Technology Effect

Now, manage cheques using a software Chennai: Cutchsoft , the software product development company belonging to the Cutch Group has unveiled its new Windows-based cheque management application, Cheque Strategic Office Software (Cheque SOS). Cheque SOS provides a comprehensive management function which includes cheque printing and aims to avoid preventable mismanagement of cheques. Designed for small and medium businesses, the software helps organize, print and track the cheques issued by a company. Aimed at increasing efficiency of a company's financial dealings, the interface not only saves time for writing and managing individual cheques but also eliminates human-error while writing them. "The software provides a professional edge to the small and medium businesses. The most obvious benefit is that it produces printed cheques that are legible since, the user doesn't have to handwrite the cheque," says Yaseer Rahman, Managing Director of Cutchsoft. The interface...

Sony launches VAIO E series notebooks Bangalore: Sony India has launched new VAIO E series notebooks with vibrant colors. The new E series comes in a number of screen sizes and configurations. These new VAIO E series notebooks would be available in 14-inch and 15.5-inch screen sizes. Major attraction of these new VAIO E series laptops would be gradient color pattern that looks attractive in Brown, Black, Pink, White, and Green. New Sony VAIO E series notebooks are bifurcated into EA series comprising of 14-inch models while EB series comprise of 15.5-inch models. These models claim to support full HD with 1366x768 pixel resolutions. The VAIO E series notebooks will come loaded with Intel Core i3 and Core i5 microprocessors - depending on the models that customers choose. Pre-loaded with Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium operating system these notebook models would hold up to 4GB RAM and up to 500GB HDD storage. For better graphics, Sony will offer choosing ATI's discrete Mobility...

Microsoft to drop Windows XP for netbooks Bangalore: Microsoft has informed that Windows XP will be dropped from netbooks on October 22. The policy is a reminder of a move unveiled in April 2008 but will require that all Windows-based netbooks use Windows 7 from the fall onwards. Switching is not expected to be a major issue as about 81 percent of netbooks were already using the much more modern OS by April, according to NPD data. The switch still represents one of the last steps in Windows XP's lifespan. Regular PCs moved relatively quickly to Windows 7 after dropping Vista and XP, but the lower price and system demands of XP led netbook designers to keep the nearly nine-year-old OS as a standard OS on their least expensive systems. XP's prolonged existence was mostly sparked by Vista, as its steep system requirements made it impractical to use on netbooks without inflating the performance and cost through extra RAM or advanced graphics. Microsoft also used the age of th...

Now, Facebook and Google Maps in Samsung TV Bangalore: Samsung has added Facebook and Goolge Maps to its HDTV-based Samsung Apps library. All of its 2010 Blu-ray players, Blu-ray home theater systems, and most Samsung TVs sized at 40 inches and larger have the ability to download and use the apps. With this users will be able to plan out trips before they leave their living room using Google Maps, and interact with friends on Facebook just like they would on their computers. Samsung Apps number in the 30s, with services that include Blockbuster, Netflix, Pandora, Twitter, USA Today and Vudu, among others

Users give thumbs down to Google's background image Washington: Google brought changes to its homepage with images from artists to sculptures and now it has dropped the feature after drawing the ire of users clamoring for the normally blank background. The new feature lets users personalize their wallpaper originally were intended to be on display on the Google.com homepages of users around the world for 24 hours. But Google returned to its plain white background prematurely because many users believed the change was permanent. On Thursday morning visitors were greeted with photos from National Geographic and Yann Arthus-Bertrand and images of the works of Dale Chihuly, Jeff Koons, Tom Otterness, Polly Apfelbaum, Kengo Kuma, Kwon, Ki-soo and Tord Boontje. Users who wanted to return to the Google white background found that they were unable to do so, however, and in addition were being forced to create a Google account to add a new image. "Remove Google background" w...

Twitter warns of possible traffic outages WASHINGTON: Twitter, which has suffered a series of outages this week, warned Friday that there could be more problems amid heavy World Cup traffic. Jean-Paul Cozzatti, a Twitter engineer, said on the Twitter blog that the micro-blogging service's problems this week were due to an internal network being over-capacity. Cozzatti said Twitter was doubling capacity and rebalancing traffic on the network to redistribute the load. When Twitter goes down, a picture of a whale -- known as the "fail whale" -- appears on Twitter.com and Cozzatti said his engineering team was hoping for fewer appearances by the creature. "You may still see the whale when there are unprecedented spikes in traffic," he said. "For instance, during the World Cup tournament -- and particularly during big, closely-watched matches -- we anticipate a significant surge in activity on Twitter. "While we are making every effort to prepare for ...

Need for more speed With new USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/s standards, you won’t have to wait too long for data transfers. In the last few months, we have seen updates to two standards. One is Hi-speed USB 2.0, which has been the interface standard for peripherals and external storage devices since almost a decade, and the other is SATA 3 Gb/s, which has been around for five years or so. With the upgrade to version 2.0, the USB interface received a speed bump that was 40 times higher than its predecessor, USB 1.1. Now with SuperSpeed USB 3.0, the peak theoretical throughput has reached 4.8 Gb/s, which is ten times faster than Hi-speed USB 2.0. Such a bump was long needed because external storage devices, especially hard drive-based ones, can easily saturate USB 2.0 bandwidth. Thus, the USB 2.0 interface has become a bottleneck for external hard drives, which are capable of transferring data at more than twice the interface bandwidth. The same isn’t the case with SATA 6 Gb/s, because even...

HP PHOTOSMART PREMIUM C309G The HP Photosmart Premium C309g is a high-end MFD that delivers superior photo printing. It has four individual color cartridges and an additional standard black cartridge with higher ink capacity. The device sports a boxy design with rounded corners for a touch of elegance. It’s all black with a matte finish, except for the scanner lid, which is glossy. Its most striking feature is a 3.45-inch tilt LCD touch screen with a backlit control panel. The feed tray, with a capacity of 125 sheets, is located in the front, and there’s an additional photo tray for 4x6-inch sheets as well. The C309g supports photo printing directly from digital cameras, memory cards and USB drives. There are two card slots (SD/xD and Memory Stick Duo) and a USB port. The device connects to the PC via USB, but you can also print wirelessly via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. A very useful feature is its built-in duplexer, letting you save paper by printing on both sides without having to fl...

NASA's Dawn Spacecraft Fires Past Record for Speed Change Deep in the heart of the asteroid belt, on its way to the first of the belt's two most massive inhabitants, NASA's ion-propelled Dawn spacecraft has eclipsed the record for velocity change produced by a spacecraft's engines. The previous standard-bearer for velocity change, NASA's Deep Space 1, also impelled by ion propulsion, was the first interplanetary spacecraft to use this technology. The Deep Space 1 record fell on Saturday, June 5, when the Dawn spacecraft's accumulated acceleration over the mission exceeded 4.3 kilometers per second (9,600 miles per hour). "We are using this amazing ion-engine technology as a stepping-stone to orbit and explore two of the asteroid belt's most mysterious objects, Vesta and Ceres," said Robert Mase, Dawn project manager from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. A spacecraft's change in velocity re...

Google's OS to bring changes in remote desktop capabilities Recently, there is a group formed by the companies such as Intel Corporation, Google Inc., AT&T, Cisco Systems Inc., and Microsoft Corporation together named as BITAG or TAG ( Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group). This group will consists of the engineers as well as technical experts in order to develop agreement on broadband network management practices with other technical related issues as well, which will affect the user’s experience in using the internet. It would be the a neutral, unbiased and technically expert group, which will help in promoting the superior consensus for technical practices for the Internet users and companies as well. In this group there would be many factors playing huge role like is the technical practices used a certain company is not used by other company related to the technical practices as well, another technical practices are accessible or not, the result of the technica...

Apple's lowest-priced Mac mini at $699 Bangalore: Apple has launched a new version of its lowest-priced computer, Mac mini, with twice the graphics performance and lower power usage, starting from $699. The new Mac mini, which is 7.7 inches square by 1.4 inches, has an HDMI port and a new SD card slot to allow transfer of files from a digital camera. The new product's power consumption would be less than 10 watts when idle. It consists of a Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics processor, a 2.4 gigahertz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 320 gigabyte (GB) hard-disk and 2GB RAM. It comes with Mac's Snow Leopard operating system.

Vidopia launches iVidopia, ad platform for smartphones in India Bangalore: Vdopia, U.S. based mobile advertising company, has launched iVidopia in India. It is an advanced mobile advertising platform and network with rich media and video advertising on smartphones. The company launched this platform in U.S. last year and have already revolutionized mobile advertising in the U.S. by successful campaigns for Coca-Cola, Warner Brothers, Miller Lite and other leading companies. iVidopia will allow advertisers to reach the target audience using smartphones. Apart from enabling application developers serve their own ad campaigns, Vdopia also provides an inventory of ads of popular brands. "Since India is getting ready for 3G, we thought that this is the right time to launch iVdopia," said Saurabh Bhatia, Chief Business Officer of Vdopia. He added that the company is in talks with leading telecom operators and advertisers in India. Vdopia's ad platform delivers ad formats ...

Astronomers' Doubts About the Dark Side: Errors in Big Bang Data Larger Than Thought? New research by astronomers in the Physics Department at Durham University suggests that the conventional wisdom about the content of the Universe may be wrong. Graduate student Utane Sawangwit and Professor Tom Shanks looked at observations from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite to study the remnant heat from the Big Bang. The two scientists find evidence that the errors in its data may be much larger than previously thought, which in turn makes the standard model of the Universe open to question. The team publish their results in a letter to the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Launched in 2001, WMAP measures differences in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation, the residual heat of the Big Bang that fills the Universe and appears over the whole of the sky. The angular size of the ripples in the CMB is t...

Hand Study Reveals Brain's Distorted Body Model Our brains contain a highly distorted model of our own bodies, according to scientists at UCL (University College London). A new study on the brain's representation of the hand found that our model of our bodies is out of sync with reality -- with a strong tendency to think that the hands are shorter and fatter than their true shape. The results of the study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show that the brain maintains a model of the hand in which our fingers are perceived to be shorter and our hands fatter than they are. Neuroscientists suspect the reason for these distortions may lie in the way the brain receives information from different regions of the skin. Dr Matthew Longo, lead author from the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, said: "The phrase "I know the town like the back of my hand" suggests that we have near-perfect knowledge of th...

Wipro introduces Tablet PC Bangalore: Wipro joins the PC bandwagon along with Apple's iPad, with the introduction of its product under E.go lifestyle series, designed for the Indian market. The tablet PC comes with a keyboard unlike other tablet PCs, reports Tanuja, from Financial Business Chronicle. The product, which has a 10" LED touchscreen with a 1.3 megapixel webcam, swivel base and weighs 1.2 kg, is based on the Intel Atom processor N270 and supports Windows 7. It is Bluetooth, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n and 3G SIM ready. Acer is already in the Indian market with a tablet PC. HP, Asus have announced their intention of launching tablet PCs. And Hyderabad-based Notion Ink is planning to come out with its Adam Tablet. Ashok Tripathy, Head-Systems & Technology division, Infrastructure Availability Services, Wipro Infotech, told that there is a lot of customer interest for the tablet PC which has just been launched. "We expect traction for the product going forward and...

Mobile phones are emerging new turf for hackers New Delhi: Imagine someone recording your conversation while you discuss confidential company information or money being withdrawn from your account through mobile phones without your consent. That's the new world of mobile phone hacking. After computers, mobile phones are now being targeted by spammers and hackers to gain confidential information and make money by duping the public. According to data security solutions provider Symantec, many people use their mobile devices to store information such as their passport numbers and other high-value data, which drastically increases the 'haul' for a cyber criminal who successfully attacks the device. "To date, around 400 threats on mobiles have been identified. While this may appear minuscule as compared to the four million threats for computers, the dangers to users are very real," Symantec India Managing Director Vishal Dhupar said. Some of the common mobile thr...

Six New Planets Discovered ScienceDaily — An international team, including Oxford University scientists, has discovered six diverse new planets, from 'shrunken-Saturns' to 'bloated hot Jupiters', as well a rare brown dwarf with 60 times the mass of Jupiter. The CoRoT (Convection, Rotation and Transits) space telescope is operated by the French space agency CNES. It discovers planets outside our solar system -- exoplanets -- when they 'transit', that is pass in front of their stars. Once CoRoT detects a transit, additional observations are made from the ground, using a number of telescopes all over the world. Although astronomers cannot see the planets directly, they use the space- and ground-based data to measure the sizes, masses, and orbits of these new planets precisely. This is why, among all known exoplanets, those with transits yield the most complete information about planet formation and evolution. "Each of these planets is interesting in its ...

Indian American scientist designs eye testing tool on mobile London: Ramesh Raskar, an Indian-origin American scientist has come up with a novel concept of testing your eyes by using a smartphone and a specially designed eyepiece in the confines of one's home. The method uses the application called Near-to-Eye Tool for Refractive Assessment (Netra). It includes a viewer fitted over a cellphone's screen combined with software running on the phone. Raskar, working with the Camera Culture group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says of his unique innovation, "It can be thought of as a thermometer for visual performance." It will be showcased at the Siggraph conference in Los Angeles in July. The test follows a simple method. The phone will show an image that appears as a pair of parallel lines, which is converted into a virtual 3D by the eyepiece. The subject needs to focus on the image and use the phone's keyboard to adjust the line so that they me...

World's first Android projector phone by Samsung Bangalore: Samsung is coming up with its latest phone 'Galaxy Beam', touted to be the world's first Android projector phone. It is scheduled to release in July in Singapore. The rest of Asia and Europe should see its launch shortly after that. This comes in as another first from Samsung after the launch of its Wave S8500 which was the first smartphone to be powered by Bada operating system. The Galaxy Beam, earlier called Halo, comes with a 3.7 inch screen super AMOLED display. It has a built-in DLP pico projector and runs with Android 2.1. The connectivity features of the phone include Bluetooth v3.0, USB v2.0, Wi-Fi. It has also got TV out option. Other regular features like camera, radio and video are present. There is a front facing VGA camera and 8MP camera that comes with auto focus with flash. It plays FM radio and supports MPEG4, H.263, H.264, WMV, DivX and Xvid video formats. Weighing at 155 grams, the devi...

Indian engineers' new tech to reduce 60 percent emission Bangalore: Two scientists in India have conceptually designed a new, cleaner motorcycle engine that uses compressed air to turn a small air turbine, generating enough power to run a motorcycle for up to 40 minutes. Their design could be combined with a compressed air cylinder as a replacement for traditional internal combustion engines. In areas where motorcycles are a major source of public transportation, such a technology could cut emissions substantially if widely implemented. According to Bharat Raj Singh, one of the two authors on the paper published in Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy and a researcher at the SMS Institute of Technology in Lucknow, India, said that around 50 to 60 percent of present emissions in some areas could be reduced with the new technology, though a number of technical challenges remain. Faster consumption of hydrocarbon fuel in the transport sector is posing global threat of dep...

Toshiba's "Libretto W100" is first dual touch screen notebook Bangalore: Toshiba brings to you a fresh outlook for notebooks. It has launched "Libretto W100"- the world's first dual touch screen Windows mini notebook PC. Also released is "Portege R700", Toshiba's lightest and thinnest full function laptop. The Libretto W100 comes with two touch sensitive screens with 7 inch display. It is mainly targeted at prosumers. The Libretto W100 can be held both vertically or horizontally as per the user's requirement. The lower screen also functions as a virtual keyboard, making the device function like a laptop. Files and icons can be dragged and dropped from one screen to another with the sweep of a finger. Its connectivity options allow the user to surf the net, read and type e-mails or messages, download newspapers, watch videos or access social networks. The Portege R700 is a 13.3 inch laptop that is light in weight and comes with an ultr...

Now more mobile users access maps via apps than browser Reston: The mobile map application market is growing so fast as more mobile users now access maps via application than via browser. A study has found that 14 percent of mobile users in the U.S. accessed maps on their devices in April 2010, as the mobile map audience reached 33.5 million users, up 44 percent from the previous year. According to the study launched by comScore, for the three month period ending April, 26 percent of smartphone users accessed maps via applications, while 19 percent accessed maps via browser in a month. In comparison, just 2 percent of feature phone users accessed maps via applications, with 4 percent doing so via browser. Smartphone users drove growth in both application and browser map usage with app access nearly tripling to 12.7 million smartphone users, while browser map access surged 93 percent to nearly 9 million smartphone users. The number of mobile map app users first surpassed mobile ma...

Tips to make your browser secure MUNICH: Web browsers are the key to the internet. Without them the internet is an impenetrable black box. Browsers may be among the most commonly used applications, but they also offer the greatest number of attack options for dangerous content on the net. To keep viruses, worms and other malware away from your computer when surfing, it's crucial to configure your browser for security. The firewall on a DSL router is a good first step for protecting the computer during surfing, says Marco Rinne from the computer portal chip.de. But that doesn't hold true if your browser is out of date: “Internet Explorer 6 and 7 or Firefox 2 no longer satisfy current security standards,” he says. For optimal protection, he therefore urges users to keep their browsers updated. There are numerous security tools already present in Firefox and Internet Explorer. The pop-up blocker, for example, prevents more than just annoying ads. It also throttles other ...

Featured Articles Sify offers revenue opportunities for cyber cafes Chennai: In order to arrest the closure of its franchisee-owned cyber cafes owing to increased costs, city-based internet services company Sify Technologies Saturday launched 'Sify mylife' that enables a cyber cafe owner to increase his revenue. "The 'Sify mylife' platform enables a cyber cafe owner to increase his revenue -- online and off-line. The cafe owner can earn by offering online services -- ticket booking, payment of utility bills, education courses and other services offered by us," chairman and managing director of the company, Raju Vegesna, told reporters here. The cyber cafes can also earn by being a test centre for corporates holding online recruitment tests; providing wall space for advertisers by being part of Sify Ad Campaign programme. "With increasing real estate and labour costs internet cafes cannot survive being just a browsing centre. There is a whole lot o...

Artificial intelligence to bring computers at par with humans Bangalore: There have been debates about the competition between man and computer.People often zero in to the fact that, computers cannot replace human brain. Computer scientists have been pursuing artificial intelligence, the use of computers to simulate human thinking, reports Steve Lohr and John Markoff of the New York Times. Rapid progress has been made in machines that can listen, speak, see, reason and learn in their way. It is not only that artificial intelligence will transform the way humans and machines communicate and collaborate, but will also eliminate millions of jobs, create many others and change the nature of work and daily routines. Artificial intelligence in today's world is way different from the older format, where computers just understood what humans were saying. Both Google's and Microsoft's search services now respond to voice commands. Translation software being tested by the Defen...

Scientists Find Direct Line from Development to Growth I t may seem intuitive that growth and development somehow go together so that plants and animals end up with the right number of cells in all the right places. But it is only now that scientists at the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy have gotten some of the first insights into how this critical coordination actually works in a plant. The answer is surprisingly simple. A well-known developmental protein called Short-root has been found to directly control the activity, in both time and space, of other well-known genes involved in cell division. "It's a remarkably straightforward answer," said Philip Benfey, director of the IGSP's Center for Systems Biology. "Considering the level of complexity that is so often found in biology, this is simplicity itself." The researchers report their findings on July 1 in the journal Nature. Benfey's group and others have s...

Indian Government wants access to your Google and Blackberry mails Indian Government has instructed the Department of Telcommunication to send notices to RIM, Skype, and Google to grant access to all communications that take place over their networks. Within 15 days, each of these companies will be required to open all the data, so that it can be read by the security and intelligence agencies. Else..... It looks like we might join the Chinese and lay traditional marigold garlands on Google India Headquarters as the Government might ban these companies if they fail to comply. Although, taking into account the recent terrorist attacks, the Government's stance is justified to an extent. However, we feel that such negotiations must take place in the background. On the other hand, once in hands of Government officials, it wouldn't be surprising if one can get all your mail and data for a bunch of green notes. None of these companies has responded to the notices as of yet.

Now, cars will inform about accidents on its own London: Computer scientists in the US are developing technology that will transform cars into intelligent vehicles fitted with aircraft-style black boxes that can record information about driving behaviour during accidents. The car, which is being developed by researchers at computer chip giant Intel, will record information about the vehicle speed, steering and braking along with video footage from inside and outside the vehicle, The Telegraph reported. This would be automatically sent to police and insurance companies in the event of an accident to make it easier to determine the cause of car crashes and identify the person responsible. The device forms part of an intelligent car envisaged by researchers at Intel. They are developing technology that will transform cars into smart vehicles that are able to detect dangers on the road and even take over control from motorists. They have been in discussions with car manufacturers abou...

How Rules of Physics in Quantum World Change When Applied to Classical World Dartmouth researchers have discovered a potentially important piece of the quantum/classical puzzle -- learning how the rules of physics in the quantum world (think smaller than microscopic) change when applied to the classical world (think every day items, like cars and trees). In a study published in the July 1 issue of the journal Nature, Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy Alex Rimberg and his colleagues describe one example of the microscopic quantum world influencing, even dominating they say, the behavior of something in the macroscopic classical world. They used tiny semiconducting crystals that contain two separate reservoirs of electrons to explore the different influences of both classical and quantum physics. "We found that the motion of the crystals is not dominated by something classical like thermal motion, but instead by random quantum fluctuat...

Now, read comics on your mobile phone New Delhi: Comics' publishers, once lamenting dropping sales as youth turn to the internet and other media for entertainment, are now laughing all the way to the bank after providing their works on mobile phones to attract the generation on the move. According to industry estimates, two major comics publishers - Amar Chitra Katha and Raj Comics - are between them raking in Rs. 500,000 to Rs. 700,000 per month from m-comics and with a third player, Diamond Comics, set to join the fray, the figure can only climb higher. Says Rushabh Sanghvi, Marketing Head of Amar Chitra Katha: "After attaining unmatched reach in all corners of India, we could not stay away from launching m-comics as that's the future." They, in fact, were the first to launch m-comics in India last January. "We have a market in 30 cities and to compete with the high-tech entertainment possibilities available, we have launched m-comics with the support of ...

HP brings data deduplication software, HP StoreOnce Bangalore: HP has come out with data deduplication software called HP StoreOnce, which helps in reduction of the duplication of data. This provides an efficient management of the data. HP rules out the inefficiency of traditional data deduplication with its unified HP StoreOnce. It increases the deduplication performance and minimizes hard ware requirements. With HP StoreOnce customers can use the same software as back up for virtual appliances, inline appliances and scale-out a storage system which proves that there is a single solution for their problems. HP StoreOnce shows 20 percent improved performance in inline data deduplication which allows customers to spend up to 95 percent less on storage capacity. This can be invested in new IT projects to bring organization innovation. HP StoreOnce software works with HP StorageWorks D2D4312 for small businesses and enterprise designed for mid size data centers. The new D2D4312 has ...

HP brings data deduplication software, HP StoreOnce Bangalore: HP has come out with data deduplication software called HP StoreOnce, which helps in reduction of the duplication of data. This provides an efficient management of the data. HP rules out the inefficiency of traditional data deduplication with its unified HP StoreOnce. It increases the deduplication performance and minimizes hard ware requirements. With HP StoreOnce customers can use the same software as back up for virtual appliances, inline appliances and scale-out a storage system which proves that there is a single solution for their problems. HP StoreOnce shows 20 percent improved performance in inline data deduplication which allows customers to spend up to 95 percent less on storage capacity. This can be invested in new IT projects to bring organization innovation. HP StoreOnce software works with HP StorageWorks D2D4312 for small businesses and enterprise designed for mid size data centers. The new D2D4312 has ...

Adobe urged to disable JavaScript by Sophos Bangalore: Software provider Adobe has been advised to start disabling JavaScript in its products by default by Sophos, an IT security and data protection firm. This report comes following the recent security update for Adobe Acrobat and Reader that fixed a serious vulnerability relying on JavaScript code. The vulnerability called CVE-2010-1297 involved a booby-trapped PDF file that contained a Flash animation and relied on JavaScript for the exploit to work. It is more complex than previous Adobe exploits. This will mark a new trend in the development of Adobe exploits. The recommendation by Sophos to all users is to disable JavaScript in Adobe Acrobat and Reader by default. Vanja Svajcer, Principal Virus Researcher at Sophos said, "The company's regular security updates show that Adobe is now doing more to address vulnerabilities, but the high number of patched vulnerabilities indicate that it may be a good time for Adobe to ...

Imec Significantly Reduces Cost of Germanium-Based Thermophotovoltaic Cells Imec presents an improved processing technique for germanium-based thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cells resulting in significant reduction of cell cost, an essential step to develop a market for thermophotovoltaic applications. Imec's newly developed TPV cells are fabricated on germanium substrates with an optimized surface, specifically designed and manufactured for this application. Thermophotovoltaic cells convert radiation from heat sources with a temperature lower than the sun's temperature. TPV cells are ideally suited to be used in an industrial context, for example to generate electricity from waste heat released during steel or glass production. Alternatively, TPV cells can be added to domestic heating systems to co-generate electricity besides hot water. TPV cells may therefore reduce the waste and hence increase the efficiency of domestic heating systems. However, due to the...

Bad News For Coffee Drinkers Who Get Headaches People who consume high amounts of caffeine each day are more likely to suffer occasional headaches than those with low caffeine consumption, a team of researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) reports in a study recently published in the Journal of Headache Pain. But in findings that had “no obvious reason”, the researchers, led by Knut Hagen from NTNU’s Faculty of Medicine, also reported that low caffeine consumption was associated with a greater likelihood of chronic headaches, defined as headaches for 14 or more days each month. The results are drawn from a large cross-sectional study of 50,483 people who answered a questionnaire about caffeine consumption and headache prevalence as a part of the Nord-Trøndelag Health Survey (HUNT 2), a county-wide health survey conducted in 1995-1997 on a wide range of health topics. To drink or not to drink Caffeine is the world’s most co...

India joins Thirty Metre Telescope Project "In about a year's time, we expect this observer status to be converted into full partnership in the project," added Kembhavi. "The government and people of India recognise the importance of embarking on world class, international science collaboration," said Science and Technology Secretary T. Ramasami, who had accompanied the Minister to sign the agreement. The 42-m European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the 24.5 m Grand Magellan Telescope (GMT) and the TMT of the United States were three international telescope projects where India could participate. Indian scientists will have access to the existing telescopes operated by Caltech. Caltech, the University of California and the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy have partnered in the TMT project. TMT will be capable of observations with a spatial resolution limited by the natural turbulence...

Improved Telescope Sees Through Atmosphere With Pinpoint Sharpness A sharp view of the starry sky is difficult, because the atmosphere constantly distorts the image. TU/e researcher Roger Hamelinck developed a new type of telescope mirror, which quickly corrects the image. His prototypes are required for future large telescopes, but also gives old telescopes a sharper view. The atmosphere contains 'bubbles' of hot and cold air, each with their own refractive index, which distort the image. As a result, the light reaching ground-based telescopes is distorted. Hamelinck's system tackles this problem with a deformable mirror in the telescope. Under this ultrathin mirror there are actuators, which can wherever necessary quickly create bumps and dimples in the mirror. These bumps and dimples correct the continuously changing distortion created in the atmosphere. This is of crucial importance to the new generation of large telescopes in particular. Hamelinck: "In princ...

Germany: Apple must improve data transparency - paper Reuters - Apple Inc must "immediately make clear" what data it collects from users of its products and for what purposes, Germany's justice minister was quoted as saying by Der Spiegel magazine on Saturday. "Users of iPhones and other GPS devices must be aware of what kind of information about them is being collected," Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger told the German weekly. According to Der Spiegel, the minister's criticism was aimed at changes Apple has made in its privacy policy whereby the company can collect data on the geographic location of the users of its products -- albeit anonymously. Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said she expected Apple to "open its databases to German data protection authorities" and clarify what data it was collecting and how long it was saving the data. An Apple spokesman said he could not comment on the report. Germany has some of the toughest privacy laws in...