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NASA skeptical on sabotage theory after mystery ISS leak

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Washington: NASA expressed doubts Wednesday over a theory floated in Russia that a tiny hole that caused an air leak on the International Space Station was the result of sabotage. The breach detected on August 29-30 in a Russian space craft docked at the orbiting station was not the result of a manufacturing defect, according to the Russian space agency, which says it is investigating the possibility that it was drilled maliciously. But NASA, the US space agency, countered in a statement that ruling out defects "does not necessarily mean the hole was created intentionally or with mal-intent." Russian space agency Roscosmos immediately launched an investigation into the hole, and its chief official Dmitry Rogozin went on television days later to say it could have been the result of foul play either back on Earth or by astronauts in space. "Where it was made will be established by a second commission, which is at work now," said Rogozin, a...
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Einstein´s 'God letter' to go on sale for $1mn

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New York -A handwritten letter from Albert Einstein about his thoughts on God, religion and his search for meaning is to go on sale in New York, valued at up to $1.5 million, Christie´s said Wednesday. Written a year before the legendary physicist died in 1955, his name synonymous with genius, Einstein writes in German from Princeton, New Jersey to German philosopher Eric Gutkind. "The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends," writes the physicist, best known for his theory of relativity. "No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change anything about this." The one-and-a-half-page letter will go on sale on December 4, estimated by Christie´s to fetch between $1 million and $1.5 million. The letter was previously offered at auction in 2008, bought by a private collector for $404,000, Christie´s said. "It i...
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Japan Nobel winner vows to continue research to ´save more patients than ever´

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Tokyo: The Japanese scientist who Monday won the Nobel Prize for medicine vowed to continue his cancer treatment work to help as many sufferers as possible, saying treating patients gave him more pleasure than any award. "I want to continue my research ... so that this immune therapy will save more cancer patients than ever," Tasuku Honjo told reporters at Kyoto University where he is based. He described his feelings of "immense joy" when people told him they had recovered from severe illnesses due to his work. He said a member of his golf club, whom he did not know well, came up to him one day and thanked him, saying: "Thanks to your medicine. I had lung cancer and I thought I was playing my last round of golf, but now I am able to play golf again." "When you hear things like that, there is no greater happiness. I have never been happier than that. Honestly, no award can replace that. I felt it was enough," said Ho...
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2018 Nobel Medicine Prize awarded for cancer research

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Stockholm: Two immunologists, James Allison of the US and Tasuku Honjo of Japan, won the 2018 Nobel Medicine Prize for research that has revolutionised the treatment of cancer, the jury said on Monday. The pair were honoured "for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation," the Nobel Assembly said. Immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy targets proteins made by some immune system cells, as well as some cancer cells. The proteins can stop the body´s natural defences from killing cancer cells. The therapy is designed to remove this protein "brake" and allow the immune system to more quickly get to work fighting the cancer. Allison, a professor at the University of Texas, and Honjo, a professor at Kyoto University, in 2014 won the Tang Prize, touted as Asia´s version of the Nobels, for their research. The duo will share the Nobel prize sum of nine million Swedish kronor (about $1.01 million or 870,000 euros)....
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South African lion cubs conceived artificially in world first

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Watching the two little lion cubs boisterously play with each other at a conservation centre outside of South Africa's capital Pretoria, it's hard to see anything out of the ordinary. But these cubs are unique. "These are the first ever lion cubs to be born by means of artificial insemination - the first such pair anywhere in the world," announced the University of Pretoria, whose scientists are researching the reproductive system of female African lions. The two cubs, a male and female, born on August 25 are healthy and normal, said Andre Ganswindt, the director of the University of Pretoria's mammal research institute. His team's breakthrough came after 18 months of intensive trials. "We collected sperm from a healthy lion," Ganswindt told AFP. Then when the lioness' hormone levels were found to be viable, she was inseminated artificially. "And luckily it was successful," said Ganswindt, adding tha...
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The scandals bedevilling Facebook

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PARIS: Facebook is at the centre of controversy yet again after admitting that up to 50 million accounts were breached by hackers. Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said engineers discovered the breach on Tuesday, and patched it on Thursday night. "We don’t know if any accounts were actually misused," Zuckerberg said. "We face constant attacks from people who want to take over accounts or steal information around the world." Facebook reset the 50 million breached accounts, meaning users will need to sign back in using passwords. It also reset "access tokens" for another 40 million accounts as a precautionary measure. Here is a roundup of the scandals dogging the social media giant. Cambridge Analytica  In Facebook’s telling, everything goes back to 2013 when Russian-American researcher Aleksandr Kogan creates a personality prediction test app, "thisisyourdigitallife", which is offered on the social network....
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Workplace messaging startup Slack eyes 2019 IPO

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Workplace collaboration software firm Slack is actively preparing for a share offering in early 2019, which be the largest in the tech sector since Snap´s debut last year, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday. Citing unnamed sources, the newspaper said Slack is aiming for an initial public offering (IPO) in the first half of the year that would value the California startup at well above the $7.1 billion it reached in its most recent funding round. The company declined to comment, with a spokesman saying "Slack does not comment on rumors or speculation." In August, the company raised $427 million to give it a valuation of some $7.1 billion, making it one of the most richly valued "unicorns," or startups with private funding worth at least $1 billion. Slack, which offers real-time messaging for the workplace, said in its announcement it has more than eight million daily active users and more than 70,000 "paid teams" that subscri...
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