My Science School

Pix's "first smart animative backpack" features a matrix of colour LEDs that lets you display pixelated images like video game characters, cartoons, sports team logos, music bands or funny pics uploaded from a free companion app on your phone via Bluetooth. You can also create your own images and animations in the app and upload them. Classic games like Tetris and Snake can be played on the backpack via the app. The bag can also display the time, weather and social media notifications. A cycling remote (available in a 'Cyclers Pack') can be used by bikers to communicate with drivers while riding on the road. The backpack lights up continuously for 12 hours, after which its 20,000 mAH battery needs to be charged with a power bank via a USB Type-A port. Weighing 1 kg, the water and shock resistant Pix has three outside zippered compartments and one inside main compartment, with space for a tablet, 15" laptop and more.

PIX is compatible with any 2A output & USB Type-A powerbank. A 20,000mAh powerbank, which will power PIX for about 12 hours, is also available for purchase through the Kickstarter campaign. With several separate compartments for ample storage space, PIX has plenty of room for a laptop, tablet and other belongings.

The Pix Inc. team is comprised of a group of innovators who focus on creating products that help consumers express their personality and customize their appearance on the go. The company brings an animative backpack to the market for energetic, creative people to emphasize their individuality. In addition to creating fun, functional and durable gear, Pix Inc. believes in inspiring others to communicate freely and continue to share their style and uniqueness. 

Credit : Market Insider 

Picture Credit : Google

NASA researchers are working to design a robotic bee that can fly on Mars. The idea is to replace modern rovers, which are slow, bulky and very expensive, with swarms of sensor studded, fast-moving micro-bots that can cover much more ground at a low cost.

Called Marsbees, the little bots are "flapping wing flyers of a bumblebee size with cicada-sized wings". The largest species of bumblebee grows to 1.6 inches; Cicada wings can vary from 1.2 inches to more than double that length.

Marsbees will not only map the Martian terrain but also collect samples of the planet's thin air, in hopes of finding methane gas- a possible sign of life.

Picture Credit : Google

When this spider senses its prey approaching from any direction, it turns to strike faster than a blink of an eye, taking just one-eighth of a second to make its spin. Flattie spiders make the fastest leg-driven turn of any land animal on the planet ranking among the fastest-turning animals, along with hummingbirds and fruit flies.

The flies turn at speeds of up to 3,000 degrees per second. They can even make three complete rotations in the time it takes to blink your eye. The leg closest to the prey is used as an anchor in the ground, allowing the spider to pull its body toward its prey. The legs opposite the prey simultaneously push off the ground to help. This combination achieves a twisting force that launches the spider into its spin.

Researchers hope that the spiders turn can help make robots and other machines more manoeuvrable.

Picture Credit : Google

Scientists have discovered about 50 giant footprints left behind by the world's largest dinosaurs dating back 170 million years. The prints are thought to be the oldest dinosaur fossils ever found in Scotland. The tracks were made in a muddy, shallow lagoon on the Isle of Skye. Most of the prints were made by long-necked sauropods, which stood up to 2 metres tall, and by similarly-sized theropods, the older cousins of Tyrannosaurus rex. The find is globally important as it is rare evidence of the Middle Jurassic period, from which few fossil sites have been found around the world.

They were made by long-necked sauropods and theropods, dinosaurs which stood up to two metres tall and were related to Brontosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex respectively.

About 50 footprints were discovered at Brothers' Point, a headland on Skye's Trotternish peninsula.

The largest was 70cm (27.5in) across, left by a sauropod, while the largest theropod track was around 50cm (19.6in).

Tidal conditions made studying the footprints difficult, but researchers were able to identify two distinct trackways in addition to many individual footprints.

Using drones to create a map of the site, the scientists also created 3D pictures using a pair of cameras and customised software.

Credit : Sky News

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We all have things we want to do, places we want to go to, movies we want to watch, books we want to read. Soon arranges your want-to-do's in beautiful lists, one for each category. The app pulls in additional information you'll need about that item, whether it's a movie's plot, photos, poster, or the phone number and address for a location, and more. Its 'City' function allows users to plan trips with friends. If you're looking for something to do, see what other users are adding to their lists. Free for iOS.

The app also offers a social element, allowing you to follow your friends on the service in order to see what they’re planning on seeing, reading or doing, for further inspiration. And in the case that you don’t have enough friends on Soon to make the social element compelling at first launch, a “trending” section will show the hottest items in your own neighborhood or city – a feature that could be useful when traveling, as well.

Ancher says he and his co-founder, Henrik Evrell, came up with the idea for Soon because they both felt that there isn’t a good way to track all the things you hear about on a daily basis that you want to try. “We started asking around and saw that the most common solution actually was the note app, which looked really messy,” he says.

Soon began as a passion project, as the two Stockholm-based founders currently work in the agency world. Ancher founded Most Studios, which is focused on digital design and communication for up-and-coming tech companies like Tinitell, Qapital and Flic. Henrik, meanwhile, is a co-founder of Seventy, a brand agency doing strategy, design, and film for bigger companies like H&M, Universal Music and OnePlus.

But now Ancher says the two of them, along with a couple of other developers who round out Soon’s team of four, will be focusing on Soon and moving away from agency work. They’ve even pulled in a small amount of angel funding – mostly a “friends and family”-type of round – in order to get Soon off the ground.

Credit : Tech Crunch 

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Streaming giant, Netflix, has developed its own custom font, Netflix Sans. This brings Netflix into a league of big technology companies with their own custom fonts Apple (San Francisco), Samsung (SamsungOne), Google (Roboto and Product Sans) and Microsoft (Segoe). Netflix previously used Gotham font, but chose to create its own font to create a unique identity, and because licensing Gotham for all Netflix's international marketing campaigns was getting expensive. The font will save the company "millions of dollars a year".

According to Netflix brand design lead Noah Nathan, the move away from Gotham and to creating a bespoke font was driven by escalating costs and the ability to make the identity more “ownable”.

“With the global nature of Netflix’s business, font licensing can get quite expensive,” Noah says. "Developing this typeface [also] created an ownable and unique element for the brand’s aesthetic.”

The typeface was created with both display aesthetics and more pragmatic functionality in mind, the uppercase proportions designed to appear “cinematic” and the lowercase proportions “compact and efficient”. Noah describes the letterforms as clean and neutral, “an approachable geometric grotesque”, eliminating excess and “favouring art over distraction”. The arched cut on the lowercase “t” is apparently inspired by the “cinemascopic curve” of the brand’s wordmark. Netflix Sans comes in different weights including regular, light, thin, medium, bold and black.

Credit : It’s Nice That

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If you’re tired of seeing all your previous searches pop up every time you search the Play Store, it may be time to clear your history. Not clearing your searches periodically may also impact the way the Play app performs. 

If you've searched for/downloaded tons of apps, you probably have plenty of entries in your download history. To remove search history, slide out the left menu and choose Settings > Clear local search history. To remove individual apps (that are uninstalled) from your history, open the left menu and choose My apps & games. Tap the Library tab, and you'll see a list of every app you've ever installed. Touch the X icon to remove an app from the list.

Did you know that Google Play saves every app you’ve ever downloaded, even if you deleted it from your device? The record of your downloads is kept in your Play account. While it may be convenient if you want to re-download an app you liked, why would you want to keep ones that you didn’t?

First, access the Play Store from your device. Tap on its icon from your Home screen or app drawer. Next, it’s time to go to your settings menu again. Tap your profile icon located at the upper right-hand corner of your screen. From your Play Settings menu, tap on My apps & device. Instead of staying on the Overview screen, tap on the Manage tab instead. Tap on the Installed tab then select Not installed from the pop-up menu. You will see a record of all the apps you’ve downloaded across all devices. If you use multiple devices, this may be a long list. To declutter this list, you may want to remove the apps that you don’t want to download again. To do this, select the app you want to remove and tap on the trash icon at the upper right corner of the screen. You can also make this process faster by sorting by recently added and/or alphabetically. Change the sorting style by tapping on the icon with three horizontal lines of varying lengths above the first app entry.

Furthermore, the Play Store helps streamline this process by letting you know which apps are not installed on the device you are currently on. To see this, sort by Recent.

Managing your apps may also be convenient if you use one Google account for a shared device like a tablet. Because it keeps a record of every single app you download, you may see all the apps your family members have ever tried. This may make it difficult to find apps to put on a new device. Since you have to sift through every app that’s ever been downloaded to your account, it may be frustrating to figure out which ones you actually need.

Credit : Tech Junkie 

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Messaging application, Snapchat, will roll out group video chat soon on iOS and Android. Enter an existing group chat or create a new group with users you wish to chat with. Tap the video icon to start a group video call. Each group member will be notified that they are invited to a call and, when they open the call, their name bubble will show up above the keyboard of the user who initiated the call. Upto 16 users can participate in group video chats simultaneously. Face lenses are available during group video chats.

Meanwhile, group audio chatting can support 32 friends at once.

Friends have the option to join a Group call just with voice too, or toggle between video and voice, if they aren't camera ready, the blogpost added.

With another new feature "Mentions", users can tag friends in the Snaps they add to their own Story.

"Group Video Chat" and "Mentions" will be rolling out globally over the next few weeks.

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 With the CLIK, Mymanu is trying to break down linguistic barriers. These Bluetooth-enabled earbuds can live-translate up to 37 languages, helping you interact with people speaking different languages in real time. When paired to the smartphone app Mymanu Translate, the earbuds automatically detect the language being spoken and provide a spoken translation. A charge on these earbuds lasts for upto 6 hours and can be easily amped up using the accompanying case. CLIK handles more than just translation. Its "unified music player" is a smartphone app that consolidates music from streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. The touch-control panel on both earbuds lets you access Google Assistant on Android and Siri on iOS, as well as adjust volume, music and answer calls and other notifications.

Incorporating APTX, Mymanu CLIK also enable users to listen to their favourite music. The earbuds are compatible with Apple and Android-based mobile devices, allowing users to make and receive phone calls and text at the touch of a finger and receive aural alerts.

Company founder, Danny Manu, said, “We’re incredibly proud to be the first and only company in the world to develop and demonstrate language recognising and translating in-ear earphones. When we first started developing this incredible product, back in 2012, our dream was to make language barriers a thing of the past - we’re now well on the way to achieving that goal.”

Credit : Deccan Chronicle 

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A photographer captured photo of a rare lunar rainbow or 'moonbow' illuminating the night sky in North Yorkshire, U.K. While not as spectacular as its daytime cousin the rainbow, a moonbow is produced when moonlight refracts through water droplets in the air. Moonbows are rarer than rainbows because a variety of weather and astronomical conditions have to be just right for them to be created. They are much fainter than rainbows, due to the smaller amount of light reflected from the surface of the moon.

Lunar rainbows are always in the opposite part of the sky from the Moon and most easily viewed when the Moon is nearly full.

They are relatively rare because they need a number of conditions to appear. The Moon must be less than 42 degrees high in the sky, the sky must be very dark and there must be rain falling opposite the Moon. Moon bows are more common near waterfalls.

The phenomena should not be confused with Moon rings, which appear like circles around the Moon. These are caused by the refraction of light through ice crystals suspended in the upper atmosphere.

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Birgus latro, or the Coconut Crab, has a crushing force few animals on the planet can rival. The crab, which lives on islands throughout the Indian and Pacific Oceans, can grow up to 18 inches long and weigh upto 4 kilos.

Using a stainless steel force measuring stick, Japanese researcher Shin-ichiro Oka calculated the crushing force of the crabs' large claw. Oka estimates that based on body size, the largest-known coconut crab could crunch with roughly 742 pounds of force about 90 times their body weight. "The pinching force of the largest coconut crab is almost equal to the bite force of adult lions," says Oka.

The pinch-force of the crab exceeds that of any other known crustacean. Among terrestrial animals and when adjusted for body size, the crab's size to crush ratio is second only to the bite of the saltwater crocodile, which has a bite force that rivals the dinosaur, Tyrannosaurus Rex.

So why does a crab need such a powerful tool? The crab sometimes eats coconuts, which require a massive amount of force to break open. Also, it has no shell to protect it, just a calcified outer skin, so the mega-claw acts as a threatening defensive weapon.

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When you let out a big yawn during a boring lecture, you succumb to a reflex universal among animals. Researchers from the State University of New York looked at the videos of 29 mammals yawning to calculate the average length of their yawns. The animals had their brain weight already documented in an earlier research.

Researchers realised that brain weight and the number of neurons in the outer layer of the brain, called the cortex, can reliably predict yawn length. Humans, with about 12000 million cortical neurons, had the longest average yawn, lasting a little more than 6 seconds. The yawns of tiny-brained mice, in contrast, were less than 1.5 seconds in duration.

Gorillas, horses, walruses and African elephants may be huge in size but they have shorter yawns than humans because their brain size is smaller compared with ours. The findings suggest that the length of yawn does not correlate to the size of the body but to the size of the brain.

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The latest version of Facebook's Android app adds a button below the text field when you're typing a post. Tap it to launch the Hindi editor and type your message using the English keyboard; Facebook will automatically transliterate the Roman characters to Hindi script. There's also a visual keyboard with Devanagari characters so you can correct mistakes and spell out proper nouns that aren't recognized. The tool will also remember the phrases a person uses the most.

The company says it built the feature in response to feedback from users who wanted an easier way to write in their native Hindi script on the social network.

It adds that it’s not yet perfect and you might encounter the ocassional error. That’s why there’s also there’s also a visual keyboard with Devanagari characters so you can correct mistakes and spell out proper nouns that aren’t recognized.

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LinkedIn allows students to apply for a range of positions with a single online standardized test that they can take through its 'Placements' program. The assessment test will help them qualify for openings at major companies, including HCL, Samsung, Airtel, Amazon and Cognizant. You can sign up for Placements with an existing LinkedIn profile or create a new one and take the test. Placements also hosts practice and learning material, so candidates are better prepared to take it. LinkedIn hopes that it will allow students in smaller towns and cities to apply for jobs in prominent companies just as easily as if they lived in major metros.

LinkedIn allows members (both workers and employers) to create profiles and "connect" with each other in an online social network which may represent real-world professional relationships. Members can invite anyone (whether an existing member or not) to become a "connection". LinkedIn can also be used to organize offline events, join groups, write articles, publish job postings, post photos and videos, and more.

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