Washington, July 17: A student team in the Virginia Tech College of Engineering is providing the blind with an opportunity many never thought possible – the opportunity to drive.
A retrofitted four-wheel dirt buggy, designed by them, uses laser range finders, an instant voice command interface and a host of other innovative, cutting-edge technology to guide blind drivers as they steer, brake, and accelerate.
Bangalore, July 17: India’s first moon mission Chandrayaan-I, launched in October last with a two-year life span, has lost a major sensor and may meet a premature end, ISRO said on Friday.
“Unfortunately, during the last month we have lost a vital sensor — the star sensor,” ISRO Chief G Madhavan Nair said.
“Like in the olden days when one used to look at the stars to fix a direction, likewise an onboard electronic equipment was doing all this and it was required for precise pointing (towards the moon). With its loss we are really worried,” he said.
Washington,July 17: Sandfish, small lizards with smooth scales, virtually turn into snakes to navigate desert sand.
Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT) researchers found that the animals place their limbs against their sides and create a wave motion with their bodies to propel themselves through sand.
“When startled above the surface, the animals dive into the sand within a half second,” said Daniel Goldman, assistant professor in GIT School of Physics, who led the study.
Washington, July 17: Birds, deer, monkeys and other wild animals all bark — but why are dogs more vocal than others?
The reason is related to dogs’ 10,000-year history of hanging around human food refuse dumps, says evolutionary biologist Kathryn Lord, University of Massachusetts (U-M).
Lord and co-authors also provide scientific literature with its first consistent, functional and acoustically precise definition of this common animal sound.
London, July 17: In a breakthrough study, scientists from University of Minnesota in St Paul have developed a new material that can repel hot water.
The new discovery could help protect vulnerable members of the population such as elderly, children, and physically impaired people from hot-water burns.
Scientists have long been working on producing water-repelling materials inspired by natural surfaces, such as lotus leaves.
These leaves have waxy hydrophobic water hating coating and a spiky surface texture that helps to trap small pockets of air beneath water droplets.
Hennigsdorf, July 17: Lions, giraffes, tigers, rabbits, bears, rhinos and even owls can go blind from cataracts, but an east German firm has an answer: custom-made “contact lenses”.
The procedure is delicate, to say the least, and requires special training for veterinarians.
But it has propelled tiny S & V Technologies, founded by Bavarian chemist and entrepreneur Christine Kreiner in the former communist east, to global leadership in a highly specialised field.
Boston, July 17: Microsoft Corp will release a free version of its dominant Office software that users can access over the Web, catching up with products that arch rival Google Inc launched three years ago.
The world’s largest software maker will offer a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software and a note-taking program with the same look and feel of their counterparts in the Office suites that it sells for personal computers.
Cape Canaveral, July 17: A US space agency official downplayed the potential of damage to Endeavour by debris that could be seen hitting the shuttle as it launched into orbit on Wednesday.
The debris could be ice or isolating foam that broke off from the external fuel tank about two minutes after the launch, said Nasa associate administrator for space operations Bill Gerstenmaier.
“We had some foam loss events,” Gerstenmaier said. “There were several losses that occurred.”
Washington, July 17: They have travelled further than any fashion item on Earth, surviving a hostile environment and extremes of heat and cold on a world far from ours. But now age is catching up with Nasa spacesuits.
“There is a lot of decay,” admitted Cathy Lewis, curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, who is charge of looking after a dozen spacesuits worn on the Apollo missions.
She even has under her care the suit worn by Neil Armstrong when he stepped out on the lunar surface on July 20, 1969, and made history as the first man to walk on the moon.
Toronto, July 17: It took a child to stump the creators of the Blackberry, one of the world’s top selling smartphones and a part of most executives’ attire.
“Are you going to make a phone more for kids so that my Mom will let me get one?” the child said from the packed audience at the annual general shareholders’ meeting at Canada’s Research in Motion on Tuesday.
The world’s No 2 smartphone maker has so far aimed its near-ubiquitous Blackberry mobile phone mostly at executives, with US President Obama being its highest-profile user.
Washington, July 17: The US Senate has confirmed former astronaut and Marines general Charles Bolden as the new administrator of Nasa, making him the US space agency’s first African-American chief.
The unanimous vote late on Wednesday came shortly after the space shuttle Endeavour successfully blasted off toward the International Space Station (ISS) after five scuttled launch attempts in a month. It also coincided with the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20 1969.
Shanghai, July 17: The longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, visible next Wednesday, has sparked tourist fever in eastern China, which according to experts is the best place to view the event.
The total eclipse, expected to last about six minutes, will pass from southwest China across the cities of Chengdu and Chongqing to Shanghai and Hangzhou in eastern Zhejiang province, according to Nasa’s eclipse website.
Tokyo, July 17: Japanese toymaker Takara Tomy said on Thursday that it would launch a talking version of its Bowlingual gadget that can “translate” dog barks into the human language.
The new model analyses six emotions, including joy, sadness and frustration, and speaks phrases such as “Play with me!” – an improvement on the original which just showed them on a screen.
“Dog owners can enjoy the toy at a dog run and a park,” said Tomy spokesperson Chie Yamada.
Washington, July 17: Nasa on Thursday unveiled restored video footage of man’s first steps on the moon to mark the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission’s historic stride.
The first installment of a more extensive project, the video release includes 15 key moments from the historic mission by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, Nasa said.
Bangalore, July 17: A malfunctioning star sensor of India’s first lunar mission spacecraft Chandrayaan-I was set right by space scientists to ensure correct orientation, an official said here friday.
“One of the star sensors, which gives the orientation of the spacecraft, was malfunctioning but our scientists have overcome this problem with innovative techniques of using antenna pointing mechanism and gyroscope on board the spacecraft to get the orientation information,” Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) direcvtor S. Satish told IANS.
New York, July 17: The original recordings of the first humans landing on the moon 40 years ago were erased and re-used, but newly restored copies of the original broadcast look even better, NASA officials said on Thursday.
NASA released the first glimpses of a complete digital make-over of the original landing footage that clarifies the blurry and grainy images of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the surface of the moon.
Washington, July 17: NASA could put a man on the moon but didn’t have the sense to keep the original video of the live TV transmission.
In an embarrassing acknowledgment, the space agency said Thursday that it must have erased the Apollo 11 moon footage years ago so that it could reuse the videotape.
But now Hollywood is coming to the rescue.
Washington, July 17: NASA could put a man on the moon but didn’t have the sense to keep the original video of the live TV transmission.
In an embarrassing acknowledgment, the space agency said Thursday that it must have erased the Apollo 11 moon footage years ago so that it could reuse the videotape.
But now Hollywood is coming to the rescue.
New Delhi, July 16: The internet giant Google has declared that its Friend Connect service now supports 47 different languages. Google Friend Connect service helps connecting users with their friends on different websites and blogs.
Google Friend Connect, the service which helps website owners offer provide social networking features for visitors, was initially available in English language. However, Google Friend Connect service is now available in 47 different languages.
Washington, July 16: Several pieces of insulation broke free from the space shuttle Endeavour’s external fuel tank when it took off and at least one piece hit the orbiter.
Three heat-resistant tiles on the shuttle’s underside were affected, but the damage during Wednesday’s launch was superficial, the associate administrator for space operations William H Gerstenmaier said.
The crew would check the shuttle after arrival at the International Space Station.
Washington, July 16: Even conspiracy theories must sometimes be taken seriously.
Every week Roger Launius, chief historian at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, devotes his time to debunking one of history’s favourite such theories: That astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin never landed on the moon.
The entire July 20, 1969, landing and the spacewalk several hours later was just a show, all lies, filmed in a Hollywood studio or in a desert, the sceptics say.
Few other conspiracy theories have proven so popular or long-lived.
Washington, July 16: Space shuttle Endeavour blasted off Wednesday on its sixth attempt to launch since June, headed to the International Space Station to expand Japan’s Kibo module.
The seven-member crew is to deliver an outside porch on the module at the station to expose scientific experiments to the extremities of space.
The mission has suffered a slew of delays that kept the craft on the ground for weeks longer than planned.
San Farncisco, July 15: Intel Corp.’s second-quarter results bolster the company’s position that the computer business is on the mend after its roughest patch in years.
Intel is the world’s biggest maker of microprocessors, the electronic brains of PCs. More than three-quarters of the world’s PCs use Intel chips. The company late Tuesday posted second-quarter sales substantially stronger than Wall Street expected, and its outlook suggests there’s more good news to come. The stock jumped 7 percent in after-hours trading.
Panaji, july 15: Global warming has not only increased the number of cyclones in the Arabian sea but has also intensified them, a marine scientist attached to the National Institute of Oceanography said here on Wednesday.
Prasanna Kumar, a senior marine scientist, said there had been virtually a five-fold increase in the number of cyclones in the Arabian sea in the last 12 years.
“The 1995-2007 period has seen five times the number of cyclones than in the previous 25 years from 1970 to 1995,” Kumar said.
New Delhi, July 15: The government will soon have “star” ratings for its commercial buildings to keep a tab on their power use and to ascertain consumption by various appliances.
All buildings adhering to the Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC), a body that specifies the energy performance requirements for commercial buildings to be constructed in the country, would be given star ratings.