Science

Washington, September 30: Glucose-the human body’s preferred energy source-can potentially power our gadgets, cars or homes.

Researchers at Brigham Young University (BYU) have developed a fuel cell-basically a battery with a gas tank-that harvests electricity from glucose and other sugars known as carbohydrates.

“Carbohydrates are very energy rich,” said BYU chemistry professor Gerald Watt. “What we needed was a catalyst that would extract the electrons from glucose and transfer them to an electrode.”

Washington, September 30: Google is in the early stages of looking at ways to write software that would fully integrate plug-in hybrid vehicles to the power grid, minimize strain on the grid and help utilities manage vehicle charging load.

“We are doing some preliminary work,” said Dan Reicher, Google’s director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives. “We have begun some work on smart charging of electric vehicles and how you would integrate large number of electric vehicles into the grid successfully.”

San Francisco, September 30: Microsoft on Tuesday released free software that people can use to protect computers against viruses, spyware and other malicious codes in arsenals of cyber criminals.

Microsoft Security Essentials is available for download at microsoft.com/security_essentials and is built on technology that the global software giant uses in computer security programs it designs for businesses.

Champagne, September 29: bubbles are not just the photogenic companion to a bottle’s opening pop, they also enhance the drink’s flavour, scientists say.
A group of European researchers say they have proven champagne’s fizz – actually scores of chemical eruptions – help unleash the drink’s distinctive taste.

According to the team, a bottle, when poured, leads to the formation of scores of carbon dioxide bubbles, aroma-rich compounds that travel upward toward the top of the glass, exploding on the surface into a burst of aerosol borne flavour.

Mumbai, September 29: Vodafone has been recognised as the most admired mobile service brand online in India followed by Tata Indicom and Aircel, a survey said.

A pan-India survey conducted by Drizzlin Media, a Branding 2.0 consultancy that audited over 1,600 relevant conversations of the 7,000 conversations’ sampled around India’s top 10 telecom brands shows that Reliance Mobile emerged as the least admired brand.

The survey was conducted over ten telecom brands including Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular, Tata Indicom, Aircel, Reliance, BSNL, MTNL, Spice and Loop Mobile.

New Delhi, September 29: After Orange, Vodafone too has joined the ranks of mobile service providers who offer iPhones on their platforms. Vodafone has struck a deal with Apple to sell iPhones in the U.K. and Ireland from early next year, said a brief company statement Tuesday in London.

Washington, September 29: Microsoft says its new computer security program can be downloaded starting today.

Microsoft Security Essentials, as the free antivirus software is called, has been available in a beta test version since June.

The software updates daily to stay current with the latest malicious programs, which can steal passwords or turn PCs into spam servers. Microsoft says it won’t make computers run slower.

Microsoft has said it isn’t out to steal business from companies like McAfee and Symantec, which make popular antivirus programs with more features.

Lucknow, September 29: The ’sanjivani’ may not be just myth. Scientists are now busy trying to identify the magical herb, which according to the Indian epic Ramayana brought back to life Lord Ram’s dying brother Lakshman.

Having found a few Himalayan herbs that match the description of the sanjivani, a team of five scientists at the National Botanical Research Institute (NBRI) here is working on identifying the properties of each of these.

Paris, September 28: New UNESCO chief Irina Bokova of Bulgaria said Sunday that she would make visiting Arab countries a priority in a bid to ease tensions over her battle with Egypt’s Faruq Hosni for the job.

Bokova insisted she was “a friend of the Muslim world” after her defeat of the Egyptian culture minister to become the UN’s cultural head triggered a storm of protest in his home country over the interference of pro-Israeli lobbying.

Brussels, September 28: The European Commission issued new volume standards for MP3 players on Monday to help prevent music lovers damaging their hearing.

The new standards will require small technical changes to I-Pods and other MP3 devices so they play at a safe volume by default. There will also be a health warning so consumers who choose to override the default settings know the risks.

Denver, September 28: Amid the din of all the other music-based games being released this fall comes a unique twist on the convergence between music and videogames: “Brutal Legend.”

Brussels, September 28: Norwegian browser maker Opera urged European Union antitrust regulators on Monday not to rush to close its antitrust case against Microsoft before ensuring a level playing field among browsers.

Hong Kong, September 28: Chinese researchers have unearthed the fossil of a bird-like dinosaur with four wings in northeastern China, which they suggest is a missing link in dinosaurs’ evolution into birds.

In a paper in the journal Nature, they said they found the well-preserved fossil of the “Anchiornis huxleyi,” which roamed the earth some 160 million years ago, in a geological formation in China’s northeastern Liaoning province.

Oslo, September 28: Dismayed by ice and storms, British explorer Captain James Cook had no regrets when he abandoned a voyage searching for a fabled southern continent in 1773.

Finding only icebergs after he was the first to cross the Antarctic Circle, he wrote ruefully that if anyone ventured further and found a “land doomed by nature…to lie for ever buried under everlasting ice and snow”:

“I shall not envy him the honor of discovery, but I will be bold to say that the world will not be benefited by it.”

Things may be worse than he thought.

Denver, September 28: The mobile music landscape is very much a study in good news, bad news.

The bad news is that mobile music has failed to live up to the expectations that the early success of ringtones had inspired. Combined ringtone and ringback tone sales have fallen almost 23 percent so far this year, according to Nielsen RingScan. And Forrester Research analyst Sonal Gandhi estimates that only one-third of U.S. mobile subscribers with music-capable phones use their devices to listen to music.

New York, September 28: Apple Inc said on Monday that downloads from its iTunes applications store had passed 2 billion and that it now has more than 85,000 apps available for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

It did not say how many of the applications delivered were sold and how many were free. The store has inspired rival stores and helped boost iPhone sales since the summer of 2008.

Apple said it has sold more than 50 million iPhones and iPod Touch devices in 77 countries. AT&T Inc is the exclusive U.S. provider for iPhone.

Berlin, September 29: Officials at a German zoo say that a male brown bear attacked and killed a female bear in front of horrified onlookers.

Christoph Langner, the director of the zoo in the northern coastal German city of Stralsund, said the incident occurred on Saturday afternoon.

He said Sunday that zoo officials are still trying to determine why the male, a Syrian brown bear named Balou, attacked the female, Klara.

Zoo spokesman Peter Koslik said that Klara arrived at the zoo two years ago and Balou about half a year later.

Tibet, September 28: Chinese researchers have unearthed the fossil of a bird-like dinosaur with four wings in north-eastern China, which they suggest is a missing link in dinosaurs’ evolution into birds.

In a paper in the journal Nature, they said they found the well-preserved fossil of the Anchiornis huxleyi, which roamed the earth some 160 million years ago, in a geological formation in China’s north-eastern Liaoning province.

London, Septmeber 28: Apple has claimed downloads from its iTunes applications store had passed two billion and that it now had more than 85,000 apps available for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

It did not say how many of the applications delivered were sold and how many were free.

The store has inspired rival stores and helped boost iPhone sales since the summer of 2008.

Apple said it has sold more than 50 million iPhones and iPod Touch devices in 77 countries.

AT&T Inc is the exclusive US provider for iPhone.

Beijing, September 28: Chinese experts Monday announced that the country’s space scientists have completed the world’s highest-resolution three-dimensional map of the moon.

The map, covering the whole surface of the moon, is based on image data obtained by a charge-coupled device (CCD) stereo camera carried by Chang’e-1, China’s first lunar probe vehicle, launched Oct 2007.

The spatial resolution of the map – measured by the distance of two features within an image that can be clearly defined – is 500 meters.

London, September 27: Zero is the hero which can give you back hours of your life by reducing time spent on hold by as much as 70 per cent.
Despite dwelling at the bottom of the keypad, it has been revealed that the humble 0 is at the top of the dial pile when it comes to fighting the dreaded automated phone “services”.

It was in researching a cheat sheet to help readers beat interactive voice response (IVR) systems that The Daily Telegraph discovered the Power of None.

Johannesburg, September 27: New Zealand defeated Sri Lanka by 38 runs in a Group B match of the Champions Trophy at the New Wanderers Stadium here Sunday.

Chasing a target of 316, Sri Lanka were all out for 277 in 46.4 overs.

–Agencies

New Delhi, September 26:Move over passport and PAN card! Identity authentication at banks, gas connection centres or while providing rural jobs will just be an SMS away, Unique Identification Authority chief Nandan Nilekani said Saturday.

“Our project will provide a unique identification (UID) number, not a card. The authentication will be made by using mobile phones,” Nilekani said.

London, September 26Google on Friday said it has enhanced its popular Internet search engine to dig deeper into pages to uncover the exact tidbits of information people seek.

While typical search results provide links to websites deemed relevant to queries, Google now weaves in direct connections to spots on pages with snippets of information that might be of interest.

“We’ve enhanced the search snippet with two new features that make it easier to find information buried deep within a page,” Chris Kern of Google’s Snippet Team wrote in a blog post.

Bangalore, September 26: A day after the ground-breaking discovery of water on the moon hit the headlines, Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) G. Madhavan Nair on Friday said the Chandrayaan-1 detected water on the lunar surface as early as June 2009.

The indigenously developed Moon Impact Probe (MIP), which crash-landed at a designated site on the lunar south pole on November 14, 2008, picked up “clear signatures” of water during its 25-minute descent, Mr. Nair said at a press conference here on Friday.