Category: Science &Technology

Google’s much anticipated follow–up to Android KitKat is coming. Currently dubbed Android L, it was detailed last week during the search giant’s annual I/O developer event in San Francisco. So, what’s changed? Well, Google seems very keen to shout about its plans.

This is the first time it’s made a similar move to Apple and released an early preview for devs to tinker with. What’s more, it’s made some tweaks that are bound to impress casual and hardcore fans alike.

Stock Android has had a similar design for a few years now. And while it’s not badly dated, Google has decided to spruce things up a bit.

It’s using a new design language called ‘Material Design’, which serves up similar looks across its own apps, as well as making the home screen look a lot less cluttered.

The feeling is that the whole thing looks a lot ‘flatter’, something which Apple’s iOS 7 achieved last year.

The aim is simple: To make basic Android look fancier, so manufacturers don’t feel the need to customise it so much, which usually slows down software updates.

{{Women should not worry about using sperm from older donors as the success rate is the same as using a younger man’s sperm, researchers say. }}

The average age of donors has risen in the UK since the right to anonymity was removed in 2005.

Doctors said there was concern about the impact on the odds of a pregnancy.

Experts said only older men with the best sperm could donate, so men as a whole should not see the results as an excuse to delay fatherhood.

A presentation at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology annual conference showed the average age of donors was 26 before the law change and 34 afterwards.

“It is a huge difference,” said Dr Meenakshi Choudhary from the Newcastle Fertility Centre.

“It may concern women, who are already older, who know their chances are lower, that if they go for an older sperm then their chance of a live birth will be further reduced and compromised.”

She analysed data from 39,282 cycles of IVF between 1991 and 2012, concluding that older men had the same success rates as younger men.

Dr Meenakshi Choudhary told media: “It doesn’t matter up to the age of 45 years, there was no decline observed in this study.

“Sperm donors are a select group of the population, they are healthy fertile donors who go through a stringent recruitment criteria.

“Based on this we can say that age does not matter as long as the sperm quality is good.”

{{‘Men not invincible’}}

Dr Allan Pacey, a lecturer in sperm at the University of Sheffield, said men should not be tempted by complacency.

He told the media : “I think there is a perception out there that men are invincible from reproductive ageing – we just need to look at Charlie Chaplin who was 73 when he had his eleventh child.

“We know that as men go above the age of 40 and go into their fifties, their chances of getting a woman pregnant does reduce as a consequence of age.

“I don’t think you can take this data and apply it uncritically to the general population, the advice would still be you should be trying to have a child before the age of 40 or 45.”

{BBC}

Google and Microsoft will add a “kill-switch” feature to their Android and Windows phone operating systems.

The feature is a method of making a handset completely useless if it is stolen, rendering a theft pointless.

Authorities have been urging tech firms to take steps to help curb phone theft and argued that a kill-switch feature can help resolve the problem.

Apple and Samsung, two of the biggest phone makers, offer a similar feature on some of their devices.

The move by Google and Microsoft means that kill switches will now be a part of the three most popular phone operating systems in the world.

Authorities claim that Apple’s feature – dubbed Activation Lock – which it introduced on all iPhones running the iOS 7 operating system in September last year, has helped reduce theft substantially.

According to a report by the New York State Attorney General, in the first five months of 2014 the theft of Apple devices fell by 17% in New York City.

Meanwhile iPhone robberies fell 24% in London and 38% in San Francisco in the six months after Apple introduced the feature, compared to the previous six months.

“During the same period, thefts of other popular mobile devices increased,” the report says.

Manoj Menon, managing director of consulting firm Frost & Sullivan said the move was a step in the right direction.

“This is a fantastic move and will go a long way in helping authorities come one step closer to realising a vision of zero theft of mobile phone,” he told the BBC.

But he added that it was “not a foolproof system” as thieves “will find a way to monetise the accessories and parts of a phone”.

However, he said the market for parts and accessories was relatively small and the kill switch “does substantially reduce the financial incentive of stealing a device”.

wirestory

{{This Wednesday, June 18, 2014 photo shows Harley-Davidson’s new electric motorcycle at the company’s research facility in Wauwatosa, Wis.

The company plans to unveil the LiveWire model Monday, June 23, at an invitation-only event in New York.}}

{{Rwandan farmers are expected to benefit from a newly improved super banana variety that has been developed by Australian scientists.}}

The New super banana variety is expected to be available in Africa including Rwanda by 2020.

According to the Australian reseachers, a super-enriched banana genetically engineered to improve the lives of millions of people in Africa will soon have its first human trial, which will test its effect on vitamin A levels, Australian researchers said Monday.

The project plans to have the special banana varieties — enriched with alpha and beta carotene which the body converts to vitamin A.

The bananas are now being sent to the United States, and it is expected that the six-week trial measuring how well they lift vitamin A levels in humans will begin soon.

“Good science can make a massive difference here by enriching staple crops such as Ugandan bananas with pro-vitamin A and providing poor and subsistence-farming populations with nutritionally rewarding food,” said project leader Professor James Dale.

The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) project, backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, hopes to see conclusive results by year end.

“We know our science will work,” Professor Dale said.

“We made all the constructs, the genes that went into bananas, and put them into bananas here at QUT.”

Dale said the Highland or East African cooking banana was a staple food in East Africa, but had low levels of micro-nutrients, particularly pro-vitamin A and iron.

“The consequences of vitamin A deficiency are dire with 650,000-700,000 children world-wide dying … each year and at least another 300,000 going blind,” he said.

Researchers decided that enriching the staple food was the best way to help ease the problem.

While the modified banana looks the same on the outside, inside the flesh is more orange than a cream colour, but Dale said he did not expect this to be a problem.

He said once the genetically modified bananas were approved for commercial cultivation in Uganda, the same technology could potentially be expanded to crops in other countries — including Rwanda, parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Tanzania.

“In West Africa farmers grow plantain bananas and the same technology could easily be transferred to that variety as well,” he said.

AFP