Science & Technology Today

Hopefully that is enough for a hungry chick. Free Gift :Count the number of fish and win a surprise gift. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty taken on Eastern Egg Rock, Maine)

Creationist will soon be running for cover as the researchers and scientists are getting very close to creating artificial life. Some of the estimates predict that they are just 3 to 10 years away from create some form of life in a laboratory environment. And truly that would be the greatest breakthrough in the scientific world. The ability to create a living cell from scratch, by chemically synthesizing all its components, is not far beyond present technology as it may seem. As per Mark Bedau , chief operating officer of ProtoLife of Venice, Italy three major hurdles to creating synthetic life: —A container, or membrane, for the cell to keep bad molecules out, allow good ones, and the ability to multiply. —A genetic system that controls the functions of the cell, enabling it to reproduce and mutate in response to environmental changes. —A metabolism that extracts raw materials from the environment as food and then changes it into energy. Jack Szostak of Harvard Medical School, pre...

A new startup company Navio Systems based in Apple's home town of Cupertino , California is trying hard to break the hold of Apple in online music domain. Their recently launched music download website gbox is getting lot of attention and record labels like Universal and SonyBMG have started selling music on there website. Customers can buy tunes through gbox at the same price charged by market leader iTunes - 99 cents per track. gbox will also benefit from a special advertising deal with Google. The adverts, which will appear when a user searches for a particular term, such as the name of an artist, will link to the g box site. Navio Systems is hoping to finally open the iPod to other formats with a system that stores the rights associated with a musical piece, game, or movie in the file itself, according to Business Magazine. Navio software that enable its customers to offer copy-protected video content that will play on Apple's iPods . The move will create o...

The importance of IPTV is set to increase rapidly as cable operators migrate services to an all IP network and DSL service providers enhance their content capability. Service providers deploying IPTV, including AT&T and Verizon. For TV and VoD services, IPTV enables operators to consolidate network infrastructure, improve access bandwidth usage efficiency, and offer enhanced service features such as interactive programming guides (IPGs) and network-based digital video recording (DVR). IPTV can then be offered and billed as part of multi-service packages without radical changes to the customer care and billing platforms. IPTV involves the interfaces between the service-providers and network providers, as well as both Web-based and IP Multi-media Subsystem (IMS)-based approaches for added functionality. The playback of IPTV requires either a personal computer or a set-top box connected to a TV. Video content is typically compressed using either a MPEG-2 or a MPEG-4 codec and then sen...

In my earlier post we talked about NASA's Gravity Probe B, not to be left behind European Space Agency ( ESA ) is getting ready to launch their gravity probe-- The Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer ( GOCE ) scheduled for launch in spring 2008. GOCE is dedicated to measuring the Earth’s gravity field and modelling the geoid with extremely high accuracy and spatial resolution. GOCE data will also be used for probing hazardous volcanic regions and bringing new insight into ocean behaviour. By combining the gravity data with information about sea-surface height gathered by other spacecraft, scientists will be able to track the direction and speed of ocean currents. What will it do? Most of us know that the acceleration due to gravity on Earth's surface is 9.8m per second squared - but, in truth, this figure varies around the planet depending on the nature of the material underneath the earth's surface.The figure varies from 9.78 (minimum) at the equ...

The June report on Trends in Email, Web, and Malware Threats by Secure Computing® Research is out and here are the key findings; Spam Volume Mail volumes remained stable in June with malicious messages making up 85.0% of all email, a 0.57% increase from May. At the end of the month, the Storm Worm gang has released a new variant of the stock spam, unleashing millions of emails with images wrapped up as PDF attachments. Malware Trojans continue to dominate the malware category, accounting for almost 96% of all newly discovered malware. Windows Executables remain the most popular vector for distributing these new attacks. Zombies An average of 236,540 new zombies were detected daily in June, a 32.3% decrease from May. Web Threats An average of 12,436 total new malicious Web sites were detected in June, a 31.28% decrease from the prior month.

While theoretical physicist have come up with new theories to explain the phenomena of gravity, scientists have not given up on Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, or theory of gravitation.Everybody knows about the Albert Einstein's well established theory of relativity we now call special relativity which leads to E = mc 2 (energy equals mass times the speed of light squared), and is a very well established experimentally.Einstein's also established the general theory of relativity to explain the gravitation and unlike special relativity, surprisingly few tests have been made quantitatively of the results of this theory. But that was until NASA launched Gravity Probe B in April 2004. The data collected by Gravity Probe B during 17 months orbiting around the Earth is putting general theory of relativity to the test.Since October 2005, scientists have conducted painstaking data analysis and validation. The preliminary results were announced in April 2007 for the ...