Hybrids may be touted as the vehicles of the future – but not the kind put together by a teenager in the eastern Swiss village of Jonschwil. The unnamed 17-year-old welded together the front of a moped and the back of a Renault Clio, and stuck the back of the […]
Airbus had a few setbacks over the weekend, but it whipped up much excitement with talk of a supersonic “commercial rocket plane” ahead of the Paris Air Show, which opened on Monday. The aircraft is meant to be a greener replacement for the retired Concorde. Airbus has a new dream, […]
Bern University has set up a professorial post in bee health with the aim of better understanding the insect and its dwindling colonies. The post, funded with a SFr5 million ($5.89 million) donation by the Biel-based Vinetum foundation, will be attached to the university’s veterinary faculty. It aims to study the largely […]
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1010425–black-hole-eats-star-causes-mysterious-flash?bn=1 Astronomers think they have solved the mystery of an extraordinary flash spied in a faraway galaxy, saying it came from a massive black hole that devoured a star after it wandered too close. The awesome energy released by the feeding frenzy was first detected by NASA’s Swift satellite on […]
by Marc-André Miserez, swissinfo.ch Antennas developed by Swiss scientists have sounded ice layers in Antarctica up to several kilometres thick, as well as the rocks underneath. This is of interest not only to geologists and climatologists attempting to measure the effects of global warming on Earth’s ice-covered regions, but also […]
by Julia Slater, in Lucerne, swissinfo.ch Concerns about both climate change and safe energy supply in the post-Fukushima world have given a new impulse to one of Switzerland’s specialities: hydroelectricity. About 900 experts in dams from all over the world converged on Lucerne this week for the annual symposium of […]
Duo faced long struggle before finding a market for stormwater-treatment technology. As university students, Greg Yeoman and Mike Hannah worked hard and played the same way. Weekends and holidays usually involved some sort of beach-centred activity: surfing, fishing or scuba diving. It was that time at the beach that sparked […]
The enormous concrete shells are as tall as a house, and they were designed to listen for enemy aircraft in the 1920s and 30s. Pre-World War II acoustic experiments led to some extraordinary architecture — and to a remarkably effective technology which ultimately succumbed to the invention of radar. In […]
By Hana Namrouqa AMMAN – Water fixtures that reduce consumption of the precious resource are now being installed in households in west Amman neighbourhoods, where water use is above the average rate. Water-saving devices will be installed in 3,600 west Amman households by next week, under a campaign launched earlier […]
Germany on Monday announced plans to become the first major industrialised power to shut down all its nuclear plants in the wake of the disaster in Japan, with a phaseout due to be wrapped up by 2022. Chancellor Angela Merkel said the decision, hammered out by her centre-right coalition overnight, […]
IT COULD be a grief-saving app of the future, the day we carry our gene sequence in our phones. When two people want to have children, they’ll bump genomes and a database might reply: ”Think again, you both have faulty disease-causing copies of the same gene.” That’s the hope […]
The Internet makes us stupid. It robs us of our souls, leads to a flattening of our personalities and reduces our attention spans. This nonsense is now being spouted from an unexpected source: Bill Keller, the executive editor of the Internet-savvy New York Times. The demonization of tools, not despite […]
Siemens AG (SIE) is betting it can sell an unproven wind turbine that uses rare-earth metals from China to cement its lead over Vestas Wind Systems A/S in an offshore power market that’s forecast to be worth $50 billion by 2020. Germany’s largest engineering company is developing a machine with fewer […]
BEIJING — China’s cell phone user grew by 41.39 million in the first four months of 2011 to 900.39 million in total, covering nearly two-thirds of the nation’s population, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). Related readings: Cell phone quest comes full circle 4G network is another […]
(CNN) — Next time Grandma asks why you’re going to the mall on Sunday morning instead of church, tell her you’re going to Apple Chapel. For Apple fans, the brand triggers a reaction in the brain that’s not unlike that of religious devotees, according to a BBC documentary series that […]
Thanks to Jesse Thomas of interactive design agency JESS3, we now have an updated look at the structure of the geosocial universe as it exists in anno domini 2011. It wasn’t so long ago that the International Astronomical Union booted Pluto out of the solar system or that MySpace was overtaking […]
BEIJING – China said on Wednesday that the Three Gorges Project, the world’s biggest hydropower complex, had affected shipping, irrigation and water supply downstream on the Yangtze River. The disclosure came after the State Council passed plans for future work on the project and for the prevention and treatment of […]
Berlin has announced plans to drive up the number of electric cars in Germany to one million by 2020, touting financial incentives worth two billion euros by 2013. German commentators wonder whether the money is being spent in the right place — or whether it is simply filling the coffers of large […]
A research team called the Human Brain Project hopes to build a complete computer model of what project leader Henry Markram calls a “magical machine.” They are seeking to secure a billion-euro grant from the European Union for the project, which could result in disease cures, new supercomputers and intelligent robots. […]
David Braben, a game developer from UK has developed the world’s cheapest computer. The USB stick PC developed by David Braben has two ports namely USB port on one side and HDMI port on the other side. Some of the facts about this tiny PC is as follows: CPU powering […]