Space Rocks

Space Center Houston was the scene Jan. 6 of a special presentation by former NASA astronaut Scott Parazynski to Space Shuttle Endeavour Commander George Zamka. Parazynski gave a moon rock and a rock from Mt. Everest to Zamka, commander of the upcoming shuttle mission STS-130. Zamka and his crew will carry the rocks with them on their Feburary mission to the International Space Station as they deliver the stations Tranquility module. The rocks will be displayed aboard the station. Parazynski carried the Apollo 11 lunar sample on a climb to the summit of Mt. Everest last May during which he also gathered the Everest rock.

SOHO and TRACE Solar Discoveries

The discoveries of the SOHO and TRACE satellites, and features NASA solar scientists Alex Young and Dawn Meyers, describing how both satellites view the sun in their own unique way

NASA’s Mars rover Spirit begins new chapter

After six years of unprecedented exploration, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit will no longer be a fully mobile robot.

NASA has designated the once-roving scientific explorer a stationary science platform after efforts during the past several months to free it from a sand trap were unsuccessful.

The venerable robot’s primary task in the next few weeks will be to position itself to combat the severe Martian winter.

If Spirit survives, it will continue conducting significant new scientific research from its final location. The rover’s mission could continue for several months to years.

“Spirit is not dead, it has just entered another phase of its long life,” said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

“We told the world last year that attempts to set the beloved robot free may not be successful. It looks like Spirit’s current location on Mars will be its final resting place.”

Ten months ago, as Spirit was driving south beside the western edge of a low plateau called Home Plate, its wheels broke through the crusty surface and churned into soft sand hidden underneath.

After Spirit became embedded, the rover team crafted plans for trying to get the six-wheeled vehicle free using its five functioning wheels. The sixth wheel had quit working in 2006, limiting Spirit’s mobility.

The planning included experiments with a test rover in a sandbox at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, plus analysis, modelling and reviews. In November, another wheel quit working, making a difficult situation even worse.

Recent drives have yielded the best results since Spirit became embedded. However, the coming winter mandates a change in strategy.

It is mid-autumn at the solar-powered robot’s home on Mars. Winter will begin in May. Solar energy is declining and expected to become insufficient to power further driving by mid-February, said a NASA release.

The rover team plans to use those remaining potential drives for improving the rover’s tilt. Spirit currently tilts slightly toward the south. The winter sun stays in the northern sky, so decreasing the southward tilt would boost the amount of sunshine on the rover’s solar panels.

The Gadget Show: Sony Blu-ray CES

Check out Sony’s latest Blu-ray players with apps announced at this year’s CES in Las Vegas.

3-D TVs and Tablet Computers

Consumer Electronics Show with 3-D TVs, tablet computers, solar-powered chargers and more.

Revolutionary devices at CES 2010

Take a peek at the cool new revolutionary devices that are going to enter our lives very soon.

Blackberry Bold 9700 Review

Blackberry Bold 9700 Review – Multimedia/ Web Browsing,BlackBerry Bold 9700 to Vodafone customers in India

Sony Ericsson Satio Review

Sony Ericsson Satio review. This part features the body, the main menu and the camera

Sony Ericsson Vivaz

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz is a very attractive Symbian touchscreen phone with HD video capture and a very rich feature set.

‘Block the sun, control global warming’

Canadian and US scientists want to block the sun to cool the earth and limit global warming.

Research and field-testing on what they call “geo-engineering” of the earth’s atmosphere to limit risk of climate change must begin quickly, say scientists from the University of Calgary in Canada, and the University of Michigan and Carnegie Mellon University in the US.

Studies on geo-engineering or solar radiation management (SRM) should be undertaken collectively with government funding, rather that unilaterally by nations, argue the scientists.

They say SRM would involve releasing mega-tonnes of light-scattering aerosol particles in the upper atmosphere to reduce earth’s absorption of solar energy, thereby cooling the planet.

Another technique would be to release particles of sea salt to make low-altitude clouds reflect more solar energy back into space, the scientists say.

“Collaborative and government-supported studies on solar-radiation management will help identify technologies to combat climate change,” writes David Keith of Calgary university in an article in Nature this week.

“Solar-radiation management may be the only human response that can fend off rapid and high-consequence climate change impacts. The risks of not doing research outweigh the risks of doing it,” says Keith, who has co-authored the opinion piece with Edward Parson at the University of Michigan and Granger Morgan at Carnegie Mellon University.

However, SRM should not take the place of deep cuts in industrial greenhouse gas emissions and taking action to adapt to climate change, say the scientists.

They say: “We must develop the capability to do SRM in a manner that complements such cuts, while managing the associated environmental and political risks.”

The scientists want governments worldwide to establish a global research budget for SRM. This budget should grow about $10 million to $1 billion a year between now and 2020, they say.

They say research results should be made available to every nation and risk assessments be as transparent and international as possible.

NASA’s Mars rover Spirit begins new chapter

After six years of unprecedented exploration, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit will no longer be a fully mobile robot.

NASA has designated the once-roving scientific explorer a stationary science platform after efforts during the past several months to free it from a sand trap were unsuccessful.

The venerable robot’s primary task in the next few weeks will be to position itself to combat the severe Martian winter.

If Spirit survives, it will continue conducting significant new scientific research from its final location. The rover’s mission could continue for several months to years.

“Spirit is not dead, it has just entered another phase of its long life,” said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

“We told the world last year that attempts to set the beloved robot free may not be successful. It looks like Spirit’s current location on Mars will be its final resting place.”

Ten months ago, as Spirit was driving south beside the western edge of a low plateau called Home Plate, its wheels broke through the crusty surface and churned into soft sand hidden underneath.

After Spirit became embedded, the rover team crafted plans for trying to get the six-wheeled vehicle free using its five functioning wheels. The sixth wheel had quit working in 2006, limiting Spirit’s mobility.

The planning included experiments with a test rover in a sandbox at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, plus analysis, modeling and reviews. In November, another wheel quit working, making a difficult situation even worse.

Recent drives have yielded the best results since Spirit became embedded. However, the coming winter mandates a change in strategy.

It is mid-autumn at the solar-powered robot’s home on Mars. Winter will begin in May. Solar energy is declining and expected to become insufficient to power further driving by mid-February, said a NASA release.

The rover team plans to use those remaining potential drives for improving the rover’s tilt. Spirit currently tilts slightly toward the south. The winter sun stays in the northern sky, so decreasing the southward tilt would boost the amount of sunshine on the rover’s solar panels.

Hands-on with the T-Mobile myTouch 3G Fender Limited Edition

Its first impressions of the T-Mobile myTouch 3G Fender Limited Edition. This Android-based music oriented handset is different from the original one by sporting a new slick looking design.

LG Watch Phone GD910 hands-on

We got our hands on the new LG Watch Phone, check out some of its key features in this video.

Scientists slam IPCC blunder, chief goes mum

The head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Thursday refused to answer any question on its unsubstantiated claim that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035, which it subsequently admitted was a goof-up, even as four leading academics questioned the warning anew.

The IPCC has already retracted the warning that it had carried in its 2007 report, but the global group of over 2,500 scientists is still facing a severe crisis of credibility due to the blunder.

It has also led to a number of allegations of financial impropriety against IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri and the The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), the think tank he also heads. The British government is reported to be planning a probe.

As an embattled Pachauri refused requests from the global media to answer the charges, or to react when asked if he was going to resign from his chairman’s post, four leading academics wrote to the journal Science saying the claim that Himalayan glaciers may disappear by 2035 requires a 25-fold greater loss rate from 1999 to 2035 than that estimated for 1960 to 1999.

The IPCC had made a statement Wednesday admitting the blunder. It said a paragraph in its report “refers to poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers (due to global warming). In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly”.

The statement — which came from Pachauri, IPCC vice chairs and co-chairs of its working groups — said they “regretted the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures in this instance. This episode demonstrates that the quality of the assessment depends on absolute adherence to the IPCC standards, including thorough review of ‘the quality and validity of each source before incorporating results from the source into an IPCC Report’. We reaffirm our strong commitment to ensuring this level of performance”.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer said: “The credibility of the IPCC depends on the thoroughness with which its procedures are adhered to. The procedures have been violated in this case. That must not be allowed to happen again because the credibility of climate change policy can only be based on credible science.”

The four academics who wrote to Science — J Graham Cogley, a professor at Ontario Trent University; Jeffrey S. Kargel, University of Arizona, Tucson; G. Kaser, Institut for Geographie, University of Innsbruck, Austria and C. J. van der Veen, University of Kansas, Lawrence — said the IPCC warning “conflicts with knowledge of glacier climate relationships, and is wrong”.

“Nevertheless it has captured the global imagination and has been repeated in good faith often, including recently by the IPCC’s chairman (R.K. Pachauri),” they pointed out.

“These errors could have been avoided had the norms of scientific publication, including peer review and concentration upon peer-reviewed work, been respected,” they said.

A recent News of the Week story on Himalayan glaciers “highlights how inadequately reviewed material makes its way into the public consciousness”, Cogley and colleagues said, noting: “One source, Working Group II (WG-II) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reproduces several errors.”

“The Working Group writes that ‘glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world’ and that ‘the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035.’

“Another source advances a no less mistaken conjecture, not discussed in the news story, that Himalayan glaciers are responding to the climate of as long as 15,000 years ago,” the four academics said.

“The IPCC fourth assessment report of 2007, particularly of the physical science basis for the changes, is mostly accurate, but the first WG-II sentence derives from a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report, which cites a news story about an unpublished study that neither compares Himalayan glaciers with other rates of recession nor estimates a date for disappearance of Himalayan glaciers,” they said.

WWF has since apologised for having carried the unsubstantiated claim.

Syed Iqbal Hasnain, the scientist whose 1999 statement gave rise to the goof-up, had said: “I have not given any date or year on the likely disappearance of Himalayan glaciers. The statement I gave (in 1999) — on the basis of the results being found till then — was: ‘All the glaciers in the middle Himalayas are retreating’ — and a scientific postulation was made that all the glaciers in the central and eastern Himalayas could disappear in the next 40-50 years at their present rate of decline.”

Hasnain’s 1999 statement had made it to the British magazine New Scientist, from there to a 2005 WWF report and from there to the IPCC report.

Don’t undermine IPCC study: Australian co-author

An Australian professor, who co-authored the climate report that wrongly claimed Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, said the discovery of the error does not undermine the science but added the charge that Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) chief Rajendra Pachauri may have have benefited by receiving funds for his institute “looks extremely bad”.

Andy Pitman, co-director of the University of New South Wales climate change research centre and key author of the IPCC’s 2001 and 2007 reports, said: “As far as I understand it, there are two paragraphs that have been questioned in a 1,600-page document.”

“We ought to be talking about the other 1,599 pages that nobody has found any problems with,” he told ABC Radio.

The report erroneously claimed Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.

Pitman says while the 2035 date may be wrong the outcome will be the same.

“It doesn’t say that the Himalayan glaciers are not vulnerable to climate change or are not melting or are not melting at an accelerated rate. It is the date of 2035 that is in error,” Australian news agency AAP quoted him as saying.

But Pitman was concerned over the charge that IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri may have benefited from the errors by receiving funding for his research institute.

“I have to admit that it looks extremely bad,” he said.

“But looking bad and actually undermining the broad conclusions that are in the IPCC report are two very different things.”

He went on to say: “It’s clear that increased carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are causing climate change but it certainly won’t stop the sceptics using the information for their own purposes.”

“My personal view is that climate scientists are losing the fight with the sceptics,” he said.

“They’re (the sceptics) doing a damn good job. I think they’re doing a superb job of misinforming and miscommunicating (to) the general public, the state and the federal governments.”

“Most of the climate sceptics, particularly those that are wandering around publicly at the moment, don’t base their arguments on science.”

India to raise scientific RandD spend to 2 percent of GDP

India Thursday unveiled for its diaspora its 21st century scientific vision, saying it intended to raise its spend on R&d to two percent of its GDP and focus on five critical areas, including energy and food security.

“Right now, we spend one percent of our GDP on scientific research and development. We intend to take this to two percent,” Minister of State for Earth Sciences Prithviraj Chavan said at a seminar on ‘Harnessing Nanotechnology Business: Diaspora Contribution’ on the opening day of the annual Pravasi Bharatiya Divas here.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will Friday formally inaugurate the three-day meet that is being attended by 1,500 delegates.

Noting that “the people of India look to science to solve their problems”, Chavan said the country would focus on “five key challenges” in the future.

“These are energy security, food security, water availability and quality, affordable healthcare for all and (counter) terrorism,” he added.

In this context, he pointed to the “convergence” with the effort to combat climate change and ensure energy security by focusing on alternative sources of energy.

“What we are now talking about is not just science and technology but science, technology and innovation to translate what we do in our laboratories to practical solutions for the masses,” Chavan said. He added that President Pratibha Patil, in her address to a joint session of parliament last February, had called for a decade of innovation.

“We are now in the first year of that decade. I see a great future for science in India,” he contended, urging the diaspora to come on board this journey.

Tracing the growth of science and technology in India since independence in 1947, Chavan said there had been a “significant jump in the output of journals” since 2002, a key indicator the state of research in the country.

“From 15th place globally in 2002, we climbed to 10th place last year and hope to go to ninth place, ahead of Spain, this year. We are not satisfied with this and intend to go higher,” he said.

“As a generator of Intellectual Property by way of registering patents, we were at 25th place in 2000 and had climbed to 19th place in 2006,” Chavan pointed out, adding: “There is significant scope for improvement here.”

Couples who say ‘we’ resolve conflicts better

Married couples who refer to themselves as “we” are better able to resolve conflicts than those who do not, a new study said.

“Individuality is a deeply ingrained value, but, at least in the realm of marriage, being part of a ‘we’ is well worth giving up a bit of ‘me’,” said University of California, Berkeley (UC-B) psychology professor Robert Levenson, study co-author.

UC-B researchers analysed conversations between 154 middle-aged and older couples about points of disagreement in their marriages.

They found that those who used pronouns such as “we,” “our” and “us” behaved more positively toward one another and showed less physiological stress.

Conversely, couples who emphasised their “separateness” by using pronouns such as “I,” “me” and “you” were found to be less satisfied in their marriages.

This was especially true for older couples. Their use of separateness pronouns was most strongly linked to unhappy marriages, according to the study, said a university release.

Moreover, the study found that older couples identified more as “we” than did their middle-aged counterparts, suggesting that facing obstacles and overcoming challenges together over the long haul, including raising families, may give couples a greater sense of shared identity.

These findings were published in Psychology and Aging.

PM holds talks with Scientific Advisory Council

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Friday held talks with the Scientific Advisory Council to discuss a roadmap to make India competitive and a global innovation hub in science in the next few years.

A team of experts lead by council’s chairman C.N.R. Rao and Minister of Science and Technology Prithviraj Chavan discussed future plans and areas that require attention.

According to a ministry official, the discussion with the prime minister pertained to three major topics – the role and operationalisation of the National Science & Engineering Research Board; the roadmap to develop medical research in general, biomedical research in particular; and the need to improve the quality of scientific effort in the country.

Lauding the efforts of the council, the prime minister asked it to come out with appropriate recommendations related to several important aspects for taking science and technology ahead in the country.

Simple passwords easier to hack: experts

Simple and easy-to-remember passwords such as “123456″ or “iloveu” can allow hackers easy access to the secured zones of internet users, experts warn.

According to a new analysis, one out of five web users still choose a simple, easily guessed password like “abc123″, “iloveyou” or even “password” to protect their data.

“I guess it’s just a genetic flaw in humans,” said Amichai Shulman, chief technology officer at Imperva, which makes software for blocking hackers. “We’ve been following the same patterns since the 1990s.”

Shulman and his company examined a list of 32 million passwords that an unknown hacker stole last month from RockYou, which develops software for users of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

The list was posted on the web, and RockYou advised its customers to change their passwords, as the hackers gained information about their e-mail accounts.

Imperva found that nearly one percent of the 32 million people it studied had used “123456″ as a password. The second-most-popular password was “12345″. Others in the top 20 included “qwerty”, “abc123″ and “princess”, The New York Times reported.

More disturbing, Shulman said, was that about 20 percent of people on the RockYou list picked from the same, relatively small pool of 5,000 passwords.

That suggests that hackers could easily break into many accounts just by trying the most common passwords. Because of the prevalence of fast computers and speedy networks, hackers can fire off thousands of password guesses per minute.

“We tend to think of password guessing as a very time-consuming attack in which I take each account and try a large number of name-and-password combinations,” Shulman said. “The reality is that you can be very effective by choosing a small number of common passwords.”

Researchers say social networking and entertainment websites often try to make life simpler for their users and are reluctant to put too many controls in place.

Overusing simple passwords is not a new phenomenon. A similar survey examined computer passwords used in the mid-1990s and found that the most popular ones at that time were “12345″, “abc123″ and “password”.

Software experts, however, cite overworking brain in the digital age as a reason behind the overuse of such passwords.

“Nowadays, we have to keep probably 10 times as many passwords in our head as we did 10 years ago,” said Jeff Moss, who founded a popular hacking conference and is now on the Homeland Security Advisory Council. “Voice mail passwords, ATM PINs and Internet passwords – it’s so hard to keep track of.”

The experts suggest that everyone choose at least two different passwords – a complex one for websites where security is vital, such as banks and e-mail, and a simpler one for places where the stakes are lower, such as social networking and entertainment sites.

Human flight to Mars will be a global mission: ISRO

The maiden human space flight to Mars would be a global mission through a consortium by 2030, a top Indian space official said Wednesday.

“Manned mission to Mars will be a global effort and will be undertaken by a consortium of space-faring nations,” Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman K. Radhakrishnan told reporters here.

Noting that international collaboration and cooperation would be the order of the day in future space exploratory missions, Radhakrishnan said the global endeavour would be to put a man on the red planet by 2030.

“Since a human space flight to Mars is not only prohibitive, but also demanding as the journey alone would be about 250 days, the ambitious mission will pose scientific and technological challenges to all space agencies,” Radhakrishnan said on the margins of a an event.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the US and the European Space Agency (ESA), a consortium of space-faring nations in Europe, signed an agreement in October 2009 to expand collective capabilities, resources and expertise for exploration of Mars.

As a leading space-faring nation, India with its low-cost but high-end launch vehicle technology will be a part of the international consortium for the manned mission to Mars.

“India will be associated with other space-faring agencies in the manned mission to Mars, with scientific experiments to be carried on the Martian surface,” Radhakrishnan said after releasing a book titled “Moon Mission: Exploring the Moon with Chandrayaan-1″.

The book on India’s maiden unmanned lunar mission is authored by S.K. Das, a former member (finance) of the space department.

Referring to the second lunar mission (Chandrayaan-2) scheduled for launch in 2012-13, the Indian space agency chief said it would repeat some of the experiments carried by Chandrayaan-1 and its unfinished task as it was aborted 10 months after its launch Oct 22, 2008.

“Chandrayaan-2 will land a Rover on the moon to collect samples and relay the data back to the earth,” Radhakrishnan noted.

Moon to be biggest, brightest Jan 30

Don’t forget to watch the moon on Saturday. The moon will be closest to the earth on that day and will appear to be bigger and brightest of the year, a scientist said Thursday.

Explaining the reason, director SPACE (Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators) C.B. Devgun said: “Some full moons are genuinely larger than others and the one on Saturday will be huge.”

The moon will be 15 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than we will see for the rest of the year, he said.

“This is because the moon’s orbit is an ellipse with one side 50,000 km closer to earth than the other. In the language of astronomy, the two extremes are called ‘apogee’ (far away) and ‘perigee’ (nearby).

“On Jan 30, the moon becomes full, three hours after reaching perigee, making it bigger and brighter than we are going to see for the rest of 2010,” said Devgun.

The moon at perigee will look bigger than it looks in all other positions, as the apparent size of closer objects is always more.

“As this is the second full moon of the month, this will also be a blue moon,” said N.S. Raghunandan Kumar, general secretary of the Planetary Society of India.

Healing of ozone hole could aggravate global warming

The hole in the ozone layer is now steadily closing, but chances are that it could aggravate warming in the southern hemisphere, warns a new study.

The Antarctic ozone hole was once regarded as one of the biggest environmental threats, but the discovery of a previously undiscovered feedback shows that it has instead helped to shield this region from carbon-induced warming over two decades.

High-speed winds in the area beneath the hole have led to the formation of brighter summertime clouds, which reflect more of the sun’s powerful rays.

“These clouds have acted like a mirror to the sun’s rays, reflecting the sun’s heat away from the surface to the extent that warming from rising carbon emissions has effectively been cancelled out in this region during the summertime,” said Ken Carslaw, professor at the University of Leeds, who co-authored the research.

“If, as seems likely, these winds die down, rising carbon dioxide emissions could then cause the warming of the southern hemisphere to accelerate, which would have an impact on future climate predictions,” he added.

The key to this newly-discovered feedback is aerosol — tiny reflective particles suspended within the air that are known by experts to have a huge impact on climate.

Greenhouse gases absorb infrared radiation from the Earth and release it back into the atmosphere as heat, causing the planet to warm up over time. Aerosol works against this by reflecting heat from the sun back into space, cooling the planet as it does so.

Beneath the Antarctic ozone hole, high-speed winds whip up large amounts of sea spray, which contains millions of tiny salt particles. This spray then forms droplets and eventually clouds, and the increased spray over the last two decades has made these clouds brighter and more reflective.

As the ozone layer recovers, it is believed that this feedback mechanism could decline in effectiveness, or even be reversed, leading to accelerated warming in the southern hemisphere.

“Our research highlights the value of today’s state-of-the-art models and long-term datasets that enable such unexpected and complex climate feedbacks to be detected and accounted for in our future predictions,” added Carslaw.

The Leeds team made their prediction using a state-of-the-art global model of aerosols and two decades of meteorological data, says a Leeds University release.

The research was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council’s Surface Ocean-Lower Atmosphere Study (UK SOLAS) and the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence Programme.

Nokia Ovi Maps

Here is an introductory video tour of the new Nokia Ovi Maps interface.

Normalcy returns to Nokia India’s plant

Production at Nokia India’s plant near here resumed as usual Saturday after the four day worker’s strike was called off Friday night.

“Workers have reported to duty this (Saturday) morning. The company assured us during the conciliation process that suspended workers would be taken back,” Nokia India Employees Progressive Union (NIEPU) joint general secretary P. Suresh told IANS.

The worker’s union is affiliated to Labour Progressive Front (LPF), the labour wing of ruling DMK. The strike began Tuesday over the transfer of an employee.

Peace was brokered Friday between the NIEPU and the Nokia India management at the Joint Labour Commissioner’s office here after a long meeting.

“As per the understanding arrived after the meeting, the suspension orders for 23 workers will be revoked when they report to duty Saturday,” LPF general secretary M. Shanmugam said.

“Decision on the balance 40 workers under suspension will be taken on Jan 29 at the labour commissioner’s office,” he added.

In its statement issued Friday, Nokia India had said: “The issue has been resolved through mutual dialogue and to the satisfaction of all parties involved. However, the suspension pending inquiry notice to some employees who are reported to have committed acts of serious misconduct still remains and will be concluded through disciplinary proceedings.”

According to workers, nine out of 12 office bearers of NIEPU are under suspension.

The company has around 3,700 permanent workers, around 2,000 trainees and 1,000 contract workers.

According to union officials, nearly 70 percent of the total workforce are women.

One of the largest multi-national companies in the country, Nokia India’s plant near here can churn out around 500,000 mobile phones a day and has the highest productivity among all Nokia plants across the world.

A Special look at Nokia E72

A Special look at Nokia E72..

Yuri Milner, DST, Talks About Facebook & Zynga Investments

Facebook’s Yuri Milner talks to TechCrunch about his recent investments in Facebook, Zynga and others. Filmed at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland.

Diamond is million times harder than thought

Diamond is the hardest object on earth, strong enough to slice through glass and steel.

Surprisingly, very little is known about its strength under extreme conditions. But Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL) scientists proved that diamond becomes even stronger during rapid compression.

Using the Janus laser at LLNL and the Omega laser at the University of Rochester, they showed that when shock waves are applied to diamond with powerful lasers, it can withstand nearly a million times atmospheric pressure before being crushed.

“It could also provide insights into the ancient history of natural diamonds found on Earth and in meteorites, where shock waves caused by impact are common,” said Stewart McWilliams, who led the study.

McWilliams conducted the experiments as a graduate student at University of California Berkley (UC-B) while on a Student Employee Graduate Research Fellowship (SEGRF) at LLNL.

Most natural diamonds are formed at high-pressure, high-temperature conditions existing at depths of 87 to 120 miles in the Earth’s mantle.

Carbon-containing minerals provide the carbon source, and the growth occurs over periods from 1 billion to 3.3 billion years (25 percent to 75 percent of the age of the Earth).

In the recent research, the team measured the behaviour of natural diamond crystals under shock-wave compression between one million and 10 million atmospheres of pressure, and the diamonds were crushed and melted in just a nanosecond (one billionth of a second).

“What we found is that diamond exhibits considerable strength right up to the point it melts,” McWilliams said.

“We reached some surprising conclusions about the strength of diamond,” said LLNL co-author Jon Eggert. “This type of research informs us about the interiors of the gas giants as well our own planet.”

Earlier research conducted by Livermore scientists show that diamond melts at around six million atmospheres of pressure and 14,000 degrees Fahrenheit, said a lab release.

Their experiments mimicked conditions on the icy gas giant planets (Uranus and Neptune) where, according to their research, icebergs of diamond could float on a sea of liquid carbon.

Russia sends new military satellite into space

Russia sent a new military satellite into space Thursday intended to improve communication facilities.

The Raduga-series satellite was launched with a Proton-M rocket from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan, said Alexei Zolotukhin, a spokesman for the Space Forces.

Space Forces Commander Maj. Gen. Oleg Ostapenko said the satellite “is a new project that will help significantly increase the capabilities of the space communication system”.

Russia reportedly operates a constellation of 60-70 military satellites with reconnaissance, missile early warning and other capabilities.

Ostapenko said Russia would be using new-generation Angara-class carrier rockets for launches from the Plesetsk centre to reduce Moscow’s dependence on Baikonur, the main launch facility for the current generation of Russian rockets.

HP dm3t Laptop Review

We review the popular HP dm3 Laptop.

Samsung Shark S5350 Review

It is a quad-band 3G enabled candybar phone with 262k color TFT display, 3.2-megapixel camera, FM Radio, microSDHC card slot and integration with social networking services.

India ranks 123rd in pollution control; Iceland on top

India and China rank 123rd and 121st in pollution control respectively, reflecting the strain rapid economic growth imposes on the environment, according to the 2010 Environmental Performance Index (EPI).

However, among the other newly industrialised nations Brazil and Russia rank 62nd and 69th, suggesting that the level of development is just one of many factors affecting pollution control.

Iceland leads the world in addressing pollution control and natural resource management challenges, according to the index produced by a team of environmental experts at Yale University and Columbia University.

Presented Thursday at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010, the EPI ranks 163 countries on their performance across 25 metrics aggregated into ten categories including environmental health, air quality, water resource management, biodiversity and habitat, forestry, fisheries, agriculture, and climate change.

Iceland’s top-notch performance derives from its high scores on environmental public health, controlling greenhouse gas emissions, and reforestation, according to a media release from Yale University.

Other high performers include Switzerland, Costa Rica, Sweden, and Norway – all of which have made substantial investments in environmental infrastructure, pollution control, and policies designed to move toward long-term sustainability.

Occupying the bottom five positions are Togo, Angola, Mauritania, the Central African Republic, and Sierra Leone – countries that lack basic environmental amenities and policy capacity.

The US ranks 61st in the 2010 EPI, with strong results on some issues, such as provision of safe drinking water and forest sustainability, and weak performance on other issues including greenhouse gas emissions and several aspects of local air pollution.

This ranking puts the US significantly behind other industrialised nations like Britain (14th), Germany (17th), and Japan (20th). Over 20 members of the European Union outrank the US.

The US ranking does not reflect the recent policy activities of the Obama administration, as the 2010 EPI builds on data from before 2009.

“At the Copenhagen climate conference last month, reliable environmental performance data emerged as fundamental to global-scale policy cooperation,” said Daniel C. Esty, director of the Yale Centre for Environmental Law and Policy.

“The 2010 EPI shows the potential for a much more analytically rigorous approach to environmental decision making, but substantial investments in indicators that are systematically tracked and transparently displayed will be needed.”

China denies hacking Indian government computers

China Tuesday said reports of attacks by Chinese hackers on Indian government computers were “without basis”, a media report said.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said at a press briefing in Beijing that China is one of the biggest victims of hacker attacks, the Wall Street Journal reported on its website Tuesday.

Hacker attacks on China from outside the country rose 148 percent in 2008, Ma was quoted as saying.

Earlier, M. K. Narayanan, India’s National Security Adviser, said his office and other government departments were targeted by hackers Dec 15, London-based The Times reported Monday.

“People seem to be fairly sure it was the Chinese. It is difficult to find the exact source but this is the main suspicion. It seems well-founded,” the report quoted Narayanan as saying.

Internet search giant Google last week said it may leave China after an investigation found the company was the target of major hacking attacks in December that it believed originated from China, the report at online.wsj.com said.

Why Google finally saw red in China

There’s no polite way to put this. China is a rogue nation, a military dictatorship masquerading as a people’s government. It’s an apparent economic success in the short term, but its aspiration to become an economic superpower is not compatible with its political model.

That’s a system backed not by the people’s will, but by raw military power. Its guiding principles are control and paranoia. All media, all information, is censored. If you politely disagree with the system, you are locked up for 11 years, if you’re lucky. If you were in China writing what I am writing here in India, you would simply disappear.

So when the world’s most influential tech company from the world’s most influential nation bowed to this political system and launched a self-censored Google.cn search in January 2006, it wasn’t sustainable. It was also incompatible with Google’s corporate motto: “Don’t Be Evil”. Even with Google’s justification that “increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results”.

Most famously, if you simply search for Tiananmen Square on Google.com, you get tanks and bloodshed , but on Google.cn you get flowers and sunshine .

So even if David Drummond’s Jan 12 blog post, “A new approach to China” shocked some people, it wasn’t completely unexpected. Google’s top lawyer’s words were careful: “In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China… what at first appeared to be solely a security incident — albeit a significant one — was something quite different.”

But the meaning was clear: The Chinese government was targeting mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists in China. And that it had “routinely accessed” the Gmail accounts of dozens of human rights activists around the world.

Google, with 31 percent of the China Internet search market, isn’t number one: That’s Baidu, the home-grown web portal (58 percent share), and Baidu will be the biggest gainer if Google pulls out. China is an enormous online market, which claims to have jumped 28 percent in a year to 384 million Internet users, powered mainly by a 120 million jump in mobile Internet users, who reached 233 million. And the Chinese government will get rid of a potential thorn in its side, albeit one that is self-blunted.

But that’s not all. Time was when Russia wore the mantle of the world’s top rogue hacker nation, but China has overtaken it. The US, with its National Security Agency, the Central Security Service, the Central Intelligence Agency and others, is more subtle and sophisticated and maybe even more effective as a hacker nation. Israel is more focused.

Like the low-intensity conflict on India’s borders, China has been waging a low-intensity cyberwar against India and other nations, against businesses even as it plays host to them, and against all those that it views as enemies, including human rights activists, and dissidents on its own soil.

Multinationals have chosen to ignore this, trading some discomfort for economic gain. China continues to bet that as long as it stays below a certain threshold, it will get away with it. It’s a dangerous game that can backfire, and they may have just crossed that line with Google.

But they have pushed the envelope way more with India. M.K. Narayanan, who till a couple of days ago was the country’s national security adviser, has admitted only to Chinese attacks on the Prime Minister’s Office: There is no way our military agencies would admit to falling prey to cyber attacks.

The next war will be fought not with conventional or nuclear weapons, but in cyberspace. Despite our business technology prowess, India is the Athens to China’s Sparta. We are ill equipped to fight that war.

(Prasanto K. Roy is Chief Editor of CyberMedia’s ICT Publications. The views expressed by the author are personal. He can be reached at pkr@cybermedia.co.in)

User privacy will be protected, Chinese mobile phone operator

China’s largest mobile operator has assured its subscribers that their user privacy would be protected amid concern over the filtering of text messages for illegal or pornographic content. The country’s mobile phone users send out a billion SMSes everyday.

Li Kang, deputy director of customer services for China Mobile, said consumers were not affected by the filter system and said the move is part of wider efforts to clamp down on “unhealthy” mobile web content.

“The freedom and privacy of individual users enjoys legal protection,” China Daily quoted him as saying Friday.

“China Mobile will do its best to protect consumers’ rights and interests strictly in line with the relevant laws and regulations.”

His comments were aimed at easing fears over a warning that the company would suspend services to any subscriber found sending illegal content via text message.

The move provoked debate among China’s 700 million cell phone users.

Li Mofang, former chief engineer of China Mobile, supported the company’s assurance that the filter system does not affect subscribers.

“Only abnormal sending behaviour, such as the distribution of a large number of short massages in a short time, will be the target of monitoring and filtering,” she said.

“The operator has an automatic monitoring system which filters suspicious massages using a set of key words.

“Mobile phone users in China send more than one billion short messages every day. There’s no way to monitor all of them,” Li Mofang said.

Many argued that an anti-porn filter system would not work.

Yu Lingyun, a law professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, told China Daily Friday: “Sexual jokes between friends and couples should not be banned as porn.”

Filtering illegal information is necessary, he said, but a system should also be set up “in case any legal content and communication is incorrectly recognized as porn”.

An iPhone for the world is on its way

Will 2010 be the year for both Verizon and AT&T to have the iPhone? We’ll show you our favorite apps for taking photos, and there’s another free giveaway!

Agra based firm launches free astrology software for mobiles

Star gazers and those interested in astrology can now prepare their horoscopes on their mobile phone itself, and that too free of cost.


A free software developed by Ojas Softech’s research wing in Agra, was Wednesday launched by Surendra Sharma of the Brahmin Maha Sabha.

“With the number of star gazers going up and the younger generation getting hooked to astrology, the new software will prove a useful tool,” Sharma said.

For those who follow Jyotish (astrology) personally and professionally, Ojas has launched free Jyotish software for mobile phones.

The software not only enables mobile phone users to generate horoscopes but also matches horoscope, gives daily horoscope predictions and has other interesting features.

“The software is free of cost, users will not have to pay for it,” Pratik Mohan Pandey, director Ojas Softech told IANS.

However, the mobile phone should be GPRS enabled so that internet is accessible. The software can be accessed at http://astrosage.com/m/.

India has more than 50 crore mobile phone users and about 1/3rd of the total mobile phones are GPRS enabled. The software has been tested on mobile platforms like Windows mobile, Palm OS, Apple iphone, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG, O2, HTC, Motorola and WAP and it is compatible with of all of them, the company claimed.

Ojas Softech had earlier developed a software named ‘Mobile Kundali’ for palmtops. Astrocamp.com and Astrosage.com are two astrology based websites, also owned by Ojas Softech.

Google unveils Nexus One smartphone

Gadget lovers finally get a peek at the much anticipated phone from Google……

Googlephone is coming next week for $530

A day after Google announced a media event for its Android mobile phone system next week, new details leaked out Wednesday about the first ever phone to be sold directly by the web search giant.

According to technology blog Gizmodo the Nexus One will be sold unlocked on a Google website for $530. The phone will work on GSM cellphone networks and will be offered at a subsidised price of $180 in the US by fourth-ranked carrier T-Mobile with a two-year talk and data contract costing $80 a month.

Google launched its Android operating system for cellphones in October 2008 and it is fast emerging as the most competitive rival to Apple’s iPhone. Manufacturers as diverse as HTC, Motorola and Samsung have based phones on Google’s open source software, but the Nexus One will be the first device to be branded and sold directly by Google.

Google is expected to officially announce the phone’s release at a media event Jan 5, and make the device available to customers on the same day.

Google unveils its first mobile phone

Internet search giant Google unveiled its first mobile phone on Tuesday as it increased the pressure on Apple’s iPhone in a mobile market that many analysts predict will come to dominate the internet in the coming years.

Google previously released its Android operating system for phones, which has been adopted by manufacturers like Samsung, Motorola and HTC.

But the Nexus One announced Tuesday is the first device to be branded by Google and sold directly to customers.

“Nexus One is where Web meets phone,” said Google’s Mario Queiroz. Google said the eagerly anticipated phone will run the newest version of its Android OS and feature a 9.4-centimetre touch screen.

Developed in conjunction with HTC, the phone featured a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, a 5-megapixel camera, is 11.5-mm thick and weighs 130 grams.

Google said it would sell the phone from its website for $530 and will ship the phones to the UK, Singapore and Hong Kong. Customers can also buy a subsidized device together with two-year service plans for $180, from the top US carrier Verizon, as well as fourth-placed carrier T Mobile.

Apple announces 3 billion iPhone applications downloads

Apple Tuesday said that customers had downloaded over 3 billion applications from the company’s App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The announcement of the milestone came as Google was set to launch a rival to Apple’s hit smartphone, but Apple CEO Steve Jobs said thepopularity of Apple’s product meant that it had little to fear from the competition.

“Three billion applications downloaded in less than 18 months – this is like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” said Jobs in a statement. “The App Store offers iPhone and iPod touch users an experience unlike anything else available on other mobile devices,

and we see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon.”

Indeed, Apple rivals remain far behind the market leader, which boasts iPhone and iPod Touch customers in 77 countries and an App Store covering 20 categories, including games, business, news, sports, health, reference and travel.

Apple further demonstrated its determination to preserve its lead in smartphones, announcing a deal on Tuesday to buy mobile advertising firm Quattro Wireless for $275 million.

Google bought Quattro’s larger rival AdMob late last year for $750 million in a deal that it being reviewed by federal antitrust officials.

New Google Phone vs. iPhone

Tech Correspondent Daniel Sieberg discussed the features of Google’s new “superphone” called Nexus One and compared it to Apple’s iPhone.

Apple to Announce a Tablet Computer?

Apple smashes Mac, iPhone sales records again

Ahead of a widely anticipated announcement of a new tablet computer Wednesday, Apple Inc. has reported another strong quarter with record sales of iPhones and Macintosh computers.

The computer major said Monday net income for the quarter ended Dec 31 surged 50 percent from a year earlier to a record $3.4 billion, or $3.67 per share up from $2.26 billion, or $2.50 cents a share, in the year-ago period.

Revenue surged 32 percent to $15.68 billion from $11.9 billion. That marks the second straight quarter in which Apple posted record revenue.

“If you annualise our quarterly revenue, it’s surprising that Apple is now a $50+ billion company,” said Apple CEO Steve Jobs in a statement. “The new products we are planning to release this year are very strong, starting this week with a major new product that we’re really excited about.”

A 100 percent year-over-year rise in iPhone sales and a 33 percent increase in Mac sales also helped drive Apple’s results. The company said it sold a record 8.7 million iPhones in the quarter.

That’s up 17.6 percent from the 7.4 million it sold in the previous quarter and double what it sold during the same quarter a year ago. Sales were partially boosted by Apple’s introduction of the iPhone in China last quarter.

Apple sold 3.4 million Macs in the quarter, despite the economic downturn and the fact that the lowest-priced Mac retails for $1,000.

The company lowered prices for many of its products last quarter, but still managed to grow its gross margin to 40.9 percent, up from 37.9 percent a year ago. Apple said lower component prices fueled its surprising margin growth, which beat Wall Street’s consensus forecast by more than five percentage points.

Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s chief financial officer, said on a conference call with investors that the company anticipates earnings of about $2.06 to $2.18 per share in the current quarter on revenue of about $11 billion to $11.4 billion.

Apple is most likely looking to its much-rumoured tablet computer to become its next revolutionary product-and cash cow, CNNMoney.com said.

Apple has remained mum about the device and has not officially confirmed that it even exists. But analysts, who have been briefed on the device cited by CNNMoney.com say it will have a 10-inch screen and retail for about $800 to $1,000.

Although some analysts believe the device could revolutionize the handheld world in the same way the iPhone changed the smartphone market and the iPod changed the way we listen to music, others are sceptical that consumers will want to carry around a tablet, it said.

High Hopes for Apple’s iPad

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has unveiled a new cutting-edge device, the iPad, which has a 10-inch-monitor, provides internet access, and will compete in the growing e-book market. John Blackstone reports.

India to send two astronauts into space in 2016

India will launch its first manned mission in 2016 with two astronauts for a week-long odyssey in space, a top Indian space agency official said Wednesday.

“We are planning a human space flight in 2016, with two astronauts who will spend seven days in the earth’s lower orbit,” Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman K. Radhakrishnan told reporters here.

Space scientists and senior officials of the state-run ISRO are preparing a pre-project report to build the infrastructure and facilities for the mission, estimated to cost a whopping Rs.124 billion ($2.76 billion).

The Planning Commission had in principle approved the human space flight project in February 2009. Its Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia then said more funds would be allocated in two phases during the Eleventh Plan (2007-12) and Twelfth Plan (2012-17).

“We will design and develop the space module for the manned mission in the next four years. Two astronauts will be selected to train for the space flight,” Radhakrishnan said on the margins of a space event.

The government had allocated Rs.950 million (Rs.95 crore/$10 million) for pre-project initiatives in 2007-08.

The space agency will set up a full-fledged training facility in this tech hub for training the astronauts and building a third launch pad at its spaceport at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, about 80 km northeast of Chennai.

“Spacecraft for the proposed manned mission will have extra facilities like entry into crew capsule and an escape chute,” the chairman said after releasing a book titled “Moon Mission: Exploring the Moon with Chandrayaan-1″.

The book was authored by S.K. Das, former member (finance) of the space department.

To demonstrate its re-entry technology prowess, ISRO had launched in 2007 a 600 kg space capsule recovery experiment (SRE) using the polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV) rocket and was successful in bringing it back to the earth safely 12 days later.