The Korea Herald

Seoul set to launch space rocket on Nov. 29

South Korea plans to launch the Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1 (KSLV-1) next week in its third attempt to send a rocket into space from its own soil, a government committee said Thursday."Nov. 29 has been set as the candidate launch date," the Naro Launch Preparation Committee said in a released statement. "The possible time of the launch will be between 4 and 6:55 p.m. with the actual time to be decided on the launch date."It said, however, that both the date and time were still tentative as bad

Nov. 22, 2012

ZTE sees Korean market test bed for global match

China’s No. 1 smartphone maker ZTE Corp. said it will target the Korean niche-market of smartphones, calling its Korean operation a screen-test for the global war against Korean tech titans such as Samsung and LG.Currently the Chinese handset firm targets the low-cost, third-generation device sector of the Korean smartphone market. In contrast to public opinion that Korea has completely switched over to Long Term Evolution devices, about 10 percent of customers in Korea are still willing to purc

Nov. 21, 2012

ZTE sees Korean market test bed for global match

Big-box retailers take on Internet

Big-box retailers are confronting their Internet competition head-on this holiday season.As the peak shopping period kicks off this week, Target and Best Buy will be leading the charge against Amazon and other Internet rivals by matching prices that shoppers find online.“The holiday is evolving,” said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at NPD Group. “It’s a paramount issue and retailers had to respond.”The first-time offer is a reaction to the practice known as “showrooming,” in which consume

Nov. 21, 2012

Samsung’s smartphone shipments forecast to top 60m in Q4

HONG KONG (Yonhap News) ― Samsung Electronics Co.’s smartphone shipments will likely exceed 60 million units in the fourth quarter of this year, proving its prowess in the world’s mobile phone market despite its ongoing patent war with Apple Inc., an investment bank said Wednesday.UBS estimated that Samsung Electronics will sell 61.5 million units of smartphones in the October-December period, up 5 percent from an estimated 58 million in the previous quarter. The number could reach as high as 63

Nov. 21, 2012

Samsung pulls controversial ‘puppy abuse’ video

IT giant Samsung Electronics is in hot water after it depicted people beating puppy-shaped computers in a controversial online video clip.Samsung posted a promotional video titled “Don’t Give Up On Puppy Love” on YouTube for its latest solid-state storage “840” series.The video portrayed computers as puppies with imaginary ears, eyes and mouth. In the video, owners of these “puppy” computers beat them with a shoe, throw them off a cliff or shoot them with a bow and arrow when the computers get s

Nov. 21, 2012

Samsung pulls controversial ‘puppy abuse’ video

SSD is expected to be more popular next year

The next-generation storage device, solid-state drive, or SSD, is expected to become more popular next year thanks to its rapidly falling price, a report said.The report by iSuppli, a U.S.-based market researcher, said the global SSD sales volume in the third quarter of 2012 reached 15.5 million units, a 137 percent increase from the same period last year.SSDs have better stability and speed compared to conventional hard disk drives. Since these specifications are most important for storage devi

Nov. 21, 2012

SSD is expected to be more popular next year

Facebook users going to secure connections

Facebook says it is moving all users to secure HTTPS browser connections to help block attacks over WiFi networks.HTTPS, a secure version of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol with which browsers connect with websites, encrypts data as it is transferred, making it harder to see for potential attackers on the same wireless network.First adopted by financial institutions and on-line shopping sites, HTTPS is becoming widespread among Web services, PC World reported.Facebook offered HTTPS as an option

Nov. 21, 2012

Facebook users going to secure connections

AIDS recedes as home-grown funding exceeds international aid

Spending on AIDS by the countries hit hardest by the disease exceeded foreign aid for the first time last year, as developing nations lessened their dependence on rich countries that curbed donations to battle deficits.Low- and middle-income countries have doubled spending on AIDS to $8.6 billion since 2005, compared with international funding for the disease that stalled at $8.2 billion last year, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, or UNAIDS, said in its annual report on the epidem

Nov. 20, 2012

Kakao seeks 1 million partners with new apps

Mobile communication venture firm Kakao launched three new mobile service platforms on Tuesday, aiming to secure at least 1 million individual and group partners in three years. Before the launch, Kakao had 31 mobile game partners and 260-some “plus friend” partner companies. In unveiling the new applications ― Kakao Page, Story Plus and Chatting Plus ― the mobile venture tech firm is poised to convert itself from customer-centered social servant to a powerful marketing-booster to its business p

Nov. 20, 2012

Kakao seeks 1 million partners with new apps

‘Going to day care ups chance of obesity for children’

Children going to day care have a higher risk of being obese, a study by University of Montreal researchers claimed.In the study published recently in the Journal of Pediatrics, lead researcher Marie-Claude Geoffroy said children regularly attending day-care centers have a 50 percent higher chance of being obese than those staying home with parents. “We found that children whose primary care arrangement between 1.5 and 4 years was in day-care centers or with an extended family member were around

Nov. 20, 2012

‘Going to day care ups chance of obesity for children’

Infants fed fish may reduce asthma risk

Fish added to an infant‘s diet during the first year may reduce his or her risk of asthma, researchers in the Netherlands suggest.Jessica C. Kiefte-de Jong of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam and colleagues at the Department of Human Nutrition in Wageningen, the Netherlands, said infants who ate fish between the ages of 6 and 12 months might have a lower risk of developing asthma later, but those who ate fish before six months or after 12 months did not seem to gain the same benefit.The r

Nov. 20, 2012

Alcohol during pregnancy found to hurt IQ

Moderate drinking by a pregnant woman -- six drinks a week or fewer -- can affect a child‘s IQ, researchers in Britain say. Dr. Ron Gray of the University of Oxford and colleagues at the University of Bristol used data involving more than 4,000 mothers and their children in the Children of the 90s study -- which tracks health and development of the parents and their children over a generation. The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, found four genetic variants in alcohol-metabolizing genes

Nov. 20, 2012

Rare image of distant exoplanet captured

Astronomers using an infrared telescope in Hawaii say they've captured a rare image of a "Super-Jupiter" around a massive distant star.Of the nearly 850 exoplanets discovered orbiting stars other than the sun, only a few have been captured in actual astronomical images.Most are detected by indirect means, since stars are much brighter than their planets and with traditional observational techniques the planet will be hidden in the glare of its host star.Obtaining an image of the planet orbiting

Nov. 20, 2012

Having younger siblings leads to high blood pressure

Children who have younger siblings tend to have high blood pressure, according to U.S. researchers. A study suggested this is caused by competition with their siblings to attract their parents’ attention and feeling responsible for the younger ones. Also, it was revealed that their blood pressure continues to stay high into adulthood. The research was on 374 adult Bolivians in 200 families. The researchers studied connections among factors including siblings’ age and sex. Older sisters and broth

Nov. 20, 2012

Having younger siblings leads to high blood pressure

Happiness in youth leads to wealth in adulthood: study

They say that money cannot buy happiness, but perhaps it may work the other way around: A new study by scientists in Britain suggests that happy youngsters have a higher possibility of becoming rich adults.According to a study by Jan-Emmanuel De Neve of University of College and professor Andrew Oswald from the University of Warwick, people who reported higher life satisfaction when young were more likely to have a higher income than their depressed counterparts. In the study, researchers evalua

Nov. 20, 2012

Phone screen responds to different touches

A U.S. computer scientist says he‘s developed a prototype smartphone with a touchscreen that can sense touches from different parts of the hand.Chris Harrison at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh says the screen can distinguish between touches from the knuckle, fingertip and even a fingernail, and initiate different phone action based on the hand part used, NewScientist.com reported.Harrison’s modified Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone senses the acoustic and vibrational differences between t

Nov. 20, 2012

Phone screen responds to different touches

Paralyzed dogs walk after cell transplant

CAMBRIDGE, England (UPI) -- A revolutionary transplant operation has allowed paralyzed dogs to walk again and may also benefit paralyzed human patients, British scientists said.Researchers at the University of Cambridge said the pet dogs had all suffered serious damage to their spinal cords that left them unable to walk normally with their hind legs.After specialized cells from the dogs’ noses were transplanted to the damaged nerves, most of the pets recovered their lost mobility and some were a

Nov. 20, 2012

Paralyzed dogs walk after cell transplant

Ban ‘killer robots,’ rights group urges

Hollywood-style robots able to shoot people without permission from their human handlers are a real possibility and must be banned before governments start deploying them, campaigners warned Monday.The report “Losing Humanity” -- issued by Human Rights Watch and Harvard Law School‘s International Human Rights Clinic -- raised the alarm over the ethics of the looming technology.Calling them “killer robots,” the report urged “an international treaty that would absolutely prohibit the development,

Nov. 20, 2012

Red Bull linked to three deaths in Canada

Energy drinks have caused three Canadian teenagers to die and have had serious side effects on 35 other Canadians since 2003, Health Canada documents show.The three male teens, two 15-year-olds and an 18-year-old, died after drinking Red Bull, The Toronto Star reported. Red Bull also appears in more side-effect reports than any other similar product.Health Canada and the energy drink companies said side-effect reports show only a suspected connection between a product and side effect but no medi

Nov. 20, 2012

Red Bull linked to three deaths in Canada

The number of people with alcohol-induced psychiatric disorders is growing, particularly in men in their 60s.According to the National Health Insurance Corporation, the number of patients with mental illnesses brought on by excessive drinking has increased from 66,196 in 2007 to 78,357 in 2011 on the annual average of 4.3 percent. Men in their 60s had the highest prevalence rate of alcoholic mental disease with 583 per 100,000 people. About 64,000 men suffered from psychiatric disorder due to ex

Nov. 19, 2012

Alcohol-related mental illness increases