Innovations

To prepare for the next mission to Mars in 2020, NASA has taken to the lava fields of Iceland to get its new robotic space explorer ready for the job. With its black basalt sand, wind-swept dunes and craggy peaks, the Lambahraun lava field at the foot of Iceland’s second biggest glacier, Langjokull, was chosen as a stand-in for the ... Read More »

Washington, Aug 13 (Xinhua/UNB) — The US scientists have mapped a part of the molecular machinery that helps the brain maintain long-term memories, providing new targets against Alzheimer’s disease characterized by memory loss. The study published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, outlined how a protein called CPEB3 primes neurons to store memories that stand ... Read More »

Japan, Aug 5 (AP/UNB) — Japanese electronics maker NEC Corp. on Monday showed a “flying car,” a large drone-like machine with four propellers that hovered steadily for about a minute. The test flight reaching 3 meters (10 feet) high was held in a gigantic cage, as a safety precaution, at an NEC facility in a Tokyo suburb. The preparations such ... Read More »

Beijing, July 29 (Xinhua/UNB) — Chinese scientists have developed a new method to control the population of mosquitoes, the Science and Technology Daily reported Monday. Scientists from the Sun Yat-Sen University have conducted a four-year field test in controlling the population of the Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus), one of the world’s most invasive mosquito species that carries dengue, the ... Read More »

India, July 15 (AP/UNB) — India aborted the launch on Monday of a spacecraft intended to land on the far side of the moon less than an hour before liftoff. The Chandrayaan-2 mission was called off when a “technical snag” was observed in the 640-ton, 14-story rocket launcher, Indian Space Research Organization spokesman B.R. Guruprasad said. The countdown abruptly stopped ... Read More »

We’ve all been there: you’re working on something important, your PC crashes, and you lose all your progress. Such a failure was not an option during the Apollo missions, the first time ever that a computer was entrusted with handling flight control and life support systems — and therefore the lives of the astronauts on board. Despite an infamous false ... Read More »

Tech Desk Walton has released its 4G smartphone ‘Primo H8’ in Turbo Edition with upgraded processor yesterday. The attractively designed device which was earlier released in different versions of 2GB and 3 GB RAM, now comes with a 1.5 GHz Quad Core processor. Asifur Rahman Khan, Chief of Walton Cellular Phone sales department, said this upgradation on processor will let ... Read More »

Dhaka, Jul 8 (UNB) – A strain of the common cold virus can infect and kill bladder cancer cells, a small study suggests, reports the BBC. All signs of the disease disappeared in one patient, and in 14 others there was evidence that cancer cells had died. University of Surrey researchers said the virus could “help revolutionise treatment” for the ... Read More »

A lightweight insect robot is capable of flying without being tethered to a power source, by using energy from light. The solar-powered RoboBee X-WingIt and has four wings which flap at a rate of 170 times per second, instead of a propeller to take off A lightweight insect robot is capable of flying without being tethered to a power source, ... Read More »

Lying on a workshop counter that is closed to the public at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum’s annex near Washington Dulles airport, Neil Armstrong’s gloves look almost as good as new. You can hardly tell they made a trip to the Moon and back 50 years ago. To their side is the slightly yellowed “Snoopy Cap” (formally known as ... Read More »

Berlin, June 25 (AP/UNB) — Scientists in Europe say they’ve successfully transferred a test tube rhino embryo back into a female whose eggs were fertilized in vitro, as part of an effort to save another nearly extinct sub-species of the giant horned mammal. Thomas Hildebrandt of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin said Tuesday the procedure ... Read More »

Comilla, June 26 – Iqbal Hossain, a youth of Shubhanagar village in Sadar Upazila, has started farming fish in backyard pools. He taught himself the technique by watching a tutorial on youtube, the video blogging site. “I started farming fish in yard pool as a hobby but now I’ve been providing fish to nearby families after meeting my own family ... Read More »

Littleton, Jun 22 (AP/UNB) — A flock of ducklings is safe in suburban Denver after a firefighter used a recording of duck calls to coax some of them from a storm drain. A video from South Metro Fire Rescue shows how a firefighter was able to scoop out four of the birds in the water at the bottom of the ... Read More »

by Mike Eman Oranjestad – To live in a small island state today is to reckon regularly with the cruellest irony of climate change. Islands contribute little to global warming, but they are the first to suffer from its devastating effects and the least equipped to manage them. As carbon dioxide emissions from larger, wealthier industrialized countries continue to warm ... Read More »

By Apoorva Oza Ahmedabad, Gujatar, India (IPS) – When we look at some of the things we take for granted in India today, there is a common thread to all of them. Every single one. They all originated from civil society. People hear the word civil society and react differently; and it depends on where they come from. For the ... Read More »

China launched a space rocket from sea for the first time yesterday, its space agency announced, the latest step in Beijing’s push to become a major space power. The Asian giant now spends more than Russia and Japan on its civil and military space programmes — unveiling ambitious plans for missions to the moon and beyond in the coming decade. ... Read More »

Los Angeles, June 01 (AP/UNB) — A transportation company is betting its sleek new hydrogen-powered electric flying vehicles will someday serve as taxis, cargo carriers and ambulances of the sky, but experts say they will have to clear a number of regulatory hurdles before being approved for takeoff years in the future. With six rotors on the roof and seats inside for ... Read More »

Shanghai, May 8 (AP/UNB) — The sound of doctors boring through his skull to feed electrodes deep into his brain made Yan tremble. “The drill was like bzzzzzzz,” he later recalled. “The moment of drilling is the most terrible.” Yan is a methamphetamine addict. The hope is that technology will extinguish his addiction — quite literally, with the flip of ... Read More »

Mymensingh, A Research teams led by Prof Dr A K M Nowsad Alam of Fisheries Technology Department of Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU) have succeeded to make dried crispy pickles and powder from Pangas fish after 2 years of research. The Pangas pickles contain 37 percent protein, 28 percent fat, 16 percent mineral and 11 percent fiber and it can be ... Read More »

New Delhi, Mar 27 (AP/UNB) — India successfully test-fired an anti-satellite weapon on Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in an unexpected announcement just weeks before a general election. Modi said in an address broadcast live that Indian scientists had destroyed a low earth orbit satellite with a missile, demonstrating India’s capacity as a “space power” alongside the U.S., Russia ... Read More »

ROME, Feb 20 2019 (IPS) – When young people from small towns and villages seek higher education they have to usually migrate to big cities leaving their local communities behind. On completion of their degree from the Universities, they generally prefer staying in cities, in search of a good job and a successful career. Though this is a standard practice, it ... Read More »

Chattogram, Feb 19 (UNB) – ‘Sunflower’, a solar-powered hybrid boat, will soon be launched in Bangladesh by Rahimafrooz Renewable Energy and Chattogram-based Taratari Shipyard. The boat, locally known as kayak, was designed by French-born Bangladeshi Yves Marre, who is also the managing director of Taratari Shipyard. “For the first time in Bangladesh, a kayak has been equipped with a hybrid ... Read More »

Dhaka, Feb 02 – TVEL, Fuel Company of Russia’s Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation has started testing accident-tolerant fuel (ATF) for nuclear reactors. Accident-tolerant fuel is resistant to severe accidents at nuclear power plants. It is expected to keep its integrity for a quite a long enough time without a zirconium-steam reaction that induces hydrogen release. First two assemblies accident-tolerant ... Read More »

Bremeverhaven, Jan 24 (AP/UNB) — Scientists prepared Thursday to embark on an unprecedented, years-long mission to explore the Indian Ocean and document changes taking place beneath the waves that could affect billions of people in the surrounding region over the coming decades. The ambitious expedition will delve into one of the last major unexplored frontiers on the planet, a vast ... Read More »

Cape Canaveral, Jan 24 (AP/UNB) — Astronomers managed to capture the moment of an impact during this week’s eclipsed moon. Spanish astrophysicist Jose Maria Madiedo of the University of Huelva said Wednesday it appears a rock from a comet slammed into the moon during the total lunar eclipse late Sunday and early Monday. The strike was seen by telescopes in ... Read More »

The erosion of materials used in wind turbine blades due to the effect of weather conditions is a problem that applies to the whole wind energy sector. VTT’s antiAGE project found a functional solution to the material problem with the help of artificial intelligence and 3D printing. Read More »

Dhaka, Jan 11 – TVEL Fuel Company, a subsidiary of Russia’s state atomic energy corporation- Rosatom and CNLY, a subsidiary of China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) have signed a contract for the supply of nuclear fuel for CFR-600 fast-neutron reactor which is currently under construction in China. The contract covers the initial loading of nuclear fuel, as well as supplies ... Read More »

Ágroecology, within the paradigm of food sovereignty, is gaining widespread recognition and is increasingly being promoted by States and international institutions as the indispensable approach to transform agriculture and food systems and address the challenges we face. Read More »

Dhaka, Dec 18 – The TVEL Fuel Company of Russia’s Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation has started batch production of MOX nuclear fuel assemblies for BN-800 Fast Neutron Reactor at their Mining and Chemical Combine in Zheleznogorsk of Siberia. Read More »

Thirty families from a rural community more than 4,300 meters above sea level will have warm houses that will protect them from the freezing temperatures that each year cause deaths and diseases among children and older adults in this region of the southeastern Peruvian Andes. Read More »