NASA Announces Discovery of Ice At Mercury's Poles

Stream videos at Ustream

Messenger Prob of NASA has founded new evidence of water ice on Mercury, NASA announced Thursday.

Top 7 Twitter Pics of the Week

Only Total Solar Eclipse of 2012 (Pictures)

Total Solar Eclipse of this year occurred today at 3:35 p.m. EST. Though people from a small area of northern Australia watched this only, NASA set up its Slooh Space Camera near the city of Cairns and live the event online.

A total eclipse happens when the moon overlaps the sun in the sky, blocking our view. The total solar eclipse of 2012 occurred at the Moon’s ascending node in central Libra. Maximum duration of its totality was only 4 minutes, 2 seconds.

Add caption

Image courtesy of Mashable

Effect of Facebook Addiction on Our Minds (INFOGRAPHIC)

Image courtesy canindia.com

Internet Addictions - mainly Social Media have become an alarming issue across the world. We can't even pass a single moment without using Facebook, Twitter or any other social media sites. We can now feel that we have a touch of Facebook Addiction.

Psychology behind this disorder:

When we receive and answer new notification, our body releases dopamine, a a chemical neurotransmitter agent with the motivation and reward response in the human brain. Dopamine is also released while consuming drugs or sexual intercourse. Social media notifications have the same addictive effect.

Is this addiction real? "Internet Addiction Disorder" has already been accepted as psychological diagnosis in China, South Korea and Taiwan. In the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-V), this addiction will be included next year.

The effect of Facebook and Internet Addictions is dangerous. It may cause decreasing in our attention span — in fact, since 2000, our collective attention span has decreased by 40%.

Find out more facts about Internet and Facebook Addiction check the infographic below:

Infographic by Best Masters in Psychology.

World's Most Innovative Companies - Apple Tops For The 3rd Year in a row

Image courtesy of Mashable

Apple has become the most innovative company in the world for the 3rd time in a row in spite of spending notably less on Research and Development than most of its competitors. To rank the most innovative companies in different industries, Booz & Co. surveyed almost 700 executives worldwide. (Source: Report)

The last time when the survey was conducted, Apple has gone through some big changes. Most importantly, it lost co-founder and visionary former CEO Steve Jobs. It has also grown to become the most valuable company in the world. But these factors couldn't change its approach to R&D spending and its perception as innovator.

Apple spent $2.4 billion on research and development in 2011, or 2.2% of its total sales revenue. The company recently revealed that it spent $3.4 billion on R&D in 2012, which still works out to be the same 2.2% of sales given Apple’s growth. By comparison, Google spent $2.2 billion on R&D in 2011, or 13.6% of its sales and Microsoft spent $9 billion on R&D in 2011, or about 13% of sales. (Source: Mashable)

Tech companies including Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung. Amazon etc. have dominated the Top 10 positions but Facebook has lost its position which was on the Top Ten List last year.

“The 10 most innovative companies handily outperformed the top 10 spenders on R&D on several financial metrics — market cap growth, revenue growth, and earnings as a percentage of revenues (after normalizing for industry variations).” Booz points out in the report

Here is the list of Top most innovative companies with amount of spending in R&D areas:

Image courtesy of Flickr, Dennis Goedegebuure