Bangalore, Sept 12 : Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday demanded a clarification from Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh Government on the alleged holding back of information regarding the India-US nuclear deal.

Speaking to reporters on Friday in Bangalore where the members of the party have assembled to chalk out the strategy for the forthcoming General and Assembly elections, senior leader of BJP Jaswant Singh said that the agreement does not transform political commitments of the two countries into legally binding commitments.

London, September 12 : An Indian-origin researcher at the University of California in Los Angeles says that the age-old problem as to whether talent or experience matters most may be solved by analysing the rise and fall of websites.

Vwani Roychowdhury bases his suggestion on the fact that the success or failure of websites depends upon millions of human decisions.

He feels that it may be possible to quantify the balance between talent and experience on the web.

He and his colleagues Joseph Kong and Nima Sarshar from the University of Regina in Canada showed this by using "web crawlers" to visit some 22 million web pages once a month for a year.

London, Sept 12 : The microchip, used in devices from cookers to computers to mobile phones, is 50 years old today.

Consisting of a strip of germanium with one transistor and other components all glued to a glass slide, the first working microchip, or integrated circuit, was demonstrated at Texas Instruments by one of the company’s newest employees, Jack Kilby, on September 12, 1958.

His rough device, measuring seven 16ths of an inch (11.5 millimetres) by one 16th of an inch, revolutionised electronics, and the world.

The microchip virtually created the modern computer industry, and the Internet would be unthinkable without it.

Washington, September 12 : Technology under development at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) could offer new hope to farmers in drought-affected and marginal areas by enabling crops to grow using salty groundwater.

The technology is being developed by Associate Professor Greg Leslie, a chemical engineer at UNSW’s UNESCO Centre for Membrane Science and Technology, who is working along with the University of Sydney.

The technology uses reverse-osmosis membranes to turn previously useless, brackish groundwater into a valuable agricultural resource.

Washington  - Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will visit Washington later this month as the US Congress begins to contemplate the approval of the landmark nuclear deal between the two countries.

President George W Bush formally submitted the nuclear cooperation agreement to Congress late Wednesday as he rushes to complete the deal before he leaves office in January.

Vienna - The UN nuclear agency has raised its long-term projections for nuclear power growth, as countries are seeking stable energy prices and energy security.

Global nuclear electricity production capacity will rise to between 473 and 748 gigawatts in 2030, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in its latest annual outlook on nuclear power, which it released in Vienna on Thursday.

In 2007, 439 nuclear reactors operated worldwide, with a capacity of 372 gigawatts.