Hong Kong on Friday announced a new air quality health index, the first in Asia to use the system, in its ongoing battle to combat air pollution.
The Air Quality Health Index (AQHI), introduced in Canada in 2005, will replace the city’s nearly two-decades-old Air Pollution Index (API) amid growing concerns about the city’s air quality and a need for more comprehensive monitoring data.
China’s first lunar rover entered the moon’s orbit on Friday, state media reported, a key step towards the vessel’s planned landing later this month.
The rover — known as Yutu, or Jade Rabbit — reached lunar orbit late Friday, the official Xinhua news agency said, about 112 hours after it was launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwestern China.
It is expected to touch down on the moon in mid-December to explore its surface and search for natural resources.
Google has reportedly extended voice search support on Android and iOS platform by adding three more languages other than English.
Google’s voice search app would now be able to answer queries in French, German and Japanese.
According to TechCrunch, despite voice search available in dozens of languages, google could only respond in English earlier, however, the new languages are also supported by Google’s Knowledge Graph to be able to answer queries posted in that language.
Scientists have developed a drug, which will be available in 5 years to slow down Alzheimer’s relentless attack on the brain.
Tests have shown that solanezumab delays the pace of decline by more than a third in those with a mild form of the disease, the Daily Express reported.
Researchers also believe that the treatment could one day be used like statins, with a single jab given to patients before they start showing symptoms of the disease.
A team of astronomers were left mystified after they discovered a giant planet orbiting its star at 650 times the average Earth-Sun distance.
The international team of astronomers, led by a University of Arizona graduate student, discovered the most distantly orbiting planet found to date around a single, sun-like star.
Planet HD 106906 b weighs 11 times Jupiter’s mass and orbits its star at 650 times the average Earth-Sun distance, and is unlike anything in found our own Solar System and throws a wrench in planet formation theories.
A mysterious video has emerged on YouTube, which shows a glowing alien-like creature floating in the waters of Bristol Harbour.
The footage has caused a stir on social networking sites and even experts cannot agree on what the uploader, John Tombe has captured on camera.
Witnesses said that the squid-like being flashed brightly in the darkness for around half a minute before disappearing, the Independent reported.
Researchers have used novel techniques to modify inexpensive imaging devices, like a webcam selling for ten euros and a mobile phone camera, into a mini-microscope.
The resolution of such mini-microscopes was dependent on the pixel size of the sensor, but sufficient for identification of several pathogenic parasites.
Dr. Johan Lundin and Dr. Ewert Linder were able to use the mini-microscopes they constructed to yield images of parasitic worm eggs present in urine and stools of infected individuals.
A team of astronomers were left mystified after they discovered a giant planet orbiting its star at 650 times the average Earth-Sun distance.
The international team of astronomers, led by a University of Arizona graduate student, discovered the most distantly orbiting planet found to date around a single, sun-like star.
Planet HD 106906 b weighs 11 times Jupiter’s mass and orbits its star at 650 times the average Earth-Sun distance, and is unlike anything in found our own Solar System and throws a wrench in planet formation theories.
After Google and Yahoo, Microsoft is reportedly set to encrypt all the data flowing through its networks in a bid to thwart government surveillance.
Following revelations by NSA whistleblower about the US’ alleged mass surveillance programmes, tech companies are facing fire from consumers and investors for not addressing privacy, which in turn has prompted them to install higher encryptions on their data flowing channels.
Researchers have been left searching for potential plasma loss mechanisms from Saturn’s magnetosphere.
In-depth observations made by the Cassini orbiter, which has been circling Saturn since 2004, have revealed fundamental differences between the behavior of Saturn’s magnetosphere and that of the Earth’s magnetosphere.
Earth’s magnetospheric plasma is largely populated by ions captured from the solar wind, whereas Saturn’s plasma comes predominantly from water vapor that spews from massive geysers on the southern end of its icy moon Enceladus.
Google’s new robotic grocery delivery service is expected to challenge Amazon’s drone project which envisages transporting goods to its customers by air.
The company has recently begun Google Shopping Express in San Francisco and San Jose, which is going to directly challenge Amazon’s Prime Air Project, the BBC reports.
According to the report, Google’s robots could be paired with its self-driving car research to help automate the delivery of goods to people’s doors.
Google said it has taken over seven robotics companies in the past half-a-year to develop its own product.
A team of researchers has revealed that the highly toxic carbon monoxide gas, which can be used to treat certain inflammatory medical conditions, may also have a role to play in treating cancer.
The study by the researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center show that in cell culture and animal models carbon monoxide (CO) can both prevent tumor growth in prostate and lung cancers and can amplify the effectiveness of chemotherapy.
Technology giant Microsoft has raised about USD 8 billion by selling securities and the proceeds would be utilised for funding acquisitions, among others.
The fund raising exercise comes at a time when Microsoft is in the process of acquiring the devices and services businesses of Finnish handset maker Nokia in a deal worth USD 7.2 billion.
The total amount includes bonds denominated in the US dollar as well as euros.
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has obtained the highest-resolution movie yet of a unique six-sided jet stream, dubbed as the hexagon, around Saturn’s North Pole.
Spanning about 20,000 miles (30,000 kilometers) across, the hexagon is a wavy jet stream of 200-mile-per-hour winds (about 300 kilometers per hour) with a massive, rotating storm at the center. There is no weather feature exactly, consistently like this anywhere else in the solar system.
Researchers are unravelling the longstanding mysteries surrounding the Van Allen radiation belts that circle Earth.
The discovery used measurements taken by a University of New Hampshire-led instrument on board NASA’s Van Allen Probes twin spacecraft to reveal that the high-energy particles populating the radiation belts can be accelerated to nearly the speed of light.
This mode of action is analogous to that of a particle accelerator like the Large Hadron Collider.
X-rays streaming towards Earth from the region near a neutron star that is cannibalizing its companion star are the youngest “X-ray binary” yet known, according to scientists.
The team discovered the age of this record-breaking pair, named Circinus X-1, by using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, which revealed faint remnants of the supernova explosion that created the neutron star.
The US National Security Agency gathers nearly 5 billion cell phone records around the world every day to track the movements of individuals and map their relationships, according to the Washington Post.
The records feed a vast database that stores information about the locations of at least hundreds of millions of devices, the influential US newspaper reported Wednesday citing top-secret documents and interviews with US intelligence officials
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Thursday said India needs to develop a strong domestic manufacturing base in electronics and telecommunication, adding that the usage of internet is quite low in the country.
“I would like to take today’s opportunity to repeat a point that I made last year. India needs to develop a strong domestic manufacturing base in electronics and telecommunication. It is estimated that by 2020 India will be importing electronics product worth $300 billion, which will be more than the value of our oil imports.
China today issued 4G licences to three state-run Chinese telecom operators, marking the beginning of a new era in the country’s high-speed mobile network employing homegrown technology.
China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) issued permits to offer fourth-generation (4G) mobile
network services employing homegrown TD-LTE technology to China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom.
The ministry said the three companies have conducted large-scale tests of TD-LTE, or Time-Division Long-Term
Scientists have sequenced the entire genome of the world’s longest poisonous snake – king cobra – and uncovered the secrets behind its deadly venom.
King cobras, capable of growing up to 18.5 feet in length, can be found in forests of India and throughout southeast Asia.
Researchers from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, along with a team of international biologists, also analysed the genome of the Burmese python (Python molurus bivittatus) and used it for comparison with the king cobra (Ophiophagus Hannah).
Cyber crime reports have revealed that 2014 will experience more cyber attacks and corporations will have to conduct more boardroom scrutiny to manage their data supply chains.
Security firms Kroll and Experian reported that the corporate boards will have to intensely scrutinise how their C-suite executives are managing and protecting their data pipelines from problems that could lead to regulatory penalties, shareholder lawsuits and reputational damage.
The number of data breaches reported are also expected to rise in 2014, the report added.
ANI
India’s maiden mission to Mars has traversed beyond the sphere of influence (SOI) of Earth extending about 9,25,000 km in its 10-month long voyage to the red planet.
The spacecraft crossed the SOI of Earth at around 1:14 hrs (IST) today, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said.
The Mars orbiter spacecraft had slung out of its earth-bound orbit in the early hours of December one during the critical 22-minute Trans Mars Injection, a manoeuvre billed as the “mother of all slingshots.”
A rice gene that can increase the production of indica rice varieties, which includes basmati, by up to 36 per cent, has been discovered by a group of international scientists.
Most of the rice produced in Southern Asia, including India and Thailand, is indica rice.
In preliminary testing, researchers from Japan and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) here found that incorporating the SPIKE gene increased the yields of modern long-grain indica rice varieties – the world’s most widely grown types of rice – by 13 to 36 per cent.
The apex body of plastic industry Tuesday appealed to the Centre to set up plastic parks across the country and provide fund for technology upgradation of units operating in the key sector.
Indian plastics industry is poised for a substantial growth on the back of increasing demand from various sectors such as agriculture, automobile, engineering, infrastructure, packaging and healthcare, All India Plastics Manufacturers Association (AIPMA) President Anand Oza said here.
Researchers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have found faint signatures of water in the atmospheres of five distant planets.
The five planets-WASP-17b, HD209458b, WASP-12b, WASP-19b and XO-1b-orbit nearby stars.
The strengths of their water signatures varied. WASP-17b, a planet with an especially puffed-up atmosphere, and HD209458b had the strongest signals.
The signatures for the other three planets, WASP-12b, WASP-19b and XO-1b, also are consistent with water.