New Primate Discovered In Mountain Forests Of Tanzania: "Two research teams working independently in Tanzania have discovered a monkey that had eluded scientists despite decades of research in the region. The 'highland mangabey' is the first monkey species to be described in Africa since 1984."

It is 2005 and they find a new primate! Amazing!

posted by Farookh at 12:11 AM Comment (1)

CNN.com - iRobot co-founder comes clean - May 30, 2005: "Greiner takes pride in knowing that the Roomba needed just two years on the market to reach 1 million in sales, compared with seven years for air conditioners to reach that threshold, six years for televisions and five years for VCRs."

She is a computer game geek, makes robots for a living, is a millionaire and looks good. Now, isn't she one helluva eligible spinster! ;)

posted by Farookh at 11:41 PM Comment (0)

Thinking out of the box is hobby for them: "Banana fibre construction material, wheelchairs that climb stairs and mobile phones that control home appliances - these are the innovations that brought several Indian teenagers international recognition."

posted by Farookh at 4:50 PM Comment (0)

Sounds of space collected by university of Iowa instruments on various spacecrafts.

posted by Amit at 11:35 PM Comment (0)

Sumatra quake longest ever recorded: The true extent of the magnitude of the earthquake that caused the tsunami comes to light.

"Dramatic new data from the December 26, 2004, Sumatran-Andaman earthquake that generated deadly tsunamis show the event created the longest fault rupture and the longest duration of faulting ever observed."

"Normally, a small earthquake might last less than a second; a moderate sized earthquake might last a few seconds. This earthquake lasted between 500 and 600 seconds."

The quake released an amount of energy equal to a 100 gigaton bomb, and that power lasted longer than any quake ever recorded.

The quake, centered in the Indian Ocean, also created the biggest gash in the Earth's seabed ever observed, nearly 800 miles.

No place on Earth escaped movement. "Globally, this earthquake was large enough to basically vibrate the whole planet as much as half an inch, or a centimeter. Everywhere we had instruments, we could see motions."

-K


posted by Kaushik at 2:34 AM Comment (0)

Russian villagers baffled by missing lake: A Russian village was left baffled on Thursday after its lake disappeared overnight

“It is very dangerous. If a person had been in this disaster, he would have had almost no chance of survival. The trees flew downwards, under the ground.”

-K

posted by Kaushik at 1:46 PM Comment (0)

Puzzled Brits Clamor for Su Doku: "For out-of-the-loop yanks, Su Doku (Japanese for 'solitary number') is a puzzle that looks like Minesweeper mated with a crossword, producing the digits one through nine as offspring. Imagine nine tick-tack-toe boards arranged three across and three down. Instead of Xs and Os, a few numbers are interspersed in the squares. The goal is to fill every grid, column and row with numbers one through nine, without repeating numbers."

posted by Farookh at 5:16 PM Comment (0)

'Oddball Rodent' Is Called New to Science: "The new species in this previously unknown family is called kha-nyou (pronounced ga-nyou) by local people. Scientists found that differences in the skull and bone structure and in the animal's DNA revealed it to be a member of a distinct family that diverged from others of the rodent order millions of years ago. 'To find something so distinct in this day and age is just extraordinary,' said Dr. Robert J. Timmins of the Wildlife Conservation Society, one of the discoverers. 'For all we know, this could be the last remaining mammal family left to be discovered.'"

posted by Farookh at 10:55 PM Comment (0)

Intelligent Plastics Change Shape With Light: "Imagine, for example, a 'string' of plastic that a doctor could thread into the body through a tiny incision. When activated by light via a fiber-optic probe, that slender string might change into a corkscrew-shaped stent for keeping blood vessels open."

posted by Farookh at 7:14 PM Comment (0)

Researchers at Cornell University have created small robots that can replicate themselves. Check out the video!

posted by Amit at 10:08 PM Comment (0)

China's Great Wall holds the key to quantum future: THE Great Wall of China is poised to play its part in pushing back the boundaries of quantum cryptography. Later this year a Chinese team, which has just broken the record for transmitting entangled particles, will test the feasibility of satellite-based quantum communication using the wall.

The Great Wall's new role was revealed after Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei and his colleagues successfully transmitted 'entangled' photons through more than 7 kilometres of the Earth's turbulent lower atmosphere without losing the photons' fragile quantum properties.

"In the autumn we will test transmission of entangled photons between receivers 20 kilometres apart on the Great Wall," he says. "We used to use light from fires on the Great Wall to signal invasions, now we are going to signal the future."


posted by Kaushik at 12:43 AM Comment (0)

Did the Vikings make a telescope? The Vikings could have been using a telescope hundreds of years before Dutch spectacle makers supposedly invented the device in the late 16th century.

"The surface of some of the lenses have an almost perfect elliptical shape," Dr Schmidt said. "They were obviously made on a turning lathe."

posted by Kaushik at 8:04 PM Comment (0)

Ivory-billed woodpecker flies back from the dead: "For the world of ornithology, it is the equivalent of Elvis being found alive and kicking.

Because, far from being extinct for at least 50 years, the ivory-billed woodpecker Campephilus principalis has been spotted in the “Big Woods” region of eastern Arkansas, US. “This is not any old bird - it’s America’s largest woodpecker and it’s legendary,” says John Fitzpatrick of Cornell University, and head of a year-long expedition to corroborate initial sightings of the species in February 2004.

The definitive evidence is 4 seconds of blurry video captured by the camcorder of David Luneau of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. It was shot at 1540 local time on 25 April as he scoured the area in his kayak."



posted by Kaushik at 2:21 AM Comment (3)

Twelve new moons discovered around Saturn: "Astronomers have spotted 12 tiny new moons circling Saturn. The observations could help scientists understand how such satellites become snagged by gas giants.

The new finds double the number of irregular moons orbiting Saturn and brings the total to 46. Eleven of the 12 new moons orbit in a retrograde orbit - opposite to the rotation of the planet."

posted by Kaushik at 2:20 AM Comment (0)

India enters the networking market: "Though most of its sales to date have been in its home country, Tejas Networks, which is based here and specializes in Ethernet-over-Sonet boxes, has started to sell equipment in North America."
...
"The railway, the largest in the world, is scrapping its diesel trains for electric ones. Inside the power lines, it's installing fiber-optic cable, which it plans to lease to regional carriers."

posted by Farookh at 5:30 PM Comment (1)

'I want to talk to my wife': coma victim breaks decade of silence: "For almost 10 years, following an accident that left him severely brain damaged, Donald Herbert was virtually silent, could barely see, and had no memory of his former life, his wife, or four children. For his family, the point must have come where they never expected to speak with him again.
But the 44-year-old former firefighter, badly injured in a fire in 1995, astounded doctors when on Saturday he suddenly looked up from the nursing home and told staff: 'I want to talk to my wife.' "

Wow...that's half a Rip Van Winkle!

-K

posted by Kaushik at 2:15 AM Comment (0)

Creating electricity with wind and wire: "Right now it's only an observed phenomenon, but practical application of the idea could lead to highly efficient gas sensors or wind generators without moving parts. The phenomenon, informally called the 'Sood Effect,' was discovered by professor Ajay Sood of the India Institute of Science."

posted by Farookh at 8:28 PM Comment (0)

Mice put in 'suspended animation': "Mice have been placed in a state of near suspended animation, raising the possibility that hibernation could one day be induced in humans."

Would be great if it works on humans, safely.

posted by Farookh at 4:47 PM Comment (0)

Sky-High Gamers Go to Extremes: "Yet, notwithstanding the risks, the four sky divers proved that an ad hoc network set up using the wireless functions of a Nintendo DS works perfectly at distances of nearly 400 feet while falling 120 miles an hour."

Geeks!

posted by Farookh at 4:10 PM Comment (0)

Odd fly uncovers evolution secret: "The researchers think sharing an island with a myriad of other lifeforms may push one species to spawn another."

posted by Farookh at 4:06 PM Comment (0)

Sex, Ys, and Platypuses: "The presence of both bird and mammal chromosomes in the platypus implies that sex determination evolved just once among a common ancestor of both groups, and then diverged into distinct systems."

The platypus constantly proves to be different than everything around it.

posted by Farookh at 3:57 PM Comment (0)

PNI, a Korean research firm, has gone a step ahead in making flat-panel speakers -- making them flexible like fabric. The speakers, however, can only support sounds in the upper end of the register. In a 5.1-channel home theater for instance, it cannot support the bass channel.

If you find any images of the speaker, do comment with the URL.

posted by Amit at 5:32 AM Comment (1)

An awesome-looking wristwatch.

-K



posted by Kaushik at 1:18 AM Comment (0)

Pepakura Designer: Software that generates a paper layouts from a 3D model. You give it a 3D model of something, it figures out how the model can be generated from a flat sheet of paper by folding and pasting, and then prints out the sheet for you.

Check out the galleries for some cool examples.

-K


posted by Kaushik at 1:15 AM Comment (0)

Seeing With Sound: Translating visual images into soundscapes with the help of a tiny video camera and a software program called “The vOICe.”

posted by Amit at 10:51 PM Comment (0)