Famous Scientist ( Vijay P. Bhatkar )

-: Vijay P. Bhatkar :-

Vijay P. Bhatkar

Dr Vijay Pandurang Bhatkar (born 11 October 1946) is an IT computer scientist from India. He is best known as an architect of the PARAM series of Supercomputers, GIST multilingual technology and Education-To-Home  mission.

 He is widely recognized for his noteworthy contributions in bringing ICT to the masses through a series of path-breaking initiatives. He is also credited with the creation of several national institutions, notably amongst them being the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, – India’s national initiative in Supercomputing; the Electronics Research & Development Centre (ER&DC), Trivandrum – India’s largest R&D Centre in application oriented R&D in electronics; the ETH Research Laboratory, Pune for launching Education-To-Home mission; the International Institute of Information Technology I2IT, Pune – India’s largest Post-Graduate Institute for advanced education in IT; and the India International Multiversity (IIMv) – an educational initiative for promoting the concept of integral education.

Bhatkar was born on 11 October 1946 at Muramba, Akola, Maharashtra . He obtained his Bachelor of Engineering degree from Nagpur University in 1965, his Master of Engineering in from M.S. University, Baroda, in 1968, and his Doctor of Philosophy degree in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi IIT Delhi , in 1972.
He has served as a Member of the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Cabinet of Government of India Government of India.

He was also a Member of several IT Task Forcesconstituted by the Prime Minister in 1998 to propel India as IT superpower. He was invited to address The Royal Society Royal society in 2003. He led the Indian delegation to South Africa to formulate Indo-SA initiative in Advanced Computing. He is a member of the Indo-Russian Long Term Programme (ILTP) in Science & Technology. He has also been a member of Indo-Hungarian and Indo-French Joint Commissions.

For his contributions to IT in India, he was conferred with the PADMASHRI award in 2000, one of the highest civilian recognitions by the Government of India, the Maharashtra Bhushan Award 1999-2000, the highest recognition of Government of Maharashtra..

He is also conferred with several social and spiritual awards, amongst them being Saraswati Award, Vidarbha Gaurav Award, Pune Citadel Award, Vidarbha Bhushan Award, Punya-Bhushan Award, and Gratitude Award. He is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (2009)

Google Nexus 7 3G could arrive in weeks

The tablet was released in July but sources have revealed that the hardware manufacturer is already currently working on a 3G variant to be released imminently.

Asus, which partnered with Google to make the Nexus 7 tablet, is reportedly gearing up production for a launch in approximately six weeks time.

The popular 7-inch tablet was launched to glowing reviews and soon sold out at some American retailers.

It was the first Android tablet to come with Jelly Bean, the latest version of Google's mobile operating system.

Aggressively priced from £160 it was designed to loosen Apple's grip on the tablet market. It's nearest competitor is the Kindle Fire, which is only available to American buyers.

It has an Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor, and a 1.2-megapixel camera, and is available with 8 or 16GB of storage.

The lack of 3G support was one of the only criticisms levelled at the tablet by reviewers.

There are not expected to be any other hardware changes to the Nexus 7, with the inclusion of 3G the only addition to the new tablet

The 3G model is likely to be more expensive than the Wi-Fi only model although the exact release date and price are currently unknown.

Apple is expected to launch a smaller, cheaper version of the iPad next month which will compete with the Nexus 7.

With Amazon expected to release a new version of the Kindle Fire this week , the move by Google would ensure that it stays dominant in the market.

Micromax launches A25 Smarty for Rs. 3,999

Soon after announcing the A87 Superfone Ninja 4, Micromax has announced yet another dual-SIM capable affordable Android smartphone. The device called the Micromax A25 Smarty is priced as low as Rs. 3,999 and it runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

It surely might be the most affordable Android smartphone till date. In terms of specifications the device is powered by a 1GHz processor, it has a 2.8-inch display with 240x320 pixels resolution, a 1.3 megapixel fixed focus camera on the back, 256MB of RAM and a 1,280 mAh battery which is rated for up to 4 hours of talk time and up to 180 hours of standby.

After a long time have we seen a Micromax smartphone which is not included in the company’s Superfone line-up. This new device sure is quite affordable but we are yet to see whether it will be a better options compared to the much robust Nokia phones in this price range. This device will be available with online retailer Saholic starting today.

Motorola unveils 3 RAZR Android phones

Google Inc's Motorola Mobility on Wednesday unveiled three smartphones to help it compete with bigger rivals Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co for the holiday shopping season.

Verizon Wireless, the biggest U.S. mobile provider, will sell all three devices - the Droid Razr HD, the Droid Razr Maxx HD and the Droid Razr M, the companies said.

The smartphones will use Google's Android software. Motorola showed off the phones at a press event in New York, its first big media gathering since Google bought Motorola in May.

Together the devices would be Motorola's "big family launch" for this holiday season, Motorola Mobility Chief Executive Dennis Woodside said.

The executive said the phones would go on sale at 30 other carriers around the world besides Verizon Wireless, which has an exclusive U.S. deal with Motorola for the devices. 

Google has disclosed little about its plans for Motorola, which it bought primarily to use the company's rich portfolio of patents to defend itself in legal battles with rivals. It will keep Motorola as a separate subsidiary so that other Android phone makers, such as Samsung, do not assume Motorola will have an advantage in accessing Android technology.

Woodside said the Razr brand -- lauded in 2005 as iconic but became unfashionable a few years later and then was resurrected by Motorola last year -- will again be a key part of Motorola's strategy going forward.

Famous Scientist ( Carlo Amoretti )

-: Carlo Amoretti :-

Carlo Amoretti

Carlo Amoretti (16 March 1741, Oneglia, now part of Imperia – 23 March 1816) was an ecclesiastic, scholar, writer, and scientist. He entered the Augustinian order in 1757. To further his studies he went to Pavia and Parma where he also taught ecclesiastical law.

Amoretti was an Encyclopedist whose mind encompassed theology, physics, geology, paleography, geography, and art history. He translated scientific works, published or republished many rare books and manuscripts noteworthy of these being the extant codex of Antonio Pigafetta's relation of the first circumnavigation of the world by Ferdinand Magellan's fleet.

Amoretti, having fallen from the graces of the ecclesiastical order at Parma, was forced to relocate to Milan around 1771. Here he became an active member of the scientific community. He was editor of the first scientific magazine published in Milan under the title—from 1775 until 1777--Scelta di opuscoli interessanti tradotti da varie lingue renamed in 1778 Opuscoli scelti until 1803, and further renamed in 1804 as Nuovi opusculi scelti.

He became a conservator, officially called "Dottori del Collegio Ambrosiano", in 1797 of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana (Ambrosian Library) at Milan which is said to be the first public library in Europe having first opened its door to the public in 1609. It was as conservator at the library that the world of exploration history was turned on its head by this paleographer. James Alexander Robertson wrongly identified him as the "prefect" or officer in charge of the Ambrosiana library, an error repeated by a few who have referred to Amoretti although as far as can be ascertained not one has detected prior to this article that Amoretti is the first to assert the Limasawa=Mazaua equation. Filipino religious historiographer Miguel A. Bernad mistakenly identified Amoretti as curator of the library.

In 1797 Amoretti discovered at the Biblioteca the lost Italian manuscript of Pigafetta on Magellan's voyage, considered by most Magellan scholars as the oldest of four extant manuscripts and the most complete, although there is consensus among paleographic scholars this and all surviving codices are mere copies of an original or originals now deemed forever lost. The three other extant manuscripts are all in French of which two are conserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale, MSS 5650 and 24224, the last, viewed as the most "princely" of all, is conserved at the Beinecke Library of the Yale University Library, in the United States.

Famous Scientist ( Gajendra Pal Singh Raghava )

-: Gajendra Pal Singh Raghava :-

Gajendra Pal Singh Raghava

Gajendra Pal Singh Raghava is a bio-informatician and head of the Bioinformatics Centre at the Institute of Microbial Technology (IMTECH).

Raghava was born in village Nagla Karan, Buland Shahr (UP), India in 1963. He did his B.Sc./M.Sc. from N.A.S. College, Meerut, UP in 1982. His major subjects were Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics. He did his M.Sc in Physics with specialization in electronics from N.A.S. College, Meerut, UP in 1984. He did his M.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology (I.I.T.), New Delhi in 1986.

In 1996 he received a doctorate in bioinformatics from Institute of Microbial Technology and Panjab University, Chandigarh. His thesis was on "Computer Aided Prediction of Protein Conformation from Amino Acid Sequences of Biotechnological Relevance".

He joined the Institute of Microbial Technology, Chandigarh in 1986 as a computer scientist and developer. He become head of the Bioinformatics Centre in 1994. He is also coordinator of the distributed information centre supported by DBT under the BTISNET programme, where his primary duty is to build and maintain infrastructure required for protein modeling and engineering.

He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford university as well as at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) at Cambridge for two years (1996–98). During this period he learned and developed a number of web servers for application in computational biology, particularly in protein modelling.

He developed a method for calculating concentration of antibodies and antigens from ELISA data, and he a prediction method for protein secondary structure prediction. In 1999 he established his research group at IMTECH with emphasis on protein structure prediction and genome annotation. In 2001, his group also focused on "Computer aided vaccine design" with emphasis on subunit vaccine design.

Since 2006, his group is trying to integrate bioinformatics, chemoinformatics, pharmaco-informatics and clinical informatics in order to develop a single plate form for designing drugs in silico.

He is an adherent of public domain software or open source software, and his group both uses and develops free software for academic use. Recently his group have initiated a web portal Computational Resource for Drug Discovery (CRDD) under Open Source Drug Discovery .

New Toshiba Excite X10 Tablet First Look

The Toshiba Excite X10 is billed as the thinnest, lightest tablet on the market and will run Android Ice Cream Sandwich on release. We had a first look hands on at CES 2012 in Las Vegas.

iPhone 5 vs Nokia Lumia 920 vs Samsung Galaxy Slll:

In 2016, phonemakers will ship a billion smartphones, according to research firm NPD DisplaySearch. That will be one smartphone for nearly every sixth person on the planet. The pot of gold at the end of that particular rainbow is pretty gigantic, and it is little wonder that vicious battles are being fought in courtrooms and markets around the world. It is into this ultimate war for tech dominance that the iPhone 5 has been delivered.

True to form, Apple delivered yet another competent iteration of its money-spinning device. But the 'reality distortion field' mastered by the late Steve Jobs is starting to wear off. Look closer (in a manner of speaking, of course), and what we have is a device physically sleeker than its predecessor, but not all that different fundamentally.

While it is true that smartphones have matured as a product category and we are mostly going to see incremental changes as opposed to defining innovations ( touchscreen, apps, retina display, Siri, etc.), there is something more at work here.

If the iPhone 5 has failed to elicit the glowing universal admiration the product line is used to, it is because it has been born into a world with more competent rivals than any of its predecessors. It has in fact been shaped by competition perhaps more than any other Apple device. In other words, after years of leading and shaping the industry, Apple is playing catch up in the handsets category, the arc of its domination appearing to plateau.

The larger screen is a direct response to the success of Samsung's Android phones with large screens. Jobs believed that 3.5 inch (diagonally) was the optimum size for a smartphone. Samsung's flagship Galaxy 3 smartphone sports a 4.8-inch screen. It sold 20 million units in three months of launch. Now iPhone has a 4-inch screen, and a 16:9 aspect ratio.

If there is one decision that was forced on Apple, this is it. Apple has always stuck with compatible aspect ratios and resolutions on its iPhones and iPads for a reason — the vast array of apps in its appstore should work seamlessly across devices and iterations. For the first time, some 700,000 apps made for iOS will appear letterboxed (with black bars at the edges) on Apple's latest device, not an experience the company is known to tolerate.

Apple's decision to do away with Google Maps as standard maps solution in iOS and opt for a proprietary solution is in parts driven by its worsening rivalry with Google. But it is also born out of a desire to take control of the maps experience. Nokia, for instance, has been getting attention for its maps and offline navigation suite, thanks to its $8.1-billion acquisition of Navteq.

Datawind launches 4 new 7-inch UbiSlate tablets at Rs 2,999 onwards

New Delhi: Aakash tablet maker Datawind has launched four new low-cost tablets under the Ubislate range - UbiSlate 7Ri, UbiSlate 7R+, UbiSlate 7Ci, and UbiSlate 7C+ - in India. These models will be available at a price ranging from Rs 2,999 to Rs 4,499.

These new UbiSlate tablets have a 7-inch screen with a resolution of 800x480 pixels, and run Android 4.0.3 operating system. The new tablets are powered by a Cortex A8 1 GHz processor and 512MB RAM. The embedded HD video co-processor is claimed to deliver high quality video content.

The UbiSlate 7Ri and UbiSlate 7R+ have a resistive touchscreen, while the UbiSlate 7Ci and UbiSlate 7C+ feature a capacitive touchscreen.

These tablets have an internal memory of 4GB. The new UbiSlate tablets also have a front VGA camera.

Other features include USB port, G-Sensor, and WiFi.

10 technologies that come straight from the future.

10 technologies that come straight from the future.

Sony Xperia Miro available for Rs 14,499

Sony's latest entry level Android smartphone comes with a 3.5 inch display, 800 MHz processor and Android ICS goodness.

Japanese consumer electronics and mobile phone brand Sony had announced the launch of its new range of Android smartphones including Sony Tipo and Sony Miro in the month of June. While Tipo was launched in India a couple of days ago, the slightly more expensive Sony Xperia Miro has also been made available for purchase in India. The Sony Xperia Miro comes with a price tag of Rs 14,499 and is available on online shopping websites such as Snapdeal.com.

Sony Xperia Miro comes with a 3.5 inch display as compared to the 3.2 inch one found on the Tipo. While the processor remains the same on both devices, an 800 MHz Qualcomm MSM7225A processor with 512 MB RAM, and 3 GB internal memory that is expandable up to 32 GB via microSD card.

The phone will have Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system pre-installed. Along with that there will be a 5 megapixel rear camera that can record VGA resolution videos at 30 frames per second. Along with that the Miro will also feature a VGA front camera for video calling, which was missing in the Tipo.

Although the device will gradually be made available in four different color combinations that include black, black/pink, white/silver and white/gold, the only color that is currently available is a combination of white and silver.

Facebook works to remove fake accounts from its network

Facebook is the largest social networking website with more than 800 million users worldwide. In spite of such huge numbers, the fact is a lot of Facebook accounts are fake. Official figures from Facebook say as many as 8.7 per cent or 83 million accounts on the network are bogus. About 4.8 percent of them are duplicate, 2.4 percent are user-misclassified accounts and 1.5 percent are “undesirable” accounts.

According to Facebook India business manager Pavan Varma, the social networking website is making “huge efforts” to reduce these numbers and prevent misuse of such identities. The official further reveals in case a dubious account is found, Facebook will ask the user to provide his/her identification details. Accounts that use a generic name instead of a proper name, use images of celebrities/cartoon characters as profile image, or do not have “enough friends,” may come under the Facebook scanner, says Varma.

"It could even be that Facebook comes back to you saying, could you help us identify yourself if you don't have enough friends, because we don't want fake identities. We are worried about the experience we deliver...It's not about protecting our brand identity so much," he said.

The Facebook official also acknowledged malware and other methods were used to create fake accounts and Likes. Varma further said advertisers should not only focus on numbers.  "How does an advertiser today treat a Facebook page? It is treated as a place where they just come with a number of people who are there. But that is a wrong way of doing it," he stressed.

It's notable the social networking website has put in place several ways to ensure it only has authentic users. Facebook allows users to verify their phone numbers and also report accounts that seem bogus. To know more about how to report a violation, visit Facebook Help Center.  

Lenovo launches new ultrabook as ThinkPad

International Business Machines ( IBM) and then acquired by Chinese PC manufacturer Lenovo, ThinkPad has come a long way, and remained a favourite among users in the fast-changing technology landscape.

ThinkPad brand is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. Over the last 20 years, a little more than 60 million ThinkPad units have been sold. To commemorate two decades of the ThinkPad brand, Lenovo today announced the launch of Ultrabook ThinkPad X1 Carbon, one of the lightest business laptops from the company.

Amar Babu, managing director, Lenovo India, said, “We are extremely proud to celebrate 20 years of continuous innovation with the ThinkPad. Lenovo India has seen phenomenal growth overall, as well as in the commercial business, where we have sustained leadership consistently for two quarters.”

With the launch of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, we are confident of continuing this rich legacy and offering performance users a product that will help them accomplish their professional and business goals.”

The ThinkPad X1 comes with carbon fiber, and is powered by the latest third generation Intel Core processor. It weighs less than three pounds and packs a high resolution 14-inch display into a 13-inch laptop design while also offering a multi-gesture glass surface touchpad, HD face-tracking camera, dual array microphones and Dolby-tuned audio for crisp and clear sound.

“With ThinkPad turning 20 this year, it stands among the few fortunate brands to achieve an iconic stature, with loyal fans that are passionate about each generation of ThinkPad products,” said Rahul Agarwal, executive director, commercial business segment, Lenovo India.

Stay in Touch with Windows Phone

Speech features on Windows Phone 7.5

Go hands-free to talk, text, and search on the next release of Windows Phone. With truly modern communications built into your smartphone, all you need is your voice to respond to text messages, get directions, or find mobile apps, people, and media. Coming Fall 2011, Windows Phone 7.5 brings you hundreds of new features—like Speech—to connect and share with the people who matter most.

 Find out how to use the speech features on your Windows Phone:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/en-US/howto/wp7/basics/use-speech-on-my...

Samsung rolls out the stylus-ready Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet

Samsung made a bold move late last year (legal issues with Apple aside) by announcing a return of the stylus for its big-screen Galaxy Note smartphone. Just when the last of the PDFs had finally ended up on the scrap heap, the Korean manufacturer reintroduced the S Pen stylus to properly navigate the huge 5.3in screen of the phone, and to good effect.

The design raised many questions about identity for portable devices. Is it just a mutant phone with a pen? Is it a tablet killer? Could it take over the whole portable market?

Answers to these questions and more have come in the follow-up release of Samsung's Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet. But is a follow-up really necessary to a phone that has already seen much of its glory stolen? Let's take a look at the tablet and see.

FORM

While functional, it's clear that Samsung has paid more attention to the screen than the overall design of the Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet. It has the same button configuration as the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, a generous bezel around the screen and a slot to house the stylus along the left vertical side.

Overall, it feels a little plasticky, and it wouldn't survive a product launch stampede that Samsung might be hoping for. However this will suit plenty of users since the device is only 600g, enabling easy holding with one hand and drawing with the other.

FUNCTION

The big draw of the device is obviously the 10.1in PLS TFT display. It offers a 1,280x800 resolution, which could be higher (the third Apple iPad boasts 2,048x1,536).

It's equally responsive to the finger, the stylus and the fingernail, which will find niche users.

Inside is a quad-core 1.4GHz processor backed by 2GB RAM, which keeps things smooth and enables impressive multi-screen functionality. The screen can host multiple apps and a video window pops up to take over the top half of the screen without any glitches in performance.

It looks as if it will ship in Thailand with Android's Ice Cream Sandwich OS, rather than the newer Jellybean OS. An upgrade will be available later. Other bundled software includes customised versions of Adobe Photoshop Touch and Polaris Office.

It offers good portability with battery power lasting around eight hours, which is an hour or more above average for this class and price.

VERDICT

Is the pen mightier than the finger? Is the stylus back forever? It's a shame that the Draw Something app wasn't more enduring, since this may have been the device to match it.

Users that have rekindled their attraction to the stylus will come to the Galaxy Note 10.1 and will enjoy its good performance and software tweaks such as multitasking.

But as many competitors, even the Apple iPad juggernaut, sell at the same price (sometimes with a better spec), Samsung has its work cut out to move the Note 10.1, which is still overshadowed by its smaller smartphone sibling.

Famous Scientist ( Edoardo Amaldi )

-: Edoardo Amaldi :-

Edoardo Amaldi

Edoardo Amaldi (5 September 1908 – 5 December 1989) was an Italian physicist.

He was born in Carpaneto Piacentino, son of Ugo Amaldi, professor of mathematics at the University of Padua, and Luisa Basini.

Amaldi graduated under the supervision of Enrico Fermi and was his main collaborator until 1938, when Fermi left Italy for the United States. In 1939, Amaldi was drafted into the Royal Italian Army and returned to physics in 1941.
The Via Panisperna Boys, including Edoardo Amaldi (center), circa 1934

After WWII, Amaldi held the chair of "General Physics" at the Sapienza University of Rome, rebuilt the post-Fermi school of physics, and was the co-founder of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics, and of CERN and ESRO. He pioneered in Europe the search for gravitational waves.

His main scientific results have been the research on slow neutrons in the Fermi group, and the evidence for antiproton annihilations with emulsion techniques, somewhat contemporary to its production in accelerators by Emilio Segrè and collaborators.

Amaldi co-authored about 200 scientific publications ranging from atomic spectroscopy and nuclear physics to elementary particle physics and experimental gravitation, as well as textbooks for secondary schools and universities. He also wrote historical-scientific books, like for example, the biography of his missing friend Ettore Majorana.

He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1962.

Smart TV Motion Control, Voice Control and Face Recognition - Samsung CES 2012

Smart Interaction, Samsung is literally changing how you can interact with the TV. You will be able to 'listen, see and do' what you want, without ever touching a remote control. The TV will be even more intuitive to your needs.

You will be able to interact with your Samsung Smart TVs just like we interact with people, using voice, gestures and face. Take a look.

The face recognition seamlessly logs in each family member to their own Smart Hub profile. You will see your apps. Your family members will see theirs.

That's just a taste of what is possible with our Smart Interaction technology. What's more, we will open our APIs to developers so they can unleash their creativity and build apps that use motion control, voice control and face recognition. 

 

Produce By:

Connect with Samsung USA:

http://www.facebook.com/samsungusa
http://www.twitter.com/samsungtweets
http://gplus.to/samsungusa

‘Invisible bike helmet’ that keeps hair intact and head safe

Washington: Two Swedish women have invented a bicycle helmet that remains invisible unless you need the headgear which is designed to inflate in a fraction of a second.

The Hovding has been invented by Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin to solve the issues we all have with helmets like giving bad hair. The Hovding looks like a collar at first, worn around the neck. Inside it is an air bag, similar to the ones in your car.

The helmet also has a “black box”, similar to ones on airplanes, to record the movements of the cyclist, and recognise the acceleration and angular velocity during an accident. “It became mandatory for children to wear a helmet in Sweden and many people didn’t use them,” ABC News quoted Haupt as saying.

“We wanted to see if there was a way to change today’s helmets and wanted people to wear them by free will, not by law.

“We found out people wanted something that was almost invisible that didn’t destroy their hair or annoy them, something with the possibility to change the looks of the helmet like they can with mobile phone shells and wigs,” she said.

According to the company’s website, shaped like a hood, the air bag is triggered when sensors – a combination of accelerometers and gyroscopes, pick up “abnormal movements of a bicyclist in an accident”.

The air bag can inflate and surround your head in 0.1 seconds. A small gas inflator fills it with helium. It needs to be powered on for which there is a power button and when it’s on, LEDs light up to tell you how much electricity you have to work the inflator.

There is also a sound to tell you it is powered on in case you cannot see it around your neck. That means you also have to charge the invisible helmet. It uses a microUSB port and the company says a charge lasts about a month during normal use.

The data is stored in the Hovding so the company can then see what sort of accident it was. As with any wearable gadget, the women put effort into the design.

It is obviously more invisible than current helmets, and there’s an added bit to make it blend in even more. The collar has a removable liner so you can change it to match your shirt.

Famous Scientist ( William Hayward Pickering )

-: William Hayward Pickering :-

William Hayward Pickering

William Hayward Pickering, ONZ, KBE (24 December 1910 – 15 March 2004) was a New Zealand born rocket scientist who headed Pasadena, California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for 22 years, retiring in 1976. He was a senior NASA luminary and pioneered the exploration of space.


Born in Wellington, New Zealand, Pickering attended Havelock School, Marlborough, and Wellington College. After spending one year at Canterbury University College he completed his bachelor's degree at the California Institute of Technology and completed a PhD in physics in 1936. His specialty was in electrical engineering and he concentrated on what is now telemetry.

As the Director of JPL, from 1954, Pickering was closely involved with management of the Private and Corporal missiles under the aegis of the U.S. Army.

His group launched Explorer I on a Jupiter-C rocket from Cape Canaveral on 31 January 1958 less than four months after the Russians had launched Sputnik (much to the surprise of the Americans).

In 1958 the lab's projects were transferred to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Pickering's team concentrated on NASA's unmanned space-flight program. JPL, under Pickering's direction flew further Explorer 3 and Pioneer missions as well as the Ranger and Surveyor missions to the moon and the several Mariner flybys of Venus and Mars.

Explorer III discovered the radiation field round the earth that is now known as the Van Allen radiation belt. Explorer 1 orbited for 10 years and was the forerunner of a number of successful JPL earth and deep-space satellites. William Hayward Pickering is not to be confused with William Henry Pickering, an astronomer from an earlier era.

At the time of his retirement as director, in 1976, the Voyager missions were about to launch on tours of the outer planets and Viking 1 was on its way to land on Mars.

Pickering's main attributes, beyond his scholarly achievements, were his team organisational and project management skills.

Famous Scientist ( Lars Hormander )

-: Lars Hormander :-

Lars Hormander

Lars Valter Hörmander (born 24 January 1931) is a Swedish mathematician who has been called "the foremost contributor to the modern theory of linear partial differential equations". He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1962, the Wolf Prize in 1988, and the Leroy P. Steele Prize in 2006. His Analysis of Linear Partial Differential Operators I–IV is considered a standard work on the subject of linear partial differential operators.

Hörmander applied for professorship at Stockholm University, but temporarily left for the United States while the request was examined. He spent quarters from winter to fall in respective order at the University of Chicago, the University of Kansas, the University of Minnesota, and finally at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in New York. These locations offered "much to learn" in partial differential equations, with the exception of Chicago of which he however notes the Antoni Zygmund seminar held by Elias Stein and Guido Weiss to have strengthened his familiarity with harmonic analysis.

Hörmander completed his Ph.D. in 1955 at Lund University. Hörmander then worked at Stockholm University, at Stanford University, and at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He returned to Lund University as professor from 1968 until 1996, when he retired with the title of professor emeritus.

Hörmander was born in Mjällby, a village in Blekinge in southern Sweden where his father was a teacher. Like his older brothers and sisters before him, he attended the realskola (elementary school), in a nearby town to which he commuted by train, and the gymnasium (high school) in Lund from which he graduated in 1948.

Hörmander took a one-year break for military service from 1953 to 1954, but due to his position in defense research was able to proceed with his studies even during that time. His Ph.D. thesis On the theory of general partial differential operators was finished in 1955, inspired by the nearly concurrent Ph.D. work of Bernard Malgrange and techniques for hyperbolic differential operators developed by Lars Gårding and Jean Leray.

Hörmander mostly remained at Lund University as professor after 1968, but made several visits to the United States during the two next decades. He visited the Courant Institute in 1970, and also the Institute for Advanced Study in 1971 and during the academic year 1977-1978 when a special year in microlocal analysis was held. He also visited Stanford in 1971, 1977 and 1982, and the University of California, San Diego in the winter 1990. He was briefly director of the Mittag-Leffler Institute in Stockholm between 1984 and 1986, but only accepted a two year appointment as he "suspected that the administrative duties would not agree well" with him, and found that "the hunch was right". He also served as vice president of the International Mathematical Union between 1987 and 1990. Hörmander retired emeritus in Lund in January 1996. In 2006 he was honored with the Leroy P. Steele Prize from the American Mathematical Society.

Nokia Asha 202, a breakthrough in value-for-money mobile.

Presenting the Nokia Asha 202, a breakthrough in value-for-money mobile technology. With both touch and type interface, the Nokia Asha 202 is all that you want from a cellphone. A smartphone for all who're looking for their money's worth, Nokia Asha 202 also comes with free internet and lots of games.

Watch this video for more.

Please visit http://bit.ly/Kg9mOg for more information on the Nokia Asha 202

News for Twitter’s API changes have users fuming...

San Fransisco: In a move to regulate how users access its microblogging service, Twitter announced new restrictions that sternly discouraged independent software developers from creating Twitter apps.

While the move is not expected to immediately affect how current Twitter users across the world access the service, the new rules will likely nudge new users toward Twitter’s own apps while slowly ushering the demise of popular third-party clients like Tweetbot.

Twitter, which has been seeking greater control of its platform as it looks to grow into a digital media powerhouse sustained by advertising revenues, has deeply divided Silicon Valley’s tech circles with its strategy.

No longer just a 140-character, text messaging service, Twitter believes it can provide more interactive content — and better serve ads and measure their performance — if the vast majority of its users use officially sanctioned programs to log into Twitter. But that approach has riled many software developers as well as users, many of whom favour independent clients like Hootsuite, Uber and Tweetbot over Twitter’s own products.

Under its new rules, independent software developers who create new Twitter apps will only be allowed to have a maximum of 100,000 users. Existing apps with more than 100,000 users can double their user base before Twitter imposes a hard cap on user base.

The new guidelines, which were published on Twitter’s blog on Thursday, attracted a torrent of criticism from “power-users” and software developers.

But they did not come as a surprise to many of the company’s observers. Last month, Twitter signaled its intentions to clamp down on its platform when it ended a syndication deal to show tweets within LinkedIn’s website.

Famous Scientist (Oskar Backlund)

-: Oskar Backlund :-

Oskar Backlund

Johan Oskar Backlund (April 28, 1846 – August 29, 1916) was a Swedish-Russian astronomer. His name is sometimes given as Jöns Oskar Backlund, however even contemporary Swedish sources give "Johan".

In Russia, where he spent his entire career, he is known as Oskar Andreevich Baklund (Оскар Андреевич Баклунд). Russian sources sometimes give his dates of birth and death as April 16, 1846 and August 16, 1916, since Russia still used the Julian calendar at the time.

He was born in Länghem, in Västergötland, Sweden and graduated from Uppsala University in 1872. In 1876 he emigrated to Russia.

He worked at Dorpat Observatory, in today's Tartu, Estonia, and then in 1879 worked at Pulkovo Observatory, becoming director of the observatory from 1895 until his death.

He specialized in celestial mechanics, and notably worked on calculating the orbit of Comet Encke, taking into account the perturbations of various planets. He used observations of Comet Encke to try estimate the mass of Mercury. Russian sources sometimes referred to the comet as Comet Encke-Backlund. He also carried out geodesic studies in Spitsbergen from 1898 to 1900.

He became a member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1883, member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1897 and Fellow of the Royal Society in 1911. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1914.

He was married to Ulrika Catharina Widebeck. Their daughter Elsa Carolina Backlund (March 25, 1880 – April 19, 1974) became a well-known artist (she married Ulrik Fredrik Adolf Hugo Celsing, and was known under the name Elsa Backlund-Celsing). Their son Helge Gotrik Backlund (September 3, 1878 – 1958) was a geologist.

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Official PlayStation® 3D Display video - introducing SimulView™ Technology. 
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Google Unveils Search Changes to Curb Access to Pirated Content

Google Inc. (GOOG) said it will introduce changes to its search engine that will discourage piracy by placing legitimate copyrighted content higher in online queries.

The company next week will begin using algorithms that push potentially pirated material to a lower position in search results, Mountain View, California-based Google said today in a blog posting on its website.

Entertainment companies have been pressing Google for years to take steps to make pirated content harder to find. The new system will use “removal notices,” or complaints from entertainment companies, that a website has received in ranking search results, Amit Singhal, senior vice president for engineering, said on the blog. Hollywood applauded the move.

“We are optimistic that Google’s actions will help steer consumers to the myriad legitimate ways for them to access movies and TV shows online,” Michael O’Leary, a senior executive vice president at the Motion Picture Association of America, said in an e-mailed statement.

Lower rankings don’t represent a conclusion that a copyright has actually been violated, Singhal wrote. The company received 4.3 million copyright removal notices in the last 30 days, he said.

“So while this new signal will influence the ranking of some search results, we won’t be removing any pages from search results unless we receive a valid copyright removal notice from the rights owner,” Singhal said.

Jason Freidenfelds, a Google spokesman, didn’t immediately return a call seeking additional comment.

Google was little changed at $642 at the close in New York. The stock has declined less than 1 percent this year.

Famous Scientist ( Gustaf Dalén )

-: Gustaf Dalén :-

Nils Gustaf Dalén

Nils Gustaf Dalén (30 November 1869 – 9 December 1937) was a Swedish Nobel Laureate and industrialist, the founder of the AGA company and inventor of the AGA cooker and the Dalén light. In 1912 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his "invention of automatic regulators for use in conjunction with gas accumulators for illuminating lighthouses and buoys".

Dalén was born in Stenstorp, a small village in Falköping Municipality, Västra Götaland County. He managed the family farm, which he expanded to include a market garden, a seed merchants and a dairy. In 1892 he invented a milk-fat tester to check milk quality of the milk delivered and went to Stockholm to show his new invention for Gustaf de Laval. de Laval was impressed by the self-taught Dalén and the invention and encouraged him to get a basic technical education.

He was admitted to the Chalmers University of Technology where he earned his Master's degree and a Doctorate on leaving in 1896. Dalén was much the same type of inventor as Gustaf de Laval, not afraid of testing "impossible" ideas, but Dalén was much more careful with the company economy. The products should have a solid market place before he introduced a new product.

In 1906 Dalén became chief engineer at the Gas Accumulator Company (manufacturer and distributor of acetylene) and in 1909 when AGA was founded, he was appointed the managing director for the company. During his life, AGA was one of the most innovative companies in Sweden and produced a large variety of products that grew every year. Finally in the early 1970s AGA was forced to reduce the number of markets it was involved in and concentrate on the production of gases for industrial use.

In 1909 he ascended to the position of Managing Director of the renamed company Svenska Aktiebolaget Gasaccumulator (AGA). AGA developed lighthouses using Dalén's products. 1910 the company bought a large real estate in Lidingö and built a production plant that was completed around 1912, when they moved out from the facilities in Stockholm.

Famous Scientist ( J. J. Berzelius )

-: J. J. Berzelius :-

J. J. Berzelius

Jöns Jacob Berzelius (20 August 1779 – 7 August 1848) was a Swedish chemist. He worked out the modern technique of chemical formula notation, and is together with John Dalton, Antoine Lavoisier, and Robert Boyle considered a father of modern chemistry.

He began his career as a physician but his researches in physical chemistry were of lasting significance in the development of the subject. He achieved much in later life as secretary of the Swedish Academy. He is known in Sweden as the Father of Swedish Chemistry.

Berzelius was born at Väversunda in Östergötland in Sweden. He lost both his parents at an early age. He was taken care of by relatives in Linköping where he attended the school today known as Katedralskolan. Thereafter he enrolled at the Uppsala University where he learned the profession of medical doctor from 1796 to 1801. He was taught chemistry by Anders Gustaf Ekeberg, the discoverer of tantalum. He worked as an apprentice in a pharmacy and with a physician in the Medevi mineral springs.

During this time he conducted analysis of the spring water. For his medical studies he examined the influence of galvanic current on several diseases and graduated as M.D. in 1802. He worked as physician near Stockholm until the mine owner Wilhelm Hisinger discovered his analytical abilities and provided him with a laboratory.Between 1808 and 1836, Berzelius worked together with Anna Sundström, who acted as his assistant

Not long after arriving to Stockholm he wrote a chemistry textbook for his medical students, from which point a long and fruitful career in chemistry began. In 1828 he compiled a table of relative atomic weights, where oxygen was set to 100, and which included all of the elements known at the time.

This work provided evidence in favour of the atomic theory proposed by John Dalton: that inorganic chemical compounds are composed of atoms combined in whole number amounts. In discovering that atomic weights are not integer multiples of the weight of hydrogen, Berzelius also disproved Prout's hypothesis that elements are built up from atoms of hydrogen.

In order to aid his experiments, he developed a system of chemical notation in which the elements were given simple written labels—such as O for oxygen, or Fe for iron—with proportions noted by numbers. This is the same basic system used today, the only difference being that instead of the subscript number used today (e.g., H2O), Berzelius used a superscript (H2O).

Berzelius had an effect on biology as well. He was the first person to make the distinction between organic compounds (those containing carbon), and inorganic compounds. In particular, he advised Gerardus Johannes Mulder in his elemental analyses of organic compounds such as coffee, tea, and various proteins. The term "protein" itself was coined by Berzelius, after Mulder observed that all proteins seemed to have the same empirical formula and came to the erroneous conclusion that they might be composed of a single type of (very large) molecule.

HTC ChaCha - A Closer Look Trailer

HTC ChaCha - A Closer Look Trailer

More trailers on Centrescope : http://www.youtube.com/user/centrescope

Cleartrip launches travel app for iPhone.

NEW DELHI: After its mobile-site app for smartphones, Indian online travel portal Cleartrip has launched yet another app for the iPhone. With the new app, Cleartrip highlights the split-screen search feature, integrating it into the mobile platform. This feature is designed to facilitate easy flight selection and checking ticket prices, all on one screen simultaneously.

The new search platform boasts of the geo-location feature to select the airport for departure from the current location, recently searched airports and the ability to easily swap the "from" and "to" cities with a tap. Also on offer is the special round-trip flight discounts, wherever applicable. Other features like the sort option can be used to reorder the results to check the cheapest, fastest or the earliest flight.

You can pay using credit cards, debit cards, a net banking account or by signing into the Cleartrip account. Payments can also be made using Expressway, a one-click checkout convenience. If not already enabled, a fresh Expressway account can be activated by saving card details through the app. The app also allows you to redeem coupon codes.

While the current version comes with flight bookings within India only, we can expect an update to the app soon the company says.

Latest addition to Google search results: Your emails from Gmail

San Fransisco: Google is creating an information bridge between its influential Internet search engine and its widely used Gmail service in its latest attempt to deliver more personal responses more quickly.

The experimental feature unveiled Wednesday will enable Google’s search engine to mine the correspondence stored within a user’s Gmail account for any data tied to a search request. For example, a query containing the word “Amazon” would pull emails with shipping information sent by the online retailer.

Such Gmail results will typically be shown to the right of the main results, though in some instances, the top of the search page will highlight an answer extracted directly from an email. For example, the request “my flight” will show specific airline information imported from Gmail. Something similar could eventually happen when searching for a restaurant reservation or tickets to a concert.

Although Google has a commanding lead in Internet search, it remains worried about the threat posed by social networking services such as Facebook Inc. As social networks have made it easier to share information online, the Web is starting to revolve more around people than the keywords and links that Google’s search engine.

Google has been trying to adapt by building more personal services and plugging them into its search engine.

Blending email information into general search results could raise privacy worries. Google is trying to mitigate that by showing Gmail results in a collapsed format that users must open to see the details. For now, users must sign up to participate.

TRAI to seek ban on mobile phones with unauthentic IMEI numbers-Report

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India may soon write to the commerce ministry seeking ban on

Import of mobile phones carrying unauthentic unique IMEI identification number, according to a PTI report.

The International Mobile Equipment Identity or IMEI is a number, usually unique, to identify GSM, WCDMA, and iDEN mobile phones, as well as some satellite phones.

The IMEI number is used by a GSM network to identify valid devices and therefore can be used for stopping a stolen phone from accessing that network. For example, if a mobile phone is stolen, the owner can call his or her network provider and instruct them to "blacklist" the phone using its IMEI number. This renders the phone useless on that network and sometimes other networks too, whether or not the phone's SIM is changed.

"TRAI will soon write to the Commerce Ministry to ban such phones. Import of only those cell phones should be allowed which are certified by GSMA and TIA authorised bodies for GSM and CDMA handsets respectively," an official told PTI.

The report said the move aims checking proliferation of mobile handsets with duplicate or cloned IMEI numbers which are also dangerous for national security.

Apps For 2012 Summer Olympic Games Abound

Whether it is a live video stream of the 100-meter dash, on-demand replays of diving, or notifications when the national team wins a medal, the mobile app is likely to play a greater role in the 2012 London Olympic Games.

Nearly 30 percent of 1,330 people questioned in an online survey said they would watch the games on their smartphones, and 31 percent planned to view it on their tablets, according to TechBargains, a California-based deal aggregation website for electronic products, which conducted the poll.

There are no shortage of apps available.

NBC Olympics Live Extra, which is available for iOS and select Android devices, will stream live video of the events and award ceremonies as well as provide access to replays taken from a variety of camera angles.

"It's the app that allows you to take the games with you," said Chris McCloskey, vice president of communications for NBC Sports Group, adding that the app provides more than 3,500 hours of video coverage for all sports and medals.

NBC Olympics, a second app from the network, has more information, including medal counts, news and athlete biographies.

Famous Scientist ( Werner Heisenberg )

-: Werner Heisenberg :-

Werner Heisenberg

Werner Karl Heisenberg (5 December 1901 – 1 February 1976) was a German theoretical physicist who made foundational contributions to quantum mechanics and is best known for asserting the uncertainty principle of quantum theory. In addition, he made important contributions to nuclear physics, quantum field theory, and particle physics.

Heisenberg, along with Max Born and Pascual Jordan, set forth the matrix formulation of quantum mechanics in 1925. Heisenberg was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics for the creation of quantum mechanics, and its application especially to the discovery of the allotropic forms of hydrogen.

Following World War II, he was appointed director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics, which was soon thereafter renamed the Max Planck Institute for Physics. He was director of the institute until it was moved to Munich in 1958, when it was expanded and renamed the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics.

Heisenberg was also president of the German Research Council, chairman of the Commission for Atomic Physics, chairman of the Nuclear Physics Working Group, and president of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Heisenberg was born in Würzburg, Germany to Kaspar Earnesta August Heisenberg, a secondary school teacher of classical languages who became Germany's only ordentlicher Professor (ordinarius professor) of medieval and modern Greek studies in the university system, and his wife Annie Wecklein.

He studied physics and mathematics from 1920 to 1923 at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. At Munich, he studied under Arnold Sommerfeld and Wilhelm Wien. At Göttingen, he studied physics with Max Born and James Franck, and he studied mathematics with David Hilbert. He received his doctorate in 1923, at Munich under Sommerfeld. He completed his Habilitation in 1924, at Göttingen under Born.

Heisenberg’s paper establishing quantum mechanics has puzzled physicists and historians. His methods assume that the reader is familiar with Kramers-Heisenberg transition probability calculations. The main new idea, noncommuting matrices, is justified only by a rejection of unobservable quantities. It introduces the non-commutative multiplication of matrices by physical reasoning, based on the correspondence principle, despite the fact that Heisenberg was not then familiar with the mathematical theory of matrices..

BSNL Penta T-Pad WS802C tablet launched...

Pantel Technologies has launched an 8-inch 3G tablet named Penta T-Pad WS802C. The company has a data tie-up with BSNL to provide a range of data plans to customers. BSNL is offering a 3G data plan of 2GB valid for 60 days alongwith the Penta T-Pad.

BSNL Penta T-Pad WS802C runs on Android 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich operating system. The tablet features an 8-inch capacitive touch screen and is powered by a 1GHz processor and 512MB DDRII RAM. Penta T-Pad Tablet PC, the WS802C, is portable and acts as a brilliant handheld tablet PC, according to the company. The tablet supports 1080P HD videos via HDMI.
BSNL WS802C Penta T-Pad comes with a built-in GPS, 3G SIM slot and Wi-Fi option.

The tablet comes pre-loaded with several games such as Angry Birds and Wow Fish, and applications such as Facebook, Twitter, Talking Tom, Google Maps, and Skype video calling and e-book facilities.

WS802C Penta T-Pad Tablet PC is priced at Rs 14,699.

Microsoft introduces mice, keyboards for Windows 8 Software

Microsoft introduced its new mice and keyboards for Window 8 ahead of the release of its next-generation operating system on October 26. From ultraslim Microsoft Wedge Mobile Keyboard to Wedge Touch Mouse, Microsoft showcased its latest hardware on its Facebook page.

Small to fit in pocket, the Wedge Touch Mouse provides four-way touch scrolling and navigation. It can be connected with Bluetooth-enabled laptop or tablet. It features BlueTrack Technology that lets mouse work on most surfaces.

The new ultraslim Microsoft Wedge Mobile Keyboard is designed specifically for tablet users. It includes some of the most commonly used features, such as Windows Hot Keys and built-in media keys.

The cover helps in protecting keyboard from scratches and can also be used as a tablet stand. Enabled with Bluetooth technology, it connects tablet without a cable or transceiver.

Famous Scientist ( Joseph von Fraunhofer )

-: Joseph von Fraunhofer :-

Joseph von Fraunhofer

Joseph Fraunhofer, ennobled in 1824 as Ritter von Fraunhofer (6 March 1787 – 7 June 1826) was a German optician. He is known for the discovery of the dark absorption lines known as Fraunhofer lines in the Sun's spectrum, and for making excellent optical glass and achromatic telescope objectives.

Fraunhofer was born in Straubing, Bavaria. He became an orphan at the age of 11, and he started working as an apprentice to a harsh glassmaker named Philipp Anton Weichelsberger. In 1801, the workshop in which he was working collapsed and he was buried in the rubble.

The rescue operation was led by Maximilian IV Joseph, Prince Elector of Bavaria (the future Maximilian I Joseph). The prince entered Fraunhofer's life, providing him with books and forcing his employer to allow the young Fraunhofer time to study.

Joseph Utzschneider was also at the site of the disaster, a fact which turned out to be important. With the money given to him by the Prince upon his rescue and the support he received from Utzschneider, Fraunhofer was able to continue his education alongside his practical training.

In 1806 Utzscheider and Georg von Reichenbach then brought Fraunhofer into their Institute at Benediktbeuern, a secularised Benedictine monastery devoted to glass making. There he discovered how to make the world's finest optical glass and invented incredibly precise methods for measuring dispersion.

One of the most difficult operations of practical optics was to polish the spherical surfaces of large object glasses accurately. Fraunhofer invented a machine which obviated this difficulty, and rendered the surface more accurate than it was left by the grinding.

He invented also other grinding and polishing machines, and introduced many improvements into the manufacture of the different kinds of glass used for optical instruments, and which he found to be always injured by flaws and irregularities of various sorts.

Fraunhofer produced various optical instruments including microscopes for his firm.This included the Fraunhofer Dorpat Refractor used by Struve (delivered 1824), and the Bessel Heliometer (delivered posthumously), which were both used to collect data for stellar parallax.

Mobile Technology for Small Business Increases Productivity

Mobile technology's impact on small business productivity is discussed in a recent survey. Mobility opportunities for small businesses including smartphone usage and increased tablet usage are discussed.