Google unveils a new phone, Nexus 10 tablet

Google is cramming more gadgets on to get already crowded holiday shopping lists. New devices announced include the latest Nexus smartphone and a larger version of the Nexus 7 tablet. It's also adding celular capabilities to the Nexus 7 and doubling the capacity of the models.

    The Nexus 4 smartphone is being made by LG and features a minor update to Google's Android OS, which now powers more than 500 million devices worldwide. A more comprehensive makeover, known as Key lime Pie, is expected next year.
    The larger Nexus tablet is being made by Samsung and features a display screen that measures about 10 inches diagonally, about the same size as Apple's top-selling iPad.
    Google's introduction of a larger tablet comes less than a week after Apple announced it's making a smaller less expensive iPad, with a 7.9-inch display, to compete with the Nexus 7 and Amazon.com's Kindle Fire.
    Some analysts have questioned whether consumers will balk at the iPad Mini's $329 price for a device with 16 gigabytes of storage. Google is widening the price difference between the iPad Mini and its smaller tablet by cutting $50 off the price of a comparable, 16-gigabyte Nexus 7, to $199.The 8-gigabyte version, which had sold for $199, will be discontinued. A Nexus 7 with 32 gigabytes of storage is being introduced for $249 in an apparent effort to discourage even more people from buying the iPad Mini. The cheapest Nexus 7 is still pricier than the Kindle Fire, which starts at $159 for a no-frills model.

     The Nexus 10 tablet with 16 gigabytes of storage will sell for $399.That's $100 less than the comparable version of the latest iPad, though the older iPad 2 is still available at that price. Both the Nexus 10 and the new Nexus 7 models will allow multiple users to create separate personal profiles on the devices by using differenet account names and passwords.
     The Nexus 4 phone boasts a 4.7-inch screen, larger than Apple's recently released iPhone 5 and just slightly smaller than Samsung's flagship phone, the Galaxy S III. A contact-free version is available for $299 with 8 gigabytes of storage and $349 for the 16-gigabyte model. Google is touting the Nexus 4's wireless charging capability as a major selling point.
     Besides adding more hardware to its online store, Google is expanding its music library to include Warner Music Group's catalog. Warner had been the only holdout among the major music labels when Google began selling music a year ago to compete with Apple's iTunes stores.
     The Android update includes a faeture called Gesture Typing, which tries to anticipate what words a user wants to enter as they are entering text. The guesses are based on an analysis of typical sentence structures and user's past entries. Another new feature called Photo Sphere stitches together 360-degree pictures of rooms and landscapes. The high-res photo created with this tool are similar to the shots shown in Google's Street View features in its online maps.

Every junk food meal damages your arteries

A single junk food meal- with saturated fat-is detriental to the health of the arteries, while no damage occurs after consuming a Mediterranean meal rich in good fats such as mono-and polyunsaturated fatty acids, according to a study by the University of Montreal.

     The study was based on 28 men, who ate Mediterranean- type meal first and then junk food -type meal one week later. Before beginning, the men underwent an ultrasound of the antecubital artery at the elbow crease after fasting for 12-hours to assess their baseline endothelial function.

     Then they tested the effects of each meal. The first consisted of which 51 per cent of calories from monounsaturated fatty acids and polyunsaturated fats. The second consisted of 58 percent of calories from fat: extermely rich in saturated fatty acids and containing no omega-3s. The researchers found that after eating the junk food meal, the arteries of the study participants dilated 24 percent less than they did when in the fasting state. In contrast, the arteries were found to dilate normally and maintain good blood flow after the Mediterranean- type meal. 

Hopscotch upgraded, with a new purpose

A new digital learning system uses the classic children's game to bring interactivity and exercise to education. It can also be used for physical therapy in adults

Fraunhofer researchers have developed a learning system that can motivate the user to move: They have combined a sensor mat with an activity monitor. Children and adults can use the system to stay fit and learn at the same time.

    Previous research has shown that people who exercise regularly are healthier, are rarely overweight and increase their power of concentration. Staying physically and mentally fit - with the HOPSCOTCH system every age group can do this eaily.
    HOPSCOTCH consists of a sensor mat that is subdivided in to nine fields and each field has several letters and a number in it. The mat is connected to a monitor via a cable, and tasks fom various fields of knowledge are displayed on the monitor. In order to complete the task the user presses on the fields of the sensor mat in the correct order and enters words or numbers. Martina Lucht, a scientist at the Fraunhofer, came up with the idea for the mat when she saw a hopscotch grid on the street.
    Lucht and her team worked closely with researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS to further develop HOPSCOTCH and added ActiSENS, a motion sensor that measures physical activity. ActiSENS registers all of a person's movements, records their intensity and then rates them. The module determines whether the user simply tapped the fields with their foot or actually hopped on them.
    The feedback is displayed on the monitor in real time using five bars.
    "It doesn't just matter whether or not the task was completed, but also how. ActiSENS tells the user whether or not they have moved enough," explains Martin Rulsch, a scientist at Fraunhofer. The small sensor is housed in a box that is hooked to the user's belt.The data is read in real time and tranmitted via Bluetooth to a terminal device, such as a TV or cellphone.
     The concept's possible areas of applications are varied: in schools it can be combined with languages and gym classes - this doesn't just benefit over-weight or hyperactive children. Older adults in rehab centers and nursing homes can also profit from the innovative movement concept that motivates people to move more in a lasting way. It can be used in parallel with physical therapy, for example to train muscles after operations. Since ActiSENS accurately calculates net movements and the level can be modified to the individual's endurance, which prevents it from over-or under-challenging.

Bee-bite may be used as anaesthetic

Bees can bite. Biologists from universities in Greece and France have discovered that, besides a tail sting, the honeybee is capable of packing a paralyzing bite.The bee uses its bite weapon on targets too small to be stung. such as wax mith larva and varroa mits. The intruders can infiltrate beehives and eat wax and pollen.

     The bee delivers a bite that can paralyze them for up to nine minutes, enough time for them to be ejected from the hive. The honeybee uses its mandibles to bite its enemy and then secretes 2- heptanone into the wound.
      In their paper, the authors explain that this defence weapon is produced in the mandibular glands, released by the mandible pore of a reservoir and through the groove flows at the sharp edge of mandibles.
     A key suggestion from their study that appears in PLOS ONE, is that the 2-H from the honeybee may find use as a local enesthetic in both human and veterinary medicine.

     While animal venoms are used to create a range of medicines, the researchers acknowledge that "the question here is whether 2-H can pass the preclinical and clinical tests required in order to be considered in clinical practice.

Robot that can play ping-pong like we do

Researchers have developed a robot that learns to play ping-pong from humans and improves as it competes against them.
    Katharina Muelling and her team at the Technical University of Darmstadt suspended a robotic arm from the ceiling and equipped it with a camera that watches the playing area. The arm was physically guided by Muelling through different shots to return incoming balls. The arm was then left to draw on its training to return balls hit by a human opponet, New Scientist reported.

   When the ball was in a position it had not seen before, the arm used its library of shots to improvise new ones. After an hour of unassisted practice, the system successfully returned 88 per cent of shots.
   Other robots have played table tennis in the past, but none have used human demonstartion to learn. Ales Ude of the Jozef Stefan Institute says that doing so allows robots to play more like people. 

Paintballs could deflect asteroids

The Earth finds an unlikely saviour. So charge your guns, and wait for the command!

In the event that a gaint asteroid is headed toward Earth, you'd better hope that it's blindingly white. A pale asteroid would reflect dunlight - and over time, this bouncing of photons off its surface could create enough of a force to push off its course.

    How might one encourage such a deflection? The answer, according to an MIT student: with a volley or two of paintballs.
    Sung Wook Paek, a student at MIT, says if timed just right, pellets full of paint powder, launched in two rounds from a spacecraft at relatively close distance, would cover the front and back of an asteroid, more than doubling its reflectivity. The initial force from the pellets would bump an asteroid off course; over time, the sun's photons would deflect it even more.
    Paek's paper won the 2012 Move an Asteroid Technical Paper Competition, sponsored by the UN's Space Generation Advisory Council.
    Paek's paintball strategy builds on a solution submitted by last year's winner, who proposed deflecting an asteroid with a cloud of solid pellets. Paek came up with a similar proposal, adding paint to the pellets to take advantage of solar radiation pressure - the force exerted on objects by the sun's photons. Researchers have observed that pressure from sunlight can alter the orbits of satellites, while others have proposed equipping spacecraft with sails to catch solar radiation, much like a sailboat catches wind.
    In his proposal, Paek used the asteroid Apophis as a theoretical test case. According to astronomical observations, this 27-gigaton rock may come close to Earth in 2029, and then again in 2036. Paek determined that five tons of paint would be required to cover the massive asteroid, which has a diameter of 1,480 feet. He used the asteroid's period of rotation to determine the timing of pellets, launching a first round to cover the front of the asteroid, and firing a second round once the asteroid's surface, they would burst apart, splattering the space rock with a fine, five-micrometer-layer of paint.
    Paek estimates that it would take up to 20 years for the cumulative effect of solar radiation pressure to successfully pull the asteroid off its Earthbound trajectory. He says launching pellets with rockets may not be an ideal option, as the violent take off may rupture the payload. Instead, he envisions paintballs may be made in space, in ports such as the ISS, where a spacecraft could pick up pellets to deliver to the asteroid.

SCI-FI SMILES

XCOM: Enemy Unknown updates the classic alien-hunting turn-based strategy game with new updated graphics and a whole new approach to the dusty old genre

It's been awhile since we've seen a high profile turn-based strategy game. The last major release was 2010's Civilization V developed by Firaxis, also responsible for XCOM: Enemy Unknown.The game has you in the role of a commander. You're in charge of a top secret project known as XCOM.It serves as humanity's deterrent against a spate of alien attacks and abductions terrorising the world.

    Not only would you be responsible for managing a squad of troops on the ground as they lay waste to gruesome creatures, you're alsoaccountable for ensuring that you have access to the latest tech and resources. This is because you'll soon find out that you have to kit out base with new additions from satellites to power plants all in an attempt to quell the invasion.
    The dual focus of managing your headquarters and on gorund war efforts make for interesting gameplay. Between deploying your soldiers in war zones you'll spend time interacting with different teams such as engineering and research, both equally important. Any alien corpses or weapons brought back can be looked at by scientists and the resulting breakthroughs like new armour can be made by engineers.

     Unlike other games, it's mandatory to continuously upgarde you base and your soldiers if you have any chance of winning. Slip up in your research or lose too many men or women in battle and you can end up restarting the game from the outset. The game is a strict taskmaster but once you understand how it works, which you will quite fast thanks to the brilliant tutorial, it becomes a fair and extremely fun game to play. You'll soon realise that any errors made have been self-inflicted rather than the AI being an absolute bully. This makes each successful battle on-ground and each research project all the more satisfying.
     While the gameplay is elegant the same extends to the menu design. XCOM bucks the trend of most strategy games that for some reason, love to inundate you with menus and statistics.

    Here the user interface is minimal. functional and presents all you need to know in a concise fashion, making it a breeze to comprehend even if you've never played a strategy game before. To sum it up,

XCOM: Enemy Unknown is an addictive game that hooks you in almost instantaneously. Before you know it you've spent more time in front of your TV or monitor playing it than you have spent in front of any of the myraid screens in your life. Recommended if you're a fan of strategy games and even more so if you're not.

An old- school Japanese RPG for the road

Among the gazillions of Japanese RPGs available on the mobile platform, there are only a handful that are truly worth your time and money. Most either lack in story, while the others seem to have trouble implementing an interesting battle system. Symphony of Eternity seems like the first great J-RPG that truly captures the essence of the genre and adopts it well for the mobile platform.
     Symphony is deep in both storyline as well as gameplay. The game begins with a coup detat, which results in a princess escaping into the woods, where she runs into a adventure and his golem sidekick. There in begins their adventure.
     There's lesser time spent here to build the initial plot, which is a bit unlike the genre, but considering the platform, I had no issues getting to the grond a bit early. Besides the story does keep getting interesting as you come across more characters and as the plot develops.

     The battle system is quite starightforward during the actual fights, but there is great depth you can go through to spurce up your characters before battle.
     The most important of these is the Merit system, based on the points you earn by levelling up. There's also a tablet system that can provide a number of skills to a character. Changing your character's class for events adds a whole new level of depth.

     Visually the game pays homage to the 16-bit era of SNES and Sega Genesis RPGs. All sprites and back-grounds are 2D with good details. The touchscreen controls work way better than the d-pad alternative.
     Symphony of Eternity may not bring the wholesome experience of a Dragon Quest game to your mobile, but it's clearly the next best thing.
    Kemco has kept the essence of an addictive J-RPG intact in the game, and you'll find yourself caring for the characters in no time. Definitely worth the price of admission.

Microsoft makes its move with Surface

Microsoft took a big step into mobile, unveiling a reqamped version of its flagship Windows system and Surface, its entry into hot tablet market.
    The new Windows 8 operating system and tablet will go on sale Friday mark a new offensive for the tech gaint seeking to keep pace with Apple and Google amid a dramatic shift away from PCs to mobile devices.
    "Windows 8 brings together the best of the PC and the tablet," said Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer." What you have seen and heard should leave no doubt and heard should leave no doubt that windows 8 shatters the perception of what a PC really is...It work and play and it is alive with your world."
     At a New York event, Microsoft announced that Windows 8 would launch in 37 languages and 140 markets. Analysts say the revamped Windows system provides an oppurnity, but the dramatic changes might not be initially welcomed.
     "Windows 8 looks like a big, bold, very innovative and very different new operating system," said independent tech analyst Jeff Kagan." The problem is that Microsoft is not giving users the chance to get used to the new operating system slowly. Instead they are launching this in as all-or-nothing way."
     Launching a version called Windows RT, designed for tablets and available pre-installed on devices including its own Surface tablet. It is "the perfect expression of Windows," said Microsoft's Panos Panay." It's exactly what Windows was designed to run on."
     To show its durability, Panay dropped the device on stage, saying," You can drop it 72 different ways." He also displayed some units modified as skateboards.
     Michael Gartenberg of the research firm Gartner said Surface" is a new category of device and one that will make sense for many consumers."
     Surface, which seeks to challenge Apple's market-ruling iPads and rivals built on Google's Android software. The news comes two days after Apple introduced its iPad mini in a bid to crowd out lower-priced offerings.
     Surface has a 10.6-inch screen and starts at $499, challenging the full-size iPads.

     But Surface appears to be a cross between a tablet and a PC, equipped with a flip-out rear"kickstand" to prop it up like a picture frame and a cover that, when opened, acts as a keypad to switch into"desktop" mode for work tasks.
     It launches in a crowded market for tablets from Apple, Google, Amazon and others, amid forecasts that global tablet sales will surpass those of PCs within a few years.
     Some analysts say the Windows RT system used on Surface and other devices offers Microsoft a chance for a fresh start controlling both hardware and software in a single device.
    The new mobile system "represents the best shot Microsoft has against Apple and Google," said Roger Kay at Endpoint Technologies Associates." WinRT is where things are going."
    Windows, the first version of which was launched in the 1990s, remains the dominant PC platform with some 90 percent of the world. But in mobiles, it is struggling against iOS and Android system.
    Microsoft reported that presales of Windows 8 have out-stripped those of its predecessor by 40 per cent.

	Surface	Galaxy Note 10.1	iPad 4th Gen
Screen	10.6-inch 1366x768 display	10.1-inch 1280x800 display	9.7-inch 2048x1536 display
Camera	0.9/0.9 MP	1.9/5 MP	1.2/5 MP
Price	Starts at $499	Starts at $499.99	Starts at $499
Battery	Up to 8 hours	Up to 10 hours	Up to 10 Hours
Memory	32GB or 64GB	16GB or 32GB or 64GB	16GB or 32GB or 64GB
Processor	Quad-core Tegra 3	Quad-core 1.4GHz	Dual-core 1.5GHz (speculated)
Size (HXWXD)	274x172x9.3mm, 676gms	246.2x170x10.9mm, 589gms	241.2x185.7x9.4mm, 662gms
Connectivity	WiFi-n, Bluetooth	WiFi-n, Bluetooth	WiFi-n, Bluetooth, 4G LTE
OS	Windows 8 RT	Android 4.1	iOS 6
Other Features	Microphone, MicroSD Accelerometer Gyroscope Compass	Microphone, MicroSD Accelerometer Gyroscope GPS	Microphone Accelerometer Gyroscope GPS

Embryo created from one man, two women

A paint white blotch in the tube (right) is DNA that has been removed from a human egg, center

Scientist in the US have created embryos with genes from one man and two women, using a provactive technique that someday could be used to prevent babies from inheriting certain rare incurable diseases. The researchers at Oregon Health & Sciences University said they are not using the embryos to produce children.

     Over the past few years, scientists have reported that such experiments produced healthy monkeys. The US scientists reported that they have produced about dozen early human embryos and found the technique is highly effective in replacing DNA.

     The genes they want to replace aren’t the kind most people think of, which are found in the nucleus of cells. Rather, these genes reside outside the nucleus of cells. Rather, these genes reside outside the nucleus in energy-producing structures called mitochondria. These genes are passed by mothers, not fathers.

    About 1 in every 5,000 children inherits a disease caused by defective mitochondrial genes. The defects can cause many rare diseases with a host of symptoms, including strokes, epilepsy, dementia, blindness, deafness, kidney failure and heart disease.

    The new technique, if approved someday for routine use, would allow a woman to give birth to a baby who inherits her nucleus DNA but not her mitochondrial DNA. Here’s how it would work:

    Doctors would need unfertilized eggs from the patient and a healthy donor. They would remove the nucleus DNA from the donor eggs and replace it with nucleus DNA from the patient’s eggs. So, they would end up with eggs that have the mother’s nucleus DNA, but the donor’s healthy mitochondrial DNA.

    In a report published in Nature, Shoukhrat Mitalipov and others transplanting nucleus DNA into 64 unfertilised  eggs from healthy donors. After fertilization, 13 eggs showed normal development and went on to form early embryos. The researchers also reported that four monkeys born from eggs that had DNA transplants remain healthy.

Soundtrack to history: First recorded blooper

It's scratchy, lasts only 78 seconds and features the world's first recorded blooper. The modern masses can now listen to what experts say is the oldest playable recording of an Americian voice and the first-ever capturing of a musical performance, thanks to digital advances that allowed the sound to be transferred from flimsy tinfoil to computer.
   The recording was originally made on a Thomas Edison-invented phonograph in St Louis in 1878.
    At a time when music lovers can carry thousands of digital songs on a player the size of a pack of gum, Edison's tinfoil playback seems prehistoric. But that dinosaur opens a key window into the development of recoreded sound.
    "In the history of recoreded sound that's still playable, this is about as far back as we can go," said John Schneiter, a trustee at the Museum of Innovation and Science, where it will be played.
    The recording opens with a 23-second cornet solo of an unidentified song, followed by a man's voice reciting "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "Old Mother Hubbard." The man laughs at two spots during the recording, including at the end, when he recites the wrong words in the second nursery rhyme.
    "Look at me; I don't know the song," he says.
    The recording was made on a sheet of tinfoil, 5-inches wide by 15-inches long, palced on the cylinder of the phonograph Edison invented in 1877 and began selling the following year.
     A hand crank turned the cylinder under a stylus that would move up and down over the foil, recording the sound waves created by the operator's voice. The stylus would eventually tear the foil after just a few playbacks, and the person demonstrating the technology would typically tear up the tinfoil and hand the pieces out as souvenirs, according to museum curator Chris Hunter. Popping noises heard on this recording are likely from scars left from where the foil was folded up for more than a century.

Bacteria that's just like electrical cables

Danish scientists have discovered how some bacteria form gigantic power lines to survive in the seabed. The find might lead to new types of electronic devices

Researchers at Aarhus University, Denmark, made a discovery almost three years ago when they measured electric currents in the seabed. It was unclear as to what was conducting the current, but the researchers imagined the electric currents might run between different bacteria via a joint external wiring network. They have now solved the mystery. It turns out that the whole process takes place inside bacteria that are just one centimetre long.
     They make up a kind of live electric cable that no one had ever imagined existed. Each one of these 'cable bacteria' contains a bundle of insulated wires that conduct an electric current from one end to the other.
      "Our experiments showed that the electric connections in the seabed must be solid structures built by bacteria," says Aarhus student Christian Pfeffer.

      Under the microscope, they found an unknown type of long, bacteria that always seemed to be there when they measured the electric currents.
      "The idea that these bacteria should be electric cables really fell into place, when, we saw wire-like strings enclosed by a membrane inside the bacteria," says Nils Risgaard-Petersen, Aarhus University.

KILOMETERS OF LIVING CABLES
The bacterium is one hundred times thinner than a hair and the whole bacterium functions as an electric cable with a number of insulated wires within it. Quite similar to the electric cables we know from our daily lives.
    "Such unique insulated biological wires seems simple but with incredible complexity at nanoscale," says student Jie Song, who mapped the bacteria's electrical properties.
    In an undistrubed seabed more than tens of thousands kilometers cable bacteria live under a single square meter seabed. The ability to conduct an electric current gives the bacteria ability to grab a lot of energy from the dead composition processes in the seabed.
    Unlike all other known forms of life, cable bacteria maintain an efficient combustion down in the oxygen-free part of the seabed. It only requires that one end to reach the oxygen which the seawater provides to the top of the seabed. The combustion is a transfer of the electrons of the food to oxygen which the bacterial inner wires manage over centimeter-long distances. However, small disturbances can lead to fatal "cabal breakage" in the fragile bacteria.
     "On the one hand, it is still very unreal and fantastic. On the other hand, it is also very tangible," says Professor Lars Peter Nielsen. In the future the reasearchers hope to use this biological evolution to create new types of electronics.  

Apple unwraps iPad mini

Apple will begin to sell a new 8-inch version of its tablet dubbed the iPad mini in US stores on Friday to compete with other smaller tablets including the Google Nexus 7, but it set a high price tag os $329 that could curb demand.

     The 7.9 inch tablet marks the Apple's first foray into smaller-tablet segment. Apple hopes to beat back incursions onto its home turf of consumer electronics hardware, while safeguarding its lead in a larger tablet space.

     Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook and marketing chief phil Schiller took the wraps off the new tablet, which essentially has most of the functions and features of the full-size iPad but smaller.
    Priced at $329 for a WiFi only model, the iPad mini is a little costly, but some analysts see that as a bid to retain premium pricing levels. The focus on growing competition was evident as Schiller - at the iPad mini's launch event, compared the iPad mini with Google's Nexus 7 tablet, citing featire by feature why the new Apple device was superior. It is unusual for Apple to single out a specific competitor in its product launches. "Theirs is made of plastic," Schiller said, referring to the Android tablet. "The entire Android product is thicker and heavier."
      In a surprise move, Apple also announced a fourth-generation full-sized iPad just six months after unveiling a third generation device to much fanfare. The latest tablet, which again sells for $499, is faster and slimmer and comes just days before Microsoft is due to show off its own "Surface" tablet.
    Apple also unveiled thinner MacBook Pro with a Retina display.

	iPad mini	Nexus 7	iPad 4th Gen	iPad 3rd Gen
Screen	7.9-inch 1024x786 display	7-inch 1280x800 HD  display	9.7-inch 2048x1536 display	9.7-inch 2048x1536 display
Front camera	1.2 Megapixel	1.2 Megapixel	1.2 Megapixel	1.2 Megapixel
Back camera	5 Megapixel	NA	5 Megapixel	5 Megapixel
Battery	Up to 10 hours	Up to 10 hours	Up to 10 hours	Up to 10 hours
Weight	312gms	340gms	662gms	662gms
Memory	16GB or 32GB or 64GB	8GB or 16GB	16GB or 32GB or 64GB	16GB or 32GB or 64GB
RAM	512MB	1GB	1GB	1GB
Processor	Dual-core 1 GHz	Quad-core Tegra 3	Quad-core 1.5GHz (speculated)	Dual-core 1 Ghz
Size (HXWXD)	200x134.7x7.2mm	198.5x120x10.45mm	241.2x185.7x9.4mm	241.2x185.7x9.4mm
Connectivity	WiFi-n, Bluetooth, 4G LTE	NFC,WiFi-n, Bluetooth	WiFi-n, Bluetooth,4G LTE	WiFi-n, Bluetooth,4G LTE
Connector	Lightning connector	Micro USB	Lightning connector	30-pin connector port
OS	iOS6	Android 4.1	iOS6	iOS6
Other features	Microphone Accelerometer Ambient light sensor Gyroscope GPS	Microphone Accelerometer Gyroscope GPS	Microphone Accelerometer Ambient light sensor Gyroscope GPS	Microphone Accelerometer Ambient light sensor Gyroscope GPS