Maths can help predict chances of conceiving

PTI | Oct 6, 2012, 07.05AM IST

Article

Comments

inShare

WARWICk: Scientists claim to have developed a new mathematical model which can help predict a couple's chances of becoming pregnant, on the basis of how long they have been trying. The new study by University of Warwick and the London School of Economics may also shed light on how long the couples should wait before seeking medical help. Researchers found that, if the woman is aged 35, after just six months of trying, her chance of getting pregnant in the next cycle is then less than 10%. The analysis uses the number of menstrual cycles over which the couple has been trying for a baby to determine a probability of conception within the next month. "After several cycles without pregnancy, it becomes relatively more likely that a couple have low fertility. This is the main reason why it becomes less likely that conception will occur in the next cycle," said Dr Peter Sozou of the London School of Economics. When a woman is 25, it takes 13 menstrual periods before her chance of pregnancy in each new cycle has declined to below 10%, according to the model. The number of months required to reach a conception chance below 10% cycle is 10 at age 30, and just six at age 35. "There is quite a good chance of conception if they keep trying," Sozou said.

Khamosh! Auto-silence app calms nerves at IIT

Silencer, an Android application developed by four IIT-B students that automatically puts phones on silent during class, is all the rage on campus

Pooja Naik

	Mail this page Print this page Translate this page	Rate me....
	Share Share Share Share

Posted On Wednesday, October 03, 2012 at 03:06:16 AM

Fed up of being embarrassed by their cellphones ringing during college lectures, students at IIT have come up with the perfect solution - an Android app called Silencer.

What this app does is very simple - it automatically puts the phone on silent once a lecture starts and returns it to normal mode once it's over.

Developed by four students from IIT Bombay for a competition (which they didn't win, incidentally) the app has become quite the rage on campus.

Silencer is the brainchild of final-year computer science students Aayush Singhal, Kanwal Prakash Singh and Ravi Vishwakarma, and final-year electrical engineering student Yudhister Satija.

They built the app in just two days, then tested it for a week before making it available for students to download to their smartphones. The application was put up on student servers at the end of August and has since been downloaded 550 times.

"All of us have been in the limelight at least once for forgetting to put our cellphones on silent. That is where this idea came from. In IIT, every course has a fixed slot. All the user has to do is select his/her slot and the application will turn on silent and normal modes automatically,” said Kanwal Singh.

Professor Urjit Yagnik, dean of student affairs at IIT-B, said, “Considering that classes get disturbed at times because of cellphones, it’s a very helpful application. The reason why I’m encouraging these students is that these kinds of projects foster creativity and productivity."

Right now the application is useful only for IIT-B students. However, the group has plans to take it one step further and make it applicable to anyone. “We will now try to sync the application to the Google calendar on anyone’s phone so that people can automatically their phones turn silent during meetings and other appointments,” said Aayush Singhal.

An application can make your phone spy on you

PTI | Oct 2, 2012, 06.28AM IST

Article

Comments (1)

inShare

LONDON: US military experts have demonstrated a new smartphone app that can turn your mobile's camera into a spying tool forcyber criminals, secretly beaming images of your house, chequebook and other private information back to them.
The software can even build up a 3D model of your house, from which the hackers can inspect your rooms, potentially gleaning information about valuables in your home, calendar entries as well as spying on you.
The app 'PlaiceRaider' was created by US military experts at Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, Indiana, to show how cybercriminals could operate in the future, the Daily Mail reported. The creators even demonstrated how they could read the numbers of a cheque book when they tested the Android software on 20 volunteers. As long as the app could be installed on the users phone, it can instantly begin beaming back images from the phone when it senses the right conditions, and software on the other end can then re-construct maps of the visited room.
The team gave their infected phone to 20 individuals, who did not know about the malicious app, and asked them to continue operating in their normal office environment. The team said they could glean vital information from all 20 users, and that the 3D reconstruction made it much easier to steal information than by just using the images alone.
Researcher Robert Templeman said their app can run in the background of any smartphone using the Android 2.3 operating system. Through use of phone's camera and other sensors, PlaceRaider constructs 3-D models of indoor environments. "Remote burglars can thus download the physical space, study the environment carefully, and steal virtual objects from the environment," researchers said.