Science

Hyderabad, February 08: The launch of Agni-III, the missile with the longest range in India’s arsenal, from the Wheeler Island off Orissa was a complete success.

Lifting off majestically at 10.50 a.m., it travelled its entire range of 3,500 km. and came down accurately on its target in the Bay of Bengal.

During its 800-second flight, it reached an altitude of 350 km. and its re-entry module sliced into the atmosphere, withstanding searing temperatures of 3,000 deg. Celsius.

The two-stage, surface-to-surface ballistic missile can carry nuclear warheads.

San Francisco, February 07: Google Earth mapping service is letting people use the internet to dive into the world’s oceans or see the ruin that World War II bombings rained on European cities.

The Internet powerhouse on Thursday added an Ocean Showcase and WW II era aerial photographs to its free, interactive online atlas.

“The historical imagery feature gives people a unique perspective on the events of the past using today’s latest mapping technology,” Laura Scott of Google Europe said in a blog post.

Washington, February 07: Some dinosaurs had russet-coloured feathers, and one jazzy specimen had a Mohawk crest and stripes, researchers say in the first reports to confidently assign colours to dinosaurs.

Their colours have long been a subject of speculation among researchers and schoolchildren.

In the new study, reported in Thursday’s online edition of the journal Science, scientists focused on melanosomes, which impart colour.

Brussels, February 07: Doctors have managed to read the thoughts of a car accident victim diagnosed to be in a vegetative condition, using brain scanning techniques that could mark a breakthrough for thousands of patients.

A 22-year-old man who had been considered to be in a vegetative state since an accident five years ago managed to answer “yes” and “no” to a team of doctors using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to scan his brain.

Patients in a vegetative state are awake, not in a coma, but have no awareness due to severe brain damage.

Sydney, February 07: An Australian nun has taken to Twitter on behalf of saint-in-waiting Mary MacKillop, bringing the late sister’s messages of hope and forgiveness to a new audience a century after she died.

Annette Arnold has been microblogging as @stmarymackillop since late December, when Pope Benedict XVI put MacKillop on course to become Australia’s first saint by recognising her second miracle.

“I just kind of take on her persona I suppose,” Sister Arnold told AFP, saying it was “absolutely critical” that the Roman Catholic Church embrace new methods of communication.

Beijing, February 07: A “Panda Express” jet arrived in China on Friday carrying two furry former residents of US zoos, which experts hope will do their bit to boost dwindling numbers of the notoriously under-sexed species.

Tai Shan and Mei Lan – loved by zoo-goers in Washington and Atlanta, where they were born in captivity – touched down in Chengdu, capital of the southwestern province of Sichuan, to join China’s panda breeding programme.

Cape Town, February 07: “It’s a clean, fast kill,” says marksman Abelines Schoeman, as his spotlight searches in the darkness for the telltale red glint that betrays a rabbit’s eye.

He stops his quad bike, levels the .22 rifle that has both a silencer and telescopic sights, and there is a muffled crack.

The beam of light shows a brief flurry of brown and white fur in the scrub, then stillness.

Schoeman walks rapidly over to the rabbit. It is indeed a clean kill: a bullet through the skull.

New York, February 07: Facebook is redesigning its site yet again, this time to better emphasise applications, games and search.

The latest evolution continued on Friday after Facebook started rolling the changes out late on Thursday, the company’s sixth birthday. Links and items have moved around the home page as Facebook tries to streamline navigation and make games and apps stand out more.

Geneva, February 07: The UN’s wildlife trade agency on Friday said it backed a proposed ban on the international trade in bluefin tuna, a prized delicacy in Asia, which is due to be examined by 175 countries next month.

“We are recommending that the parties approve the proposals made by Monaco,” said David Morgan, head of the scientific support unit at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

Japan has opposed the ban proposed by Monaco, which would classify the fish as a species threatened with extinction, CITES officials said.

Beijing, February 07: Authorities in China’s Xinjiang region on Saturday restored access to 27 internet sites that had been blocked following last July’s ethnic unrest in the province, state media reported.

The restored websites included official government services as well as commercial sites such as Taobao and Alibaba, and airlines and online games, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Partial access was also restored to the public discussion forums of official media such as the People’s Daily newspaper and Xinhua itself, Xinhua said.

Munich, February 07: Unlike politicians, operating systems (OS) don’t get a honeymoon with the general public. Windows 7 has been on the market for almost 100 days now, so – as in politics – it’s a good time to review how the software has performed so far. The results are largely positive.

Mumbai, February 05: Acer launches its new Android smartphone ‘Liquid’Acer has launched a new Android based smartphone ‘Liquid’ which is the first in the world to use Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, in the Indian market.

The phone offers real time communication along with the location aware content. The unique feathers this phones offer includes new user interface developed by the company and its partners along with improved power management systems.

Florida, February 06: The U.S. space agency has cleared shuttle Endeavour for liftoff Sunday and says the launch team is keeping its focus on safety even though workers are facing uncertainty over the direction of the space program.

Mission managers gave the launch go-ahead yesterday, as forecasters offered up an improved forecast. The chance of good launch weather is now 80 percent for the liftoff, set for 4:39 a.m. EST (0939 GMT).

Cairo, February 05: Terming the use of networking sites such as ‘Facebook’ as anti-Islamic, a top Egyptian cleric has issued a fatwa against it saying Mus
lims using such cyber platforms must be considered “sinners”.

And the cleric went to extent of blaming such sites for growing incidents of marital discords in the country.

Noted Sunni scholar Sheikh Abdel Hamid al-Atras, former head of the fatwa commission at prestigious Al-Azhar University here, issued the fatwa saying such sites have resulted in rise of the marital infidelity.

Sydney, February 05: Researchers have achieved yet another milestone in the global quest to produce synthetic silk.

They have hand-drawn fine threads of honeybee silk from a ‘soup’ of silk proteins that they had produced transgenically.

These threads were as strong as threads drawn from the honeybee silk gland, a significant step towards development of coiled silk biomaterials.

London, February 05: Scientists claim to have finally unlocked the genetic history of Charles Darwin, by using DNA from the famous English naturalist’s great-great grandson.

The mapping of Darwin’s ancestry has revealed that the father of evolutionary theory — that all humans are descended from one common ancestor — actually comes from a long line of adventurers, his forbears being some of first modern humans to leave Africa for Middle East, ‘The Daily Telegraph’ reported.

Washington, February 05: Internet search firm Google is finalizing a deal that would let the US National Security Agency help it investigate a corporate espionage attack that may have originated in China, the Washington Post reported.

The aim of the investigation is to better defend Google, the world’s largest internet search company, and its users from future attacks, the Post said, citing anonymous sources with knowledge of the arrangement.

Bangalore, February 04: NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) want to be part of Chandrayaan-II, the next Indian mission to Moon, by sending their instruments, ISRO Chairman K Radhakrishnan said here today.

Replying to a query whether NASA and ESA have sent proposals to ISRO to be part of Chandrayaan-II, expected in 2012 or 2013, by sending their instruments, Radhakrishnan told reporters, “They are all there actually (they have sent proposals).”

NASA and ESA are among “several candidates” who have evinced interest in Chandrayaan-2, he said.

Australia, February 04: The day when restaurants will serve garlic grasshoppers or beetle larva skewers is getting closer in Costa Rica, where scientists are “growing” insects for human consumption.

Entomologist Manuel Zumbado’s research into this alternative food source is inspired by practices in Africa, where insects have long been part of people’s diet.

With its rainforests playing host to countless insect species, including thousands that have yet to be identified, Costa Rica is a perfect breeding ground for the work.

Washington, February 04: An out-of-this world rock has become the centre of a down-to-earth dispute over who its rightful owner should be.

The tennis ball-sized meteorite plummeted through the roof of a Virginia medical office just after dusk on January 18, the same time as people reported seeing a fireball in the sky.

It plunged through the ceiling of an examination room and landed near the spot where a doctor had been sitting a short while earlier.

“I’m the most likely person to be sitting in that place where it hit,” Dr Marc Gallini said. “It just wasn’t my time, I guess.”

Sydney, February 04: A landmark copyright trial that rebuffed a Hollywood bid to hold an internet provider responsible for illegal downloads, was also Australia’s first proceedings reported live on Twitter.

Federal Court judge Dennis Cowdroy approved the unusual measure, which resulted in hundreds of postings on the micro-blogging site.

“This proceeding has attracted widespread interest both here in Australia and abroad, and both within the legal community and the general public,” he said in a summary of the case released on Thursday.

Bloemfontein, February 04: Two white rhinos in the Free State were apparently drugged and robbed of their horns at the Willem Pretorius nature reserve near Ventersburg, environmental authorities said on Thursday.

Free State environmental affairs spokesperson on law enforcement, Werner Boing, said it was suspected the two adult white rhino cows were darted and drugged over the weekend.

A power-saw or grinder was used to remove the horns. Officials said one of the reserve’s rhino watchers reported on Wednesday that one of the pregnant cows had no horn.

Washington, February 04: Researchers have identified some of the tools that mosquitoes use to smell their human prey and said on Wednesday their findings might help find better repellents or ways to trap and kill the pests.

They found 50 different genes that the mosquito Anopheles gambiae uses to sniff out tasty humans, and characterised how each one responded to different uniquely human odours, including those known to attract mosquitoes.

Washington, February 04: Nasa’s plan for the private sector to build spacecraft to fly astronauts to the International Space Station is a high-risk undertaking that won’t show results for years, experts said.

The abrupt shift “harnesses our nation’s entrepreneurial energies, and will create thousands of new jobs”, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy said in a statement issued as the budget for the fiscal year that begins October 1 was unveiled on Monday.

Tehran, February 04: Iran announced on Wednesday it has successfully launched a research rocket carrying a mouse, two turtles and worms into space – a feat President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said showed Iran could defeat the West in the battle of technology.

Ahmadinejad also unveiled the model of a light booster rocket that is being built and three new, Iranian-built satellites, touted as the latest in the country’s ambitious space programme.