Technology

Researchers have developed a plug-in accessory with a customizable LED light, that emits smells from coconut to curry when you get a new email or Facebook message.

Scentee, which is made by a Japanese company with the same name, plugs into your phone and releases a chosen scent when you get a notification, the New York Daily News reported.

That means that every time someone comments on your Facebook post or sends you an email, you could get a whiff of lavender or coconut or coffee.

A group of engineering students at the University of Pennsylvania have created a bionic arm that can be just strapped on an external bicep and will give you enormous strength.

The bionic device, dubbed the Titan Arm, has been developed by four mechanical engineering students who, in their final undergraduate year, built an upper-body exoskeleton that could be used in physical therapy and manual labour, CNN reported.

The arm can be strapped directly to a user’s right arm to help them lift heavy objects that they usually wouldn’t be able to lift.

MIT chemical engineers have designed nanoparticles that can carry the cancer drug doxorubicin, as well as short strands of RNA that can shut off one of the genes that breast cancer cells use to escape the drug.

Lead author of the paper is Jason Deng, a postdoc in Hammond’s lab. Other authors are MIT graduate student Stephen Morton, junior Elana Ben-Akiva, and postdocs Erik Dreaden and Kevin Shopsowitz.

A novel technique is set to help researchers understand how antibiotics work, how bacteria develop resistance, and what molecular mechanisms could be exploited to get around their defence mechanisms.

Dr. Joseph Ndieyira, one of the developers involved in the technique, said that they are reporting a novel, nanomechanical approach to investigate the workings of vancomycin – one of the last powerful antibiotics used to combat increasingly-resistant infections like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

A second Software Technology Park would be set up in Tripura to boost information technology in the country’s northeast region and to reach out to people of rural and remote areas with e-governance, a minister said here Saturday.

The proposed Software Technology Park (STP) would be the second such technological complex in Tripura and sixth in the northeast region of India.

Jitendra Chowdhury, Tripura’s industries, commerce and information technology minister, held a meeting with Omkar Rai, director general, Software Technology Park of India (STPI), in Bengaluru earlier this week.

The ozone hole, which forms every year in the stratosphere over Antarctica, is slightly smaller in size than average this year, according to NASA satellite data.

The ozone hole is a seasonal phenomenon that starts to form during the Antarctic spring (August and September).

The September-October 2013 average size of the hole was 8.1 million square miles (21 million square kilometres). For comparison, the average size measured since the mid-1990s when the annual maximum size stopped growing is 8.7 million square miles (22.5 million square kilometres).

Google’s video-sharing arm YouTube is preparing to launch a paid music service this year competing against other streaming outlets, with the added feature of video, media reports have said.

The New York Times yesterday said the service designed for mobile devices would cost around USD 10 a month for an ad-free service and would compete with services such as Spotify, Rdio and Rhapsody.

The report said the deal would allow record companies to get bigger royalty payments than they currently get from free services.

The discovery of a seventh planet around the dwarf star KIC 11442793 could be a record, as it may be one of the richest planetary systems yet.

According to two separate teams of researchers, the system bears some similarities to our own, but all seven planets orbit much closer to their host star, which lies some 2,500 light-years from Earth, the BBC reported.

The crowded solar system is described in two papers published on the pre-print server Arxiv.org.

Scientists have claimed that just 13 days in space may be enough to cause profound changes in eye structure and gene expression.

The study, which looked at how low gravity and radiation and oxidative damage impacts mice, is the first to examine eye-related gene expression and cell behavior after spaceflight.

“We found many changes in the expression of genes that help cells cope with oxidative stress in the retina, possibly caused by radiation exposure,” Houston Methodist pathologist Patricia Chevez-Barrios, M.D., the study’s principal investigator, said.

A New York City-based tech startup has reportedly developed an app which makes recruiting possible without the need of the old-school job hunt using resumes.

The Apploi app had been launched five months ago, and lets job seekers showcase their personalities and interact with prospective employers.

According to the New York Daily News, the app has already signed up 185 employers including the United Nations which is aiming to help recruit its talent globally and will soon install Apploi iPad kiosks in ten locations around NYC, including Harlem, Wall Street and at UN headquarters.

Majority of smartphone owners in the United States compulsively check handsets at least hourly, according to a new survey.

The survey released by mobile security firm Lookout found that about 63 percent of people said they check their smartphones at least once each waking hour.

The survey found that nine percent Americans said they did not let five minutes pass without looking at their handsets.

The length of time between smartphone screen checks shrank with the ages of owners.

The discovery of a seventh planet around the dwarf star KIC 11442793 could be a record, as it may be one of the richest planetary systems yet.

According to two separate teams of researchers, the system bears some similarities to our own, but all seven planets orbit much closer to their host star, which lies some 2,500 light-years from Earth, the BBC reported.

The crowded solar system is described in two papers published on the pre-print server Arxiv.org.

Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) has reportedly launched a smartphone app that allows users to book as well as track taxis at literally ‘the wave of a hand’.

The free-to-download Smart Taxi app includes a unique ‘shake-a-taxi’ concept allowing users to fetch a cab by merely shaking their cellphone.

CEO of Licensing Agency, Ahmad Hashem Bahrozyan said that passengers can expect to do everything from ‘shaking’ down a taxi to checking flights on board and paying by credit or NoL cards, Gulf News reports.

Apple has reportedly issued a software update for its latest iOS7 after users complained of feeling nauseous as a result of the app transitions.

The tech giant has released new software treating the motion-sickness, addressing some security loopholes and also has added new features.

As the users complained of motion-sickness from the app transition affects, the update has added the ‘reduce motion’ tool that allows users to control the 3D effects and zooming.

A new study claimed that bees also underwent massive extinction when dinosaurs did millions of years ago.

For the first time ever, scientists have documented a widespread extinction of bees that occurred 65 million years ago, concurrent with the massive event that wiped out land dinosaurs and many flowering plants.

The findings could shed light on the current decline in bee species.

Researchers have developed a smart pill cap that is going to make forgetting forgettable, by helping patients remember to take their medications on time.

Following 3 years in development, iRemember has launched for pre-orders on a newly created platform called Wealth Taxi for an introductory price of 10 dollars per month.

The company aims to secure a minimum of 100,000 dollars in pre-orders to proceed into mass production, with anticipated fulfillment within 12 months.

The rivalry between the two top tech giants Microsoft and Apple doesn’t seem to cede anytime soon as the OS manufacturer’s vice president for communications has reportedly said that the iPhone maker’s new apps are struggling, lightweight productivity apps.

The scathing jab by Frank Shaw comes after Apple announced that iWork and iLife will come free with purchase of every new Mac or iOS device.

A Boston-based nanotechnology firm has reportedly created a mobile device that can accurately test for AIDS in under an hour.

Nanobiosym has invented the iPad-sized device called as Gene-Radar that works by taking a blood or saliva sample or other bodily fluid and placing it on a nanochip, which is then put into the device for testing.

(ANI): Researchers have successfully added a fourth dimension to their printing technology, opening up exciting possibilities for the creation and use of adaptive, composite materials in manufacturing, packaging and biomedical applications.

A team led by H. Jerry Qi, associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, and his collaborator Martin L. Dunn of the Singapore University of Technology and Design have developed and tested a method for 4D printing.

Scientists have revealed that the number of observed exoplanets – worlds circling distant stars – has passed 1,000.

Of these, 12 could be habitable – orbiting at a distance where it is neither “too hot” nor “too cold” for water to be liquid on the surface, the BBC reported.

The planets are given away by tiny dips in light as they pass in front of their stars or through gravitational “tugs” on the star from an orbiting world.

These new worlds are listed in the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia.

(ANI): An international team of astronomers have discovered that Milky Way galaxy “wobbles.”

The team of astronomers around Mary Williams from the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) detected and examined this phenomenon with the RAdial Velocity Experiment (RAVE), a survey of almost half a million stars around the Sun.

In addition to the regular Galactic rotation the scientists found the Milky Way moving perpendicular to the Galactic plane.

Even as Apple is yet to make an official announcement about developing a smartwatch, concept designers are letting their imaginations run wild with some anticipating it to be a blend of Nike+ Fuelband smart wristwear having a display that navigates through various applications.

A new concept design gives an idea about how Apple’s rumoured smartwatch would include a display that navigates through the time and date, an iTunes-style music player, and a menu featuring the icons for Apple’s iMessage and Calendar apps.

NASA has reversed it earlier ban on Chinese scientists, allowing them to attend an astronomy conference in California next month. The US space agency put the earlier ban down to a misinterpretation of its policy on foreign nationals. Chinese officials had called the rejection of Chinese scientists” applications a form of discrimination.

European Space Agency’s billion-star surveyor Gaia, which will map the stars with unprecedented precision, is going to be launched from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou on November 20.

Gaia’s main aim is to create a highly accurate 3D map of Milky Way Galaxy by repeatedly observing a billion stars to determine their positions in space and their movement through it.

Other measurements will assess the vital physical properties of each star, including temperature, luminosity and composition.

ESA’s GOCE satellite that mapped variations in Earth’s gravity with unprecedented detail for four years, has run out of fuel and the end of mission has been declared.

Since March 2009, the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer – GOCE – has been orbiting Earth at the lowest altitude of any research satellite.

Its ‘gradiometer’ – the sensitive instrument measuring gravity in 3D – was the first in space and has mapped variations in Earth’s gravity with unrivalled precision.