Washington, July 29 : By manipulating extra dimensions with astronomical amounts of energy, two Baylor University physicists from the US, have outlined how a faster-than-light engine, or warp drive, could be created that would bend, but not break the laws of physics.

According to a report in Discovery News, the warp engine is based on a design first proposed in1994 by Michael Alcubierre.

The Alcubierre drive, as it’s known, involves expanding the fabric of space behind a ship into a bubble and shrinking space-time in front of the ship.

London, July 29 : The first attempt by NASA’s Phoenix Mars lander to quickly collect and analyze ice samples was foiled by sticky Martian soil that refused to budge from the collection scoop.

On July 26th, the robot drilled holes with a rasp on its robotic arm in a work trench known as “Snow White”.

Phoenix’s robotic arm then scooped up an icy soil sample and attempted to quickly transfer it to the onboard TEGA (Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer) instrument before the ice vaporised in the thin Martian air.

London, July 29 : Navigation in fruit flies has been attributed to a protein that detects blue light, which also helps fruit flies tune into the Earth''s magnetic field, revealed a new study.

The knowledge about this weak field is vital for explaining the homing and migration abilities of many animals.

It was believed that when struck by blue light, proteins known as cryptochromes detect magnetic fields, perhaps by making charged molecules - called free radicals.

London, July 29 : A new study has indicated that a “gravity tractor” could deflect an Earth-threatening asteroid if it was deployed when the asteroid was more than one orbit away from the potential impact.

According to a report in New Scientist, the study, carried out by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, shows that the weak gravitational pull of a nearby spacecraft could deflect a hypothetical asteroid 140 metres across, big enough to cause regional devastation if it hit Earth.

London, July 29 : A tape, much like the common sticky tape, that can carry out humongous electronic tasks like active sensing, data translation, and wireless transmission may soon be on the anvil.

Made by growing a mixed "lawn" of two kinds of nanowires, such cheap, high-quality image sensors may have uses that cannot be conceived using today’s more expensive technology, said researchers who developed this technology.

Today sensors, such as those found in digital cameras, are made like any other silicon chip – they are carved out from a block of material. However, the new nanowire sensors are instead built from the bottom up, by using chemically-grown nano-sized components.

London, July 29 : With Google’s Street View Service under constant scrutiny over privacy issues, a team led by an Indian origin researcher from University of Colombia has come up with a new software that can swap human faces in street pictures taken for the popular mapping service.

Lead researcher Neeraj Kumar and his colleagues have developed software that arbitrarily selects 33,000 photos of faces from picture-sharing sites like Flickr. com and then picks the most suitable faces for each person in the shot. Only eyes, nose and mouth are used.

"It matches subject pose, lighting conditions and image resolution,” New Scientist quoted Kumar, as saying.