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Asteroid could hit Earth in 2182

admin — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 08:48:56 +0000

London: A massive asteroid might crash into Earth in 2182, scientists have warned.

The asteroid, called 1999 RQ36, has a one-in-thousand chance of actually hitting the Earth at some point before the year 2200, but is most likely to hit on September 24, 2182.

The asteroid was first discovered in the year 1999 and is more than 1,800 feet across. If an asteroid of this size hits the Earth it would cause widespread devastation and possible mass extinction, reports the Daily Mail.

Scientists say that any attempt to try and divert the asteroid will have to take place at least 100 years before it is due to hit to have any chance of success.

If the asteroid had not been spotted until after 2080 it would have been impossible to divert it from its target, the scientists warned in a new research paper.

While the odds may seem long, they are far shorter than that of the asteroid Apophis, which currently has a one in 250,000 chance of striking the Earth in 2036.

A competition was launched in 2008 by the Planetary Society for designs for a space probe to land on Apophis and monitor its progress.

Maria Eugenia Sansaturio and scientists from the Universidad de Valladolid in Spain have used mathematical models to calculate the risk of the asteroid hitting the Earth anytime between now and the year 2200.

The impact from the asteroid that created the famous Chicxulub crater in Mexico would have caused ‘mega-tsunamis’ many thousands of feet high.

It is believed that this asteroid led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Scientists around the world have long been discussing ways of deflecting potentially hazardous asteroids to prevent them from hitting the Earth.

One of the more popular methods is to detonate a nuclear warhead on an approaching asteroid to deflect it from its orbital path.

Last month, physicist David Dearborn of the Lawrence Livermore National Lab in the US argued that nuclear weapons could be the best strategy for avoiding an asteroid impact – especially for large asteroids and with little warning time.

India unveils Rs 1,500 tablet PC

admin — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 08:52:16 +0000

New Delhi: India unveiled a Rs 1,500 (around $ 30) tablet PC designed specifically for students.

“If more companies decide to manufacture a similar device, prices will come down automatically,” Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said after unveiling the low cost-access-cum computing device here.

The device would be made available to students in 2011.

When the ministry floated the concept of a low cost laptop some years ago, officials said it would cost Rs 500 ($ 10). It will now cost about three times the initial projections.

The ministry expects the prices to drop to Rs 1,000 ($ 20) and reach Rs 500 ($ 10) as innovations are introduced.

The device, no bigger than a conventional laptop, is a single unit system with a touch screen and a built in keyboard along with 2GB RAM, Wi-Fi connectivity, USB port and powered by a 2-watt system to suit poor power supply areas.

“This is real and tangible and we will take it forward. Sun will rise for the Indian students in 2011,” he said.

The ministry also invited private players to produce similar low cost computers.

“When we started the project, the response from the private sector was lukewarm. Now many are willing to join the innovation,” Sibal said.

The ministry started its efforts by holding discussions on this concept with a group of experts at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, IIT Kanpur, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Madras and IIT Bombay, a ministry official said.

The low cost tablets will be distributed in institutions by the HRD ministry. The final price will depend on the transportation cost.

“We will give some subsidy on the device. As far as transport is concerned, if the transport cost in less, the government can bear that as well,” Sibal added.

Heaviest star ever discovered

admin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 08:48:36 +0000

London: A huge ball of brightly burning gas drifting through a neighbouring galaxy may be the heaviest star ever discovered, hundreds of times more massive than the sun, scientists said on Wednesday after working out its weight for the first time.

Those behind the find say the star, called R136a1, may once have weighed as much as 320 solar masses. Astrophysicist Paul Crowther said the obese star, twice as heavy as any previously discovered, has already slimmed down considerably over its lifetime.

In fact, it’s burning itself off with such intensity that it shines at nearly 10 million times the luminosity of the sun.

“Unlike humans, these stars are born heavy and lose weight as they age,” said Crowther, an astrophysicist at the University of Sheffield in northern England.

“R136a1 is already middle-aged and has undergone an intense weight loss programme.”

Crowther said the giant was identified at the centre of a star cluster in the Tarantula Nebula, a sprawling cloud of gas and dust in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy about 165,000 light-years away from our own Milky Way.

The star was the most massive of several giants identified by Crowther and his team in an article in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Virus attacks Siemen’s systems

admin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:00:37 +0000

Boston: Trojan worm virus attacked the Siemens AG’s widely used industrial control systems.

The virus creates malicious software that can be used for espionage and sabotage.

Siemens told that the malware is a Trojan worm dubbed Stuxnet that spreads via infected USB thumb drives, exploiting a yet-to-be-patched vulnerability in Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system.

The problem was first reported in Wednesday, Jul 14 2010.

“Just viewing the contents of the USB stick can activate the Trojan. Siemens recommends avoiding the use of a USB stick,” said Siemens spokesman Alexander Machowetz.

Once the worm infects a Siemens system, it quickly sets up communications with a remote server computer that can be used to steal proprietary corporate data or take control of the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system.

Analysts explained that the attackers may have chosen to spread the malicious software via a thumb drive because many SCADA systems are not connected to the Internet, but do sport USB ports.

Airtel to launch iPhone 4 in India by October

admin — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 17:09:58 +0000

New Delhi: India’s leading mobile operator, Bharti Airtel, is looking to launch Apple’s iPhone 4 in September or October, Chief Executive Officer for India and South Asia Sanjay Kapoor said on Monday.

India’s curbs on import of telecoms equipment are easing, Kapoor added. Carriers in the world’s fastest-growing mobile market must obtain government clearance before they place any equipment purchase order, and earlier this year India had barred some operators from placing orders with China’s Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp on security concerns.

Last week, the telecoms minister said the government expected to resolve the issue in a couple of weeks.

“I think operators have gone through a bit of a lull in the last six months on equipment clearances but now things have begun to ease up and we are getting the equipment in place,” Bharti’s Kapoor told reporters on the sidelines of an industry event.

The government has discussed the issue with carriers and is in the process of putting out a revised policy for telecoms gear imports that would elaborate on appropriate security checks to be put in place, officials say.

Bharti Airtel, which won third-generation (3G) spectrum in 13 of India’s 22 telecoms zones in a recently concluded auction, will be allotted the radio airwaves in September.

Kapoor said they would work towards “aggressive time lines” for the roll out of 3G services, without elaborating further.

“A very large amount of the network is 3G ready,” he said.

Human sperm gene 600 million years old

admin — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 07:40:23 +0000

Washington: In a finding which could have many practical uses for human health including male contraception, US scientists claim to have discovered that the human sperm gene is 600 million years old.

A team at Northwestern University has found that the sex-specific gene, called Boule, which is responsible for sperm production, has remained unaltered throughout evolution and is found in almost all animals.

The research has also revealed that Boule is the only gene known to be exclusively required for sperm production — from an insect to a mammal.

“This is the first clear evidence that suggests our ability to produce sperm is very ancient, probably originating at the dawn of animal evolution 600 million years ago. This finding suggests that all animal sperm production likely comes from a common prototype,” lead scientist Prof Eugene Xu said.

According to him, the discovery of Boule’s key role in perpetuating animal species offers a better understanding of male infertility, a potential target for a male contraceptive drug and a new direction for future development of pesticides or medicine against infectious parasites or carriers of germs.

“Our findings also show that humans, despite how complex we are, across the evolutionary lines all the way to flies, which are very simple, still have one fundamental element that’s shared.

“It’s really surprising because sperm production gets pounded by natural selection. It tends to change due to strong selective pressures for sperm-specific genes to evolve. There is pressure to be super male to improve reproductive success.

“This is the one sex-specific element that didn’t change across species. This must be so important that it can’t change. Boule is likely the oldest human sperm-specific gene ever discovered,” Xu said.

For the study, the scientists searched for and discovered the presence of the Boule gene in sperm across different evolutionary lines — human, mammal, fish, insect, worm and marine invertebrate.

“A sperm-specific gene like Boule is an ideal target for a male contraceptive drug,” Xu wrote in the latest edition of the ‘PLoS Genetics’ journal.

Countdown begins for PSLV-C 15 launch

admin — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 15:24:35 +0000

Chennai: The over 50-hour count down for the 17th flight launch of ISRO’S Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle PSLV-C 15 from Sriharikota spaceport began on Saturday.

The countdown for the launch from Satish Dhawan Space Centre scheduled at 9.22 am on Monday, began at 6.52 am on Saturday, ISRO officials said.

“The countdown is progressing well and the launch will be as per schedule,” ISRO spokesperson S Satish told PTI.

He said preparations are in full swing and all parameters for the launch of PSLV-C-15, which would put five satellites, into the orbit, were doing well.

These satellites include remote sensing satellite Cartosat-2B from India, Alsat from Algeria, nano satellites from Canada and Switzerland and a pico (very small) satellite called Studsat built by seven engineering students in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.

The PSLV launch was to take place on May 9 last but was postponed because of a drop in the pressure in the vehicle’s second stage. This would be the first mission by ISRO after the failure of India’s ambitious home-made cryogenic engine powered GSLV-D3 in April last.

Satish said the satellite would help in urban planning and infrastructure development such as laying ring-roads and rerouting of highways.

China renews Google’s operating licence

admin — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 22:30:14 +0000

Beijing: After months of confrontation with China over the censorship issue, American web search giant Google said that Beijing has renewed its licence to operate in the world’s largest internet market.

It is still not clear what brought about the turnaround in the rocky relationship between the two sides that had forced Google to shift its Chinese search engine to Hong Kong which had a more liberal environment.

“We are very pleased that the government has renewed our ICP (internet content provider) licence and we look forward to continuing to provide web search and local products to our users in China,” Google’s chief legal officer David Drummond said an e-mailed statement, without giving further details.

It appears that the undertaking given by Google on June 30 pledging to abide by the rules, which included intrusive censors which the search engine had objected to earlier, made the Chinese government to relent.

The licence was renewed in response to an application submitted by Guxiang Information Technology Co. Ltd., the operator of Google.cn, which pledged to abide by the rules.

The application was made ‘almost at the same time’ Drummond posted a blog post, saying Google was committed ‘not to self-censor.’

Guxiang had said it would ‘ensure the company will provide no law-breaking contents as stated in the 57th statement in China’s regulations concerning telecommunications.’

One third of young women check Facebook before loo in the morning

admin — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 09:10:12 +0000

London: A new study has revealed that one third of women aged 18 to 34 check Facebook when they first wake up, even before going to the toilet.

The study, conducted by Oxygen Media and Lightspeed Research polled the habits, of 1,605 adults using social media between May and June 2010 in an effort to chart behavioural trends.

Twenty-one per cent of women aged between 18 to 34 check Facebook in the middle of the night, while 42 per cent of the same group think it is fine to post drunken photos of themselves onto the social network. Seventy-nine per cent are also happy to be seen kissing in photographs posted on Facebook.

Fifty-eight per cent of those polled use Facebook to track their ‘frenemies’ (people they are ‘friends’ on the site but do not like in real life) and 50 per cent are happy being Facebook ‘friends’ with complete strangers.

Sixty-three per cent use Facebook as a networking tool and an increasing number are using the site to find dates. Sixty-five per cent men were comfortable with dating people they had met on Facebook, whereas only 50 per cent of women felt the same.

Nine per cent of women have used the network to break up with their partners compared to the 24 per cent of men who have used the site in the same way. While 49 per cent of women believe it is alright to track their partner’s activities by having their login details, and only 42 per cent of men share the same view.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, believes people do not want complete privacy online anymore.

“The way that people think about privacy is changing a bit. What people want isn’t complete privacy. It isn’t that they want secrecy. It’s that they want control over what they share and what they don’t,” the Telegraph quoted her as telling Time magazine.

“Our core belief is that one of the most transformational things in this generation is that there will be more information available…. Even with all the progress that we’ve made, I think we’re much closer to the beginning than the end of the trend,” Zuckerberg added.

Govt threatens to ban BlackBerry, Skype

admin — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 08:36:40 +0000

New Delhi: India has given Internet telephony pioneer Skype and the makers of BlackBerry handsets a deadline to fall into line with strict security-monitoring regulations or be blocked, a report said.

India’s intelligence officials have long complained that they are unable to decipher encrypted data sent on Blackberry handsets, made by Canadian firm Research In Motion, or intercept calls on Skype.

The government has threatened to ban or block BlackBerry and Skype services if the companies fail to adhere to a 15-day deadline to make data available in formats that can be monitored, a leading business newspaper said.

Google has been asked to ensure emails on its Gmail service can be deciphered, though no deadline has been issued, the paper said.

“The latest development indicates that security agencies are again finding it difficult to intercept or decipher messages sent through BlackBerry phones,” the paper said.

The Indian telecommunications ministry was unable to comment when contacted by AFP.

India, which faces a strengthening home-grown Maoist insurgency and constant threats from Islamist groups, is highly sensitive about the potential risks of technology.

The government has been restricting imports from Chinese telecom equipment manufacturers because of Indian intelligence agency fears that “spyware” could be embedded in the equipment.

It has also restricted the use of mobile phones in violence-wracked Indian Kashmir, where pay-as-you-go phones and the use of text messages have been curtailed. The area is a hotbed of anti-India activity.