Technology

Researchers have developed a bioinspired microfluidic circulatory system for windows that could help save energy and cut cooling costs dramatically, while letting in just as much sunlight.

The same circulatory system could also cool rooftop solar panels, allowing them to generate electricity more efficiently.

The new window-cooling system contains an extensive network of ultrathin channels near the “skin” of the window — the pane — through which water can be pumped when the window is hot.

Scientists have created an artificial human ear by combining living tissues extracted from cows and sheep.

The scientists allowed them to grow around a flexible wire frame, which retains the correct anatomical shape of the ear.

The researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston said that a key feature of the artificial organ is a cartilage scaffold which has an embedded titanium wire that retains the shape of the structure as well as maintain its flexibility, the Independent reported.

They look like normal eucalyptus trees up to 65 feet tall with a trunk girth of about 19 cm and towering over their peers in an evaluation trial on the foothills of Himalayas here. They are hybrids, progenies of two high-growth species of eucalyptus parent trees.

The progenies – just about six-years-old – have shown a growth pattern which is substantially higher over a commercially available clone variety of their age and with approximate height of 25 feet and girth of 6 cm.

Sir Ian Wilmut – the pioneering scientist whose team unveiled Dolly as the world’s first cloned mammal in 1996 – has outlined how to help bring extinct woolly mammoths back to life.

The procedure, which echoed of techno-thriller ‘Jurassic Park’ – was spelled out by Edinburgh-based stem-cell scientist Wilmut.

Wilmut said in an article that it is unlikely that the extinct mammal could be cloned in the same way as Dolly, as much more modern techniques are needed to convert tissue cells into stem cells to achieve the feat.

Recently, an image of Arctic showing a lake at North Pole captured lots of attention, but researchers have said that it is not extreme.

Jamie Morison, a polar scientist at the UW Applied Physics Laboratory and principal investigator since 2000 of the North Pole Environmental Observatory, said that every summer when the sun melts the surface the water has to go someplace, so it accumulates in these ponds.

Researchers said that one of the issues in interpreting the image is that the camera uses a fisheye lens.

A unique theory that talks about how life started on Earth has the potential to reveal clues about where else it might have arisen in the universe.

Online shopping giant Amazon Monday announced plans to hire 7,000 workers for its operations in the US, CNN reported.

The firm said most jobs offer pay and benefits far above typical retail wages.

Amazon did not give specific pay scales for the positions, but said the 5,000 warehouse jobs will pay 30 percent more than jobs in traditional retail stores.

The jobs are full-time permanent positions. The company said many workers would also be eligible for 95 percent tuition reimbursement to those attending college, whether or not their field of study is related to their job.

Chemical components that are crucial to the start of life on Earth may have primed and protected each other in never-before-realized ways, a new study has suggested.

According to co-authors Sarah Keller, UW professor of chemistry, and Roy Black, UW affiliate professor of bioengineering, it could mean a simpler scenario for how that first spark of life came about on the planet.

Indonesia and India were today named as the world’s biggest shark catchers, with over 20 per cent of global catches between 2002 and 2011, in an EU-backed probe to protect seven threatened species of sharks and rays.

The study examines how implementation of trade controls through CITES regulations can ensure that seven species of sharks and manta rays are only sourced sustainably and legally before entering international trade.

Astronomers have for the first time, through X-ray observations, detected an exoplanet passing in front of its parent star.

An advantageous alignment of a planet and its parent star in the system HD 189733, which is 63 light-years from Earth, enabled NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency’s XMM Newton Observatory to observe a dip in X-ray intensity as the planet transited the star.

Earthquakes may contribute to global warming by releasing methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas, from the ocean floor, according to a new study.

An international team of scientists investigated the aftermath of a magnitude 8.1 earthquake that took place in the Northern Arabian Sea in 1945.

They postulated that this event caused the release of about 7.4 million cubic meters methane, into the ocean. In 2007, during a research cruise off the coast of Pakistan, the scientists obtained several sediment cores.

NASA has been flooded with more than 400 suggestions on how to find asteroids that are on a collision course with Earth.

Some suggestions were there to help relocate a small asteroid orbiting a moon for future study.

The ideas came in response to a June 18 solicitation intended to reach beyond the aerospace industry for partnerships on two asteroid exploration initiatives which are being planned.

The first project called ‘Grand Challenge,’ is to find potentially dangerous asteroids that come close to Earth.

The fastest thing in the universe – Light, was brought to a halt for a record-breaking minute.

Thomas Krauss at the University of St Andrews, UK said that the feat was indeed a major milestone, as one minute is extremely a long duration for light to come to a pause.

The feat could allow secure quantum communications to work over long distances, according to New Scientist.

Facebook shares surged by over 25 percent in early trade after posting net income of USD 333 million in the April-June quarter on the back of rising mobile advertising revenue.

The company had reported a loss of USD 157 million in the year-ago period.

Revenue totalled USD 1.81 billion in the second quarter, an increase of 53 per cent from USD 1.18 billion a year earlier, the social networking giant said in a statement.

Powered by massive black holes at the center of most known galaxies, quasars can emit enormous amounts of energy, up to a thousand times the total output of the hundreds of billions of stars in our entire Milky Way.

Dartmouth astrophysicists Ryan Hickox and Kevin Hainline and colleagues have detailed their discoveries based upon observations of 10 quasars.

They documented the immense power of quasar radiation, which reaches out for many thousands of light years to the limits of the quasar’s galaxy.

Search engine giant Google is yet to publically launch its wearable computing device Google Glass and enough has been mocked and debated about its privacy issues and potential misuse.

Even if Google Glass is developed to be strictly anti-porn, anti-nudity, and anti-profanity and user cannot search for porn or visit porn sites, the in-built camera still allows users to shoot for their own adult content, Huffington Post reports.

Search engine giant Google’s Android operating system which was found to have security flaw making around 900 million devices vulnerable to hacking has reportedly infected two apps in China.

According to the BBC, security firm Symantec has said that it identified the first known malicious use of Android”s ‘master key’ vulnerability which allows attackers to install code on phones running Google”s mobile operating system and then take control of them.

Comets and meteorites contain clues to our solar system’s earliest days, even though some of the findings don’t fit well together.

Now, a new set of theoretical models from Carnegie’s Alan Boss shows how an outburst event in the Sun’s formative years could explain some of this disparate evidence.

His work could have implications for the hunt for habitable planets outside of our solar system.

Software Corporation Apple’s CEO has reportedly hinted at developing products for the automobile industry as a next step towards integrating its innovative technology into other devices after iWatch and television.

CEO Tim Cook said that having something in the automobile is very important which is something that people want and Apple can do it in a better way than anyone else, hinting towards the possibility of it being the next project the company is working on, Huffington Post reports.

Comets and meteorites contain clues to our solar system’s earliest days, even though some of the findings don’t fit well together.

Now, a new set of theoretical models from Carnegie’s Alan Boss shows how an outburst event in the Sun’s formative years could explain some of this disparate evidence.

His work could have implications for the hunt for habitable planets outside of our solar system.

One way to study the solar system’s formative period is to look for samples of small crystalline particles that were formed at high temperatures but now exist in icy comets.

India and Israel have agreed to work jointly on development of fifth generation (5G) telecom technologies, sources said.

The matter was discussed during the visit of Telecom and IT Minister Kapil Sibal to Israel last month, they said.

Sibal and his Israeli counterpart Gilad Erdan in a meeting agreed that both the countries can cooperate on exploring the possibilities of standard formulation, development and manufacturing in the area of 4G and 5G telecom technologies.

Software Corporation Apple’s CEO has reportedly hinted at developing products for the automobile industry as a next step towards integrating its innovative technology into other devices after iWatch and television.

CEO Tim Cook said that having something in the automobile is very important which is something that people want and Apple can do it in a better way than anyone else, hinting towards the possibility of it being the next project the company is working on, Huffington Post reports.

Stretches of ice on the coasts of Antarctica and Greenland are at risk of rapidly cracking apart and falling into the ocean, which could worsen sea level rise, according to new findings.

“If this starts to happen and we’re right, we might be closer to the higher end of sea level rise estimates for the next 100 years,” Jeremy Bassis, assistant professor of atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences at the University of Michigan College of Engineering, and first author of the paper, said.

Two men from US have developed a hybrid vehicle that can be driven in land and in sea.

WaterCar co-founders Fred Selby and Dave March have been working on this project for more than a decade.

The seed of their work was laid after March purchased an Amphicar – a German-designed amphibious convertible from the 1960s.

Though March liked the concept, he desired a vehicle faster than the Amphicar’s 40-some-horsepower engine could muster.

Global warming has not stopped, but is just on pause, according to scientists, who have revealed that the Earth’s rate of warming has slowed down.

Huge amounts of heat – equivalent to the power of 150 billion electric kettles – are being continuously absorbed by the deep ocean, which could explain why global warming has “paused” over the past 10 to 15 years, the Independent reported.

Global average temperatures are higher now than they have ever been since modern records began.