Technology

US space agency NASA is investigating what may be the first crime committed in outer space, The New York Times reported today. Astronaut Anne McClain is accused of identity theft and improperly accessing her estranged wife’s private financial records while on a sixth-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS), the Times said. The astronaut’s spouse Summer Worden filed a ... Read More »

Moscow, Aug 24 (AP/UNB) — A Russian space capsule carrying a humanoid robot has failed to dock as planned with the International Space Station. A statement from the Russian space agency Roscosmos said the failure to dock on Saturday was because of problems in the docking system. It said the space station itself and the six-person crew are safe. Vladimir ... Read More »

It is a good news for students, tree lovers, morning walkers and research scholars as they would be able to know detail information about the trees planted beside roads and parks since authorities are going to tag trees with Quick Response (QR) codes. New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) has taken the decision of tagging the trees with QR codes recently ... Read More »

Russia was set to launch on today an unmanned rocket carrying a life-size humanoid robot that will spend 10 days learning to assist astronauts on the International Space Station. Named Fedor, for Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research with identification number Skybot F850, the robot is the first ever sent up by Russia. Fedor was to blast off in a Soyuz ... Read More »

Cape Canaveral, Aug 22 (AP/UNB) — Spacewalking astronauts added another parking spot to the International Space Station on Wednesday. NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Andrew Morgan successfully installed a docking port delivered by SpaceX last month. It will be used by SpaceX and Boeing once they start launching astronauts to the orbiting lab late this year or early next year. ... Read More »

India’s Chandrayaan 2 spacecraft entered lunar orbit on Tuesday, executing one of the trickiest manoeuvres on its historic mission to the Moon. After four weeks in space, the craft completed its Lunar Orbit Insertion as planned, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said in a statement. The insertion “was completed successfully today at 0902 hrs IST (0332 GMT) as planned, ... Read More »

Facebook is homing in on Facebook groups to help crack down on harmful content on the platform. In a tandem of blog posts this week, Facebook detailed two major changes to its user-created groups feature — one of which will simplify privacy settings across the platform. According to the company, groups will now have just two privacy settings, public or ... Read More »

Samsung  unveiled a new-generation Galaxy Note large-screen handset yesterday  starting at $950 and said it will work closer with Microsoft so that services function better across its array of devices. The Note 10 “phablet” which is set for release on August 23, comes in two sizes, with the larger beginning at $1,100. The price puts the model at the premium ... Read More »

Global privacy regulators joined forces Tuesday to demand guarantees from Facebook on how it will protect users’ financial data when it launches its planned cryptocurrency, Libra. The watchdogs from Australia, the US, EU, Britain, Canada and other countries issued an open letter calling on Facebook to respond to more than a dozen concerns over how it will handle sensitive personal ... 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 »

A series of privacy missteps in recent months has raised fresh concerns over the future of voice-controlled digital assistants, a growing market seen by some as the next frontier in computing. Recent incidents involving Google, Apple and Amazon devices underscore that despite strong growth in the market for smart speakers and devices, more work is needed to reassure consumers that ... Read More »

The digital financial service of Bangladesh Post Office, Nagad today announced it’s available on IOS platform, which would enable the iPhone and iPad users to have the app. The IOS version of the app, which previously was available only on the android platform, will have similar features of the other version, said a Nagad release. Through the app, customers can ... Read More »

by Sahana Ghosh on 1 August 2019 Dreaming of a perfect blue-sky and rain-free wedding day? A luxury travel company promises to do just that for a price with the help of cloud seeding, a commonly used technique in weather modification. By artificially popping up clouds a day before the D-day and making it rain, the company guarantees a flawless ... Read More »

President Donald Trump warned  yesterday that he would snub Apple’s requests for tariff exemptions on device components imported from China, as he put pressure on the tech company to shift production to the United States. “Apple will not be given Tariff wavers, or relief, for Mac Pro parts that are made in China. Make them in the USA, no Tariffs!” ... Read More »

Beijing, July 25 (AP/UNB) — Chinese state media says a Beijing-based rocket developer has become the country’s first private company to successfully complete an orbital launch. The Xinhua state news agency reported that a carrier rocket sent two satellites into orbit from a satellite center in northwest China on Thursday afternoon. Xinhua said the SQX-1 Y1, a four-stage small commercial ... Read More »

US regulators are expected to unveil Wednesday a settlement with Facebook — a reported $5 billion fine that might be the least painful part of the agreement for the social network. The deal, which follows a lengthy investigation by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), allows Facebook to avoid prosecution for its data protection lapses. The real question, however, remains what ... Read More »

Tokyo (AP/UNB) — A cart-like robot scuttles across the field to bring back javelins and discuses. A towering screen-on-wheels is designed for “virtual” attendance. The cute ones are, naturally, the likeness of the Olympic and Paralympic mascots. Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp., a major Olympic sponsor, is readying various robots for next year’s Tokyo Olympics. The robots were shown to ... Read More »

Americans were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing on Saturday, a generation-defining event watched by half a billion people globally, as the US seeks to pivot to a new era of crewed space exploration. At 4:18pm ET (2018 GMT) on July 20, 1969, the lunar module carrying astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down on the ... Read More »

Space engineer Pablo de Leon has designed two spacesuit prototypes for the Moon and for Mars, and knows how long development takes. If NASA wants to meet its own deadline of returning to the Moon by 2024, it needs to get a move on. “NASA still doesn’t have a suit because the decision was taken suddenly,” explained the Argentine engineer, ... Read More »

Scientists seeking to avoid catastrophic sea-level rises from the melting West Antarctic ice sheet have come up with a “terrible” solution: use snow cannons to pump trillions of tonnes of ice back on top. The gargantuan ice sheet contains enough frozen water to raise global sea levels by six metres (20 feet). Just one metre of sea-level rise would be ... Read More »

Fifty years after a mighty rocket set off from Florida carrying the first humans to the Moon, a veteran of the Apollo 11 crew returned to its fabled launch pad today to commemorate “one giant leap” that became a defining moment in human history. “We crew felt the weight of the world on our shoulders, we knew that everyone would ... 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 »

India today  dramatically scrapped the launch of a rocket that was aiming to land a probe on the Moon less than one hour before blast-off because of a “technical” problem. India wants the Chandrayaan-2 — or Moon Chariot 2 — mission to make it only the fourth country after Russia, the United States and China to land a craft on ... Read More »

Russia launched a space telescope  from the cosmodrome in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, in a joint mission on Sunday with Germany intended to map X-rays across the sky and replace a project lost in January. Video posted on the website of the Roskosmos, the Russian space agency, showed a Proton-M rocket carrying the Spektr-RG taking off from the launch pad at Baikonur ... Read More »

By Isaiah Esipisu Dodoma, Tanzania, Jul 11 2019 (IPS) – Research scientists are studying groundwater resources in three African countries in order to understand the renewability of the source and how people can use it sustainably towards a green revolution in Africa. Read More »

Stunning pictures of a rare total eclipse that blocked out the sun above Chile and Argentina have been captured by a satellite orbiting the moon. Thousands of people – including tourists, locals and astronomers – gathered to see the solar spectacle earlier this week, with the two South American countries the only inhabited locations from where it could be soon. ... Read More »

Elizabeth Turtle was overjoyed when, on June 26, she received a call from NASA: her project to send a drone quadcopter to Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, was given the green light, which came with a budget of nearly a billion dollars. But the launch of “Dragonfly” won’t happen until 2026 — surely a frustrating detail, given she has been studying ... Read More »

NASA carried out a successful test today of a launch abort system for a capsule designed to take US astronauts to the moon. The test was carried out at Cape Canaveral in Florida and carried live on NASA TV. The exercise aimed to test in almost real-life conditions the evacuation of astronauts from the Orion capsule in the event of ... Read More »

From Danielle Nierenberg Women in the food system and technology sectors face a lot of obstacles. The agriculture sector is rapidly incorporating new technologies and innovations, but the sector often falls flat in incorporating women into AgTech. Women in the sector make on average 61 cents to the dollar in wages compared to their male counterparts, and women-led startups receive ... Read More »

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday the leading social network is struggling to find ways to deal with “deepfake” videos which have the potential to deceive and manipulate users on a massive scale. Zuckerberg said Facebook is trying to determine whether deepfakes are “a completely different category” of misinformation and added, “there’s a very good case that they are.” ... Read More »