Science

New Delhi, July 02: With nearly 400 million people living along coastal India, a system was needed to send off tsunami related warnings, prevent damage and save cost of evacuation in case of a false alarm

London, July 01: A car which can fly if caught in a traffic jam is soon to become a reality as the US aviation authority has given its nod for commercial production of “ligth sport” aircraft.

The aircraft “Terrafugia Transition”, which requires 1,700-feet runway to take off, will be the smallest aeroplane with a maximum weight of 1,320 lb (about 600 kg).

New York, June 29: Facebook recently announced it would be opening an office in Hyderabad, India, to be able to provide better round-the-clock and multilingual support to its ever-increasing number of users, advertisers and third-party developers.

According to Business Standard and India Times, the company is set to launch its India operations from the ‘City of Pearls’ – its first office in Asia – within the next two months.

New Delhi, June 27: Kerala, Delhi and many other parts of the country will soon have new onset dates for monsoon.

A team of 40 weather scientists are in the process of revising the normal onset dates for monsoon across the country.

However, according to Ajit Tyagi, Director General of India Meteorological Department (IMD), there will not be any significant difference and the new normal dates may vary only by one or two days.

Moscow, June 25: Russia launched the second of three stealth frigates for the Indian Navy under USD 1.6 billion deal inked in July 2006.

The launching ceremony of the missile frigate Tarkash (Quiver) in Russia’s Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, was attended by senior Russian and Indian naval officials, state-owned Yantar shipyard said in a release.

The first of three Project 11356 (modified Krivak III) frigates, named the Teg (Sword), was launched in last November.

The third frigate, Trikand (Bow) is due to be delivered in 2011-12.

New Delhi, June 24: To spread awareness about the development of technology in the country, Indian Railways have decided to launch a ‘Technology Express’ in near future.

“We will launch Technology Express soon to showcase the progress we have made in technology. The train will be starting from IIT-Kharagpur and travel across the country,” Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee said while flagging off the Commonwealth Express here today.

Sydney, June 24: Some sperms fail to ‘communicate’ with the female reproductive tract and while a man may appear to be fertile, his semen can be rejected by a woman if it’s not compatible, says a study.

This is more likely to happen if a woman has not been previously exposed to his sperm over a long period of time, says study author Sarah Robertson, professor at the University of Adelaide’s (UA) Robinson Institute.

Dehradun, June 22: Stressing on the need to strike a balance between environment and development needs, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh today said hydel projects were essential to meet the demand for energy and could not be done away with completely.

However, a number of hydel projects were stopped in Uttarakhand in view of the “public demand,” he said in a statement here.

By the year 2013, India will have an exclusive satellite meant for monitoring forest fire, he told a meeting at the Forest Research Institute (FRI) here. This satellite would also help in forest mapping.

Washington, June 21: NASA scientists predict a solar storm will hit the earth in 2013 mostly affecting electronic devices leading to a major catastrophe.

The once-in-a-generation storm, caused by extremely high levels magnetic energy released by solar flares, “will disrupt communication devices such as satellites and car navigations, air travel, the banking system, our computers, everything that is electronic,” says Richard Fisher, head of NASA’s Heliophysics Division, quoted in a June 14 Daily Telegraph article.

Gaithersburg, June 20: A pink sex pill offered little help to women and came with unacceptable risks, US government advisers agreed on Friday, another setback in the search for a drug to boost female libido.

German drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim failed to convince an expert panel that its pill increased sexual desire enough to win approval.

“The efficacy was not sufficiently robust to justify the risks,” said Dr Julia Johnson, the panel’s chair and head of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Washington, June 20: The Food and Drug Administration on Saturday urged consumers to stop using an instant coffee product that is being marketed as a sexual aphrodisiac, saying it could dangerously lower blood pressure.

In a statement, the FDA said Magic Power Coffee contains a chemical that could interact with some prescription drugs to significantly lower blood pressure. When blood pressure drops suddenly, the brain is deprived of an adequate blood supply, which can lead to dizziness or light-headedness.

Kuala Lumpur, June 20: A report says a rare baby pygmy elephant rescued from a plantation moat early this month has died on Borneo Island in Malaysia.

The elephant was one of two calves found starving recently in Sabah state in the first known cases of the endangered animals apparently being abandoned by their mothers.

The Star reports the two-year-old female died of internal bleeding in a wildlife park on Wednesday.

The report says another six-month-old female, nicknamed Huminidon, is recovering after being found starving in another plantation last month.

Brussels, June 20: Iceland’s whale hunting tradition, despite a ban it wants lifted, looms as a major hurdle in its upcoming membership talks with the European Union where all cetaceans are legally protected.

The EU membership talks haven’t started yet, but a European diplomat stressed that “if Iceland continues to practise commercial whale hunting for scientific purposes, that’s going to create a political problem.”

In nearly all areas Iceland has been seen as a perfect EU candidate, and could have started talks earlier had it wanted to.

Beijing, June 20: Many parents in China are not in favour of their children using the internet and a majority of them worry that surfing the net could adversely affect children’s studies, a new study has said.

Around 42.6 percent of parents surveyed “strongly oppose their children’s use of internet” or “relatively oppose”, while as high as 78.4 percent say they are worried that surfing the internet could negatively affect their children’s studies. Another 44.9 percent said they are worried about their children’s exposure to pornography, Xinhua reported.

Copenhagen, June 19: A whale stranded for two days on the edge of a Danish fjord is ill and has almost no chance of surviving, experts said on Friday, after rescue efforts were called off.

Thousands of people have flocked to see the distressed fin whale at the Vejle fjord in western Denmark.

But rescuers, who have made repeated attempts since Wednesday morning to help it return to the water at high tide, later decided to allow it to “die naturally and in peace”.

Tokyo, June 19: A Japanese scientist who created the equivalent of embryonic stem cells from ordinary skin cells has won one of this year’s Kyoto Prizes and will receive a $550 000 prize.

Shinya Yamanaka, 47, developed a way to reprogram skin cells so that they can be developed into all kinds of tissue, such as that of the heart or brain. This has vast potential to speed medical research, creating genetically matched cells for use in damaged parts of the body.

Tokyo, June 19: The Dalai Lama on Saturday criticised wildlife activists for staging what he said were violent protests over Japan’s hunting of whales.
The rebuke came as the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader visited Japan for an 11-day lecture tour.

At a news conference, he said he had told the US-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to stop its violent harassment of Japan’s whaling fleet.

“One time I wrote a letter…(saying) their activities should be stopping,” he told reporters.

Port Fourchon, June 19: Hollywood star Kevin Costner joined BP’s efforts to clean up the oil-fouled Gulf of Mexico on Friday as the British company began deploying his “dream” machine to separate oil from water.

BP acquired 32 of the centrifuges to help remove some of the oil that has been gushing into the Gulf from its blown-out well in the worst oil spill in US history.

The units are being deployed after BP tested them to see if they could handle the crude leaking from an undersea well for two months at an estimated rate of up to 60 000 barrels a day (9.5 million litres).

New York, June 19: When a World Cup goal is scored, Twitter celebrates.

The social networking site is seeing huge traffic when a big goal is scored in the soccer tournament. Though Twitter normally sees about 750 tweets per second on an average day, there were 2,940 tweets per second, then a record, after Japan scored against Cameroon on Monday.

Nearly as much traffic was reported after Brazil’s first goal against North Korea on Monday, as well as after Mexico’s tying goal against South Africa on June 11.

Rome, June 19: An Italian priest has developed an iPad application that will let priests celebrate Mass with an iPad on the altar instead of the regular Roman missal.

The Reverend Paolo Padrini, a consultant with the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Social Communications, said on Friday that the free application will be launched in July in English, French, Spanish, Italian and Latin.

Washington, June 18: Scientists have established for the first time clear dates for the ruling dynasties of ancient Egypt after carbon dating plant remains, according to research published Thursday.

The results will force historians to revise their records for the two millennia when ancient Egypt dominated the Mediterranean world and hopefully end debate once and for all between rival Egyptologists.

Washington, June 18: Clearing forests in the Amazon helps mosquitoes thrive and can send malaria rates soaring, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.

They found a 48 percent increase in malaria cases in one county in Brazil after 4.2 percent of its tree cover was cleared.

Their findings, published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, shows links between cutting down trees, a rise in the number of mosquitoes and infections of humans.

Washington, June 18: A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying two US astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut arrived Thursday at the orbiting International Space Station (ISS).

The Soyuz lifted off Tuesday from the Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan with Americans Doug Wheelock, Shannon Walker and Russian Fyodor Yurchikhin aboard.

The 2221 GMT docking occurred over Argentina. It was the combined 100th flight to the ISS by US space shuttles and Russian Soyuz capsules.

Bangalore, June 18: India on Friday successfully test-fired its indigenously developed, nuclear-capable, ballistic missile Prithvi-II from the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur, about 15 km from Balasore off the Orissa coast.

The missile, mounted on a mobile launcher, was blasted off from the launch complex-3 at the ITR at around 6:50 am, defence sources said.

“The trial of Prithvi-II, conducted by the Army, has gone through nicely,” ITR Director S. P. Dash said.

With a maximum striking range of 350 km, Prithvi-II is capable of carrying a pay-load of 500 kg.

Tunis, June 17: My first experience with writing started with blogs. Through blogging, my view of the world started to change; I was no longer dependent on the censored lens of the mainstream media.

My window to the world, my escape and even the vehicle to my enlightenment, blogging is the only means of communication that has allowed me to express my thoughts freely. Because I am my own publisher, I can write freely without censor or edit.