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.

The Chennai based- Novatium Solutions, which was incubated at IIT Chennai recently launched their Nova NetPC in Mauritius, in collaboration with Mauritius Telecom. The device is basically server driven with all the updates carried out centrally through the server.

The Nova NetPC is very economical, and the company is planning to expand it internationally, by making it available to almost 1,00,000 households by 2012.

London, July 28 (ANI): Scientists have invented a new device that can focus a fuzzy laser beam into a tightly focused “knife” of light, replacing the mirrors and lenses usually needed.

Lasers might be thought of as needle-like crisp beams. But the semiconductor lasers used for everything from CDs to fibre-optic broadband are more like the fuzzy, spreading beams from a flashlight.

Intricate arrangements of curved mirrors or lenses are needed to tame these into usable beams, especially if they need to travel long distances.

According to a report in New Scientist, a new device that fits to the front of the laser source makes the process much simpler and more efficient.

Kingston Technology Company has rolled out its new range of products in the Indian market.

The newly launched products include USB drives and memory cards, which are compatible with today’s high-end technological products such as laptop computer, cellular phone, photography and office equipments.