Science News Updates

Washington: At least one million babies have been born in the US using in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) and other assisted reproductive technologies, a report has said. The latest report was released this week by the US Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART), which started to collect data on assisted reproductive technologies (ART) in 1985, Xinhua news […]

New York: Micro-blogging website Twitter has partnered with Bloomberg Media to stream news round-the-clock on the social networking platform. “It is going to be focused on the most important news for an intelligent audience around the globe and it’s going to be broader in focus than our existing network,” The Wall Street Journal quoted Justin […]

Canberra: Facebook has monitored the posts of Australian children and used algorithms to identify and exploit them by allowing advertisers to target them during their most vulnerable moments. Internal documents outline how the social network can target “moments when young people need a confidence boost” by monitoring posts, pictures and interactions, Sky News reported on […]

San Francisco: Analysis considering a range of flood scenarios, as opposed to a single 100-year threshold, could be more robust and accurate about vulnerability of bridges, according to a study. Current risk assessments in the US assume that bridges may collapse when a 100-year flood, a streamflow with one per cent probability of being exceeded […]

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said the ‘South Asia Satellite’ to be launched by India on May 5, will go a long way in addressing the region’s economic and developmental priorities. “The capacities of this satellite and the facilities it provides will go a long way in addressing South Asia’s economic and […]

New York: Inspired by the jelly-like jaw of a sea worm, researchers have developed a new material that becomes hard or flexible depending on the environment around it and can be used in soft robotics. The researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology looked at a sea worm called Nereis virens whose jaw has a […]

London: Researchers have developed a simple eye test that could help solve the biggest global cause of irreversible blindness, glaucoma, by detecting the onset of the disease at a very early stage. Loss of sight in patients with glaucoma is caused by the death of cells in the retina at the back of the eye. […]

New Delhi: US tech giant Google on Friday announced a new “Solve for India” initiative that aims to expand and energise the start-up ecosystem in tier 2 cities across the country. The programme will inspire new wave of entrepreneurs and startups in emerging cities like Pune, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Kochi, Indore, Nagpur, Nashik, Madurai, Kanpur […]

Washington: An international team of researchers has successfully retrieved human DNA in cave sediments where no skeletal remains were found, a new study revealed. The highly sensitive screening technique the team applied even identified ancient human DNA sequences from locations where the presence of an extinct human species called Neanderthals has been proposed but never […]

San Francisco: US tech giant Apple is experimenting with wireless charging technologies that could see users charge their iPhones with a Wi-Fi router. “Apple’s patent application for ‘Wireless Charging and Communications Systems With Dual-Frequency Patch Antennas’ is a method for transferring power to electronic devices over frequencies normally dedicated to data communications,” appleinsider.com reported on […]

New Delhi: Extending the ban on tourism activities in the core areas of tiger reserves, the Supreme Court today pulled up the Centre for the depleting population of the wild cats in the country. A bench of justices A K Patnaik and Swatanter Kumar put some searching questions to the Centre as it made a […]

Imphal: Imported hovercrafts, which were deployed in the Loktak lake here to flush out militants, are now frightening off migratory birds and making the fragile ecosystem of the area inhospitable for the winged guests. The presence of 3 hovercrafts – vehicles that can be driven both over water and land – which were procured from […]

Washington: NASA’s Dawn spacecraft encountered a glitch while preparing for its scheduled observation of Ceres on April 29 from an “opposition” position, directly between the dwarf planet’s mysterious Occator Crater and the sun. The malfunction will not significantly impact Dawn’s rest of the extended mission, NASA said in a statement on Wednesday. One of Dawn’s […]

New York: Google Trips, an app for iOS and Android that makes it easier to plan and organise trips, now allows users to make bus and train reservations. “Previously, it only handled flight, hotel, car and restaurant reservations but now, if users are travelling by train or bus, Trips will organise those reservations for them,” […]

New York: Expanding the list of material that can be produced by 3-D printing, researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have designed a system to print the basic structure of an entire building. Structures built with this system could be produced faster and less expensively than traditional construction methods allow, the researchers said. “Our […]