Technology

By RIA Novosti, Moscow : Russia is set to launch its first weather satellite, Meteor-M1, in the fourth quarter of 2008, the satellite's manufacturer said Wednesday. Russia currently has no weather satellites and gets its information from foreign sources. The Russian state research and development company VNIIEM said its specialists had assembled the satellite and launched "the final stage of complex tests". The 2.7-tonne Meteor-M1 will be put into a 830-km orbit by a Soyuz-2 launch vehicle and a Frigate upper stage. Its service life will be five to seven years.

By Arun Kumar, IANS, Washington : Four leading academics have questioned a warning by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that Himalayan glaciers could melt to a fifth of current levels by 2035, as wildly inaccurate. The IPCC has also retracted the warning, which had appeared in its 2007 report.

By IANS, Ranchi : Want to know more about the ferocious T-Rex and his friends? Well, there's good news for you, as the forest department of Jharkhand plans to establish a dinosaur park in the state. The authorities came up with the idea after footprints resembling those of the big reptiles were discovered in the state. "Footprints resembling those of dinosaurs have been found in Pithoria in Ranchi and Hazaribagh districts. There is a possibility that the big reptiles might have been roaming in these areas," said Nitish Priyadarshi, a geologist and environmentalist.

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

By IANS, Washington : Huge flying reptiles of ancient times weren't exactly predators grabbing fish from seas, but were really more suited to life on the ground. A particular kind of pterosaur, the azhdarchids, existing 230 to 65 million years ago with dinosaurs, stalked animals on foot rather than through the air, according to a new study. Azhdarchids were better adapted to walking than any of their first cousins because of their long limbs and skulls were suited for picking up small animals off the ground.

By RIA Novosti Moscow : Russian scientists have claimed 1.2 million km of potentially energy-rich Arctic territory following preliminary research results released here Thursday. "Preliminary results of an analysis of the Earth's crust show that the structure of the underwater Lomonosov mountain chain is similar to the world's other continental shelves, and the ridge is, therefore, part of Russia's landmass," the Russian Natural Resources Ministry said.

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 IANS, Washington : Researchers in the US are working on a new technique to create detailed high-resolution images that will show the atomic structure of cellular molecules. A research team at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab is collaborating with scientists in Germany and Sweden to utilise high-energy X-ray beams, combined with complex algorithms, to overcome limitations in current technology.

By IANS, Washington : Engineers have fabricated a tiny positioning device that will help build more compact, powerful computer hard drives and practically double the effectiveness of biological sensors. Called monolithic comb drive (MCD), it can be potentially used as a "nanoscale manipulator" for use in watery environments to probe biological molecules, said Jason Vaughn Clark, an assistant professor of electrical, computer and mechanical engineering at Purdue University, who created the design.

By IANS, Chennai : Indian and Italian tanners' associations Monday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to improve skills and efficiency of the leather industry in Tamil Nadu. According to the agreement, signed between the Indian Finished Leather Manufacturers and Exporters Association (IFLMEA) and Italy's Associazione Conciatori, both sides will promote technology transfers, joint ventures and business partnerships. Funded by the Italian government, the project will be implemented by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (Unido).

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

By IANS Washington : The universe comprises three dimensions of space and one of time, but researchers are exploring the possibility of the fifth. Sound like an episode from the "Twilight Zone"? Almost, but not quite, according to John Simonetti and Michael Kavic of the College of Science at Virginia Tech, reports Sciencedaily. "The idea we're exploring is that the universe has an imperceptibly small dimension (about one billionth of a nanometer) in addition to the four that we know currently," Kavic said.

By Xinhua Beijing : U.S., Mexican and Canadian scientists on Tuesday announced the discovery of helmet-crested, duck-billed dinosaur that lived about 7 million years ago. The composition of its skull -- with a nose on top of its head and elongated nasal passages -- meant its call was probably one of its most unique aspects, said Terry Gates, a Utah Museum of Natural History paleontologist.

By IANS Bangalore/New Delhi : India's Internet connectivity was disrupted Thursday after two undersea cables were damaged in the Mediterranean, although IT majors reported no impact on business. Smaller companies and individual surfers would, however, have to make do with slower speeds till the cables are repaired. "Slow connectivity, choking and other problems have been caused across India due the cable damage," Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) President Rajesh Chharia said, adding it may take 10-15 days for normalcy to be restored.

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

By IANS New York : A study by US scientists suggests that a soya based drink a day may help postmenopausal women to reduce fat, particularly the fat that accumulates on the stomach. Abdominal fat is particularly bad for health. It raises the risk of heart attacks and diabetes. Soya may also help women cut risk of cardiovascular disease or diabetes, the study suggests.

By Xinhua London : The amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed by the world's oceans has reduced, British scientists who carried out a decade-long study said. Researchers from University of East Anglia gauged carbon dioxide absorption through more than 90,000 measurements from merchant ships equipped with automatic instruments and the results of their 10-year study in the North Atlantic show carbon dioxide uptake halved between the mid-90s and 2000 to 2005, the BBC reported Saturday.

By IANS New Delhi : He looks like your average school going kid, but 14-year-old Sahil Khan, at the release of the second edition of his book "Hackers and Crackers" Wednesday, said he is an ethical hacker and uses his skills to fight cyber crime. "While chatting, I used to face problems because of the viruses. So, I used to experiment and fiddle. Thus, the results of my experimentation have made me what I am today," said Sahil, who released his book at the sidelines of the launch of monthly magazine "Gadget Guru".

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 : The GigaGalaxy Zoom project has captured a mind-boggling, magnificent, 800-million-pixel panoramic view of the vast glittering sky. This 360-degree starscape, covering the entire celestial sphere, reveals the cosmic landscape that surrounds our tiny blue planet. This staggering panorama serves as the first of three extremely high-resolution images featured in the project, launched by European Organisation for Astronomical Research (ESO).

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

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By Neelam Mathews, IANS Hyderabad : With joint plans for new satellites, manned space flights and missions to the moon, India and Russia are entering a new phase of bilateral cooperation in space. The chiefs of the space agencies in the two countries met during a global conference here last week to decide on a road map for future missions. "We discussed programmes with Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)," Anatoly Perminov, Head of Russian space agency, Roscosmos, told IANS on the margins of the International Astronautical Congress here.

By IANS Chennai : India would focus on Arctic and Antarctic missions, study climate change and send new satellites into space to study oceans and the atmosphere over the next five years, an official said here Wednesday. "India will develop new capability to drill deep into the ocean and by 2011, try to place a manned submersible into the dark depths of the ocean," P.S. Goel, secretary, ministry of earth sciences, told IANS on the sidelines of an advanced engineering conference here. "Ocean, atmosphere and seismology will be the areas of action for us," he said.

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

By DPA, Washington : The planet-hunting Kepler space telescope has found a new planetary system orbiting a distant star that could include a planet nearly the same size as Earth, NASA scientists said Thursday. In findings to be published in the journal Science this week, the scientists report the discovery of two large planets about the size of Saturn orbiting a star similar to the sun. A third small object orbiting the star could be a much smaller planet, just a bit larger than Earth, but more work must be done to confirm it is actually a planet.

By IANS Bangalore : Biotechnology firm Biocon's chairperson Kiran Mazumdar Shaw late Tuesday unveiled a radiology training centre at Teleradiology Solutions (TS) facility in India's silicon hub. Purported to be first-of-its-kind in the country, the centre, christened Rad Gurukul, will train and refine skills of radiologists, technologists and those involved in healthcare IT. Teleradiology services include interpretation of non-invasive imaging studies, namely CT, MRI, ultrasound, nuclear medicine studies and digitised X-rays.

When it comes to percentages, consumer calculating errors can be costly By TwoCircles.net newsdesk People deal with percentages every day: the performance of a stock portfolio, a sale at the department store, or the performance of a new hybrid car, are all often expressed as percent changes. As an everyday occurrence, calculating percentages should be second nature to the average person. "Not so," says Akshay Rao, professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management.

By Azera Rahman, IANS New Delhi : Two students from the premier engineering institute BITS at Pilani have developed for the first time in India a humanoid robot that will be shown at the world's biggest robot contest in San Francisco. Samay Kohli, 21, and Arpit Mohan, 19, are all set to leave for the US despite funding problems. "Although non-resident Indians (NRI) have developed humanoids before, we are the first Indians here to have developed one," Kohli beamed.

By IANS, Bangalore : The Indian subsidiary of the London-based Logica plc helped the leading IT services firm reduce carbon emission by 11.3 percent in 18 months, the company said Monday. "We have achieved 11.3 percent reduction in our carbon footprint in the last 18 months and set a target of reducing it by another 10 percent next year," Logica India chief executive Abhya Gupte said in a statement here. The reduction enabled the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) to rank the British firm top of the FTSE 350 for IT services in its global 500 report.

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

By IANS, New Delhi : Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Saturday said the role of technology in supporting India's counter terrorism and internal security efforts was not being given adequate emphasis and there was need for greater investment in security technologies.

Tehran: US Secretary of State John Kerry has acknowledged for the first time that a final nuclear deal would not require Iran to detail...

By IANS, Washington : NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has spotted its first never-before-seen near-Earth object (NEO), the first of hundreds it is expected to find during its mission to map the whole sky in infrared light. NEOs are asteroids and comets with orbits that pass relatively close to Earth's path around the sun. In extremely rare cases of an impact, the objects may devastate the Earth's surface. An asteroid, about 10 km wide, is thought to have plunged into our planet 65 million years ago, triggering a global disaster and obliterating dinosaurs.

By Jatindra Dash, IANS, Bhubaneswar : The pre-historic legacy of what is now the United States could be redefined thanks to an Indian-born scientist in...

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 Xinhua, Beijing : Stephen Hawking said there may be alients, but they may not be intelligent as others had thought, or just primitive life. The 66-year-old famed British cosmologist Hawking's comments were part of a lecture at George Washington University on Monday in honor of NASA's 50th anniversary. He theorized that there are possible answers to whether there is extraterrestrial life. "Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare," said Hawking "Some would say it has yet to occur on earth."

By DPA Washington : The much-delayed launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis remains up in the air, according to NASA officials who are now predicting a takeoff date of early February and in any case no sooner than Jan 24. Shuttle programme manager John Shannon Thursday said that ongoing attempts to resolve a problem with the shuttle's fuel sensors has prevented the US space agency from setting a firm launch date.

By IANS, Beijing : China will launch 12 meteorological satellites before 2020 to boost the country's weather monitoring capabilities, an official said Saturday.

By IANS, Bangalore : Leading IT solutions provider IDS Softwares Ltd has forayed into Egypt to automate the hospitality industry and extend its footprint in North African countries, a top company official said. “We have already bagged a deal from Egypt’s leading hotel chain Pyramisa Hotels to deploy our suite of products developed at our global R&D facility in Bangalore to automate its operations,” IDS general manager Rajesh P. Yadav said in a statement here late Thursday.

By IANS, Washington : Human intervention has caused widespread climatic alterations like permafrost thawing, premature blooming of plants across Europe and declining lakes in Africa, according to a NASA study. Cynthia Rosenzweig of NASA and co-author of the study, said it is the first to co-relate global temperature data sets and observed changes in a broad range of physical and biological systems with humans, climate, and impact.

By IANS, Havana : Cuban scientists are trying to cure cancer with a homeopathic drug manufactured from the venom of scorpion, according to participants at an annual symposium held in the country.

By IANS, New Delhi : With more hits from countries like China, Germany and Japan, the Incredible India website, the country's popular tourism campaign, has moved from the 100,000 rank to 25,000 in the World Wide Web Space. Believing in the power of the Internet, the tourism ministry revamped its website to make its Incredible India campaign popular in India and abroad. It was first launched in December 2004.

By IANS, London : Criminals are having a harder time hiding themselves, thanks to new software that helps witnesses recreate images and recognise suspects relying on principles borrowed from the fields of optics and genetics. The software, known as EFIT-V system, is being used by 15 police departments in Britain, France and Switzerland. In field trials, it led to twice as many identifications of suspects as traditional methods.

Bangalore: For the second time in three years, Infosys chairman N.R. Narayana Murthy will Saturday bid adieu to the iconic company he co-founded with...

By DPA, San Francisco : Microsoft has outsourced its internal tech support to Indian technology services firm Infosys, the companies have announced. The move was first revealed in an Infosys press release Tuesday announcing a three-year deal to "manage internal IT services for Microsoft worldwide" and later confirmed by the US software giant.

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 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 IANS, Washington: Engineers have created energy-scavenging nanofibres that could one day be woven into clothing and textiles. The nanofibres can convert energy from mechanical stresses into electricity, and could one day be used to create clothing that can power small electronics, says a new study, conducted by University of California, Berkeley (UCB) researchers.

By IANS, Beijing: China launched its Shenzhou-9 spacecraft with the country's first female astronaut aboard Saturday.

By IANS, Washington : As students get older they become less likely to take intellectual risks such as sharing their tentative ideas when learning science, a new study says. The study on student willingness to take risks in the name of early scientific exploration has been done by Ronald A. Beghetto, University of Oregon professor of education studies. It looked at intellectual risk-taking of 585 students in the third- through sixth-grades in seven Oregon elementary schools. Fifty-one percent were girls.

By RIA Novosti, Moscow : Martian soil could contain a toxic substance that would make it less likely that life formed there, data gathered by NASA's Phoenix lander on the red planet has revealed. Earlier NASA said Phoenix analysers detected water in the soil, which suggested that Mars could have the conditions for life. However, if the presence of perchlorate were confirmed, the probability of detecting living organisms there would be reduced.

By Xinhua, Washington : The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has announced that the crust and upper mantle of Mars are stiffer and colder than previously thought. The new observations from its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter suggest any liquid water that might exist below the planet's surface and any possible organisms living in that water would be located deeper than scientists had suspected. "This implies that the planet's interior is more rigid, and thus colder, than we thought before."

By Xinhua, Washington : A contender for the title of the brightest star in our Milky Way has been unearthed in the dusty metropolis of the galaxy's center, according to a new study in an upcoming issue of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. Nicknamed the "Peony nebula star," the bright stellar bulb was revealed by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and other ground-based telescopes. It blazes with the light of an estimated 3.2 million suns, reported a team of German astronomers.

By DPA, Washington : NASA late Friday sent the Kepler satellite into Earth's orbit with instructions to search for extraterrestrial life on Earth-type planets orbiting other stars. The launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida on board a Delta-II-rocket was reported on a live blog operated by the Kepler project on the internet. The Kepler mission, named after the 17th century German astronomer, is targetting about 100,000 stars in the Milky Way galaxy that scientists believe could have planets orbiting in a "habitable" zone.

By IANS, Washington : Decades of drought, alternating with intense monsoon rains, may have sounded the death knell for Cambodia's ancient Khmer civilization at Angkor nearly 600 years ago. Columbia University researchers say this based on an analysis of tree rings, archaeological remains and other evidence. Their findings may also shed light on what drives - and disrupts - the rainy season across much of Asia, which waters crops for nearly half the world's population.

By IANS, London : Arid conditions on Mars for more than 600 million years may have been too hostile for any life to survive on its surface

By IANS Kochi (Kerala) : Power electronics company Hykon India has introduced a window collector solar water heater, claimed to be the first in the country. Hykon Window Solar Collectors can be installed on balconies and windows of flats, apartments and individual villas where conventional rooftop water heaters do not fit in.

By IANS, Washington : A computer that is a thousand-fold faster than the fastest current supercomputers is being developed by an Indian American scientist. The machine of the future being developed by Ashok Nahata of the University of Utah relies on infrared wavelengths rather than electrical wires. Nahata and his team made the equivalent of wires that carried and bent this form of infrared light, or terahertz radiation, the least exploited segment of electromagnetic spectrum.

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

By Xinhua, Beijing : A huge black hole has been seen leaving its home galaxy after a colossal cosmic merger occurred. The event, seen for the first time, was announced Tuesday. When two colliding galaxies finally merge, it is thought the black holes at their cores may fuse together too. Astronomers have theorized that the resulting energy release could propel the new black hole from its parent galaxy out into space, but no one has found such an event.

By NNN-WAM, Dubai : In an unprecedented breakthrough in the GCC region, Dubai-based scientists have successfully produced the first identical twin camel using the embryo splitting technology. Zahi and Baih, the two identical twins, were naturally born to two surrogate camel mothers on Feb 10 and 23 respectively after a pregnancy period of 13 moths. According to the scientists team at Dubai Camel Breading Centre, the genetically identical cubs are in a good health.

By IRNA, New Delhi : Notwithstanding the chill in Indo-Pak ties, students from both the countries have come together in designing an innovative crew ship to travel from Earth to Mars and jointly compete with students from other countries at NASA. Under the Sixteenth Annual International Space Settlement Design Competition, sponsored by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Boeing, school students from Lahore and Delhi have prepared a novel project on future of human civilisation in Mars.

By IANS, Washington : The ability to work together and capture larger prey has allowed social spiders to flourish beyond the strength of their numbers, according to a new study. The surface area of the three-dimensional webs social spiders use to capture prey does not grow as fast as the number of spiders in the nests. So the number of incoming prey per spider declines with colony size.

By IANS, London : Video coding techniques still have their flip side - digital images are not always disruption-free. Now, an extension of the coding format known as H.264/AVC will help protect the most important data packets to ensure they reach the receiver. For instance, your favourite detective series has just reached its climax when a thunderstorm raging outside interferes with the digital image on your TV.

By IANS, Hyderabad: This information technology hub is expected to witness rapid growth in the IT sector with the setting up of investment region around the city.

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

Thiruvananthapuram : It's a computer mouse that can also do the job of a scanner. MobScan has built-in technologies that helps to scan as well...

By IANS Washington : What does the cow have to do with the global oil crisis? Well, it may help ease it! An enzyme from a microbe that resides deep in a cow's gut holds the key to converting corn into a cheap biofuel like ethanol, a new study has found. The enzyme, which allows a cow to digest grasses and other plants, can be used to turn other plant fibres into simple sugars. These simple sugars can be used to produce ethanol to power cars and trucks, said Michigan State University researchers, who conducted the study.

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Bhubaneswar: India Wednesday test fired its Akash surface-to-air missile from a defence base in Odisha, an official said. The indigenously developed missile, with a 27-km...

By IANS, London : An active compound, plectasin, from fungi and lower animals may well be suitable as an effective weapon against dangerous bacteria. Plectasin is a small protein molecule that can even destroy highly resistant bacteria. Researchers at the University of Bonn, Utrecht, Aalborg and of Danish company Novozymes AS have shed light on how the substance does this. The authors see plectasin as a promising lead compound for new antibiotics.

By IANS New Delhi : Advances in the area of bio-nanotechnology would go a long way in helping India's food security, Minister for Food and Agriculture Sharad Pawar said here Wednesday. "Bio-nanotechnology takes agriculture from the era of genetically modified (GM) crops to the brave new world of atomically modified organisms," Pawar said, speaking at the inaugural session of the three-day Fifth Knowledge Millennium Summit on "B2B Bio and Nanotechnology" organised by industry body Assocham.

By IANS, Hyderabad: The work on Tata Advanced Systems' facility on the outskirts of Hyderabad to manufacture Sikorsky helicopter cabins formally began Thursday as Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy unveiled a plaque for the project. The facility to assemble fuselages of Sikorsky S-92 helicopters is coming up at the Aerospace Special Economic Zone (SEZ) being developed by the Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (APIIC) in Adibatla.

By IANS, Washington : China did have clearer skies and easier breathing when it shut down factories and banished many cars in a pre-Olympic sprint to clean up Beijing's air. Taking advantage of the opportunity, researchers have since analysed data from NASA's Aura and Terra satellites that show how key pollutants responded to the Olympic restrictions.

By IANS, New Delhi: With less than a month to go before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh goes to the US, the government is planning to introduce the contentious Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill in the Lok Sabha Monday. The bill is likely to be introduced in the Lok Sabha Monday, said government sources here. The passing of the bill, which seeks to limits damages to American nuclear companies in case of an accident, is a crucial step India is required to complete under the 123 civil nuclear agreement with the US.

By IANS, Washington : After six years of unprecedented exploration, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit will no longer be a fully mobile robot. NASA has designated the once-roving scientific explorer a stationary science platform after efforts during the past several months to free it from a sand trap were unsuccessful. The venerable robot's primary task in the next few weeks will be to position itself to combat the severe Martian winter.

New York: App ads on Twitter may soon have the option to be video-based, the microblogging site has announced. In a blog post celebrating one...

By IANS, New Delhi : Microsoft founder Bill Gates Friday said it would be a "big mistake" if the US curbs the entry of skilled workers from abroad, rallying behind the "smart people" from countries like India that has a globally recognised outsourcing industry. He also said Microsoft will like to partner the Indian government in its ambitious plan to give a unique identity number and a biometric card to each of its 1.17 billion people.

By Xinhua Beijing : The website of China's National Bureau of Corruption Prevention (NCBP) crashed just hours after it was launched, as a huge number of people logged on to the site to lodge their complaints against corrupt officials. The website "yfj.mos.gov.cn" launched Tuesday was inaccessible by afternoon due to the large number of visitors, Beijing Youth Daily reported.

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

By IANS, Washington : Relying on fleeting brain waves, a futuristic technology enables people with severe muscle disorder to operate computers and enter a 3-D virtual world to chat or stroll. The technology, demonstrated by Junichi Ushiba of Keio University, opens up a world of possibilities for serious motion-impaired people to communicate with others and to work normally. This marriage of leading-edge technologies in brain science and the Internet also heralds the world's first successful example to help the physically impaired meet people in the virtual world.

By IANS, London : A technique which lights up tumour cells during surgery could help those who suffer from ovarian cancer.

By IANS, New York : E. coli has remained a mystery for long as a fourth of the roughly 4,000 genes it carries are unknown to researchers. But 'GIANT-Coli,' short for genetic interaction analysis technology for E. coli, a new technique, has the potential to speed up the discovery of new gene functions and help crack its code, says a new study. The principle behind this technique is to track interaction among genes that produces observable effects, and helping identify gene functions. Harmless E. coli strains are found in many animals and human intestines, but some can cause diseases.

By Arun Kumar, IANS Washington : Leading global internet brand Yahoo! Inc. has introduced Yahoo! Buzz, offering the most interesting and relevant content from websites across the worldwide web and bringing more buzz-worthy stories to the homepage of Yahoo! Currently in beta, Yahoo! Buzz measures consumer votes and search patterns to identify interesting and timely stories and videos from large news sources as well as niche blogs around the web, the firm announced Wednesday.

By DPA Geneva : The US ambassador to the United Nations warned Friday the defective US spy satellite was due to enter the Earth's atmosphere March 6 if efforts announced by the Pentagon to destroy it failed. Christina Rocca, the US permanent Representative to the UN Conference on Disarmament, said it was not possible to say where the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) satellite would strike. "It could occur in any region on the Earth's surface between 58.5 degrees North and 58.5 degrees South latitudes," she told a special session of the Conference in Geneva.

By IANS, Washington : NASA's Kepler spacecraft is ready to begin a journey to search for worlds that could potentially host life. It is scheduled for blast-off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, aboard a Delta II rocket on March 5 at 7:48 p.m. Pacific Time (10:48 p.m. Eastern Time). It is the first mission with the ability to find planets like Earth -- rocky planets that orbit sun-like stars in a warm zone where liquid water could be maintained on the surface. Liquid water is believed to be essential for the formation of life.

By Hitesh Raj Bhagat, IANS, Today (Dec 11, 2008) is a big day. Third generation or 3G mobile networks are finally here, for MTNL users in parts of Delhi and NCR. Mumbai will follow as soon as the pilots in Delhi are successful. India has been making do with ancient mobile technology for long now. The current Second generation or 2G networks were designed to carry only voice, which does not require high data transfer speeds. With the advent of new technologies -- video streaming, mobile TV and mobile gaming, higher transfer speeds were necessary.

By IANS, Washington : A new model of mouse behaviour developed by Japanese scientists is likely to help in better diagnosis and evaluation of depressive disorders in people. Researchers from University of Tokyo and Osaka Bioscience Institute evaluated a holistic approach to assess mouse behaviour, and threw up interesting results. For example, a 24-hour monitoring of the rodents by pressure sensors, after a gene regulating the circadian rhythm was removed, was found to be similar to that previously observed by the team in humans suffering from major depressive disorder.

By IANS Washington : A first-of-its kind study on Internet and suicides has found that a net search throws up more sites that detail methods of self-annihilation than those offering help and support. The study also concludes that people bent on taking their lives are most likely to find sites that offer detailed and factual methods of killing themselves rather than sites that discourage them. Researchers from the universities of Bristol, Oxford and Manchester replicated a typical search, visiting popular websites like Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.