Tech & Science

Egyptian Communication and Information Technology Minister Tarek Kamel announced on Sunday that the country had filed an application for the ".misr" (".Egypt") top-level domain (مصر‎ in Arabic) and that registrations for second-level domains would begin as of midnight (2200 UTC) at an Internet conference sponsored by the United Nations. According to Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) chief executive Rod Beckstrom, six countries have applied for top-level domains in three languages since the Internet coordinator opened u

According to scientists, the land territory of Russia has expanded by about 4.5 square kilometres within the last few years in the Far East due to seismic and volcanic activity. The gained land was recorded in the Sakhalin Peninsula. Boris Levin, head of the Institute for Sea Geology and Geophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that the increase happened primarily due to two seismic events. The first, in August of 2007, was when a heavy 6.8 earthquake near the city of Nevelsk in the Far East raised about three square kilometres of

Nobel Prize winner, prominent Russian Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences and theoretical physicist Vitaly Ginzburg has died on Sunday at the age of 93 years. Ginzburg was one of the fathers of the Soviet hydrogen bomb together with Andrei Sakharov, and the head of the Department of Theoretical Physics in the Lebedev Physical Institute of Academy of Sciences (FIAN), as well as editor-in-chief of the scientific journal UFN. He was born in Moscow in 1916, and graduated from the Physics Faculty of Moscow State University in 1938. In

Former Formula One McLaren designer Gordon Murray has unveiled a new all-electric car. The car model, which is known as the T.27, is due to be developed over the course of the next 16 months with four prototypes. The process that will be used during the course of the manufacturing of the vehicle is called iStream. The technology iStream had been invented by Gordon Murray in 1999 and means that all the parts are designed using a computer. The project has approximately received £9,000,000 (US$14,919,000) in investment. The electric car is desig

The European Union has warned the UK government that it does not do enough to protect its citizens' online privacy and personal data. Now the EU has moved to the next stage of legal action, which could see Britain taken to court. The warning follows complaints over the Phorm company's targeted advertising system. The controversial technology is designed to track the activities of internet users, and was tested on some BT customers without their consent. Campaigners complained to various bodies including the UK's data protection agency, and the

Mobile phone and computer manufacturer Nokia is filing a lawsuit against Apple over patent infringements. The infringements include speech coding, wireless data, security and encryption technology Nokia claims is used in Apple iPhones. According to a Nokia press release, 40 other companies are paying royalties to them in return for the use of their patented technology. Therefore, Nokia wants Apple to also pay for its usage. "The basic principle in the mobile industry is that those companies who contribute in technology development to establis

In Shanghai, China, bootleg copies of Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system were displayed a week before the official date of sale. People in mainland China have been able to buy copies of the newest version of Microsoft’s Windows franchise for 20 yuan ($2.93) each — less than one percent of list prices, which are $320. In China, the world’s second largest PC market, about 80 percent of software sold last year was pirated. The biggest issue is the price of software: Microsoft will sell its low-end version of Windows 7 for 15 times as much as

Kapil Sibal, India's Minister of Human Resource Development (HRD) held a meeting Monday to present his reform plans for the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) sector by increasing the entrance percentage to 80% and above in the class XII (final year) board exams. A three-member committee was set up to review the proposal. Sibal said, "The present criteria is that students need to secure 60% in class XII for appearing in IIT-JEE. This is not acceptable", pointing out that the current criteria where students getting more than 60% in the board

Stewart D. Nozette, 52, from Chevy Chase, Maryland in the United States, was arrested Monday on charges of espionage and is being held until a court hearing on Tuesday. He is accused of spying for Israel. Nozette, who received a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had several high profile jobs in the U.S. government and access to classified materials. He worked for the Energy Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 1990 to 1999 and was the President of the Alliance for Competitive Technology, which was formed

In Sydney, Australia, Thomas and Manju Sam were jailed after being convicted of manslaughter on Monday. The court found they had failed to take their ill daughter to medical appointments, and shunned the effective conventional medical treatments offered. Instead they chose homeopathic 'alternative' medical treatments which the medical profession generally considers to be pseudoscience. As a result, their then nine-month-old malnourished daughter Gloria died of the skin disorder eczema in 2002. In the evidence, the Crown prosecutor, Mr Tedeschi

The BBC are going to release their iPlayer to other broadcasters around the UK. Eric Huggers, Director of Future Media and Technology at the BBC, announced that the BBC iPlayer would be opening up to third-party broadcasters. He made the announcement at the IBC 2009 conference in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He said that the broadcaster would be willing to accept outside content. The sharing of technology with other broadcasters means that ITV and Channel 4 shows could be featured with the same technology. This would mean that British viewers would

Naledi Pandor, Minister of Science and Technology in South Africa, publicized results of a study on Tuesday on the role of women in the fields of science and technology in the country. Though women only make up thirty-three percent of publishing scientists in the country, their numbers have increased in recent years. When compared to a similar study from 2004, trends show increased enrollment of women in higher education. Pandor was disappointed by the dearth of individuals that attended the announcement of the results of the study at the Parl