Technology

Smartphone app developers have reportedly invented a scent cartridge that will give off aromas when plugged to the mobile phone every time an alarm goes off, or an email is received or a Facebook ‘like’ pops up.

The Scentee app puffs out various aromas like beef ribs, salted tongue and buttered potato along with other scents which can be set in accordance with message alerts, emails, etc.

According to Fox News, the scent catalog includes 12 olfactory options, from strawberry, mint and jasmine, to more non-traditional fragrances like corn soup, cinnamon roll and curry.

Microsoft has reportedly taken off the update of its Windows RT after some consumers complained of issues after downloading.

The software giant did not give further details about the issue but assured that it is trying to fix the issue quickly.

According to stuff.co.nz, Microsoft removed the RT 8.1 update from its Windows Store during the weekend.

Microsoft said that RT 8.1 is an OS for tablets and light, thin personal computers and only runs built-in apps or apps downloaded from the Windows Store.

Children as young as 9 are indulging in very risky behaviour online, a survey has revealed.

Many children between 9 and 11 are sharing personal information and playing games rated for much older children, the survey drawn up by the ISC2 IT security education group found.

According to a website, the survey found that 18 percent of the 1,162 children questioned said they had arranged offline meetings with friends made through the web.

Meanwhile, a second survey suggested that 55 percent of young people in England accept cyber bullying as part of everyday life.

Twitter is considering killing off its Twitter #Music mobile application, just six months after it was launched.

It is however not clear in what time Twitter will ultimately end support for Twitter #Music, as the company is currently in the midst of revamping its music department.

According to AllThingsD, since its debut in, Twitter #Music spiked in the App Store rankings, reaching the No. 6 slot in overall free app downloads . But in the months that followed it slipped quickly.

China and Iran are increasing their militarization objectives in the Antarctica region, Australia has warned.

The report called “Cold Calculations” has revealed that Antarctic bases are being used increasingly for military research, involving space and satellites.

According to The Age, a Chinese base inland has been built in the Australian Antarctic Territory for its clear, interference-free skies and space intelligence gathering potential and Iran has also recently shown interest to establish a polar presence.

Scientists have developed a biological DNA clock and are hoping to use it to slow ageing and fight cancer.

The DNA clock compares biological “age” of body tissue to a person’s age in years, the Mirror reported.

The DNA clock had been discovered embedded in genomes that is that a person’s complete genetic make up, and may help scientists find why humans age and how aging process can be slowed.

It was found that healthy female breast tissue is 2-3 years older than other tissues in the body.

A 800-million-pound early warning system to find asteroids that are on a potential collision course with the Earth is set to be launched next month by European Space Agency.

The Gaia space telescope is going to track thousands of asteroids that are placed between Earth and the Sun that earlier used to blind telescopes.

The probe is going to be placed 145km from the Earth and is fitted out with the most high-powered video camera that has ever been built, Metro.co.uk reported.

Researchers have used the fruit fly to find out how the brain integrates multiple signals to identify one unique smell.

A team led by Associate Professor Glenn Turner has described how a group of neurons in the fruit fly brain recognize multiple individual chemicals in combination in order to define, or remember, a single scent.

The olfactory system of a fruit fly begins at the equivalent of our nose, where a series of neurons sense and respond to very specific chemicals.

A researcher has said that a promising new malaria vaccine being tested by GlaxoSmithKline is a step in the right direction, but much more economical methods are needed.

Laura Harrington, professor of entomology at Cornell University and an expert in global health and epidemiology, said that despite a resurgence in the global effort to fight malaria, the war on this deadly mosquito borne infection has overwhelmed scientists, policy makers, and government officials alike.

A new Android-powered, Bluetooth-linked motorcycle helmet features a display that appears in front of our right cheek.

The headgear, called Skully Helmet, is capable of showing driving directions, the weather and other basic interface elements, Discovery News reported.

The Redwood City, Calif., startup’s helmet can also show the view behind you, which is captured by a 180-degree camera that has been placed at the back.

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Gajendra Jena, 55, kept his radio switched on for updates when Cyclone Phailin, the strongest storm to hit India’s eastern coast in 14 years, was nearing.

He packed essential items such as beaten rice, sugar, clothes, money and his radio set and went to the nearby cyclone shelter along with his wife and two small children, immediately after a special radio bulletin said people needed to evacuate.

The bulletin warned those who are staying within five km of the coast in dilapidated, thatched house or homes with asbestos roofing to move to safer places, Jena said.

The Indian space agency Sunday completed integration of its Mars mission satellite with the rocket while the heat shield is expected to be closed in couple of days, said an official.

“The 1,340 kg satellite was mated with the rocket today (Sunday). The heat shield will be closed in two or three days after tests. Everything is progressing normally on the rocket and the satellite side,” an Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) official, who did not want to be identified, told IANS.

Chinese researchers who were banned from attending a NASA conference on exoplanets – planets that orbit a star outside the solar system – research have received a letter of clarification from the organising committee and can now attend the event.

“Few weeks ago, you received an e-mail… noting that we were unable to accommodate your request to attend the Second Kepler Science Conference at the NASA Ames Research Centre,” Xinhua quoted a letter obtained Saturday from one of the banned researchers, who refused to be named, as stating.

Former president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Sunday said technology was a key enabler for better healthcare.

“Technology is a key enabler for better healthcare. If technology is not affordable, healthcare will not be accessible to the neediest people,” Kalam said launching a first of its kind, healthcare technology on wheels – “Mission Healthier India”.

Terri Bresenham, president and CEO, South Asia at GE Healthcare said: “Mission Healthier India” is our endeavour to showcase technologies that bring quality healthcare closer to the people of India.”

French researchers have developed a mathematical model to study the behaviour of earthly vortices, like hurricanes and ocean currents.

In the new paper, researchers Junho Park and Paul Billant of the CNRS Laboratoire d’Hydrodynamique in France describe their study of one such geophysical vortex behavior, radiative instability, and how it is affected by two factors, density stratification and background rotation.

Park said that in this study they have considered how background rotation — in this case, the rotation of the Earth — impacts them.

Automaker Volvo has developed new light-weight and cheaper nano batteries for future electric vehicles that could replace the conventional, heavy car batteries.

The new energy storage components consists of carbon-fibred, nano-structured batteries and super-capacitors, requires less space, is cost effective and eco-friendly, News24 reports.

The project in partnership with Imperial College London was funded by the European Union and is presently under tests in the form of panels within a Volvo S80 test vehicle.

A coffee kiosk will soon replace a barista, as it does everything better, it has been revealed.

According to The Atlantic, the Briggo coffee kiosk that is just 4.6sq m, doesn’t need any training and is able to memorise every single one of its customers’ orders, News.com.au reported.

Kevin Nater, CEO of the kiosk, claims that his invention is capable of making a perfect cup of coffee, tailored to one’s specifications, as it tracks each and every coffee order.

Security researchers at Quarkslab have reportedly revealed that tech giant Apple can read the encrypted content sent through its iMessage service, if it wants.

Quarkslab said that as claimed by Apple that there is end-to-end encryption in iMessage service, the issue is with the key infrastructure and the tech company can change a key anytime it wants and thus gain access to the content.

IBM has unveiled a prototype of its new brain-inspired computer that is fed by “electronic blood.”

The computer firm said that it learns from nature by building computers fuelled and cooled by a liquid, like human minds, the BBC reported.

The human brain has phenomenal computing power and uses only 20 watts of energy – an efficiency that the computer company is keen to match.

The firm’s new “redox flow” system pumps “electronic blood” through a computer, and carries power in and taking heat out.

Sir James Dyson, the brains behind the bladeless fan and bagless vacuum cleaner, may be building a silent hairdryer.

Diagrams seen at the UK’s patents office show that Dyson’s company has filed patents for a hand-held blower that features an insulating chamber, the Guardian reported.

The usual hairdryers are extremely loud, and reach up to 75 decibels, which is as noisy as a vacuum cleaner, but is held besides your head.

A new image of the Sunward plunging Comet ISON suggests that the comet is intact even though there are some predictions that the fragile icy nucleus might disintegrate as the Sun warms it.

The comet will pass closest to the Sun on November 28.

In this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image taken on October 9, the comet’s solid nucleus is unresolved because it is so small.

If the nucleus broke apart then Hubble would have likely seen evidence for multiple fragments.

Moreover, the coma or head surrounding the comet’s nucleus is symmetric and smooth.

A team of researchers have used a novel astronomical survey software system — the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF) — to link a new stripped-envelope supernova, named iPTF13bvn, to the star from which it exploded.

The iPTF team including Carnegie’s Mansi Kasliwal and John Mulchaey, also pinpointed the first afterglow of an explosion called a gamma-ray burst that was found by the Fermi satellite.

Their findings reflect the first time a star has been linked to the resulting explosion for this type of supernova, called Type Ib.

An Oxford University researcher has claimed that Bigfoot is nothing but a cross between an ancient polar bear and brown bear.

According to Bryan Sykes, professor of human genetics at the university, the most likely explanation for the existence of the mythical creature, which is believed to reside in the High Himalayas, is that it is a hybrid, the Mirror reported.

Sykes has explained in his upcoming book, titled ‘The Yeti Enigma: A DNA Detective Story’, that the species are closely related and are known to interbreed where their territories overlap.

(ANI): Researchers have found evidence that magnetic waves in a polar coronal hole contain enough energy to heat the corona and that they also deposit most of their energy at sufficiently low heights for the heat to spread throughout the corona.

The observations by Drs. Michael Hahn and Daniel Wolf Savin, research scientists at Columbia University’s Astrophysics Laboratory in New York, help to answer a 70-year-old solar physics conundrum about the unexplained extreme temperature of the Sun’s corona – known as the coronal heating problem.

(ANI): Mars rover Curiosity has just proven that Martian meteorites are really from the Red Planet.

A key new measurement of Mars’ atmosphere by NASA’s Curiosity rover provides the most definitive evidence yet of the origins of Mars meteorites while at the same time providing a way to rule out Martian origins of other meteorites.

The new measurement is a high-precision count of two forms of argon gas-argon-36 and argon-38 — accomplished by the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument on Curiosity.