Science

Las Vegas, January 11: Stun gun maker Taser wants to help parents – not with jolts of electricity but with a tool which allows parents to effectively take over a child’s cellphone and manage its use.

“Basically we’re taking old fashioned parenting and bringing it into the cellphone era,” Taser chair and co-founder Tom Smith said at the Consumer Electronics Show here, where the Arizona company unveiled the new product.

“Because when you give your child his cellphone you don’t know who they’re talking to, what they’re sending or SMSing, all of those things,” Smith told AFP.

Cairo, January 11: Egyptian archaeologists discovered a new set of tombs of the workers who built the great pyramids, shedding new light on how the labourers lived and ate more than 4 000 years ago, the antiquities department said on Sunday.

The tombs date to Egypt’s 4th dynasty (2575 BC to 2467 BC) when the great pyramids, the last remaining ancient wonder of the world, were built, according to the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass.

New York, January 11: Cadmium is a soft, whitish metal that occurs naturally in soil. It’s perhaps best known as one half of rechargeable nickel-cadmium batteries, but also is used in pigments, electroplating and plastic.

Lab testing organised by The Associated Press shows that it also is present in children’s jewellery – sometimes at eye-popping levels exceeding 90% of the item’s total weight.

New York, January 11: Clara Tolentino was terrified when her 43-year-old sister died in 2009 after getting liquid silicone injections to add a bit more shape to her buttocks.

The 35-year-old Tolentino had good reason to be. In 2006, she paid $2 000 to get liquid silicone injections, too.

“I didn’t do it as many times as my sister… But I was afraid,” said the Dominican woman who lives in the Bronx. “I was afraid that something was going to happen to me.”

Jerusalem, January 11: Israeli archaeologists have found remains of an 8 000-year-old building as well as hippopotamus bones and pottery shards in the Tel Aviv area, the Israel Antiquities Authority said on Monday.

The remains, found on the banks of the Yarkon river, are the earliest discovered in the Tel Aviv region.

“This discovery is both important and surprising to researchers of the period,” said Ayelet Dayan, who led the excavations.

“For the first time we have encountered evidence of a permanent habitation that existed in the Tel Aviv region about 8 000 years ago.”

Johannesburg, January 11: Scientists at the University of Johannesburg have started a DNA bar-coding project to stop the smuggling of endangered cycad species in the country.

Botany masters student Philip Rousseau started the project with the aim of creating a barcode library for the African Encephalartos species in an attempt to control collectors in America and the Far East who are prepared to pay up to R71 000 for a large specimen of a rare species, university spokesperson Herman Esterhuizen said in a statement.

Washington, January 11: Scientists have created a multitude of nano-scale materials, but they are practically useless, unless slotted precisely in the architecture of proposed devices, until now.

Jen Cha, University of California San Diego (UCSD) nanoengineering professor, and her team have discovered that one way to bridge this gap is to use biomolecules, such as DNA and proteins and vastly improve sensing equipment.

Washington, January 10: With the hit movie Avatar creating a buzz around 3-D entertainment, a California company is touting what it believes are the first 3-D glasses which can also double as sunglasses.

“We believe we’re the first ones and we have a significant patent portfolio in the lens device so we believe we’ll have a good bit of protection in the market,” MicroVision Optical president David Johnson said.

London, January 10: Danish toymaker Lego is seeking to build a presence in the world of multiplayer online games with the release of a new videogame called Lego Universe.

“Think World of Warcraft, Second Life and Club Penguin all wrapped into one,” lead producer Chris Sherland of NetDevil, the Colorado-based game development company behind Lego Universe, said.

The PC-based game will incorporate many of the features of the iconic interlocking, studded plastic bricks that have delighted children – and parents – the world over for years.

Buenos Aires, January 10: A species of dinosaur that lived 190 million years ago has been found in Argentina, a researcher said.

‘No discoveries with these characteristics had ever been made in the region. It’s an important discovery because it helps us understand the environmental diversity of the period,’ researcher Santiago Bessone of the Museum Egidio Feruglio, an institution based in the Argentine Patagonian city of Trelew that was responsible for the expedition, told EFE.

Washington, January 08: The solar system may be significantly more compact than previously thought, American scientists have claimed.

Astronomers at the University of Washington in Seattle have developed a computer simulation of the cloud of comets that enshrouds the solar system.

The work suggests the cloud may not contain as much material as once suspected, which could resolve a long-standing problem in models of how the planets formed.

London, January 08: Coral reefs give birth to a dazzling number of new species of sea creatures, according to a study that highlights their critical role in marine ecosystems.

Scientists have found that the reefs not only harbour amazing biodiversity, but are actively involved in the generation of new life forms. The study overturns conventional thinking that much of the sea life in coral reefs originated elsewhere.

London, January 07: The space shuttle Endeavour was hauled out to its launch pad on Wednesday, despite freezing temperatures that had technicians spelling each other after 30 minutes to ward off the cold.

Temperatures were an unseasonably — for Florida — cool 29 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 2 Celsius) at the launch pad as NASA prepared to roll out Endeavour for its first mission of the new year. Nearby Melbourne set a record low temperature of 28 F.

New Delhi, January 07: Scientists should start considering earth, moon and mars as an economic complex for future habitat expansion of human beings, said Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Former President Of India in his public lecture on the topic ‘It can be done’, at the ongoing 97th Indian Science Congress.

He began the lecture with the suggestion that Indian scientists should look forward to celebrating the socio-economic development of India in 2020. He then proposed his vision of transition of Indian Science from 2020 to 2050 saying that the vision for 2050 is one of dynamic growth.

Washington, January 07: Music therapy could be of great help for the speech acquisition process in toddlers who have undergone cochlear implantation, a new study has revealed.

Some infants who are born with impaired hearing and who cannot benefit from hearing aids are likely to gain 90% normal hearing ability by undergoing a cochlear implantation procedure.

But, after the operation, the child – who never heard before – undergoes a long rehabilitation process before he or she can begin to speak.

Sydney, January 06: Scientists have programmed computers to read human expressions and to tell whether one is in pain.

“Each facial expression is made up of many different components – a twitch of the mouth here, a widening of the eyes there – some lasting only a fraction of a second,” said Simon Lucey of Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

“Our computer program looks at these components, matches them against a list drawn up by expert psychologists and decides what expression just flitted across a face,” said Lucey, a computer scientist.

Washington, January 06: Google has launched its Nexus One, the newest Android-powered phone equipped by a voice-enabled keyboard for text fields as a serious competitor to the popular iPhone.

The Nexus One runs on Google’s own Android 2.1 operating system and features a touchscreen display. It comes with all Google Mobile apps pre-installed.

Users can find classic applications like search, maps, Gmail, YouTube and Google Talk, with additional goodies like maps navigation and Google voice.

Washington, January 06: Girls worldwide are just as good or bad at maths as boys, even though the latter are more confident in their abilities, according to a new international analysis.

But girls from countries where gender equity is more established are more likely to perform better on math tests, the report said.

‘Stereotypes about female inferiority in mathematics are a distinct contrast to the actual scientific data,’ said Nicole Else-Quest, psychology professor at Villanova University in the US, who led the study.

Washington, January 06: Scientists comparing hundreds of calls of insects and other animals have discerned common threads tying all of them.

Compiling data from nearly 500 species, researchers at the University of Florida (UF) and Oklahoma State University have found that the calls of crickets, whales and other creatures are controlled by their metabolic rates – their uptake and use of energy.

Sydney, January 06: Phenomenally powerful quantum computing, the stuff of science fiction, has edged closer to reality, thanks to recent breakthroughs.

Quantum computing relies on controlling and observing the behaviour of quantum particles or single electrons, to deliver phenomenal processing power at blinding speeds.

A team of Andrew Dzurak, professor, University of New South Wales (UNSW) and Andrea Morello, at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computer Technology, achieved these breakthroughs.

London, January 06: An artificial mind! Yes, a machine brain, perhaps much more intelligent than your own may someday be a reality, if scientists are to be believed.

A Swiss team, led by Professor Henry Markram, claims to be working on the world’s first artificial conscious and intelligent mind, made of silicon, gold and copper, which they say would be ready latest by 2018.

San Francisco, January 06: Internet search giant Google unveiled its first mobile phone on Tuesday as it increased the pressure on Apple’s iPhone in a mobile market that many analysts predict will come to dominate the internet in the coming years.

Google previously released its Android operating system for phones, which has been adopted by manufacturers like Samsung, Motorola and HTC.

But the Nexus One announced Tuesday is the first device to be branded by Google and sold directly to customers.

San Francisco, January 06: Apple Tuesday said that customers had downloaded over 3 billion applications from the company’s App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The announcement of the milestone came as Google was set to launch a rival to Apple’s hit smartphone, but Apple CEO Steve Jobs said thepopularity of Apple’s product meant that it had little to fear from the competition.

Coimbatore, January 05: The Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, has sanctioned Rs. 13.33 lakh to the Department of Botany, PSGR Krishnammal College for Women here, to undertake research on biodiesel production in a cost-effective method from karanja oil and jatropha oil using microbial enzyme as catalyst.

According to press note from N. Yesodha Devi, principal of the college, conversion of animal fat or vegetable oil into biodiesel by chemical process requires higher temperature and the processing of raw materials which contain impurities.

New York, January 05: Apple Inc is planning to launch its long-awaited tablet computer in March in a bid to increase its share of the market for handheld computers, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The tablet is to be presented in late January, the paper said, quoting sources briefed by Apple. The device with a 25 to 28-centimetre colour touch screen is a likely competitor for Kindle, the electronic book reader of Amazon.com Inc, as well as netbook computers.