Technology

By Sahana Ghosh, IANS,

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

By DPA, Washington : Astronauts from the space shuttle Endeavour Thursday began a second spacewalk on their construction mission to the International Space Station, which was marking its 10th anniversary. Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper und Shane Kimbrough are to move equipment carts to allow astronauts to later install a truss, and lubricate the hand on the station's robotic arm and the joint on one of the solar panels that provides power to the ISS. Most of the mission's four spacewalks will be devoted to getting the joint in order. It has been defective for more than a year.

By Frederick Noronha, IANS, Bangalore : Searching the net might become quite a different experience thanks to an experiment from Yahoo! India called Glue that yields results with visual information. Search in.glue.yahoo.com for the term 'India', for example, and what you find is news, images, links, maps, and even sponsored ads -- all related to the second-most populous country on the planet. "Glue Pages unite your classic search results with visual information from the best sites anywhere on the Web," said Yahoo! India, while recently unveiling this way of finding information.

By IANS, Balasore/New Delhi : India Wednesday successfully test-fired a new nuclear-capable surface-to-surface ballistic missile, that can also be launched from an attack-proof underground silo and is meant to give the Indian Army a credible second-strike capability, an official said. "The test was successful," an official of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) that has developed the missile, told IANS.

By DPA Dortmund (Germany) : LCD monitors might be pretty, but computer users should still admire them from a distance. Just like with old-fashioned cathode ray tube monitors, users should be sure to sit at least 50-80 cm from the monitor. Sitting closer means users run the risk of wearing out their eye muscles. Older monitors, which work just like older televisions, took up so much desk space that workers were often left with no choice but to sit close to the monitor, says Windel. But that's not a problem with the newer liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors.

By Prashant K. Nanda New Delhi, March 25 (IANS) An Indian medical technology firm has configured a laptop that can do a heart scan, abdomen scan and even a pregnancy test while retaining its basic functions like writing a note, preparing presentations and sending an e-mail. "Though portable ultrasound machines are not new in India, this machine doubles up as a laptop and a multi-utility ultrasound machine. It is easy to use, carry and send body images even to your e-mail," A.B. Sivasankar, director (imaging) of Trivitron Medical Systems, told IANS.

By DPA Washington : Two European emperors and an uncounted number of innocent collectors have died over centuries at its hand. Now, starting Tuesday, the infamous, yellow-green death cap mushroom is front and centre as the "Encyclopaedia of Life" opens its website to the general public. The unveiling is the culmination of more than two years of work by scientists and internet experts intent on documenting the world's 1.8 million known species in one place.

By IANS,

By IANS, London: Social network Facebook has made compulsory its Timeline feature through which all of a user's photographs and wall posts would be seen by friends on their homepage.

By Jay Dougherty, DPA,

By DPA,

By IANS, Washington : Mammal teeth and bones, protective shells of molluscs and needle-sharp spines of sea urchins are made from scratch by nature. The materials of which shells, teeth and bones are composed are the strongest and most durable in the animal world, and scientists and engineers have long sought to mimic them. Now, biomineralisation may be closer to reality. An international team of scientists has detailed a key and previously hidden mechanism to transform amorphous calcium carbonate into calcite, the stuff of seashells.

Helsinki: Stuart Parkin, a physicist who has enabled vast increase in digital storage, received the 2014 Millennium Technology Prize in Helsinki Wednesday. Finnish President Sauli...

By IANS/RIA Novosti,

By Xinhua, Beijing : NASA's Phoenix lander closed in on Mars Saturday, healthy and on course for touchdown Sunday evening near the Red Panet's northern polar cap. Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., decided to forego a course-correction rocket firing late Saturday but left open the option for a final trajectory tweak Sunday eight hours before atmospheric entry.

Kolkata : Female train commuters in distress can now seek immediate police assistance at the touch of a button -- courtesy a mobile...

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.

By Xinhua Washington : With a trouble shooting plan in hand, NASA will begin to test the erratic fuel sensors which had halted the launch of space shuttle Atlantis, a top NASA official announced Tuesday at a teleconference. The test work is tentatively planned for Dec. 18, said Wayne Hale, NASA's Space Shuttle Program Manager. Technicians and engineers plan to test the sensor system onboard Atlantis by pumping super-cold liquid hydrogen into the external fuel tank.

New Delhi : Zen Mobiles on Wednesday launched a new smartphone named Sonic 1 at a price of Rs.5,999 exclusively on eBay India. The new...

By IANS Noida : India's leading IT hardware and systems integration firm HCL Infosystems Ltd Monday announced net profit of Rs.814.1 million ($20.69 million) for the quarter ending Dec 2007, an increase of seven percent from the same period last year. The company reported consolidated revenues of Rs.33.06 billion ($840 million) during the period, an increase of 11 percent from Rs.29.68 billion in the third quarter of 2006-07.

By DPA Hanover : Anti-virus software is increasingly losing ground in the battle to provide reliable protection for PCs. The Hanover-based c't magazine tested 17 current programmes recently. Each piece of software was tested for recognition of more than a million different pests, including trojans, viruses, worms and bots. Two products were able to identify more than 99 percent of the malicious intruders. Four other virus scanners caught at least 95 percent and were hence awarded a grade of very good.

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

By IANS, London : An international team of scientists has developed an ultrasound treatment to remove Ibuprofen from waters polluted with this drug. The new method could be used in water purification plants, which would avoid the emission of pharmaceutical pollutants into rivers, lakes, seas and other surface waters. The team at the laboratories of the Federal Polytechnic School in Lausanne, Switzerland has developed a novel method for eliminating pharmaceutical products from water.

Washington : A new NASA map has revealed that over 556 asteroids smashed into the atmosphere over a 20-year period between 1994 and 2013,...

By DPA, Brussels : The European Union's executive Wednesday confirmed that it had received three anti-trust complaints about internet search engine Google, and that it had asked the company to comment on the allegations. The European Commission is charged with enforcing the EU's strict laws on fair competition. In recent years it has imposed billion-dollar fines on industry giants such as Microsoft and Intel for breaching those laws.

By IANS, London: A new way of administering oxygen into blood, that could allow people to stay alive without breathing, has been discovered.

By IANS, Toronto : Though the Canadian icon BlackBerry continues to maintain its lead in the US smart phone market, handsets with Google's Android operating system may upset it soon, says a report released Monday. In fact, the devices with the Google operating system have left Apple's iPhone behind in the first quarterly sales, says the report.

By DPA, Bonn (Germany) : A security hole has been discovered in the VLC Media Player, the German Federal Agency for Security in Information Technology (BSI) here reported. Attackers can exploit this vulnerability using rigged Real Media files (file ending with "rm") to install malicious software onto the user's computer. The victim has just to open the manipulated multimedia file.

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

By IANS,

By DPA, Geneva : Polyester fibres covered by tiny silicone filaments can create clothing that when dunked in water will still remain completely dry, a Swiss scientist discovered. The nanotechnology structure allows the surface to be covered in chemicals which make the clothing hydrophobic to the point that water simply bounces or slides off. Stefan Seeger, a lead researcher on the project at the University of Zurich, said the technology could have many purposes, including producing improved swimsuits, making industrial clothing and even for protecting outdoor furniture.

By DPA, San Francisco : Social networking site Facebook officially has 500 million users, the company announced Wednesday. The milestone means that the six-year old website now reaches eight percent of the planet's population, just 18 months after it passed the 150 million user mark. Last month Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said there is a "good chance" that the social networking site could boast one billion users within three to five years.

By IANS Sriharikota/Bangalore/Chennai : India's space agency ISRO Monday successfully placed an Israeli "spy satellite" in the polar orbit after a textbook launch and reaffirmed its position among the elite group of nations capable of commercial launches - with three more orders in the queue. The 300-kg Israeli satellite, Tecsar, was launched as scheduled at 0915 IST (Indian Standard Time) using the `core alone' configuration of the polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV-C10), that is, the rocket without its usual six strap-on booster motors.

By IANS, London : A new car navigation system is being developed to help motorists negotiate rush hour jams by advising them about the best possible routes. The 'Congestion Avoidance Dynamic Routing Engine' (CADRE) uses “artificial intelligence”, or AI, to interpret live traffic information shared among vehicles fitted with a special GPS, or Global Positioning System.

By IANS New York : The long-running Ulysses mission, which was launched to study the sun's poles and its influence on surrounding space, is coming to an end. After more than 17 years in space - almost four times its expected lifetime - the mission is finally running out of power and is likely to finish sometime in the next month or two, a release by the European Space Agency (ESA) said. A joint mission by ESA and NASA, Ulysses was launched in 1990 from a space shuttle. The data it sent has forever changed the way scientists view the sun and its effect on the space surrounding it.

By IANS, Aligarh: The Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) may soon host the Indo-US energy centre.

By IANS, New Delhi : Leading telecom service provider Reliance Communications (RCom) Thursday launched an information service called 'Quick Search'. Powered by OnYoMo.com on Reliance Mobile World (R-World), the service includes information on banks, automated teller machines (ATMs), shopping malls, hotels, restaurants, cinema theatres, educational institutions, hospitals, blood banks, chemists and airline offices.

By IANS Bangalore : Global computer chipmaker Intel is developing next-generation microprocessors for diverse mobile computing devices that are energy efficient, scalable and high-performing, a top company official said here Wednesday. "Our global research labs, including the one in Bangalore, are working on advanced computing technologies such as ultra-mobility, long battery life, high performance per watt and rich sensing to build new applications in education, healthcare and entertainment," Intel chief technology officer Justin Rattner told reporters.

By Xinhua, Beijing : Scientists at the CERN laboratory outside Geneva successfully activated the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest, most powerful particle collider, in an attempt to understand the makeup of the universe. On Wednesday morning, scientists shot the first protons into an about 27-km-long tunnel below the Swiss-French border in the world's most powerful particle accelerator -- the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

By IANS, Sydney : Building super-fast computers has just become easier, thanks to a breakthrough that lets researchers grab hold of tiny components and probe their inner structure using only a beam of light. The discovery takes researchers a step closer to utilising semi-conductor nano-wires that will be key components of future integrated devices and circuits.

By IANS, Sydney : A neuroimaging scan called PiB PET can predict the onset of Alzheimer's in individuals at least 18 months earlier than all currently available diagnostics. PiB PET can show excess of beta-amyloid (molecule) in the brain and potentially allows clinicians to distinguish patients with early Alzheimer's disease, even before signs of memory loss are present.

By DPA Washington : In the past, it was difficult to measure exactly how fast one computer ran Windows versus another computer. Now, thanks to Windows Vista's new experience index, the guesswork has been taken out of evaluating performance. Understand the experience index and you'll be ahead of the game when it comes to judging the performance of a new PC or determining how best to upgrade your existing box.

By Venkatachari Jagannathan, IANS, Chennai : The 500-MW prototype fast breeder reactor (PFBR) fast coming up at Kalpakkam, 80 km from here, has several firsts to its credit. "For the first time in the country's nuclear power plant construction history, components are being fabricated on site owing to their huge size and weight," Prabhat Kumar, project director, Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Limited (Bhavini) told IANS.

By DPA, Beijing : China Thursday afternoon intitiated the final eight-hour countdown to its Shenzhou VII space mission, which is scheduled to feature the nation's first spacewalk. The Jiuquan space centre in the north-western province of Gansu began the countdown at 1:10 pm (0510 GMT), state media said. The start of the countdown put the mission on course for its previously announced launch time of 9:10 pm (1310 GMT), although officials Wednesday said the exact time could still vary between 9:07 pm and 10:27 pm.

By IANS, New Delhi : Sky gazers in some parts of India will get an opportunity to observe a partial solar eclipse Jan 26. The eclipse, first for the year, will start at 2.15 p.m. Monday and end by 4 p.m. "The eclipse will be visible only from southern parts of India, eastern coast, most of northeast India, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep. People in north and west India will miss the celestial activity," N. Rathnasree, director Nehru Planetarium, told IANS.

By Fakir Balaji, IANS, Mumbai/Bangalore : Convergence of technologies, domain expertise and falling bandwidth tariffs are making India a hot data hosting and remote infrastructure management (RIM) site for global enterprises, says a top industry player. For the next wave of outsourcing in back office operations, top Indian players such as Reliance Infocomm, Tata Telecommunications, Sify and Netmagic Solutions are bracing up to provide a range of IT managed services, including data hosting, mission critical applications, networking and RIM to domestic and overseas enterprises.

By IANS/EFE, Orlando (Florida) : A Puerto Rican scientist will be in charge of creating the menu for the first manned mission to Mars.

By Nabeel A. Khan and Ankur Tewari, IANS, New Delhi : The lunar eclipse that will start within minutes of the ushering in of 2010 may matter a lot to astrologers but is unlikely to affect plans of revellers who have booked pubs, lounges and restaurants in advance to party through the night. "There is no effect of lunar eclipse on this New Year celebrations. We have already booked 50 percent of our seats at our branches," Sanjeev Anand, general manager of the bar BUZZ, told IANS.

By DPA, Washington : Two asteroids are to zip close by Earth within hours of each other Wednesday, the US space agency said.

By IANS New Delhi : If a power plant coming up in India for $500 million can embrace clean technology for an extra $50 million, developed countries must pay the difference, a top UN official has said. United Nations Development Programme Administrator Kemal Dervis said developed and developing countries had different responsibilities, but would have to strive together to reach a goal of two tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per capita, which would mean a global warming of two degrees Celsius.

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

By IANS, Sydney : Swinburne University of Technology researchers have edged closer to bringing non-invasive cancer treatment to reality, thanks to advances in photothermal therapy. The therapy, a promising experimental approach, involves introducing a reactive compound (gold nanorods) into a patient's tumour, which will absorb laser light to heat up the tumour cells and identify them.

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.

By Ranjana Narayan, IANS,

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

By 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.

By Xinhua Belgrade : The European Union on Monday moved closer to the realization of its satellite navigation project by endorsing a proposal regulating the project's implementation. "EU Transport Ministers today supported the text of the proposal of the so-called Galileo Implementation Regulation, which represents the legal basis for the implementation of the budget and sets out a new management structure for the project," said a statement by the current holder of the EU presidency Slovenia.

By IANS, New Delhi : The high-powered ministerial group, set up to decide on issues related with the auction of frequency spectrum for third generation telecom services, is scheduled to meet here for the first time later Friday. The mandate of the empowered group, which has been set up under Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, is to decide the base price for the spectrum auction and the number of operators to be allowed in each telecom circle for offering third generation, or 3G, services.

By NNN-APP

Islamabad : Ministry of Information Technology (MOIT) is in process of providing e-services for Ministry of Population Welfare to eliminate the redundant steps of collecting the information from the districts and provincial offices of the Ministry.

Under the project which is expected to be completed by October this year, an online integrated web-based MIS is being developed, sources at Electronic Government Directorate, MoIT said here Saturday.

By Xinhua Washington : NASA is sending a prototype inflatable habitat to Antarctica to see how it stands up during a year of use, said an official with the space agency. "Testing the inflatable habitat in one of the harshest, most remote sites on earth gives us the opportunity to see what it would be like to use for lunar exploration," said Paul Lockhart, director of Constellation Systems of NASA. The prototype was inflated one last time Wednesday at ILC Dover corp. in Delaware, before being packed and shipped to Antarctica's McMurdo Station.

By IANS, New Delhi : Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates Friday said he is a 24-hour technology person and rarely feels drained. "I am a 24-hour technology person. I am not that big text messaging and I am impressed with the young people doing that," said Gates, on visit here for overseeing the philanthropic activities of the foundation he has formed with his wife Melinda. However, Gates said, he reads random articles in silence whenever he feels drained. Calling social networking sites "irritating", Gates said he is flooded by "friend requests" everyday on Facebook.

By IANS, Chandigarh : Imagine doing a 250-km journey from Delhi to Jaipur or Delhi to here in a car that will go the distance in just one-litre of petrol (just over $1)! That's exactly what students of a technical institute in Punjab - the Rayat Institute of Engineering and Information Technology near Ropar, 50 km from here - claim to have developed.

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...

By DPA, San Francisco : Microsoft's latest deal proposal to Yahoo envisages the internet portal selling off its valuable properties in Asia and Microsoft buying its search business in the US, media reports said. The Software giant also proposed buying a minority stake in the whittled down Yahoo that would remain after the sell-off, the Wall Street Journal reported late Monday.

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

By IANS, Washington : Our ancestors, going back 2.5 million years, had jaws of steel with which they cracked open hard nuts and objects, unlike human species today with much more delicate and smaller teeth, a research study has shown. Mark Spencer, Arizona State University (ASU) assistant professor and evolutionary scientist, and doctoral student Caitlin Schrein used futuristic computer modelling and simulation technology to build a virtual model of the A. africanus skull to see how the jaw operated.

By Parveen Chopra, IANS New York : Yahoo Inc is in talks with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp for a possible merger of the media conglomerate's MySpace and other online properties with Yahoo! to fend off Microsoft's takeover bid. The deal is not very likely but the negotiations can help Yahoo! boost its market value above Microsoft's initial offer of $44.6 billion, or $31 per share, made on Feb 1. The possible deal envisages News Corp and a private equity firm buying a significant stake - over 20 percent - in Yahoo!, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

By IANS, La Paz : Seventy-four Bolivians will get training from Chinese scientists on how to operate communication satellites, Bolivia's vice-minister for telecommunications Roy Mendez said. The trainees will learn the techniques of construction, pre-launch testing and gathering data from the satellites from the space. He said a newly formed Bolivian Space Agency will also give training to professionals, especially young Bolivians, on how to operate and administrate Tupac Katari satellites, Prensa Latina reported.

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.

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

By Xinhua, Beijing : Debris from the U.S. intercept of a spy satellite in February and from China's anti-satellite test in Janaury 2007 is still orbiting Earth, according to a space debris expert. T.S. Kelso's CelesTrak satellite tracking software shows some 15 pieces of the busted up USA 193 spysat are still flying around, although when the successful intercept was reported, estimates were that all pieces would re-enter Earth's atmosphere within 40 days. A recent analysis shows the last piece of clutter will decay about 100 days post-intercept, Kelso reported.

By Arun Kumar, IANS, Washington : Discovery of water on the moon by India's first lunar mission Chandrayaan-1 with a thin layer of surface 'dew' appearing to form and then dissipating each day has set the scientific community agog. "Finding water on the Moon in daylight is a huge surprise, even if it is only a small amount of water and only in the form of molecules stuck to soil," writes University of Maryland astronomer Jessica Sunshine.

By IANS, Beijing : China's solar-powered lunar probe satellite Chang'e-2 has successfully stood the test of a lunar eclipse and hours of flying in complete darkness.

By IANS, Sriharikota (Andhra Pradesh) : The launch of Chandrayaan-1, India's first mission to probe the moon, from here Wednesday morning marked the 13th consecutive successful score for the India-built polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV) which had failed in its very first attempt. The 320-tonne PSLV-C11, which roared into skies at 6.22 a.m. from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) with the 1,380-kg Chandrayaan, is a modified version of PSLV, described by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) as its "trusted workhorse".

Hyderabad, Sep 28 (IANS) International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) of the US are a major hurdle in the growth of new space industry actors in the global market, said speakers from emerging space nations at the 58th International Astronautical Congress (IAC 2007) here. They also made a strong case for change in the rules to facilitate cooperation and healthy competition in the global space industry. The speakers were unanimous that both cooperation and competition were necessary to ensure growth of the space industry, especially among emerging nations and new players.

By DPA, Stuttgart (Germany) : A robotic goalkeeper is better than human keepers in Germany's football Bundesliga, its inventors boasted Monday as they demonstrated the computer-controlled device, Goalias, to the media. Players from first-division side VfB Stuttgart, including Germany team player Mario Gomez, tried last week to outwit Goalias, shooting indoors at a full-size goal mouth from 11 metres out. Scientists have since fine-tuned Goalias.

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.

By DPA Singapore : All dogs in Singapore will have to be implanted with a microchip enabling them to be traced back to their owners starting next month as part of a crackdown on irresponsible pet ownership. Under measures unveiled by the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA), allowing man's best friend to run free without a licence will incur a fine of up to 5,000 Singapore dollars (about $330), a 10-fold hike from the current maximum.

By DPA, Washington : The space shuttle Endeavour lit up the Florida coast before dawn Monday as it blasted off for a mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The 1014 GMT start was the final night-time launch for the ageing shuttle fleet, which is to be mothballed later this year. Endeavour is carrying a six-window viewing area that will give astronauts a panoramic look at Earth, the station and visiting spacecraft. Endeavour's 13-day mission will carry the Tranquility node to the ISS, making the orbiting space lab 90-percent complete.

By Shudip Talukdar, IANS, Lucknow : Ethno-botanist Deepak Acharya has spent eight years in the Satpura mountains in Madhya Pradesh, parts of which lie cut off from civilisation, driven by a single goal -- documenting and salvaging India's traditional herbal remedies before they are lost to the world.

By RIA Novosti, Moscow : The development of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator, has involved over 700 Russian physicists from 12 research institutes, a project coordinator said Monday. The $5.8 billion international project, which will be officially unveiled on October 21 at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French initials CERN, has involved more than 2,000 physicists from hundreds of universities and laboratories in 34 countries since 1984.

By DPA, Washington : NASA is eyeing Feb 27 as the earliest possible date for launch of the next shuttle mission Discovery, a postponement blamed on worries over the possibility that pieces of a faulty fuel valve could strike the shuttle on takeoff. In a statement over the weekend, NASA said it would give an update on plans next Friday. Discovery was originally aiming for a Feb 12 launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida, a date that had been put back to Feb 19.

By IANS, Sydney : Latest fertility treatments helped younger and older women in Australia and New Zealand conceive 10,522 babies in 2006, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. The institute reported that 9,291 babies were born in Australia and 1,231 in New Zealand with assisted reproduction treatment (ART).

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, Los Angeles : A newly established US company, Deep Space Industries, Tuesday announced a plan to harvest near-earth asteroids.

By IANS/RIA Novosti,

By IANS, Mumbai: A website with a bank of over 900,000 news images has been launched to tap the estimated Rs.300 crore image market in India.

By IANS, New Delhi: Samsung Electronics Friday launched a new tablet, Galaxy Note 800, in the Indian market expanding its product portfolio.

By Xinhua Moscow : Russia will send astronauts to the Moon by 2025 and establish a permanent station there between 2028 and 2032, a senior official said here Friday. Russia, which sent the first cosmonaut to the space in 1961, has forged a long-range blueprint for its space industry up to 2040, said Anatoly Perminov, head of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos).

By IANS Bangalore : The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will launch its advanced remote sensing satellite Cartosat-2A, with high resolution stereo cameras and scientific instruments April 28, a space agency official said here Friday. "We have rescheduled the launch of Cartosat-2A to this month-end. The tentative launch date is April 28. The exact date and time will be finalised in a fortnight after factoring weather and other relevant data," ISRO chairman G. Madhavan Nair told reporters on the sidelines of a space event.

By DPA, Los Angeles : A computer virus attack that has infected more than 6.5 million Windows PCs this week is one of the worst in years, internet security firm F-Secure said Friday. In total the worm, which is known as Downadup or Conficker, has infected nearly nine million PCs since its first version was unleashed two years ago.

By IANS, New Delhi: The government has cleared a project to interconnect 14,000 police stations and 6,000 police officers across the county for speedy investigation of crime and detection of criminals in real time, parliament was informed Wednesday.

By IANS, Toronto : In a discovery which may hold clues to the origin of comets, astronomers have found an object that orbits the sun backwards and tilts at an angle of 104 degrees - almost perpendicular to the orbits of the planets in our solar system. They have named this unique object 2008KV42. Canadian astronomer Brett Gladman, who is a part of the international team behind the discovery, said in a statement Friday that this unusual object with backward and tilted orbit around the sun may clarify the origins of certain comets.

New Delhi : India will conduct an experimental test of its Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mark 3 in mid-December, Indian Space Research Organisation...

By IANS/RIA Novosti, Moscow : The space shuttle Endeavour landed at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida Wednesday bringing its 25th and final spaceflight to a close.

By Fakir Balaji, IANS, Bangalore : The countdown has begun for the launch of Ariane-5 rocket from Kourou spaceport in French Guiana, South America, early Sunday, carrying the Indian-built European satellite W2M along with Eutelsat's Hot Bird 9 satellite for broadcasting services, a top space official said here Saturday. The 3,462-kg W2M was designed and built at the satellite centre of the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in Bangalore at $80 million (Rs.4 billion) for the European satellite operator (Eutelsat) under the ISRO-EADS-Astrium alliance formed in 2006.

By Xinhua Washington : NASA has decided to skip Wednesday's first landing opportunity for the space shuttle Endeavour at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida due to bad weather conditions, according to NASA's landing blog updates. Now NASA was aiming for the second opportunity at Kennedy, which is set at 8:39 p.m. EDT (0039 GMT on Thursday). "The weather conditions for the second opportunity seem to be more favorable," reported NASA's real-time landing blog.

By Xinhua Beijing : Yahoo will introduce new features for its popular web-based e-mail program, taking six weeks to become available to all 254 million Yahoo mail subscribers in 21 languages worldwide, media reports said Monday. The new version allows users to click on a contact and then select whether to send that person an e-mail, instant message or text message. "You could send an e-mail or instant message if you know the recipient is at the computer — or a text message if the recipient is on the road with a cell phone," the reports added.

By IRNA, New Delhi : A warning that most of the Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035 owing to climate change is likely to be retracted after the United Nations body that issued it admitted to a series of scientific blunders. Two years ago, the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) headed by India's Rajendra Pachauri, issued a benchmark report that claimed to have incorporated the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was that world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

By Dr Syed Zafar Mahmood The 13 year American Ahmad Mohamed, inventor of home-made clock with digital display, was expecting a pat on the back...

By IANS, New Delhi : External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee will present electronic passports to President Pratibha Patil, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Vice-President Hamid Ansari Wednesday, marking the introduction of the new scheme in India. The e-passport, also called biometric passports, will carry the biological features and facial imprints of a holder and will be at par with international civil aviation standards.

By IANS, London : A couple of websites have decided to ban model-turned-actress Megan Fox for 24 hours to give fans a break from round-the-clock coverage on her. The "Transformers" beauty will suffer a dip in online coverage Aug 4, with sites such as AskMen.com and Asylum.com joining forces to impose 'the Megan Fox blackout', reports thesun.co.uk. "You can have too much of a good thing. We're giving our readers a one-day reprieve from the woman we've been drowning in all summer," James Bassil of AskMen.com.

By SPA Washington : Microsoft Corporation said Thursday it would share more information about key technology elements of some of its best-selling software products to increase interoperability of its software with that of competitors and customers. The world’s biggest software maker said it will publish on its website key software blueprints, known as application program interfaces, to make it easier for its high-volume products to be used with third-party software.

By Xinhua, Kathmandu : An ultra-light aircraft built by Nepali engineers is scheduled to take off on Saturday afternoon almost one year since its builders sought permission from the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, according to The Kathmandu Post. "The research team is ready for the test flight as we have already fulfilled all necessary lab-safety requirements," said Bikash Parajuli, leader of the team that built the aircraft. "We are optimistic that the flight will be successful," he was quoted by the Saturday's daily as saying.

By IANS, Sydney : Scientists have discovered a secretive and exotic species of mosquito, which, unlike others of its kind, do not require a blood meal before laying eggs.

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

By IANS Bangalore : World's leading chip designer firm ARM is expanding its India design centre to make it the largest outside Britain, a top company official said here Thursday. "Headcount in our Bangalore facility will be doubled to 700 in the near future from 350 presently, making it the second largest design centre after our headquarters at Cambridge in Britain," ARM chief operating officer (COO) Tudor Brown told reporters here.

By IANS/RIA Novosti, Washington : A NASA spacecraft will move 30 km closer to the moon for a week to take clearer images of the Apollo lunar landing sites.

By IANS, New Delhi : Queues will soon be a thing of the past in Delhi High Court as Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) would be installed in the court premises to promote e-filing of cases. The proposal was mooted by Delhi High Court Bar association (DHCBA) and is in the final stages of completion. Wi-fi is a wireless local area network that uses radio waves to connect computers and other devices to the Internet

By IANS, Hyderabad : An Egyptian expert has arrived to restore a mummy from the age of the pharaohs and preserved at the State Archaeological Museum here. Tarek el Awady, director of Scientific Research in Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), arrived Wednesday night on a six-day visit to restore the mummy, dating back to 2500 BC, but which is showing signs of decay now.

By IANS Washington : A giant binocular telescope on Mount Graham in Arizona has taken celestial images in 3D for the first time, using its twin, 28-foot primary mirrors together. The images are not only a milestone for the telescope, now the world's most powerful, but also for astronomy itself, said researchers, Sciencedaily reported. US, Italy and Germany have partnered for the telescope, known as LBT. They are now releasing the images. University of Arizona owns part of its observing time.

By IANS New York : An atomic clock, based on a single aluminium atom and applying computer logic to the peculiarities of the quantum world, now rivals the world's most accurate clock, relying on a mercury atom. Both clocks are at least 10 times more accurate than the current US time standard, according to a new study, Sciencedaily reported. The measurements were made in a yearlong comparison of the two next-generation clocks, both designed and built at the US Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

By IANS New York/Bangalore : Global chip major Intel Corporation has launched five small processors under Atom trademark for mobile Internet devices and Centrino Atom chip for embedded computing solutions, the company said Wednesday. Each Atom processor has 47 million tiny transistors in 45 nanometer (nm) scale, measuring less than 25 square millimetres. Built on a micro-architecture for small devices and low power consumption, the new chip can support multiple threads for higher performance and quick system response, Intel said in a statement.

By IANS, Washington : A much clearer picture of the Earth's temperature nearly 50 million years ago, when Carbon Dioxide (CO2) concentrations were higher than current levels, has emerged.

By RIA Novosti, Moscow : A Progress space freighter has successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS) four days behind schedule because of the evacuation of Nasa's space centre in Houston in the wake of Hurricane Ike, Russia's mission control said. The Progress M-65, launched on board a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan on Sep 10, has delivered some 2.5 tonnes of fuel, oxygen, water, food and medical supplies, as well as the latest Russian-designed space suit for use during a space walk by Russian crewmembers on board the ISS.

By IANS, Washington : An unencrypted laptop computer stolen from NASA last year contained command codes used to control the International Space Station (ISS), media reports said.

By DPA, Jakarta : An Indonesian woman found a brother who had been missing for more than three decades through the popular social networking site Facebook, a report said Tuesday. Nurlianti Dehi was separated from her elder brother Anton in 1974 when he left their hometown in Central Sulawesi province for neighbouring North Sulawesi, according to the online edition of the Media Indonesia daily. Anton maintained contact with his family for the first two years but later cut off communication completely, she told the newspaper.

By Jay Dougherty, DPA, Washington : Bad things can happen to good data. Hard drives can crash. Memory cards can be formatted accidentally. CDs or DVDs on which important files are stored can become scratched and unreadable. But there are steps you can take to try to retrieve damaged data. The course you take will depend upon the type of media on which the data is stored as well as how severe the damage is.

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

By IANS/RIA Novosti, Moscow : Four solar and two total moon eclipses will be observed in different parts of the world, including in India, in 2011.

By Prasanto K. Roy, IANS, This can become the largest database on planet earth and the oldest technology-driven plan that is still doing the rounds in India - a unique, single identity smart card for every citizen and resident in the country. Don't expect it in 2011, despite Home Minister P. Chidambaram promising a smart card in the hands of every Indian by then. But even if it eventually does happen within this government's tenure, it would be one of its top achievements.

By IANS London : Unusual rock formations, long suspected to be an outcome of volcanic activity in the British Isles, were caused by a massive meteorite hit 1.2 billion years ago, spewing debris over a 50 square km area near Scottish town of Ullapool. A research team from the universities of Oxford and Aberdeen found the evidence buried in a layer of rock they now believe is the material thrown out during the formation of a meteorite crater.

By IANS Washington : Reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions that are leading to climate change is going to be a lot more challenging than society has been led to believe, according to a new study. The challenges of reducing emissions of carbon dioxide - the main greenhouse gas - have been significantly underestimated by the UN appointed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the study has contended. It says the IPCC is overly optimistic in assuming that new technologies will result in dramatic reductions in the growth of future emissions.

By IANS, Washington : Researchers led by an Indian American scientist have discovered how the main curative ingredient of turmeric - used for centuries to treat wounds, infections and other health problems - works to increase the human body's resistance to disease. Lately, turmeric's astonishing array of antioxidant, anti-cancer, antibiotic, antiviral and other properties have spurred a flurry of research into curcumin, its main curative ingredient. Yet little was known about how exactly it works in the body.

By IANS, Washington : A new technique relying on data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory could help weigh something as unimaginably heavy as the biggest black holes in the universe. Black holes are such dense masses that they would compress a 90,000-tonne cruise ship into the size of a teaspoon, but with the same weight. By measuring a peak in the temperature of hot gas at the centre of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4649, scientists determined the mass of the galaxy's super massive black hole.

By DPA, Bonn (Germany) : New technologies gleaned from observing nature are set to provide exciting applications in the decades ahead that will supersede current environmentally destructive practices, UN experts said Wednesday. Ahmed Djoghlaf, general secretary of the UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), called on entrepreneurs to "wake up" to the new possibilities and to "work with nature, not against it." Djoghlaf was speaking on the sidelines of the ninth conference of the parties to the CBD being held in the German city of Bonn.

By Venkatachari Jagannathan, IANS,