NASA has developed a vegetable production system termed as ‘Veggie plant pillows’ that could soon give astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) their first taste of space-grown salad. Dr Gioia Massa, a payload specialist at the Kennedy Space Centre, Florida said that if one could get the environmental conditions correct, there would be no reason why plants would not grow pretty well in space, the Guardian reported.
Apple is reportedly set to release the latest version of its OS X, which will be most comprehensive out of the existing OS X versions.
The new look will reportedly take design cues from last year’s radical rethink of iOS, but the aesthetic changes will not change the fundamentals of OS X.
According to The Verge, OS X 10.10 will have sharper corners, more white space, and iOS 7-esque toggles.
However, Apple will continue the trend of adding features from iOS to OS X but the company has assured customers that the two OS will remain distinct, the report added. (ANI)
This can well be an interesting plot to make a sci-fi movie. As the scientific community gears up for a manned mission to Mars, there are apprehensions about invaders to the red planet – in the form of micro-organisms from the Earth!
Astronomers fear that organisms on an exploring spacecraft or a landing vehicle have the potential to contaminate Mars.
This would make it difficult for scientists to determine whether a life form existed on another planet or was introduced there by explorers.
A new phone has been developed that can be transformed from single screen to widescreen in an instant, making it the world’s first foldable smartphone.
PaperFold’s displays can be folded, detached and flipped to create different shapes and it can even be turned into a mini laptop, the Daily Star reported.
The device, which is developed by Canadian designers, is currently just a prototype, but can change smartphone design forever.
Researchers have claimed that they have used stem cells derived from human body fat to treat brain cancer in mice.
Scientists from Johns Hopkins University said that their biological treatment procedure using mesenchymal stem cells, which were harvested from human fat tissue, was able to successfully treat mice with the most common and aggressive form of brain tumor, significantly extending their lives.
Distressed at the slow speed of your personal computer? Here comes a microchip that would give your PC a speed that is 9,000 faster than an average one.
Modelled on the human brain, Neurogrid chip can simulate 1 million neurons and billions of synapses or brain connections.
That is a vast improvement over previous brain simulations but still only a fraction of the roughly 80 billion neurons in the human brain, researchers said.
Apple has acquired a 5-year old, micro LED startup called LuxVue, for an undisclosed sum. In the last 18 months, Apple has made 24 discreet acquisitions.
A new app has been developed that selects your videos for the best frames, then gives you Instagram-style filtering, editing, and sharing.
Vhoto is a free app that extracts still frames from iPhone video after the fact. And not thousands of individual frames you have to sift through yourself, but a culled assortment of the “best” pictures, as determined by Vhoto’s proprietary tech, CNet reported.
Researchers have said that the average level of carbon dioxide has, for the first time, topped 400 parts per million for a full month in April.
They’ve said that it’s likely this record-breaking moment marks the first time in 800,000 years that the Earth’s atmosphere has featured so much CO2, discovery News reported.
A new research has suggested that birds can adapt to the low-levels of radiation found near Chernobyl, where the catastrophic nuclear disaster took place in 1986.
According to the Verge, while going through previous studies, scientists found that birds near the Japanese Fukushima reactor that experienced a meltdown in 2011 had less chances of survival than Chernobyl’s birds, since they probably had more time to adapt.
To test out their theory, scientists collected blood samples and feathers from different bird species in both low and high-radiation that persists around Chernobyl.
Video sharing app Vine has revamped its desktop website with new look and features, making it a bit similar to YouTube.
Vine has added a featured section that includes Editors Picks, playlists, and special featured videos.
According to TechCrunch, Now users don’t have to be logged in to Vine on the web to surf through these channels or featured Vine videos.
This may be a step to get closer to be a YouTube competitor.
Most mobile companies have limited and poorly designed websites but Vine’s update to the website sets it apart from others.ANI
Photo sharing app Snapchat has reportedly added new features which allows users to chat and make video calls.
According to CNET, the new update lets users chat with others for as long as they like, but as soon as they leave the chat screen, the entire conversation is wiped.
However, there is a feature which lets users save the conversation with screenshot, or tapping on chat to save it.
Snapchat, with its new update, now stands against messaging apps like whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat and more.
Researchers at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research, an accelerator laboratory located in Darm-stadt, Germany, have obtained evidence for the artificial creation of element 117.
The experiment was performed by an international team 72 scientists and engineers from 16 institutions in Australia, Finland, Germany, India, Japan, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, headed by Prof. Christoph Dullmann, who holds positions at GSI, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), and the Helmholtz Institute Mainz (HIM).
A US court has ordered Samsung to pay 119.6 million dollars to Apple for infringing two of their patents.
According to The BBC, the amount is less than 10 percent of what Apple requested and probably doesn’t surpass by too much the amount Apple spent litigating the case.
However, the court also ruled that Apple too infringed Samsung’s patents and awarded 158,000 dollars in damages, the report added.
Meanwhile, Samsung denied any wrongdoing and stated that Apple infringed two of their patents, and asked for 5 million dollars as damage s. (ANI)
Stephen Hawking has said that the short-term impact of Artificial Intelligence depends on who controls it but the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.
Also Hawking seems not to trust the so-called AI experts at all, Cnet reported.
Hawking said that robots and other artificially intelligent machines could bring enormous benefits and if they were a success it would be the biggest event in human history.
But he also suggested that AI could be the last event in the history of humanity.
Scientists have devised new technology which generates electricity from body heat, allowing you to charge electronic devices on the go.
Professor Byung Jin Cho from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in South Korea is leading the team working on a thermoelectric (TE) generator.
The small and flexible generator, made from glass and fabric, can be used to power up heart monitors, smart glasses and other wearable tech.
Researchers have created a device that generates electricity from our own body heat, and helps us to recharge electronic devices on the go.
The small and flexible generator, made from glass and fabric, can be used to power up heart monitors, smart glasses and other wearable tech, Daily Express reported.
According to the company, they are looking to develop it so that it can be used for devices such as Apple iPhone, Samsung Galaxy and the HTC range of smart phones.
This tea machine brews a perfect cup of tea every time you go for it. But there ain’t free tea, isn’t it?
Costing a whopping $13,000 (Rs.780,000), the machine named Bkon does not use the old method of pulling or pushing water through the tea.
Instead, it uses air pressure to draw tea through water.
“Our patented Reverse Atmospheric Infusion process infuses beverages through controlled negative pressure,” Dean Vastardis, Bkon co-founder, was quoted as saying.
Dating website HowAboutWe has just launched a standalone messaging app for couples that lets two sweeties share multiple types of content and create a story together.
The app is called YouandMe and is the first standalone project out of the company, which currently provides a dating subscription service for singles and couples, as well as a series of media properties covering the topics of sex, love and relationships, Tech Crunch reported.
A new study has revealed the real difference between how men and women choose their partners.
According to the study by researchers from Concordia University, men respond more strongly to the “framing effect” when it comes to physical attractiveness, while women are more attuned to negatively framed information due to an evolutionary phenomenon called ‘parental investment theory.
A new study has revealed that females prefer courtship over competitiveness when it comes to choosing mates .
The study by scientists at the University of Exeter and the Universities of Okayama and Tsukuba in Japan investigated the complicated sexual conflict over mating in Gnatocerus cornutus, the horned flour-beetle and found that female mate choice and male-male competition are the typical mechanisms of sexual selection, which do not do not always favour the same males.
Sniffing out food or danger fine but prostate cancer? Yes, if we believe Finnish investigators, an electronic nose can very well diagnose prostate cancer – the second most common cancer in males – by smelling urine samples.
In a proof of principle study, the ‘eNose’ successfully discriminated between prostate cancer and benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) by ‘sniffing’ urine headspace – the space directly above the urine sample.
Microsoft has reportedly fixed the infamous ‘zero-day exploit’ in Internet Explorer even for Windows XP which is no longer supported by the American company.
The bug allowed hackers to install malware on one’s computer without permission, and allowed hacker to steal user’s personal data, track online behavior, or gain control of the computer, CNET reported.
Usually, Microsoft issues security patches on every second Tuesday of the month but because of the severity of the bug, the patch was released on last Thursday, the report added.
Researchers have discovered a new galaxy that is about 75,000 light-years away from us and is the faintest galaxy ever detected.
The galaxy Segue 1 is very small, and contains only about 1,000 stars; it also has a rare chemical composition, with vanishingly small amounts of metallic elements present.
Now a team of scientists, including an MIT astronomer, has analyzed that chemical composition and come away with new insights into the evolution of galaxies in the early stages of our universe-or, in this case, into a striking lack of evolution in Segue 1.
A new spacesuit unveiled by NASA could be the wardrobe essentials for a trip to Mars.
NASA said that elements from the prototype Z-2 spacesuit are going to be incorporated in the suit worn by the astronauts for their trips to Mars, the BBC reported.
Light-emitting patches and luminescent wire are used by the new spacesuit, which then could be customised to identify individuals.
The spacesuit will be built using 3D-printed parts, and 3D laser scans are going to ensure that each suit fits each astronaut perfectly. (ANI)