Heart valve change without operations

A new technique to replace heart valves offers hope to those unfit to undergo open-heart surgery due to old age or other health complications.

The new method called Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement ( TAVI), involves doctors transporting a synthetic valve to the heart through a small incision in the groin.

Three elderly patients with severe blockage of the main blood vessel of the heart (calcified aortic stenosis) have been treated using this technique at Fortis Escorts Heart Institute.

Dr Ashok Seth, chairman of cardiac sciences at the heart institute, said the patients had reported ill to the hospital .

"They were at risk as conventional surgery would have involved opening up the chest and heart and putting patients on cardio-pulmonary bypass. Two of them had earlier undergone bypass surgeries and were frail while a woman also had extreme calcification of aortas making her unfit for surgery," said Seth.

Apple launch iPad 3 on March 7

Apple Inc, the world's most valuable company, will hold a product event on March 7 in San Francisco, where it's said to be releasing the third generation of its best-selling iPad tablet computer.

"We have something you really have to see. And touch," Apple said today in an invitation, which features a picture of an iPad screen. The new device will sport a high-definition display, run a faster processor and work with speedier wireless networks, people familiar with the product said last month.

After pioneering the tablet market two years ago, Apple is counting on the new model to beat back competition from newer devices running Google Inc's Android software. The company has sold more than 55 million iPads, generating at least $34.5 billion in revenue. Amazon.com Inc's Kindle Fire, which uses Android, emerged as the iPad's biggest rival over the holiday shopping season last year.

Trudy Muller, a spokeswoman for Cupertino, California-based Apple, declined to comment beyond the information in the event invitation.

Apple's manufacturing partners in Asia started ramping up production of the iPad 3 in January, said one of the people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the details aren't public. The tablet will use a quad-core chip, an enhancement that lets users jump more quickly between applications, the people said.

LTE networks
The company has been working to make the iPad compatible with a wireless standard called long-term evolution, or LTE, one of the people said last month. Carriers such as Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc are rolling out LTE networks to give users faster access to data.

Smartphone makers, including Samsung Electronics Co, Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc and Nokia Oyj, have already introduced smartphones that work on the faster networks. Apple is bringing LTE to the iPad before the iPhone because the tablet has a bigger battery and can better support the power requirements of the newer technology, one of the people said.

The new Retina display is capable of greater resolution than the current iPad, with more pixels on its screen than some high-definition televisions, the person said. The pixels are small enough to make the images look like printed material, according to the person. Videos begin playing almost instantly because of the additional graphics processing, the person said.

New high
Apple shares were trading at $532.98 at 2:47 pm New York time, up 1.4 per cent, after earlier reaching a record high. The stock has climbed 31 per cent this year.

The introduction of the new iPad will be Apple's first major hardware release since the death of co-founder Steve Jobs in October. With new features, Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook aims to give customers more reasons to stick with the iPad, even as rivals undercut it on price. While Apple's tablet starts at $499, the Kindle Fire costs $199.

Amazon.com, the world's largest online retailer, surpassed Samsung as the No 2 seller of tablet computers last quarter, shipping 3.89 million units, according to research firm IHS Inc Apple, meanwhile, maintained its lead in the market, accounting for more than half of shipments.

The company also may use the March event to unveil an updated Apple TV set-top box, which could stream higher- resolution video to consumers' televisions, according to Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray Cos in Minneapolis. Apple is planning to release a full television set as early as the December quarter, Munster said today in a report, reiterating an earlier prediction.

The new iPad is being assembled by Apple's main manufacturing partner, Foxconn Technology Group. That company, which also builds the iPhone and other Apple products, gets about 22 per cent of its sales from Apple, according to supply- chain data compiled by Bloomberg

Microsoft plans to roll out Windows Phone software in 23 countries

Microsoft Corp plans to bring its Windows Phone software to 23 new countries and put the operating system on less expensive smartphones, part of an effort to win back market share lost to Google Inc and Apple Inc.

Microsoft will kick off the expansion by opening mobile- application stores in China, Thailand,Venezuela and the 20 other nations by the end of the month, with phones arriving around the same time, said Terry Myerson, who oversees the company's Windows Phone business. That will bring the total number of markets Microsoft serves to 63, letting it target 60 per cent more buyers, he said.

BSNL has launched three tablets

 

BSNL has launched three tablets with the cheapest model costing a mere Rs 3,250, making a quiet entry into the increasingly competitive market for the hand-held computers.

Recently, Datawind, promoted by a Canadian India, had made a much-publicised entry into the market in a tie-up with the government to provide cheap networking devices 'Aakash', priced at Rs 2,250 for students.

The three tablets launched by BSNL are priced at Rs 3,250, Rs 10,999 and Rs 13,500. Two of them come with 7-inch resistive screen with Android 2.3 operating system, while the third comes with an 8-inch touchscreen, a BSNL official said.

Made by Noida-based Pantel, these tablets will be sold with discounted data plans from BSNL, sources said.

According to Pantel, the T-PAD IS701R has 1GHz processor and 256M RAM and is wi-fi enabled. The built-in 2GB memory can be expanded by up to 32GB.

The second model T-Pad WS704C has 512MB DDRIII RAM and can be connected to TV through HDMI.

The costliest model, T-PAD WS802C is powered by a 1.2GHz processor and 512MB DDRIII RAM and also has a built-in Global Position System.

Samsung launches ‘Ultra' notebooks

Samsung on Thursday introduced its new range of ‘Ultra' notebooks, which are thin, lightweight and powerful computing device loaded with latest processor and multimedia capabilities.

The new ‘Series 5 Ultra' notebooks are available in 13 inch and 14 inch screen sizes, priced at Rs.48,990 and Rs.54,390, respectively. The notebooks come with features such as instant starts using ‘FastStart' and the innovative ExpressCache storage. Designed with consumer feedback in mind, the 14 inch model is also one of the firsts in the market to feature a built-in DVD drive and SD card slot, giving users the ability to easily access software, movies, photos and more.

“With the Series 5, our consumers will be able to enjoy superior performance, great looks and complete portability…through these products, we are creating a new segment within the Notebook space, said Samsung India Head (Mobile & IT) Ranjit Yadav.

NASA looking for vendors

NASA is looking for vendors as it has plans to open source its NASA.gov website. For this, NASA has released a Request For Information (RFI) for reimplementing the NASA.gov website with open source software and open standards, states a report from The H.

The task of making the website open source is sure to be huge as there are around 6,00,000 unique visitors and over 1.29 TB of traffic per day on the website. Also, there are 140 different websites and applications involved along with over 7,00,000 Web pages in the task.
NASA has published the RFI as it is looking for companies that are "visionary, that get open source, cloud computing, and citizen engagement using the latest online technology," states Nick Skytland, Open Government program manager at Johnson Space Center.

The RFI was posted by NASA on 6 February 2012 on normal government channels and is also available online. The RFI lists down 19 questions regarding the approach that would be taken by vendors to handle problems like cloud development, incremental growth, backup and restore, service level agreements, compliance and bandwidth. Also, the objective of the project is to "leverage open source to drive down cost of software", but it also lists that it will "strive for vendor independence through the use of open source software" and implement open standards-based solutions.

The potential applicants for the project need to respond by 15:00 ET on 6 March 2012.

Google celebrates Hertz birthday By Google doodle

Google's latest addition to their animated doodles, celebrates Heinrich Hertz' 155th birthday. A German physicist, his experiments led to the discovery of electromagnetic waves which ultimately led to the development of the radio and the wireless telegraph.

Born in Hamburg, he was first apprenticed as a jeweler. He displayed remarkable aptitude for the sciences and not to mention, Arabic and Sanskrit. A true genius, he easily grasped the dynamics of physics while very young; he later enrolled to study the subject in Berlin.

At the age of 22, he earned his PHd - on electromagnetic induction in rotating spheres - from the University of Berlin. TWhen Hertz took up the position of a professor at Karlsruhe Technische Hochschule in 1885, he turned his attention to open electrical circuits. He demonstrated electromagnetic induction using a condenser discharging through an open loop.

In the course of doing this, he noticed something quite unfamiliar; something that he had never dealt with before - the emergence of 'side-sparks' in another nearby loop.

There, in Berlin, in 1886, he successfully generated and detected electromagnetic radiation - a feat that was not quite so simple but, seemed simple enough for the young 29-year-old physicist. By 1888, demonstrated that the electromagnetic emissions associated with these sparks behaved like waves.

The astounding discovery answered so many unanswered questions! It clarified and added new dimensions to the theory of electromagnetism that had been put forth by the British physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1884.

Hertz's name is now the common term used for radio and electrical frequencies - in hertz (Hz), kilohertz (kHz) and megahertz (MHz).

Heinrich Hertz died in Bonn, Germany in 1894 after being detected with Wegener's granulomatosis, a disorder in which blood vessels become inflamed, and subsequently effetcs the nose, lungs and kidneys. He was buried in Ohlsdorf, Hamburg.

MSN adds new feature to take Internet's pulse

Microsoft is hooking up MSN.com with a hipper sidekick to broaden its appeal and stay on top of the Internet's hottest topics.

The trend-tracking service, called "msnNOW," tunes into the buzz by sifting through millions of Internet searches and links circulating among the hordes on Facebook and Twitter. The chatter is then distilled into the equivalent of a digital water cooler — a place where people can go to keep in touch without taking up a lot of their time.

After months of development, the new feature debuts Thursday at http://now.msn.com.

The service is primarily aimed at college-age teenagers and young adults who are increasingly relying on smartphones and other mobile devices to remain plugged into what everyone is talking about from one hour to the next. It's an "information-snacking" addiction that msnNOW is looking to feed with a smorgasbord of morsels served up a team of about 20 editors who will write 100-word summaries of the stories driving online conversations, said Bob Visse, MSN's general manager.

Although it's tailor made for people on the go, msnNOW isn't offering an app for smartphones or computer tablets. It will include tools to make it easy to share on Facebook, Twitter and email.

Taking the Internet's pulse isn't new. The main page on Yahoo Inc.'s website has highlighted the top trends for years and Internet search leader Google Inc. calls out the top queries each day. Twitter regularly updates its rankings of the most-tweeted topics.

But MSN believes its new service will prove to be even more effective because it is drawing upon Microsoft Corp.'s expertise in data management and relying on human editors to ensure the real-time site is more compelling than a list of words and links.

Facebook Inc. and Twitter also have negotiated deals that make more of their data available to Microsoft's Bing search engine than to Google, but msnNOW isn't relying on that privileged access, Visse said. Instead, msnNOW is conducting its analysis through the public entryways that Facebook and Twitter offers to all websites. MsnNOW is also leaning on BreakingNews.com, a part of MSNBC that also pores through a variety of social media to find interesting stories as they unfold.

MsnNOW's reliance on Bing to monitor online search activity could be a drawback because it processes far fewer requests than Google. But Bing is picking up more cues now that it's powering Yahoo's search engine as part of a 10-year partnership. Combined, Bing and Yahoo have a roughly 30 percent share of U.S. search volume compared to 66 percent at Google.

Bing's second-banana status in search is a big reason why Microsoft's online division has been a financial albatross. The software maker's online operations have lost about $8 billion since June 2008.

MSN.com remains one of the Internet's top destinations with about 520 million users. In comparison Facebook boasts 845 million users, Yahoo has about 700 million and Twitter has more than 100 million.

Hackers bring down Microsoft India website

Microsoft was in for a rude shock late Sunday night when the leading packaged software maker discovered that its Indian retail website has been hacked.
The incident has not forced the company to pull down its Indiasite temporarily; it also gave hackers access to the password and ID of the users.

Microsoftspokesperson, when contacted, confirmed the development.

Even so, the financial details of the users are safe, the official added. "Immediately after the report surfaced, our technical team swung into action and informed the users to change their password. So, their financial details such as credit card number and other details are safe."

In an e-mail statement, Microsoft said the company was investigating the limited compromise of the company's online store in India. "Customers have been notified and provided with guidance to reset their passwords. We are diligently working to remedy the incident and keep our customers protected," the statement added.

Microsoft Store India is not run by Microsoft, but by an Indian vendor called Quasar Media. Microsoft is yet to confirm how the hackers broke into their system.

This is the latest case of website hacking in the country. According to the data with CERT-IN, which is the national nodal agency for responding to computer security incidents, as many as 1,425 websites were defaced in India last month alone. Last year even saw the website of the country's Central Bureau of Investigation having been hacked.

The Microsoft Store India website, www.microsoftstore.co.in, showed an error message: "The Microsoft Store India is currently unavailable. Microsoft is working to restore access as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused."

According to cyber security expert Ankit Fadia this kind of security incidents are unavoidable. "We should learn to accept this reality. Two days ago, even the CIA website became inaccessible for hours."

Fadia also has a word of advice for the netizens. "Try to use multiple passwords." One should not use single password for e-mail, net banking, e-commerce and others.

iPad 3

 Apple Inc plans to introduce its latest iPad tablet at an event in the first week in March, the website AllThingsD reported, citing unnamed sources. 


The event will be held in San Francisco, likely at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, which is Apple's preferred site for product launches, the website said. 


An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment. 


Apple has typically introduced the latest versions of its iPad in the first few months of the year. The current iPad 2 was introduced on March 2, 2011. The original iPad was introduced at the end of January 2010. 


Apple's iPad dominates the nascent market for tablets even though deep-pocketed rivals are taking aim at the lucrative segment. Amazon.com Inc's Kindle Fire, which sells at half the cost of an iPad, has chipped away at the lower end of the tablet market. 


Apple iPad tablet sales doubled in the December quarter to 15.43 million units from a year earlier.