Science

Seattle, June 20: Microsoft plans to release a beta test of its free computer security program next week and is on track to launch a finished product in the fall.

The program, Microsoft Security Essentials, is designed to find and kill malicious software that can steal passwords and other personal information or turn PCs into spam distribution hubs.

Once the PC security software is installed, Microsoft said it will download updated lists of identified malware daily, but will keep a low profile unless it detects dangerous software.

Washington, June 19: Nasa successfully blasted two probes into space on Thursday on a landmark lunar exploration mission to scout water sources and landing sites in anticipation of sending mankind back to the moon in 2020.

The launch marked “America’s first step in a lasting return to the moon”, a Nasa official said moments after a rocket carrying the probes launched at 17:32 (2132 GMT), one day after the US space agency scrubbed the shuttle Endeavour launch for the second time in a week because of a nagging hydrogen fuel leak.

New York, June 19: New Yorkers have long been able to keep tabs on the national debt, but they now have a highly visible counter to track greenhouse gas emissions.

A 21m high billboard outside Madison Square Garden and Pennsylvania Station, not far from the Empire State Building, features a carbon counter.

Digital numbers help viewers track the amount of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere. As of Thursday morning, it stood at more than 3.6 trillion tonnes.

Cape Town, June 19: South Africa’s justice system is “clogged” and cannot be relied on to tackle environment crimes, new Environmental Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica said on Thursday.

For this reason, it was planned to re-open the country’s Environment Courts, she told journalists at a media briefing ahead of her department’s budget vote debate in the National Assembly.

“You can’t rely on the justice system. The justice system is clogged; it’s overloaded, and… [environment] crimes are not necessarily the core function of the justice department.”

London, June 19: Tiny mussel-like creatures living 100 million years ago made giant sperm longer than their own bodies, proving size has always mattered for some animals when it comes to sex, scientists said on Thursday.

Giant sperm are still around today. A human sperm, for example, would have to be 40 metres long to measure up against a fruit fly’s. The insect is only a few millimetres in size but can produce 6cm-long coiled sperm.

Scientists have been unsure if such gigantism is a freakish one-off.

Washington, June 19: NASA launched a dual mission Thursday to help pave the way for humans to return to the moon, as the US space agency looks beyond the continuing needs of the International Space Station.

The Atlas V rocket launch lifted off at 5:32 p.m. (2132 GMT), 20 minutes into planned, from NASA’s Cape Canaveral in Florida.

A scheduling conflict with the space shuttle Endeavour, which now won’t be launched before July 11, delayed the launch by a day.

New Delhi, June 18 : The Anil Ambani-owned Reliance Mobile will launch Friday a game based on Hollywood movie ‘Wolverine’ on its R-World value-added services platform, the company announced Thursday.

Wolverine is a fictional super hero, who appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics.

The new movie will be released in Indian theatres Friday.

The role playing game developed by the Indian arm of Electronic Arts (EA), the US-based developer of video games, will enable players to get into the shoes of the protagonist Wolverine and avenge the death of his girlfriend.

—IANS–

New Delhi, June 17: Import of Chinese mobile phones without unique identity code numbers has been banned, India’s commerce ministry announced.

‘Import of mobile handsets without International Mobile Equipment Identify (IMEI) number or with all-zero IMEI is prohibited with immediate effect,’ the Director General of Foreign Trade said in a notification.

IMEI – a unique 15-digit number – helps authorities trace the handset that has been used to make a call.

Oviedo, Spain, June 17: Two US engineers regarded as the inventors of e-mail and the mobile phone were Wednesday awarded the highly respected Spanish Prince of Asturias Prize in the category of scientific and technical investigation.

Raymond Samuel Tomlinson and Martin Cooper had produced a communications revolution for billions of people, contributing “decisively to the progress of knowledge” and increasing equal opportunities for developing countries, the jury said in Oviedo.

Tomlinson created the first system to send e-mail between different computers in 1971.

Washington, June 17: The launch of the space shuttle Endeavour for a 16-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS) was postponed Wednesday due to a hydrogen gas leak.

The shuttle had been scheduled to take off at 5:40 am (0940 GMT) from Cape Canaveral, Florida after a four-day delay caused by an earlier hydrogen leak. It was to carry the final pieces to the Japanese Kibo module of the ISS.

The latest leak developed during fuelling, NASA said.

New Delhi, June 15: Come July, star gazers will be in for a treat — a total solar eclipse that will remain unsurpassed in duration for the next 123 years.

And in addition to it, they will also witness a lunar eclipse in the same month.

A total eclipse of the sun will be visible on July 22 from within a narrow corridor that traverses half of the Earth starting in India and crossing through Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar and China.

After leaving mainland Asia, the path crosses Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and curves southeast through the Pacific Ocean.

Anchorage, June 14: Alaska’s Rat Island is finally rat-free, 229 years after a Japanese shipwreck spilled rampaging rodents onto the remote Aleutian island, decimating the local bird population.

After dropping poison onto the island from helicopter-hoisted buckets for a week and a half last autumn, there are no signs of living rats and some birds have returned, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Tehran, June 14: The main mobile telephone network in Iran was cut in the capital Tehran on Saturday evening while popular internet websites Facebook and YouTube also appeared to be blocked, correspondents said.

The communication cuts came after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won a landslide re-election victory, sparking rioting in the streets by opposition supporters who claimed the result had been rigged.

Moscow, June 14: A volcanic eruption on a remote Russian island north of Japan has created a giant ash cloud that threatens passing airplanes, the RIA-Novosti news agency reported on Sunday, citing Russian geologists.

The eruption of Sarychev Peak on uninhabited Matua Island, part of the Kuril Islands archipelago in the north Pacific Ocean, began overnight between Thursday and Friday and is still underway, the news agency said.

Germany, June 14: The new Windows 7 operating system (OS) will be available starting on October 22, Microsoft says.

Users who buy Microsoft’s current OS, Windows Vista, in the Home Premium, Business, or Ultimate versions will soon be able to take part in an upgrade program with “participating dealers and PC makers.”

Paris, June 12: A force known as orbital chaos may cause our Solar System to go haywire, leading to a possible collision between Earth and Venus or Mars, according to a study released on Wednesday.

The good news is that the likelihood of such a smash-up is small, around one-in-2500. And even if the planets did careen into one another, it would not happen before another 3.5 billion years.

California, June 11: Google doesn’t believe it needs to change its ways despite three separate US government inquiries into whether some of the internet search leader’s actions are thwarting competition.

“There is no reason to be upset or surprised with the scrutiny,” Dana Wagner, Google’s competition counsel, told reporters on Wednesday. “It comes with the territory.”

Paris, June 11: A force known as orbital chaos may cause our Solar System to go haywire, leading to possible collision between Earth and Venus or Mars, according to a study released Wednesday.

The good news is that the likelihood of such a smash-up is small, around one-in-2500.

And even if the planets did careen into one another, it would not happen before another 3.5 billion years.

Washington, June 10: An English website hosting company may have lost the data for over 100,000 websites after hackers exploited a security vulnerability in software used to provide customers with hosting facilities.

According to Rus Foster, the company’s director, hackers managed to gain access to the root level of a key piece of software the company uses to provide its low-cost virtual website solutions.

“We were hit by a zero-day exploit” in HyperVM, a virtualization application made by LXLabs in Bangalore, India.

Washington, June 08: A much-loved Stanford University professor from India who mentored and backed such sparkling Silicon Valley companies as Google and Rajeev Motwani, Stanford University professor from India & Google mentor, died in a freak drowning accident at his Bay area home on Friday. Paypal died in a freak drowning accident at his Bay area home on Friday, sending the tech community into gloom.

Carolina, June 05: Researchers at the North Carolina State University has developed a machine that can keep a heart beating outside the body. The potential medical benefit is huge, though for whatever reason I kept on thinking about Dr. Frankenstein:

“Researchers can obtain pig hearts from a pork processing facility and use the system to test their prototypes or practice new surgical procedures,” says Andrew Richards, a Ph. D. student in mechanical engineering at NC State who designed the heart machine.

London, May 24: The ultimate computer game that banishes handheld controls and allows players’ gestures to dictate the action on screen is to be launched by Microsoft.

The Microsoft Xbox 360 uses 3-D camera technology, and is aimed at challenging the dominance of the Nintendo Wii, reports The Times.

Allowing users to kick a virtual football, drive a car or practise dance moves with a computer-generated partner simply by monitoring an individual’s movements, the entertainment system will become a must-have for any child or even a youngster.

Tokyo, April 05: North Korea launched a rocket Sunday, a South Korean foreign ministry official told Yonhap news agency.

Pyongyang said it was putting a communications satellite into orbit, but Japan, South Korea and Washington believe the launch was a screen to test a long-range ballistic missile.

The launch occurred around 11.30 a.m. (0230 GMT) from North Korea’s base on its east coast, the official said.

—-Agencies

Cape Canaveral, March 25: After eight days together, it’s time for the space shuttle and space station crews to say goodbye.

The hatches between the linked spacecraft will be sealed early Wednesday afternoon. Three hours later, Discovery will undock.

Discovery will be bringing back five months’ worth of science experiments from the space station. The blood, urine and saliva samples need to be kept cold for as long as possible, and will remain in the station freezer until the last possible moment.

Banglore, February 27: Software multinationals in India have begun freezing wage increases, slashing salaries and postponing merit-based hikes, a study by Indian consulting firm Zinnov has found.

‘Though Bangalore stands highest in its average salary for multinational R and amp;D firms, followed by Pune and Chennai, the economic slump is causing undue pressure on them to retain compensation levels,’ Zinnov director for advisory services C.S. Chandramouli, told IANS after the survey was made public.