China to test its bullet train next month

Chinese railway is all set to test its bullet train in the longest Beijing-Shanghai rail corridor next month, which is expected to cut the travel between the two cities by 13 hours.

The 1,318-km link will cut the journey between Shanghai and Beijing, separated by over 1300 km, to less than five hours from the current 18 hours, state-run Shanghai Daily reported.

The new line, which will open to the public on June 20, has been designed with a travel speed of 350kph and above.

A train logged 486.1kph during a previous test on a stretch between Shandong and Anhui provinces last year.

It is not yet known how much the tickets will cost. Flights between Shanghai and Beijing cost around 1,200 yuan (USD 185) at present with a journey time of one and a half hours.

The Shanghai-Beijing bullet train project is said to have cost 220.9 billion yuan (USD 33.6 billion), the highest expenditure on a national infrastructure project to date.

Significantly, the fast rail line between the two cities touted as the most prestigious, is being opened after the recent sacking of China's longstanding Railway Minister, Liu Zhijun in connection with a probe into suspected corruption.

Liu said last month that another 700 billion yuan (USD 106 billion) would be invested in construction this year to build more high-speed links and improve facilities.

China is also aggressively marketing its high speed rail technology in other countries. Recent reports said. Chinese high speed railway may make forays in Britain as the UK government has evinced interest besides California.

Disclaimer: All information on this news has been compiled from their respective official websites or through public domain sites and leading newspapers. Although, we have taken reasonable efforts to provide you with accurate information, but we assumes no responsibility for the accuracy (or inaccuracy) of the Information and would advise you to verify it from the official product provider. We cannot guarantee that the information on this page is 100% correct. If you would like to advertise on our site please contact us

Ink-jet printers inspire scientists to make skin

Ink-jet printing technology has inspired scientists to look for ways to build sheets of skin that could one day be used for grafts in burn victims, experts said.

One technique involves a portable bioprinter that could be carried to wounded soldiers on the battlefield where it would scan the injury, take cells from the patient and print a section of compatible skin.

Another uses a three-dimensional printer combining donor cells, biofriendly gel and other materials to build cartilage.

The 3-D printer was shown at work, building a prototype of an ear during a half-hour demonstration at a Washington science conference.

Hod Lipson of Cornell University in New York said it worked much like an ink-jet printer.

"It spits out plastic to gradually build an object layer by layer... after a couple of hours you end up with a real physical object that you can hold in your hand," he said.

"Just imagine -- if you could take cells from a donor, culture them, put them into an ink and recreate an implant that is alive and made of the original cells from the donor -- how useful that would be in terms of avoiding rejection," said Lipson.

Device to see under the skin for cancer signs

A researcher has developed optical technology that provides unprecedented images under the skin's surface.

The technology will detect and examine skin lesions (red rashes) to determine whether they are benign or cancerous without having to cut the suspected portion out of the skin and analyze it in a lab.

Instead, the tip of a roughly foot-long cylindrical probe is placed in contact with the tissue, and within seconds a clear, high-resolution, 3D image of what lies below the surface emerges.

"My hope is that, in the future, this technology could remove significant inconvenience and expense from the process of skin lesion diagnosis," says optics professor Jannick Rolland, from University of Rochester in the US, who developed the device.

"When a patient walks into a clinic with a suspicious mole, for instance, they wouldn't have to have it necessarily surgically cut out of their skin or be forced to have a costly and time-consuming MRI done," according to a Rochester University statement.

The device accomplishes this using a unique liquid lens setup developed by Rolland and her team for a process known as Optical Coherence Microscopy.

Latest Apps for ICC Cricket World Cup

Cricket is very much in the air, with the ICC World Cup getting underway in Bangladesh. And, just as for seemingly everything in life, there is an app—correction, 'are apps'—for the gentleman's game as well, designed to keep you in touch with proceedings, even if you are nowhere near a cricket stadium or even a television set. Yes, there are good old SMS alerts too—which are being offered by a number of service providers—but what makes these apps stand out is the fact that all of them are available for free of cost, and require nothing more than a decent GPRS/EDGE connection.

What's more, if you are really missing the action, there are apps that will let you have a slog of your own or bowl a few wrong 'uns without moving from your seat.

We cherry-pick seven of the best apps that will let you get your cricketing fix, whether in terms of action or information - no TV or cricket ground needed.

ESPN Cricinfo 
There is a saying in online cricket circles that "if it is not in Cricinfo, it is not cricket," such is the near encyclopedic information that Cricinfo serves up to its followers. By far the most popular cricket web site in the world, it too has revamped its cricket app for both Android and iOS, with now a special section added for the World Cup. In terms of sheer information about the game, it is difficult to get any better than this with news, statistics, audio and video clips, and even push notifications about your team being built into the app. Our favourite section is the ‘magazine’ which contains a number of excellent—often tongue-in-cheek—articles about the game. No, it is not going to stop us from visiting the site itself time and again, but if there is one cricket app you should have on your handset, this is it.

Get it from Android Market, iTunes App Store

ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 - Official 
This is the official app for the 2011 World Cup for iOS and Windows Phone 7 (alas, Indian users will not be able to get that version, unless they log in with a US ID), and while it is not the most attractive around (some player profiles do not have pictures of the players), it certainly delivers in terms of information. You have everything that you would need to keep tabs on the tournament from live match coverage together with text commentary, team statistics, team standings, video clippings and tournament photographs. What however is missing in this app is the news and features section, which is going to turn away a lot of purists who want a lot more than just live match coverage. We also could see no sign of any push notifications. Still, it is pretty zippy for those seeking to grab the latest score, stats and standings.

Get it from iTunes App Store, Windows Marketplace