1) Three astronauts blast off for International Space Station in upgraded Soyuz spacecraft.
- Three astronauts blasted off from Russia`s Baikonur Cosmodrome towards the International Space Station in an upgraded Soyuz spacecraft.
- First-time astronauts Kathleen Rubins of NASA and Takuya Onishi of the Japanese space agency set off for a four-month mission at the ISS with two-time Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin.
- The new Soyuz series include upgraded boosters, an improved navigation system, strengthened shielding from debris and more cells on the craft’s solar panels.
- Nasa’s Kate Rubins will be the first woman aboard the ISS since Italian Samantha Cristoforetti returned to earth with the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman (199 days).
2) DeNA brings EasyMile`s self-driving bus to Japan.
- Japanese mobile internet company DeNA Co. it would start a transportation service in Japan that uses self-driving buses.
- DeNA will use the EZ10 electric shuttle produced by EasyMile, a French driverless technology startup, that it has dubbed the ``Robot Shuttle``.
- The four-meter-long (13-foot-long) Robot Shuttle can accommodate as many as 12 passengers and travel at up to 40 kilometers (25 miles), an hour.
- The vehicle uses sensors, cameras and a Global Positioning System to navigate and avoid obstacles.
- The bus being used on private roads and properties such as shopping malls, university campuses and factories.
3) UA astronomers discover 16 million-year-old planet with 3 suns.
- A team of three astronomers from the University of Arizona have discovered a planet with three suns.
- The planet is located about 320 light years from Earth and is 16-million years old.
- The planet is four times larger than Jupiter and is being called Planet "HD 131399AB``.
- A University of Arizona led team used a telescope in Chile to spot the new planet.
4) Facebook Launches End-to-End Encryption Option for Messenger.
- Social media giant Facebook has begun offering an option to encrypt messages (End-to-end encryption)a way to have secret conversations with other users to some of 900 million users of Messenger.
- End-to-end encryption means the messages, videos, photos, calls made over the app can’t be read by anyone; not Facebook, not third-parties like the government or cyber-criminals or hackers.
- End-to-end encryption means device level encryption, and the data is not stored on the company’s servers.
- Facebook Messenger will also let users set a timer on these ‘secret conversations,’ and the messages will disappear after the allocated time, once the other users has read them.
5) China conducts combat drill for navy in South China Sea.
- The Chinese navy conducted combat drills near its southern island province of Hainan and the Paracel islands in the South China Sea.
- The drills conducted to focus on air control, surface operations and anti-submarine warfare, amid other combat training exercises.
- The drills come ahead of ruling by the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration on a case brought by the Philippines disputing several of China‘s territory claims in the South China Sea.
6) Scientists propose bacterial `windfarms` to power future mobile phones.
- A team of Oxford University researchers have found that natural movement of bugs could be harnessed to accumulate and activate tiny ``windfarms`` in smartphones components.
- Using computer simulations, the team demonstrated that the chaotic bacterial movement could be organised to turn cylindrical rotors in order to provide a steady power source.
- Bacterial growth is usually too disorganised on its own to be used to generate any kind of meaningful power but the researchers developed a special lattice of 64 symmetric microrotors around which the bacterial bloom spontaneously organised itself.
- The result was a network of spinning rotors which acted like a microscopic windfarm, which could conceivably be used as a tiny engine to power miniature machinery.
7) Researchers discover the first evidence of Neanderthal cannibalism in northern Europe.
- Scientists have uncovered grisly evidence that shows Neanderthals butchered their own kind some 40,000 years ago, the first evidence of cannibalism among the ancient human relatives in the north of the Alps.
- Neanderthal bones from an excavation in Goyet caves in Belgium.
- The skeletal remains were radiocarbon-dated to an age of around 40,500 to 45,500 years. This group of late Neanderthals also used the bones of their kind as tools, which were used to shape other tools of stone.
8) NASA`s new mission to map Earth`s atmosphere.
- NASA is launching an airborne mission that will map the contours of the Earth’s atmosphere to discover how much pollution exists in the most remote corners of the planet and assess how the environment has changed as a result.
- The Atmospheric Tomography (ATom) mission is the first to survey the atmosphere over the oceans.
- Scientists aboard NASA’s DC-8 flying laboratory will journey from the North Pole south over the Pacific Ocean to New Zealand and then across to the tip of South America and north up the Atlantic Ocean to Greenland.
- ATom is particularly interested in methane, ozone and airborne particles called black carbon, which have strong effects on climate and which all have both human and natural origins.
9) Researchers are developing an anonymity network more secure than Tor.
- A team of MIT researchers has developed an anonymity network, called Riffle, following the revelation of vulnerabilities in the widely-popular anonymity network `Tor`.
- Apart from the existing techniques being used by Tor, Riffle adds two more layers of security – making every server permute the order of messages it receives and keeping any malicious server from leaking the incoming data.
- Riffle uses a series of servers called a mixnet, that each switch the order of the packets being transmitted.
10) Microsoft announces new subscription options for Windows 10, debuts Surface as a service.
- Microsoft introduced a new program aimed at growing Surface’s footprint in the business, dubbed ``Surface as a Service``.
- A new initiative that will allow businesses to lease Surface devices, alongside subscriptions to its Office 365 and Windows 10 products.
- The enterprise states this will permit consumers to gain from access to the most recent hardware as effectively as a lot quicker machine refresh cycles.
- Google Assists Travelers With Improved Hotel and Flight Search.
- Google announced a series of updates for its search results that will help its users find best deals on flights and accommodations.
- Google will highlight deals when certain hotels are cheaper than normal, and will suggest tweaking the dates of the stay to get cheaper deals.
- Its algorithm will also be kind enough to alert you if there’s potential to save money by making slight adjustments to your travel dates.
- The new features will also include price tracking for flights.
11) Nasa`s Juno probe sends back first images of Jupiter.
- NASA`s Juno spacecraft has sent back the first image since entering Jupiter`s orbit.
- The images transmitted back to Earth after Juno began orbiting Jupiter confirm the beginning of the space probe’s 20 month mission around the solar system’s largest planet.
- The image shows a sunlit portion of the planet and its three moons.
12) Scientist develop first underwater microscope to study corals.
- Scientists developed a new technological asset that would help them analyze the tiny corals behavior. The device is known as the Benthic Underwater Microscope (BUM).
- This microscope has a computer interface that can be operated underwater, meaning that experts will now be able to monitor the activity of microscopic organisms in their natural environment.
- BUM was developed by a team of scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Jaffe Laboratory for Underwater Imaging in San Diego at the University of California.
13) India Successfully Tests New Advanced Artillery Gun System.
- DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organization) successfully conducted firing tests of Armament system for 155 mm x52 caliber New Advanced Towed Artillery Gun System (ATAGS).
- The tests were conducted as part of technical trials at Proof & Experimental Establishment (PXE) in Balasore, Odisha
- ATAGS is fully indigenously built towed artillery gun system undertaken in mission mode by DRDO as a part of artillery modernisation programme of Indian Army.
- It also has advanced features in terms of high mobility, quick deployability, auxiliary power mode, advanced communication system, automatic command and control system.
14) World`s first 3D printing restaurant is coming to London.
- Food Ink, which claims to be the world`s first 3D printing restaurant, is coming to London.
- The dishes at Food Ink’s `multi-sensory food experience` are created using a 3D-printer, and produced live in front of the diners’ eyes
- The dishes at Food Ink’s `multi-sensory food experience` are created using a 3D-printer, and produced live in front of the diners` eyes.
- At the cost of £250 (about $334) each, the pop-up restaurant will serve ten customers each night.
15) Researchers create skeleton robot with human-like muscles.
- Researchers have been working to create robots that mimic human behaviour - potentially dooming us all for the future.
- Tokyo Institute of Technology have gone one terrifying step further by building a skeleton robot and giving it human-like muscles for movement.
- The microfilament muscle "tissues" connect to joints, expand and contract like human muscles.
16) US 1st to open high-band spectrum for 5G network.
- US regulators voted to open nearly 11 gigahertz of high-frequency spectrum to help carriers create 5G wireless applications and networks, making US the first country to do so.
- 5G networks are expected to be at least 10 times faster than 4G networks. South Korea and Japan plan to deploy 5G by 2018 and 2020 respectively.
17) South African super telescope finds hundreds of galaxies.
- The South Africa’s MeerKat radio telescope captures 1,300 galaxies in tiny corner of universe where only 70 were known before.
- The image released was the first from MeerKAT, where 16 dishes were formally commissioned. When fully up and running in the 2020s, the SKA will allow astronomers to peer deeper into space in unparalleled detail.
- It will have a discovery potential 10,000 times greater than the most advanced modern instruments and will explore exploding stars, black holes, dark energy and traces of the universe’s origins some 14 billion years ago.
18) Gun Carriage Factory hands over 3 `Dhanush` guns to Army.
- Three indigenously-developed 155 mm Dhanush is 155 mm artillery guns have been handed over to the Indian Army by the Jabalpur-based Gun Carriage Factory (GCF).
- The gun, a towed howitzer with a strike range of 38 km, has been developed by Ordnance Factory Board (OFB), Kolkata.
- The trials saw some 2,000 rounds being successfully fired from the gun in different climatic conditions like in snowy, desert and hostile areas in the country.