Science and technology

Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson has been contracted to build a 5G network in Greenland, initially covering three towns, local phone company Tusass said on Friday. Related: 5G is coming: what can we expect? Deploying Ericsson equipment and Netgear routers, Tusass will bring high-speed wireless internet to the sparsely populated island without resorting to expensive and hard-to-deploy cables, the company said. A further 10 towns, including Greenland’s capital Nuuk, are set to follow next.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Ericsson (@inside_ericsson) Tusass said it plans to invest around 1 billion Danish crowns ($131.3 million) to secure and expand Greenland’s infrastructure and improve communication. Greenland, an island of just 56,000 people, is part of the Kingdom of Denmark but has broad autonomy. ($1 = 7.6155 Danish crowns) from Science and Technology News - Latest science and technology news https:/...

Dubai has achieved outstanding results in the Local Online Service Index (LOSI) 2022 issued by the United Nations as part of its bi-annual E-Government Survey, with the city being included in the list of the world’s best-performing digital governments that received a ‘Very High’ rating. Dubai was ranked fifth globally and first in the Arab World in the Index. Dubai received perfect scores in Institutional Framework, Content Provision and Service Provision, earning it top ranking in these vital indicators and consolidating its reputation as one of the world’s best digital governments. The city also received fourth ranking in the Technology index. The latest Local Online Service Index assessed digital governments in major cities across 193 countries. Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of Dubai Executive Council, said, “Dubai’s exceptional performance in the UN’s Local Online Service Index demonstrates the strategic vision and the stead...

Elon Musk’s SpaceX plans to fund a study with NASA to examine ways to use the space company’s Dragon capsule to raise the Hubble Space Telescope’s orbital altitude, which would extend its useful life, agency officials announced on Thursday. SpaceX, whose Crew Dragon capsule ferries astronauts and cargo to and from the International Space Station for NASA, will fully fund the six-month study, NASA’s science chief Thomas Zurbuchen told reporters during a short-notice press conference. “A few months ago SpaceX approached NASA with the idea for a study of how a commercial crew could help boost our Hubble spacecraft into a higher orbit, that would extend its observational lifetime.” The Hubble Space Telescope has been a workhorse cosmic observatory for astronomers around the world since its launch in 1990, delivering dramatic stellar imagery and enabling important discoveries such as the age of the universe and the moons of Pluto. NASA said teams will collect data to “help determine wh...

CALIFORNIA: Facebook-parent Meta put out word to employees that it will freeze hiring to cut costs as it endures tough economic times, The Wall Street Journal reported. Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg revealed a planned pause in hiring during a weekly all-hands meeting, the Journal reported, saying the move came as the social media titan planned to cut expenses by at least 10 percent. Meta declined to comment on the report, instead referring AFP to remarks Zuckerberg made in July when the company reported its first quarterly revenue drop and a plunging profit. Zuckerberg said during an earnings call that teams would shrink in order to “reallocate our energy” as it battled a turbulent economy and the rising phenomenon of TikTok. Meta had long delivered seemingly endless upward growth, but reported early this year its first decline in global daily users. “This is a period that demands more intensity, and I expect us to get more done with fewer resources,” Zuckerberg told analysts during...

Imagine a future world starved of resources where carmakers have to resort to replacing the metal in your car’s roof and hood with cardboard. That’s what Citroën has done with a new concept car Oli, designed in anticipation of a resourceless world, using cardboard instead of steel for those parts. This is no ordinary cardboard, but a specialised honeycomb format reinforced with plastic coating on each side that is strong enough to be stood on without buckling. It was developed in partnership with German chemical giant BASF. This and a vertical windscreen designed to reduce the amount of glass needed and save weight make the electric Citroën “Oli” concept car look like a futuristic SUV. During the Soviet era, a common, erroneous, urban myth held that the Trabant, a small two-stroke engine car produced in the former East Germany, had a body made of reinforced cardboard – and if it rained hard enough you could punch a hole in it. In fact, the Trabant was made of “duroplast”, a plas...

Once unthinkable, mobile phones could go dark around Europe this winter if power cuts or energy rationing knocks out parts of the mobile networks across the region. Russia’s decision to halt gas supplies via Europe’s key supply route in the wake of the Ukraine conflict has increased the chances of power shortages. In France, the situation is made worse by several nuclear power plants shutting down for maintenance. Telecoms industry officials say they fear a severe winter will put Europe’s telecoms infrastructure to the test, forcing companies and governments to try to mitigate the impact. Currently there are not enough back-up systems in many European countries to handle widespread power cuts, four telecoms executives said, raising the prospect of mobile phone outages. European Union countries, including France, Sweden and Germany, are trying to ensure communications can continue even if power cuts end up exhausting back-up batteries installed on the thousands of cellular antennas...

For human beings and 99.8% of our fellow vertebrates, having jaws is an integral part of life. Just try eating a taco without them. But, like everything else in our bodies, jaws had to start somewhere. Researchers on Wednesday described the earliest-known vertebrates that possessed jaws as revealed by fossils of four remarkable fish species unearthed in China, two dating from 436 million years ago and two from 439 million years ago. Until now, only scrappy fossils of vertebrates from that critical time in the evolution of animals with backbones had been known, leaving the earliest ones with jaws as something of a mystery. “The new fossils change everything. Now we know how big they are, what they look like, how they evolved over time,” said vertebrate palaeontologist Min Zhu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, who led the research published in the journal Nature. The newly identified species – none more than a few inches long – were part of two treasure troves of Siluria...

Amazon on Wednesday announced a host of new capabilities for Alexa, including a handful of new smart home features. According to a report , Amazon has rolled out these features to make Alexa more proactive and predictive, including things like its automated Alexa Routines, smart home suggestions known as Alexa Hunches, and its home security features from Alexa Guard. At its Alexa event today, Amazon introduced a feature that will let you turn on or off smart home devices at some specific point in the future. For example, you can ask Alexa to turn off the lights at 9 pm or in 10 minutes, allowing you to schedule these sorts of smart home interactions. Alexa will also now gain support for remote switches instead of only wired smart switches. This allows users to push a button to trigger certain Alexa actions — like reading the news or turning off the lights — without having to use their voice. Furthermore, Amazon says Echo Show device owners will be able to view multiple smart home ...

Apple is dropping plans to increase production of its new iPhones this year after an anticipated surge in demand failed to materialize, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. The company told suppliers to curtail efforts to increase assembly of its flagship iPhone 14 product family by as many as 6 million units in the second half of this year, Bloomberg reported. Instead, the Cupertino, California-headquartered company will aim to produce 90 million handsets for the period, nearly the same number as a year ago and in line with Apple’s original forecast this summer, the report said. Demand for the higher-priced iPhone 14 Pro models is stronger than for the entry-level versions and at least one Apple supplier is shifting production capacity from lower-priced iPhones to premium models, Bloomberg reported. Apple had this week said it would start manufacturing the iPhone 14, launched earlier this month, in India, as the tech giant moves some of its ...

Gomphotheres, an extinct relative of the modern elephant, roamed southern Chile thousands of years ago and might have been the target of group hunts by inhabitants of the region, Chilean scientists hypothesize after a recent discovery. Scientists recently uncovered several Gomphothere remains dating back 12,000 years near Lake Tagua Tagua, a glacial finger lake, in southern Chile. The large creatures weighed up to 4 tonnes and could reach 3 meters (9.8 feet), leading scientists to believe that they were the target of group hunts from inhabitants in the region. “The hypothesis we’re working with is that it’s about hunting, hunting events,” said Carlos Tornero, an archaeologist working on the site. “We think this because the Gomphothere is a very large animal and dangerous and it probably required several people (to hunt).” Scientists say the discovery will also allow them to study the wider human impact on the region and how a changing climate affected animals in the area during t...

Apple is dropping plans to increase production of its new iPhones this year after an anticipated surge in demand failed to materialize, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. The company told suppliers to curtail efforts to increase the assembly of its flagship iPhone 14 product family by as many as 6 million units in the second half of this year, Bloomberg reported. Instead, the Cupertino, California-headquartered company will aim to produce 90 million handsets for the period, nearly the same number as a year ago and in line with Apple’s original forecast this summer, the report said. Apple did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Demand for the higher-priced iPhone 14 Pro models is stronger than for the entry-level versions and at least one Apple supplier is shifting production capacity from lower-priced iPhones to premium models, Bloomberg reported. Also Read : Apple says it will manufacture iPhone 14 in India Apple h...

Swiss glaciers have recorded their worst melt rate since records began more than a century ago, losing 6% of their remaining volume this year or nearly double the previous record of 2003, monitoring body GLAMOS said on Wednesday, The melt was so extreme this year that bare rock that had remained buried for millenia re-emerged at one site while bodies and even a plane lost elsewhere in the Alps decades ago were recovered. Other small glaciers all but vanished. “We knew with climate scenarios that this situation would come, at least somewhere in the future,” Matthias Huss, head of the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network (GLAMOS) told Reuters. “And realising that the future is already right here, right now, this was maybe the most surprising or shocking experience of this summer.” More than half of the glaciers in the Alps are in Switzerland where temperatures are rising by around twice the global average. Scientists across the Alps, including Huss, have been obliged to do emergency rep...

Kenya’s worst drought in four decades has killed almost 2% of the world’s rarest zebra in three months, and 25 times more elephants than normal over the same period. It is starving Kenya’s famed wildlife of normal food sources out in the open and driving them into a deadly conflict with people as they roam wider, to the edges of towns and villages, in a desperate search for sustenance. Without interventions to protect wildlife, or if the approaching rainy season fails again, animals in many parts of the East African country could face an existential crisis, conservationists say. “It’s a serious threat to us,” said Andrew Letura, a monitoring officer at Grevy’s Zebra Trust (GZT). Grevy’s zebra, which are larger than a standard plains zebra and have narrower stripes and wider ears, are the rarest in the species: there are 3,000 left in the world, 2,500 of which are in Kenya. Drought has killed about 40 Grevy’s since June – which is how many would be expected to die over a whole year...

Bitcoin broke above $20,000 on Tuesday for the first time in about a week, as cryptocurrencies bounced, along with other risk-sensitive assets, in Asian trade. The biggest cryptocurrency by market value, bitcoin, was up more than 5% at $20,286. The second-biggest, ether, rose 4% to a one-week high of $1,389. In the broader market, the dollar eased slightly after soaring to fresh heights on Monday. A week earlier, cryptocurrencies fell to fresh lows on regulatory concerns and as investors globally turned shy on risky assets with interest rate rises looming around the world. Bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency by market value, fell about 5% to a three-month low of $18,387. Also Read : Bitcoin falls below $19,000 Ether, the second largest cryptocurrency, dropped 3% to a two-month low of $1,285 and is down more than 10% in the last 24 hours. Most other smaller tokens were deeper in the red. from Science and Technology News - Latest science and technology news https://ift.tt/KBMs...

NASA’s DART spacecraft successfully slammed into a distant asteroid at hypersonic speed on Monday in the world’s first test of a planetary defence system, designed to prevent a potential doomsday meteorite collision with Earth. Humanity’s first attempt to alter the motion of an asteroid or any celestial body played out in a NASA webcast from the mission operations centre outside Washington, D.C., 10 months after DART was launched. The live stream showed images taken by DART’s camera as the cube-shaped “impactor” vehicle, no bigger than a vending machine with two rectangular solar arrays, streaked into the asteroid Dimorphos, about the size of a football stadium, at 7:14 p.m. EDT (2314 GMT) some 6.8 million miles (11 million km) from Earth. The $330 million mission, some seven years in development, was devised to determine if a spacecraft is capable of changing the trajectory of an asteroid through sheer kinetic force, nudging it off course just enough to keep Earth out of harm’s wa...

UK airline EasyJet outlined Monday its plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 via new technology, saying it would use carbon capture to address just under a quarter of its emissions. Chief Executive Johan Lundgren, unveiling EasyJet’s update at its headquarters in Luton north of London, said “exponential” growth in “state-of-the-art” technology will help meet the goal. EasyJet announced the 2050 aim last year but like all energy-intensive firms faced deep scepticism from environmental campaigners. The strategy hinges on technologies that are still emerging like carbon capture, or in the pipeline like cleaner hydrogen engines. The latter are set to become operational by 2035 at best. The no-frills carrier will deploy more fuel-efficient Airbus A320neo aircraft in a multi-billion-dollar refit under its “roadmap” to slash carbon. EasyJet forecast Monday that this will enable it to cut emissions per passenger per kilometre by 78 percent by 2050, from 2019 levels. The carrier wil...

Samsung Electronics is targeting repeat purchases from its 175 million customers in India through a new cashback credit card, a senior executive said, a move to boost sales in the critical market where it was once the top smartphone seller. With India’s festive season underway, the South Korean electronics giant on Monday launched a new credit card with India’s Axis Bank to offer 10% cashback all year round to customers buying Samsung products. Typically, such discount offers are available on e-commerce websites such as Amazon.com and other brick-and-mortar stores only during the festive season or during sales.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Samsung India (@samsungindia) “We are talking about 175 million existing consumers, which is our current installed base for Samsung in India. This entire base is a potential,” Raju Pullan, Samsung’s senior vice-president for its India mobile business, told Reuters. Samsung, w...

Apple said on Monday it will manufacture its latest iPhone 14 in India, as the tech giant moves some of its production away from China. The company launched the flagship iPhone 14 at an event earlier this month, where it focused on safety upgrades rather than flashy new technical specifications, with the exception of a new adventure-focused watch.  read more “The new iPhone 14 lineup introduces groundbreaking new technologies and important safety capabilities. We’re excited to be manufacturing iPhone 14 in India,” Apple said in a statement. Analysts at J.P.Morgan expect Apple to move about 5% of iPhone 14 production from late 2022 to India, which is the world’s second-biggest smartphone market after China. Apple could make one out of four iPhones in India by 2025, JPM analysts said in a note last week.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by apple (@apple) from Science and Technology News - Latest science and tech...

NASA said on Saturday that it was scrapping Tuesday’s plans to launch Artemis, the U.S. return to the moon after five decades, noting concerns about a tropical storm headed to Florida. Tropical Storm Ian is expected to hit Florida, home to the Kennedy Space Center, next week, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. Apart from the weather and technical challenges like a fuel leak, Artemis I, the uncrewed test flight, signals a major turning point for NASA’s post-Apollo human spaceflight program, after decades focused on low-Earth orbit with space shuttles and the International Space Station. read more Artemis will be headed to the moon, as a stepping stone for a future flight to Mars. Also Read : NASA calls off second launch retry for Artemis moon rocket Named for the goddess who was Apollo’s twin sister in ancient Greek mythology, Artemis aims to return astronauts to the moon’s surface as early as 2025, though many experts believe that time frame will likely slip. fro...

Take-Two Interactive Software, the parent company of Rockstar Games, may release Grand Theft Auto 6 or simply GTA 6 between 2023 and 2024. Watch ARY News live on  live.arynews.tv Earlier, a hacker had leaked a footage of Grand Theft Auto VI and it caused the shares of Take-Two Interactive Software to tumble. The unprecedented leak included dozens of videos showing robberies, gunplay and open-world driving and was posted on an online message board. Related – Grand Theft Auto game maker says new edition in development According to a report, the company is likely to launch the game between April 2023 and March 2024 and is investing over $89 million for development during the time period.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Rockstar Games (@rockstargames) Moreover, it will be the first in the franchise to have a female protagonist. Moreover, a couple – inspired by American criminals Bonnie and Clyde – are expe...

Apple has released the first major update of the new iOS 16 ahead of schedule as the company announced to fix the camera shaking issues and copy and paste permissions-related bugs. The company had confirmed earlier in the week that an iOS 16 update next week, without mentioning the exact launch date, will fix permission bugs, camera shaking issues and other bugs. Camera shake issue It was reported earlier that the camera shake when recording video in a number of third-party apps, including TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram, according to TechCrunch. The iOS 16 users got surprised after finding an update arriving late on Thursday afternoon which addressed the issue of the iPhone camera, which “may vibrate and cause blurry photos when shooting with some third-party apps on iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max.” Apple did not give any details about the reason for camera shake issues which appears to be a software issue only and it is being fixed through an iOS update. Permission issue ...

People across the country would be able to witness the second and last partial solar eclipse of 2022 on October 25, 2022, told Astronomer Dr Javed Iqbal, ARY News reported.   Partial Solar eclipse will be seen in #Karachi , #Lahore and across whole Pakistan on 25th October 2022. Start Time: 3:57 PM Peak Time: 5:01 PM End Time: 5:56 PM pic.twitter.com/Z0bKN0HE6z — PakWeather.com (@Pak_Weather) September 21, 2022 Dr Javed said the eclipse would last from 3:57 PM to 5:56 PM after peaking at 5:01 PM. Note that it will be visible across the country just before sunset. The solar eclipse would last for nearly two hours. The eclipse would be visible in Pakistan, Europe, Asia and North Eastern Africa. This first solar eclipse of the year 2022, not visible in Pakistan, was seen at midnight between 30th April and 01st May 2022. This partial solar eclipse was visible in southern parts of South America, parts of Antarctica, and over the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. However,...

Whistleblower Frances Haugen — a former Facebook engineer who leaked documents suggesting the firm put profits before safety — on Thursday launched an organization devoted to fighting harm caused by social media. The Beyond the Screen nonprofit’s first project will be to document ways big tech is failing in its “legal and ethical obligations to society” and help come up with ways to solve those problems, a statement on the launch said. “We can have social media that brings out the best in us, and that’s what Beyond the Screen is working toward,” Haugen said in the statement. “Beyond the Screen will focus on tangible solutions to help users gain control of our social media experience.” Haugen last year leaked reams of internal studies showing executives knew of their site’s potential for harm, prompting a renewed US push for regulation. Haugen contended the tech titan, which has since rebranded itself as Meta, put profits over safety. Meta has fought back against the accusation. ...

Google launched Career Certificates today to offer flexible learning paths for all Pakistanis to enable learners to develop their knowledge and acquire digital skills for in-demand jobs. In its mission to Unlock Pakistan’s Digital Potential, Google has also reinforced its commitment to enable an equitable and inclusive digital economy by offering 15,000 scholarships by this year through local partners – IRM and Ignite, comprising education institutions, industry partners and nonprofits. A report by AlphaBeta found that if leveraged fully, digital technologies could create up to PKR 9.7 Trillion (USD 59.7 Billion) worth of economic value annually in Pakistan by 2030. Pakistan’s ICT sector has witnessed remarkable growth over the past decade, boasting an average annual revenue growth rate of 20-30%. ICT-related exports currently exceed US$5 billion, and the Ministry of IT & Telecommunication believes the sector has the “potential to become the [nation’s] largest export industry” ...