Science

London, May 27: Facebook founder Mark ZuckerbergCHICAGO: Calling the case a “brazen and outrageous fraud,” Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg urged a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit by a New York man claiming he owns a huge stake in the social networking website.

In a filing with the US District Court in Buffalo, New York, Facebook and Zuckerberg said the lawsuit by Paul Ceglia is based on a “doctored contract and fabricated evidence.” They also called the plaintiff “an inveterate scam artist whose misconduct extends across decades and borders.”

London, May 24: A new study conducted by consumer research group Intersperience has revealed that social networking sites certainly do not allure people aged above fifties in the UK as they have fewer than 20 friends on Facebook whereas people in twenties have more than 1,000 friends on the same site.

The news has come just when Facebook’s second-in command, Sheryl Sandberg, is visiting the UK to deliver a speech on how the social web has transformed people’s friendships and relationships, at the London School of Economics.

London, May 24: Although Yahoo’s service remains larger than Gmail, it has been losing ground in the past yearSAN FRANCISCO: Yahoo Inc is giving its popular email service a long-promised facelift in an attempt to make it more appealing to people who are increasingly using Facebook, Twitter, Google and other online alternatives to communicate.

The changes announced Tuesday build upon a redesigned email format that Yahoo began testing seven months ago. The estimated 277 million users of Yahoo’s free email service will be switched to the new version during the next few weeks.

New York, May 24 (IANS) Microsoft will ship Windows 8 for desktop computers and tablets next year and the updated Windows Phone 7 will have 500 new features.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Monday: “As we progress through the year, you ought to expect to hear a lot about Windows 8. Windows 8 slates, tablets, PCs, a variety of different form factors.”

The Microsoft chief, who was addressing a developers’ meet in Tokyo, also said that the upgraded Windows Phone 7 – to be announced Tuesday – will also have 500 new features.

London, May 24: A phone that turns your palm into touchscreenLONDON: Researchers at Potsdam University in Germany have developed an ‘imaginary phone’ that lets you keep your phone in your pocket and use apps or answer calls by tapping your hand.

Patrick Baudisch and his colleagues envision someone doing dishes when his smart phone rings. Instead of quickly drying his hands and fumbling to answer, the imaginary phone lets him simply slide a finger across his palm to answer it remotely.

New Delhi, May 21: Really? Is the world going to end today? A preacher from Oakland, California, has warned so.

At about 6 pm on May 21, Harold Camping reckons 2 percent of the world’s population will be immediately “raptured” to Heaven; while the rest of us will be sent straight to the Other Place.

According to a man named Harold Camping “The End Is Here!”

The 89-year-old founder of Family Radio has made such “predictions” before (most recently in 1994). Not surprisingly, he says he simply miscalculated then, but he is absolutely certain that he has the right calculation now.

Los Angeles, May 21: A woman offering to sell a moon rock for $1.7 million was detained in a NASA sting, the authorities have said.

It is illegal to sell moon rocks, which are considered national treasures. The gray rocks, which were gifted to each US state and 136 countries by then-President Richard Nixon, can sell for millions of dollars on the black market.

London, May 19: Harold Camping, the head of the Family Radio broadcasting network, has calculated that the apocalypse will begin on May 21. Do his numbers add up for a judgment day this weekend?

As you may have learned from one of the 2,000 billboards worldwide, May 21, 2011, is Judgment Day, upon which the righteous – which totals 3 percent of humanity – will be whisked away to the sweet hereafter, leaving the rest of us to weather five months of extreme natural disasters until Oct. 21, whereupon God destroys the entire universe and everyone left in it.

Chennai, May 17: All the preparatory activities connected with the launch of advanced communication satellite GSAT-8 on board an Ariane-V rocket May 21 are progressing satisfactorily at Kourou in French Guiana, India’s space agency said Tuesday.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said the launch of GSAT-8 is scheduled May 21 at 0208 a.m.(IST) from the spaceport in South America.

‘All the pre-launch activities are progressing satisfactorily,’ said ISRO.

Originally the Ariane V rocket was scheduled to blast off May 20 but was postponed by a day to May 21.

New Delhi, May 17: Singapore-based software applications developer U2opia Mobile has developed a new application for mobile phones that will allow them to access Facebook on all kind of handsets without paying for a data connection.

“We are using USSD technology, which will enable users to access Facebook without having a GPRS connection on their phones,” said Sumesh Menon, the co-founder and CEO of U2Opia Mobile.

Madrid, May 17: Scientists say the blood test will show how fast someone is ageing and estimate how long they have left to live; it measures the vital structures on the tips of a person’s chromosomes, called telomeres which are believed to be one of the important and accurate indicators of the speed at which a person is ageing.

The scientists behind the 435 pounds test said that it would be possible to tell whether a person’s “biological age” as measured by the length of their telomeres, is older or younger than their actual chronological age.

Bangalore, May 17: Developed by four students in Bangalore, this prototype runs on diesel and gives a mileage of 110km/litre.

The diesel bike developed by the students of M S Ramaiah Institute of Technology. In the last two years, the petrol price in Bangalore has gone up from Rs 46.28 to Rs 71.10 — a whopping 65 per cent increase. While the best brains across the world are working hard to make vehicles more fuel efficient, four engineering students in the city have come up with another alternative: a bike that runs on diesel.

Washington, May 15: NASA mission managers have given the green light for the final voyage of the space shuttle Endeavour to the International Space Station (ISS).

Endeavour will fly to the ISS on Monday under the command of astronaut Mark Kelly, the husband of recuperating US Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head in an attack in Tucson, Arizona on January 8, 2011. She will be at Cape Canaveral for Endeavour’s second launch attempt.

London, May 11: A deadly new flying robot, named Aeryon Scout, promises to replace the CCTV camera and track down criminals and security threats with greater effectiveness.

Users simply point to a place on Google Maps on its touch-screen controller and the robot flies there at 30 mph to record high quality video that can be beamed to an iPhone in real-time.

Hyderabad, May 11: Web-based Venturesutra has unveiled a direct and private funding platform to afford startup and growing enterprises with easy and quick access to funding source.

With Venturesutra, entrepreneurs, venture capital, angel and seed investors can now privately discuss potential investment opportunity directly in real-time, said an official of the web-based platform.

Over 160 entrepreneurs and more than 25 top-notch investors have already joined Venturesutra, said Abhijit Maheswari, its founder.

Washington, May 11: Microsoft Corp. Tuesday announced it would buy Skype Global for $8.5 billion in its largest acquisition ever, a media report said.

The deal will give Microsoft a boost in voice and video communications, allowing the company to leverage Skype’s technology on platforms, including Xbox 360, Kinect and Outlook, CNN reported.

It may also help Microsoft’s fledging mobile telephone offering, which lags far behind Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems. In 2010, Skype users had 207 billion minutes of voice and video conversations, the broadcaster said.

Chennai, May 11:Bangalore based Indo-Chinese joint venture ALTA-XinTong Solar Tech Pvt Ltd is in the process of finalising a deal to sell 2,000 solar systems to power mobile phone towers, said a top company official Tuesday.

“We are in advanced stages of finalising 2,000 solar power systems for leading tower companies in India under zero investment plan. The deployment of these solar power systems would create job opportunities for more than 70,000 skilled and semi-skilled technicians in India,” managing director E.M. Abdul Manaf told reporters here.

Washington, May 11: A group of NASA scientists and astronauts are gearing up for an undersea mission to test concepts and techniques for future space expeditions.

This week, engineers are laying the foundations for the 15th expedition of NASA’s Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO 15), space.com reported.

To launch the project, which is slated to begin on October 17, diving crews are setting up the tools and the rocky environment needed to simulate an asteroid landscape.

Washington, May 10: April was a historic month for wild weather in the United States, and it wasn’t just the killer tornado outbreak that set records, according to scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

April included an odd mix of downpours, droughts and wildfires. Six states — Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia — set records for the wettest April since 1895. Kentucky, for example, got nearly a foot of rain, which was more than three times its normal for the month, NOAA reported.

New York, May 10: The iPad craze has catapulted Apple to the world’s most valuable brand, toppling Google, according a study of the global brands Monday.

Facebook is the world’s fastest growing brand, up 246 percent from last year, according to the study by Millward Brown, a global brands agency.

Thanks to the iPad sales, Apple’s brand value jumped by 84 percent to $153.2 billion whereas Google slipped two percent to stand at $111.5 billion, says Millward Brown’s 2011 BrandZ study.

Washington, May 10 NASA has said that it expects repairs to be done in time for the space shuttle Endeavour to launch as planned on May 16, after a trio of delays forced by technical problems in a fuel heating line.

The US space agency confirmed the launch time of May 16 at 1256 GMT, set last week after the initial launch attempt was scrubbed hours before liftoff on April 29.

“We’ve got extremely high confidence… there should be no threats to the 16th launch date,” said NASA shuttle program launch integration manager Mike Moses yesterday.

London, May 09: It could go down as one of the most irritating inventions in history. Scientists have devised a gadget that will allow mobile phones to be recharged simply by talking into them.

The technology turns sound into electricity, allowing a mobile to be powered up while a conversation is in progress – and the greater the volume the greater the charge.

The invention is billed as a godsend for those who regularly suffer the frustration of flat batteries.

Washington, May 08: Researchers have created an amazing, matchbook-sized atomic clock 100 times smaller than commercial versions with both military and commercial applications.

For instance, pocket-sized Chip Scale Atomic Clock (CSAC) could help divers engaged in deep-sea explorations plan ultra-precise operations with remote colleagues who also have atomic clocks, especially when the GPS singals are blocked by natural barriers.

Washington, May 07: In a unique experiment, scientists in the US claim to have afflicted computers with virtual schizophrenia to better understand the human brain with the condition.

A team from University of Texas and Yale University has used a virtual computer model or “neural network” to simulate the excessive release of dopamine in the brain.

The findings, published in the ‘Biological Psychiatry’ journal, revealed that the network recalled memories in a distinctly schizophrenic-like fashion.

Toronto, May 06: Canadian researchers have invented a plastic smart phone which is as thin and flexible as a credit card and changes its shape depending on where it is stored.

Dubbed PaperPhone, this smart phone, with its 9.5-cm diagonal thin film flexible display, is a forerunner of paper-thin handset and tablets of the future, according to the researchers.