Los Angeles  - Chip manufacturer AMD aims to challenge rival Intel by launching its Shanghai processor by the end of the year.

The company has learned its lesson and there won't be any of the start-up problems of the kind that afflicted the company's latest Barcelona processor, AMD manager Pat Patla told the CNET media company.

AMD, the world's second biggest chipmaker after Intel, lately suffered billion dollar losses and replaced its top management.

Oslo - Microsoft said Tuesday its main development centre for search engine technology was to be based in Norway.

Chief executive Steve Ballmer made the announcement after a meeting with Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.

In the short-term, Microsoft was to hire 50 developers and researchers, Stoltenberg said.

Microsoft currently has some 300 employees in Norway, mainly employed by FastSearch & Transfer that the US-based giant acquired earlier this year.

London, September 30 : Scientists have shown that it’s possible to make oil rigs or other ocean structures invisible to tsunami waves, with the help of an ‘invisibility cloak’.

Invisibility cloaks that are able to steer light around two dimensional objects have become reality in the last few years.

According to a report in New Scientist, the first real-world application of the theories that made them possible could be in hiding vulnerable coastlines and offshore platforms from destructive tsunamis.

Washington, September 30 : Commercial aquatic plants grown in constructed wetlands (CWs) are being touted as inexpensive, low-technology approaches for treating agricultural, industrial, and municipal wastewater to comply with increasingly stringent environmental regulations.

CWs, or marshes built to treat contaminated water, incorporate soil and drainage materials, water, plants, and microorganisms.

“Surface-flow” constructed wetlands resemble shallow freshwater marshes and generally require a large land area for wastewater treatment.

More effective for greenhouse and nursery operations with limited production space and expensive land are a type of constructed wetland called “subsurface flow”.

Washington, September 30 : Scientists have shown that it is possible to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) using a relatively simple machine that can capture the trace amount of CO2 present in the air at any place on the planet.

The machine has been developed by a team of researchers from the University of Calgary (U of C) in Canada, lead by climate change scientist David Keith.

“At first thought, capturing CO2 from the air where it’s at a concentration of 0.04 per cent seems absurd, when we are just starting to do cost-effective capture at power plants where CO2 produced is at a concentration of more than 10 per cent,” said Keith, Canada Research Chair in Energy and Environment.

New Delhi, Sep 30 : Russia will start deliveries of MiG-29K Fulcrum-D carrier fighters to India in the spring of 2009.

Russia and India signed a contract on January 20, 2004, stipulating the delivery of 12 single-seater MiG-29K and four two-seater MiG-29KUB by 2009, to be deployed on the Admiral Gorshkov, currently being retrofitted in Russia for the Indian Navy.

“The first four MiG-29K aircraft will be delivered to India in the spring of 2009,” said Mikhail Globenko, marketing director of MiG.