In a new study, scientists have blamed volcanism for a 500-year cold period referred to as the Little Ice Age.
Volcanism is often implicated in periods of abrupt cooling. After the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, for instance, global temperatures dropped by half a degree Celsius due to airborne particulate matter blocking solar radiation.
However, these effects don’t normally last more than a few years.
US online retail spending reached $44.3 billion in the first three months of this year, with help from shoppers using tablet computers to buy clothing and other items, industry tracker comScore reported.
The top-performing online product categories included digital content and subscriptions, computer software, consumer electronics, jewellery, watches and event tickets.
Each category grew at least 17 percent versus year ago, reported Xinhua.
A Japanese company has come up with a robot vacuum cleaner that can talk to people as it cleans. The gadget can be controlled with an iPhone and it also sends back photos of the home while it does its job.
The Cocorobo – created by Sharp – speaks three languages, English, Japanese and Chinese. It comes with more than 30 phrases, including “Long time no see” and “Hello”, a newspaper reported.
The annual mean temperature in India is expected to rise by 3.5-4.3 degrees Celsius by 2098, badly impacting production of wheat – a major grain crop – and increasing malaria outbreak, according to India’s submission to the United Nations (UN) released here Wednesday.
India’s second national communication to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) projects climate change impacts for key sectors like water, agriculture, forestry, natural ecosystems, costal regions, human health and other during 1961-2098 using computer generated models.
After the much appreciated Doodle honouring zip inventor Gideon Sundback, Google is now celebrating the 138th birthday of famous English archaeologist and Egyptologist Howard Carter.
Carter, who gained fame as the discoverer of “Tomb of Tutankhamun”, was honoured by Google by a portrayal of the Tomb of Tutankhamen” at the centre of its homepage.
Google’s autonomous cars, also known as robotic or informally as driverless or self-driving, have passed their first driving test in Nevada, which included a trip along the famous Las Vegas Strip.
The cars are controlled by computers processing a combination of mapping data, radar, laser sensors and video feeds.
According to The Telegraph, Nevada is the first state to grant a license to these vehicles to run on public roads.
It comes after Nevada passed laws to create a new type of licence for autonomous vehicles last year, which came into effect on March 1.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed the implementation of the Cheetah Reintroduction Programme by which the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) had proposed to import the African large-sized feline to India.
A forest bench comprising justices K.S. Radhakrishan and C.K. Prasad restrained the government from going ahead with the Rs. 300 crore project in the wake of questions being raised that a “totally misconceived” venture was pushed without consulting that National Board for Wildlife (NBW) which is a statutory body for the enforcement of the wild life law.
Researchers have suggested that magnet-making bacteria may be used for building biological computers of the future.
A team from the UK’s University of Leeds and Japan’s Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology have used microbes that eat iron.
As they ingest the iron, the microbes create tiny magnets inside themselves, similar to those in PC hard drives.
The research may lead to the creation of much faster hard drives, the team of scientists say.
People who have already processed online information to make sense of a subject can help strangers facing similar tasks. This process of distributed sense making, say researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft, could save time and result in a better understanding of the information needed for whatever goal users might have.
They could be planning a vacation, gathering information about a serious disease or trying to decide what product to buy, according to a Carnegie Mellon statement.
More and more people are getting addicted to social media, such as Facebook.
To measure this addiction researchers from Norway have developed a new instrument called the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale.
The use of Facebook has increased rapidly. We are dealing with a subdivision of Internet addiction connected to social media, said Doctor of Psychology Cecilie Schou Andreassen, who heads the research project Facebook Addiction at the University of Bergen (UiB).
Andreassen has explanation as to why some people develop Facebook dependency.
Internet revolution has bypassed rural India with less than half a percent of families having the facility at home as against 6 percent in cities, reveals a government survey.
“At all India level only about 0.4 percent of rural households had access to Internet at home as compared to about 6 percent of urban households,” said the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) report on expenditure in 2009-10.
Reflecting the digital divided in India, the study said just 3.5 households per 1000 families, had access to Internet services at home in rural areas in the year.
Sensors, transmitters and GPS modules need only a few milliwatts of power to operate, which could also be met by vibrations produced by moving objects, thanks to a new technology – “energy harvesting”.
But is this really enough to supply electronic microsystems? The answer lies in a compact data-logger installed on board, designed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, Germany.
Slamming the Centre for its alleged lackadaisical approach towards cleaning Ganga river, BJP leader Uma Bharti said the National Ganga River Basin Authority is not functioning properly and is a “mere wastage of money.”
“The central government is responsible for the deplorable condition of Ganga. The Prime Minister constituted Ganga River Basin Authority, but it is merely a waste of money,” she told reporters after she visited environmentalist Swami Gyan Swarup Sanand in a hospital here yesterday.
A group of astrophysicists studying the dust of shattered “corpse planets” in the atmospheres of dying white dwarf stars have highlighted a doomsday scenario, which states that one day in the distant future, the sun will explode and destroy our nearby planets, roast the Earth’s surface and probably kill us all.
Scientists from the University of Warwick used the Hubble Space Telescope to examine the chemical mix of 80 such stars.
China launched a new mapping satellite early Sunday.
The satellite – Tianhui I-02 – will mainly be used to conduct scientific experiments, carry out land resource surveys and map territory, according to a statement released after the launch, Xinhua reported.
Remote sensing information and test results from the satellite will boost both the country’s scientific research and economic development, it added.
It was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the country’s Gansu province. It has entered its preset orbit.
Want to avoid being “unfriended” by your friends on Facebook? Then, just start responding to posts on your wall, researchers say.
Researchers at Arizona State University in the US found that following some simple but unspoken rules — such as responding to messages, avoiding disrespecting people and not posting controversial pictures, can help one stay in friends’ good graces always on social networking sites.
The number of glacial lakes in the Himalayas has reduced in recent years, but their total area has increased, a research revealed here on Tuesday.
Wang Xin is heading a 30-year study on the subject organized by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Hunan University of Science and Technology.
Wang said glacial lakes were formed by melted glaciers. Therefore, the study might help scientists better understand relations among glaciers, glacial lakes and weather conditions at high altitudes, as well as dangers of lakes bursting their banks.
Britain’s High Court has ordered the country’s internet service providers to block file-sharing website The Pirate Bay, the UK’s main music industry association said today.
London: Britain’s High Court has ordered the country’s internet service providers to block file-sharing website The Pirate Bay, the UK’s main music industry association said today.
Providers who refuse could find themselves in breach of a court order, which can carry a large fine or jail time.
Skipper Gautam Gambhir struck his fourth half-century of the season and spearheaded Kolkata Knight Riders to a five-wicket win against Chennai Super Kings with two balls to spare in the Indian Premier League here Monday.
Gambhir’s innings of 63 (52b, 6×4, 1×6) saw the Knight Riders easily overhaul Super Kings’ modest total of 139 for five as the skipper added 70 runs for the third wicket with Jacques Kallis (34) to take the Knight Riders to their sixth win in 10 matches for a tally of 13.
An Australian mining magnate today unveiled plans to build Titanic II, which may make its maiden voyage from England to New York in 2016, a century after the luxury ship sank on its first trans-Atlantic voyage.
Billionaire businessman Clive Palmer said that he had signed a memorandum of understanding with state-owned Chinese company CSC Jinling Shipyard to build the replica of Titanic, heralded as the world’s largest, most luxurious and safest ocean liner before it set sail in April 1912.
A Spanish tech company has come up with sidewalk paving stones, dubbed iPavement, that are Wi-Fi hotspots.
The avant-garde innovation could allow wireless internet access to people as they are walking down the street.
The stones are wired to 1,000-watt cables and contain a 5GB microprocessor that will connect with devices via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi to provide coverage, the Discovery News reported.
Earth-like rocky planets that humans could live on may be more common in the universe than stars, says an international team of planetary scientists which included an Indian-origin researcher.
Aditya Chopra at Australian National University and colleagues claim that determining whether these planets are habitable has become the new holy grail of astronomy.
China today successfully launched two more satellites for its proposed Beidou global navigation and positioning network being built to counter the US Global Position System (GPS).
With the two, China has so far launched 13 satellites to form part of the Beidou system.
The Beidou-2 satellites, launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the southwestern province of Sichuan, was boosted by a Long March-3B carrier rocket and has entered the scheduled orbit, the center said in a statement.
The European Space Agency said on Friday it had awarded a 300-million-euro ($400 million) contract to a British technology firm to build a satellite to examine the Sun from closer up than any before it.
The Solar Orbiter, to be built by Astrium UK, is due to launch in January 2017 – coming to within 45 million kilometres (28 million miles) of the Sun – closer than its nearest planet, Mercury.
Project scientist Daniel Mueller said the satellite, roughly eight cubic metres in size, would have to withstand ten times the solar heat than that on earth.
Embattled Internet firm Yahoo has expanded its legal fight with Facebook by including two more charges of intellectual property theft against the social networking giant.
Yahoo has now claimed that Facebook is infringing on 12, rather than ten, of its patents.
“Today’s filing underscores the breadth of Facebook’s violation of Yahoo”s intellectual property,” The Los Angeles Times quoted a Yahoo spokesman, as saying.
Last month Yahoo claimed Facebook had infringed on ten of its patents, including systems and methods for advertising on the web.