Washington, August 04: If global warming is to be addressed without breaking people’s pocketbooks, no single answer will do the job, a US research group tied to the electric utility industry says in a new study that concludes the problem must be attacked from many directions.
Johannesburg, August 04: About 150 yellowwood trees, an endangered species and the national tree of South Africa, were chopped down and poisoned in the Drakensberg because a government environmental group mistook them for black wattle trees, a report said on Tuesday.
The yellowwood trees that were destroyed were between 50 and 100 years old, Beeld newspaper reported.
The Working for Water initiative, administered by the department of water affairs and forestry, was created to fight invasive alien plants.
Pretoria, August 04: South Africa says it and other developing countries won’t consider the next round of climate change talks successful unless rich nations pay up.
South African officials meeting on Tuesday to discuss strategy ahead of the December climate change talks in Copenhagen said at least 1 percent of global GDP should be set aside by rich nations.
That money would help developing countries conduct research and take other steps to cope with climate change. It also could help them obtain technology to reduce their carbon emissions.
Washington, August 04: The US Marine Corps is banning its troops from going onto Facebook, MySpace and other social network sites, citing a possible security risk.
The corps issued an order on Monday saying the ban is effective immediately on the Marine Corps computer network. It said the internet has been used as a haven for malicious behavior, and said that using social sites can expose information to adversaries.
Washington, August 04: Researchers said on Monday they had found primitive bladder cancer cells that cloak themselves with a “don’t eat me” signal that scares off immune system cells, allowing them to mature into tumours later on.
But they found a way to unmask this disguise and said their findings may lead to new approaches for treating cancers of several different types.
Johannesburg, August 04: Television licence fees will increase 11%, the SABC said on Tuesday.
The increase, effective from last Saturday, was approved by Communications Minister Siphiwe Nyanda, SABC spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago said in a statement.
“The annual fee for a domestic, business, dealer and lessor licence will increase by R25 – from R225 to R250.
“Concessionary TV licences, granted to those over the age of 70, as well as to receivers of social grants from the State, will be increased by a mere 8% – from R65 to R70 per annum.”
Mumbai, August 04: Significant changes in the lowest part of earth-ionosphere have been observed by the scientists from the Indian Institute of Geomagnetism (IIG) who conducted experiments on Very Low Frequency (VLF) radiowaves for the first time during total solar eclipse (TSE) on July 22.
The scientists monitored very low frequency (VLF) radiowaves travelling long distances through the earth-ionosphere wave guide and found increase in VLF signal strength during TSE at around 50 to 60 kms above the earth.
New Delhi, August 04: Skywatchers will find lunar radiance rather dim on the full moon day this Thursday when the penumbral lunar eclipse occurs.
The moon’s small entry into the earth’s penumbral shadow will produce an extremely subtle dimming of the moon’s southern edge which will, however, be difficult to observe with the naked eye, Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE) Director C B Devgun said.
Mumbai, August 03: The Nokia XpressMusic added a new Nokia 5630 cell phone in the list. This is smarter and faster cell phone in all its features. The latest Xpress-music phone is packed with the quickest processor Nokia have till now.
This cell phone works on the ARM 11 600MHz processor and supports the different network (Quad-band GSM supports). This is the first cell phone of the music series which have 3G network (UMTS and HSDPA).
This Xpress-Music phone offers many softwares features N-Gage support, and support all the extra outdoor apps.
London, August 03: India and China are in talks to monitor the melting of glaciers in the Himalayas, a border region crucial to both countries’ water supplies, Minister for Environment Jairam Ramesh has said.
“We are talking to the Chinese about monitoring the Himalayan glaciers,” Ramesh told the a newspaper.
However, he said India would not allow Chinese scientists “to climb all over India’s glaciers” but wanted a collaborative research programme.
Washington, August 03: Scientists are now seeing signals that the Sahara desert and surrounding regions are greening due to increasing rainfall, all thanks to the rising temperatures due to climate change.
According to a report in National Geographic News, if sustained, these rains could revitalize drought-ravaged regions, reclaiming them for farming communities.
This desert-shrinking trend is supported by climate models, which predict a return to conditions that turned the Sahara into a lush savanna some 12,000 years ago.
New Delhi, August 02: Are you constantly on the move and don’t have time to log on to your computer to be in touch with your friends? Coming to your rescue now is your mobile phone through which you can access any social networking site, anytime, anywhere.
Take college student Ajay Kumar for instance.
On a holiday in Goa, Kumar was constantly glued to his mobile phone — not calling or texting but scrapping and walling his friends on their profiles on Facebook and Orkut.
Kanpur, August 02: Taking a big leap in its technological quest, IIT Kanpur has developed a nanosatellite which is expected to provide real-time data on drought, flood, vegetation and forestation.
The satellite, designed and developed by a group of students of the institute, will be handed over to ISRO, which is expected to launch it by the end of the year.
New York, August 02: A sad day for Yahoo! That’s the consensus — a rare one — across both global technology and investor communities. Yahoo stock dropped 10 percent, Microsoft rose one percent. For once, the markets may have got it right. The decision to work together on their search engines is a big mistake for Yahoo, and a small gain for Microsoft.
But it was coming, even if we didn’t see exactly this 10-year deal in which Microsoft’s Bing will power Yahoo Search.
Cape Canaveral, August 01: Koichi Wakata was still getting used to gravity, though it wasn’t going to stop him from diving into a deluge of sushi.
Huge amounts of the delicacy awaited the Japanese astronaut Friday after he returned to Earth aboard shuttle Endeavour with six other astronauts. Wakata, the first Japanese astronaut to return from a long space journey, lived in orbit at the international space station for four and a half months.
Houston, August 01: The shuttle Endeavour descended safely to Earth on Friday, ending a successful 16-day assembly mission to the International Space Station (ISS) with the final piece of Japan’s Kibo science laboratory.
The seven US, Canadian and Japanese astronauts aboard Endeavour touched down at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 10:48 am (1448 GMT).
There were concerns that early morning thunder storms, coastal rain showers and fog near the Florida landing site might force shuttle commander Mark Polanski and his crew to postpone their return until Saturday.
Chandigarh, August 01: A car designed and built by engineering students from a Punjab town has won first prize in the perseverance category at an international competition, held in the US.
The car won first prize at the ‘International Car Fiesta Shell Eco Marathon’ held at Fontana, California April 15-18.
Ankit Khurana, team leader of the project, said here Friday: ‘Around 32 teams from different countries participated in this competition. We were the only team from Asia. We named our car Stealth and christened ourselves Team Stealth.’
San Francisco, August 01: Internet surfers have downloaded the open source Firefox browser more than one billion times, the software’s distributor, the Mozilla Foundation, said Friday.
The browser is the strongest current rival to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which once controlled over 90 percent of the browser market but has seen its dominance steadily eroded by Firefox.
Firefox now accounts for some 22.5 percent of all active browsers, compared to Microsoft’s 65 per cent share, according to the tracking firm Net Applications.
Dubai, July 30: Engineers were celebrating the successful launch of the UAE’s first government satellite last night.
DubaiSat-1 took off on a Dnepr rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan last night on schedule at 10.46 UAE time.
It will orbit 680km above Earth, at a speed of 27,000kph. It is expected to beam back its first images in a matter of days. The satellite was stacked in the nose cone of a converted intercontinental ballistic missile with five other satellites from around the world.
Washington, July 30: If you’ve ever felt doomed to repeat your mistakes, researchers can explain why. Brain cells seem to learn only when we do something right and not when we fail.
Earl K. Miller, professor of Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and colleagues have created for the first time a unique snapshot of the learning process that shows how single cells change their responses in real time as a result of information about what is the right action and what is the wrong one.
Chennai, July 30: India’s Moon mission spacecraft ‘Chandrayaan’, which developed a technical snag following failure of one of its star sensors, is doing fine and a review meeting would be held in September, ISRO Chairman Madhavan Nair said on Wednesday.
“Chandrayaan is doing fine,” Nair said on the sidelines of a function organised to launch the ‘Integrated GIS and Image Processing Software’ developed by Scanpoint Geomatics in partnership with ISRO.
New Delhi, July 29: In this increasing mobile market the peoples are looking forward for touchscreen handsets. while keeping these things in mind the companies are increasing the range of touch handsets widely day by day.
The Samsung star series is seem to be the amazing cell phones. These cell phones are packed with attractive look and good features.
If we talk about with the features then this cell phone measures (104 x 53 x 11.9 mm, it weights 93.2gm. This Samsung has a 3.15 MP camera which gives a resolution of 2048×1536 pixels, internal memory of 50 Mb, Stereo FM radio with RDS
Australia, July 29: IF YOU like the sound of your iPod and mobile phone being theft-proof, listen up.
Scientists have found a way of using the “acoustic fingerprint” of a person’s ear to ensure no one else can operate their iPods, mobile phones and other personal portables.
The technology can be extended to protect bank accounts and passports.
Overseas researchers have discovered they can identify individuals from the unique sounds of the ear chamber.
Seattle, July 29: Microsoft Corp appears to have finally locked up rival Yahoo Inc in a long-awaited internet search partnership aimed at narrowing Google Inc’s commanding lead in the most lucrative piece of the online advertising market.
The details of the Microsoft-Yahoo alliance are expected to be announced on Wednesday, a person with knowledge of the talks told The Associated Press. This person spoke on Tuesday night on condition on anonymity, confirming earlier reports, because the deal was not yet final.
Sydney, July 29: Tanning beds have been ranked alongside cigarettes, arsenic and asbestos as posing the greatest threat of cancer to humans by an international cancer research group.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has moved ultra-violet emitting tanning beds to its highest cancer risk category and labelled them as “carcinogenic to humans” after ruling they are more dangerous than previously suggested.
The France-based agency, which is part of the World Health Organisation, had previously classified sunlamps and tanning beds as “probably” carcinogenic to humans.