Technology

Battery powered passenger jets expected in 15 years

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Move over electric cars. Plan a family trip on a private electricity-powered jet instead!

France-based aircraft maker Airbus is ready to foray into making passenger jets powered by hybrid electric engines.

The planned plane can take off and land using electric power, and carry about 70-90 people.

“The full-fledged plane can hit the tarmac between 15 and 20 years,” Jean Botti, Airbus Group chief technology officer, was quoted as saying in media reports.

Smartphone sensors leave trackable fingerprints

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Researchers have found that fingerprints exist within smartphone sensors.

Research by Associate Professor Romit Roy Choudhury and graduate students Sanorita Dey and Nirupam Roy has demonstrated that these fingerprints exist within smartphone sensors, Sanorita Dey, Associate Professor Romit Roy Chourdhury, and Nirupam Roy .

Other collaborators on this project are Professors Srihari Nelakuditi and Wenyuan Xu at the University of South Carolina (USC).

Now, manage emails with ‘Sanebox’

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A new mail management system is launched that analyzes user’s emails, and sorts them according to one’s past behavior.

According to The Good Techie, Sanebox separates important and unimportant emails according to user’s behavior and automatically filters out unimportant email into a folder and summarizes it in a daily digest.

The result of which is that one’s inbox is left with important and high priority emails.

The new tool also has a suite of time saving features such as SaneBlackhole, which enables users to unsubscribe from emails with just one click.

Microsoft warns zero day vulnerability present in all versions of IE

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Microsoft confirms zero day vulnerability that allows remote code execution to be present in all versions of Internet Explorer.

According to CNET, the vulnerability, which could allow remote code execution, is being used in limited and targeted attacks.

All the versions of IE are affected but versions 9,10, and 11 are reportedly the main targets.

A hack ing group, APT [advanced persistent threat] is exploiting the vulnerability.

The group has been the first to have access to a select number of browser-based 0-day exploits, the report added.

Mind vs body: What is a better lie detector?

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To know if the person in front of you is lying, you may rely a lot on your instincts as more than the conscious mind, the body may act as a better lie detector, suggests a study.

“Perhaps our own bodies know better than our conscious minds who is lying,” Leanne ten Brinke, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, was quoted as saying.

For the study, researchers conducted a classic lie detection experiment in a different way.

Sexual conflict over mating affects women more: Study

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Sexual conflict over mating affects females more than males, impacting the parental care behaviour, research shows.

In experiments on beetles, British researchers at University of Exeter used artificial selection and mating crosses among selection lines to determine if and how mating behaviours co-evolve with parental care behaviours.

“The research shows costs of mating in females appear to determine how patterns of parental care evolve in response to changes in mating behaviour,” explained Nick Royle from the centre for ecology and conservation at University of Exeter.

Breathe in your smart phone to check cancer signs!

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It may sound bizarre but breathing test on smart phones that could check for signs of cancer may be available in next two years.

According to scientists at Cambridge University’s spin-off company Owlstone, they are just two years away from developing a small add-on device that simply slots into the base of a mobile.

They have already created a desktop ‘disease breathalyser’ which is proven to work.

Now, machine that makes water out of ‘thin air’

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An Israeli company has developed a device that extracts drinking water from air.

The machine, which is developed by Water-Gen, is already being used by the military, but the company claims that civilians will use it in the future, CNN reported.

The company has come up with Atmospheric Water-Generation Units that is using its “GENius” heat exchanger to chill air and condense water vapor.

Study reveals ‘Love hormone’ bonds animals like humans

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And you thought you had a patent on ‘love hormone’ when it comes to showing affection! Dogs too have oxytocin and release it in a good quantity when in love or looking for bonding.

In fact, experts were shocked by the levels of oxytocin released in animals.

Referred to as a ‘bonding’ hormone, oxytocin plays an important role in the neuroanatomy of intimacy, specifically in sexual reproduction, in particular during and after childbirth.

How to win more ‘likes’ on Facebook photos

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Disappointed at less number of ‘likes’ on your selfie or a photo from your latest vacation on Facebook or Twitter? Now, there is a formula that can win more ‘likes’ online.

An Indian-American student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US, has devised a formula that tells how the contents of a photograph may predict its popularity online.

Computer student Aditya Khosla and his team scanned through 2.3 million Flickr photos to see which got the most views.

India successfully test-fires anti-ballistic missile

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India successfully test-fired an anti-ballistic missile on Sunday capable of intercepting targets outside the earth’s atmosphere, a major step in development of a missile defence system that is available to only a handful of nations.

Sharing borders with nuclear armed China and Pakistan, India is developing a two-tier missile defence system that aims to provide a multi-layered shield against ballistic missile attack.

Leaked mobile cover points to thinner, taller iPhone 6

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A leaked image of mobile case from a New Jersey based companies suggests that the iPhone 6 will be thinner and taller than the existing iPhones. According to CNET, the leaked iPhone 6 case image suggests that the iPhone 6 will be thinner than the Nexus 5. The case also suggests that the new iPhone will have the power button on its side, unlike the existing iPhones. However, it is not confirmed that the case, seemingly having a cutout similar to iphones, belongs to the iPhone. (ANI)

Life may have originated at bottom of sea, suggests new study

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A lab reconstruction of Earth’s “ancient ocean” has suggested that how the first organisms on the planet could have become metabolically active at the bottom of the sea. The results of the research, conducted at the University of Cambridge, permit scientists to speculate how primitive cells learned to synthesize their organic components – the molecules that form RNA, lipids and amino acids.

Lamp that secretly tweets your conversation!

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Next time you plan a private dinner with your beloved, check the lamp kept next to your table as it may be secretly listening in to your conversation and sending live tweets about whatever you say!

Developed by New York-based Kyle McDonald and Brian House, the Conversnitch lamp can covertly listen in on conversations and then post them on Twitter.

It captures audio and uploads it via the nearest Wi-Fi to a Twitter account.

The $100 (Rs.6,000) lamp includes a mini-computer, a microphone, an LED and a plastic flower pot.

Now, smartphone app to create the perfect dream

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A smartphone app makes it possible for people to create their perfect dream and so wake up feeling especially happy and refreshed, scientists say.

The app, called ‘Dream:ON’, monitors a person during sleep and plays a carefully crafted ‘soundscape’ when they dream.

Each soundscape is carefully designed to evoke a pleasant scenario, such as a walk in the woods, or lying on a beach, and these sounds influence people’s dreams.

Hertfordshire University’s Professor Richard Wiseman, teamed-up with app developers YUZA to create ‘Dream:ON’ in 2010.

Now revealed, how body’s defence keeps off ‘junk’ DNA attack

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Had there been no defence mechanism in operation to minimise the collateral damage of what could be termed as a civil war among the 37 trillion cells in a human body, diseases could have been much more widespread than they are today.

Scientists have now discovered how our cells fight off the effects of the rogue DNAs, called LINE-1 retrotransposons, in our cells.

The new finding gives scientists the first proof of a hypothesised defence strategy, said John Moran, a professor at the University of Michigan in the US.

Firstborn kids more likely to be ambitious, well-qualified

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A new study has revealed that firstborn children are more likely to be ambitious and well-qualified.

Researchers have claimed that Angela Merkel, Hillary Clinton, Christine Lagarde, Oprah Winfrey, Sheryl Sandberg, JK Rowling and Beyonce were all firstborn children and world’s most powerful women according to Forbes are also all firstborn children in their families, the Guardian reported.

You are invited for a spectacular meteor shower!

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If you do not have a telescope or binocular, do not worry as a meteor shower is something that anyone can enjoy. You may not like to miss the spectacular show of the Eta Aquarids around May 6.

The Eta Aquarids are a meteor shower associated with Halley’s Comet.

The meteors from this shower can be seen between April 19 and May 28 – peaking May 6.

A meteor is small body of matter from outer space that enters the earth’s atmosphere, becoming incandescent as a result of friction and appearing as a streak of light.

Liquid water on Mars more evident now

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Water could be flowing on the red planet more recently that previously thought, says a study.

“We have discovered a very young crater in the southern mid-latitudes of mars that shows evidence of liquid water in Mars in recent past,” said Andreas Johnsson from University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

With crater statistics, the researchers determined the age of the crater to be approximately 200,000 years.

It implied that the crater was formed long after the most recent proposed ice age on mars, which ended around 400,000 years ago, said the study.

Soon, users could smell Twitter notifications

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A futuristic system, Sensabubble, could alert you for Twitter notifications with little scented bubbles.

According to CNET, Sensabubble is a system that allows colors, text, and icons to be projected on bubbles that are filled with scent ed fog.

Sriram Subramanian, professor of human-computer Interaction in the University of Bristol Interaction and Graphics group has made a prototype of Sensa bubble, for Twitter notifications, but the model is not portable.

Subramanian explains possible usage of the device in museums, advertising, alarm clocks or education. (ANI)

Twitter selfies to reveal your mood

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What if selfies posted on Twitter can reveal our mood – whether people who live in “happier” cities tend to post more selfies and whether they smile more while taking self-portraits?

A team of researchers from University of California, San Diego and City University of New York have analysed one million photos tweeted over a period of one year to gauge various moods.

They are now in the process to measure the “moods” of cities. The idea is to correlate the Twitter data with other sources of happiness like Gallup Poll results.

Oz set to see partial solar eclipse

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A partial eclipse will be visible across Australia on Tuesday afternoon, April 29.

It will be highest in the sky in Western Australia, including Perth and Albany, and it will be visible low in the sky near sunset in Melbourne and Sydney.

A small bit of Antarctica, an inaccessible part, will have an annular eclipse, that is an eclipse in which the Moon is a little farther than average from the Earth so that it doesn’t entirely cover the Sun to make a total eclipse.

Scientists uncover planetary disks in NASA’s Hubble archive

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Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have applied a new image processing technique to obtain near-infrared scattered light photos of five disks observed around young stars in the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes database.

These disks are telltale evidence for newly formed planets.

Remi Soummer, of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md., and his team reanalyzed the archived images and found debris disks and even determined their shapes.

Facebook launches Newswire for journalists

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Facebook has launched FB Newswire, with the aim to make it easier for journalists and newsrooms to find, share and embed newsworthy content from the popular social networking website in their work.

The FB Newswire is a Facebook page of hand-selected and journalist-verified news stories from across Facebook’s platform, according to Andy Mitchell, director of news and global media partnerships at Facebook.

The newswire is designed to help journalists share and embed newsworthy Facebook content that is made public by its members such as photos, status updates and videos.

iPhone 6 may adopt curved display: Rumors

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Latest rumors suggest that iPhone 6 will have a curved display.

According to CNET, iPhone 6 will incorporate a curved glass display that will stay flush against the phone’s new rounded corners.

It is also being claimed that the new iPhone 6 will sport bigger screens compared to the existing iPhones.

The report added that Apple will release two iPhones this year, one with 4.7 inch display, and other will sport a 5.5 inch screen. (ANI)