MAKE CELL PHONES AT HOME, INDUSTRY URGED.

President Zillur Rahman has urged the industrialists and businessmen to make instead of importing cellular phones. "Our mobile phone sector is almost wholly dependent on imports, which means a good slice of our hard-earned foreign currency is, in the process, siphoned out," he said on Tuesday. He inaugurated the 'Third Dhaka International Telecom Fair-2009' at Bangladesh-China Friendship Conference Centre. "I believe our young engineers and IT experts can play an important role in making cellphone hardware and software." The president, however, called upon all to check the misuse of mobile phones at the same time. Some rogue individuals are creating law and order problems through cell phone, Rahman said. Telecommmunications minister Raziuddin Ahmed Razu said the government decided to cut down BTTB call rates and would charge only Tk 0.30 per minute from July 1. The minister said they would 'soon' take steps to introduce 3G technology to the new generation. "You can very well take initiatives to provide our students with laptop computers at Tk 10,000 apiece," the minister said, addressing the businessmen. Md Nizamuddin Zitu, president, Bangladesh Mobile Phone Businessmen's Association, said manufacturing mobile phone sets at home should be very much possible with government assistance. Former FBCCI president Salman F Rahman and first FBCCI vice president Abul Kashem Ahmed were present.
Source:bdnews24

MOBILE PHONES FACE HACKING THREAT!

Accessing your bank account using your mobile phone might seem safe, but security experts say would-be hackers can access confidential information via a simple text message seemingly from your service provider. People in the industry aware of the risk see it as extremely small, as only a few people use handsets to access their bank accounts, but it is growing as mobile Internet usage rises. In April, the flaw -- which enables criminals to access a cellphone data connection, steal data or install or remove programmes -- gained wider attention at the BlackHat Europe security conference. "The hacker does not have to be especially skilled to do this," said Jukka Tuomi, chief technology officer at Finnish software firm ErAce Security Solutions. ErAce said that in some phones using Microsoft's Windows software, users cannot block the attack, while Symbian phone users can block malicious messages. However, in practice, most users accept an installation of new settings if they seem to be from an operator. So far, security problems on cellphones have been mostly limited to small outbreaks as operators have been able to screen the data traffic, but the new risk could be out of their reach in many countries where screening text messages is not allowed. Consumers' increasing fears over computer viruses' ability to attack cellphones can put at risk the takeup of new mobile services, which are crucial for operators looking for growth in mature markets, where call prices are falling.

THIN,CHIPEST LAPTOP FROM INTEL.

Intel Corp on Monday launched a lighter, power-saving microprocessor intended for use in ultra-thin laptops, a move by the top chip maker to shore up its lead in mobile computing. The new processor, dubbed the Pentium SU2700, comes amid investors' fears that cheaper processors such as the Atom, designed for use in ultra-cheap netbooks, are cannibalizing the market share for higher-margin, more expensive chips. Acer and Asustek have said they will build laptops with the chip, and Microsoft will ensure its software supports it. Intel expects that by the fourth quarter of 2009, about a fifth of its consumer shipments will be for the new-generation laptops, slimmer and more energy-efficient. Intel is upbeat on the ultra-thin market and expects "explosive growth in 2009, very similar to the netbook growth," Intel's director of mobile platforms product marketing Uday Marty said on a conference call. Asustek, which in 2007 pioneered the successful low-cost, no-frills netbook PC in 2007, is expected to unveil five new laptop models based on the technology this year. Analysts say Intel's CULV platform may offer a cheaper -- but virtually as powerful -- alternative to the traditional processors it makes for laptops, while enabling laptops to begin to approach the diminutive size of netbooks. Intel on Monday also released three new Core 2 Duo processors and a new mobile chipset.

ROCKET SOYUZ DOCKS AT SPACE STATION.

Russia's Soyuz TMA-15 spacecraft docked successfully with the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, a spokesman for Russian mission control said. "The docking was achieved automatically and without any problems," spokesman Valery Lyndin said. "Everything went very smoothly, it went very well." The Soyuz rocket is carrying Belgian Frank de Winne, Canadian Robert Thirsk and Russian Roman Romanenko, who will double the permanent crew of the space station to six for the first time. They join Russian Gennady Padalka, U.S. astronaut Michael Barratt and Japan's Koichi Wakata. docks at space station

LAUNCHING NEW ZUNE BY MICROSOFT.

Microsoft Corp plans to launch a new version of its Zune portable media player later this year in the United States, incorporating high-definition video, touch screen technology and Wi-Fi connection. Microsoft said on Tuesday the new Zune, its answer to Apple Inc's popular iPod digital music player, will also come with an Internet browser and a built-in HD radio receiver that offers higher-quality sound than traditional radio. It did not give a price or a specific date except to say it was due in the fall. The company added new features to Zune's music service last year, enabling users to download music wirelessly and buy songs they hear on the device's built-in FM radio.

NOKIA OPENS A NEW SOFTWARE.

Nokia said it opened its online software and content store, Ovi Store, globally to some 50 million phone users on Tuesday. Nokia aims to follow the success of Apple's App Store with its new offering. Apple's store has proved extremely popular, with one billion applications downloaded in less than a year, and operators and technology firms including Vodafone Nokia, and Microsoft now want a piece of the pie. The Finnish handset maker began rolling out the store on Monday, opening it to users of a few of its phone models in Australia and Singapore. Nokia said clients in eight countries can pay for purchases through their phone bills, and AT&T was planning to make the store available to its clients in the United States later in 2009.

SCIENTISTS INDENTYIFY THE GENE WHO MAY EXPLAIN HAIR LOOS.

Researchers in Japan have identified a gene that appears to determine cyclical hair loss in mice and believe it may also be responsible for hair loss, or alopecia, in people. In a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists described how they generated a line of mice that were lacking in the Sox21 gene. "The mice started to lose their fur from postnatal day 11, beginning at the head and progressing toward the tail region of the back," they wrote. "Between day 20 and day 25, these mice eventually lost all of their body hair, including the whiskers. Intriguingly, new hair regrowth was initiated a few days later but was followed by renewed hair loss." The cyclical alopecia continued for more than two years and the researchers observed that the mutant mice had enlarged oil-secreting sebaceous glands around the hair follicle and a thickened layer of skin cells during periods of hair loss. "The gene is likely involved with the differentiation of stem cells that form the outer layer of the hair shaft," wrote the researchers, led by Yumiko Saga of the Division of Mammalian Development at the National Institute of Genetics in Mishima. The scientists went on to examine human skin samples, where they found evidence of this same gene. "We confirmed that Sox21 is also expressed in the hair shaft cuticle in humans ... These results indicate that the Sox21 gene could be responsible for some hair loss conditions in humans," the authors concluded.

SLOTH FOSSIL FOUND IN PERU IT WAS FIVE-MILLION YEARS OLD.

The nearly intact fossil of an ancient sloth that lived 5 million years ago has been unearthed in Peru, a find about 4 million years older than similar ones discovered in the Americas, researchers said. The sloth was found beneath the cement floor of a house in the Andean region of Espinar in southern Peru when workers were installing a water system. Parts of a giant armadillo that has also been dated to 5 million years ago were also found nearby. The sloth, about 10 feet long, was an herbivore and lived during the Mio-Pliocene era, said paleontologist Rodolfo Salas of Peru's Natural History Museum and one of the scientists on the dig sponsored by the French government. "This skeleton of the sloth is especially important as it is the first complete skeleton of its kind that is 5 million years old in the Americas," he told Reuters. "Previously, discoveries have been made of partial skeletons of similar animals, but from the Pleistocene era, meaning from the last million years." The sloth was found at 13,000 feet above sea level. Salas said the sloth was relatively small compared with other animals of its type and would help researchers better understand evolution of mammals in the Andes. Peru's dry climate has helped preserve thousands of fossils from the Pacific coast to the Andes highlands, making it a favorite of fossil hunters.

NEW SEARCH ENGINE FROM MICROSOFT.

Microsoft Corp is likely to show a new version of its Internet search engine publicly for the first time next week, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter. The software giant has been testing a new version of the service internally under the name of Kumo.com and it may become part of the firm's attempt to catch up with Internet search leaders Google Inc and Yahoo Inc. Microsoft has hired JWT, a unit of WPP Plc, to develop an advertising campaign for the product, the paper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The search engine is expected to be unveiled at the "D: All Things Digital" conference. Microsoft was not immediately available for comment.

NASA finds scratch damage to shuttle shield.

The US space shuttle Atlantis apparently was hit by a piece of debris that nicked part of its heat shield but the damage appeared very minor, NASA said on Tuesday. Atlantis and its seven-member crew blasted off from Florida on Monday on an 11-day mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. It will be the US space agency's last chance to tinker with the telescope -- which has vastly expanded scientists' knowledge of the universe -- before NASA ends the shuttle program in 2010. NASA told the Atlantis crew additional inspections might be needed of the area where the ship's right wing joins the fuselage around where the debris hit. But agency officials said later that a detailed inspection was unlikely. Early analysis of images relayed by the crew revealed a scratch about 21 inches long across four heat-resistant ceramic tiles. "It looks like something just kind of chattered its way down along that edge," deputy shuttle program manager LeRoy Cain said at a briefing, showing a picture of unidentified debris that hit the ship 104 seconds after liftoff. "This is not something we're very concerned about." SHALLOW SCRATCH NASA was trying to establish exactly what had caused the scratch, but it is "relatively shallow" and is not in a critical area that would endanger the ship during the extreme heat of reentry, Cain said. The liftoff also damaged about 25 square feet (2.3 square meters) of the shuttle's launch pad flame trench, NASA said. In 2003 space shuttle, Columbia, disintegrated as it was returning to Florida, killing its seven crew members because of heat shield damage from a piece of foam insulation that fell off the fuel tank during launch. NASA redesigned the tanks so they would shed less foam and implemented in-orbit inspections. Technicians were trying to retrieve pictures from a digital camera in the shuttle's belly that should have photographed the external fuel tank after it was jettisoned. The Atlantis astronauts spent Tuesday panning a sensor-studded boom over the ship's wings and nose cone, a routine task on all shuttle missions since the Columbia accident. After that, NASA also drew up plans to shelter shuttle astronauts aboard the International Space Station in case their ship was too damaged to fly through the atmosphere for landing. Since the Atlantis is heading to the Hubble Telescope and will be too far away to reach the space station, NASA has a second shuttle on the launch pad ready to mount a rescue if needed. Atlantis is due to reach the Hubble Telescope on Wednesday. While the shuttle astronauts scoured their ship for damage, teams on the ground inspected the launch pad. Damage was discovered in an area known as the flame trench, which lies beneath the shuttle's mobile launcher platform. The affected area deflects flames from the solid rocket boosters. The launch pad is next scheduled to be used for a June 13 mission to the International Space Station. "Right now there's no indication that this would delay launch," said Kennedy Space Center spokeswoman Candrea Thomas. The launch pad damage does not affect NASA's contingency provisions for a standby rescue mission for the Atlantis crew, which would be launched from different pad. The Atlantis astronauts plan five days of spacewalks to install two new cameras in Hubble, replace positioning gyroscopes and batteries and repair two broken science instruments. It is NASA's fifth and final servicing mission to the observatory, which has been operational since 1990. Hubble is one of the most productive and ground-breaking science instruments of modern day astronomy. With the upgrades, NASA hopes to keep the Hubble Telescope running until at least 2014.

JONE HURUM FOUND 47 MILLION YEARS OLD FOSSILIZ.

Scientists on Tuesday unveiled the well preserved fossilized remains found in Germany of a primate from 47 million years ago that may have been a close relative of the common ancestor of monkeys, apes and people. It is the most complete fossil primate ever found, only missing part of one leg below the knee, and could shed light on an early stage of primate evolution, the scientists said. Norwegian paleontologist Jorn Hurum, who led a team of scientists who analyzed the fossil in the past two years, said it may resemble one of the earliest ancestors of humans but was not likely to have been a direct ancestor. "We are not dealing with our grand- grand- grand- grandmother but perhaps our grand- grand- grand- aunt," Jens Franzen of the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt told reporters at New York's American Museum of Natural History. The primate, which was two feet from the tip of its nose to the end of its tail, was a female that died before its first birthday, Hurum said. It was called Darwinius masillae in honor of Charles Darwin, who advanced the theory of evolution, but nicknamed Ida. The fossil was found by an amateur collector in 1983 in the world heritage listed Messel pit, a disused quarry southeast of Frankfurt where many fossils have been found. Ida was kept in a private collection until it was offered for sale to Hurum and the University of Oslo in 2006. The direct ancestors of humans "must have looked something like" Ida, Hurum said. "This is the only clue we've got to what they looked like," he said. "But being cautious as scientists ... we are of course not stating that this is our direct ancestor. That's too much," Hurum added. "It's really, really hard to pinpoint who gave rise to humans at that point, but this is as good as it gets." Ida is linked to humans by the talus bone in her ankle which is the same shape.

MICROSOFT HAS GIVEN ORDERED TO PAY IN PATENT CASE.

Microsoft Corp said on Wednesday a Texas federal jury ordered the company to pay Canadian software firm i4i Ltd $200 million in damages for infringing a patent. The world's largest software company, which is involved in a number of legal battles over patents, said the award was unsupported, and plans to appeal.

Toronto-based i4i, a privately held maker of software for manipulating documents, claimed in a 2007 suit that Microsoft knowingly infringed one of its patents in its Word processing application and its Vista operating system. The patent concerned software for manipulating a document's content and architecture separately. Microsoft denied infringement throughout the case. "The evidence clearly demonstrated that we do not infringe and that the i4i patent is invalid," a Microsoft spokesman said.

"We believe this award of damages is legally and factually unsupported, so we will ask the court to overturn the verdict." i4i did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Last month, Microsoft was ordered to pay $388 million in damages for infringing a patent held by anti-piracy software maker Uniloc Inc. It also appealing that verdict.

THE WORLD ASTRONOMERS ARE HAPPY FOR THE "HUBBLE TELESCOPE".

A pair of spacewalking astronauts on Thursday outfitted the Hubble Space Telescope with a new camera that will allow astronomers to turn their gaze closer to the birth of the universe.

The 11-day mission is the U.S. space agency's last chance to service the telescope - which has vastly expanded scientists' knowledge of the universe - before NASA ends the shuttle program in 2010. It is NASA's fifth and final servicing call to Hubble, which was put into space in 1990. NASA hopes the improvements will keep Hubble operational until at least 2014 so it can work in tandem with its projected replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope. Tethered to the shuttle's robotic arm, Feustel struggled with a bolt on the old camera for more than an hour, finally using a wrench and old-fashioned elbow grease to pry it loose. "It's been in there for 16 years -- and it didn't want to come out," Grunsfeld said. Installing the new wide field camera was among NASA's highest priorities, and will allow Hubble to capture images of objects formed as early as 500 million years after the birth of the universe. Grunsfeld and Feustel also replaced a key computer that processes and formats information collected by Hubble's science instruments but which shut down last September. The astronauts will perform five spacewalks to repair the bus-sized observatory and install new instruments that will allow Hubble to send back upgraded versions of its spectacular images of distant galaxies and cosmic anomalies. Astronomers could see the first of the images from Hubble's upgraded capacity in September. The new camera replaces a 1990s-era digital camera with an upgraded imager that is sensitive to infrared and ultraviolet light in addition to the wavelengths the human eye can detect. The infrared detectors are particularly important for imaging very distant objects, whose light comes to Earth shifted into longer, redder wavelengths. Taking a long, deep look for the most distant objects detectable tops Hubble's to-do list once the observatory is back in service. The oldest targets Hubble has seen date back to 700 million years after the Big Bang, the explosion that created the universe about 13.7 billion years ago.

NASA WILL HAPPY FOR THE "HUBBLE"

A pair of spacewalking astronauts on Thursday outfitted the Hubble Space Telescope with a new camera that will allow astronomers to turn their gaze closer to the birth of the universe.



The 11-day mission is the U.S. space agency's last chance to service the telescope - which has vastly expanded scientists' knowledge of the universe - before NASA ends the shuttle program in 2010. It is NASA's fifth and final servicing call to Hubble, which was put into space in 1990. NASA hopes the improvements will keep Hubble operational until at least 2014 so it can work in tandem with its projected replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope. Tethered to the shuttle's robotic arm, Feustel struggled with a bolt on the old camera for more than an hour, finally using a wrench and old-fashioned elbow grease to pry it loose. "It's been in there for 16 years -- and it didn't want to come out," Grunsfeld said. Installing the new wide field camera was among NASA's highest priorities, and will allow Hubble to capture images of objects formed as early as 500 million years after the birth of the universe. Grunsfeld and Feustel also replaced a key computer that processes and formats information collected by Hubble's science instruments but which shut down last September. The astronauts will perform five spacewalks to repair the bus-sized observatory and install new instruments that will allow Hubble to send back upgraded versions of its spectacular images of distant galaxies and cosmic anomalies. Astronomers could see the first of the images from Hubble's upgraded capacity in September. The new camera replaces a 1990s-era digital camera with an upgraded imager that is sensitive to infrared and ultraviolet light in addition to the wavelengths the human eye can detect. The infrared detectors are particularly important for imaging very distant objects, whose light comes to Earth shifted into longer, redder wavelengths. Taking a long, deep look for the most distant objects detectable tops Hubble's to-do list once the observatory is back in service. The oldest targets Hubble has seen date back to 700 million years after the Big Bang, the explosion that created the universe about 13.7 billion years ago.