techworm

ISRO has lined up 14 missions for launch in 2021, including the space agency's first unmanned mission later this year, its Chairman K Sivan said here on Sunday. He was addressing scientists at the Mission Control Centre here after the successful launch of Amazona-1 of Brazil and 18 other satellites. "Definitely our hands are full. We are going to have something like 14 missions this year. Seven launch vehicle missions and six satellite missions, as well as our first unmanned mission by the end of the year. That is our target and the scientists are working on that", he said. ISRO plans to take up two unmanned space missions before the Gaganyaan-manned space mission. The Gaganyaan mission envisages sending three Indians to space by 2022. The four test pilots selected for the mission are currently undergoing training in Russia. Sivan expressed hope that his team would rise to the occasion as usual and meet all the targets set by the ISRO. Before concluding his speech, th

by Sahana Ghosh Turn the clock back in time 50,000 years and you would have seen two species of giant prehistoric elephants ( Palaeoloxodon namadicus and Stegodon namadicus ), a hippopotamus, Hexaprotodon sp ., and a zebra-like horse, Equus namadicus , alongside other great beasts that roamed the Indian subcontinent. Modern humans had arrived by then on the Indian subcontinent from Africa but these four large mammals stuck around in the region for at least 20,000 years after their arrival. A low-magnitude extinction began about 30,000 years ago when some megafaunal species, such as the giant elephants, hippopotamus and zebra-like horse, started disappearing. This is in contrast to the Americas, Europe and Australia where the arrival of humans ( Homo sapiens ) have been implicated in more rapid, large scale megafauna extinctions such as those of woolly mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers. These extinctions took place during a geologic period called Late Quaternary (from ~50,000 years

A satellite orbiting the Earth has snapped photographs of a phenomenon that has scientists stumped. An odd landscape seen in the cold Arctic depths of Siberia, Russia, near the Markha River, shows widespread ripples that scientists could not explain. Images from the NASA satellite Landsat 8 were taking over several years, and recently shared by the space agency in its Earth Observatory website. The images show ripples on land on either side of the Markha river, with alternating light and dark stripes that give it an optical illusion-like quality. While visible in all four seasons, the effect is more pronounced during the winter, when white snow gives an even more striking contrast to the pattern, NASA said in the statement. The space agency isn’t entirely sure what causes the pattern on the Siberian ground. One explanation offered by the space agency was linked to the frigid temperatures in the region. With many Siberian slopes spending 90 percent of the year covered in permafrost th

Rating: 4/5 Price: Rs 12,999 About a year and a half ago, we reviewed the Amazfit GTR and were mighty impressed with its design, wide array of fitness features and unreal battery life. Its successor has now arrived, and it promises to up the style quotient further and also has a few additional tricks up its sleeve. Time to see if the Amazfit GTR 2 can walk the talk. The design just got even better I am still quite fond of the Amazfit GTR’s design, and it remains one of the best-looking fitness watches in the sub-Rs 15,000 segment. The GTR 2 takes the finesse a notch higher by making the watch look almost bezel-less courtesy of a curved glass that encompasses the outer ring, too. The designers have smartly put minute markers on the periphery that nicely blend in with several analogue watch faces, making the watch feel completely bezel-less. It has a round dial and a stainless-steel body. Despite the sturdy steel construction, the company has managed to keep the GTR 2’s weight to un

OnePlus 9 Pro alleged screenshots show that the smartphone will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 SoC, paired with 8GB of RAM and 128GB storage, a 6.7-inch 120Hz AMOLED display and 48-megapixel quad rear camera system and Android 11 out-of-the-box. from Gadgets 360 https://ift.tt/3c3hDu3

OnePlus 9 Pro alleged screenshots show that the smartphone will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 SoC, paired with 8GB of RAM and 128GB storage, a 6.7-inch 120Hz AMOLED display and 48-megapixel quad rear camera system and Android 11 out-of-the-box. from Gadgets 360 https://ift.tt/3c3hDu3

Oppo F19 Pro+ and Oppo F19 Pro will launch in India soon, a dedicated Amazon page reveals. The Oppo F19 series was first in the news back in December of 2018 but only now has been confirmed to launch in the country. from Gadgets 360 https://ift.tt/37Wggfs

Realme X9 Pro may feature a full-HD+ display with 90Hz refresh rate. It may sport a hole-punch design with the cutout placed on the top left corner of the screen. The leak reiterates that Realme X7 Pro may be powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 1200 SoC. from Gadgets 360 https://ift.tt/2Mz2FmB

Airbus unveiled Friday the carbon footprint of its aircraft, a move that will help measure progress made by the aviation industry towards its goal of reducing emissions. It is the first time an aircraft manufacturer has released lifetime carbon emissions of its aircraft, and Airbus Executive VP Corporate Affairs Julie Kitcher said it was an opportunity to increase transparency in the sector. "We really want to demonstrate our commitment to driving decarbonisation of the sector," she said. The industry currently represents 2 percent of global CO2 emissions, according to the International Civil Aviation Organisation, but a forecast rise in passenger air traffic means it could add more pollution to the skies unless measures are taken rapidly. And between the "flygskam" movement, a Swedish neologism meaning "flight shame", to increasing social responsibility expectations among investors, the industry is under mounting pressure to meet its promise to cut its

Oppo F19 Pro+ and Oppo F19 Pro will launch in India soon, a dedicated Amazon page reveals. The Oppo F19 series was first in the news back in December of 2018 but only now has been confirmed to launch in the country. from Gadgets 360 https://ift.tt/37Wggfs

Realme X9 Pro may feature a full-HD+ display with 90Hz refresh rate. It may sport a hole-punch design with the cutout placed on the top left corner of the screen. The leak reiterates that Realme X7 Pro may be powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 1200 SoC. from Gadgets 360 https://ift.tt/2Mz2FmB

A third effective weapon was added to America’s arsenal against the coronavirus Saturday when the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization for a vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson. The company said it would start shipping millions of doses early this week and would provide the United States with 100 million doses by the end of June. Together with 600 million doses of the nation’s first two authorized vaccines, made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, that are due to be delivered over the next four months, that ought to be enough to cover every American adult who wants to be vaccinated. The new vaccine differs markedly from the two already in use in the United States. Here is how they compare. One shot instead of two The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is administered in a single shot, while the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are given in two shots several weeks apart. How J&J's COVID-19 shot works The Johnson & Johnson vaccine uses a di

PlayStation Network (PSN) is currently suffering a major outage. The outage reflects on  PlayStation Network status page as well. The page reveals that services experiencing issues include "Account management, Gaming and social and PlayStation Store". The outage is affecting all consoles including PS5, PS4, PS3 and the PlayStation Vita. The PSN status page also confirmed that this outage began at  "27/02/2021, 5:03 AM". As of 1 March, 9.48 am IST, the services are still facing the issue, as it can be seen in the screenshot below taken from the PSN status page. As per the website, users might face difficulty launching games, apps or other network features. The company did not disclose how long can this outage last but confirmed that they are "working to resolve the issue as soon as possible." We have reached out to Sony PlayStation India regarding the same. We will update this article as soon as we hear back from the company. Notably, neither Sony In

A few nights ago, after my weekly trip to the grocery store, I sat in my car glued to Clubhouse , the invitation-only social audio app. While my ice cream thawed in the trunk, I dropped in on a room where Tom Green, the former MTV shock comedian and star of “Freddy Got Fingered,” was debating the ethics of artificial intelligence with a group of computer scientists and Deadmau5 , the famous Canadian DJ. When that was over, I headed to a room called NYU Girls Roasting Tech Guys . There, I listened to college students playing a dating game in which contestants were given 30 seconds of stage time to try to seduce someone else in the audience. And after a few rounds of that, I joined a room called the Cotton Club, in which users changed their avatars to black-and-white portraits and pretended to be patrons of a 1920s-style speak-easy, complete with jazz soundtrack. Two hours later, my ice cream fully liquefied, I emerged from the car with the feeling that I had just experienced someth

The third-gen Hyundai i20 has been named the winner of the 2021 Indian Car of the Year (ICOTY) Award. As for the other categories, the Tata Nexon EV has been conferred with the first-ever Green Car Award by ICOTY 2021 and the Land Rover Defender with the 2021 Premium Car Award by ICOTY. The Hyundai i20 took the top prize with a score of 104 points from the jury. Following it at a close second place was the Kia Sonet with 91 points and in third place was the Mahindra Thar with 78 points. The Tata Nexon EV took top honours in its category with 106 points, the Hyundai Kona followed in second with 99 points and the MG ZS EV in third with 93 points. As for the premium car winner, the Land Rover Defender scored 108 points, followed by the Mercedes-Benz GLE at some distance with 77 points and the BMW 2 Series with 61 points. Each of the judges scored the contenders on 25 points. Judges were asked to rate at least five contenders and have picked a clear winner out of these. The process was

A lot has happened over the past year, so you can be forgiven for not having a clear memory of what some of the major concerns were at the beginning of the pandemic. However, if you think back to the beginning of the pandemic, one of the major concerns was the role that surfaces played in the transmission of the virus. As an epidemiologist, I remember spending countless hours responding to media requests answering questions along the lines of whether we should be washing the outside of food cans or disinfecting our mail.  I also remember seeing teams of people walking the streets at all hours wiping down poles and cleaning public benches. But what does the evidence actually say about surface transmission more than 12 months into this pandemic? Before addressing this, we need to define the question we’re asking. The key question isn’t whether surface transmission is possible, or whether it can occur in the real world — it almost certainly can. The real question is: what is the

The most prestigious Indian automotive awards have crowned the newest member of the Royal Enfield family, the Royal Enfield Meteor 350, as the Indian Motorcycle of the Year 2021. The IMOTY 2021 winner was picked out of a total of eight contenders which included the Bajaj Dominar 250, Hero Glamour 125, Hero Passion Pro, Hero Xtreme 160R, Honda Hornet 2.0, Husqvarna Svartpilen 250 and KTM 390 Adventure. The runners up for IMOTY 2021 were the KTM 390 Adventure, and Hero Xtreme 160R. Coming back to the Royal Enfield Meteor 350, which was launched in November 2020, as a replacement to the Thunderbird 350X. Despite the familiar looks, the Meteor 350 rides on an all-new twin-downtube chassis, the first time Royal Enfield's 350cc platform has been revamped since its introduction over a decade back. The Meteor 350 also packs a new 349 cc engine and 5-speed gearbox, another departure for the company, moving from a pushrod style engine to a thoroughly modern SOHC two-valve design, but it r

A Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Sunday carrying Russia's first satellite for monitoring the Arctic's climate, the Roscosmos space agency said. Video published by the Russian space agency showed the Soyuz blaster launching against grey skies at 06.55 GMT, carrying an Arktika-M satellite. Space agency chief Dmitry Rogozin wrote on Twitter later that communication with the satellite had been established. The monitoring system will need at least two satellites to operate properly, the space agency said. "As part of the system, they will provide round-the-clock all-weather monitoring of the Earth's surface and the seas of the Arctic Ocean," it added. The launch of the second Arktika-M satellite is planned for 2023, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported. Economic exploitation of the Arctic is one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's key goals. The Arctic holds huge oil and gas reserves that are being eyed by Ru

Spacewalking astronauts ventured out Sunday to install support frames for new, high-efficiency solar panels arriving at the International Space Station later this year. NASA’s Kate Rubins and Victor Glover put the first set of mounting brackets and struts together, then bolted them into place next to the station’s oldest and most degraded solar wings. But the work took longer than expected, and they barely got started on the second set before calling it quits. Rubins will finish the job during a second spacewalk later this week. The spacewalkers had to lug out the hundreds of pounds of mounting brackets and struts in 2.5-meter duffle-style bags. The equipment was so big and awkward that it had to be taken apart like furniture, just to get through the hatch. Some of the attachment locations required extra turns of the power drill and still weren’t snug enough, as indicated by black lines. The astronauts had to use a ratchet wrench to deal with the more stubborn bolts, which slowed th

In the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) first mission of the year, the country's polar rocket on Sunday successfully launched Brazilian satellite Amazonia-1 and 18 other satellites from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh's Sriharikota. The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle PSLV-C51 lifted off at around 10.24 am from the first launch pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre and injected into orbit primary payload Amazonia-1 about 17 minutes later. Primary satellite #Amazonia1 successfully separated from #PSLVC51 . Join us again at 1210 hrs IST for witnessing the separation of co-passenger satellites ISRO Website : https://t.co/bwLKodEjCL Youtube: https://t.co/XlVvZaENl5 Facebook: https://t.co/MYy1DZUA7e — ISRO (@isro) February 28, 2021 After a gap of over one-and-half hours, the co-passenger satellites, including one from Chennai- based Space Kidz India (SKI), which is engraved with a picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, were launched one a

Officials at the Pompeii archaeological site in Italy announced Saturday the discovery of an intact ceremonial chariot, one of several important discoveries made in the same area outside the park near Naples following an investigation into an illegal dig. The chariot, with its iron elements, bronze decorations and mineralised wooden remains, was found in the ruins of a settlement north of Pompeii, beyond the walls of the ancient city, parked in the portico of a stable where the remains of three horses previously were discovered. The Archaeological Park of Pompeii called the chariot “an exceptional discovery” and said "it represents a unique find — which has no parallel in Italy thus far — in an excellent state of preservation.” The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD destroyed Pompeii. The chariot was spared when the walls and roof of the structure it was in collapsed, and also survived looting by modern-day antiquities thieves, who had dug tunnels through to the site, grazing

Johnson & Johnson plans to test its coronavirus vaccine in infants and even in newborns, as well as in pregnant women and in people who have compromised immune systems. The bold plan for expanded clinical trials met with the approval of Dr Ofer Levy, director of the Precision Vaccines Program at Harvard’s Boston Children’s Hospital and a member of the Food and Drug Administration advisory committee that reviewed the company’s vaccine data. When Levy saw the outlines of the planned trials, "they turned my head," he said. They were reported as part of the company’s application to the FDA for emergency use approval and discussed at the FDA meeting. “They did not get into a lot of detail about it but did make it clear they will be pursuing pediatric and maternal coronavirus immunization studies,” Levy said. They referred committee members to their briefing materials where, on page 34, the company mentioned the planned studies. A spokesperson for Janssen Biotech, the Johns

Washington:  Early last summer, Chinese and Indian troops clashed in a surprise border battle in the remote Galwan Valley, bashing each other to death with rocks and clubs. Four months later and more than 1,500 miles away in Mumbai, trains shut down and the stock market closed as the power went out in a city of 20 million people. Hospitals had to switch to emergency generators to keep ventilators running amid a coronavirus outbreak that was among India’s worst. Now, a new study lends weight to the idea that those two events may have been connected — as part of a broad Chinese cyber campaign against India’s power grid, timed to send a message that if India pressed its claims too hard, the lights could go out across the country. The study shows that as the battles raged in the Himalayas, taking at least two dozen lives, Chinese malware was flowing into the control systems that manage electric supply across India, along with a high-voltage transmission substation and a coal-fired powe