Technology

) The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid-Tropics (ICRISAT), which conducts agricultural research for development in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, Thursay launched a website to make large volumes of scientific knowledge and information easily accessible by the public.

The website (exploreit.icrisat.org) was launched Thursday, said a statement by ICRISAT, which has its headquarters at Patancheru near here.

EXPLOREit will become the main source of ICRISAT’s scientific information, with profiles of all topics, systems, crops, locations and resources where it works.

The first scoop of soil analysed by the Curiosity rover reveals that fine materials on the Martian surface may contain “abundant” water, Xinhua reported Thursday citing US researchers.

Curiosity touched down Mars last August and began its 100-day mission of collecting and analysing samples of all kinds in Gale crater, which is near the Martian equator, with its high-tech lasers and scoops.

In this study, researchers from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute used the rover’s scoop to collect dust, dirt and finely grained soil from a sandy patch known as “Rocknest”.

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has confessed that setting ”Control-Alt-Delete” as a way to log in to Windows was a mistake.

According to Fox News, during a talk at Harvard, Gates said that there was an option to make a single button for such a command, but the IBM keyboard designer didn”t want to give Microsoft one.

Scientists have discovered Earth-like Martian rock that could offer new insight into the history of Mars’ interior and suggests parts of the Red Planet may be more like our own.

Lead author is Edward Stolper and his colleagues – including Caltech senior research scientist Michael B. Baker and graduate student Megan Newcombe – examines in detail a 50-centimeter-tall pyramid-shaped rock named “Jake_M” (after MSL surface operations systems chief engineer Jacob “Jake” Matijevic, who passed away two weeks after Curiosity’s landing).

A man, who lost his leg below the knee after a motorcycle accident four years ago, now has a robotic prosthesis which he can control with his mind.

While similar technology has allowed amputees to control bionic arms with their thoughts, 32-year-old Zac Vawter is the first amputee with a thought-controlled bionic leg, the researchers said.

After suffering a severe nasal trauma in a car wreck, a Chinese man will soon undergo a transplant that will replace his damaged nose with a new nose that has been grown on his forehead.

At the time of the accident, the 22-year-old patient, identified as Xiaolian, did not have a plastic surgery due to financial constraints, Fox News reported.

Doctors had to resort to the extreme measure after an infection decomposed the cartilage of his original nose and made it impossible for them to fix it.

A team of researchers lead by Indian origin scientist has unveiled the first computer built entirely with carbon nanotubes.

‘Cedric’, which is the most complex carbon-based electronic system realised till now, is only a basic prototype, but could open the door to a new generation of digital devices, the BBC reported.

It can help develop a machine which is smaller, faster and more efficient than today’s silicon models.

A research team has invented a “wormlike” hematite photoanode which can convert sunlight and water to clean hydrogen energy with a record-breaking high efficiency of 5.3 percent.

The previous record of solar hydrogen efficiency among stable oxide semiconductor photoanodes was 4.2 percent owned by the research group of Prof. Michael Graetzel at the Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland.

The key to the solar water splitting technology is the semiconductor photocatalysts that absorb sunlight and split water to hydrogen and oxygen using the absorbed solar energy.

Iran Wednesday unveiled two domestically manufactured air-launched missiles, Press TV reported.

“By building these missiles for the first time in the country, not only will the fighter jets of our country’s air force be equipped with advanced missiles, but their operational and deterrence power will also increase considerably,” Defence Minister Hossein Dehqan was quoted as saying by the channel, Xinhua reported.

US space agency NASA and the Department of Homeland Security said Wednesday that they have teamed up to develop a device to detect disaster victims trapped in large piles of rubble.

The prototype technology, called Finding Individuals for Disaster and Emergency Response, or FINDER, can locate individuals buried as deep as nine metres in crushed materials, hidden behind six metres of solid concrete, and from a distance of about 30 metres in open spaces.

A research team has invented a “wormlike” hematite photoanode which can convert sunlight and water to clean hydrogen energy with a record-breaking high efficiency of 5.3 percent.

The previous record of solar hydrogen efficiency among stable oxide semiconductor photoanodes was 4.2 percent owned by the research group of Prof. Michael Graetzel at the Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland.

The key to the solar water splitting technology is the semiconductor photocatalysts that absorb sunlight and split water to hydrogen and oxygen using the absorbed solar energy.

(ANI) A new study suggests that oxygen appeared in the atmosphere up to 700 million years earlier than it was earlier believed, raising new questions about the evolution of early life.

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen and University of British Columbia examined the chemical composition of three-billion-year-old soils from South Africa – the oldest soils on Earth – and found evidence for low concentrations of atmospheric oxygen.

NASA along with the US Department of Homeland Security are reportedly working together on developing a first-of-its-kind portable radar device to trace disaster struck victims by detecting their heartbeats and breathing patterns when trapped under piles of rubble.

The prototype technology, called Finding Individuals for Disaster and Emergency Response (FINDER) can locate individuals buried as deep as 30 feet in crushed materials, hidden behind 20 feet of solid concrete, and from a distance of 100 feet in open spaces.

Boeing has revealed that the United States Air Force is testing its retrofitted F-16 fighter jets as drones for training pilots.

Two U.S. Air Force pilots controlled an unmanned Lockheed Martin F-16 jet on its first flight from a Florida base to the Gulf of Mexico last week, the BBC reports.

Boeing suggested that the innovation could ultimately be used to help train pilots, providing an adversary they could practise firing on.

The jet, which previously sat at an Arizona site for 15 years, carried out a series of manoeuvres on its first flight.

Researchers studied genomic regions and mitochondrial DNA of individuals from 66 African and Eurasian populations to determine that the first significant expansion of human population happened in Paleolithic age (60,000-80,000 years ago).

Now, researchers Aime, et al., compared their genetic results with archaeological findings.

The dispersal and expansion of Neolithic culture from the Middle East has recently been associated with the distribution of human genetic markers.

Two comets that will pass Mars next year have prompted excitement as well as some concern that some cometary particles could hit the Mars spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet and exploring its surface.

Currently, three operational spacecraft are orbiting Mars: NASA’s Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), as well as Europe’s Mars Express.

NASA also has placed two functioning rovers, Curiosity and Opportunity, on Mars’ surface.

M.C. David, a 57-year-old amateur magician from Kerala, has secured a US patent for an invention that generates electricity “anywhere, anytime”.

The invention relates to generation of electricity from gravitational energy.

An iron pipe, filled with water, is placed vertically and hollow balls made of concrete or wood are driven into the pipe from below. As each ball rises due to buoyancy and is forced out of the pipe, it falls on to a moving platform which is connected to a wheel. The wheel is connected to a generator and electricity is generated, David said.

Curiosity rover has uncovered evidence of water on Mars. Thanks to discoveries by the NASA rover, which has been exploring the Red Planet since touching down inside Gale Crater in August 2012, picture of ancient Mars has emerged during the past few months.

The announcements have come in dribs and drabs, but presented together recently here at the European Planetary Science Congress, they provide compelling evidence that Mars was quite wet in the distant past, CBS News reported.

More than 83,000 volunteer citizen scientists have helped catalog information on more than 300,000 galaxies to help learn more about our universe.

The project, named Galaxy Zoo 2, is the second phase of a crowdsourcing effort to categorize galaxies in our universe.

Researchers say computers are good at automatically measuring properties such as size and color of galaxies, but more challenging characteristics, such as shape and structure, can currently only be determined by the human eye.

Researchers have developed a transparent, elastic organic light-emitting device (OLED) that is stretchable, foldable, and could help revolutionise the electronic display industry.

The OLED that researchers from UCLA’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have developed can be repeatedly stretched, folded and twisted at room temperature while still remaining lit and retaining its original shape.

Researchers have said that they may now know about the mechanism that our brain uses to make sense of novel situations.

Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder showed that brains could process these new situations by relying on a method similar to the “pointer” system used by computers.

In the new study, led by Trenton Kriete, a postdoctoral researcher, the scientists show that the connections in the brain between the prefrontal cortex and the basal ganglia could play a similar role to the pointers used in computer science.

New analysis has revealed that moon, which is believed to have formed after a mysterious planet crashed into Earth about 4.56 billion years ago, is most likely between 4.4 billion and 4.45 billion years old.

According to the researchers, the new findings, which make the moon 100 million years younger, may reshape scientists’ understanding of the early Earth and moon, Discovery News reported.

The hormone, oxytocin, could play a role in treating psychiatric disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, a new study has revealed.

According to the study conducted by Dr David Cochran of University of Massachusetts Medical School and his colleagues, oxytocin is an important regulator of human social behaviors.

The study also revealed that the hormone can also be useful for treating certain mental health diagnoses, particularly those which involve impaired social functioning.

A recent study has revealed that people who are addicted to porn show similar brain activity to alcoholics or drug addicts.

The MRI scans of the test subjects, who confessed to compulsive pornography use, showed that the reward centers of the brain reacted to explicit material in the same way as an alcoholic’s might on seeing a drinks’ advertisement, the Independent reported.

The research, which was conducted by Cambridge University, examined the brain activity of 19 addictive pornography users against a control group of people who were not compulsive users.

China”s most popular instant messaging service, WeChat, now offers its users a chance to interact with celebrities for a monthly membership fee.

Users can get to see unretouched celebrity photos, read books published by famous writers and also have their favourite movie stars wake them up.

The messaging app was launched in early 2011 and has gained popularity with many celebrities in China, who prefer to use it as a tool to engage with their fans.