Life

India, Sri Lanka cyclone death toll rises to 26

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AFP) — Thousands took to relief camps in Sri Lanka and southern India on Saturday to escape rising floodwaters after a cyclone killed at least 26 people. Cyclone Ockhi has left 13 people dead in Sri Lanka and killed an equal number in India’s Kerala and Tamil Nadu states since Friday as it churns in the Arabian Sea. Eleven people, mostly fishermen, remained missing in the two countries as nearly 9,000 people […]

NASA successfully fires Voyager 1 thrusters after 37 years

WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft — cruising interstellar space billions of miles from Earth — was back on the right track Friday thanks to thrusters that were fired up for the first time in 37 years. The unmanned spaceship was launched along with its twin, Voyager 2, more than 40 years ago to explore the outer planets of our solar system, traveling further than any human-made object in history. But after […]

World’s biggest lithium ion battery switched on in Australia

JAMESTOWN, Australia (Reuters) — The world’s biggest lithium ion battery, built by Tesla, was switched on to feed Australia’s shaky grid just in time for the first day of summer, meeting an ambitious promise by Tesla’s Elon Musk to build it in 100 days or give it for free. Tesla won a bid in July to build the 129-megawatt hour battery for the state of South Australia, which has expanded in wind power far quicker […]

Scallops have 200 eyes, which function like a telescope: study

MIAMI, United States (AFP) — Scallops may look like simple creatures, but the seafood delicacy has 200 eyes that function remarkably like a telescope, using living mirrors to focus light, researchers said Thursday. Most creatures’ eyes have lenses that focus light. But scallops have concave mirrors at the back of their eyes. Scientists have known since the 1960s that Pecten scallops see by reflecting light off these concave mirrors onto the retina above, said the […]

65-million-year-old turtle fossil found in Mexico

SALTILLO, Coahuila, Mexico (Reuters) — The fossilized remains of a turtle thought to be 65 million years old has been discovered in Mexico’s arid north, shedding new light into life into the once lush desert areas of Coahuila. The turtle fossil dubbed the “Yelmochelis rosarioae” is one of the smallest animals to have roamed this ancient area, measuring just 10 centimeters (under 4 inches). Despite its size, the thickness of its shell and its ability […]

Lewd comments cause YouTube to pull videos of children

SAN FRANCISCO, United States (AFP) — YouTube pulled 150,000 videos of children after lewd comments about them were posted by viewers, as the Google-owned platform sought to reassure advertisers their messages would be kept out of compromising situations. The online video-sharing behemoth confirmed on Thursday that it deleted several hundred accounts along with the thousands of videos that were problematic. The move came after a British newspaper reported that ads for big-name brands were displayed alongside videos […]

Toyota’s humanoid robot helper mirrors its controller

TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) — Japanese car maker Toyota unveiled a new humanoid robot that mirrors the movements of its remote operator in Tokyo on Wednesday (November 29). The company says T-HR3 is designed to explore how a robot can help the elderly in a country whose population is ageing faster than the rest of the world as the birthrate decreases. “Humanoid robots are very popular among Japanese people. That’s why we continued to work on […]

Space station crew begins final training before December launch

Reuters — The next crew of the International Space Station conducted final qualification training this week at the Gagarin Training Center in Star City, Russia. Soyuz Commander Anton Shkaplerov, and flight engineers Scott Tingle of NASA and Norishige Kanai of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) posed for photos and took questions from the media ahead of their training. The crew are scheduled to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on December 17 for […]

Snapchat redesign keeps it personal

SAN FRANCISCO, United States(AFP) – Snapchat on Wednesday unveiled a redesign intended to rev up use of the image-sharing smartphone application by focusing on personal interests instead of what friends post. Parent company Snap has promised the redesign in a bid to make Snapchat more user-friendly in the face of competition from rival messaging apps, especially those fielded by leading social networking Facebook. Snap changes included separate streams for posts or messages from close friends versus […]

In US, 57 percent of kids on track for obesity by 35: study

MIAMI, United States (AFP) — More than 57 percent of children in the United States will be obese by age 35 if current trends in weight gain and poor eating habits continue, researchers warned Wednesday. The risk of obesity is high even among children whose present weight is normal, said the report in the New England Journal of Medicine. “Only those children with a current healthy weight have less than a 50 percent chance of becoming obese […]

Scientists discover resilient ‘heart’ of Great Barrier Reef

MIAMI, United States (AFP) — Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is in peril from climate change and widespread bleaching, but scientists said Tuesday a small portion may be resilient enough to keep much of the rest alive. About three percent of the World Heritage site — home to the planet’s largest collection of coral reefs with 3,800 in all — has so far emerged relatively unscathed from a host of threats, from warming waters to pollution […]