Science

Washington, July 19: Two astronauts from the US shuttle Endeavour have successfully completed the first of five scheduled spacewalks aimed at completing a Japanese laboratory at the International Space Station, NASA said.

Tim Kopra, who made his first space walk, and Dave Wolf, an old hand with four walks under his belt, returned to the ISS’s decompression chamber and closed the airlock at 2151 GMT on Saturday, 37 minutes ahead of schedule, NASA reported.

The duo’s spacewalk lasted five hours and 32 minutes, US space agency officials said.

Tokyo, July 19: Japan’s next-generation supercomputer will be made by Fujitsu Ltd. after its two partners withdrew from a government-sponsored project to develop the computer which will achieve the world’s highest performance of 10 petaflops.

Fujitsu will make the supercomputer for the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, an independent administrative institution known as RIKEN.

Berlin, July 19: Windows PC users should keep the “Video ActiveX Control Element” deactivated until further notice.

While helpful for playing back some films, it also presents an “actively exploited” security hole for hackers. Under some circumstances it could even be used to sneak viruses onto a user’s computer, warns the German Federal Agency for IT Security.

Washington, July 19: Microsoft’s recent launch of its search engine bing (http://www.bing.com) prompted many to stray from Google for the first time in a while. What they found was a search engine with a few nifty tricks up its sleeve.

But Bing isn’t the only alternative search engine that has managed to introduce features that search kings Google and Yahoo don’t have.

Plenty of newcomers are innovating in ways that can add up to significant productivity gains for you as you search for information on the Internet. Here are a few.

— Social networking search

Washington, July 19: (After the 1969 flight, Armstrong stayed on at Nasa for just two years. Wearied by the unending attention and demands on his time, he left to teach engineering at the University of Cincinnati in his native Ohio, not to return to public life again.)

The remarkable thing about the men who have walked on the Moon is how normal they are.

Washington, July 19: This weekend, 40 years after man first landed on the Moon, more human beings than ever before are orbiting on a single spacecraft. In 1969, three men squeezed into Apollo 11’s command module, a craft little bigger than a Mini.

Tokyo, July 19: Japan has started selling of a new biofuel made from rice, which is expected to help the resource poor country reduce its dependence on imported gasolie and make better use of deserted farmland.

The Niigata prefecture of Japan has begun the selling of the new biofuel, produced from domestically-grown brown rice and blended with gasoline at a ratio of up to three percent, the Mainichi Daily News newspaper reported Saturday.

Washington, July 18: Astronauts from the US space shuttle Endeavour prepared for their first spacewalk of the mission on Saturday, aimed at completing a Japanese space laboratory at the International Space Station.

During their first full day in space, the Endeavour crew inspected the spacesuits that they will use in the five spacewalks planned during the mission.

The seven-person crew, including six Americans and one Canadian also tested rendezvous equipment, installed a camera for the orbiter docking system and extended the docking ring that sits on top of the system.

Washington, July 18: Yahoo MicrosoftGoing by the Friday reports from Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal’s All Things D blog, a Yahoo-Microsoft tie-up for Internet search technology and advertising is apparently on the cards – unnamed sources-in-the-know said that the deal might likely be announced next week!

All Things D said that a number of Microsoft executives – including Satya Nadella and Qi Lu, Microsoft’s search head and top digital exec – are currently in Silicon Valley to see the agreement come through.

Nairobi, July 18: Eighteen percent of Kenyans are connected to electricity but KenGen projects this will grow to 20% by next year.

Demand will be about 2 500MW in 2013, when the extra 2 000MW of clean power will be running, said Albert Mugo, business development and strategy director at the country’s biggest power producer.

“It’s expected to cost about $7bn to $8bn, and we are seeking investors,” Mugo said. “The government is organising an investors’ conference in September to identify who would be interested in developing this project.”

Cape Canaveral, July 18: Space shuttle Endeavour has arrived at the International Space Station.

Endeavour docked at the space station on Friday afternoon for a week-and-a-half-long stay. The linkup created the biggest crowd ever in orbit at the same place: 13 astronauts.

The two crews will greet one another, face to face, as soon as the hatches between the craft are opened.

Dayton, July 18: It was a reunion of reunions.

Twelve Apollo astronauts reminisced, traded stories and poked fun at each other on Friday night as the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing and moonwalk approached.

The astronauts, including first ‘moonmen’ Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, attended the ceremony in which the National Aviation Hall of Fame presented the Apollo crews with the “Spirit of Flight” award for their courage and dedication.

Washington, July 18: Power pack 3 betaMicrosoft Corp. said in blog Friday that it has launched Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 Beta that would improve compatibility with Windows 7 as well as Netbooks and multimedia.

Anyone, who wants to catch the PP3 Beta, will have to join the WHS program on Microsoft Connect, using build number 2361 and download size 19.4MB.

Software giant’s Power Pack 3 will be a free update for existing Home Server Owners.

London, July 18: Most lizards are content scurrying in and out of nooks and crannies in walls and between rocks. But neon blue tailed tree lizards (Holaspis guentheri) leap from branch to branch as they scamper through trees in the African forest. A new study has found their bones are full of air to enable them to glide.
Bieke Vanhooydonck from the University of Antwerp and her colleagues, Anthony Herrel and Peter Aerts, decided to find out whether neon blue tailed tree lizards really glide.

Washington, July 18: There are still many secrets waiting to be gleaned from moon rocks collected by Apollo 11 astronauts on their historic moonwalk 40 years ago.

Randy L Korotev, research professor in the department of earth and planetary sciences Washington University-St Louis (WUSTL), has studied lunar samples and their chemical compositions since he was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin.

Washington, July 18: A high in solar activity impacts the earth in a way that resembles the devastating El Nino, releasing more energy than a million Hiroshima bombs, according to a new study.

The study shows that as the sun reaches maximum activity, it heats cloud-free parts of the Pacific Ocean enough to increase evaporation, intensify tropical rainfall and the trade winds, and cool the eastern tropical Pacific.

New Delhi, July 18: The fifth largest personal computer manufacturer in world – Toshiba has announced the availability of its Satellite laptop line in India.

The Satellite M500 notebook sports 14.1-inch widescreen HD TruBrite LED Backlit display, capable of viewing HD 720p content at 1366×768 pixel resolution. With the 16:9 aspect ratio, the display is not Full-HD. The notebook features built in HD webcam with mic capable of recording high quality video, Harmon Kardon speakers, and a backlit keyboard. The notebook features multi-touch touchpad, and a fingerprint scanner.

Berlin, July 18: In another step towards realizing the dream of electric flight, the world’s first manned aircraft with the ability to take-off using power from fuel cells takes to the German skies.

The Antares DLR-H2 aircraft, which generates zero emissions onboard, is the result of a joint venture between Germany’s Lange Aviation, BASF and German Aerospace Center (DLR), and Denmark’s Serenergy.

The single-person all-composite aircraft has a one electric motor, turning a two-blade propeller above its spine.

Washington, July 18: In the four decades since the world watched his “one giant leap for mankind”, Neil Armstrong hasn’t had much use for the limelight.

Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon July 20, 1969, during NASA’s Apollo 11 mission. But he once said that going to the moon didn’t interest him nearly as much as the technology that got him there.

San Francisco, July 17: Microsoft and Yahoo are close to signing a deal to collaborate on search and advertising in a bid to challenge Google’s overwhelming dominance.

Bloomberg financial news serfice Friday reported that the two companies could reach a deal as early as next week, though the deal could still disintegrate. The two companies refused to comment on the reports.

Google controls some 65 per cent of the US internet search with Yahoo ranked a distant second with 19.6 per cent and Microsoft third with 8.4 per cent.

San Francisco, July 17: Google Inc. made more money than ever in the second quarter, even though its revenue growth slowed like never before.

The latter part of that paradox bothered investors, causing Google shares to fall $14.62, or 3.3 percent, to $427.98 in extended trading Thursday after the second-quarter results were released.

Bangalore, July 17: Chandrayaan-I, which put India into a select group of moon-faring nations, is considered as a unique example of global partnership in research as six of its 10 experiments are of international partners, including NASA.

Though a key component of Chandrayaan-I has malfunctioned raising doubts over the duration of the country’s eight-month-old maiden moon mission, ISRO today said it had achieved “almost all” objectives of the mission.

New Delhi, July 17: The mobile voice search engine, custom-built by Google India has been launched by Google India, free for mobile services subscribers in India. However, the voice-based search engine services are currently limited to BlackBerry users.

The mobile voice search engine is another big achievement of Google India on the mobile front. Earlier, Google India launched a SMS-based search engine services.

Google India’s mobile voice search engine is a Beta launch. It is only available on Blackberry. Presently, it reaches 400,000 people.

Bangalore, July 17: Playing down the concerns regarding Chandrayaan-I’s usability after a crucial onboard sensor developed a snag, ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair said on Friday that over 95 percent of India’s first moon mission objectives have been achieved.

“In the last eight months of the operation of the mission we have collected almost 95 percent of the data that we wanted; most of its objectives have already been completed,” ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair said.

Bangalore, July 17: India’s ambitious Chandrayaan-I Moon mission might come to a premature end as star sensors on board the spacecraft have failed.

“Star sensors are malfunctioning,” S Satish, spokesperson of the Bangalore-headquartered Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) told PTI.

Star sensors played the crucial role of orientation towards the Moon.

ISRO said it has devised innovative technology and is using antenna pointing mechanism and gyroscopes to overcome the problem.

But the space agency is not confident on how long they can hold to this mode.