Science

Cuttack, September 22: Indian agricultural scientists Wednesday claimed to have developed a new paddy variety for water- logged areas. Vast tracts of land under rice cultivation in many states get affected every year due to water-logging and this development could be a boon for farmers in such places.

The variety, christened ‘CR Dhan-501’, was developed at the Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI) here in Orissa. It can withstand static water-logging of up to 50-75 cm of water depth. The rice variety is expected to be notified soon.

Bhubaneswar, September 22: Scientists in India Wednesday claimed to have developed a new paddy variety for semi-deep water logged areas.

The variety, christened ‘CR Dhan-501’, was developed at the Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI) at Cuttack in Orissa, some 26 km from here. It can withstand static water-logging of up to 50-75 cm of water depth.

The rice variety is expected to be notified soon.

New Delhi, September 22: Day and night will be of equal duration Thursday, marking the beginning of autumn in northern hemisphere.

During an autumnal equinox, the sun shines directly overhead as viewed from the earth’s equator.

‘An equinox happens twice every year, when there is a location on the earth’s equator where the centre of the sun can be observed to be vertically overhead, occurring around March 20/21 and Sep 22/23 each year,’ said Chandrabhushan Devgun of the Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE).

New Delhi, September 22: Day and night will be of equal duration Thursday, marking the beginning of autumn in northern hemisphere.

During an autumnal equinox, the sun shines directly overhead as viewed from the earth’s equator.

‘An equinox happens twice every year, when there is a location on the earth’s equator where the centre of the sun can be observed to be vertically overhead, occurring around March 20/21 and Sep 22/23 each year,’ said Chandrabhushan Devgun of the Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE).

Bangalore, September 21: Leading vocational training provider Indian Institute of Job Training (IIJT) Tuesday unveiled a countrywide VSAT (very small aperture terminal) facility to enable last mile access to employability enhancement training.

‘The two-way satellite ground station (VSAT) will enable us to give quality career skills training to all candidates, including those in remote locations where access to quality faculty, infrastructure and exposure to industry professionals is limited,’ IIJT chief executive Ashish Prasad told reporters here.

New Delhi, September 21: PanIIT, an alumni association of seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), will hold a conclave next month in which nealy 5,000 engineers will participate, officials said Tuesday.

The three-day conclave, scheduled to be held from Oct 29-31 in Noida, will be focused on sustainable transformation of technology in India.

PanIIT represents over 200,000 IIT alumni.

–IANS

Mumbai, September 21: Falling back on its legacy, Finnish mobile giant Nokia has revived its Communicator phone and launched it in a sleeker and trendier avatar dubbed as E-7.

One of the first business phones from the stable of Nokia, the Communicator, which was popularly called the “brick” for its bulky demeanour, was a status symbol among business tycoons.

The device was much celebrated in Hollywood and Bollywood.

Not to forget, Val Kilmer, playing the character of an orphan Simon Templar in the 1997 remake of The Saint, using Nokia 9000 Communicator.

England, September 21: Targeted nuclear blast could have limited impact compared to such blasts in large numbers many miles away from the geographical boundaries of a nation up above in the sky.

This was illustrated by Defence Secretary Liam Fox of England. He said that detonation of a nuclear weapon in space by North Korea and Iran could paralyze Britain’s power, transport and communication systems.

Liam Fox told that countries became more vulnerable to widespread threat as their technologies grew more complex and interdependent.

London, September 21: Detonation of a nuclear weapon in space by North Korea and Iran could paralyse Britain’s power, transport and communication systems, a top official has said.

Defence Secretary Liam Fox told an international conference here Monday that countries became more vulnerable to widespread threat as their technologies grew more complex and interdependent.

“When we are discussing North Korea or Iran, for example, people need to understand there are other risks than the sort of nuclear strike we saw in Nagasaki or Hiroshima,” Fox was quoted as saying by the Daily Express.

New Delhi, September 20: India’s telecom giant Bharti Airtel on Monday said it has selected Ericsson India, Nokia Siemens Networks and Huawei Technologies as network partners to launch 3G services in India.

These companies will plan and deploy high speed packet access (HSPA)-enabled 3G equipment and network in Bharti Airtel’s 3G licence circles to support world class user data speeds and enhanced mobile broadband user experience.

HSPA enables high peak user throughputs which are multiple times higher than those supported in current 2G networks.

Chennai, September 19: In a 20-hour operation that ended early Saturday, the Rs.5,600 crore ($1.25 billion) prototype fast breeder reactor (PFBR) built by Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Ltd (Bhavini) at Kalpakkam near here got its fourth critical component — the 65-tonne inner vessel.

‘The 65-tonne inner vessel has been successfully installed and bolted precisely inside the main vessel. The process started at 6 a.m. Friday and got over around 2 a.m. Saturday without any scratch to any of the components,’ Prabhat Kumar, project director at Bhavini, told IANS.

Chandigarh, September 19: Haryana has sent a proposal for establishing 13 Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) in the public-private-partnership (PPP) mode and 96 skill development centres to the central government for approval, an official said here Friday.

The ITIs will be set up in various parts of the state, Haryana chief secretary Urvashi Gulati said.

Presiding over the third meeting of state level skill development mission, Gulati stressed the need to provide quality training and introduce new short-term vocational courses in the ITIs and polytechnic institutes.

New Delhi, September 19: India is set to become a major scientific player in 20 years, provided there is a favourable environment for innovations and structural and administrative reforms are undertaken, said a vision document released by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Saturday.

Mumbai, September 17: Amid discussions with India on lawful interception of data sent from BlackBerry devices, the smartphone maker, Research in Motion, has said it cannot compromise the security architecture of its enterprise solution.

The company is continuing discussions with governments in India, the UAE and other countries, as well as with service providers, and “believe we have made good progress in those discussions,” RIM Co-CEO Jim Balsillie said.

“I am optimistic that a positive and constructive outcome can be achieved,” he said in a conference call with analysts on Thursday.

Washington, September 16: Arctic sea ice melted over the summer to cover the third smallest area on record, US researchers have said, warning global warming could leave the region ice free in the month of September 2030.

Last week, at the end of the spring and summer “melt season” in the Arctic, sea ice covered 4.76 million square kilometres, the University of Colorado’s National Snow and Ice Data Centre said in an annual report.

Washington, September 11: An e-mail virus has attacked servers across the world, including those at NASA and Google, and possibly the US internal security department office.

The virus, called “here you have” or “VBMania”, is a simple Trojan Horse that arrives in your inbox with the odd-but-suggestive subject line “here you have”, the Fox News said Saturday.

The body reads “This is The Document I told you about, you can find it Here” or “This is The Free Download Sex Movies, you can find it Here”.

London, September 09: A mind reading machine has edged closer to reality after scientists found a way of converting thoughts into words.

Researchers were able to render brain signals into speech for the first time, relying on sensors attached to the brain surface.

The breakthrough, which is up to 90 percent accurate, will be a boon for paralysed patients who cannot speak and could help read anyone’s thoughts ultimately, reports the Telegraph.

San Francisco, September 09: Google Inc unveiled a set of enhancements to its Internet search engine that predict search queries as users type, promising to speed up the time it takes to find information online.

Google Instant, launched on September 8 in the United States, delivers search results on a Web page before a user finishes typing in a query. The search results displayed on the page refresh and change as the user continues typing additional letters of the search term.

Google said the new technology can save two seconds to five seconds from every search.

Bangalore, September 08: Indian Space Research Organisation today successfully conducted static testing of its liquid core stage (L110) of launch vehicle GSLV Mk -III for 200 seconds.

L110 is one of the heaviest earth storable liquid stages developed by ISRO. It has two high pressure Vikas engines in a clustered configuration, the ISRO said in a statement.

Nearly 500 health parameters were monitored during the test at 15:50 hours conducted at the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre test facility at Mahendragiri in Tamil Nadu.

Initial data indicated normal performance.

Washington, September 08: Two asteroids are to zip close by Earth within hours of each other Wednesday, the US space agency said.

The asteroids measuring several metres in diameter were discovered Sunday by a telescope in Arizona and will pass closer than the moon’s distance to Earth, NASA said. Though asteroid’s come within that distance of Earth regularly, it is rare for two to do so in such a short period of time.

New Delhi, September 07: The Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI) Tuesday launched a new software system that will streamline the booking arrangements between consumers and travel agents to facilitate quicker and smoother planning of tours.

“This software will act as a search engine that will facilitate the planning of a tour for the customer. Hotel bookings and airline ticketing will both be accomplished through this window,” TAAI president Rajji Rai said.

Ahmedabad, September 06: A team comprising army officers and scientists today embarked on an expedition to study the eco-system in Gujarat.

The expedition led by Captain Chetan N Balulad, was flagged off from Sainik School, Balachadi in Jamnagar by Brigadier B G Pathak, Commander of Golden Katar Artillery Brigade, an Army spokesperson said.

During 12-day expedition, the team accompanied by scientists of Ayurvedic University of Gujarat would cover 200 km of sea and 550 km of land to study the eco-system of Kutch arid zone and sea water as well.

–Agencies

Bangalore, September 05: Voluminous scientific data, including rare images of the moon, from India’s maiden lunar mission Chandrayaan-1 will be made public by the year-end.

“People will have free access to the huge data obtained from our first moon mission on a web portal that will be launched by this year-end,” a senior scientist of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) told IANS here.

Beijing, September 05: China successfully launched a new satellite into space Sunday, which will improve television and radio broadcasting signals in the country.

The “SinoSat-6″ was launched at 12:14 a.m. from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in southwest China’s Sichuan Province. The Long March 3B rocket took SinoSat-6 into a geostationary transfer orbit 26 minutes after the launch, Xinhua reported.

London, September 03: God didn’t create the universe it was actually a result of the inevitable laws of physics, British physicist Prof Stephen Hawking has concluded.

In his latest book, The Grand Design, Hawking said: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there’s something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.”

In his new book, he has rejected Sir Isaac Newton’s theory that the universe did not spontaneously begin to form but was set in motion by God.