Science

Beijing, December 01: European leaders called on China to provide details on how it plans to curb its greenhouse gas emissions, saying today that Beijing’s status as the world’s largest polluter gives it a special responsibility to combat global warming.

India, meanwhile, is under growing pressure to offer up a plan of any kind with less than week to go before 192 nations gather in Copenhagen to try to craft an international agreement for controlling emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases believed responsible for global warming.

Moscow, December 01: In adding another cap to mankind’s quest for knowledge, Russian manned spacecraft Soyuz TMA-15, was undocked from International Space Station (ISS), Xinhua has informed from the Mission Control Center outside Moscow.

The spaceship, with three ISS crew members aboard, undocked from the station at 6:56 a.m. Moscow time (0356 GMT), the Mission Control said.

The spacecraft’s reentry vehicle is to land near the town of Arkalyk in northern Kazakhstan at about 10:16 a.m. Moscow time (0716 GMT).

New Delhi, Dec 01: Internet games can boost children’s interest in mathematics, says a footballing Oxford University professor who plays wearing the prime number 17 and uses dance to prove theorems.

Marcus du Sautoy says there is “a real crisis” in maths education in English secondary schools, attended by pupils aged 11 to 16, where he says initially enthusiastic pupils “lose interest and become bored”.

His response is a glitzy maths website that uses arcade-style games to teach children curriculum topics such as geometry and quadratic equations.

Moscow, Dec 01: A Russian Soyuz space capsule carrying three astronauts from the International Space Station landed safely in Kazakhstan on Tuesday.

The capsule — carrying Belgian Frank de Winne, Canadian Robert Thirsk and Russian Roman Romanenko — landed as planned in the vast steppe of northern Kazakhstan about 85 km (50 miles) north of the town of Arkalyk.

Hanover, December 01: Many people have more than one PC nowadays. Add in all the mobile devices like netbooks and smartphones that need data moved around and you have got a problem: photos, songs, videos, and other files are available on one unit and not another.

Geneva, Dec 01: It comes after various advances on the machine, which underwent extensive repairs and improvements after it collapsed last year

Scientists say the world’s largest atom smasher has broken the record for proton acceleration, sending beams of the particles at 1.18 trillion electron volts.

A statement by the European Organization for Nuclear Research says the Large Hadron Collider eclipses the previous high, which was just short of 1 Tev at Fermilab outside Chicago.

Mumbai, November 30: The outgoing chairman of Atomic Energy Commission Anil Kakodkar today said India should have a long-term goal to achieve energy independence.

“To achieve energy independence is not going to be easy and what I meant by energy independence is the day India stop importing energy,” Kakodkar said, addressing his staff at Department of Atomic Energy Headquarters on his farewell.

“We all should look for such a day and that should be the ultimate aim,” Kakodkar, a proponent of self-reliance with import option as only ‘additionality’ said.

Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 29 (IANS) With the aim of ‘catching them young’, the Kerala government will invite around 3,500 school students to attend the Children’s Science Congress (CSC) here in January and listen to eminent scientists speak.

The Children’s Science Congress will be held alongside the 97th edition of the Indian Science Congress (ISC). The ISC is being hosted by the Indian Space Research Organisation and the University of Kerala. The state government has sanctioned Rs.3.50 crore for the event.

Mumbai, November 29: US based Nanotechnology firm Nanobiosym is planning to set up multi-purpose nanotechnology innovation parks, the first of its kind in India.

Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat have already signed MOUs with the globally recognised firm to establish the Nanobiosym Tech Park in India.

Munich,November 29:Searches on the Yahoo engine should soon deliver more results, thanks in part to new filter functions, reports the company.

Those new filters could allow a searcher, for example, to limit results to those found on major websites like Amazon or Wikipedia. The company also reports that its filter allows searches by related terms.

The engine’s search methods have also been upgraded, reports Yahoo. It now analyses the search habit of users over a certain period of time to come up with logical connections between past and present searches.

New Delhi, November 29:Even as the rural market is growing attractive for India’s telecom industry, the operators face several challenges in rural penetration like illiteracy and low revenue per user, according to a report.

“Despite the inherent attractiveness of the rural market for telecom operators, several challenges in going rural stare the operators in their face,” said the report jointly prepared by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and global consultancy KPMG.

Munich, November 29: Searches on the Yahoo engine should soon deliver more results, thanks in part to new filter functions, reports the company.
Those new filters could allow a searcher, for example, to limit results to those found on major websites like Amazon or Wikipedia. The company also reports that its filter allows searches by related terms.

The engine’s search methods have also been upgraded, reports Yahoo. It now analyses the search habit of users over a certain period of time to come up with logical connections between past and present searches.

Tuticorin, November 28: Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar has said India’s 1998 nuclear test was a ‘hundred per cent success’.

“I assure (you) that the nuclear test conducted in 1998 was hundred per cent success. The yield of the test was verified using various alternative methods and it was perfect,” he told reporters after inaugurating the Zirconium complex at Pazhayakal near here yesterday.

London, Nov 27: Scientists have designed a prototype device that kills germs from hands, feet and even underarms in a jiffy without harming the skin.

The prototype device can kill off bacteria, viruses, and fungi in just seconds by creating Plasma, commonly known as the fourth state of matter besides solid, liquid and gas.

Plasma is a sea of atoms that produces a cocktail of chemicals in air which kill bacteria but are harmless to skin.

Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 27: ISRO is planning 36 launches during the 11th plan with more than six a year, a top space official said here on Thursday.

The expanding horizon of Indian Space Programme, with more number of launches annually and missions like reusable launch vehicle on the anvil, calls for increased productivity with consistent quality and at a competitive cost, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre Director, P.S. Veeraraghavan said.

Bangalore, November 27: India’s space scientists are developing semi-cryogenic propulsion technology using kerosene that is expected to give the country the capability to launch six-tonne class satellite, almost three times the weight its rockets can currently handle.

The cryogenic technology uses liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, whereas in semi-cryogenic technology, instead of liquid hydrogen, pure kerosene(aviation-grade) is used, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman K Radhakrishnan said.

London, Nov 26: The brain’s ability to reconstruct fragmented sounds allows us to successfully carry on a conversation in a noisy room. Now, a new Dutch study throws up interesting insights into how the brain allows us to perceive a physically interrupted sound as being continuous.

‘In our day-to-day lives, sounds we wish to pay attention to may be distorted or masked by background noise, which means that some of the information gets lost,’ explains senior study author, Lars Riecke of cognitive neuroscience at Maastricht University.

Hyderabad, November 26: Microsoft had launched a set of tools that help Users enter Indian Languages text into computers and the beta version of the tools would be made available as a free down-load soon.

Talking to newspersons here yesterday, Vice-President and Managing Director Srini Koppolu said the tools would initially support Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu and later it would take up the project on other Indian languages.

Hyderabad, November 25: (Siasat News) The Railway Electrical Board’s Member Mr.Sudesh Kumar, said, the IRISET’s, (Indian Railway Institute of Signal Engineering and Telecommunications ) e-learning should reach out to every student of the Institute , so that the Prestigious Institute instead of being obsolete and outdated could be abreast of the latest developments and technology.

New Delhi, Nov 25: A day after the Centre announced its intentions to lower the import duty on hybrid cars, Tata Motors, the country’s third largest passenger car manufacturer, said it might launch electric Indica in domestic market in 2011.

“The electric Indica, which was unveiled at the auto expo last year, will be available for launch in the country simultaneously with its global unveiling in 2011,” Prakash M Telang, managing director, Tata Motors said, adding that the company would start a feasibility study on the product when it would be ready for launch.

Pune, Nov 25: Philips India recently unveiled its first ‘Light Lounge’ in Pune for the home decorative lighting segment.

The Light Lounge showcases lighting solutions for every application within a home including the living room, bedroom, study, dining rooms, kitchen and bathroom and so on, said a press note from the company.

In the last quarter, Philips has more than tripled its range of decorative home lighting solutions from 150 decorative home lights to over 500.

Chennai, Nov 25: India has become one of the key players in international biomedical research, with its IT capabilities, willingness of the government to start reforms and trained technicians, Melody Lin, deputy director, National Institutes of Health – Office for Human Research Protection, U.S., said.

Wellington, Nov 24: New Zealand’s glaciers were continuing to lose significant ice mass, finds the latest snowline survey by New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA).

NIWA’s snow and ice scientist Jordy Hendrikx said it shows the impact of global warming, Radio New Zealand reported on Tuesday.

For the annual survey, which has been going since 1977, pictures are taken from planes of 50 glaciers in the Southern Alps and the Kaikoura range.

New Delhi, Nov 24: Greenpeace has welcomed the government’s Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM), which was launched here on Tuesday.

“We welcome the formulation of the JNNSM from vision to action. The JNNSM underlines the government’s intention to give boost to solar energy and is a purposeful step by India towards climate change mitigation,” said Climate and Energy Policy Officer of Greenpeace India Siddharth Pathak in a statement.

Florida, Nov 24: Astronaut Randolph Bresnik is a new dad again, after launching into space and taking a spacewalk, all for the first time.

He announced the birth of his daughter, Abigail, on NASA’s airwaves.

His wife, Rebecca, gave birth to their second child back home in Houston on Saturday at 11:04 p.m. CST (0504 GMT). They have a 3-year-old son, adopted from Ukraine.

Bresnik said both mother and baby are doing very well.