Cloudy skies, more rains this weekend

NEW DELHI - The weather will be pleasant in Delhi this weekend as cloudy skies and thundershowers are expected over the next two days, the weather office said Friday.

British firefighters to use motorbikes fitted with hoses

LONDON - Fire chiefs in Britain have unveiled their latest weapon - a 30,000-pound ($13,600) “fire bike” fitted with a power hose, which will be sent out instead of fire engines if fires are not deemed a threat to people or buildings, a media report said Friday.

British firefighters to use motorbikes fitted with hoses

LONDON - Fire chiefs in Britain have unveiled their latest weapon - a 30,000-pound ($13,600) “fire bike” fitted with a power hose, which will be sent out instead of fire engines if fires are not deemed a threat to people or buildings, a media report said Friday.

Yahoo! hosting 24-hour ‘hacking’ event in India’s tech hub

BANGALORE - Global search engine Yahoo! is hosting a non-stop 24-hour “hacking” event from Saturday noon in this tech hub where about 300 whiz-kids will use its web tools and services to develop new applications, a company official said Friday.

Nanowick at core of advanced system to cool ‘power electronics’

Washington, July 23 (ANI): An advanced cooling technology being developed for high-power electronics in military and automotive systems can handle nearly 10 times the heat generated by conventional computer chips, researchers have demonstrated.

Divers trying to uncover mysteries of sacred Maya pools

Washington, July 23 (ANI): A team of divers mapping some of the 25 freshwater pools of Cara Blanca, Belize, has found fossilized animal remains, bits of pottery and - in the largest pool explored - an enormous underwater cave.

Boffins discover key compound of ozone depletion

Washington, July 23 (ANI): Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany, have, for the time, measured in the ozone layer the chlorine compound ClOOCl, which plays an important role in stratospheric ozone depletion.

Teen creates free Internet application for iPhone

LONDON - A 15-year-old boy managed to dupe Apple Inc. by creating an iPhone application that connects to the Internet for free but it is no longer available.

African ancestry linked to high-risk breast cancer

WASHINGTON - A new study has found that African ancestry is linked to triple-negative breast cancer, which is harder to treat.

US ‘atom smasher’ could get more time to hunt ‘God particle’

LONDON - The American Tevatron accelerator may get three more years of life to enable scientists to continue the hunt for Higgs boson or the so called “God particle”.

Hubble discovers hyperfast star hailing from Milky Way’s core

WASHINGTON - NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has come across a hypervelocity star - which is moving three times faster than our sun - hailing from the Milky Way’s core.

Novel treatment for pain in sickle cell disease identified

WASHINGTON - A research team, led by an Indian-origin boffin, has found that cannibinoids offer a novel approach to ease the chronic and acute pain caused by sickle cell disease (SCD).

Once a criminal, not always a criminal

WASHINGTON - A new study has revealed that kids who come in conflict with the law early on in life do not necessarily become long-term criminals thereafter.

Mechanism behind success of disease-causing microbes identified

WASHINGTON - Researchers have identified the mechanism used by several types of common, virulent microbes to infect plants and cause devastating blights.

Mother-to-child HIV transmission on decline in US, but more can be done

WASHINGTON - With the advent of new therapies, HIV transmission to kids before or at birth has declined dramatically in the US in the last decade, but scientists believe there is still scope to do more and further reduce the number of babies born with the disease.

Astronomers discover elusive buckyballs in space

WASHINGTON - Astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have, for the first time, discovered elusive carbon molecules, known as “buckyballs” in space.

Oldest footprint fossil could offer insights into ancient human gait

Washington, July 23 (ANI): After discovering fossil remains of what is believed to be the oldest footprints that look like those made by modern humans, scientists are trying to understand how walking evolved in humans.

Caterpillars’ gut movements inspire soft-body robot design

Washington, July 23 (ANI): “Weird movements” in the guts of freely crawling caterpillars could improve the design and development of soft material robots, according to researchers at Virginia Tech.

Kids with celiac disease should go for vitamins to stave off bone disease: Study

Washington, July 23 (ANI): Kids suffering from celiac disease should include certain must-have vitamins in their diets to prevent weak bones and osteoporosis, according to researchers at the University of Alberta.

Bones may have bigger role in diabetes than believed

Washington, July 23 (ANI): Two new studies have analysed the interplay between bone and blood sugar, suggesting that bones play a more important role in the onset of diabetes than previously thought.

Black hole at the center of Milky Way powers galaxy’s fastest stars

Washington, July 23 (ANI): Astronomers have found that a black hole at the centre of the Milky Way is shooting “hypervelocity stars” out of the galaxy at up to 1.8 million miles per hour.

Detector technology ‘to help NASA find earth-like exoplanets’

Washington, July 23 (ANI): A new detector technology could help NASA directly image and characterize exoplanets.

Boffins successfully test plane that perches on wire like a bird

WASHINGTON - Tomorrow’s planes might be able to land gracefully onto a narrow perch just like birds, a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have demostrated.

Scientists spot largest molecules in space

LONDON - Scientists in Canada have spotted the largest molecules existing in space called buckyballs.

‘Toaster on legs’ sets new world record by walking 14.3 miles in 11hrs!

London, July 23 (ANI): A robot billed as a ‘toaster on legs’ has set a new world record - by walking 14.3 miles in 11 hours.

EPA feels tug-of-war between angry Pa. residents, gas companies over its new drilling study

EPA hears from gas drillers, angry Pa. residents

Blood test for depression closer to reality

Washington, July 23 (ANI): A team of Dutch researchers have identified a set of seven genes in whole blood that helped them to distinguish un-medicated major depressive disorder (MDD) patients from healthy controls. The work throws up the possibility of a blood test for depression in the near future.

Gene ‘makes kids more vulnerable to bullying’s effects’

Washington, July 23 (ANI): It’s well-known that children victimized by bullies face physical and emotional distress, and now researchers have discovered a genetic variation that moderates whether victims of bullying will go on to develop emotional problems.

Genes make some hit the bottle when other boozers are around

Washington, July 23 (ANI): If your friend, sitting next to you at a bar, orders a drink, would you too? Researchers say your genes decide.

Gene involved in aging also linked to Alzheimer’s

Washington, July 23 (ANI): A gene previously implicated in the aging process has now been linked to Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

Circumcision would do little to prevent HIV in gay men: Study

WASHINGTON - Circumcision in gay men would have little effect on reducing HIV incidence, according to a new US study.

Why laughter is contagious

LONDON - How many times has it happened that when one person starts laughing, it takes no time till everybody else in the group starts rolling too? And now, researchers have found clues behind this common phenomenon and have explained why laughter is so contagious.