Technology

By IANS, Abu Dhabi : An international meet on space technology will be held in the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) next month to be attended by space scientists from across the world including those from the US, Europe and the UAE, WAM reported Thursday. The three-day Global Space Technology Forum, the first of its kind in the Middle East, will be held Nov 16-18 at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre and will focus on new space technology and commercial markets, research and development, environment, energy and climate, among other things.

By Prashant K. Nanda, IANS, New Delhi : India will be helped by Russia, Spain and the United States in deep space tracking of Chandrayaan-I, its maiden moon mission that will be launched later this year. "Deep Space tracking of Chandrayaan-I is a tough task and needs global support. We are getting support from Russia, Spain and the US for tracking the movement of the mission," K. Kasturirangan, former head of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said. Kasturirangan is currently an adviser to ISRO.

By DPA, Taipei : Tens of thousands of people in Taiwan watched Wednesday's partial solar eclipse, but few said they still believe in superstitions that the eclipse could spell disaster. In Taipei, clusters of people gathered in squares, parks and on rooftops to try to catch a glimpse of the phenomenon, which appeared as a total eclipse in parts of India, Nepal, China and Japan and a partial eclipse in other areas of Asia.

By IANS, Washington : Engineers have designed a 'Sunshield' to protect NASA's James Webb space telescope from extremes of heat and cold, radiation and small debris. Besides, the 'Sunshield' would also block solar heat to allow its cameras and instruments to operate optimally at 1.6 million km from the earth in 2013. A satellite has to withstand the icy cold and the intense heat and radiation of a solar flare in space, which ranges between a super-hot 127 degrees Celsius and a frigid minus 243.

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 NNN-PTI, Bangalore, India : India's space scientists have developed hydrogen fuel cells to power an automobile bus by leveraging their know-how of the homegrown cryogenic technology for rockets. The two-year effort has yielded positive results and the scientists are now readying for the fuel cells to be fitted into a bus. "That's not exactly the cryogenic technology... (It's) liquid hydrogen handling and that's where we have some expertise. So, we have finalised the design", Chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation, G Madhavan Nair told PTI here.

By Rahul Dass, IANS, Helsinki : Want to know from your mobile phone where to hangout in Delhi or eat out in Beijing? Three teens in Finland, including one from India, are giving final touches to a system that integrates social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. They are part of a team of 30 brainy teens who have come to Finland from 16 countries to take part in the week-long Millennium Youth Camp being held in a forested area, abutting a lake, about an hour's drive from capital Helsinki.

Washington(Xinhua) : NASA will launch its space shuttle STS-122 Atlantis on Dec 6 to deliver the European-built Columbus laboratory to the International Space Station (ISS), NASA TV reported. The announcement was made at a press conference late Friday, following a two-day flight readiness review at NASA's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. The shuttle mission management team conducts the traditional review two weeks prior to the launch of each space shuttle mission.

By IANS, Toronto : Sprinters in lane eight may well be at a disadvantage, says a new study that suggests the reaction time of those close to the source of a loud sound - such as a starter's pistol - is faster. Researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, who analysed the reaction time of the 100 and 110 metres athletics events at the 2004 Olympics, found that runners closest to the starter reacted much faster than those farther away.

By NNN-Bernama Ipoh (Malaysia) : The country's involvement in space industry is part of broader efforts to attain the Vision 2020 objective of turning Malaysia into a developed country, said Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. He said to bring about progress, the government had to implement various initiatives, one of which was Malaysia's foray into space science.

By DPA, San Francisco : Intel reported net income of $2.3 billion Thursday for the fourth quarter, a staggering 875-percent rise over the same period a year ago. The world's dominant maker of computer chips said it had sales of $10.6 billion, up $2.3 billion or 28 percent from the year-ago period. Intel forecast sales of about $9.7 billion for the current quarter, compared with the $9.3-billion average estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of Wall Street analysts.

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By IANS/RIA Novosti, Moscow : Scientists have found the amount of debris lying on the ocean floor in the Arctic has doubled over the past decade.

By IANS Mumbai : Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Reliance Communications, HDFC Bank and NCDEX (National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange Ltd) won the Symantec Asia South visionary awards for protecting their IT infrastructure and information with the company's anti-virus solutions and firewalls against hacking.

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 : A software being developed by the University of Illinois can tell your age fairly accurately by looking at your face. "Age-estimation software is useful in applications where you don't need to specifically identify someone but would like to know their age," said Thomas S. Huang, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Illinois.

By IANS, New Delhi : Ela Srivastava had been suffering from double vision, chewing problem and weakness in the nervous system, but no more - thanks to All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) doctors and a four-arm robot. “It's the first robotic chest surgery in India,” claimed Arvind Kumar, professor of surgery at AIIMS. “In the last four days (since Saturday) we have performed chest surgeries on seven patients using the robot and have achieved complete success. This is a milestone for Indian medical fraternity,” Kumar told IANS.

By RIA Novosti, Moscow : The re-entry capsule of the Russian Soyuz spacecraft has landed safely in Kazakhstan's steppe Sunday, officials said. Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, NASA's (US space agency) Michael Barratt and space tourist Guy Laliberte onboard the capsule landed safely in northern Kazakh steppe. Padalka was extracted first from the capsule, following which the other space travellers were extracted from the re-entry vehicle that landed on Earth several hours after leaving the International Space Station (ISS).

By IANS, Toronto : The planet's most advanced and powerful electron microscope, capable of looking at atoms, the tiniest object in the universe, has been installed at the new Canadian Centre for Electron Microscopy at McMaster University. "We are the first university in the world with a microscope of such a high calibre," said Gianluigi Botton, director of the Centre, professor of materials science and engineering and project leader.

By IANS, London : Scientists want to explore the far side of the moon using a manned spacecraft for the first time since the Apollo landings of 1968.

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 Parveen Chopra, IANS New York : A research team led by an Indian American scientist has challenged the validity of a prototype gene treatment based on Nobel prize winning work that has attracted billions of dollars in investment for developing cures for cancer, diabetes and other diseases.

By NNN-PTI, Thiruvananthapuram, India : With the success of Chandrayaan-1, the country's first moon mission, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is planning a manned space mission as a first step to manned moon mission. "Sending man to moon is a very complicated mission. So, as a first step, we plan to develop an Indian spacecraft that will take astronauts across the earth and bring them back," ISRO Chairman G Madhavan Nair said delivering a lecture on 'India's Recent Space Achievements' here on Sunday.

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 : 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 DPA, Vienna : The international Association of Space Explorers (ASE) Tuesday called on the UN to develop strategies against asteroids threatening to hit earth, in a report presented at the UN headquarters in Vienna. Among the known 5,600 so-called near-earth objects, and the 500,000 additional ones expected to be discovered in the next 15 years, "several dozen will pose an uncomfortably high risk of striking Earth and inflicting local or regional devastation," the astronauts said in their report.

By IANS, Washington : A team of paleontologists in the US has discovered a new dinosaur species they're calling Abydosaurus. Abydosaurus belongs to the group of gigantic, long-necked, long-tailed, four-legged, plant-eating dinosaurs such as Brachiosaurus. In a rare twist, they recovered four heads - two still fully intact - from a quarry in Dinosaur National Monument in eastern Utah in the US. Complete skulls have been recovered for only eight of more than 120 known varieties of Sauropod dinosaurs.

Panaji : Goa may soon be one of the first states in India to have a 3D digitized mapped presence online if the state...

By Pervez Bari, TwoCircles.net

Bhopal: Curtain was drawn on the three-day Bharatiya Vigyan Sammelan (All India Science Conference) 2007 with 10-point recommendations that emphasized on promoting traditional scientific knowledge along with modern science and increased community participation for balanced and sustainable development here on Sunday.

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By Wang Aihua, Xinhua, Shanghai : Astronomers from China, Japan and South Korea are building the world's largest radio telescope array to study the Milky Way Galaxy and black holes as well as to determine the orbits of lunar probes such as China's Chang'e-1. The array, called the East Asia Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) consortium, consists of 19 radio telescopes from China, Japan and South Korea that cover an area with a diameter of 6,000 km from northern Japan's Hokkaido Island to western China's Kunming and Urumqi regions.

By IANS New Delhi : India has not received a single Nobel Prize in the field of science after independence but efforts are on to spur innovation and research, Minister of Science and Technology Kapil Sibal said Monday. To a question in the Rajya Sabha on whether it is fact that no Nobel Prize has been awarded to India in science after independence, Sibal said: "Yes Sir". However, Sibal said his ministry was making efforts to strengthen research and innovation in the field of science.

By IANS, London : A new generation of service robots will soon be able to relieve us of heavy, dirty, monotonous or irksome tasks at home, according to scientists. They would work long hours, efficiently, tirelessly and without ever complaining and virtually for free after an initial investment. Named Care-O-bot 3, the one-armed wonder can even pick up an apple juice bottle and placed it next to the glasses on the tray and serve them to guests.

By IANS, Washington : Smithsonian Institute scientists have discovered a new species of bird in Gabon, Africa, that was unknown to the scientific community. The newly found olive-backed forest robin was named by scientists for its distinctive olive back and rump. Adult birds measure 4.5 inches in length and average 18 grams in weight. Males exhibit a fiery orange throat and breast, yellow belly, olive back and black feathers on the head. Females are similar, but less vibrant. Both sexes have a distinctive white dot on their face in front of each eye.

By DPA, San Francisco : Yahoo has completed the migration of its web and mobile search functions to Microsoft's Bing search engine as the two companies hope that their combined market power may prove a more significant threat to the dominance of Google. The integration comes more than a year after Yahoo and Microsoft announced their 10-year search deal under which Microsoft will power Yahoo's search site, while Yahoo manages sales for both companies' premium search advertisers.

By DPA Moscow : Her name in translation means "barker," but in the end Laika, the first living creature in space, must have gone out whimpering. When Soviet space scientists sent her up exactly 50 years ago this Saturday, the two-year-old mongrel was expected to live for several days. In fact, it was later revealed, she lasted only a few hours. Soviet propaganda at the time said she would find a peaceful end through lack of oxygen after days of orbiting the Earth aboard Sputnik 2.

New Delhi: New Delhi-based ETI Dynamics and Auckland-based Greenhouse Capital on Tuesday announced a partnership to invest $100 million in exporting clean technologies from...

By Venkatachari Jagannathan, IANS, Chennai : The earth orbit of India's first lunar spacecraft will be raised to 267,000 km Wednesday, an official here said. "The Chandrayaan spacecraft, orbiting at a distance of around 165,000 km apogee (farthest point from earth) will be raised Wednesday to around 267,000 km. As of now, everything is normal and as per our expectations," Chandrayaan-1 project director M. Annadurai told IANS.

By Xinhua, Moscow : The Russian Soyuz spacecraft with South Korea's first female astronaut Yi So-yeon aboard landed safely in the Kazakh steppe on Saturday, according to the Mission Control Center. The spacecraft carrying Yi, U.S. astronaut Peggy Whitson and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko undocked with the International Space Station (ISS) and started trip home earlier Saturday. The Soyuz capsule landed in the Kazakh steppe at 12:51 Moscow time (0851GMT), 20 minutes later than the planned time and 420 km from the planned landing site, the Misson Control said.

By IANS, Washington : Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have entered the danger zone and must be reduced if climate disasters are to be averted, according to researchers. US, British and French scientists, including two from Yale, said in a study that optimum CO2 level should be less than 350 parts per million (ppm) - a dramatic change from most studies that have pegged the danger level for CO2 at 450 ppm or higher. Atmospheric CO2 is currently 385 ppm and is increasing by about two ppm every year from the burning of coal, oil, gas and forests.

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By IANS, New Delhi : Chant the surya mantra, avoid eating out and postpone work and any major assignments, some astrologers warn about the impending eclipse Wednesday. Others, however, dismiss these warnings as "eclipse hysteria". Astro-pundits are predicting a mixed bag when it comes to the solar eclipse. The solar eclipse hemmed in between two lunar eclipses - one on July 7 and another Aug 6 - will affect those with Cancer in their birth charts, according to some astrologers.

By DPA, Geneva: The number of Internet domain names under dispute saw a rise in 2009, the World Intellectual Property Organisation said Tuesday. The Geneva-based organisation dealt with claims on 4,688 domains last year, up from 3,985 the year before. The total caseload, however, declined by 9.5 percent, as many incidents involve multiple attempts to "squat". Cybersquatting is defined as "the abusive registration of trademarks as domain names."

By DPA Washington : With Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system now on store shelves around the world, lots of PC users are wondering whether their machines are up to the task of running it. One way to find out is to read the "minimum requirements" notes on the side of the Windows Vista box. But few take these seriously. So what do you really need in your computer to be a happy Windows Vista user?

By IANS, Washington : Engineers in the US have developed TV displays based on a telescope design invented by Isaac Newton to reduce the display's electricity consumption. The rear layer of a conventional liquid crystal display (LCD) used in televisions produces light (backlight), whose brightness is controlled by small liquid crystals that swing round like tiny shutters. However, most of this backlight is wasted and never reaches the viewer.

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, London : Microsoft has unveiled a new version of its flagship Windows software to run on microchips designed by British company ARM.

Hyderabad: The government of Andhra Pradesh on Saturday signed an MoU with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) to increase employability of students...

By Falah al-Fadhli, KUNA, New Delhi : Over the past ten years, the Indian capital, New Delhi, has developed considerably in view of opening up to international markets and entry of foreign capital. The active investment movement in New Delhi has stimulated and spurred migration from the countryside to the capital in pursuit of work, making it one of the most overpopulated and chaotic cities. In spite of recent changes in the city, three-wheeled green-yellow Reksha hiring cars or Tok Tok are still favored by many commuters thanks to its old style, new technology and cheap fare.

By IANS, Copenhagen : The capital of Denmark has set itself the ambitious target of becoming the world's first carbon-neutral capital by 2025 by bringing its net carbon dioxide emissions down to zero. The target was announced by the seven mayors of Copenhagen here Tuesday, while they launched the city's new climate plan. The plan has 50 specific initiatives to achieve the city's target of a 20 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2015.

By IANS Bangalore : Smart Indian techie S. Somasegar, an employee of Microsoft India in Hyderabad, has been honoured with the Asian American Engineer Award, instituted by the US-based Chinese Institute of Engineers (CIE), the global software major said here Tuesday. According to a company statement, the award recognises Somasegar's contribution to science and engineering. As senior vice-president (developer division) of Microsoft Corporation and head of its India development centre, Somasegar is responsible for developer-related languages, tools and platforms.

By IANS, London : The bulk of Danish vehicles fleet runs on diesel, which is causing air pollution in urban areas, from carbon particles, nitrogen oxides and unburned hydrocarbons. A new four-year project at Ris� DTU (Danish Technical University) is developing an effective method for purifying flue gases, especially exhaust gases, from diesel engines.

Bangalore : Google, the world's largest search engine provider, Thursday unveiled a new tool to search, navigate and explore Indian cities, streets, landmarks, restaurants...

By DPA, San Francisco : Microsoft is to strip its Internet Explorer browser from the new version of its Windows 7 operating system that it sells in Europe, the company announced Thursday. Microsoft said the move was designed to meet criticism from European Union (EU) regulators who have launched an investigation into whether bundling the browser with the operating system is in breach of European anti-trust rules.

By Jay Dougherty, DPA Washington : If you've been using a computer for some time and need to abandon it - either because you're leaving a job or moving to another machine - you need to be concerned about security. Simply put, once you're gone, a lot of information can be retrieved about you just by inspecting the digital traces you leave behind. So before you say goodbye to a PC, follow this list of to-do items to ensure that no one gains information about you that they do not need to know.

By Xinhua, Moscow : A Russian Proton-M rocket Tuesday sent a US telecommunications satellite, the Inmarsat-4 F3, into Earth orbit, a spokesman for a Moscow-based producer of space launch systems said. The rocket was launched from the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan at 2.43 a.m., said Alexander Bobrenyov, spokesman for the Khrunichev state research and production space centre.

By Imran Khan, IANS, Taregna (Bihar) : The overcast skies cast a dampener and the rare celestial event unfolded behind rain clouds, disappointing the many thousands from India and the world. But the clouds did part momentarily to let the crowds glimpse the century's longest solar eclipse. And for some that was enough. As the morning skies darkened into night over the village, touted as the best place to watch the eclipse, a moved Gaurav Singh said: "It was a memorable moment when I saw the skies dim into night in the early morning and the solar eclipse reached its totality."

By Xinhua, Los Angeles : Computer chipmaker Intel is developing tiny devices that can tap the energy from the surrounding environment, a US newspaper reported Saturday. The devices include chip-size sensors that monitor air quality while riding piggyback on street-sweepers, and cell phones that recharge themselves with energy "scavenged" from the environment, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The company has tested a version of this technology in San Francisco, putting the sensors in small boxes attached to street- sweeping machines, the report said.

By Xinhua Tokyo : Japan Friday launched an H-2A rocket carrying the Selenological and Engineering Explorer, the country's first lunar probe satellite, from the Tanegashima Space Centre in southern Kagoshima prefecture. The rocket, which is named Kaguya after an ancient Japanese fable, lifted off as scheduled at 10.31 a.m. from the centre on the Pacific off Japan's southern Kyushu island. The satellite and the launch vehicle successfully separated at 11.16 a.m.

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By IANS New Delhi : The government has proposed to establish a Vessel Traffic System (VTS) in the Gulf of Kutch to regulate the shipping traffic, the Lok Sabha was informed Wednesday. VTS is a marine traffic monitoring system established by harbour or port authorities, similar to air traffic control (ATC) for aircraft.

By Xinhua, Washington : Scientists have discovered a wavepattern, or oscillation, in Saturn's atmosphere only visible from Earth every 15 years, according to two studies published Thursday in journal Nature. The discovery is the result of a 22-year campaign observing Saturn from Earth, and the Cassini spacecraft's observations of temperature changes in the giant planet's atmosphere over time.

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, Karnal (Haryana) : Even though scientists at the National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI) here received a setback Thursday after the country's first cloned buffalo calf died just five days after its birth, they are happy that the "superior technology" they used for cloning was "tested". The female buffalo calf died at the NDRI centre here, 150 km from the national capital, Wednesday night, scientists said.

By Xinhua Washington : After six weeks of hunkering down during raging dust storms that limited solar power, both of NASA's Mars exploration rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have resumed driving, NASA reported Friday. Opportunity advanced 13.38 meters toward the edge of Victoria Crater on Aug. 21. Spirit drove 42 centimeters backwards on Aug. 23 to get in position for taking images of a rock that it had examined with its spectrometer. The rover team is planning additional drives for Spirit to climb onto a platform informally named "Home Plate."

By IANS, Jaipur : Optical fibre manufacturer Aksh Optifibre Ltd, in association with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Thursday announced the launch of its IPTV brand 'icontrol' in Kukus of Jaipur district, making it the first IPTV service to be launched in rural India. Simultaneously, Aksh also announced the commercial launch of icontrol in Jaipur, which will now enable BSNL broadband customers to avail IPTV (internet protocol television) service.

By IANS, Washington : Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions that fuel global warming, but the benefits are highly dependent on how the power system changes in future. "Plug-in hybrids represent an opportunity to reduce oil consumption, leverage next-generation bio-fuels and reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

By IANS London : Volcanic clay may have the capability to kill deadly bacteria or super bugs, which are resistant to antibiotics, researchers have found. Lynda Williams of Arizona State University and her colleague Shelley Haydel found that agricur - the volcano clay found in the Massif Central mountain range in France - also kills other deadly bacteria, including salmonella and a flesh-eating disease called buruli, similar to leprosy.

By DPA, San Francisco : Yahoo has entered an agreement to run some Google's ads on its search pages after acquisition talks with Microsoft ended in failure, the web pioneer has said. The deal reached Thursday may add $800 million a year to Yahoo's sales, but the companies will delay implementation till October to give the US Justice Department time for review, Yahoo said.

By IANS, New Delhi : Sky gazers can expect to see an exhibition of celestial fireworks over the next two days as the night sky will be lit up by the famous Leonid meteor shower expected to peak on Monday. Amateur astronomers of the capital can see about 15 to 20 shooting stars every hour for the next couple of days. "People can watch for the meteor showers during the early hours Monday. There will be fireballs in the sky," said N. Rathnashree, director Nehru Planetarium here.

By IANS Melbourne : Now mineral deposits of silver, zinc, copper and nickel can be detected through a glass of wine or soft drink, a research conducted by scientists in Australia suggests. An acid present in the drinks dissolves some of the metals to form a solution, and then the metals can be easily detected in routine laboratory tests, the scientists said. "In many cases, the comparison of metals extracted using wine and soft drink were superior than those extracted using conventional, and much more expensive, commercial solvents," scientists led by Ryan Noble found.

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.

Thiruvananthapuram (IANS) : A Swedish team visiting the country is holding talks with companies in Technopark campus here to explore possibilities of business deals between IT firms of the two countries. The Swedish team consisted of Maria Johansson of Aurorum Science Park, and Michael Nilsson of Centre for Distance-Spanning Technology (CDT) of the Lulea University of Technology in Sweden. Speaking to IANS, Johansson said that they held exploratory talks with a few IT companies in Technopark and have been impressed with the outcome.

By IANS/RIA Novosti, Moscow : A Russian rocket is set for a seaborne launch Sunday to put a US telecom satellite into orbit, a spokesman for the Sea Launch company said.

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 DPA, Los Angeles : Don't throw out your mouse yet, but the next version of Microsoft's Windows operating system will allow users to control their computers using touch screen technology. Company heads Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer provided a brief glimpse into the new offering at the All Things D technology conference Tuesday night. The new operating system is expected to hit stores in early 2010. Microsoft hopes that Windows 7 will have a better reception that Windows Vista, which has largely been shunned by businesses, but has still sold 150 million units.

By IANS, New York : Apple's iPhones will have a big competition on their hands as Google is set to launch its much discussed smart phone next week. The new smart phone, Nexus One, may be unveiled Jan 5 when the internet search engine giant holds a media briefing about its smart phone business at its Mountainview headquarters in California. The Google-branded device will use its latest Android operating system called Anrdoid 2.1. Android is already being used in more than a dozen smart phones by many vendors, including Motorola and Samsung.

By DPA, Jakarta : A tsunami early warning system developed and funded by five donor countries began operations Tuesday in Indonesia, nearly four years after the Asian tsunami of December 2004, which claimed 230,000 lives. Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who attended the launch ceremony in Jakarta, expressed pride over the development of the technology in Indonesia but reminded the country that the equipment was not an end-all, be-all but would only provide help. The German government financed the 45-million-euro ($58-million) project.

By DPA Washington : You've probably heard of Skype - the Internet telephony application that enables you to make free phone calls with your PC - but you may not know whether it's right for you. Telephoning through the Internet, after all, has been available for years, but most applications that purported to make the process painless were actually difficult to use, unreliable, and impractical.

By Venkatachari Jagannathan, Sriharikota (Andhra Pradesh) : The Indian space agency is working at preparing a business model to partner with industries - public and...

TwoCircles.net presents “Agenda for India”. Series editor is Charu Bahri. Challenges & Solutions Information technology professionals Amin Ismaili and his wife Shahin Ismaili, both of whom work as Assistant Systems Engineers with TATA Consultancy Services Ltd., identify India’s heavy dependence on markets in the USA as the greatest challenge presently facing the Information Technology (IT) and IT enabled services (ITES, more commonly spoken of as outsourcing) industries.

By DPA, Berlin : If you're stuck on your sudoku puzzle, there's hope. New photo recognition software for Android mobiles - Goggles - can help solve the puzzle.

By IANS, Sydney : Researchers have developed a tool that analyses water purity within minutes, against the 20 to 48 hours required by existing methods. The tool will boost "water safety and reduce health risk from use of contaminated water in the developing world", said David Garman, executive director of Environmental Biotechnology Cooperative Research Centre (EBCRC) at the World Water Congress in Vienna.

By Xinhua, Washington : The US space agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), is seeking to develop a new navigation system for use on the moon, an official said. The space agency has awarded $1.2 million to an Ohio State University research team who would develop the new system over the next three years. The device would be a lot like the Global Positioning System (GPS) on Earth, the university announced Monday. However, a GPS can't be used on the moon since it doesn't have satellites to send its signals to.

By IRNA, New Delhi : History was created on Saturday when India's first mission to the moon, Chandrayaan-1, lifted off from Sriharikota on 22nd October and successfully entered the lunar orbit. In one of the most crucial manoeuvres since the launch of India's maiden moon mission, Chandrayaan-1, ISRO scientists injected the spacecraft into the lunar orbit today. "The lunar orbit insertion (LOI) started around 5 p.m. and lasted around 800 second," Indian official media reported quoting Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) spokesperson S Satish as said in Banglore.

By Xinhua, Beijing : The longest running electrical storm on Saturn recorded by scientists is creating lightning bolts 10,000 times more powerful than any seen on Earth. The monster storm appeared in Saturn's southern hemisphere five months ago, when it was first spotted by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, and has persevered to become the planet's longest continuously recorded tempest to date.

By IANS, Bangalore: Global IT major IBM's big data and predictive analytics will create systems to monitor and manage water supply in Bangalore by the...

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By DPA Washington : Just about everything in our lives is being stored digitally today - music, videos, photographs, documents, arts and crafts, and much more. That's why the scramble for more data storage - and more versatile data storage - is never-ending. The market has responded with a proliferation of types of data storage designed to meet the needs of everyone. But the options are dizzying. To keep from making a costly mistake when buying storage, you need to know what your storage needs are and which type of storage best satisfies those requirements.

By Parveen Chopra, IANS New York : Amar Bose, a pioneer in modern acoustics who is known for the high-end audio products bearing his name, has been inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in the US, which has previously honoured Thomas Edison, Graham Bell and the Wright Brothers. Born in the US to a Bengali father and a German mother, Bose's name is in the 2008 list of 18 inventors to be honoured, 11 of them posthumously, by the Ohio-based Hall of Fame in May.

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, London : US space agency NASA has unveiled three concept designs for quieter and more energy efficient superplanes that could be ready by 2025.

By Xinhua, Geneva : The world's most powerful particle collider built for the multi-billion dollar 'Big Bang' experiment to unearth the secrets of cosmos has suffered a new problem and will be out of action for at least two months, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has said. CERN, the operator of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), said Saturday the incident occurred at mid-day Friday, resulting in a large helium leak into the tunnel containing the LHC, which was started with great fanfare earlier this month.

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 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, Beijing : The solar industry in America was "materially injured" by imports of solar cells from China, a US trade panel has claimed.

Chennai : India will launch six more satellites during 2015-16 of which two would be communication satellites, three navigation satellites and one space science...

By Xinhua, Taiyuan (China) : China Tuesday launched its second Olympic weather forecasting satellite, the Fengyun-3, to ensure timely weather forecasts during the Olympics. The satellite was launched on a Long March-4C carrier rocket from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre in northern Shanxi province at 11.02 a.m. Zheng Guoguang, director of the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), said the FY-3 would work with the existing FY-2.

By Xinhua Washington : NASA's Mars rover Opportunity entered Victoria Crater for the first time to explore the richest science trove of its long mission. On the rover's 1,291st Martian day, Opportunity radioed home information via a relay by NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, reporting its activities for the day, according to NASA mission updates Tuesday.

By Xinhua, Beijing : How baby birds learn to sing is just like how babies learn to talk, researchers reported in Friday's edition of the journal Science. Michale S. Fee at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology studied the brains of baby zebra finches as the little birds learned the unique song they would use as adults. "Young birds learn their songs in a series of stages. They start out just as humans do, by babbling," Fee said, while the adult bird produces a very precise pattern of sound.

New Delhi: The city government on Wednesday told the Delhi High Court that it was willing to fund the entire project of installation of...

By Xinhua, Abu Dhabi : A senior official of the Defense Ministry of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) said that the ministry plans to launch a joint remote-sensing satellite with other member countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), local newspaper Gulf News reported on Tuesday. The plan was revealed by Brigadier Khalifa Mohammad Al Rumaithi, Chief of Military Works of the UAE Armed Forces, at the Defense Geospatial Intelligence Middle East opened on Monday in Dubai.

Hyderabad: Facebook on Friday launched a training programme for rural self-help groups (SHGs) in Telangana to equip them with technological knowledge to promote their...

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 Xinhua, Moscow : A Russian spaceship, carrying tonnes of food, water and fuel was on its way to the International Space Station (ISS) Wednesday, Itar-Tass news agency reported. The Progress M-65 spaceship took off from the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan at 11.50 p.m. (1950 GMT) Wednesday, the report said. The unmanned spaceship will deliver two tonnes of food, water, fuel and equipment, to the ISS. The spaceship is to dock at the ISS Sep 13, the report said. The ISS's orbit was adjusted Aug 13 to prepare for the docking of the cargo module.

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 DPA, Washington : Two US spacewalkers left the International Space Station (ISS) Tuesday to remove an empty ammonia tank that is crucial for keeping the station cool. John "Danny" Olivas and Nicole Stott left the ISS at 2149 GMT for the planned six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk. They will disconnect lines that transfer ammonia and nitrogen in the tank, unhook the electricity and unbolt the tank before lifting it away from the station and placing it on the robotic arm to be moved out of the way.

By IANS New Delhi : One could not help comparing American-Indian astronaut Sunita Williams with Shah Rukh Khan, who played the role of a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) engineer who came back to India to ignite the minds of people in the Hindi movie "Swades". The metaphor may sound somewhat remote, but a senior US embassy official Monday drew a comparison between the two stars in a programme where Williams interacted with around 150 school students.

By IANS, Hyderabad : A low-flying aircraft of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) late Wednesday took pictures of Nallamalla forest area where the helicopter carrying Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy was last seen before it went missing. Finance Minister K. Rosaiah told reporters that the low-flying aircraft belonging to ISRO had taken 41 satellite imagery pictures. Authorities hope to get some clues about the missing chopper from there images.

By IANS,