Author: Edward Ramamoorthy

So far we have seen robots entering hazardous nuclear plants and dangerous buildings and repairing things that cannot be repaired by humans. Now engineers at Sandia Labs have created a new rescue bot that’s explicitly designed to enter and investigate collapsed mines. The Gemini-Scout robot is just two feet tall and less than four feet in length and packs a set of gas sensors, a thermal camera and a two-way radio, allowing it to detect dangerous underground materials and relay critical information to above-ground rescue workers. The bot can also navigate across rocky terrain, tight quarters, or flooded tunnels, and is sturdy enough to carry food and other supplies to trapped miners. Operators, meanwhile, can manipulate the Gemini-Scout using only an Xbox 360 controller, which was incorporated into the system on the strength of its intuitive design and UI. Sandia’s engineers demoed their bot last week in DC and are hoping to begin licensing it to rescue agencies by the end of next year.

The Cyberbike for Nintendo Wii crosses the finish line and available now in North America this time around, relying on, surprise magnetic resistance to offer a costly workout for those under 286 pounds. The oversized device is available now for $199.99 (both bike and game combo), puts it a bit too far above the cost of actual console ($150) for us to consider giving it a shot. We have already committed to biking downtown for our eventual Wii U pickup. For more details read the press release

The robot named Showa Hanako 2, this humanoid was originally developed last year as a tool for dentists looking to practice new procedures. Now the engineers at Japans Showa University have updated their dental denizen, adding a motorized head and replacing her PVC skin with a more realistic silicon coating. She also features speech recognition capabilities and executes natural movements, it includes blinking, sneezing, coughing, and more unsavory circumstances, even chocking. Dont forget to see her in action at the video

DBAs faced data fragmentation issues frequently. Data fragmentation affects the database performance. In production database, we need to follow any one of the below method to solve the fragmentation issue.

An app priced $6 for an iPhone, Aston Martin Experience displays the speed and Gs you film your drive behind the wheels. The British automakers latest app includes top roads-most of them Europe. The AutoBlog paired the app with a loner Rapide, driving up Californias Aston approved Pacific Coast Highway. The reviewers may have spent more time focusing on the car than the app. Aston claims that the Experience can be had with any other car, but if you are looking to get the experience spend some $6 and click on the source link

Hackers seemed to have vowed to disrupt the Brazilian governments security machinery and have attacked the government institute of geographic and statistics, making third attack in three days. Hacked IBGE, the hackers also depicted the Brazilian national flag with an eye in it. The hack is carried out by a group called Fail Shell. They added that the hack is a form of protest from a nationalist group, who wish to make Brazil a better country. The official sites from Brazil suffered attacks from LulzSec and some anonymous. According to the Brazilian government the attacks only affects only home portal, and the database is still available for the users.

Social Networking giant Facebook has made an announcement that it would be rolling out its latest service, Facebook Credits. The service is set to be launched in 13 countries includes Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Indonesia, India, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Portugal, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, UK, US, Venezuela. It starts from July 1st 2011, it intends to be used as an alternative payment option on social networking giant, and it will be supported by Live Gamer. The Credits would allow users to buy virtual currency and virtual goods that are available in Facebook apps.

The XC2V FLYPMode is one imposing looking vehicle, also called as Experimental Crowd-derived Combat Support Vehicle. DAPRA has billed this mean machine as the first crowd-sourced, military relevant vehicle design. After being selected as a winning entry to DAPRAs design competition, Local Motors tricked it out in just 14 weeks. We wont see this thing driving dirty in the desert anytime soon. Dont forget to look at the video

The team of researchers from University of Minnesota has found a way to harness energy from our hot castoffs. The group has apparently created a brand spanking new alloy that spontaneously creates energy when its temperature raised by a small amount. Future uses a material Ni45Co5Mn40Sn10 include charging a hybrid car battery with the help of waste heat from its exhaust. The material is a phase changer; it can go from non-magnetic to magnetic in moments, when the temperature rises. They also try to get the waste heat from computers. Dont forget to check out the video

According to Billboard, HPs discussions with major record labels about a cloud-based service of some sort are now heating up, that is not meant as actual launch is imminent. One major label executive says Billboard that the service could be something like Qriocity for a variety of media, which can be delivered on any HP device, We dont know how serious they are, which is not exactly encouraging thing to hear. Some of them told HP could launch such a service, while some other sources say that HP is still trying to narrow down what their service look like.

In this article we will learn about different RAC Background Processes in Oracle.The Five RAC background processes that will be covered in this article areLock Monitor Processes ( LMON), Lock Monitor Services (LMS), Lock Monitor Daemon Process ( LMD), LCKn ( Lock Process), DIAG (Diagnostic Daemon)

Acer now founding itself grappling with data breach, it has reportedly cost in the details of over 40,000 customers. The details includes their names, emails addresses, phone numbers, addresses, also names of products purchased by the customers. As Hacker News said that the Hacking group are from the Pakistan Cyber Army is a well-known hacking outfit. Still the attack is unclear, hacker themselves have assured that for a press conference.

Japans NHK Science & Technology Laboratories has announced a new animated translation system to help get important news for deaf viewers. While televised subtitles may work for those who understand the language, people who are born deaf and learned sign language from an early age can significantly more difficulty. The system unveiled at Technology Open House 2011, bypasses this problem by automatically comparing Japanese text to sign language, converting equivalent words into animated onscreen gestures, and replacing differing words with appropriate synonyms. The ultimate goal is to create a system that could be used during emergencies or natural disasters, allowing deaf people to receive urgent broadcasts as instantly as their hearing competitors. Dont forget to look at the video

Twitter announced its own integrated photo-sharing service, will launch over the next several weeks, and lets you upload the images and attach it directly to tweet from Twitter. The functionality is going to hit the mobile apps soon. The service is parented through the Photobucket to actually host the photos. The Twitter also announced the complete new version of Twitter Search is related to photos and videos that will be displayed nest to your results. Hit on the demo video.

Last week I migrated some schemas from 11g database (11.1.0.6) to 9i database (9.2.0.8). I used to export the 11g schemas using oracle 9i binary & exported successfully. While importing 11g schemas into 9i database I faced below issues.Error: import done in US7ASCII character set and AL16UTF16 NCHAR character setSegmentation Fault (coredump)

The Security nightmare just continues, plenty of Sonys executives beginning to wish someone would pinch them already. It taken a PR and financial beating over the PSN breach, now the Greek site of Sony BMG has been hacked and account info of thousands of users has been posted online. According to Naked Security, the attack does not appear to have been particularly sophisticated and was carried out using an automated SQL injection tool that demands more patience and skill. The dump reveals usernames, real names, and email addresses of Sony registered users (SonyMusic.gr customers), other fields including passwords, telephone numbers are either empty or contain fake data suggests that hack was not entirely successful.

The first standardized and hardware platform for peer-to-peer automobile communication called C2X, the module inside is the product of Choda Wireless and near-field communications at NXP, and it uses 802.11 Wi-Fi to let equipped cars see another around blind corners, through other vehicles, chat with traffic signals up to a mile away. Pocket-lint got a look at the technology during Automotive week, and its a good idea of when we expect the tech; NXP says it will begin rolling out in 2014 and hopes every cars will get it by 2020. For more details read the press release.

D-Wave One is the first commercially available quantum computer, its 128-qubit processor can only handle very specific tasks and is easily outperformed by traditional CPUs, it represents a revolution in the field of supercomputing. D-Wave scale up to thousands or tens-of- thousands of qubits, complex number theory problems, and cryptographic systems can crumble before the mighty power of quantum annealing. The Price seems to be large at $10,000,000. Hit one the source link to know more about D-Wave One