These are some of the newest ways of storing power, says Stanford University researcher Yi Cui, assisitant professor of material science and engineering.

Stanford scientists are harnessing nanotechnology to quickly produce ultra-lightweight, bendable batteries and supercapacitors in the form of everyday paper.

Post doctoral students in the lab of Yi Cui, light up a diode from a battery made from treated paper, similar to what you would find in a copy machine.

The paper batteries are treated with a nanotube ink, baked and folded into electrical generating sources.

Simply coating a sheet of paper with ink made of carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires makes a highly conductive storage device, said Yi Cui.

“Society really needs a low-cost, high-performance energy storage device, such as batteries and simple supercapacitors,” a Stanford statement quoted him as saying.

Like batteries, capacitors hold an electric charge, but for a shorter period of time. However, capacitors can store and discharge electricity much more rapidly than a battery.

Cui’s work was published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Source: http://www.zeenews.com/news585914.html

Helen Hodgetts and Dylan Jones, professor of psychology at Cardiff University, examined the cost of such interruptions in terms of the time taken to complete a simple seven-step computer task.

“Our findings suggest that even seemingly brief and inconsequential on-screen pop-up messages might impact our efficiency, particularly given their frequency over the working day,” says Hodgetts.

They found that, even after only a five second interruption, people take longer than normal to complete the next step in the task they are working on.

But in a more realistic work environment, where there is more information to retrieve after the interruption, the loss of concentration could have a greater impact on performance.

Other results from the study show that an interruption lag — a brief time between a warning for a pop-up and the interruption itself — can reduce the time we lose trying to find our place again.

A warning sound was found to be most effective because it allows us to consolidate where we are in the current task before transferring our attention to the interruption.

Conversely, a flashing warning signal on the screen can be just as disruptive as the interruption itself, said a Cardiff release.

Researchers suggest that e-mail alerts and similar pop-up messages should be as small and discreet as possible and should not obscure the original activity.

Source: http://www.zeenews.com/news585905.html

Professor John Coleman and his team are one of four teams to win the ‘Digging into Data’ competition set up to encourage imaginative, forward-thinking research using large-scale computing in Humanities.

The resulting database will contain a year’s worth of spoken English and the project Mining a year of speech will create the world’s largest searchable database of spoken English sound recordings.

It will be a useful resource for anyone interested in spoken English not just phoneticians and linguists, but also many other kinds of people such as teachers of English language, social historians, and interested members of the public.

Professor Coleman said: “In a world where there’s more multimedia than text, audio searching is becoming a vital technology: even Google is moving into it now. We will provide the data so that it is searchable, but we can’t even begin to imagine the full range of questions about language that people will want to use it for.”

Source: http://www.zeenews.com/news585667.html

Economists said the 7.2 trillion yen plan, equal to about 1.5 per cent of gross domestic product, would not provide a significant lift to an economy dependent on overseas demand for machinery, electronics and cars.

While several other economies are already debating phasing out economic stimulus deployed to fight the financial crisis, Japan continues to struggle amid chronically weak consumer demand and falling prices.

The budget underscores the balancing act faced by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and his Democratic Party.

The Democrats are keen to avoid a recession ahead of an upper-house election next year but are also under pressure to make good on their pledge of fiscal discipline as the country’s public debt nears 200 per cent of GDP, by far the worst among G7 nations.

“This may help the economy somewhat,” said Yasunari Ueno, chief market economist at Mizuho Securities. “But it doesn’t even begin to address the more fundamental issues facing Japan, such as weaknesses in the global economy and deflation.”

Japan pulled out of recession in April-June thanks to a recovery in exports but figures due on Wednesday are expected to show third-quarter growth was much slower than an initial estimate.

Growth is seen slowing further in the first half of next year as the effect of nearly 27 trillion yen stimulus agreed by the previous Liberal Democratic Party government, wears off.

The new package, earmarked for low-interest mortgages for new home buyers, incentives for users of “green” technologies and extended subsidies for energy-efficient cars and household appliances, aims to encourage reluctant Japanese consumers to spend more.

Analysts, however, were sceptical about the plan’s impact and while most expect Japan to avoid a double-dip recession, those who predict another slump were not swayed by the latest spending plan.

“This stimulus will have a limited impact on the economy. I don’t think we need a major change in our forecast,” said Hideki Matsumura, a senior economist at Japan Research Institute, who expects a contraction in both the first and second quarter.

“I would be surprised if the contribution to growth exceeded 0.5 percentage point,” said Simon Wong, regional economist at Standard Chartered in Hong Kong.

Source: http://ibnlive.in.com/news/japan-injects-81-bn-stimulus-into-its-economy/106717-7.html

“Criminals have been taking note of the large crowds in social-networking sites,” said Cisco security researcher Scott Olechowski. “They steal them with various techniques.”

Tactics used to get into social-networking profiles include hacking password databases at vulnerable online services and then exploiting the fact that many people use one password for multiple accounts.

Cisco estimates that a Koobface computer worm, named as a play on social networking hot spot “Facebook,” has infected more than three million computers since it first appeared in 2008.

Koobface is malicious code that steals social networking account credentials, logs into profiles and sends “friends” messages along the lines of wanting to share scintillating online videos.

Links enclosed in the messages lead to bobby-trapped Web pages that trick visitors into infecting their machines with copies of the worm.

Crooks sometimes set up fake profiles and then finagle their ways into people’s online social circles and entice them to opening computer files tainted with malicious code.

Money-making tricks can be as simple as hackers using social-networking profiles to pretend to be friends in desperate straits that ask to be wired money to get out of trouble in faraway places.

Social networks are also targeted by hackers out to control or disrupt political discourse.

Business computers can wind up infected because one of every 50 “clicks” in the workplace is to social-networking websites, according to Cisco.

“The blending of social media for business and pleasure increases the potential for network security troubles, and people, not technology, can often be the source,” said Cisco fellow Patrick Peterson.

“Without proper cognizance of security threats, our natural inclination to trust our ‘friends’ can result in exposing ourselves, home computers and corporate networks to malware.”

Cyber criminals can mine profiles for names and email addresses of business executives or accounting department members to “spear phish,” target strategically placed workers with scams.

The potential for workplace computers to be infected through a social-networking attack is all the more disturbing given the rise of a computer Trojan named Zeus crafted to digitally loot money from banks.

Once in computers, Zeus can swipe information and alter what is seen in Web browsers so that people tending to online banking see correct balances on screen while accounts are actually being emptied by cyber thieves.

Source: http://www.zeenews.com/news585582.html

The Bollywood beauty has almost shown her assets during photo session for the magazine in a deep-neck black top. Sameera never looked so hot before this.

For the December issue of ‘Maxim’ cover, Sameera has also given several hot pose.

Apart from Sameera’s hot pics, you have another reason to buy the latest issue as it also includes world’s top bikini feast.

There is ample of material in the magazine to take your breath away and put extra pressure on your eyes.

Source: http://www.samaylive.com/news/sameera-reddy-graces-maxim-cover/670060.html

“We are here today to announce Google real time search,” Google fellow Amit Singhal said at a press event held near the firm’s headquarters in Mountain View, California.

“Users will get results on results page as they are being produced out there. This is the first time ever that a search engine has integrated the real time Web into the results page,” Singhal said.

Twitter messages and other fresh content streamed into a box on Google’s main search page in a demonstration of the new feature, which will be rolled out at all English-language search sites in the coming days.

Google is planning to incorporate real time search in other languages beginning early next year, according to Singhal.

Online social-networking rivals MySpace and Facebook will be providing feeds of all public updates.

“MySpace and Facebook users can decide what they want to see offered at Google,” said Google vice president of search products and user experience Marissa Mayer.

Google is working on a standard software interface Facebook and MySpace can use to stream updates to the Internet search titan in real time.

Twitter feeds were in Google real-time results on Monday, but Facebook and MySpace updates will not be integrated until possibly as late as February of next year, according to Mayer.

“I’m super-excited that we are doing this,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said while leaving the event. “I’m so psyched. It’s the future, like ‘Star Trek.’”

Google will only display updates from Facebook Public pages, “fan pages” used by celebrities, athletes and other high-profile people interested in firing off text messages to large numbers of followers.

MySpace will let all users permit online comments, pictures, video or other content created in profiles to be displayed in Google’s real time results, according to MySpace chief product officer Jason Hirschhorn.

“We look at this as an extension of their self expression,” Hirschhorn told AFP. “We want people to hear their comments and opinions and what better way than to have them next to results on a Google search?”

Google engineers could have crafted Web-crawling computer code to hunt down and index public posts from micro-blogging star Twitter and social networking services but preferred to work with the firms, according to Mayer.

“We really do value the partnerships,” Mayer said. “For social networks one of the key factors is user privacy.

“It is really important that they have some element of control and having a partnership makes it more comfortable for them,” she said.

Google is eager to have a platform in place to allow bloggers, social networks and other producers of real time online content to instantly route updates to the search engine.

Source: http://www.zeenews.com/news585543.html

Voting began at 0700 hrs IST . Third phase of polling will cover 11 of the 81 assembly seats and decide the electoral fate of 273 candidates.

The 11 Assembly seats covered in the third phase are – Bermo, Bokaro, Chandankiari, Dhanwar, Bagodar, Jamua, Hazaribagh, Shikaruipara, Dumka, Jarmundi and Jama. Half of the Assembly seats are situated in Maoist strongholds areas.

Heavy security arrangements have been made for peaceful polling. “Roads have been covered by the security forces and we are also seeking air force helicopters for peaceful polling,” said VH Deshmukh, Jharkhand Police spokesperson said.

In this phase of polling, the fate of five former ministers including former deputy chief minister Stephen Marandi will be decided.

The other key candidates are Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) Rajya Sabha member and son of Shibu Soren, Hemant Soren and Shailendra Mahto.

In the first and second phase, polling took place for 26 and 14 seats on November 25 and December 2 respectively. The five phase polling will end December 18 and counting will take place December 23.

Source: http://ibnlive.in.com/news/voting-begins-for-third-phase-of-jharkhand-polls/106679-37.html

However, the censors’ latest campaign against content that harms public morality appears to have encouraged Internet users to look for porn online.

Within the first 24 hours, a hotline set up Friday by Internet Illegal Information Reporting Centre was flooded with more than 500 phone calls and 13,000 online tips, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The centre is looking for websites and mobile phone-accessible sites that contain obscene material or advertise sex products, the report said.

Rewards ranging from 1,000 yuan to 10,000 yuan will go to the first person to report each website, the centre said in a notice, adding a committee would review the tipoffs to determine what award was appropriate, Xinhua said.

China has launched several Internet crackdowns on pornography, con artists and political activists in the past.

Earlier this year China threatened to sanction major websites, including search engine giants Google and Baidu, alleging that pornography and other material that could corrupt young people was turning up in search results.

Source: http://www.zeenews.com/news585152.html

A secret report compiled by the Secret Service reveals the security surrounding America’s President has been breached at least 91 times since 1980, ‘The Washington Post’ reported.

A summary of the 2003 report, obtained by the leading US newspaper, contains accounts of many breaches, including a family who were allowed to the White House grounds in minivan, a man believed to be a delivery driver, and a woman previously known to Secret Service agents after she had falsely claimed a “special relationship” with Bill Clinton.

The report states that the list of security breaches exposes significant gaps that could be exploited by “would-be assassins” and erodes “one of the best tools for deterring future attempts” — the aura of invulnerability around the White House.

A Secret Service official confirmed the authenticity of the “unclassified document” and said it was used to train agents and officers in an effort to improve agency operations.

“This document reflects a proactive attempt to evaluate our security and obviously raises the awareness of uniformed division officers and agents about their jobs. We have to be concerned about the threats to our protectees at all times, whether at the White House or away from the White House,” Spokesman Edwin Donovan was quoted as saying.

After the appearance at last month’s state dinner by the Salahis, the Secret Service has launched a criminal investigation into the couple and a sweeping internal review of security procedures.

Offering a rare public apology for the incident, the agency’s Director, Mark Sullivan, characterised it as a “pure and simple… case of human error” in which three uniformed officers let the well-dressed Salahis pass through gates on a rainy night without confirming their names on a guest list.

Source: http://www.ndtv.com/news/world/white_house_security_breach_too_easy.php