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| SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY |
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Google+ opens up, takes fight to Facebook
THIS UNIVERSE l Penguins identify mates, kin by smell |
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Google+ opens up, takes fight to Facebook Google Inc and Facebook trotted out a variety of new social networking features in back-to-back announcements on Tuesday, underscoring their intensifying competition for Web surfers. Google integrated its flagship search engine into its 3-month old social network — with membership now open to the Internet public — and expanded its “Hangouts” video-chat feature to allow mobile use and broadcasting. The company said on its official blog its well-received Hangouts feature — where up to nine people can link up and chat with a user on video — will be available on camera equipped smartphones powered by its own Android software. Support for Apple Inc iOS devices “is coming soon”, it added. And a user can now host an online broadcast with this feature — recording a session and broadcasting it live for public access online. Black Eyed Peas front man will.i.am was to host the first “Hangout on Air” on Wednesday, Google said. “Hangouts should keep pace with how you socialize in the real-world, so today we’re launching it on the one device that’s always by your side: your mobile phone,” senior vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra said on the blog post. For its part, Facebook said it was introducing a new “ticker” on its users’ home pages, providing real-time notifications of what friends are doing on the service. Facebook also revamped the service’s main news feed to flag important items — such as a new baby announcement — for Facebook users who have not logged on for a few days. Facebook also changed the way photos are displayed on the site, increasing the size of pictures that appear in a users’ news
feed. Facebook is the world’s No.1 social networking service, with more than 750 million users. The company has rolled out a series of improvements to its service recently, many of which seem designed to match features Google has used to set apart its rival social networking service, Google+. Google did not say how many people had signed up for Google+ so far, but confirmed the social network was now open to all, whereas previously it had been invitation-only. Analysts estimate upward of 25 million users have joined Google+ since its inception. The company also made its search engine available from within the social network. Users can search from Google+ and get results not just on the network, but from the worldwide Internet. Google’s infant social network, which counts Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as a member, has met skepticism so far. Some are waiting to see if it can maintain the rapid momentum of its first months. If CEO Larry Page’s brainchild —which some say mimics better than Facebook the instinctive categorizing of friends that occurs in real life — takes off, it will come at a pivotal moment for its bigger rival. Facebook is widely expected to go public in 2012. “We’re nowhere near done, but with the improvements we’ve made so far we’re ready to move from field trial to beta,” Gundotra said. — Reuters
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THIS UNIVERSE Why do we yawn? I am quoting below the answer I gave to this question five years ago: This is a truth about which I cannot give a very cogent and scientific explanation. What is more, I have not seen it in anything I have read. I do not know why we yawn. I can only guess. When we are tired and sleepy, most of us yawn. Do we have a need for gulping in more oxygen? Perhaps. Do we want to send a signal to friends and relatives around us that we have had enough of their company and we must take leave and go in for a shuteye? Perhaps. I do know that when we are listening to a particularly boring speech we become drowsy and begin to yawn? This particular yawn is especially contagious. This usually happens in late afternoon. The fact that it happens is indisputable. But there are lectures and speeches that wake us up and all yawing disappears. This shows that the origin of yawning is not only physiological. Intellectual and emotional engagement — or disengagement — also makes a difference. The contagious property of yawning is understandable, if the people who are simultaneously affected are together late in the day and listening to the same boring speaker. Perhaps disengagement of some in the audience, when noticed, leads to a similar disengagement of others. I have found that when I notice just one shining pair of eyes focused on the speaker, I also become more attentive. Besides physiology, social psychology is simultaneously at play. In spite of all these observations I still cannot tell you why yawning should be such a widespread symptom when some tiredness is combined with boredom. Only the young have the courage to pull out a novel or a short story book to overcome the boredom. Most others feel socially obligated to simulate attention with their eyes open and staring at the speaker — a stance not very conducive to an engaged presence at the event. Having said all this I might also point to another category of yawning that is perhaps better understood. Many of us get up in the morning after a restful sleep and shake away the last dregs of drowsiness by stretching our arms and a big yawn. This tendency perhaps helps to expand our lungs and fills them up with a large mouthful of air. I do not think this yawn is that contagious, partly because we seldom wake up at the same place at the same moment.
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Trends CHICAGO: Penguins can sniff out the door of lifelong mates, helping them reunite in crowded colonies, and also can identify the scent of close kin to avoid inbreeding, scientists said on Wednesday. Some seabirds have previously been known to use their sense of smell to find food or locate nesting sites but the experiments with captive Humboldt Penguins at Brookfield Zoo near Chicago proved, for the first time, that the birds use scent to discriminate between close relatives and strangers. Arkansas’ lost moon rock found in Clinton’s gubernatorial files LITTLE ROCK, Ark:
For years, Arkansas historians have searched for a valuable lunar rock from the Apollo 17 mission, one of the moon rocks NASA presented to each state in the 1970s. While other states also continue to dig for the rocks that came to be known as the Goodwill Moon Rocks, the mystery in Arkansas was solved Wednesday-sort of-when an archivist discovered it in former President Bill Clinton’s gubernatorial papers. Spooky theory, leukaemia drugs top Nobel tips LONDON: Researchers who developed ground-breaking leukaemia drugs, discovered dendrimers and delved into the intricacies of what Einstein dubbed “spooky action” are among Thomson Reuters 2011 top tips to win Nobel prizes for science. Nobel prediction expert David Pendlebury’s annual forecast is made using the company’s “Web of Knowledge” data on how often a scientist’s published papers are used and cited as a basis for further investigation by other researchers. Crime witness ID method can affect error rate DES MOINES, Iowa:
Showing photographs of suspected criminals to witnesses in sequence, rather than all at once, can produce fewer mistakes in identifications, according to new research. Gary Wells, a psychology professor at Iowa State University, said presenting photos one at a time produced a lower error rate than when witnesses were shown a simultaneous array of photos. China to launch “Heavenly Palace” on way to space BEIJING:
China will next week launch an experimental craft paving the way for its first space station, an official said on Tuesday, bringing the growing Asian power closer to matching the United States and Russia with a long-term manned outpost in space. The Tiangong 1, or “Heavenly Palace,” will blast off from a site in the Gobi Desert around September 27-30, adding a high-tech sheen to China’s National Day celebrations on October 1, the Xinhua news agency said. NASA unveils new plan to buy rides for astronauts CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: NASA plans to spend $1.6 billion over the next two years bolstering industry efforts to develop space taxis, officials said on Monday. The U.S. space agency will be looking for complete systems- launchers, spaceships, mission operations and ground support- to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station by the middle of the decade, a draft solicitation released on Monday shows. — Reuters
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