SCIENCE BOND

Every search done this way will also be piped only through its recently released Edge browser.  In a blogpost, Microsoft said it was making people use Bing so they could get the most out of other search-related features in its products.  Many Cortana users have previously preferred to carry out searches with Google rather than Bing.  Windows users will still be able to install other web browsers and use other search engines outside Cortana, said Ryan Gavin, Microsoft's head of search and Cortana, in the blogpost.  However, he said, Microsoft was adding extras to Edge and Bing that meant it made sense to tie these programs to Cortana instead of other search engines and browsers. Anything else would be a "compromised experience that is less reliable and predictable", he said.  The extra features will differ depending on what people search for, but if someone used Cortana to look for a restaurant the browser would take them to the relevant webpage and ad...

He had to command a robot rover on Earth, driving it across a big sandpit in Stevenage, near London, that simulated the surface of Mars.  The Briton experienced some software glitches, but achieved his objectives.  These involved finding a series of painted targets in a darkened room that had been set up to represent a cave on the Red Planet.  It was all part of a European Space Agency (Esa) project which aims to learn how astronauts can control remote systems on other worlds.  Known as Meteron (Multi-Purpose End-To-End Robotic Operation Network), the programme has already seen Danish ISS crewman Andreas Mogensen get a robot on Earth to precisely place some pegs in a set of holes . But Major Tim's job, which got under way at 15:00 BST (14:00 GMT), took things up a notch in terms of complexity.One of his big obstacles was time. His control link had to transmit down to Earth, bounce through numerous communications nodes, before reaching the robot in its simulatio...

Until now, it was thought features of human sleep such as rapid eye movements were seen only in mammals and birds.  Now, a study of the bearded dragon - a popular pet - suggests these distinctive sleep rhythms emerged hundreds of million of years ago in a distant ancestor.  They could even have been present in dinosaurs, say scientists.  Some form of sleep has been described in everything from worms to people.  But the sleep phases of humans and birds are very distinctive, involving cycles of deep (slow-waGerman researchers recorded the brain activity of bearded dragons when they were sleeping. They found that similar to humans and other mammals, the reptiles showed cycles of eye movements and deep sleep.  However, while humans typically go through four or five 90-minute cycles of slow-wave sleep and REMs, the lizard sleep rhythm is faster and more regular, resulting in hundreds of much shorter cycles. And in lizards the activity seems to originate ...

Also called Hitomi, the satellite was launched in 17 February to observe X-rays coming from black holes.  Contact was lost with $273m satellite on 26 March sparking a scramble by Japanese scientists to find out what had happened.  The next time a similar satellite will be launched is in 2028 by the European Space Agency.  Hitomi was a joint effort between Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), NASA and other groups."We concluded that the satellite is in a state in which its functions are not expected to recover," Saku Tsuneta, director general of JAXA's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, told a press conference on Thursday. "JAXA will cease the efforts to restore ASTRO-H and will focus on the investigation of anomaly causes," the space agency said in a statement.  It added that it was likely two solar arrays had broken off their bases.  Until now, there was hope that the satellite could be recovered after JAXA said it had received three...

The increase is particularly pronounced among middle-age white people who now account for a third of all US suicides.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report did not offer an explanation for the steep rise.  However, other experts have pointed to increased abuse of prescription opiates and the financial downturn that began in 2008 as likely factors.  The report did not break down the suicides by education level or income, but previous studies found rising suicide rates among white people without university degrees.  "This is part of the larger emerging pattern of evidence of the links between poverty, hopelessness and health," Robert D Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard, told the New York Times.  CDC reported on Friday that suicides have increased in the US to a rate of 13 per 100,000 people, the highest since 1986. Meanwhile, homicides and deaths from ailments like cancer and heart disease have declined.  In t...

Hull, with an average of 12.4Mbps, is the UK's slowest city, according to comparison site uSwitch, which conducted the tests.  London and Edinburgh had average speeds of 22.4Mbps and 21Mbps respectively.  These speeds are likely to be low not because of lack of availability but because people have chosen not to take up faster services.  Government figures suggest superfast broadband - 24Mbps or higher - is now available to more than 90% of homes and businesses, with funding pledged to bring that total to 95% by 2017.  According to BT, its fibre services are available to 24 million home, but only 22% (5.5 million) have connected to them. Hull is the only UK city not served by BT's Openreach, which controls the telecoms network. Hull's independent supplier, KCOM, disputed the findings.  "We're rolling out ultrafast fibre to the home across Hull and East Yorkshire, which means speeds of 250Mbps are available to consumers right now," said a KCOM spokesman...

Mr Musk has long targeted a trip to Mars and has previously said he can get humans to the red planet by 2026.  His company, SpaceX, is planning "Red Dragon" missions to Mars to test technology for bigger missions.  In a tweet, Mr Musk said that its Dragon 2 spacecraft is "designed to be able to land anywhere in the solar system".  But Mr Musk "wouldn't recommend transporting astronauts beyond Earth-moon region" as the internal area of the spacecraft is only the size of a large car.  "Wouldn't be fun for longer journeys," he said in a tweet.SpaceX has been developing rockets and has a $1.6bn (£1.08bn) contract with Nasa to supply the International Space Station. On Wednesday it won an $83m contract from the US Air Force to launch a satellite for GPS navigation services.  It is a significant win for the company as, for the last decade, Lockheed Martin and Boeing have been supplying space launches for the military. Last Decembe...

Their "semantic atlas" shows how, for example, one region of the brain activates in response to words about clothing and appearance.  The researchers found that these maps were quite similar across the small number of individuals in the study, even down to minor details.  The work, by a team at the University of California, Berkeley, is published in the journal Nature.  It had previously been proposed that information about words' meaning was represented in a group of brain regions known as the semantic system.  But the new work uncovers the fine detail of this network, which is spread right across the outer layer of the human brain.  The results could eventually help those who are unable to speak, such as victims of stroke or brain damage, or motor neuron diseases. Volunteers - including lead author Alex Huth - listened to more than two hours of stories from a US radio programme while remaining still inside a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)...

According to the work in the Journal of Medical Entomology, the blood-sucking insects love black and red but hate yellow and green.  This information could help make better traps to lure and catch the bugs.  But it is too soon to say if yellow sheets can stop them nesting in your bed, say the US researchers.Bed bugs are tiny and they like to live close to their next meal - your blood. They can hide in the seam of your mattress or a joint in your bed frame. They tend to prefer fabric and wood over plastic and metal.  But Dr Corraine McNeill and colleagues wanted to find out if colours affected where bed bugs might dwell.  They carried out a series of experiments in their lab, placing bed bugs in dishes with different colour shelters made out of card. Rather than taking cover at random, the bugs appeared to select the shelters according to their colour, showing a preference for black and red.Dr McNeill said: "We originally thought the bed bugs might prefer red...

Sun Microsystems was a Silicon Valley giant Founded in the 80s, the company sold hardware and software to thousands of companies, and during the dot.com boom it was bringing in $5bn (£3.4bn) in revenue each quarter. But then the bubble burst, and the firm went into a catastrophic downward spiral. Its share price plummeted and, in 2010, the scraps of Sun Microsystems were bought up by Oracle — and that was that.  Six years on, I'm driving towards San Jose, past the Menlo Park headquarters of Facebook. On the side of the road, there's a big "Like" billboard, and you'll often find a bevvy of techy tourists waiting to have their picture taken in front of it - like some kind of social media Taj Mahal.  But most striking about the Facebook sign is what's on the reverse side: a logo for Sun Microsystems, the previous tenants at this location. It looks dirty and worn out, but it's very deliberate.  Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg apparently demand...

New study says that if the extra green leaves prompted by rising CO2 levels were laid in a carpet, it would cover twice the continental USA.  Climate sceptics argue the findings show that the extra CO2 is actually benefiting the planet.  But the researchers say the fertilisation effect diminishes over time.  They warn the positives of CO2 are likely to be outweighed by the negatives.  The lead author, Prof Ranga Myneni from Boston University, told  the extra tree growth would not compensate for global warming, rising sea levels, melting glaciers, ocean acidification, the loss of Arctic sea ice, and the prediction of more severe tropical storms.  The new study is published in the journal Nature Climate Change by a team of 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries. It is called Greening of the Earth and its Drivers, and it is based on data from the Modis and AVHRR instruments which have been carried on American satellites over the past 33 ...

High winds delayed the landing at Moffett Airfield, Mountain View, as pilot Bertrand Piccard flew in a holding pattern off the coast.  "The Pacific is done," he declared just before landing.  The latest leg of the round-the-world flight was the riskiest yet because of the lack of emergency landing sites.  Fellow pilot Andre Borschberg hugged Mr Piccard when he stepped from the cockpit.  Google boss Sergey Brin was also at the airfield to greet him. "It was a beautiful landing, we were right there watching," he said in a clip tweeted by the plane's media team."You know there was a moment in the night, I was watching the reflection of the moon on the ocean and I was thinking, 'I'm completely alone in this tiny cockpit and I feel completely confident'," Mr Piccard told reporters afterwards."And I was really thankful to life for bringing me this experience; it's maybe one of the most fantastic experiences of life I've had....

The Google-owned platform said select concerts from California's Coachella festival would be the first to use the virtual reality facility.  In addition, it announced videos on its service could now be enhanced with "spatial audio", which simulates the effect of sounds coming from different directions and distances.  One expert said the innovation could greatly enhance VR experiences.  The announcements were timed to coincide with the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference in Las Vegas, where several new virtual reality products are being launched.  GoPro, Adobe and Sky Italia are among those demoing new tech at the event.YouTube made it possible to play interactive 360-degree videos on its site just over a year ago. If viewed on a laptop, viewers can use a mouse to adjust their perspective. But if watched on a smartphone or VR headset, the experience becomes more immersive, as changes in viewpoint correspond to the movements of the device b...

They have a number of ideas that could fit as add-ons to US missions that are likely to be launched in the 2020s.  The concepts range from remote-sensing instruments to penetrators that would try to burrow beneath Europa's ice-encrusted surface.  Whatever option is chosen, it will first have to win the support of the European Space Agency.  The Paris-based organisation is about to issue a call for proposals to fill a medium-cost launch opportunity - and the invitation will cover the full gamut of space exploration, not just planetary science.  Nonetheless, there is an offer on the table to Esa from its American counterpart, Nasa, to participate in the Europa ventures. These missions will likely include a probe, to be launched in 2022, that will make repeated passes of the moon.  It is very probable also that Nasa will send another craft to make a soft landing. This could launch in 2022 with the first mission, or separately a couple of years later. ...

The new assessment adds further fuel to a debate on how dinosaurs were doing when a 10km-wide space rock slammed into Earth 66 million years ago.  A team suggests the creatures were in long-term decline because they could not cope with the ways Earth was changing.  The study appears in PNAS journal.  Researchers analysed the fossil remains of dinosaurs from the point they emerged 231 million years ago up to the point they went extinct.  To begin with, new species evolved at an explosive rate. But things started to slow about 160 million years ago, leading to a decline in the number of species which commences at about 120 million years ago.Dr Manabu Sakamoto, a palaeontologist from the University of Reading, who led the research, said: "We were not expecting this result." "Even though they were wiped out ultimately by the impact of the asteroid, they were actually already on their way out around 50 million years before the asteroid hit."  Dr Sakamoto's a...