Science

New Delhi, August 09: To get rid of the mosquito menace, Northern Railway has launched a special train equipped with power sprayer to check its breeding in the water bodies along rail tracks in Delhi.

The ‘mosquito terminator’ train launched in collaboration with the Municipal Corporation of Delhi will run twice in a fortnight till November covering the city from New Delhi to Shahdara and from Anand Vihar to Nizamuddin.

According to a Northern Railway official, an engine will haul a truck mounted power sprayer stationed on a special kind of low flat surface rail wagon.

New Delhi, August 08: A celestial treat today greeted star gazers as three planets of the solar system formed a triangle in the sky.

“Venus, Mars and Saturn were seen forming a right-angle triangle in the night sky theatre,” Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE) Director Chander Bhushan Devgun told PTI.

The three planets formed a triangle with Saturn in the western horizon, he said.

London, August 08: Human brains imitate speech patterns of other people, even complete strangers, without meaning to due to an inbuilt urge of the brain to “affiliate” with them.

Researchers say humans want to “bond” with others, even when a voice cannot be heard or, somewhat embarrassingly, even if another person is a foreigner.

Scientists from the University of California at Riverside, found the subconscious copying of an accent comes from an inbuilt urge of the brain to “empathise and affiliate,” says a Telegraph report.

Washington, August 08: Two NASA astronauts have failed to replace a faulty cooling pump module aboard the International Space Station (ISS) after a lengthy effort.

Doug Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson, two US astronauts, spent over eight hours outside the space station, but were unable to completely disconnect and remove the 780-pound pump module, NASA announced on Saturday.

It was the longest spacewalk in the floating observatory’s history.

The orbiting lab’s ammonia pump failed last Saturday, disabling half of the station’s cooling system.

Chandigarh, August 07: An innovative ‘milk urea detection kit’ has been developed by the scientists of the Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agricultural University (CCSHAU) in Haryana’s Hisar town, the university’s vice chancellor K.S. Khokhar announced Friday.

Khokhar said that with this kit, milk could be checked for the presence of urea in it – even at home.

Chandigarh, August 06: An innovative ‘milk urea detection kit’ has been developed by the scientists of the Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agricultural University (CCSHAU) in Haryana’s Hisar town, the university’s vice chancellor K.S. Khokhar announced Friday.

Khokhar said that with this kit, milk could be checked for the presence of urea in it – even at home.

Istanbul, August 05: Imagine swiping a mobile phone to pay for all the things that you buy! This has just been made possible by latest technology that allows bank information to be stored in your mobile phones’ memory cards.

Global credit card giant Visa has entered a partnership with a Turkish bank to launch this technology, the first of its kind in Europe.

This technology is used to store bank information in memory cards placed in mobile phones and allow them to be waved in front of credit card payment points, Visa Europe, which has collaborated with Turkey’s Akbank, said.

Japan, August 04: Japanese bike maker Yamaha Wednesday launched three bikes for the mass Indian market priced between Rs.47,000 and Rs.52,000.

“India is the most important market for us and we realised we need to address the volume segment who commute everyday for their work and are looking for a vehicle that has comfortable seating and excellent mileage,” Yukimine Tsuji, chief executive, Yamaha Motor India, told reporter.

The three motorcycles named SZ, SZ-X and YBR 125 have 123cc and 153cc engines.

Washington, August 04: The makers of BlackBerry have unveiled a new smartphone with a touchscreen and slideout keyboard that it hopes will fend off competition from Apple’s iPhone.

The BlackBerry Torch will go on sale in the US Aug 12 for $199.99 (Rs.9,200) with a two-year contract with AT&T. The new smartphone was unveiled in New York on Tuesday.

The device uses a new operating system and has a faster and easier-to-use web browser, its manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM) said at a press conference, reports from the US.

New York, August 04: Scientists have warned that a solar tsunami is likely to hit the Earth anytime this weekend.

Solar Tsunami is an unusually complex magnetic eruption on the Sun. Scientists have feared that a large cloud of electrically charged particles due to solar tsunami could hit the earth.

According to the pictures received from NASA’s new Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), a solar blaze, comparable to the size of the earth, erupting above sunspot.

Solar Tsunami, also called a coronal mass ejection, was directly aimed towards earth.

Hyderabad, August 03: DO you want to save yourself the hassle of visiting the corporation to get a new birth or death certificate? Then look no further than your nearby e-Seva centre. The issuing of birth and death certificates by e-Seva centres is getting good response from people.

Bhubaneswar, July 31: Orissa Saturday launched an online service to address the grievances of its citizens, an official said.

The web-based grievance redressal and monitoring system, named e-Abhiyoga, was launched by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik here in the presence of state officials, said a senior official of the Chief Minister Office.

‘Orissa is the second state in the country after Haryana to provide citizens such a facility,’ he told IANS.

Thailand, July 30: The world has less than 12 years to go before it faces major ice-melting and potentially catastrophic effects if nothing is done to reduce carbon emissions, a Thai environmental conservationist has warned.

Energy and environmental conservationist Chirapol Sintunawa said it would take approximately that time for the carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere to reach the 450 parts per million (ppm) figure, which would cause temperatures to rise and ice to melt, increasing sea levels.

New Delhi, July 29: Telecom service providers reported around 2,150 cases of misuse of mobile cloning in different parts of the country during 2009-2010, Telecom Minister A. Raja said in the Rajya Sabha Thursday.

‘The government has come to know through telecom service providers that approximately 2,150 cases of misuse of mobile cloning through duplication of subscriber identity in different parts of country have come to their notice during 2009-10,’ said Raja in the statement.

Mobile cloning refers to the act of copying the identity of one mobile telephone to another.

Beijing, July 26: Scientists behind the European atom smasher aimed at uncovering the secrets of the universe want to build an even bigger machine with partners and funds from around the world.

Scientists from CERN – the European Organisation for Nuclear Research – a particle physics laboratory outside Geneva, Switzerland, will spell out their ambitions at a conference in Paris today.

They are reaching out to China, India and Russia to help fund the next £8.5 billion step of the project, according to Guy Wormser, a leading particle physicist and one of the conference organisers.

Bangalore, July 24: Global search engine Yahoo! is hosting a non-stop 24-hour ‘hacking’ event from Saturday noon in this tech hub where about 300 whiz-kids will use its web tools and services to develop new applications, a company official said Friday.

‘About 300 developers across India will participate in the 24-hour hacking event, which involves using our web tools, services and application programming interfaces (APIs) to innovate new solutions for our global netizens,’ Yahoo! India Research and Development Head Shouvick Mukherjee told IANS here.

New Delhi, July 24: An Indian laptop priced at just Rs.1,500 ($30) and touted as the world’s cheapest will come as a godsend for students for whom it has been specifically designed.

The laptop, unveiled Thursday by Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Kapil Sibal, has all the basic features, including a built-in key board, a 2 GB RAM memory, Wi-Fi connectivity, USB ports and is powered by a 2-watt system for use in power deficit areas. The device is likely to be available next year.

New Delhi, July 22: India Thursday unveiled a Rs.1,500 (around $30) laptop designed specifically for students.

‘If more companies decide to manufacture a similar device, prices will come down automatically,’ Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said after unveiling the low cost-access-cum computing device here.

The device would be made available to students in 2011.

When the ministry floated the concept of a low cost laptop some years ago, officials said it would cost Rs.500 ($10). It will now cost about three times the initial projections.

New Delhi, July 22: India Thursday unveiled a Rs.1,500 (around $30) laptop designed specifically for students.

‘If more companies decide to manufacture a similar device, prices will come down automatically,’ Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said after unveiling the low cost-access-cum computing device here.

The device would be made available to students in 2011.

When the ministry floated the concept of a low cost laptop some years ago, officials said it would cost Rs.500 ($10). It will now cost about three times the initial projections.

Panaji, July 22: Prison bars brook no stopping for suspected Israeli drug dealer David Driham alias Dudu as far as updating his latest developments on social networking portal Facebook is concerned.

Arrested for possessing a narcotics cocktail of ecstacy, cocaine, heroine, LSD and charas of Rs.3.81 lakh (about 8,000 USD) Feb 21, Dudu has been updating his friends using Facebook mobile from behind prison bars.

His first entry begins with a statement of love for his fiance Zarine Driham, a Kazakhstan national, uploaded on his wall April 15, 2010 at 11.33 a.m.

London, July 22: They put on their headphones, drape a hood over their head and drift off into the world of ‘digital highs’.

Videos posted on YouTube show a young girl freaking out and leaping up in fear, a teenager shaking violently and a young boy in extreme distress.

This is the world of ‘I-Dosing’, the new craze sweeping the Internet in which teenagers use so-called ‘digital drugs’ to change their brains in the same way as real-life narcotics, reports the Daily Mail.

Bangalore, July 22: India’s latest remote sensing satellite Cartosat-2B has started beaming high quality images of the country’s landscape from the earth’s lower orbit, India’s space agency said Wednesday.

‘The camera of Cartosat-2B has been switched on and images of high quality are being received,’ the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said in a statement here.

The first two images vividly show Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh with the Sangam and Madurai city in Tamil Nadu.

New Delhi, July 22: With the domain name bandwidth for web addresses expected to get exhausted by March 2012, the government has drawn up a roadmap for the transition into a newer version of Internet protocol that will enable unlimited options for users.

‘Over 18.4 million registered addresses in India have overburdened the initial version of address platforms, which is expected to exhaust the available space globally by March 2012,’ a statement issued by the ministry of communications and information technology said Wednesday.

Gandhinagar, July 22: Gujarat Wednesday unveiled a single stop portal –www.portal.gujarat.gov.in — for all its e-governance services.

State minister Jaynarayan Vyas said: ‘More than 50 G2C services will be made available to the people of the state through this portal.’

The minister said government service applications like VAT (Value Added Tax), HMIS (hospital management), e-dhara (revenue records), e-procurement, swagat (public grievance portal), jan suvidha kendra at district collectorates and city civic centres in municipal corporations can be accessed through this portal.

Hyderabad, July 22: TheSmokingJacket.com will contain none of the nudity that makes Playboy.com NSFW (not suitable for work). Instead, it will rely on humour to reach Playboy’s target audience, men 25 to 34 years old, when they are most likely to be in front of a computer screen.

A lot of our audience logs on (to Playboy.com) after work and we saw that we were missing a golden opportunity to reach guys when they’re online the most when they’re sitting at their desk, not working, sending e-mails to their friends,” said Jimmy Jellinek, Playboy’s editorial director.