Science

Two Russian cosmonauts Thursday launched a six-hour space walk outside the International Space Station (ISS), the country’s space agency Roscosmos said.

Cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Anton Shkaplerov began the space walk at 18.31 p.m. (1431 GMT), Xinhua quoted the agency as saying.

The cosmonauts will try to remove a mechanical cargo arm from the ISS’ Pirs docking module, the agency said.

They also planned to set up additional anti-meteorite shields on the Zvezda module.

Moscow, February 17: First Islamic social network “Salamworld” will be soon launched to serve as an alternative of “Facebook.” A group of Russian and Turkish investors have devoted tens of millions of dollars to create the project.

Described as “Halal Facebook,” Salam World will be a Muslim exclusive social networking platform for Muslims of all ages.

According to “Hurriyet Daily News” the new platform is planned to register 50mln users in 5 years. One of the founders of the project Abdulvahed Niyazov said some videos of Madonna are unacceptable for the Islamic world.

Apple is working with component suppliers in Asia to test a new version of its popular tablet computer with a smaller screen, US media reported Tuesday.

Officials at some of Apple’s suppliers, who declined to be named, said the company has shown them screen designs for a new tablet with a screen size of about eight inches, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.

In comparison, the iPad tablets Apple has launched so far feature 9.7-inch screens, said Xinhua.

India must embark on a “new evergreen revolution” with the extensive use of appropriate bio- and space technology inputs to ensure food security for all and enable the country to compete successfully in a globalised economy, says renowned space scientist UR Rao.

India’s population is bound to cross 1.6 billion by 2050, which will demand doubling of our foodgrain production to ensure food security to all our people, according to him.

Popular avian menace game, Angry Birds, joined Facebook’s global network on Tuesday.

The game was launched in Indonesian capital Jakarta, where 17% of it’s 240 million population has a Facebook account. Jakarta has 17 million Facebook accounts.

Angry Birds is the most-downloaded mobile app of 2011, while Facebook boasts of over 800 million users.

Facebook’s Angry Birds allows users to compete with their Facebook friends, send gifts and enables them to buy “power-ups” to master precise and powerful targeting.

Though electric cars are heralded as an environment friendly solution in major cities, a study says their pollution levels are worse than petrol-powered vehicles.

A study on pollution in 34 Chinese cities found that electricity generated by power stations to drive electric vehicles leads to more fine particle emissions than petrol-powered cars.

Researchers Chris Cherry and Shuguang Ji analysed the emissions and environmental health impacts of five vehicle technologies.

In a first of its kind initiative in the Arab world, the Prime Minister of UAE will now have a dedicated You Tube channel to keep the people of the country abreast of his initiatives and opinions.

The Government of Dubai Media Office (GDMO) launched a special YouTube Channel for Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.

President Barack Obama’s proposed 2013 budget for NASA boosts spending at the Kennedy Space Center, which bore the brunt of job layoffs at the end of the space shuttle program last year, the center director said on Tuesday.

The president’s $17.7 billion budget request for NASA for the year beginning October 1 includes $2.1 billion for the Florida spaceport, an increase of $323 million over this year’s budget.

The race is on to discover life in the most remote and extreme environment known on Earth.

Russia has set the pace, piercing through Antarctica’s icy crust to reach a freshwater lake to try to find ancient or new kinds of life that have adapted to the extremely cold, sunless climate and may shed light on the origins of evolution.

Scientists from the United States and Britain are close on Moscow’s heels, sure that their technology will speed analysis of the depths, hidden away for tens of millions of years.

A European space observatory has discovered previously unknown islands of star formation and a haze of microwave radiations in our galaxy, the source of which is a complete mystery.

The Planck space observatory was launched in 2009 to analyse small fluctuations in the omnipresent cosmic microwave background (CMB) – complementing data gathered by NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe.

Some exoplanets may experience powerful tidal forces, which could strip them of water completely, thus leaving behind hot, dry worlds like Venus, a new study has revealed.

These findings might considerably affect searches for habitable exoplanets, scientists explained.

Frequenters of India’s online Microsoft Store were briefly greeted with the suspicious visage of a Guy Fawkes mask this morning, following a hack that compromised the site’s user database.

Washington, February 02: A new study conducted in the University of California has enabled scientists to find a way to decipher actual words from human brain waves.

A team of neuroscientists worked with a group of epilepsy patients who were under the treatment for difficult curable seizures.

They implanted the required electrodes deep in patients’ brains to locate the source of seizures and help doctors remove the malfunctioning tissue.

Beijing, June 13: Around 303 million Chinese people use their mobile phones to surf the internet.

This accounted for 66.2 percent of all internet users in the country, Qian Jinqun, vice secretary-general of the China Association of Communications Enterprises, was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

Around 43 million people “exclusively” use mobile phones to log on to the World Wide Web. This accounts for 10 percent of all internet users in China, he said.

Experts say that by 2013 the number of Chinese who surf the internet with phones would surpass that of those who use computers to do so.

New Delhi, June 12: Personal data, hacking, cyber crime0 Washington: Computer hackers have an ability to cause chaos by using personal data that they have stolen. But the theft can be prevented if people are careful with their information.

Personal finance expert Carmen Wong Ulrich shared advice during a talk show on how to protect personal information and what to do when hackers get their hands on it.

“The first line of defense is always your passwords, and the information on your computer,” Ulrich was quoted as saying.

Russia, June 09: Russia’s biggest retail bank is testing a machine that the old K.G.B. might have loved, an A.T.M. with a built-in lie detector intended to prevent consumer credit fraud.

Consumers with no previous relationship with the bank could talk to the machine to apply for a credit card, with no human intervention required on the bank’s end.

California, June 08: Though making a false prediction for the first date he specified for day of rapture, a US fundamentalist preacher said that the end of the world is still near, shifting the day for Day of Judgment for further five months, the BBC reported on Tuesday, May 24.

“We are not changing a date at all; we’re just learning that we have to be a little more spiritual about this,” radio preacher Harold Camping said in a rambling 90-minute radio broadcast in his Open Forum radio show late on Monday.

Bangalore, June 02: India has bagged multi-million dollar contracts to launch 12 foreign satellites in the lower orbit from its spaceport over the next two years, a top space agency official said Wednesday.

“Through our commercial arm Antrix Corporation, we have received orders from Canada, Indonesia, Germany and other European countries to launch a dozen satellites in the sun-synchronous orbit during the next two years,” state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman K. Radhakrishnan told reporters here.

New Delhi, June 01: A partial solar eclipse will be seen in Siberia and northern China today but the sky gazers in the country will be a disappointed lot as it will be midnight here.

The partial solar eclipse will be seen at sunrise in Siberia and northern China when the penumbral (lighter outer shadow of earth) first touches earth at 00.55 am IST, Apoorva Malhotra of Space Technology Education Private Limited told PTI.

This eclipse will not be visible in India, he said, adding, observers in eastern Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina will witness it.

Bangalore, June 01: Former president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Wednesday hoped an Indian astronaut would walk on the Moon in 2025 and on Mars by 2035.

“I believe an Indian astronaut will walk on the Moon in 2025 and on Mars by 2035. The Indian space agency should attempt to put an Indian on Moon and Mars between 2025 and 2035,” Kalam said at a function here.

World Health Organization (WHO) has released a study that points to cell phone radiation causing cancer…..

A World Health Organization panel has concluded that cellphones are “possibly carcinogenic,” putting the popular devices in the same category as certain dry cleaning chemicals and pesticides, as a potential threat to human health.

New Delhi, June 01: Premlata Agarwal is not just another woman who climbed Mt Everest – she is the mother of two married daughters. At 45, she is also the oldest Indian woman to scale the highest mountain in the world.

What started off as an adventure in 2000 in the form of a hill climbing competition in Jamshedpur, ended at the altitude of more than 29000 feet.

Premlata said, “When I spoke to my daughters and husband for the first time fter creating the record, I told them that I have been able to fulfill their expectations.”

New Delhi, May 31: A total lunar eclipse will be visible to sky-watchers in the country in the late hours of June 15.

“The lunar eclipse will be visible in India. It can be seen with naked eyes,” P. Iyamperumal, Executive Director, Tamil Nadu Science and Technology Centre, Chennai told PTI.

“The total lunar eclipse, which will be visible in southern Asia, Africa and Australia, is the first of two lunar eclipses in 2011 and the third of all eclipses to occur throughout the year,” said Vijayakumar, a space enthusiast.

Pune, May 28: A new device to enable law enforcing agencies monitor use of sonography machines is being introduced as a measure to fight growing incidence of female foeticide in the country.

The device ‘Silent Observer’ (SIOB) would also provide law enforcing agencies with analytical reports for further action warranted under the Preconception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention) Act (PC and PNDT), according to Sunil Umrani, Managing Director, VisionIndia Software Exports, which has made the device.

Houston, May 28: NASA astronauts made history twice on Friday, venturing on the final spacewalk of the agency’s 30-year shuttle program and completing assembly of the $100 billion International Space Station.

Astronauts Mike Fincke and Greg Chamitoff floated outside the orbiting outpost’s Quest airlock for the fourth and final spacewalk planned during shuttle Endeavour’s 16-day mission, the next to last in the US space shuttle program.