SCI-TECH

ROBOTS THAT MAKE PIZZA AND PANCAKES

European research project, RoboHow, has developed robots called PR2
that use instructions to figure out how to make pizza and pancakes. The robot
chefs were on display at the High-Tech Systems 2015 fair in the Netherlands.

Vodafone to begin
4G roll-out this year
Indias second-largest mobile operator will offer 4G in four cities this year as it attempts to catch up with Bharti
Airtel, which already offers the service in 296 towns. Reliance Jio is also set to follow suit starting December
odafone India has said it will launch its
fourth-generation (4G) mobile telephony services by 2015-end, an announcement that comes days after
market leader Airtel announced plans
of its own.
The rollout will match the upcoming 4G
commercial launch by Reliance Jio, which is
planned for December.
Important data markets, including Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Kochi, will
be part of the first wave of the rollout, Vodafone India said in a statement.
In addition, Vodafone India will introduce
its own 3G networks in seven circles Assam,
the North-East, Uttar Pradesh-West, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Kerala and Odisha, to expand
its overall 3G footprint to 16 circles across the
country.
Testing of 4G services has commenced
successfully. Vodafone India has partnered
with leading global technology infrastructure
service providers for the network rollout, the
statement said.
Pan-India 4G services will be launched at
an appropriate time, it said.
Bharti Airtel on August 6 announced the
launch of its 4G mobile phone services to cover
nearly 300 towns in the coming weeks. The
launch came ahead of Reliance Jio, the telecom
arm of the cash-rich conglomerate Reliance Industries, starting 4G voice and data services in
December.
With some of the latest technological developments on the anvil, Vodafone is building
a robust and resilient network architecture
with a strong backhaul to support the volumes
and need for speed from customers, the Vodafone statement said.
Vodafone India had successfully acquired
additional 4G (LTE) spectrum in five circles
Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Kerala and Karnataka
in February 2014 auctions. These circles together contribute close to 50 per cent of the to-

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MOBILEAPP

BREAKNECK
Any game that comes out of the PikPok stable is almost
guaranteed to be great, and Breakneck is no different.
Similar to the also brilliant Race the Sun, this is a pod
racer where youre racing against time across beautiful 3D
worlds. Your aim is to go as far as possible, navigating
through tricky maze-like levels, racing out of areas where
everything is crumbling in front of you, and avoiding
capture. The best part is that the
games environment resets daily, so
youre always coming back to a new
challenge.
Breakneck is a free game available
for iOS devices. Scan the QR code
to go to the games App Store page.

Pune Mirror, Pune, August 29, 2015. Pp.14

Supermassive black
holes discovered in
quasar close to Earth

tal data revenues for the company.

Globally, Vodafone has launched 4G in 18
countries. There are over 20 million 4G customers across the group and its 4G propositions are enhanced with a mixture of music,
sports and TV content to increase adoption
and usage.
In preparation for the India rollout, Vodafone India had in 2014-15 set up a record number of over 23,000 tower sites, taking its overall
network footprint to more than 1,31,000 sites.
Over the last few months, Vodafone India
has taken several steps to modernise its radio
network and switching systems. Charging
platforms have also been upgraded to facilitate
a wider bouquet of products and services, it
said.
Major investments have been made in
high-capacity fibre/backhaul to significantly

increase the internet connectivity to the rest of

the world.
Vodafone India remains committed towards making significant investments in network expansion and for enhancing overall customer experience, the statement said.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN 3G AND 4G

4G is expected to bring substantially higher data rates, making HD video streaming over your
mobile network a possiblity, but the additional
infrastructure required to support 4G will also
bring improvements in voice services.
While a speed of 200 Kbps was mandatory
for a service to qualify as 3G, the minimum data
rate for 4G is 100 Mbps. There are various kinds
of 4G, from HSPA+ to LTE, the latter being the
fastest, especially for uploading data.
PMB

Instagram now supports portrait, landscape media layouts

nstagram has added new layout options in
addition to its signature square for pictures and videos in a bid to attract more advertisers and to stop users defecting to rival
services.
This is the first major alteration to the
photo-sharing, social media service since
Facebook bought it for $1 billion in 2012, and
addresses the wishes of many of its 300 million users, who have been constrained by the
square format.
It boils down to giving advertisers and
users more options, said analyst Debra Aho
Williamson. You want people to be able to
see more of your ad. It's something advertisers are definitely going to be interested in.
One in five photos and videos posted on
the service do not fit the square format, Insta-

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SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, 2015

Photos now appear without bands around them

gram said in a blog post.

Friends get cut out of group shots, the
subject of your video feels cramped and you
cant capture the Golden Gate Bridge from
end to end, it said.
From Thursday, Instagrams web-based
service and its Android and iOS apps will allow portrait and landscape formats, giving
both users and paying advertisers more options.
The move should help Instagram in its
battle with new rivals like Snapchat for users
in the fast-moving messaging and mediasharing market.
To promote the new photo formats, Walt
Disney released exclusive footage of its upcoming film, Star Wars: The Force Awakens,
using the new landscape option. AGENCIES

stronomers have found two supermassive

black holes in Markarian 231, the nearest quasar to Earth, using observations from NASAs
Hubble Space Telescope.
The discovery of two supermassive black holes
one larger one and a second, smaller one are
evidence of a binary black hole and suggests that
supermassive black holes assemble their masses
through violent mergers.
Xinyu Dai, professor in the Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Oklahoma, and Youjun Lu of the National
Astronomical Observatories of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, looked at ultraviolet radiation
emitted from the centre of the Mrk 231 from Hubble observations, then applied a model developed
by Lu to the spectrum of the galaxy.
As a result, they were able to predict the existence of the binary black holes in Mrk 231.
We are extremely excited about this finding
because it not only shows the existence of a close
binary black hole in Mrk 231, but also paves a new
way to systematically search binary black holes via
the nature of their ultraviolet light emission, said
Lu.
The structure of our universe, such as those giant galaxies and clusters of galaxies, grows by
merging smaller systems into larger ones, and binary black holes are natural consequences of these
mergers of galaxies, said Dai.
So over time, the two black holes discovered by
Dai and Lu in Mrk 231 will collide and merge to
form a quasar with a supermassive black hole.
A quasar is an active galaxy with an illuminated
centre, which is short-lived compared to the age of
the universe.
AGENCIES