Move over 3D, 4K TVs are the real deal

Consumer Electronics Show 2013 in Las Vegas, USA signalled the end of gimmicky innovations in televisions. Last year’s CES was full of 3D TVs, while many 4K (four times high-definition) TVs were among the best products at this year’s event. Toshiba was the first to bring 4K TVs to India, after it launched its product last year, followed by LG. Samsung announced its first TV that can handle 4K content on Friday. The new product is called 85S9 and it will be available from May 2013. The company is not calling it a 4K TV, preferring the “Ultra HD TV” moniter instead, but just like 4K TVs, this product has the potential to give you the most immersive experience seen in TVs till date.

4K content (see picture), is about as real as high-definition gets. If you are hungry, do not watch a cookery show on 4K TVs. The experience is mouth-watering to say the least. The 85S9 is an impressive example of the technology. It doesn’t matter how far you are from the TV, the image clarity never drops.

The catch is that there isn’t enough 4K content in the market as of now, but that is always the case with new technologies. Content creators will catch up eventually. Instead of taking 3D to mainstream television, companies would benefit much more by bringing 4K TVs to the market.

Source:  http://www.indianexpress.com/news/move-over-3d-4k-tvs-are-the-real-deal/1081839/

Milky Way grew by ‘cannibalising’ other smaller galaxies

Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered tantalising evidence for the possible existence of a shell of stars that are a relic of the Milky Way’s past cannibalism of other galaxies.

Peering deep into the vast stellar halo that envelops our Milky Way galaxy, a team of astronomers led by Alis Deason, from UC Santa Cruz, used Hubble observations to precisely measure, for the first time ever, the sideways motions of a small sample of stars located far from the galaxy’s center.

Their unusual lateral motion is circumstantial evidence that the stars may be the remnants of a shredded galaxy that was gravitationally ripped apart by the Milky Way billions of years ago. These stars support the idea that the Milky Way grew through the accretion of smaller galaxies.

“Hubble’s unique capabilities are allowing astronomers to uncover clues to the galaxy’s remote past,” said coauthor Roeland van der Marel of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore.

“The more distant regions of the galaxy have evolved more slowly than the inner sections. Objects in the outer regions still bear the signatures of events that happened long ago,” Marel said in a statement.

They also offer a new opportunity for measuring the “hidden” mass of our galaxy, which is in the form of dark matter — an invisible form of matter that does not emit or reflect radiation.

“Our ability now to measure the motions of these stars opens up a whole new territory we haven’t explored yet,” Deason said.

Deason and her team plucked the outer halo stars out of seven years’ worth of archival Hubble telescope observations of our neighbouring Andromeda galaxy.

In those observations, Hubble peered through the Milky Way’s halo to study the Andromeda stars, which are more than 20 times farther away.

The Milky Way’s halo stars were in the foreground and considered as clutter for the study of Andromeda. But to Deason’s study they were pure gold.

The observations offered a unique opportunity to look at the motion of Milky Way halo stars.

“We knew these stars were there, because for the Andromeda study we had to separate the stars in Andromeda from the stars in the Milky Way,” said co-author Puragra Guhathakurta, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz.

Researchers said finding the stars was meticulous work. Each Hubble image contained more than 100,000 stars.

“We had to somehow find those few stars that actually belonged to the Milky Way halo. It was like finding needles in a haystack,” Marel said.

Source: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/milky-way-grew-by-cannibalising-other-smaller-galaxies/1078215/0

Top iPhone, iPad apps on App Store

Apple app store official charts for the week ending February 18, 2013:

Top Paid iPhone Apps:

1. Clear Vision 2 (DPFLASHES STUDIO)

2. Minecraft – Pocket Edition (Mojang)

3. WhatsApp Messenger (WhatsApp Inc.)

4. Angry Birds Star Wars (Rovio Entertainment Ltd)

5. Wood Camera – Vintage Photo Editor (Bright Mango)

6. Fruit Ninja (Halfbrick Studios)

7. Plague Inc. (Ndemic Creations)

8. CraftedBattle (C-Apps)

9. Haze (Robocat)

10. Arms Cartel Global (Pixel Addicts)

Top Free iPhone Apps:

1. 4 Pics 1 Word (LOTUM GmbH)

2. Lazors (Pyrosphere)

3. iMadeFace (Keyloft LLC)

4. Temple Run 2 (Imangi Studios, LLC)

5. YouTube (Google, Inc.)

6. What’s the Word? – new quiz with pics and words (RedSpell)

7. Fast Camera (i4software)

8. Infinity Blade (Chair Entertainment Group, LLC)

9. Google Maps (Google, Inc.)

10. Ruzzle (MAG Interactive)

Top Paid iPad Apps:

1. Minecraft – Pocket Edition (Mojang)

2. Angry Birds Star Wars HD (Rovio Entertainment Ltd)

3. Pages (Apple)

4. Fionna Fights – Adventure Time (Cartoon Network)

5. Bad Piggies HD (Rovio Entertainment Ltd)

6. FIFA SOCCER 13 by EA SPORTS (Electronic Arts)

7. Trainz Driver – train driving game and realistic railroad simulator (N3V Games Pty Ltd)

8. Where’s My Perry? (Disney)

9. TETRIS for iPad (Electronic Arts)

10. The Room (Fireproof Games)

Top Free iPad Apps:

1. Infinity Blade (Chair Entertainment Group, LLC)

2. 4 Pics 1 Word (LOTUM GmbH)

3. Temple Run 2 (Imangi Studios, LLC)

4. YouTube (Google, Inc.)

5. Tiny Dentist (fantastoonic)

6. Calculator for iPad Free (International Travel Weather Calculator)

7. Candy Crush Saga (King.com Limited)

8. Skype for iPad (Skype Communications S.a.r.l)

9. Netflix (Netflix,Inc.)

10. What’s the Word HD (RedSpell)

Source: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/top-iphone-ipad-apps-on-app-store/1076938/0

“Meteorite rush” begins as Russian scientists find fragments

A meteor that exploded over Russia’s Ural mountains and sent fireballs blazing to earth has set off a rush to find fragments of the space rock which hunters hope could fetch thousands of dollars a piece. Friday’s blast and ensuing shockwave shattered windows, injured almost 1,200 people and caused about $33 million worth of damage, said local authorities. It also started a ” meteor ite rush” around the industrial city of Chelyabinsk, 1,500 km (950 miles) east of Moscow, where groups of people have started combing through the snow and ice. One amateur space enthusiast estimated chunks could be worth anything up to 66,000 roubles ($2,200) per gramme – more than 40 times the current cost of gold.

“The price is hard to say yet … The fewer meteor ites that are recovered, the higher their price,” said Dmitry Kachkalin, a member of the Russian Society of Amateur Meteor ite Lovers. Meteor ites are parts of a meteor that have fallen to earth. Scientists at the Urals Federal University were the first to announce a significant find – 53 small, stony, black objects around Lake Chebarkul, near Chelyabinsk, which tests confirmed were small meteor ites. The fragments were only 0.5 to 1 cm (0.2 to 0.4 inches) across but the scientists said larger pieces may have crashed into the lake, where a crater in the ice about eight metres (26 feet) wide opened up after Friday’s explosion.

“We just completed tests and confirm that the pieces of matter found by our experts around Lake Chebarkul are really meteor ites,” said Viktor Grokhovsky, a scientist with the Urals Federal University and the Russian Academy of Sciences. “These are classified as ordinary chondrites, or stony meteor ites, with an iron content of about 10 percent,” he told RIA news agency. He did not say whether the fragments had told his team anything about the origins of the meteor , which the U.S. space agency NASA estimated was 55 feet (17 metres) across before entering Earth’s atmosphere and weighed about 10,000 tons. The main fireball streaked across the sky at a speed of about 30 km (19 miles) per second, according to Russian space agency Roscosmos, before crashing into the snowy wastes.

Treasure Hunters

More than 20,000 people took part in search and clean-up operations at the weekend in and around Chelyabinsk, which is in the heart of a region packed with industrial military plants. Many other people were in the area just hoping to find a meteor ite after what was described by scientists as a once-in-a-century event.

Residents of a village near Chelyabinsk searched the snowy streets, collecting stones they hoped would prove to be the real thing. But not all were ready to sell. “I will keep it. Why sell it? I didn’t have a rich lifestyle before, so why start now?” a woman in a pink woollen hat and winter jacket, clutching a small black pebble, told state television Rossiya-24.

The Internet filled quickly with advertisements from eager hunters hoping to sell what they said were meteor ites – some for as little as 1,000 roubles ($33.18). The authenticity of the items was hard to ascertain. One seller of a large, silver-hued rock wrote in an advertisement on the portal Avito.ru: “Selling an unusual rock. It may be a piece of meteor ite, it may be a bit of a UFO, it may be a piece of a rocket!”

Source: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/meteorite-rush-begins-as-russian-scientists-find-fragments/1075932/0

Meteor shower hits Russia, 500 injured by blasts

A meteor streaked across the sky above Russia’s Ural Mountains today morning, causing sharp explosions and injuring more than 400 people, many of them hurt by broken glass. “There was panic. People had no idea what was happening. Everyone was going around to people’s houses to check if they were OK,” said Sergey Hametov, a resident of Chelyabinsk, about 1500 kilometers east of Moscow, the biggest city in the affected region.

“We saw a big burst of light then went outside to see what it was and we heard a really loud thundering sound,” he said. Fragments of the meteor fell in a thinly populated area of the Chelyabinsk region, the Emergency Ministry said in a statement. Interior Ministry spokesman Vadim Kolesnikov said more than 400 people had sought medical treatment after the blasts, and at least three had been hospitalized in serious condition.

Many of the injuries were from glass broken by the explosions. Kolsenikov also said about 600 square meters of a roof at a zinc factory had collapsed. Reports conflicted on what exactly happened in the clear skies. A spokeswoman for the Emergency Ministry, Irina Rossius, told The Associated Press that there was a meteor shower, but another ministry spokeswoman, Elena Smirnikh, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying it was a single meteorite.

Amateur video broadcast on Russian television showed an object speeding across the sky about 9:20 am local time (0320 GMT), leaving a thick white contrail and an intense flash. Russian news reports noted that the meteor hit less than a day before the asteroid 2012 DA14 is to make the closest recorded pass of an asteroid — about 28,000 kilometers. There was no immediate demonstrable connection.

Source: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/meteor-shower-hits-russia-500-injured-by-blasts/1074796/

Now, jumping robot to facilitate search and rescue

Scientists have designed a soft jumping robot that can leap as much as a foot in the air, a technique that will help it avoid obstacles during search and rescue operations.

“Initially, our soft robot systems used pneumatic pressure to actuate,” said Robert Shepherd, first author of the study, and former postdoctoral researcher in the Whitesides Research Group at Harvard.

“While that system worked, it was rather slow – it took on the order of a second. Using combustion, however, allows us to actuate the robots very fast. We were able to measure the speed of the robot’s jump at 4 meters per second,” Shepherd said in a statement.

Just as with other soft robots, the three-legged jumping system begins life as a mold created by a 3-D printer. The robots are molded using soft silicone that allows them to stretch and flex.

But where pneumatic robots are connected to tubing that pumps air, the jumping robots are connected to tubes that deliver a precisely controlled mix of methane and oxygen, according to the study published in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

Using high-voltage wires embedded in each leg of the robot, researchers deliver a spark to ignite the gases, causing a small explosion that sends the robot into the air.

Among the key design innovations that allowed the combustion system to work, Shepherd said, was the incorporation of a simple valve into each leg of the robot.

“We flow fuel and oxygen into the channels, and ignite it. The heat expands the gas, causing the flap to close, pressurising the channel and causing it to actuate.

“As the gas cools, the flap opens and we push the exhaust out by flowing more gas in. So we don’t need to use complex valve systems, all because we chose to mold a soft flap into the robot from the beginning,” Shepherd said.

“It’s a lot more powerful, but the question we had to answer was whether it was compatible – were the temperatures compatible – with this system,” Shepherd said.

Source: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/now-jumping-robot-to-facilitate-search-and-rescue/1074164/0

Asteroid to whizz past Earth tomorrow night

An asteroid, about half the size of a football field, will pass in close proximity to Earth, closer than the orbits of some geosynchronous satellites, tomorrow night.

The asteroid called “2012 DA14” will flyby earth at a distance of 27,700 km on February 16 at 00:10 AM, Secretary and Director of Planetary Society of India N Sri Raghunandan Kumar said.

The 45-metre wide space rock is moving at a speed of 7.8 km/sec. This is the closest approach by any asteroid in recorded history to buzz past our planet, NASA scientists have said. This asteroid was discovered on February 23, 2012 in Spain.

It will pass within the moon’s distance from Earth and closer than the orbits of some geosynchronous satellites, which provide weather data and telecommunications. However, the space rock poses no danger of impacting the Earth.

The next time it will have closest approach to Earth on February 15, 2019 when it be at 6,91,64,078 km. The last time it came close was on 16th February 2012 and was at 26,06,840 km. On the day of its closest approach, it will shine at 8 Magnitude. The space rock is not visible to the naked eye but can be spotted with the help of telescopes.

The best viewing location for the closest approach will be Indonesia. Eastern Europe, Asia and Australia are also well situated to see the asteroid, he said. Meanwhile, another space rock called “Asteroid 1999 YK5” will flyby Earth at distance of 1,88,87,632 km on February 15 at 3.48 PM. Its travelling at the rate of 20 km/sec.

Source: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/asteroid-to-whizz-past-earth-tomorrow-night/1074181/

Samsung launches REX series of ‘smart’ feature phones

Samsung has launched a new series of feature phones on Thursday. Developed in India, the REX ‘smart’ feature phones are priced between Rs 4,280 and Rs 6,490. These phones run on the Java platform.

The company launched four models in the series: REX 60, 70, 80 and 90. At the launch, Samsung Mobile Vice President Asim Warsi said: “This new series of phones has been developed in India, for Indian consumers. We look at this series as a way to broaden our appeal. These are targeted at young consumers.”

With the REX series, Samsung is taking on Nokia’s Asha series of feature phones. REX phones are dual SIM and let you change SIM cards while the phone is on. They run Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface and two of these phones support WiFi.

The company said these phones come with many pre loaded apps such as ChatOn, Facebook, Gtalk, Twitter, etc. None of these phones have 3G connectivity.

Source: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/samsung-launches-rex-series-of-smart-feature-phones/1074237/

Space laser could help detect counterfeit food post life on Mars

The European Space Agency (ESA) has revealed that a laser device developed to measure carbon on Mars could soon be used here on Earth to detect counterfeit food.

Today’s equipment is large, bulky and stationary. Samples of, say, polluted soil must be collected in the field, put in a flask and brought to the lab for testing – clearly unsuitable for space testing. But the new laser ‘isotope ratio-meter’ from RAL Space could change that.

Thanks to its small, lightweight, robust, highly accurate lasers, the device could be sent into space to look for trace amounts of gas in very small samples. “You take a laser, whose optical frequency or ‘colour’ can be continuously adjusted, beam it at a gas sample, and detect the level passing through the gas,” explained Dr Damien Weidmann, Laser Spectroscopy Team Leader at RAL Space.

As the laser colour changes, the light passes straight through the sample until it reaches a particular frequency, specific to the isotopic gas, that is partially blocked. “Each molecule, and each of its isotopic forms, has a unique fingerprint spectrum. If, on the other hand, you know what you are looking for, you can simply set the laser to the appropriate frequency.”

Through an ESA program, Weidmann and his colleagues have been able to demonstrate that the laser can quickly root out counterfeit food. Fake honey made using sugar, for example, would be detected by the laser by scanning the carbon dioxide released from burning only a few milligrams of the product. Likewise, counterfeit olive oil and chocolate could also be detected.

Though Weidmann said it was important for his project to attract interest from industry, sending the laser to Mars is his real goal. “I wanted to develop this to help gather evidence as to whether or not there was life on Mars,” said Weidmann.

Weidmann stated that using the laser to measure carbon isotopic ratios in methane on Mars could help determine where the hydrocarbon came from. “If it’s bacterial in origin, it would mean a form of life occurred on Mars,” he added.

Source: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/space-laser-could-help-detect-counterfeit-food-post-life-on-mars/1073539/0

Six months WorldSpace subscription free with EAFT tablets

EAFT Technologies, a Bangalore based company, has launched two new tablets. These are Destiny D90T and D70P. The company has tied up with on-demand music service WorldSpace and buyers will get a free subscription for six months. Users can listen to DRM-protected music from 12 channels for free.

The D90T has a 9.7-inch IPS screen and runs on Android 4.0. D90T utilises can play full HD 1080p content, and has an HDMI port that lets you connect it to big screens. Powered by 1.6 GHz dual core Cortex A9 processor, EAFT says the tablet has a battery life of 8 hours on continuous video playback. The battery is rated at 8,000 mAh battery.

The D70P is a 7-inch tablet with built-in 3G (data+voice) for connectivity. It also has an IPS panel on the display, with a resolution of 1024×600 pixels. The device is powered by a 1GHz Cortex A9 processor. The D70P comes with connectivity options like HDMI, USB, memory card slot, WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS. The battery is rated at 4,000 mAh.

Both tablets come with Smart Office, an application that lets you read and edit documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

Jithendhar GS, president and CEO, EAFT Technologies, said “We are excited to bring WorldSpace into the hands of music lovers once. Having consolidated our presence in the enterprise segment offering highly customised solutions in the entertainment and education verticals, we are now committed to offer unique propositions and best-in-class devices to retail customers.”

Source: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/six-months-worldspace-subscription-free-with-eaft-tablets/1073079/