Washington, October 07: After centuries of observation, astronomers have identified yet another ring around Saturn, according to an article appearing Wednesday in the journal Nature. The newly discovered ring is barely visible, yet includes one of Saturn’s most famous and long-identified moons, Phoebe, according to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
The laboratory helps operate the Spitzer Space Telescope which was used to identify the ring.
Pasadena, October 07: The Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered the biggest but never-before-seen ring around the planet Saturn, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced on late Tuesday.
The thin array of ice and dust particles lies at the far reaches of the Saturnian system and its orbit is tilted 27 degrees from the planet’s main ring plane, the laboratory said.
JPL spokeswoman Whitney Clavin said the ring is very diffuse and doesn’t reflect much visible light but the infrared Spitzer telescope was able to detect it.
San Francisco, October 07: Users of Google’s Gmail and Yahoo Mail were also targeted in the large-scale phishing attack that harvested at least 10,000 passwords from Microsoft’s Live Hotmail, according to reports Tuesday.
Neither of the companies’ US representatives responded to requests for information. But in Europe, where most of the Hotmail phishing victims appeared to be located, a spokesman for Google confirmed the targeting of Gmail users.
Washington, October 06: A Pioneer in fibre optics and two scientists who figured out how to turn light into electronic signals -work that paved the way for the Internet age – were awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for physics.
Charles Kao, a Shanghai-born British-American, won half the 10 million Swedish crown ($1.4 million) prize for a discovery that led to a breakthrough in fibre optics, determining how to transmit light over long distances via optical glass fibres.
France, October 06: French researchers say they had uncovered the biggest dinosaur footprints in the world, left by giant sauropods that may have weighed 40 tonnes or more.
An extraordinary track of footprints was found in April this year in the Jura plateau at Plagne, near the southeastern city of Lyon, by a pair of amateur fossil-hunters, the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) said.
Professional palaeontologists have since authenticated the find.
Washington, October 06: Thousands of Hotmail users’ details have been posted online after what Microsoft says is likely to be a phishing attack.
Neowin.net first reported the leak when it found username and password details posted online at pastebin.com, a site where developers share code.
Around 10,000 people were affected, according to Neowin, spanning hotmail.com, msn.com and live.com accounts.
The list, which alphabetically details accounts from A to B, suggests the anonymous party that originally posted it on October 1 could have details for thousands more accounts.
Sydney, October 06: A new imaging agent could help to save innumerable lives by tracking melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer, at an early stage.
Ivan Greguric and colleagues working within the Cooperative Research Consortium (CRC) for Biomedical Imaging Development note that about 130,000 new cases of malignant melanoma occur worldwide every year.
Patients have the best chance of survival with early diagnosis and prompt treatment. However, positron emission tomography (PET) scans used for diagnosis sometimes miss small cancers, delaying diagnosis and treatment.
London, October 06: Criminals are going to have a really tough time hiding their faces, thanks to a new software that can recreate their faces.
The software is being used by approximately 15 police departments in the UK as well as half a dozen European countries, including France and Switzerland.
In field trials conducted by the Derbyshire police force, it led to twice as many identifications of suspects as traditional methods.
Law enforcement agencies worldwide traditionally employ sketch artists, who piece together faces.
Sydney, October 06: Scientists in Denmark have found a powerful new technique to rid soil of toxic heavy metals faster and more efficiently than current methods.
“Our aim was to speed up the established process for removing metals like lead and cadmium from soil using electrokinetic methods to protect community health and safety,” says Lisbeth Ottossen of the Technical University of Denmark, who led the study.
Paris, October 05: A report charges that Lance Armstrong’s Astana cycling team was given “special treatment” by the International Cycling Union (UCI) during this year’s Tour de France, the online edition of the daily Le Monde said Monday.
The daily cites a report drawn up by the French Anti-Doping Agency (AFLD) about the way doping tests were administered during the three-week race, in which Armstrong finished third. His Astana teammate Alberto Contador won the race.
Washington, October 05: Giant chipmaker Intel has recently conducted a study, concluding that Microsoft Windows 7 has improved in performance and stability compared to Windows XP SP3.
The study titled “The Value of PC Refresh with Microsoft Windows 7” takes into consideration Windows 7’s user adoption, performance, stability and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
More than 290 out of 300 Intel users said they “would recommend Microsoft Windows 7 to colleagues,” the study said.
New Delhi, October 05: The largest non-carbonaceous plant fossils, 140 times bigger than today’s algae species, have been discovered in western Rajasthan, opening a new window for understanding evolution of life on earth.
A team of researchers from the University of Lucknow have discovered the fossils with physical characteristics of Vaucheriacean plant, a type of yellow-green algae found in fresh or marine water, five kms from Jodhpur in Sursagar mines region.
Bhubaneswar, October 05: Indian scientists claim to have developed a rice variety that requires no cooking, only soaking in water.
The rice variety developed at the government-run Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI) at Cuttack in Orissa is characterized by low amylase content and becomes soft on soaking in water, institute director Tapan Kumar Adhya told IANS in an interview.
Chicago, October 03: Gasps and tears greeted the announcement on Friday that Chicago had lost its bid to host the 2016 Summer Games, as the city went from favorite to also-ran in the multibillion-dollar Olympics sweepstakes.
“This was Chicago’s shot at coming out as a world-class city so it’s deflating,” said Kevin O’Hara, 48, who runs a financial trading firm in Chicago.
Chicago was the first city eliminated in the first round of voting by the International Olympic Committee, with rivals Rio de Janeiro, Madrid and Tokyo still standing.
London, October 03: Scientists have detected a crack in the armour of the Helicobacter pylori, a common microbe that infects the stomachs of one-sixth of the world’s population, causing gastritis and ulcers.
They identified a group of substances that block a key chemical pathway that the bacteria need for survival. Their study could lead to new, more effective antibiotics to fight these hard-to-treat microbes.
Javier Sancho, biologist at the University of Zaragoza, Spain, and colleagues note in the new study that Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) bacteria infect the stomach lining.
Korolyov, October 02: A spacecraft carrying a Canadian circus tycoon and a two-man Russian-American crew has docked at the International Space Station.
Billionaire Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte is the seventh paying space tourist to visit the orbital station. The 50-year-old dubbed the first clown in space spent a reported $35 million for his voyage.
His children and partner Claudia Barilla broke into applause after watching the docking Friday on a giant screen at Russian mission control outside Moscow.
Munich, October : The first of two planned satellites for Germany’s defence forces blasted off late Thursday from the European space launch centre outside Kourou, French Guiana, officials said.
The satellite separated from its rocket and was placed into orbit about 30 minutes after launch.
The satellites, both weighing 2.5 tonnes and code-named SatcomBw, will provide communications links to troops in Afghanistan and German Navy vessels in distant seas.
German defence forces already operate sensors from space that can peer through clouds and make radar images of the ground.
London, October 01: Research suggests that Britons are addicted to the internet – even though broadband quality has been ranked behind countries such as Bulgaria and Latvia.
Shopping and social networking are reasons why we spend time online
An average person in the UK is clocking up more than 30 hours a week online, according to a study by independent price comparison service uSwitch.com.
On a typical working day, a person now spends an average of five hours using the internet.
Cairo, October 01: Some Egyptians are lashing out at the government over the case of Culture Minister Faruq Hosni and his failed bid for the top job at UNESCO, blaming the regime or Hosni himself for the defeat.
Egypt fought a tough diplomatic battle to get Hosni elected, and when the man lost out to Bulgaria’s Irina Bokova last week.
Hosni told an Egyptian weekly: “My fight was not against candidates but against states. The conspiracy was bigger than you can imagine.”
Many critics agree that Jewish groups and some pro-Israeli states had a big role in his defeat.
New Yorkm, October 01: As Internet use expands worldwide, the United States said Wednesday it will give other governments and the private sector a greater oversight role in an organization whose decisions affect how computers relay traffic such as e-mail and Twitter posts.
The move comes after European regulators and other critics have said the U.S. government could wield too much influence over a system used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Those critics have complained, among other things, about the slow rollout of Internet addresses in languages other than English.
Manila, October 01: Environmental damage, shoddy urban planning, corruption and other man-made problems are magnifying the human cost of natural disasters almost every time they strike in Asia, experts said.
Thousands of people have died across the region this week in a relentless string of events that at first may seem to be the fault of Mother Nature, but the enormous death tolls can be equally blamed on people, they said.
Bangalore, October 01: For the first time, India’s space scientists have developed electric propulsion technology that is expected to boost the life of geostationary satellites by upto five years.
In other words, the satellites which today have a lifespan of ten years, could last upto 15 years.
The system — plasma thrusters – would be tested in GSAT-4 spacecraft slated to be launched on board GSLV later this year, ISRO chairman Madhavan Nair said.
New York, October 01: Google is all set to offer a wider preview of its Google Wave as a compelling platform for real time streaming communication. The company (Google) is all set to send out invites for preview to those individuals that have signed up for feedback.
London, September 30: Mercedes-Benz adverts for its new E class saloon series which said “CO2 emissions for the range are down to 139g/km” whave been banned after the advertising watchdog ruled the ads were misleading.
The Advertising Standards Authority noted only two out of the 24 possible permutations in the Mercedes range had a 139g/km figure, the exact CO2 emissions figure per vehicle being dependent on a number of possible variations.
Those variations included the choice between petrol and diesel, manual and automatic gearbox, and were also affected by various alloy wheel size.
Toronto, September 30: Researchers have developed a microchip that is sensitive enough to quickly determine the type and severity of a patient’s cancer and nip the disease in the bud.
“This remarkable innovation is an indication that the age of nanomedicine is dawning,” says David Naylor, professor of medicine at the University of Toronto (U of T).
“Thanks to the breadth of expertise here at U of T, cross-disciplinary collaborations of this nature make such landmark advances possible,” he adds.