In what is being considered a rare feat by experts, four schoolboys from Delhi have discovered two asteroids.
Shubham Sharma and Mayank Sharma of DAV Centenary School, Paschim Vihar and young Astronomicans (amateur astronomer’s wing of SPACE) Sahil Wadhwa and Akshay Gupta, who were part of two separate teams, have made two provisional discoveries of asteroids doing the country proud, SPACE Director C B Devgun told PTI.
A genetic clue to why women outlive men has been found in a study of fruit flies by British researchers.
The research, published in the journal Current Biology, show that a set of DNA inherited from the mother can be harmful to males and speed up male aging, Xinhua reported Friday.
Researchers from Lancaster University said the results point to numerous mutations within mitochondrial DNA that affect how long males live, and speed at which they age.
Mitochondrial DNA, which is found in many species, including human, is inherited through the mother only.
A Chennai-based development organisation is among the five winners of this year’s World Environment Day Challenge organised by the UN for inspiring environmental action.
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) had challenged people across the world to pledge an environmental activity in connection with this year’s World Environment Day, which was observed on June 5.
“Today we celebrate five inspiring projects, submitted for the World Environment Day 2012 challenge, that illuminate the pathway to a transition to a green economy,” UNEP?s Executive Director Achim Steiner said.
India will launch three satellites next month and two more by the end of this year, said a senior official here.
“We will be launching Spot-6, a French satellite and a small Japanese satellite on board PSLV-C21 (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) rocket, next month,” P.S.Veeraraghavan, director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), told .
The third is a communication satellite – GSAT-10 – on-board Ariane rocket from Kourou in French Guiana.
The Thiruvananthapuram-based VSCC is part of India’s space agency Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
Russia and Britain are discussing a number of space projects, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday.
“We plan to launch several British satellites,” Putin said while summing up his short visit to London.
“We would like to receive a positive response to the deployment of a Glonass (Russian satellite navigation system) station here, in Britain, to make the signal for Europe even more precise.”
“We also have opportunities of military and technical cooperation, which is good both from the viewpoint of the economy and political trust,” he said.
Microsoft has announced that it has completed the product development and testing of Windows 8 and is releasing its next generation of operating system to computer makers.
“The Windows 8 team is proud to share with you that a short while ago we started releasing Windows 8 to PC OEM and manufacturing partners,” said Microsoft’s Windows engineering team on their blog.
“This means our next milestone will be the availability of exciting new models of PCs loaded with Windows 8 and on-line availability of Windows 8 on October 26, 2012.”
India has successfully developed its first submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) for the indigenous nuclear submarine ‘INS Arihant’, joining an elite club of nations possessing such weaponry.
The SLBM, which can be launched from Arihant, has been developed successfully, sources said here.
Microsoft Tuesday introduced the preview version of Outlook.com, a new free web-based personal email service with cleaner user interface and integration with social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
“We think the time is right to reimagine email. So today, we’re introducing a preview of Outlook.com,” Chris Jones, a Microsoft corporate vice president, wrote in a blog post, Xinhua reported.
Microsoft said that with Outlook.com, there are 30 percent more messages visible in the inbox than similar web-based email services most users now are used to.
The first bio-inspired microbot is capable of not just walking on water but jumping up and down on the water’s surface like the insect, a study shows.
Qinmin Pan and colleagues from Harbin Institute of Technology and the National Natural Science Foundation of China, reported a number of advances toward tiny robots that can walk on water.
However, even the most advanced designs, including one from Pan’s team last year – can only walk on water. Pan noted that real water striders actually leap, the journal Applied Materials & Interfaces reported.
Russia Saturday launched a rocket with a Cosmos class military satellite and three civilian satellites on board, spokesperson Col. Alexey Zolotukhin said.
The rocket blasted off from the Plesetsk space centre in northern Russia at 5.35 a.m.
The civilian payload includes two Gonets-M telecoms satellites and a MiR scientific microsatellite.
The satellites were put into designated orbits at 7.21 a.m., as scheduled.
The classified military satellite will join a Russian network of about 70 military reconnaissance satellites.
IANS
Terming water pollution as a “national crisis”, a Parliamentary committee has decided to summon officials of at least six central ministries to seek their views to find ways to check the problem.
“Since the subject of water is not restricted to only one ministry, we have decided to summon officials of Ministries of Water Resources, Agriculture, Urban Development, Panchayati Raj, Rural Development and Sanitation and Drinking Water to find a multi-agency approach to deal with the situation,” a member of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee said here.
After more than two years of anticipation, Google finally announced Thursday that the company’s ultra-high speed internet service Google Fiber would become available to the residents of its test community Kansas City starting in September.
Offering an internet connectivity speed of one gigabit per second, Google said the service will be about 100 times faster than the speed most Americans have with current broadband connections, reported Xinhua.
Popular instant messaging service Google Talk has been partially restored after going offline in India and other parts of the world for hours together.
“Google Talk service has already been restored for some users…We expect a resolution for all users in the near
future. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change,” Google said in an update at 2020 hours.
It is estimated that there are thousands of Google Talk users in India.
However, half an hour later, Google said the problem with Google Talk should be resolved.
The Canadian Space Agency has unveiled a precision equipment that will be used on the James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the Hubble.
The Webb, billed as a powerful time machine capable of uncovering the origins of the universe, is scheduled for launch in 2018.
Canada’s contribution to the biggest space telescope ever made is a two-in-one instrument, reported Xinhua.
China Wednesday night successfully launched a communication satellite into space.
A Long March-3C carrier rocket carrying the Tianlian I-03 satellite lifted off at 11.43 p.m. from Sichuan province, Xinhua reported.
The Tianlian will join two other satellites to improve the country’s data relay services.
—IANs
A large inflatable heat shield to demonstrate how a space capsule can slowdown and protect itself while entering Earth’s atmosphere at hypersonic speeds has been successfully tested by NASA.
The Inflatable Re-entry Vehicle Experiment (IRVE-3) was launched by sounding rocket yesterday from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility and survived a trip through Earth’s atmosphere, while travelling at a speeds of 7,600 mph, NASA said in a statement.
Four Indian-American researchers figure among 96 named by President Barack Obama as recipients of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest US honour for young professionals.
“Discoveries in science and technology not only strengthen our economy, they inspire us as a people.” Obama said announcing the awards Monday. “The impressive accomplishments of today’s awardees so early in their careers promise even greater advances in the years ahead.”
Google has acquired Sparrow, a provider of email management software for Apple’s platforms, Sparrow announced.
“Now we’re joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger vision — one that we think we can better achieve with Google,” said Dom Leca, chief executive officer of Sparrow, in an announcement posted on the company’s website Friday.
No financial details of the acquisition were disclosed, reported Xinhua.
India is all set to give the go-ahead for an ambitious mission to Mars, expected in November next year, a top Space Department official said here today.
“A lot of studies have been done on the possible mission to Mars”, Secretary in the Department of Space and Chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation K Radhakrishnan told reporters here.
“We have come to the last phase of approvals”, he said. “And I am sure that, maybe soon, we will be hearing an announcement on the Mars mission”.
Even nine-month-old infants can distinguish between speech and non-speech sounds in both humans and animals, a study says.
“Our results show that speech perception of infants is resilient and flexible. This means that our recognition of speech is more refined at an earlier age than we’d thought,” says Athena Vouloumanos, assistant professor of psychology at New York University, who led the study.
NASA astronaut Sunita Williams says she is ready for her second expedition to the International Space Station (ISS). Williams, who has been assigned as the next commander of the ISS, says she is impatient to meet members from Expedition-32, who have been on board ISS since mid-May.
Daughter of an Indian American father from Gujarat and a Slovenian mother, Sunita is currently making final preparations for the Sunday launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, according to a NASA announcement.
A huge solar storm, the second major flare to erupt from the Sun in less than a week, has triggered a coronal mass ejection which is expected to reach the Earth today, scientists have claimed.
The powerful flare unleashed on Thursday sent a wave of plasma toward Earth at a speed of about 1,400 km per second and it’s expected to reach the planet by 5:00 GMT (10:20 A.M India time) today. While it may spark a minor geomagnetic storm, power stations, satellites and astronauts need not worry, the scientists said.
India on Friday successfully test-fired its indigenously developed nuclear capable Agni-I ballistic missile, with a strike range of 700 km, as part of the Army’s user trial from a test range at Wheeler Island off Odisha coast.
The surface-to-surface, single-stage missile, powered by solid propellants, was test-fired from a mobile launcher at about 1010 hrs from launch pad-4 of the Integrated Test Range at Wheeler Island, about 100 km from here, defence sources said.
“The trial of the sophisticated missile with a strike range of 700 km was successful,” a defence scientist said.
A hacker group has posted the names and email addresses of paedophiles online as it launched a campaign against them, the Daily Mail reported.
The group, called Anonymous, posted a video on YouTube announcing the campaign, called Operation PedoChat. The names and email addresses were posted on the site’s Pastebin.
“Recently it has come to our attention that there has been a surge of websites dedicated to pedophiles for chat and picture sharing,” an member of the group said in the video.
China has rolled out a plan to boost its underdeveloped electric vehicle industry, with a goal of making the industry more competitive in the global marketplace, Xinhua reported.
The central government’s plan calls for producing 500,000 electrical and hybrid cars by 2015, with the output of both types of vehicles slated to grow to two million units by 2020, according to the Chinese government website.