Science

Washington, May 04: The Apple iPad has hit another major milestone with the sale of the one millionth iPad after a little less than a month of retail availability.

The milestone was reached Friday the same day the company released its 3G version of the much-hyped device, as sales of the tablet continued to build, Apple said Monday.

“One million iPads in 28 days-that’s less than half of the 74 days it took to achieve this milestone with iPhone,” Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs said.

Toronto, May 04: Google Monday snapped up a top Canadian startup which pioneered a 3D interface technology for Mac and Windows PCs.

Called Canada’s hottest software startup, Toronto-based BumpTop has been acquired by the search engine for reportedly between $30 and $45 million, according to reports. However, there were no details of the deal by the two sides.

Set up just three years ago, BumpTop has pioneered touch-screen software that allows use of multiple fingers at a time on a multiple touch screen.

Toronto, May 03: Accusing world famous astrophysicist Stephen Hawking of spreading misinformation about threats from aliens, former Canadian defence minister Paul Hellyer claimed Sunday that extraterrestrials have actually been visiting earth for decades.

Rather than harm mankind, he said, their (aliens’) spaceships have provided us information for triggering today’s microchip and IT revolution on our planet.

Toronto, May 03: Accusing world famous astrophysicist Stephen Hawking of spreading misinformation about threats from aliens, former Canadian defence minister Paul Hellyer claimed Sunday that extraterrestrials have actually been visiting earth for decades.

Rather than harm mankind, he said, their (aliens’) spaceships have provided us information for triggering today’s microchip and IT revolution on our planet.

New Delhi, May 02: India Saturday concluded 110 rounds of an auction to award spectrum for third generation (3G) telecom services in the country, with the government’s provisional revenue from the sale of airwaves reaching Rs.40,054 crore, more than what it expected.

Communication Minister A. Raja earlier this week had said that the government expects Rs.40,000 crore revenue from the 3G spectrum auction alone.

The government expects to raise Rs.55,000 crore from the 3G auction and the rolling out of broadband wireless Internet services in the country, he had said.

Washington, May 02: US search engine giant Google is planning to introduce Android-based television software in May which will enable the users to access television through internet.

The new software, designed to open set-top boxes, TVs and other devices to more content from the internet, is attracting interest from partners that include Sony Corp., Intel Corp. and Logitech International SA, which are expected to offer products that support the software, according to people familiar with the matter.

Los Angeles, May 01: Apple Inc is shutting down its newly bought Lala online music service amid speculation it is creating a way for iTunes customers to listen to songs stored on distant computers.

The move comes just weeks before an annual conference for developers in San Francisco on June 7 at which the secretive company tends to announce big news. Last year, it used the conference to unveil the latest version of its popular iPhone, the 3GS.

Beijing, May 01: The number of internet users in China, already the largest in the world, has surpassed 400 million and accounts for almost a third of the country’s population, state media reported on Saturday.

The online population in the world’s most populous nation has reached 404 million, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing the State Council Information Office.

That compares with 384 million users at the end of 2009.

Stirling, May 01: Researchers in Scotland say rare video of a chimpanzee dying has offered a unique glimpse of how one of man’s closest relatives deals with death and grieving.

The pictures show the final hours and moment of death of an older female chimp living in a small group at a British safari park as captured on video.

Knoxville, May 01: Before deliberating a fourth day at the trial of a man charged with hacking Sarah Palin’s e-mail, a federal jury in Knoxville will get some encouragement from the judge.

Jurors told US District Judge Thomas Phillips they have reached unanimous verdicts on three other charges but were still deadlocked on a count of identity theft on Thursday.

Defendant David Kernell is charged with breaking into Palin’s email while she was the Republican vice presidential candidate in 2008.

Washington, May 01: Aids, smoking and obesity are reversing progress made in helping people live longer around the world, with mortality rates worsening over the past 20 years in 37 countries, researchers reported on Thursday.

They found Icelandic men have the lowest risk of premature death, while Cypriot women do. Some rich countries such as the US and Britain scored relatively poorly, the survey found.

Cape Town, May 01: Parents who are concerned about their children being exposed to cyber bullying or sexting can use cellphones to check up on them.

Verb Innovations has launched My Mobile Watchdog in SA. According to the company, the software is aimed at parents of young children who may be exposed to cyber bullying or sex predators online.

High Island, May 01: Flies buzz everywhere and the stench is overwhelming as biologist Lyndsey Howell stops to analyse the remains of yet another endangered sea turtle washed up from the Gulf of Mexico.

“It’s been on the beach for a while,” Howell said, flipping over the decomposing, dried-out shell.

More than 30 dead turtles have been found stranded on Galveston and the Bolivar Peninsula south of Houston this month – an unusually high number that has puzzled researchers, in part because most are so decomposed that there are few clues left about why they died.

San Francisco, May 01: Amazon.com Inc’s Kindle e-reader is getting access to Facebook and Twitter, along with several other enhancements, as part of a software update being sent wirelessly to the devices.

In a posting on Amazon’s site, the company says the new software will let users share book passages on their Twitter and Facebook accounts.

The update will also let people sort books and documents into collections and lock their Kindle with a password. There also will be larger font options and the ability to zoom in on PDF documents.

Mumbai, April 30: After receiving flak for not having the Adobe Flash programme on its iPhone smartphone, Apple is going on the offensive.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is going on the offensive against Adobe’s Flash technology. He says it’s too buggy, battery-draining and PC-oriented to work on the iPhone and iPad.

In a statement Thursday, Jobs laid out his reasons for excluding Flash – the most popular vehicle for videos and games on the Internet – from Apple’s blockbuster handheld devices.

Livermore, April 30: Scientists at a government lab in Livermore, California are trying to use the world’s largest laser – the size of three football fields – to set off a nuclear reaction so intense that it will make a star bloom on the surface of the earth, according to a report. The ambitious experiment will be tried for real, and for the first time, late this summer.

Washington, April 30: You stare at your Windows desktop every day. So why not make it your own? With a little know-how, you can make your desktop easier to read, more enjoyable to look at, and more useful. Read on for some tips.

Q: How can I create a desktop background from a personal photograph that I love? I’m using Windows 7.

A: That’s fairly easy, so long as you know the resolution of your monitor and you have a decent image editing program that allows you to crop an image to an exact size specification.

Bhubaneswar, April 29: Frequently hit by natural calamities, Orissa government is all set to formulate a climate change action plan for the state.

“We will have a comprehensive state climate change action plan within a month,” Orissa Forest and Environment Secretary U N Behera told reporters after a high-level co-ordination committee meeting for finalisation of draft of the plan.

The meeting chaired by chief secretary T K Mishra deliberated on the reports of 11 working groups which submitted their reports on the climate change action plan.

Abu Dhabi, April 29: Google is understood to be planning a bid for ITA Software, a specialist in internet travel software, for about US$1 billion (Dh3.67bn).

The move would coincide with spectacular growth in Middle East airlines’ market share and a concerted effort by Google to penetrate the Gulf’s growing online community.

Washington, April 29: The search for life will be a key part of future space exploration, a scientist involved in reviewing scientific endeavours in space said Wednesday.

Steve Squyres, a scientist at Cornell University who has been a key researcher on the Mars rover project, said an ongoing once-a-decade review of solar system
science to recommend projects to NASA has developed a long-list of potential projects focussed on the search for life in space.

“Astrobiology is really central to what we should be doing next in exploration,” he told reporters.

Paris, April 29: Astronomers have for the first time detected ice and organic compounds on an asteroid, a pair of landmark studies released says.

The discovery bolsters the theory that comets and asteroids crashing into Earth nearly four billion years ago seeded the planet with water and carbon-based molecules, both essential ingredients for life.

Working separately, two teams of scientists using NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii found that the 24 Themis, which orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter, is literally covered in a thin coating of frost.

New Orleans, April 29: Crews began controlled burns of a giant oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico, but a cruel wind shift raised fears the spill could hit Louisiana’s fragile shores by the weekend.

The leading edge of the crude was about 16 miles (26 kilometers) off the Louisiana coast by Wednesday evening and winds were expected to strengthen and crucially change direction on Thursday, blowing it towards the coast.

London, April 29: Scientists have discovered that ice floating in the polar oceans is melting, causing sea levels to rise. The research is the first assessment of how quickly floating ice is being lost.

According to Archimedes’ principle, any floating object displaces its own weight of fluid. For example, an ice cube in a glass of water does not cause the glass to overflow as it melts.

But because sea water is warmer and more salty than floating ice, changes in the amount of this ice are having an effect on global sea levels.

Washington, April 29: Asteroids may not be the dark, dry, lifeless chunks of rock. According to recent research, there is evidence of water ice and organic material on the asteroid 24 Themis.

The research led by Josh Emery, assistant professor with the earth and planetary sciences department at the University of Tennessee (UT), found evidence that supports the idea that asteroids could be responsible for bringing water and organic material to earth.

Toronto, April 27: Vision loss simply makes blind people pay more attention to how they perceive smells, a new research said, debunking the myth that the blind have a more acute sense of smell than the sighted.

“If you enter a room in which coffee is brewing, you will quickly look for the coffee machine. The blind person entering the same room will only have the smell of coffee as information,” said Mathilde Beaulieu-Lefebvre, psychology graduate student at the Montreal University (MU).