Technology

By Fakir Balaji, IANS, Bangalore : Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman-designate K. Radhakrishnan, who takes over Oct 31, has said his first priority would be to see that the indigenously built cryogenic engine is made ready for the GSLV launch by the year-end. He made the statement soon after he learnt about his appointment to the top post. The successful firing of a cryogenic engine will take India into the exclusive space club, which has the US, Russia, China, France and Japan with such a capability.

By IANS Mumbai : Software major Infosys Technologies Ltd has partnered with ACDI/VOCA, a non-profit international development organisation, to develop an information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled application to improve the agro supply chain in India. ACDI/VOCA promotes broad-based economic growth, and develops applications, which fall under growth oriented micro enterprise development (GMED) programme, which is a $6.3 million a USAID-funded initiative.

By IANS, New York: Vibration energy from a surface like the passenger seat of a moving vehicle to power your smart phone? Yes. It's possible as...

By IANS, London : NASA has launched a 2.7-billion km voyage to Jupiter that will try to discover the secrets behind the largest planet in the solar system.

By DPA, Washington : NASA has delayed the launch of the space shuttle Discovery by 24 hours to allow more time to review data about a suspect valve in the liquid hydrogen fuel tank, officials said Thursday. NASA earlier this week postponed a Tuesday launch to the early hours of Friday morning after detecting a problem with the fill and drain valve. The latest plan is to proceed with the launch about midnight Friday (0400 GMT Saturday).

By Xinhua Washington : Astronauts aboard the orbiting International Space Station opened the newly-installed European Columbus laboratory and conducted some outfitting tasks on Tuesday. European-built Columbus lab was delivered to the station by U.S. space shuttle Atlantis, which lift off on Feb. 7 after a series of delays.

By IANS, Hyderabad: The information technology industry in India has a challenging and an uncertain year ahead, feel the business leaders in the sector in this technology hub.

By Xinhua, Washington : NASA spacecraft MESSENGER has successfully made the second of the three planned flybys of Mercury on Monday, taking pictures of most of its remaining unseen surface. The spacecraft passed 125 miles (about 200 km) above the planet's cratered surface, capturing more than 1,200 pictures and collecting a variety of science data. Mission scientists hope to begin receiving the new data from MESSENGER in the very early morning on Tuesday.

By Mohammed Shafeeq Hyderabad, Sep 27 (IANS) German Aerospace Centre DLR is hoping that the data generated from India's lunar mission 'Chandrayaan-1', to be launched next year, will help in its own proposed moon mission slated for launch in 2012. "Chandrayaan-1 has good science and high resolution instruments and we expect that the data on different aspects of lunar exploration will benefit us. No agreement has been signed but we hope the scientific findings will help widen lunar exploration," a DLR official told IANS.

By IANS, Los Angeles : NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, has announced that it has completed "brain transplant" on Mars rover Curiosity.

By IANS, New Delhi : Leading Indian global software major NIIT Technologies Ltd said Friday that it has signed a "multi-million pound" three-year deal with Britain's premier airline British Airways. "The deal enables the support and testing of business critical applications across various business areas of the global airline," the regulatory statement said. The contract is one of the largest ever deals to be signed by NIIT Technologies with a member of the British airlines industry and follows a 12-year relationship between the two companies, the statement said.

By Xinhua, Beijing : Precious information was found on a melted disk drive from Columbia space shuttle which broke up while returning to the earth on Feb. 1, 2003, media reported on Saturday. The hard drive contained data from the CVX-2 (Critical Viscosity of Xenon) experiment, designed to study the way xenon gas flows in microgravity.

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By Venkata Vemuri, IANS, London : The digital doomsday is round the corner. In exactly 1,273 days there will be a web chaos in the world as we run out of internet addresses. More than 85 percent of the available addresses have already been allocated and the rest will run out by 2011, according to a prediction by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

By Arun Kumar, IANS, New York : Once the world's online search leader, Yahoo's share has sharply declined, putting it in danger of losing its relevance in a market increasingly dominated by Google with a staggering 65.6 percent share

By IANS, Copenhagen : Even in the best case global warming scenario, low lying countries and coastal regions will be regularly flooded by 2100, when the sea is expected to rise by at least 50 cm. This implies that if emissions of greenhouse gases is not cut down quickly and substantially, low lying coastal areas will be flooded, hitting 10 percent of the global population really hard. The emissions are leading to climate change.

By IANS, Washington : NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected light emanating from a "super-Earth" planet beyond our solar system for the first time.

By IANS Chennai : The Rural Innovation Fund (RIF), promoted by Microsoft India among others, has selected nine innovators, who will receive $15,000 (Rs.590,000) each to implement their projects to empower rural India. Microsoft India has established a RIF corpus of $200,000 to encourage innovations that will benefit rural India.

By IANS, Istanbul : Imagine swiping a mobile phone to pay for all the things that you buy! This has just been made possible by latest technology that allows bank information to be stored in your mobile phones' memory cards. Global credit card giant Visa has entered a partnership with a Turkish bank to launch this technology, the first of its kind in Europe. This technology is used to store bank information in memory cards placed in mobile phones and allow them to be waved in front of credit card payment points, Visa Europe, which has collaborated with Turkey's Akbank, said.

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By IANS/RIA Novosti, Moscow : Iran has successfully launched an observation satellite, Iranian news network Press TV reported Friday.

By IANS, New Delhi : “The successful launch of the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, India's first unmanned scientific mission to the moon, marks the first step in what we hope will be a historic milestone in India's space programme," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Wednesday.

By IANS, New Delhi : Did you ever realise that the shafts of light emanating from your house could actually be impacting the night-sky visibility? If that sounds far-fetched, the Nehru Planetarium here has decided to study just that phenomenon and quantify light pollution in Delhi. A satellite map made available by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) clearly shows how much 'night sky pollution' the dazzling lights are causing across India.

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

By Xinhua Shanghai : Scientists and astronomy enthusiasts all over the country all have access to data sent back from China's first lunar orbiter Chang'e-I, a leading scientist in the program said here Sunday.

By IANS, Washington : What would happen if the planet's upper atmosphere were to be stripped of two-thirds of its ozone layer by 2065, not just over the poles, but everywhere? Intense DNA-mutating ultraviolet (UV) radiation, up by 650 percent, falling on mid-latitude cities like Washington, would singe your skin in just five minutes, besides damaging plants, animals and aggravating skin cancer rates.

By IANS, Washington : Researchers are trying to harness the gecko's ability to scale walls effortlessly, with a practical bearing on military and industrial uses, by developing 'peel test' norms for nanosized manufacturing. 'Peel tests' are used in industry to determine just how much force is required to pull a material off another. But no tests exist for nanoscale structures, said Arvind Raman of Purdue University.

By IANS, Washington : A robot designed for lunar prospecting will be tested on the cool, rocky slopes of Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano that is also Hawaii's highest mountain. During the field experiment, scheduled in the first half of November, the four wheeled robot called Scarab will simulate a lunar mission to extract water, hydrogen, oxygen and other compounds that could potentially be mined for use by future lunar explorers.

By IANS, Washington : Some plants are discarding elaborate defences against predatory caterpillars and evolving more favourable stratagems to ensure survival, according to a study. The latest example is the milkweed plant, which, according to genetic analysis, instead of resisting predators, is now putting greater efforts into repairing themselves faster than their foe monarch butterfly caterpillar can eat them.

Tel Aviv : Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his country was "ready and willing" to share with India technology in areas such...

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.

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

By XINHUA, Beijing : China will soon begin mass production of its Shenzhou (Divine Vessel) spacecraft, the chief designer of the spacecraft system of China's manned space programme said Friday. Zhang Bainan said the mass-produced model will serve as a shuttle between China's space station and the ground, and may also transport astronauts and cargo for other countries. The Shenzhou 7 spacecraft is currently in orbit with three astronauts one of who, Zhai Zhigang, will undertake a space walk later Friday.

By Venkatachari Jagannathan, IANS,

By Xinhua, Washington : NASA packed a new toilet pump aboard the space shuttle Discovery on Thursday to be sent to the International Space Station to fix its faulty Russian toilet, the U.S. space agency said Thursday. The new toilet pump and some other replacement parts were rushed in from Russia to the United States last night and were stowed inside the payload bay of Discovery, which is perched at the launch pad of NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

By IANS, London : Fist sized bats emit much louder sounds than the noisiest rock concerts anywhere, according to a new study. Using microphone arrays and photographic methods, researchers found that bats emit ear shattering sounds exceeding 140 deciBels (dB) at 10 cm from the source, far louder than the 115-120 dB produced by a rock concert, reports Sciencedaily. This is the first comparative field study of bat echo-location sounds, illustrating the value of an interdisciplinary approach combining bat biology, ecology, behavioural biology and acoustics.

By Mohit Dubey Lucknow: How does one prevent hate speeches and inflammatory videos from being shared through applications like WhatsApp and on BlackBerry Messenger (BBM)?...

By RIA Novosti, Moscow : Russia will spend around 600 billion rubles, or about $25 billion, on scientific research in 2008-2010, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Thursday. "We have allocated substantial resources for the development of such promising areas as nano- and biotechnology, nuclear energy, aerospace and other research in 2008-2010. Federal target programmes alone will receive about 600 billion rubles for these purposes," Putin told a meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

By IANS, New Delhi: Mahindra Racing will team up with former Grand Prix rider Eskil Suter's company to produce an all new bike for the 2013 Moto3 season.

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.

California : When you are busy chatting or surfing the internet, do you know that nearly 4.8 billion people - or two-third of the...

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

By IANS, London : The four huge detectors of the new Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, when fully operational, are expected to generate up to a staggering 15 million gigabytes of data every year. Andreas Hirstius, manager of CERN Openlab and the CERN School of Computing, explained how computer scientists have met the challenge of handling this unprecedented volume of data.

By IANS Chennai : Fishermen in Bay of Bengal now have help on hand in case of any crisis as the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Tuesday handed over emergency alert transmitters to the fishing community along the Tamil Nadu coast. At a function held at the Coast Guard premises here, State Fisheries Minister K.P.P. Samy handed over five transmitters, each costing about Rs.10,000, free of cost to fishermen.

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

By IANS, Thiruvananthapuram : The Technology Business Incubator (TBI) at Technopark here has bagged the prestigious national award for the best technology business incubator in the country for 2007. Technopark Tuesday said the award, instituted by the department of science and technology of the central government, was for encouraging and recognising the business incubation activity, which plays a key role in promoting the entrepreneurial culture in the country.

By IANS, Sydney : Internet dating, which sparks such a rush of emotions between people even before they have met, often ends in disappointment and failure. According to a new study, the initial spate of replies a person gets on net dating sites makes them seem very popular. The kind of attention is a lot more “than if they had walked into a bar”, said Matthew Bambling of the Queensland University of Technology, who led the study,

By DPA, Washington/Moscow : A US satellite was destroyed in an unprecedented collision with a spent Russian satellite, raising fears of danger to other satellites, a report said Thursday. The collision between Iridium-33, a commercial US communications satellite and Russia's Cosmos 2251 satellite, which had been turned off for years, occurred Tuesday at 04:55 GMT above Siberia at a height of 790 km, the space.com site said, quoting a statement by US space agency NASA.

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.

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

By Neena Bhandari, IANS, Sydney : An Australian-Indian is part of a consortium of scientists who are developing and licensing information and communication technologies (ICTs) that can interact with humans in an emotionally intelligent manner. Some of the top minds working in corporate and university research laboratories in Australia, India, Japan and Singapore have developed emotionally intelligent computers - which their new company, Human Mind Innovations (HMI) Pty Ltd, will license and put to commercial use.

By IANS, Bangalore : The autonomous National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) has become a state-run body and brought under the Indian Space Research Organsiation (ISRO), the space agency said Monday. Renamed the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), the Hyderabad-based entity will be integrated with other ISRO centres for the development and operations of the ground segment under India's remote sensing programme. “The society has been merged with ISRO in view of the allied activities carried out in aerial and satellite remote sensing,” ISRO said in a statement.

By DPA, Washington : Jupiter appears to have again been hit by a speeding celestial object that left a giant dark scar in the giant gaseous planet's atmosphere, NASA astronomers said. The US space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory received a tip early Monday from Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley who had spied the spot near the planet's south pole. Scientists then pointed NASA's infrared telescope in Hawaii at the planet and detected signs - including particles in the upper atmosphere and a warming of the lower atmosphere - that it may have been struck by a comet.

By IANS New York : Scientists in US are developing an automated system that will help to detect terrorists before they strike. When a person is interrogated, the system will start tracking his or her behaviours and create a baseline data of the individual. The system tracks individual characteristics of a person like face, voice, and physiology among other things, to help confirm personal identity of a person against scientifically tested behavioural indicators, scientists at the University of Buffalo said in a press release.

By IANS/RIA Novosti, Plesetsk (Russia) : Russia Monday launched a navigation satellite from its Plesetsk Space Centre, Space Forces spokesman Col. Alexei Zolotukhin said.

By IANS, London : Researchers have brought the world one step closer to 'hearing' gravitational waves - ripples in space and time predicted by Albert Einstein in the early 20th century.

Washington: In a first such demonstration, an Indian-origin researcher has developed a system that uses Wi-Fi internet signals to beam power to remote devices...

By Xinhua, Washington : U.S. space shuttle Discovery's STS-124 mission to the International Space Station is officially scheduled for launch on May 31, NASA announced Monday after the final Flight Readiness Review. "Preparations are going really well," Shuttle Launch Director Mike Leinbach said, pointing out that Discovery's remarkably smooth processing flow will allow shuttle work crews to take off the Memorial Day holiday.

By IANS, London: For people who experience "winter blues" when waking up early morning, a cure has been found. A British firm has invented an alarm clock that creates an artificial dawn.

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By IANS, London : A massive underwater river flowing along the bottom of the Black Sea has been found by scientists - a discovery that could help explain how life manages to survive in the deep oceans away from the nutrient-rich waters found close to land. It is estimated that if on land, the undersea river would be the world's sixth largest in terms of the volume of water flowing through it.

By Xinhua Beijing : Scientists believe that early life forms on Mars were most likely snuffed out by the extremely salty water on the Red Planet, media reported Monday. "In fact, it was salty enough that only a handful of known terrestrial organisms would have a ghost of a chance of surviving there when conditions were at their best," said Harvard biologist Andrew Knoll, a member of the Mars rover science team.

By IANS, London : The airborne fraction of carbon dioxide (CO2) has not increased either during the past 150 years or during the most recent five decades, research says. Most of the CO2 emitted by human activity is absorbed by the oceans and our ecosystems. In fact, only about 45 percent of emitted CO2 stays in the air. However, some studies have suggested that the ability of oceans and plants to absorb CO2 recently may have begun to decline.

By IANS Hyderabad : Seven nations, including India, the US and China, are planning to launch lunar missions in the near future, even as experts have sounded a word of caution about the impact these missions would have on moon's environment. Japan, Germany, Britain and Italy are the other countries whose delegates made their countries' plans clear at the ongoing 58th Astronautical Congress Wednesday.

By IANS New Delhi : India is set to launch an advanced meteorological satellite by the end of this year to boost its weather forecasting capabilities. The satellite INSAT-3D will give "quantum jump in satellite meteorology", P.S. Goel, secretary of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, said Tuesday. This satellite is almost similar to GOES Satellites of the US and will have six channel imagers. Goel spoke about the satellite at the ongoing Saarc (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) Workshop on Weather Forecasting Techniques in the national capital.

By IANS, Thingalur (Tamil Nadu) : A temple in this Tamil Nadu town dedicated to the moon god conducted special prayers Tuesday for the successful launch of Chandrayaan, India's first lunar mission. "Since this temple itself is meant for propitiation of the moon god, we conducted prayers for the success of Chandrayaan as it is bound for the moon tomorrow (Wednesday) from Sriharikota," N. Govindarajan, an official of the temple, told IANS. "The omens during the worship were good and we are sure the mission will be a success," he said.

By Frederick Noronha, IANS, Panaji : Free software and open source solutions offer a huge potential to link your computer to the mobile phone and the inexpensive Skype networks -- that allows you to make international calls over the internet -- and for sending out SMSes too. This could help significantly narrow the digital divide "at the social level between rich and poor and geographical levels, between city and village", says Giovanni Maruzzelli, an Italian expert in the field currently touring India.

By DPA, Washington : Microsoft has announced an overhaul of its Internet-based Windows Live communications platform. Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Hotmail in particular have been equipped with a new user interface and added functionality, Microsoft reports. Among the new functions is the ability to create Windows Live Groups. These let friends, colleagues or family members gather in groups for easier communication.

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

By IANS, 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.

By Anne K. Walters, DPA, Cape Canaveral (Florida) : The massive cement expanses that dot the flat Florida landscape have been launching pads for history: the first US astronauts blasted into orbit, the Apollo missions to the moon and nearly 30 years of space shuttle flights. But human space travel from Kennedy Space Centre will soon come to a halt. After nearly three decades, the space shuttle programme is set to come to a close in September.

By IANS, Washington : Scientists have developed the world's tiniest superconductor -- a sheet of four pairs of molecules less than a nanometre wide. The Ohio University (OU)-led study provides the first evidence that nanoscale molecular superconducting wires can be fabricated for use in nanoscale electronic devices and energy applications. (A nanometre is a billionth of a metre).

By Xinhua Beijing : AOL announced in its blog post to shutter support for Netscape Navigator from Feb. 1 and recommended the Netscape users to make the move to Firefox, media reported Saturday. Netscape would still be available for download from the Netscape Archive after Feb. 1, but no "active product support" will be offered. The decision came after Netscape Navigator, once the dominant Web browser, failed in the battle against Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

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

By Gurmukh Singh, IANS, Toronto : Apple's iPhone 3G debuted in the country of BlackBerry Friday with an unprecedented response. In cities across Canada, people started making lines at stores as early as 2 a.m. to lap up the magic wireless device. Rogers Communications, the exclusive carrier of iPhone in Canada, had a tough time controlling the crowds as supplies sold out quickly at its stores. In fact, at its flagship store in downtown Toronto, the iPhone was sold out immediately after it opened at 8 a.m.

By IANS, San Francisco: Mass production of a smaller and cheaper version of Apple's iPad tablet computer has started, media reports said Wednesday.

Beijing, Dec 22 (Prensa Latina) China announced on Saturday its first 186-mph bullet train, wholly designed and built in this Asian country. China thus joins Japan, France and Germany as the fourth country worldwide in position to build state-of-the-art high-speed trains, a spokesman for the Railway Ministry said.

By IANS, Washington : The largest-ever telescope network has been activated. It stretches 11,000 km across North and South America, Europe and Africa, and will simultaneously observe the same objects. The telescopes are all members of the Express Production Real-time e-VLBI Service (EXPReS) project, and became functional when the Arecibo Observatory of the National Science Foundation in Puerto Rico joined the network June 6, a press release said Tuesday.

By IANS, Washington : Ice core and ocean deposit comparisons show complex links between carbon dioxide levels, ocean currents and climate and may help explain past, present and future climate trends. Researchers presented new data from their analysis of ice core samples and ocean deposits dating as far back as 90,000 years ago and suggest that warming, carbon dioxide (CO2) levels and ocean currents are tightly interrelated.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday sought a response from the information technology ministry on how it (ministry) can assist in the reporting...

By Xinhua, Washington : NASA said images received on Thursday confirmed that its Phoenix Mars lander has sprinkled a spoonful of Martian soil onto the sample wheel of the spacecraft's robotic microscope station.

By IANS, Washington : Scientists have recorded higher emissions of a greenhouse gas thousands of times more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, in spite of global efforts to curb its release. The substance HFC-23 is a by product of HCFC-22, a refrigerant in ACs and refrigerators and a starting material for producing heat and chemical-resistant products, cables and coatings.

By IANS, Washington : The help of insects might be required to make a biofuel like bioethanol commercially viable, according to an entomologist. Michael Scharf, entomologist at the University of Florida, Gainesville and his colleague Aurélien Tartar informed how enzymes produced by both termites and the micro-organisms that inhabit their gut - known as symbionts - could help to produce ethanol from non-edible plant material such as straw and wood.

By DPA, Beijing : When Zhai Zhigang floats out of a space capsule wearing his 120-kg, $30-million pressurized suit, he is to set another landmark for China's ambitious space programme as it moves toward assembling a permanent space station by 2020. Nearly three years after China's last manned space mission, Zhai should make his spacewalk Friday, if all goes well. "The spacewalk is risky," Australian space analyst Morris Jones said. "The Chinese spacesuit has not been tested in space before." "The Shenzhou's orbital module has never been depressurized before either."

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

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

By IANS, London : Google Chrome is now the world's third most popular web browser with one in five users preferring it.

Bangalore: India Wednesday created space history by becoming the first country in the world to enter Mars orbit in its maiden attempt, an event...

By IANS/RIA Novosti,

By DPA, Amsterdam : Scientists plan to gather June 12 and 13 in the southern Dutch city of Maastricht to discuss the possibility of human beings increasingly engaging in personal and even romantic relationships with robots in the coming decades. Academics from Austria, Canada, the Netherlands, Ireland, Singapore, the US and Britain are due to deliver some 20 presentations.

By IANS, Washington : Students built and launched a cosmic radiation detector into space with the help of a 12-inch helium filled balloon that reached an altitude of 104,000 feet. The instrument recorded radiation levels at varying altitudes - information that will be used by NASA to develop instrumentation for space flight. "This is really amazing," said Carl Johnson, a physics graduate student who designed and built the device. "Our detector actually flew to the edge of outer space and then back to ground, and the whole time it worked perfectly."

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.

By DPA, Los Angeles : Microsoft released key details Tuesday of the next generation of software that it hopes will run the world's computers. The software giant, whose dominance is under threat, said Windows 7 will replace the disappointing Windows Vista in January 2010. Microsoft said the new operating system was designed to function like a tighter version of Vista, which launched in 2006 but was widely derided as a "system hog" that slowed down computers with features that most users never accessed.

By DPA, San Francisco : Google is shutting down the online store it launched with much fanfare in January to sell the Nexus One smartphone, the technology giant said Friday. Google had hoped the direct sales initiative for what was widely called the "Google-phone" would launch a new business model for the US cellphone industry, by persuading buyers to purchase phones independently from the major carriers. Currently the vast majority of cellphone purchases are subsidised by the carriers in return for customers locking in to a two year contract.

By IANS, Shimla : Partly cloudy sky Wednesday morning in most parts of Himachal Pradesh marred the early moments of one of nature's greatest spectaculars - the century's longest total solar eclipse, weather officials here said. "Clouds in most parts of the hill state remained an intermittent problem, with most areas reporting partly overcast conditions," meteorological office Director Manmohan Singh said. On the historic Ridge in Shimla, a large number of people, especially schoolchildren, have gathered to witness the eclipse through clouds.

By IANS, London: A revolutionary tablet as thin and flexible as paper that can be twisted or dropped without suffering damage is set to be showcased soon in American city of Las Vegas.

By DPA Tokyo : Toyota Motor Corp Thursday unveiled two new robots that can assist humans in transport, domestic duties and care taking. The first robot is envisaged to transport humans and objects at a speed of 6 km per hour for a distance of 20 km with one battery charge. The other, a two-legged violin-playing robot, has 17 movable joints that provide it capability to conduct domestic duties and assist in nursing or medical care.

By IANS, Washington : Like charity, the battle against global warming should also begin at home, according to a new study. The study set out to establish that going green, recycling items of daily use and reducing your carbon footprint would be easier if a household's environmental impact is monitored. The study, which enlisted 20 families to assess how well sustainable behaviour might be inculcated among householders, compared fuel, electricity, water costs and waste generation and recommended cost-effective steps to reduce consumption.

By Xinhua, Jiuquan (China) : China will launch its third manned spacecraft Shenzhou-7 Thursday, a spokesperson of the space programme said Wednesday. The Shenzhou-7, carrying three astronauts, will be launched on a Long March II-F carrier rocket from Jiuquan launch centre in the northwest province of Gansu and then moved into orbit at an altitude of 343 km, Wang Zhaoyao, who is also the deputy chief of the manned space programme, told reporters. Two astronauts would enter the orbital module, where they would prepare for a spacewalk Friday.

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

By A Mirsab, TwoCircles.net, Solapur (Maharashtra): In an attempt to highlight the great work that Muslims have done in the field of science, an...

By IANS, Sydney : Australian researchers are providing the Chinese government with detailed assessment of the area devastated by the May 12 quake that claimed more than 60,000 lives. The high-resolution map generated from analysis of satellite images shows the ground lifting by up to five metres in areas affected by the quake. Radar satellite survey of the devastated area by researchers at the University of New South Wales is giving China information about the level of damage from the magnitude 8.0 temblor.

By RIA Novosti Tehran/Moscow : Iran successfully launched on Monday a sounding rocket as a preliminary step toward sending its first homemade research satellite into orbit, national media said. Iran's state television earlier reported that Iranian scientists had built the Omid (Hope) research satellite under a project that took 10 years to complete. The satellite was unveiled on Monday during an official ceremony and may be launched by March 2009.

By IANS, Tehran : Iran plans to send satellites in medium and high Earth orbits in two or three years, Iran's ISNA news agency reported quoting a senior official. On Feb 3, the country launched Omid light satellite in low Earth orbit, using the Safir 2 (messenger) rocket. The chief of Organisation for Iranian Scientific and Industrial Research, Hossein Rahimi, said Sunday that Iran's next step in space technology was sending operational satellites in an orbit of 36,000 km.

By IANS, New Delhi : Can the computer replace your chartered accountant? Yes, says a software firm, which is aiming its only product at the small-time taxpayer who can't afford the hassles of finding a person to help file tax returns. TaxSpanner - an online income tax preparation and filing tool for India at taxspanner.com - offers to help you "e-file" your income tax return in three easy steps. Delhi-based SpanAcross IT Solutions Private Ltd. director Manoj Yadav said the product was gearing up to work with some big players and was expecting to extend its reach.

By TCN News, Hyderabad: Madrassa students wearing hard hat along with traditional ‘topi’ (skull cap) handling heavy machinery, it is not an ordinary scene, but...

By Jay Dougherty, DPA,

By IANS, New York : A US engineer has developed the prototype of a device capable of tapping slow-moving ocean and river currents for a new, reliable and affordable alternative energy source. Called the Vivace, the machine works like a fish and turn vibrations in fluid flows into clean, renewable power. It has been featured in the latest issue of the Journal of Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering. Developed by Michael Bernitsas of the University of Michigan, the device harnesses energy from water currents moving slower than three km per hour.

By IANS,

By DPA, Washington : Two NASA astronauts Tuesday installed the Japanese module, Kibo, on the International Space Station in a nearly seven-hour spacewalk. During a six-hour, 48-minute excursion, space shuttle Discovery specialists Mike Fossum and Ron Garan attached the laboratory to the ISS, retrieved a shuttle inspection tool, and serviced and inspected solar components.

By DPA, San Francisco : Web search giant Google has created a centralised search system for tracking down people missing in the Haitian earthquake, the company announced Monday in a blog posting. The new platform incorporates the major people search services that sprang up in the US media in the days following the devastating temblor. However, news sites like CNN, The Miami Herald and The New York Times, all collected similar information, people may not find each other if they're looking in the wrong places online.

By Venkatachari Jagannathan, Chennai : India's first satellite - Aryabhata - was launched successfully by a Russian rocket on an April day 40 years ago,...

By DPA San Francisco : There's never been a laptop as skinny as the new MacBook Air from Apple. At its thinnest, it measures just about four millimetres. "When you first see MacBook Air, it's hard to believe it's a high-performance notebook with a full-size keyboard and display," gushed Apple CEO Steve Jobs while presenting the new laptop at the keynote speech of the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco. "But it is."

Ghaziabad : Social media was to blame for sensational spontaneous crimes in Uttar Pradesh, Director General of Police (DGP) Jagmohan Yadav said on...

By NNN-Bernama Putrajaya : The Malaysian astronaut to blast off to the International Space Station on Oct 10 will be decided at the last minute after both the country's candidates are recognised as astronauts. Prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said Monday that Dr Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor would be placed with the first crew for the Soyuz 15-S mission while Captain Dr Faiz Khaleed would join the second crew.

By IANS New Delhi : Sixty years after independence, Indian science has taken giant strides in virtually every arena - from space vehicles to vaccines. Starting out 60 years ago as a poor country with a history of famines and underdevelopment, India today stands poised as the surprise powerhouse of cutting-edge science and technology. Science and technology (S and T) has been key to India's development strategy right from the time of independence in 1947.