IntellectBeat

The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (Beam) an expandable habitat crucial for future deep space exploration will be removed from the back of the SpaceX Dragon cargo ship on Saturday before installation on the Tranquility module that begins on early Sunday. However, the expansion of the new habitat module would not occur until late May for two years of habitability tests, US space agency Nasa said in a post. The 1,400 kg Beam is a $17.8 million project that will test the use of an inflatable space habitat in micro-gravity. Beam will be filled with air to expand four and a half times its original volume. SpaceX's Dragon cargo ship arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday and was successfully docked by the orbiting lab's robotic arm. A total of six astronauts are already on-board the ISS along with another US commercial cargo ship called Cygnus that has been attached to the station since March 26.  "Dragon's arrival marks the first time two com...

Intel Corp is planning to cut thousands of jobs this spring, including reducing headcount in some business units by double-digit percentages, news website Oregonlive said, citing sources inside the company familiar with the plan. The job cuts at the world's largest chipmaker this year will be considerably larger than the more than 1,100 US jobs eliminated last year, Oregonlive said. Intel is also looking to consolidate some operations and close some smaller outposts after a series of acquisitions Oregonlive said on Friday. The job cuts, which could also include top executive roles, could begin soon after the company reports its first-quarter results on Tuesday, Oregonlive said. Intel, which had 107,300 employees as of December 26, declined to comment. The company had said in 2014 it planned to reduce its global workforce by about 5 percent, or more than 5,000 positions, as it struggled with falling personal-computer sales and shifted focus to faster-growing areas. Last...

Social media website  Facebook  may soon add a news section to its Android and iOS smartphone apps that may look like Facebook Paper -- a standalone mobile app created only for iOS. Facebook confirmed to Mashable tech website that it is testing the new, sectioned news feed, in addition to the current format, though it is unclear if the feature would ever get an official launch. Some screenshots surfaced on Twitter on Friday, showing that a new layout of the mobile app that highlighted multiple news sections, with topics such as world and us, sports and food. "People have told us they would like options to see more stories on Facebook around specific topics they are interested in," a Facebook spokesperson was quoted as saying. "So we have been testing a few feeds for people to view more and different stories from people and Pages based on topic areas," the spokesperson added. The report said the move would encourage users to get more news from Facebook rather t...

Providing unprecedented insight into roles played by individual atomic and nano-scale features, researchers have recorded the first-ever videos showing how heat moves through materials at the nano-scale travelling at the speed of sound. The groundbreaking videos were made using a state-of-the-art ultrafast electron microscope called FEI Tecnai Femto, which is capable of examining the dynamics of materials at the atomic and molecular scale over time spans measured in femtoseconds (one millionth of a billionth of a second). According to the study, published recently in Nature Communications, the researchers used a brief laser pulse to excite electrons and very rapidly heat crystalline semiconducting materials of tungsten diselenide and germanium.  They then captured slow-motion videos (slowed by over a billion times the normal speed) of the resulting waves of energy moving through the crystals. "As soon as we saw the waves, we knew it was an extremely exciting observat...

Technology giant Apple is reportedly not planning to produce a large volume of the iPhone SE that it released last month to offset the slump of its flagship series, a report said. A report in business publication Nikkei Asian Review quoted the parts suppliers as saying that Apple would continue its reduced production of iPhones in the April-June period in light of sluggish sales. Apple apparently does not plan to produce a large enough volume of the small iPhone SE released last month to offset the slump of its flagship series, the report pointed out. Slow sales of the flagship iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus have forced Apple to lower production for the January-March quarter by about 30 per cent from the year-earlier period. With sales still not up to the mark, Apple told its parts suppliers in Japan and elsewhere that it would maintain the reduced output level in the current quarter. This prolonged production cut would affect the parts suppliers such as liquid crystal display pane...

A camera lens used by the commander of the 1971 Apollo 15 space mission both on the lunar surface and in orbit is up for auction. Boston-based RR Auction says the 12-inch long Zeiss Tele-Tessar 500mm f/8 lens could get more than $500,000 during the sale that starts Thursday. The lens was designed specifically for the Hasselblad Electric Data Camera used by astronaut David Scott to take nearly 300 photos. The silver lens is engraved near the mount with NASA part numbers. Special tabs were fitted to the rotational parts used to adjust the focus and f-stop to make them easier to use while wearing pressurized spacesuit gloves. The 83-year-old Scott says in a letter that accompanies the sale that NASA gave the lens to him as a memento.