Technology

By IANS, Washington : Although the Internet provides scientists an instant access to thousands of academic journals and research papers, they are citing fewer papers and that too from more recent publications. This trend may be limiting the creation of new ideas and theories, said James Evans, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, who, focussing on the nature of research, analysed a database of over 34 million articles. He compared their online availability between 1998 and 2005 to the number of times they were cited from 1945 to 2005.

By IANS, Washington : Imagine trying to get out of a stadium with 70,000 fans after a bomb explodes, or even a bomb threat. For an evacuation on this scale, there are no dress rehearsals or practice drills - just simulation software. A new breed of simulation software - dubbed SportEvac - is being funded by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) as part of the Southeast Region Research Initiative (SERRI), and developed and tested by the National Centre for Spectator Sports Safety & Security (NCS4) at the University of Southern Mississippi.

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 IANS, Beijing : Archaeologists in China have found the ruins of two 5,000-year-old villages in Mongolia. The ruins in Hamin'aile village in Tongliao city in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region have been identified as possibly originating from Hongshan culture, dating back 5,000 years, said Ji Ping, a researcher at the Institute of Cultural and Historical Relics and Archaeology. About 1,200 square metres have been excavated, and houses and tombs had been found, China Daily reported.

By IANS New York : Mother's care is important even for plants, a new study says. A study by researchers at the University of Virginia shows that maternal plants give cues to their offspring that help them adapt to their environmental conditions. Findings of the study have been published in the latest issue of the journal Science. The researchers found that plants grown in the same setting as their maternal plant performed almost three-and-half times better than those raised in a different environment.

By IANS,

By IANS, Dubai : Gas turbine technology is the best fossil fuel-based technology available for power generation in the Gulf, given the skyrocketing oil prices, according to a leading energy expert. "Gas turbine technologies are the cleanest techniques within systems that use fossil fuels and are favoured in GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries due to the low cost of available natural gas," Abdullah Al-Amiri, chairman of the Emirates Energy Award, which recognizes best practices in energy conservation and management, said in a statement here.

By Aroonim Bhuyan, IANS, Dubai : Data received from Indian satellites can prove to be very useful to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in its infrastructure development work, according to K. Kasturirangan, former chairman of Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) K. Kasturirangan. "The data received from our constellation of satellites have a lot of relevance for the UAE and also for this region as a whole," Kasturirangan, who was here to attend a conference on e-governance in the emirate of Ras Al Khaimah (RAK), told IANS in an interview here.

By IANS, Washington : Employing a powerful supercomputer, researchers screened 140,000 prospective drug compounds to identify one that dramatically lowers blood pressure, improves heart function and prevents damage to the organ. These findings could spur development of a new class of anti-hypertensive drugs to overcome two major problems associated with cardiovascular disease: high blood pressure (BP) and tissue damage or fibrosis.

By IANS, Sydney : E-mentoring has been found to be more convenient, more direct and better than face-to-face mentoring, according to a study. “E-mail-based communication is almost instant and helps overcome one of the major obstacles to traditional mentoring - participants finding a suitable time to meet,” said Kim Rickard of Victoria University, who conducted the study. By using e-mail, participants can go straight to the issues without the need to engage in “polite conversation” beforehand, the study found, ScienceDaily reports.

By DPA, Washington : US emissions of carbon dioxide tumbled seven percent in 2009, government figures have showed, marking the largest one-year decline in the heat-trapping gas blamed for global warming since records began in 1949. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) Wednesday attributed the sharp fall to a drop in energy use as the United States battled through its worst recession in decades, coupled with a smaller 2.3-percent drop in the "carbon intensity" of energy sources.

By Devirupa Mitra, IANS Bogota : Colombia will soon have a sophisticated software programme to prepare, implement and monitor its national budget, thanks to an Indian software company. From his office inside the finance ministry building opposite the Colombian Presidential Palace in Bogota, Subramanian Ravishankar is leading a global team of 350 Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) employees working exclusively on this major government project.

By Fakir Balaji, IANS Mumbai : Symantec Corp, the $5.2-billion leading security and information management solutions provider, Thursday unveiled its vision for securing the digital world and ensuring stakeholders stay connected anywhere, anytime. Outlining the vision, Symantec India managing director Vishal Dhupar told about 1,000 delegates that securing IT infrastructure from end-to-end had become critical in the digital world, as pervasive technology was not only converging but also connecting everyone through multiple devices and applications.

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

By RIA Novosti, Washington : The space shuttle Endeavour has docked with the International Space Station at the start of a home-improvement mission due to last almost two weeks, NASA's Mission Control said. The shuttle linked up with the orbiter at 22:01 GMT on Sunday, NASA spokeswoman Nicole Cloutier-Lemasters said.

By IANS, London : Increased investment in plant breeding technique can help boost efforts to pull millions of people out of the hunger trap, said International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) scientists. IAEA scientists use radiation to produce improved high-yielding plants that adapt to harsh climate conditions such as drought or flood, or that are resistant to certain diseases and insect pests. Called mutation induction, the technique is safe, proven and cost-effective. It has been in use since the 1920s.

By IANS, Bhubaneswar : Toxic weeds, which came along with wheat that India imported over the last few years, now pose a serious threat to its crops, people and livestock, says a scientist associated with the National Invasive Weeds Surveillance Programme.

By IANS, Bangalore : It is a time for jubilation for the scientific community of India and they are cherishing every moment of it with the successful launch of Chandrayaan-1 early Wednesday. The Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, India's first unmanned scientific mission to the moon, blasted off successfully towards destination moon from Sriharikota, about 80 km from Chennai. With the successful launch of Chandrayaan-1, India now has joined an exclusive club of nations including the US, former Soviet Union, European Space Agency, China and Japan to have sent missions to moon.

By DPA Washington : The US space shuttle Atlantis has lifted off for the International Space Station (ISS) to deliver a long-awaited European-built laboratory. After days of iffy weather, Atlantis roared off the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida at 2.45 p.m. (19.45 GMT) Thursday under clear blue skies and climbed steeply to orbit powered by seven million pounds of thrust. Within minutes, Atlantis shed its booster rockets and external fuel tank as it departed the Earth's atmosphere, set to rendezvous with the space station Saturday.

By IANS, Sydney : The discovery of a new plant hormone that controls shoot branching is likely to impact forestry, plant science and agriculture industries. A molecule with a specific four-ring structure in plant hormone strigolactone has been shown to inhibit shoot branching in plants. "It could be used to increase yield in horticultural industries and manual pruning may be circumvented through the use of the natural strigolactones," said principal investigator Christine Beveridge of University of Queensland (UQ).

By IANS Bangalore : Duke of York Prince Andrew Thursday launched chip designer ARM's corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme here that will benefit hundreds of underprivileged children in India's silicon hub. Andrew, second son and the third child of British Queen and Duke of Edinburgh, dedicated 6,000 hours of ARM employees' work to three social organizations - Ashwini Charitable Trust, Sahasra Deepika Institute for Education and the Marathalli government school, located in and around Bangalore.

By DPA Hanover: Apple's latest patent is for a mouse without buttons. The new model resembles the Mighty Mouse, Apple's last mouse technology breakthrough that featured touch-sensitive side buttons and Bluetooth technology, but uses touch sensors instead of buttons, the Hanover-based computer magazine c't reported. The new mouse does not have a scrolling ball or wheel.

By Bernama, New Delhi : India is gearing up for the launch of its maiden moon mission Chandrayaan-I later this year and the government is actively considering sending a man into space, Minister of State in PMO Prithviraj Chavan said Wednesday. Integration of 11 experiments -- five Indian and six foreign -- is proceeding satisfactorily and scientists are looking forward to a launch in the third quarter, the Press Trust of India (PTI) quoted him as saying, in replying to supplementary questions in the Lower house of Parliament.

By IANS, New Delhi : The government Thursday gave its approval to a satellite-based navigation system, which would meet the growing air traffic and strengthen aviation navigation system. “The new navigation system would increase safety, improve airport and airspace access in adverse weather conditions, and enhance reliability and reduce flight delays,” Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel told reporters after a cabinet meeting.

By IANS, New Delhi : The millennium's longest annular solar eclipse began in the national capital Friday but fog and cloudy skies marred a clear view of the celestial spectacle. Although seen only partially from here, it nevertheless enthralled enthusiastic onlookers who gathered to watch the celestial phenomenon at the Nehru Planetarium and other places where special arrangements were made to view the event.

By RIA Novosti Moscow : Two Europeans and four Russians have been selected to participate in an experimental Mars mission simulation, Mars-500, a medical institute spokesman said Monday. The experiment, which is being run by the Russian Institute of Biological Problems, will sequester the six volunteers in a "Mars Expeditionary Complex" for 520 days beginning late 2008.

By IANS, Washington : Researchers have solved one of our bodies' neatest little tricks - how a cell pinches molecules from outside without allowing any leakage ot its membranes. "Doing this without leaking is quite a feat," said Sandra Schmid, who heads Scripps Research department of cell biology and co-authored the paper with Thomas Pucadyil, a postdoctoral researcher in her lab. "A cell's outside environment is very nasty, and if any of that toxic fluid got into the cell, it would kill it," added Schmid.

By IANS, London : Scientists triggered 52 downpours last year in Abu Dhabi's eastern Al Ain region using technology designed to control weather.

By IANS, London : NASA Tuesday turned on a humanoid robot in the International Space Station for the first time since it was delivered in February, a media report said.

By DPA, Washington : The seven astronauts on space shuttle Endeavour were to complete their mission to the International Space Station (ISS) with landing scheduled at NASA's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida Sunday. The shuttle undocked from the ISS at 9.47 a.m. (1447 GMT) Friday, and was expected to land at the Kennedy Space Centre at 1.19 p.m. (1819 GMT Sunday. On Saturday, US space agency NASA was closely monitoring a cold front, which might bring rain, thunderstorms and cross-winds, and could affect Sunday's entry and landing at the Kennedy Space Centre.

By Xinhua Los Angeles : Intel Corp founder Gordon Moore and his wife Betty have donated $200 million to build the world's largest optical telescope, according to media reports. The telescope will have a mirror nearly 100 feet across and three times the size of the current record holder. The donation went to Caltech (California Institute of Technology) and the University of California, said the Los Angeles Times. Caltech officials said matching gifts from two other institutions are expected to bring the total to $300 million.

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By IANS, London : Scientists at US space agency NASA have found vital clues that primitive aliens could be living on Titan, one of Saturn's biggest moons. On the basis of chemical composition found on Titan's surface, the experts believe that life forms have been breathing in the planet's atmosphere and also feeding on its surface's fuel. The research based on the analysis of data sent from NASA's Cassini probe has been detailed in two separate studies.

By IANS/RIA Novosti, Moscow : The Arctic will have no ice during the summer by the mid-21st Century, says the head of the Russian Meteorological Centre. "In 30-40 years, the Arctic may have no ice in the summertime, including the North Pole," Alexander Frolov said, quoting data from an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Frolov said levels of ice reduction in 2010 could exceed the record levels of 2007.

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

Tehran: Tehran will continue supporting Baghdad in its fight against terrorism as Iraq's security was intertwined with that of Iran, President Hassan Rouhani has...

By Thomas Brey, DPA,

By IANS, Washington : A spidery fungus feeding ravenously on military uniforms and tents holds the key to improved biofuel production, according to a study. The finding could enable more efficient and cheaper conversion of maize, switch grass and even cellulose-based municipal waste into ethanol. Ethanol from waste products is a more carbon neutral alternative to petrol. The fungus T. reesei rose to notoriety during World War II when military leaders found it feeding on clothing and tents in the South Pacific and rendering them useless.

By Xinhua Washington : An international team of astronomers has found 10 new extra-solar planets, planets that orbit stars other than our sun, University of California, Santa Barbara, announced on Tuesday. The new international collaboration is called "SuperWASP," for Wide Area Search for Planets. In the last six months the SuperWASP team has used two batteries of cameras, one in Spain's Canary Islands and one in South Africa, to discover the 10 new extra solar planets.

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

By Xinhua, Washington : NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) intend to conduct joint research on sonic boom modeling, the U.S. federal space agency announced Thursday. Sonic Boom is the shocks caused by the supersonic flight of an aircraft. Sonic booms can generate enormous amounts of sound energy, sounding a lot like an explosion.

By IANS, Toronto : A 70 million-year-old dinosaur, whose fossil was discovered in British Columbia more than 37 years ago, may have been a hitherto unknown plant-eating species, says an expert. The fossil - the most complete set of bones ever found globally and the first dinosaur discovery in Canada - had been discovered in the Sustut Basin way back in 1971. The bones were recently re-examined by a University of Alberta researcher.

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

By IANS, London : Samsung and Google have launched their version of a tablet computer designed to take on Apple's iPad, the market leader.

By DPA, Washington/Moscow : Two International Space Station (ISS) crew members installed an experiment outside the craft during a nearly five-hour long spacewalk. US Commander Mike Fincke and Russian flight engineer Yury Lonchakov Tuesday completed the spacewalk around 2110 GMT, about one hour earlier than planned. The spacewalk's main objective was to place a European Space Agency container of micro-organisms outside the station to examine the effects of extreme temperatures and radiation. Fincke and Lonchakov also photographed the Russian parts of ISS.

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

By DPA, Washington : A group of scientists has discovered the galaxy's newest supernova - as exploding stars are known - providing clues to what happens when stars die. The supernova is just 140 years old, a baby in galactic terms, and is "by far the youngest identified supernova in the galaxy and the only one we know at its stage," researcher David Green of Britain's University of Cambridge told reporters Wednesday.

By Devirupa Mitra, IANS, New Delhi : India's first e-passport, which will make travel easy, is expected to be issued next month. It will be issued to diplomats and officials first. Others may have to wait for about 10 months -- or even more. If all goes well, the first e-passport will be issued around June 15 to President Pratibha Patil or Prime Minister Manmohan Singh -- or both. The e-passport project is on a roll. A recent test conducted in a US government laboratory was so impressive that American officials remarked that they would need to study the Indian technology.

By IANS, London : How much spam you get depends on the first letter in your e-mail address, a Cambridge study reveals. Analysis of more than 500 million junk messages has found that addresses that began with more common letters were likely to receive 40 per cent of their mail from spammers. Those starting with less common letters, by contrast, would receive less than a fifth of their mail as spam.

By IANS, London : Contrary to popular perception that glaciers are melting faster the world over due to global warming, a new study says that Swiss glaciers were melting even faster in the 1940s when temperatures were lower. Significantly, ETH Zurich researchers attribute the melting of glaciers in the 1940s to a lower level of aerosol - a suspension of fine solid particles or liquid droplets in a gas - pollution in the atmosphere.

By DPA, New York : Software giant Microsoft Corp has reported sales of $13.1 billion for the latest quarter, well below Wall Street expectations of more than $14 billion. The PC market has dwindled for three straight quarters. The company, based in Redmond, Washington, saw profits for the fourth quarter of its budget year drop 29 percent amid falling demand for its Office software package and Windows operating system. "The economy continues to be challenging, and we need to lift our game to another level," chief financial officer Chris Liddell said.

By DPA, Washington : When the Spirit rover landed on Mars five years ago, no one expected it or its sister rover Opportunity to make it to their first birthdays, let alone their fifth. The rovers had predicted life spans of just 90 days, but instead US space agency NASA this month marks the fifth anniversary of the mission that is still going strong.

By IANS, Bangalore : Perhaps for the first time since India adopted the saffron-white-green tricolour as its flag, millions of hearts across the country fluttered but not the flag itself when it reached the lunar surface, around 384,000 km away, Friday night. The heart beat was faster at Indian Space Research Organisation ISRO's deep space network (DSN) at Byalalu, about 40 kms from Bangalore city centre, and its telemetry, tracking and command network (Istrac), much closer to the city.

By IANS, Washington : A new filtering membrane could be the long awaited answer to toxic oil spills, besides providing safer water and detoxifying industrial effluents. The new technology, designed by materials engineers, works by attracting water while beading oil, traits that are antagonistic. "We take mixtures of oil dispersed in water and run them through these filters, and we are getting 98 percent separation," said Jeffrey Youngblood, assistant professor of materials engineering at Purdue University and co-author of the study that reported the findings.

By IANS, Sriharikota (Andhra Pradesh) : The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) C9 lifted off successfully with 10 satellites - two Indian and eight foreign - at 9.23 a.m. Monday from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre here. Officials said the satellites' launches were progressing as expected. Around 16 minutes into the flight, the satellites will be injected into the polar sun synchronous orbit inclined at an angle of 97.94 degree to the equator.

By DPA, Washington : The US space agency NASA Saturday extended by one day space shuttle Discovery's mission at the International Space Station. The move was made to allow an inspection of Discovery's heat shield while the craft is still docked at the International Space Station. Discovery is now slated to land at Kennedy Space Centre in Florida April 19 at 8:54 am (1824 IST). The inspection has been standard procedure since the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on reentry into the Earth's atmosphere in 2003 after its heat shield was damaged.

By IANS Chennai : Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation, a Chennai-based global provider of IT and business process outsourcing services, Saturday said that it has completed the acquisition of New Jersey-based marketRx Inc. MarketRx is a provider of analytics and related software services to life sciences companies in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical devices segments. With over 430 employees in the US, India and Europe, marketRx enables pharma and biotechnology companies to improve the effectiveness of their sales and marketing operations.

By IANS, Washington: Quantum computing - a new paradigm in information processing that may complement classical computers, could soon become a reality with physicists successfully creating a circuit using neutral atoms. Physicists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison created the circuit by exerting delicate control over a pair of atoms within a mere seven-millionths-of-a-second window of opportunity.

By IANS New Delhi : Imagine a world where synthetically made microorganisms will suck up excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turn it into fuel. It's not the imagination of a science fiction writer, but the research area of maverick American biologist and entrepreneur J. Craig Venter. Speaking on the concluding day of the India Today Conclave Saturday, Venter outlined a world where artificially created organisms could provide solutions to some of the most pressing ecological dilemmas.

By IANS, Washington : More than 200 years after Pythagoras discovered the orderliness of music, three professors have devised a way of analysing music that takes advantage of the deep, complex mathematics seemingly enmeshed in its very fabric. Writing in the April 18 issue of Science, they have outlined a method called "geometrical music theory" that translates the language of musical theory into that of contemporary geometry.

By IANS New York : An unidentified person bid $40,800 for the naming rights of a new species of butterfly -- and scientists will use the money to continue their research. Researchers at the University of Florida discovered the new owl butterfly in Mexico's Sonoran desert earlier this year and decided, in a first, to offer its naming rights in an online auction. The new butterfly's scientific name is Opsiphanes blythekitzmillerae, but its popular name, chosen by the winning bidder, is Minerva -- in memory of Margery Minerva Blythe Kitzmiller of Ohio.

By DPA, Hamburg : Google is testing a new social search function to make it easier for people find their friends' blogs and twitter feeds. The only catch is that users of the service need to have an open profile with Google that includes personal contact data. Once those conditions are met, the user can access the service at the Google Labs. Typing in "New York" will yield a list of friends in the user's social network who have posted items from the Big Apple. Settings can be altered so that only postings from close friends and acquaintances are included in the "social graph."

By Xinhua Beijing : SanDisk Corp Wednesday introduced a USB flash drive with automatic online backup, the first of its kind linking up with the Internet to offer new features. The Cruzer Titanium Plus is SanDisk's first USB drive with backup capabilities. The 4Gbyte device will be featured at the International Consumer Electronics Show Jan. 7-10 in Las Vegas, Nev.

Sriharikota (Andhra Pradesh) : Two more navigational satellites will be launched this year, said ISRO chairman K.Radhakrishnan Friday after an Indian rocket successfully placed...

By IANS, London : A NASA-led mission has provided the world's first ever 3D image of the sun's surface.

By IANS, Washington : Automakers have been crashing test dummies to gain insight into how safety systems protect or fail to protect people during car accidents. But these dummies made out of plastic and steel, not tissue and bone, have their limitations. Now a virtual dummy being developed by two engineering teams with University of Virginia (UVa) Centre for Biomechanics, will make driving much safer.

By IANS, London : Vaccines targeting the build-up of fatty deposits in arteries (plaques) could be available within five years to prevent heart attacks.

By SPA Brussels : The European Union is fining Microsoft Corp. ¤899 million (US$1.3 billion) for charging rivals too much for software information. EU regulators say the company charged unreasonable prices to software developers who wanted to make products compatible with the Windows operating system. The fine is the largest ever for a single company and the first time the EU has penalized a business for failing to obey an antitrust order, AP reported

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 Bangalore : India's first exploratory mission to moon Chandrayaan-1, scheduled for launch April 9, has been deferred, a top space agency official said here Tuesday. "As a number of pre-launch tests have to be conducted, it is difficult to meet the April 9 deadline," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman G. Madhavan Nair told IANS on phone. "The mission payload has 12 instruments. We will decide on the next launch date by this month-end after a review meeting," he said.

By IANS, Washington : Extreme solar eruptions could disrupt communications, power grids and other technology on earth by 2012. These eruptions are expected to increase in frequency and intensity towards the next solar maximum cycle which peaks in 2012, up from the current minimum of its 11-year activity cycle.

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

By Xinhua Washington : NASA said Thursday that its engineers have adjusted the flight path of the Phoenix Mars Lander, setting the spacecraft on course for its May 25th landing on the Red Planet. "This is our first trajectory maneuver targeting a specific location in the northern polar region of Mars," said Brian Portock, chief of the Phoenix navigation team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The mission's two prior trajectory maneuvers, made last August and October, adjusted the flight path of Phoenix to intersect with Mars.

By IANS, Bangalore : India is inching closer towards building the world's largest solar telescope in Ladakh on the foothills of the Himalayas that aims to study the sun's microscopic structure. The National Large Solar Telescope (NLST) project has gathered momentum with a global tender floated for technical and financial bidding by the Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA).

By IANS, Washington : New findings have shed light on the little known process of embryonic stem cell replication and would help scientists control tumour cell growth more effectively. “Our study suggests that what we believe about how embryonic stem cell self-renewal is controlled is wrong. Our findings will likely change the research direction of many stem cell laboratories,” said Qi-Long Ying, of University of Southern California and co-author of the paper.

By IANS, New Delhi : The first solar eclipse of the year was partially visible in some parts of India and observed by various people Monday afternoon. The eclipse started at 2.15 p.m. and ended at 4.20 p.m. “The eclipse was visible only from southern parts of India, eastern coast, most of northeast India, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep,” Nehru Planetarium director N. Rathnasree told IANS here. She said people in north and west India couldn't see the celestial activity.

By IANS, London: Photographers will soon be able to charge their camera batteries with the rays of the sun. A team of Chinese researchers are developing solar panels to straps that would make the charging easy. Inventor Weng Jie’s idea, of which a prototype may be ready in months, could spell the end of wall-socket charging, reports dailymail.co.uk. But there is a downside: In case there is not enough sunlight, regular batteries can not be used as a substitute.

By IANS Hyderabad : The India Technology Centre (ITC) of Computer Associates (CA), one of the largest IT management software companies in the world, has developed a mobile device management (MDM) product, which can manage an entire corporate mobile infrastructure from a single consol. MDM will provide large organisations with enterprise-level device management tools for the most popular smartphone platforms from companies such as Microsoft, RIM and Symbian. Designed and developed entirely at ITC here, the product is scheduled for release next month.

By Ranjana Narayan, IANS,

By IANS Hyderabad : Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams will be the star speaker at an international astronautical congress that begins here Monday to focus on the growing use of space technology to improve the quality of life. Over 2,000 space scientists, heads of leading space agencies and astronauts will attend the five-day 58th International Astronautical Congress (IAC 2007) which has as it theme 'Touching humanity: Space for improving quality of life'. It will be held at Hyderabad International Convention Centre (HICC) near Hitec City.

By IANS, Washington : US President Barack Obama has outlined his administration's new space exploration plan, vowing to increase NASA's budget by $6 billion over the next five years. Speaking at the Kennedy Space Centre Thursday, where America's moon missions originated decades ago, Obama said he was "100 percent committed to the mission of NASA and its future". Obama said he wants to accelerate the development of a large, heavy-lift rocket to carry astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit. He called for a decision on the new rocket design in 2015.

By IANS Dubai : Thuraya, the United Arab Emirates-based world's largest provider of handheld mobile satellite services, is set to commercially launch its operations in the Asia-Pacific markets by January with the launch of its third satellite on Monday. "The launch of Thuraya-3 is a significant milestone in the company's progress towards realizing its strategic vision of becoming a dynamic, world leading, multi-regional mobile satellite operator," Thuraya chief executive Yousuf Al Sayed told the Emirates News Agency (WAM).

By IANS, Panaji : Three days after the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) admitted the abrupt end of its Chandrayaan-1 mission, a leading US-based scientist associated with the project Wednesday termed it "a complete success", but added that "what we have not achieved is our ultimate goal, which was a much more extended mission that was to be achieved during the full two years".

By IANS, Sydney : A new process developed by scientists converts low grade animal waste like feathers into plastic products that are bio-degradable. The “bio-plastic”, as it is being called, would be suitable for agricultural plastic sheeting, seedling trays, plant pots and even biodegradable golf tees, ScienceAlert reported.

By IANS, Gurgaon : Swati, a college student, beat thronging crowds to become the first customer to get an Apple iPhone from a mall in this satellite town Thursday midnight. Swati was waiting at the Sahara Mall from 7 p.m. The phone was handed over to her by by Sanjay Kapoor, president of Bharti Mobile Services. The iPhone is priced at Rs.31,000 for 8GB and Rs.36,100 for 16GB of memory space, The phones are being given on first come first serve basis.

By Aliki Nassoufis, DPA, Cologne (Germany) : Repetitive strain is a creeping threat for any 21st century computer user. Steady mouse clicking may seem innocent, but many computer users find that pain starts in their arm and eventually spreads to their wrist and shoulder. In the days of the good old typewriter, people suffered from so-called writer's cramp. Although the phrase has since been shelved, the problem still applies to anyone who spends hours at a desk.

By IANS, Beijing : China will launch a communications satellite for Pakistan at an "appropriate time", an official said Wednesday.

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By IANS Sriharikota : The successful launch of the communication satellite INSAT-4CR by the geo-synchronous satellite launch vehicle GSLV F04 Sunday here is a morale booster for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The organisation is mourning the death of three of its employees in a car accident Aug 24. The car in which two senior officials, Rajeev Lochan, scientific secretary, and S. Krishnamurthy, director of publications and public relations, met with an accident near the temple town of Tirupathi in Andhra Pradesh.

By DPA Washington : The US space shuttle Endeavour has lifted off from the Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral, Florida, bound for the International Space Station (ISS). The spacecraft with seven astronauts on board is on an 11-day mission to install a 2.5-tonne solar panel on the ISS, conduct repairs on the orbiting station and deliver of supplies.

By IANS Hyderabad : The 21st international conference on very large scale integration (VLSI) design and the 7th international conference on embedded systems will be held here next week to highlight the next generation challenges and opportunities in multicore processor design. The five-day conference will start Jan 4 and will be held at Hyderabad International Convention Center (HICC). It will be attended by leading VLSI and embedded systems architects and technology experts.

By Venkatachari Jagannathan, IANS, Chennai : At a time when the domestic software sector is going slow on hiring of personnel and expansion, the city-based Rs.11-billion Polaris Software Lab is taking a contrarian path. The company has decided to construct a new 1,500-seat facility at Siruseri near here with an outlay of Rs.350 million. "Construction activity will start next quarter. We have 10 acres there," Polaris chairman and managing director Arun Jain told IANS.

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.

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, Washington : Cyclone Nargis rendered as many as 3.2 million Burmese homeless, according to geographic risk models developed by researchers. Relying on Geographic Information Systems (GIS), researchers calculated the likely distribution of the population and developed maps of the regions at greatest risk from the storm's effects.

Washington: In a bid to stop snooping on its users, Google has overhauled its Gmail service in a big way - encrypting every single...

By DPA, San Francisco : Not content with involvement in almost every facet of your online life, online search giant Google now wants to get into your wardrobe.

By IANS,

By IANS, Chandigarh : A car designed and built by engineering students from a Punjab town has won first prize in the perseverance category at an international competition, held in the US. The car won first prize at the 'International Car Fiesta Shell Eco Marathon' held at Fontana, California April 15-18. Ankit Khurana, team leader of the project, said here Friday: "Around 32 teams from different countries participated in this competition. We were the only team from Asia. We named our car Stealth and christened ourselves Team Stealth."

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

By IANS, London : A 9,550-year-old spruce, the world's oldest living tree, has been found in Dalarna province of Sweden. The tenacious specimen has survived by growing between erect trees and smaller bushes in pace with the dramatic climate changes over time. For many years the spruce tree has been regarded as a relative newcomer in the Swedish mountain region. "Our results have shown the complete opposite. The spruce is one of the oldest known trees in the mountain range," said Leif Kullman, of Umeå University.

By DPA, San Francisco : Google's online video site YouTube now gets a billion hits a day, the site's founder Chad Hurley said in a video posted Friday. "Three years ago today (YouTube co-founder) Steve (Chen) and I stood in front of our offices and jokingly crowned ourselves the 'burger kings' of media," read the post, which was titled Y,000,000,000uTube.

By Xinhua

Beijing : Computer manufacturer feedback saying customers still want to purchase Windows XP has prompted Microsoft Corp. to delay a scheduled transition to its newer Windows Vista software to the end of June 2008.

The world's largest software maker introduced Windows Vista in January with the plan to phase out sales of its predecessor, Windows XP, by Jan. 30, 2008.

By DPA, Madrid : Spanish scientists said Wednesday they have discovered the world's first humpback dinosaur.

By Prasanto K. Roy, IANS, So the die is cast. In a meeting on Thursday, India's home ministry asked the Department of Telecom (DoT) to read the riot act to mobile operators running BlackBerry services: Either provide full access to Indian law enforcement, or face a shutdown on Sep 1.

By RIA Novosti Moscow : Russia's space agency will soon invite a tender to develop a new carrier rocket for its manned flight programme, a top space official said Wednesday. "A special commission will determine the design criteria (for the new space vehicle) and the domestic companies eligible for participation in the tender," said Anatoly Perminov, the head of the Federal Space Agency.

By IANS, Dubai : Saudi Arabia's upcoming King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST) has announced it will build one of the world's fastest and most powerful supercomputers in collaboration with IBM. The joint project will build and conduct research on the most complex, high-performance computing (HPC) system in the region and among academic institutions in the world, according to a KAUST statement.

By DPA, Washington : Astronauts from the space shuttle Endeavour Thursday completed a second spacewalk on their construction mission to the International Space Station, which was marking its 10th anniversary. Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper und Shane Kimbrough completed the second spacewalk at 00:43 GMT. The spacewalk lasted 6 hours and 45 minutes, and started 45 minutes ahead of schedule. They moved equipment carts to allow astronauts to later install a truss, and lubricated the hand on the station's robotic arm and the joint on one of the solar panels that provides power to the ISS.

By IANS, New Delhi : India Thursday announced the auctions for 80 more hydrocarbon assets in the country, including 10 for coal-bed methane, in the largest such exercise under its new policy on oil and gas exploration. The 70 oil and gas blocks under round number eight of the new policy include 24 in deep waters, 28 in shallow waters and 18 on-land blocks, Petroleum Secretary R.S. Pandey told reporters here. For coal-bed methane, this is the fourth round of auctions. The bids from both domestic companies and multinational corporations will be accepted till Aug 10.

By IANS London : A revolutionary new tool not only allows a better, brighter visualisation of two or more proteins but also helps differentiate young and old copies of a protein within the human cell. Developed by researchers at Ecole Polytechnique in Lausanne, Switzerland, the procedure is the latest in a line of innovative tools relying on fluorescent molecules to view such biochemical processes. This tool, called SNAP-tag, can be labelled in living cells using benzylguanine (BG) derivatives bearing a chemical probe.

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 Xinhua Shanghai : A Chinese vessel with e-tagged containers sailed Monday from Shanghai to Savannah port in the United States, marking the opening of the world's first international e-tagged container route. The doorbell-sized e-tags installed on the 20-foot container equivalent units (TEU), will record information about every procedure in the TEU's whole transportation process, such as the delivery and off-loading time, the real-time TEU condition and the time and place of the legal or illegal opening.

By IANS, Bangalore : The ceremony to welcome the latest "entrants" to IT bellwether Infosys Technologies at its Electronic City campus here Friday was a grand one, with the company's co-founder, chairman and chief mentor N.R. Narayan Murthy himself doing the honours. The 101 "new entrants" were, however, no IT geeks joining the country's second largest software exporter as its recruits.

By IANS, Washington : US space agency NASA Sunday postponed the launch of its space shuttle Endeavour by at least one day due to a low cloud ceiling over Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. Launch managers initially plan for a 24-hour turnaround, but will evaluate Monday's weather before making a final decision. Next possible launch attempt is 0914 GMT Monday, Xinhua reported.

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.

By Venkatachari Jagannathan, IANS, Chennai : A week before launch, India's maiden lunar mission has progressed one step further, with the Chandrayaan spacecraft that will orbit the moon installed atop the rocket ferrying it. "The spacecraft was fitted to the rocket Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle C11 (PSLV C11) Tuesday night. Today (Wednesday) the heat shield will be fitted to make the rocket ready for moving to the launch pad," M. Annadurai, project director, Chandrayaan told IANS from the launch site Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, around 80 km from here.

By IANS, Washington : A child's 4,000-year-old skeleton that surfaced in India's Rajasthan state could be the oldest evidence of leprosy, says a new study. The analysis was conducted by biological anthropologist Gwen Robbins from Appalachian State University working with an undergraduate, an evolutionary biologist from University of North Carolina at Greensboro and archaeologists from the Pune-based Deccan College in India.

By Xinhua Beijing : Intel and Micron Technology have developed technology for a high-speed solid-state drive that's five times faster than current products used in consumer and professional devices, like notebooks and digital cameras, media reported Saturday. The NAND flash memory chips developed jointly by the two companies can reach speeds of up to 200 MB per second for reading data and 100 MB per second for writing data. Current memory chips have maximum read-write speeds of 40 MB and 20 MB, respectively.

By IANS, Beijing: Chinese astronauts Sunday manually docked a spacecraft with an orbiting module, the first such attempt in China's space exploration history, authorities said.

By IANS, Beijing : China successfully launched a new satellite into space Sunday, which will improve television and radio broadcasting signals in the country. The "SinoSat-6" was launched at 12:14 a.m. from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in southwest China's Sichuan Province. The Long March 3B rocket took SinoSat-6 into a geostationary transfer orbit 26 minutes after the launch, Xinhua reported.

By DPA, New York : Citing increased international cooperation to curb nuclear weapons and global warming, scientists Thursday moved the so-called Doomsday Clock back by one minute. The clock was created by nuclear scientists in 1947 to symbolise the world's proximity to planetary catastrophe with midnight signalling the apocalypse. Following Thursday's move the clock now reads six minutes to midnight.