Science

Paris, June 17: Roughly a quarter of global electricity could be generated by nuclear power by 2050, requiring a tripling in nuclear generating capacity but making a major contribution to reduced CO2 emissions, a report said on Wednesday.

A study by the International Energy Agency, which seeks to co-ordinate energy policies in industrialised nations, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development described such a target as “ambitious but achievable”.

Washington, June 17: The Obama administration more than doubled transportation spending on bicycling and walking last year as it seeks to coax Americans out of their cars, according to a Federal Highway Administration report released on Wednesday.

Spending on biking and walking projects rose from less than $600m in 2008 to $1.2bn in 2009. Twenty years ago, the federal government was spending only $6m a year on such projects.

Cape Town, June 17: The World Cup is on course to become a watershed event for social media networking, but popular microblogging site Twitter has been struggling to cope.

So popular has the platform become since its launch in 2006 that even FIFA president Sepp Blatter has opened an account to “connect with football fans” during the tournament – twitter.com/seppblatter.

“It is the first FIFA World Cup in which social media websites will play an important role in connecting everyone who cares about the game of football,” he said.

Johannesburg, June 17: The official website of the World Cup in South Africa registered a record 265 million page views in a single day on Tuesday, football’s world governing body FIFA said on Wednesday.

The page views on www.FIFA.com were accessed by nearly 10 million users.

The match between five-time World Cup winners Brazil and North Korea on Tuesday helped boost traffic to the site, which is partly supplied by Agence France-Presse.

Miami, June 17: Move over James Cameron: a sea turtle found a waterproof camera in the Caribbean, somehow activated the device, filmed itself and is now a YouTube sensation.

Back in May US Coast Guard agent Paul Schultz found a digital camera in a waterproof case on a beach in Key West, Florida, and posted images he found on its memory chip on the internet in an attempt to find its owner.

In a video clip dated January 2010 “a turtle came across the camera, and it’s really hard to tell how, but it turns the camera on and recorded itself swimming with the camera,” said Schultz.

Paris, June 17: In a technical feat, astronomers measured the size of a small rock six billion kilometres away to an accuracy of a few kilometres and found its surface to be a mysterious ice-like white.

Years of planning combined with a network of telescopes to grab the first pictures of the Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) through a method of celestial alignment, they reported on Wednesday in the British science journal Nature.

Washington, June 17: Scientists geared up on Wednesday for a 12-day trip in the Gulf of Mexico with an undersea robot they hope will capture 3D images of oil plumes from the BP spill.

Oceanographers and others have been monitoring the plumes of oil, gas and dispersant chemicals coming from the broken BP wellhead since soon after the explosion on April 20 on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform.

Tokyo, June 17: An internet service company will show The Cove free of charge on Friday and invite public comment after theatres cancelled screenings in Japan due to nationalist opposition to the film’s depiction of a dolphin hunt.

Niwango Inc, which shows streaming video on the internet, said on Thursday it’s inviting people to write opinions via Twitter and email for an open exchange of views on the Oscar-winning documentary that shows the annual hunt in Taiji village.

Sydney, June 17: A space capsule thought to contain the first fragments from a moving asteroid Thursday began its journey from Australia to Japan, where scientists hope it will yield vital clues about the solar system.

The Frisbee-sized capsule, which parachuted into the Australian Outback after a seven-year space odyssey, was loaded onto a plane and is due back in Japan on Friday ahead of its much-awaited opening.

“JAXA has commenced to transport the retrieved capsule to Japan,” Japan’s space agency said in a one-line statement.

Sydney, June 15: A space capsule that scientists hope is carrying asteroid dust, potentially revealing secrets about the origins of the solar system, will be flown back to Japan this week, officials said Tuesday.

The precious probe, which made a textbook landing in the Australian Outback on Sunday after a seven-year, five-billion-kilometre (three-billion-mile) journey to the ancient Itokawa asteroid, will be carried on a chartered flight.

Washington, June 15: Scientists have found Moon’s minerals may have at least 100 times more water than previously indicated by remote sensing data from the Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 and other lunar sample analysis.

In March 2010, a US space agency NASA radar experiment aboard Chandrayaan-1, India’s first lunar spacecraft launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation in October 2008, found thick deposits of water-ice near the Moon’s north pole.

Los Angeles, June 15: Microsoft’s hotly-anticipated motion-sensing controllers for Xbox 360 videogame consoles made their debut before an invitation-only audience in a Los Angeles theater late Sunday.

Technology developed by Microsoft under the code name Project Natal was re-christened “Kinect.”

The potentially revolutionary device uses a 3-D camera and gesture recognition software to let people play videogames using natural body movements instead of hand-held controllers.

Beijing, June 15: At a wildlife park outside Beijing a dozen lions battle over a live chicken thrown into their enclosure by a tourist — who has paid four dollars for the privilege.

A siren wails and three four-wheel-drive vehicles race into action, screeching to a halt just shy of the animals to separate them and restore harmony to the caged pride — until the next feeding.

“It was scary,” says one visitor, standing at a viewing point above the enclosure.

“Yes, but it was thrilling too, lots of fun,” adds her friend, part of a group touring the Badaling park.

Paris, June 15: Companies in Japan, Iceland and Norway are developing whale-based products ranging from drugs to cosmetics to animal feed, banking on the resumption of global trade, according to a report.

Ahead of a key meeting of the 88-nation International Whaling Commission (IWC) in Agadir, Morocco next week, debate on the use of hunted whales has centered on the consumption of meat, especially in Japan.

Seattle, june 15: The next version of Microsoft Corp.’s Office software will be available to consumers and small businesses starting Tuesday.

Office Home and Student 2010, the most basic bundle of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, will cost $150. The programs can be installed on as many as three home computers.

A $280 version also includes the Outlook e-mail program. A $500 bundle adds Publisher, a desktop publishing program, and Access, a database.

An international team, including scientists from the Oxford University, has discovered seven diverse new planets, from shrunken- Saturns to bloated hot Jupiters, as well as a rare brown dwarf with 60 times the mass of Jupiter.

The CoRoT ( Convection, Rotation and Transits) space telescope is operated by the French space agency CNES. It discovers planets outside our solar system exoplanets when they transit, that is pass in front of their stars. Once CoRoT detects a transit, additional observations are made from the ground, using a number of telescopes all over the world.

Washington, June 15: Scientists have found Moon’s minerals may have at least 100 times more water than previously indicated by remote sensing data from the Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 and other lunar sample analysis.

In March 2010, a US space agency NASA radar experiment aboard Chandrayaan-1, India’s first lunar spacecraft launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation in October 2008, found thick deposits of water-ice near the Moon’s north pole.

New Delhi, June 14: Doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) have successfully performed a hi-tech implant surgery on a three-and-a-half-year-old deaf boy.

This is for first time that the new generation cochlear implant surgery has been conducted in a government hospital in the country, AIIMS officials said.

Aditya was implanted with a modern, state-of-the-art fifth generation cochlear implant last month. Cochlear implant is the only option available to children and adults who fail to benefit from hearing aids.

Madrid, June 14: Google has “illegally” collected private data from Wi-Fi networks in Spain through its Street View project, a crime prevention association said Sunday.

A complaint has been filed against Google in a Madrid court, the NGO APEDANICA said.

The Spanish Data Protection Association (AEPD) opened a probe May 19 to determine if Google had broken the law protecting citizens’ personal data and rights.

Google blamed an “error” for the slip-up. Javier Rodriguez, the company’s director for Spain, said the data would be returned to AEPD.

Washington, June 12 (IANS) Scientists have tried to unravel how some people who seemingly freeze to death, with no heart rate or respiration for extended periods, can be brought back to life with no long-term negative health consequences.

New findings from the lab of cell biologist Mark B. Roth, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre (FHCRC), may help explain the mechanics behind this widely documented phenomenon.

Dubai, June 11: Nearly 60 million people living around the Himalayas will have food shortages in the coming decades as glaciers shrink and the water sources for crops dry up, a study said on Thursday.

But Dutch scientists writing in the journal Science concluded the impact would be much less than previously estimated a few years ago by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The UN report in 2007 warned that hundreds of millions of people were at risk from disappearing glaciers.

Hanoi, June 11: Google Inc says new internet regulations in Vietnam raise disturbing concerns that the government may be working to block access to websites and track user activity.

An entry posted on Thursday on Google’s online public policy blog said new regulations passed in April require that all retail internet locations in the capital of Hanoi must install special software on their server computers by 2011.

Phnom Penh, June 11: Conservationists in Cambodia are celebrating the hatching of a clutch of eggs from one of the world’s most critically endangered animals, the Siamese crocodile.

Thirteen juveniles crawled out of their shells over the weekend in a remote part of the Cardamom Mountains in south western Cambodia, following a weeks-long vigil by researchers who found them in the jungle.

Experts believe as few as 250 Siamese crocodiles are left in the wild, almost all of them in Cambodia but with a few spread between Laos, Myanmar, Indonesia, Vietnam and possibly Thailand.

New York, June 11: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was among the 100 000 iPad users whose email addresses were exposed because of a security vulnerability, but he is shrugging it off and says he doesn’t think it’s a big deal.

The billionaire mayor has spent the last several weeks touting his iPad as a helpful tool for managing a city of 8.4 million people.

The former CEO of the financial information company Bloomberg LP said on Thursday that his email address isn’t hard to figure out.

London, June 11: The Great Bustard, extinct as a nesting bird in Britain since 1832, is making a comeback in the wild, six years after a trial group was introduced.

Four chicks have hatched this year on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, conservationists say.

In 2004, chicks reared in Russia were introduced as a trial group, with the first nest being found in 2007.

The first nests yielded no young but in 2009 the first chicks hatched in the wild.