The findings revealed that nocturnal sleep duration full moon compared to new moon reported an average decrease of five minutes. To establish if lunar phases somehow do affect humans, an international group of researchers studied children to see if their sleeping patterns changed or if there were any differences in their daily activities.  To establish if lunar phases somehow do affect humans, an international group of researchers studied children to see if their sleeping patterns changed...

New research finds that those who spot the logical flaws of their dream-world are likely to show greater insight when awake You’re in a lecture hall giving the talk of your life, when you suddenly become aware of the fact that you aren’t wearing any trousers. Dr Patrick Bourke, Senior Lecturer at the Lincoln School of Psychology, says: It is believed that for dreamers to become lucid while asleep, they must see past the overwhelming reality of their dream state, and recognise that they are dreaming.The...

Although Albert Einstein praised another as “the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began” after her death in the ’30s, she couldn’t get a teaching job. When she finally did, the Nazis took it away because she was Jewish. The struggles of female mathematicians Hypatia (killed in the 5th century), Sophie Germain (1776–1831) and Emmy Noether (1882–1935) are now history. However, not until Tuesday did a woman win the Fields Medal —...

Australia's multibillion-dollar mining, farming and tourism industries face significant threats as worsening global warming causes more dangerous and extreme weather, the world's leading climate science body will warn. A final draft of a five-year assessment by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - seen by Fairfax Media - details a litany of global impacts from intensifying climate change including the displacement of hundreds of millions of people, reduced crop yields and...

LG has made clear its ambitions to grab a higher market share in the booming Indian smartphone market. According to Soon Kwon, Managing Director, LG Electronics India, LG is aiming at a 10% market share in the Indian smartphone market by the end of 2014. As of now LG has about 4.8% market share in the segment. LG's flagship model, the G2, is expected to fuel much of this growth. LG announced few more products today at its Tech Show 2014, taking place in Delhi. The primary one is the LG G2 4G LTE...

 India on Tuesday successfully test-fired indigenously developed nuclear-capable Prithvi-II missile with a strike range of 350 km from a test range at Chandipur in Odisha as part of a user trial by defence forces. The surface-to-surface missile was test-fired at around 10:05 a.m. from a mobile launcher in salvo mode from launch complex-3 of the Integrated Test Range, about 15 km from Balasore, defence sources said. Describing the launch of the sophisticated missile as a complete success,...

The success of the spacecraft, scheduled to orbit Mars by next September, would carry India into a small club of nations including the United States, Europe, and Russia, whose probes have orbited or landed on Mars. India's first mission to Mars left Earth's orbit in the early hours of Sunday, clearing a critical hurdle in its journey to the red planet and overtaking the recent efforts of rival Asian giant China. The success of the spacecraft, scheduled to orbit Mars by next September, would...

Sexual frustration impairs the health of fruit flies and causes premature death, according to new research. Scientists found that male flies who were stimulated to mate but prevented from doing so, had their lives cut short by up to 40%. Those allowed to copulate not only lived longer but suffered less stress. The research is published in the Journal Science. In the experiment, the flies were put in close proximity to genetically modified males who had been altered to release female sex pheromones. Continue...

Scientists involved in the project say they have a long way to go as the orbit of the spacecraft has to be raised. It was moment of triumph for scientists closely involved in the Mars Orbiter Mission. For KS Shivkumar, director of the Isro Satellite Centre where the spacecraft was built, the placing of the Mars Orbiter spacecraft into the orbit around the Earth was like his baby taking its first steps. “Our baby is up in space looking for scientific objects but we have a long way to go,” he...

For top Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) scientists, it has been a tradition to visit Tirupati temple before any major launch. It has been no different in the run-up to the launch of the Mars Orbiter Mission on Tuesday. Isro chairman Dr K Radhakrishnan visited Tirupati on Sunday to seek blessings for the successful launch. Former Isro chairman G Madhavan Nair on Monday said, “This has been a tradition. I had also gone to Tirupati before the Chandrayaan mission.” But more than religious...

Across North America — in places as far-flung as Montana and British Columbia, New Hampshire and Minnesota — moose populations are in steep decline. And no one is sure why.  Twenty years ago, Minnesota had two geographically separate moose populations. One of them has virtually disappeared since the 1990s, declining to fewer than 100 from 4,000. The other population, in northeastern Minnesota, is dropping 25 percent a year and is now fewer than 3,000, down from 8,000. (The moose mortality...

Sony seems to be geared up to officially launch another mid-range smartphone, the Xperia C for the Indian market. The device is currently available online for Rs. 20,490 on Saholic, while it is up for pre-order on Flipkart with the same pricing. Both the ecommerce sites have mentioned that the device will be available from second week of October. The Xperia C was officially unveiled earlier this year at the Mobile Asia Expo. The Sony Xperia C is the first smartphone from the Japanese handset giant...

It’s the brain like never seen before. A group of researchers – Misha Ahrens, neurobiologist, and Phillipp Keller, microbiologist from Howard Hughes medical Institute’s Janelia Farm Research Campus, have been able to see individual neurons firing in the brain of a larval zebra-fish, recording activities across the entire fish brain. They have mapped the exact firing pattern for 80% of the 100,000 neurons in the brain, suggesting that, should an upscaling of this mapping be done, the human brain...

The good: Sleek universal remote with beautiful-looking design; large color touch screen with custom virtual buttons and numeric keypad; recognizes limited gestures; Web-programmable via Windows or Mac PCs, but can edit commands without having to connect a computer; rechargeable via the included cradle; controls up to 15 devices. The bad: Much more expensive than the superior Harmony 650; poorly placed "transport" buttons; lacks dedicated forward and reverse skip keys; limited customization options...

 It was hours before dawn on a heaving Arctic sea, and snow showers were making it hard for Kurt Ludvigsen to find his fishing buoys with the trawler's powerful searchlight. But the 49-year-old Norwegian was less bothered by the conditions than by the large numbers of cod flailing in the nets he and his younger brother, Trond, winched aboard. "It's paradoxical but we have too many fish this year," the older Ludvigsen said. "Prices have fallen 30 percent ... We're having to work far harder." Just...

 The smallest of gains gave the Standard & Poor's 500 its seventh straight winning day on Thursday, but the index failed to hold above the 1,500 line, restrained by Apple's worst day in more than four years. Apple Inc slid 12.4 percent to $450.50 a day after it posted revenue that missed Wall Street's forecast as iPhone sales were poorer than expected. The sharp drop wiped out nearly $60 billion in Apple's market capitalization to less than $423 billion, leaving the company vulnerable...

Nearly two years after spotting Gliese 581g, the celebrated "first potentially habitable" alien world, the planet's discoverers continue to fight for its existence. The discovery of Gliese 581g made headlines around the world in September 2010, because the planet was said to orbit in the middle of its star's "habitable zone" — that just-right range of distances where liquid water, and perhaps life as we know it, could exist. Just a few weeks later, however, another prominent research team began...