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Philips has developed a lightbulb that connects to broadband networks and then lets iPhone users change the colour and brightness with an app.

The Philips ‘Hue’ lightbulb, which cost 179 pounds for a starter pack that includes broadband connection equipment and three bulbs, screw into existing sockets and use just 20 percent of the energy of conventional bulbs.

Users are then able to turn lightbulbs on or off or adjust their brightness from anywhere in the world - from their sofa or while on holiday, the Telegraph reported.

Philips claims that the new 50W (600 lumen) LED bulbs will give property owners the chance to deter burglars by remotely turning on lights, and will also allow them to save and adjust settings so that lights come on automatically, giving the impression that somebody is at home.

The bulbs will be available exclusively from Apple Stores, and Philips says users can “tune shades of white light or create any colour.”

Settings can be saved so that users can recreate “scenes” instantly, and also be adapted to form a backdrop to photographs.

Light themes, called ‘LightRecipes’ will also help users to adjust lights to complement the body’s biological response to light.

Philips claimed these “expert LightRecipes, four pre-programmed lighting settings based on Philips’ research around the biological effects that lighting has on the body, feature scenarios that adjust bulbs to the optimum shade and brightness of white light to help you relax, read, concentrate or energise.”

An autonomous flying robot that is as smart as a bird when it comes to manoeuvring around obstacles has been developed by an Indian-origin scientist and his colleagues.

Able to guide itself through forests, tunnels or damaged buildings, the machine could have tremendous value in search-and-rescue operations, researchers say.

Small flying machines are already common, and Global Positioning System (GPS) technology provides guidance. Now, Ashutosh Saxena from Cornell University and his team are tackling the hard part: how to keep the vehicle from slamming into walls and tree branches.

Human controllers can't always react swiftly enough, and radio signals may not reach everywhere the robot goes.

The test vehicle is a quadrotor, a commercially available flying machine about the size of a card table with four helicopter rotors.

Saxena and his team have already programmed quadrotors to navigate hallways and stairwells using 3-D cameras. But in the wild, these cameras aren't accurate enough at large distances to plan a route around obstacles.

So, Saxena is building on methods he previously developed to turn a flat video camera image into a 3-D model of the environment using such cues as converging straight lines, the apparent size of familiar objects and what objects are in front of or behind each other - the same cues humans unconsciously use to supplement their stereoscopic vision.

Researchers trained the robot with 3-D pictures of such obstacles as tree branches, poles, fences and buildings; the robot's computer learns the characteristics all the images have in common, such as colour, shape, texture and context – a branch, for example, is attached to a tree.

Researchers, including an Indian origin scientist, have developed a new technique to mass produce dramatically smaller and faster carbon nanotubes that can replace silicon chips in computers.

A carbon 'chip' with more than ten thousand working transistors and made of nano-sized tubes could replace silicon in computer chips to create smaller, faster circuits.

"These carbon devices are poised to replace and outperform silicon technology allowing further miniaturisation of computing components and leading the way for future microelectronics," IBM researchers said.

Due to rapid innovation over four decades, silicon microprocessor technology has continually shrunk in size and improved in performance, thereby driving the information technology revolution, the 'Daily Mail' reported.

However, their increasingly small dimensions, now reaching the nanoscale, have reached the limits of performance due to the nature of silicon and the laws of physics.

Experts believe that the future may be carbon nanotubes, as electrons in carbon transistors can move easier than in silicon-based devices allowing for quicker transport of data.

The nanotubes are also ideally shaped for transistors at the atomic scale, an advantage over silicon according to IBM's team.

"Carbon nanotubes, borne out of chemistry, have largely been laboratory curiosities as far as microelectronic applications are concerned," said Supratik Guha, Director of Physical Sciences at IBM Research.

"We are attempting the first steps towards a technology by fabricating carbon nanotube transistors within a conventional wafer fabrication infrastructure.

"The motivation to work on carbon nanotube transistors is that at extremely small nanoscale dimensions, they outperform transistors made from any other material," Guha said.

The Sony Xperia TL, is tipped for a release by AT&T later this November 2nd. AT&T has set the asking price of the Sony Xperia TL to be $99.99, where it will come with a new two-year agreement. The Sony Xperia TL will be featured in the upcoming 007 film, Skyfall, as part of Sony’s marketing campaign.

The Sony Xperia TL boasts of Sony’s best HD capture and viewing experiences, not to mention being able to share content across different devices courtesy of One-touch connectivity with near field communication (NFC).

For starters, the Sony Xperia TL will feature a 13-megapixel primary camera that is capable of capturing even the smallest of details to life. In addition, this high resolution fast capture camera will be able to enter the first shot from standby mode in a mere 1.5 seconds, which is enough to capture even some of life’s unexpected moments. Regardless of whether you are using the back or front facing cameras, either one are able to capture video in High Definition quality.

The Sony Xperia TL comes with a superb 4.6-inch HD Reality Display at 1280 x 720 resolution which is powered by the Mobile BRAVIA Engine. Should you want to watch content from your smartphone screen to the TV screen, the Xperia TL will be able to do so via HDMI with MHL support or wirelessly through DLNA. NFC technology will also allow the Xperia SmartTags for you to perform a range of customizable functions for different locations and situations.

Being part of the newest member of the Nexus family, the LG Nexus 4 will be available from next month onward in select markets. This also marks the first time that Google has worked with LG to build a Nexus device, having first partnered with HTC for their first Nexus, followed by the good people over at Samsung.

The LG Nexus 4 is no pushover in terms of hardware specifications for sure, where it will carry a high performance 8-megapixel camera which is capable of capturing stunning Photo Sphere images that lets you shoot photos in every direction which will come together later on. Not only that, you will be able to upload the photos using Instant Upload to the cloud, ensuring that you never need to suffer from the indignation of losing a captured image ever again.

In terms of its display, the Nexus 4 sports a vibrant 4.7” True HD IPS Plus display at 1280 x 768 pixels resolution that is supported by Zerogap Touch technology. There will be gently curved glass edges that enables your finger to slide smoothly on and off the 320ppi screen that incidentally is protected by scratch resistant Corning Gorilla Glass 2.

Other than that, the LG Nexus 4 will also run on a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, accompanied by 2GB RAM and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean right out of the box, in addition to the latest Google apps such as the newest version of Google Now which is built-in. There is no word on pricing, but it should reside on the high end side of things for sure.

The unmanned SpaceX capsule returned to Earth today after successfully delivering its first commercial payload to the International Space Station commanded by Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams.

The Dragon spacecraft parachuted into the Pacific at 0052 IST after an 18-day mission to resupply the station with payload including hardware, supplies, and a GLACIER freezer packed with scientific samples.

The capsule made a safe splashdown in the Pacific waters successfully and is now being recovered by a team of divers, US-based SpaceX said in a statement.

"This historic mission signifies the restoration of America's ability to deliver and return critical space station cargo," said SpaceX CEO and Chief Technical Officer Elon Musk.

"The reliability of SpaceX's technology and the strength of our partnership with NASA provide a strong foundation for future missions and achievements to come," he said.

The mission - the first of 12 planned trips in SpaceX's USD 1.6 billion contract with US space agency NASA -- is a milestone for American efforts to privatise the space industry, aimed at reducing costs and spreading them among a wider group than governments alone.

The capsule delivered about 450 kilogrammes of cargo to the space station and is taking home 758 kilogrammes of supplies, hardware and scientific tests and results.

Dragon is the only craft capable of returning a significant amount of supplies to Earth, and this mission marks the first time since the space shuttle that NASA has been able to return research samples for analysis.

The crewmates on-board the International Space Station are astronaut Sunita Williams, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, Russian cosmonauts Evgeny Tarelkin and Oleg Novitskiy and NASA astronaut Kevin Ford, all flight engineers.

It could be decades before man steps foot on Mars, but scientists have warned that if he ever does, he'll bring with him trillions of tiny invaders that pose danger of contaminating the Red planet.

Scientists say a swarming mass of 100 trillion microbes will travel with every astronaut who may land on Mars.

While these microbes have evolved over thousands of years to help humans do everything from digesting their food to keeping bacteria from killing them, there's no telling how they might interact with the Martian environment, the Daily Mail reported.

"We have the responsibility to Mars, I think even if it's just Martian microbes not to kill them by the act of detecting them," said Cynthia Phillips of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute.

"If you have human astronauts there, there's no way to sterilise them. They're spewing out thousands of microbes every second. So it's a real problem," Phillips said.

Even if a man on Mars is decades away, at best, space agencies are already thinking about ways to minimise contamination risks.

The Committee on Space Research even established a protocol in 2008, aiming to protect Earth from any contamination from Mars and vise versa.

The plan also advises avoiding gullies, potentially geothermal sites, and any other region where Earth life could survive.

While mechanical pioneers like NASA's Curiosity rover which landed on August 5 this year can be cleaned enough that they only carry no more than 300,000 bacterial spores on any surface that could transfer to the Martian environment, there's no way to get human explorers that clean, the paper said.

Researchers have designed a new ball camera that can produce a 360-degree view of a place and could help fire-fighters or security teams scout out the potentially dangerous environments they are about to enter.

Researchers from the Boston-based startup Bounce Imaging, developed a device containing a clump of cameras, electronics and LEDs packed into a rubber shell the size of a tennis ball.

The device contains six cameras. When the ball is thrown into an unknown area, the cameras take two photographs per second and send them to a smartphone or laptop, where software knits the images into a 360-degree view of the room, the 'New Scientist' reported.

The cameras capture light in the near-infrared range, and the device comes equipped with infrared LEDs, allowing it to build a full panorama of a scene even if it is poorly lit.

Bounce founder Francisco Aguilar says the idea for the device came to him after the Haiti earthquake in 2010. He saw the need for a reconnaissance device that would be useful in environments like the damaged buildings of Port-au-Prince.

At a few hundred dollars, Bounce is much cheaper than the existing technologies used to image the inside of unknown areas. This means officers won't have to worry about breaking the equipment, the report said.

Aguilar suggests that a future version of the device might have a Geiger counter to get initial readings on suspected radioactive areas.

The device is still a prototype, but Aguilar says the finished product will be tested by the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams and Massachusetts police departments in January.

Three in four teachers worry that easy access to hardcore pornography through mobile phones and the internet is “damaging” their students, a research has revealed.

According to research, girls as young as 11 are dressing like “inflatable plastic dolls” while young boys are developing “almost pathological” attitudes to sex as a result, the Daily Mail reported.

Some boys even admitted to being unable to go to sleep without first watching porn while others are obsessed with getting a perfect body shape.

The study revealed escalating concern about children’s exposure to sexual images.

Teaching staff has warned that children are developing twisted views of relationships, as they feel pressured to perform sex acts, use derogatory sexual language and even consider plastic surgery.

The teachers also blamed books and television programmes with overtly sexual themes, such as the hit novel ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ and TV series ‘The Only Way Is Essex,’ for the increased sexualisation of under-16s.

A third of more than 500 teachers surveyed by the Times Educational Supplement said that they believed the majority of their pupils aged 16 and under, “regularly” viewed hardcore pornography.

Most of the teachers questioned were from secondary schools but some were from primaries.

“Children from as young as Year Seven (aged 11) are becoming over-sexualised. They feel under lots of pressure to perform sex acts,” one teacher said.

Another added, “Very overly sexualised language is becoming the norm when speaking to each other, and more so about each other.”

Some teachers warned that watching pornographic material had resulted in “awful” behaviour of boys towards young women.