiscovered objects
By DPA,
Washington : NASA's newest "eye" to be launched Wednesday is a satellite equipped with unprecedented infrared sensitivity to scope out cosmic objects unseen by other cameras.
The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, is to be launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Over the next nine months in orbit around the north and south poles, the satellite is to scan the entire sky one and a half times seeking out the "coolest stars, dark asteroids and the most luminous galaxies," NASA said.
New global map most comprehensive ever
By IANS
New York : A new global map that details the planet's land cover with a resolution 10 times sharper than any of its predecessors is also the most comprehensive ever.
The map is based on 20 terabytes of imagery - the equivalent of data in 20 million books - acquired from May 2005 to April 2006 by Envisat's Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument.
There are 22 different land cover types shown in the map, including croplands, wetlands, forests, artificial surfaces, water bodies and permanent snow and ice.
India to launch a Third World satellite
By IANS
Hyderabad : India's space agency will in January launch a 'Third World' remote sensing satellite, images from which can be received free by universities and research organisations of developing countries.
"All they would need to spend is on a 3.7-metre dish antenna that will not cost much," D.V.A. Raghavamurthy, Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO's) director of small satellite projects, said here recently. The imageries can be used for research, mapping, and disaster management, he said.
SMS hotline for Free TB support service in India
By Bobby Ramakant,
A Short-Message-Service (SMS) hotline was launched in New Delhi, India to provide round-the-clock free tuberculosis (TB) support service to TB patients. This SMS helpline is being managed by ex-TB patients.
Scientists map genes behind bipolar disorder
By IANS,
New York : In a first, scientists have comprehensively mapped the genes believed to cause bipolar disorder.
Indiana University neuroscientists combined data from the latest gene hunting studies for bipolar disorder with information from their own studies to zero in on the best candidate genes for the illness.
Their findings, reported in the latest issue of the American Journal of Medical Genetics, describe how researchers analysed how these genes work together to create a comprehensive biological model of bipolar disorder.
India considering manned space mission
By IANS
Bhopal : India is considering a manned mission to space soon, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman G. Madhavan Nair said Thursday.
"We are seriously considering a manned space mission. But we will first have to study and prepare a report within a year on newer technologies to develop capsules to send men to space and bring them back safely," Nair told a press conference here.
The study report would be sent to the government for approval, he said.