Immense Knowledge

MATHEMATICS GENIUS

2011-02-26T21:32:00.000+05:30

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50 Interesting Science Facts

2011-02-05T10:38:00.000+05:30

1 – The speed of light is generally rounded down to 186,000 miles per second. In exact terms it is 299,792,458 m/s (equal to 186,287.49 miles per second).

2 – It takes 8 minutes 17 seconds for light to travel from the Sun’s surface to the Earth.

3 – 10 percent of all human beings ever born are alive at this very moment.

4 – The Earth spins at 1,000 mph but it travels through space at an incredible 67,000 mph.

5 – Every year, over one million earthquakes shake the Earth.

6 – When Krakatoa erupted in 1883, its force was so great it could be heard 4,800 kilometers away in Australia.

7 – Every second around 100 lightning bolts strike the Earth.

8 – Every year lightning kills 1000 people.

9 – In October 1999 an Iceberg the size of London broke free from the Antarctic ice shelf .

10 – If you could drive your car straight up you would arrive in space in just over an hour.

11 – Human tapeworms can grow up to 22.9m.

12 – The Earth is 4.56 billion years old…the same age as the Moon and the Sun.

13 – The dinosaurs became extinct before the Rockies or the Alps were formed.

14 – Female black widow spiders eat their males after mating.

15 – When a flea jumps, the rate of acceleration is 20 times that of the space shuttle during launch.

16 – If our Sun were just inch in diameter, the nearest star would be 445 miles away.

17 – Astronauts cannot belch – there is no gravity to separate liquid from gas in their stomachs.

18 – The air at the summit of Mount Everest, 29,029 feet is only a third as thick as the air at sea level.

19 – One million, million, million, million, millionth of a second after the Big Bang the Universe was the size of a …pea.

20 – DNA was first discovered in 1869 by Swiss Friedrich Mieschler.

21 – The molecular structure of DNA was first determined by Watson and Crick in 1953.

22 – The first synthetic human chromosome was constructed by US scientists in 1997.

23 – The thermometer was invented in 1607 by Galileo.

24 – Alfred Nobel invented dynamite in 1866.

25 – Wilhelm Rontgen won the first Nobel Prize for physics for discovering X-rays in 1895.

26 – The tallest tree ever was an Australian eucalyptus – In 1872 it was measured at 435 feet tall.

27 – Christian Barnard performed the first heart transplant in 1967 – the patient lived for 18 days.

28 – An electric eel can produce a shock of up to 650 volts.

29 – ‘Wireless’ communications took a giant leap forward in 1962 with the launch of Telstar, the first satellite capable of relaying telephone and satellite TV signals.

30 – The Ebola virus kills 4 out of every 5 humans it infects.

31 – In 5 billion years the Sun will run out of fuel and turn into a Red Giant.

32 – Giraffes often sleep for only 20 minutes in any 24 hours. They may sleep up to 2 hours (in spurts – not all at once), but this is rare. They never lie down.

33 – There are 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body.

34 – An individual blood cell takes about 60 seconds to make a complete circuit of the body.

35 – On the day that Alexander Graham Bell was buried the entire US telephone system was shut down for 1 minute in tribute.

36 – The low frequency call of the humpback whale is the loudest noise made by a living creature.

37 – A quarter of the world’s plants are threatened with extinction by the year 2010.

38 – Each person sheds 40lbs of skin in his or her lifetime.

39 – At 15 inches the eyes of giant squids are the largest on the planet.

40 – The Universe contains over 100 billion galaxies.

41 – Wounds infested with maggots heal quickly and without spread of gangrene or other infection.

42 – More germs are transferred shaking hands than kissing.

43 – The fastest speed a falling raindrop can hit you is 18mph.

44 – It would take over an hour for a heavy object to sink 6.7 miles down to the deepest part of the ocean.

45 – Around a million, billion neutrinos from the Sun will pass through your body while you read this sentence.

46 – The deepest part of any ocean in the world is the Mariana trench in the Pacific with a depth of 35,797 feet.

47 – Every hour the Universe expands by a billion miles in all directions.

48 – Somewhere in the flicker of a badly tuned TV set is the background radiation from the Big Bang.

49 – Even traveling at the speed of light it would take 2 million years to reach the nearest large galaxy, Andromeda.

50 – A thimbleful of a neutron star would weigh over 100 million tons.

Over 2.5 million Muslims threaten to leave Facebook: Report

2010-07-16T19:03:00.000+05:30

LONDON: Angry over the removal of certain Islamic pages from Facebook, more than 2.5 million Muslim users are likely to quit the social networking website, according to a media report.

Following the removal of four extremely popular Islamic pages from the website, the Muslim community has expressed anger and a template letter that has been pasted into numerous Facebook pages accused the website's founder Mark Zuckerberg of "ignoring the feelings of more than 2.5 million Muslims", the Daily Mail reported.

The letter reads: "Although you have attended the world's best communication skills courses you have been most successful in growing great hatred and hostility between you and Muslims around the world, but seriously this time you have caused an almost unrepairable [sic] damage."

The letter demanded not only that the pages are reinstated but that new rules are introduced which make it a violation of Facebook's terms to post anti-Islamic comments.

Apart from reinstating the four deleted pages, the letter demanded the website to ban disrespecting Islamic religious symbols and disable any Facebook page which does so.

It warned that unless its demands are met Facebook's "2.5 million Muslim users" will join 'madina.com' - a social networking site for Muslims.

A spokeswoman for Facebook said that the Islamic pages, which included "I love Mohammed" and "Quran Lovers", were taken down because they were being used to 'spam' users, which is against the company's policy.

The letter also accused Facebook of "irresponsible behaviour" for allowing to host "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" pages which sparked controversy for encouraging users to draw portraits of the Prophet.

According to the report, there is no specific ban on images of Allah or the Prophet Mohammed in the Quran but there is one line which is commonly taken to mean that it is impossible for human hands to recreate his likeness. To attempt to do so is an insult to Allah, it is believed.

Madina.com is a site set up specifically for the Muslim community. It pledges to abide by the Islamic principles and encourages unity among the community.

It also asks female users not to use their photographs in their profile.

Source: Times of India

20 Interesting Facts

2008-07-07T16:54:00.000+05:30

1. A zebra is white with black stripes.

2. All the planets in our solar system rotate anticlockwise, except Venus. It is the only planet that rotates clockwise.

3. Hummingbirds are the only animal that can also fly backwards.

4. Insects do not make noises with their voices. The noise of bees, mosquitoes and other buzzing insects is caused by rapidly moving their wings.

5. The cockroach is the fastest animal on 6 legs covering a meter a second.

6. The word "listen" contains the same letters as the word "silent".

7. The only 2 animals that can see behind itself without turning it's head are the rabbit and the parrot.

8. A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.

9. India invented the Number System. Zero was invented by Aryabhatta.

10. The whip makes a cracking sound because its tip moves faster than the speed of sound.

11. A hippopotamus can run faster than a man.

12. India never invaded any country in her last 10000 years of history.

13. 'Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia' is the fear of long words.

14. Didaskaleinophobia is the fear of going to school.

15. A snail can sleep for 3 years.

16. The names of the continents all end with the same letter with which they start.

17. In 1883 the explosion of the volcano Krakatau put so much dust into the earth's atmosphere that sunsets appeared green and the moon appeared blue around the world for almost two years.

18. "Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.

19. Twenty-Four-Karat Gold is not pure gold since there is a small amount of copper in it. Absolutely pure gold is so soft that it can be molded with the hands.

20. Electricity doesn't move through a wire but through a field around the wire.

Muslims Contribution To Science

2008-07-02T14:50:00.000+05:30

Lots of Christians left christianity & the reason was clearly : It contradicts science ! What about Muslims ? Here you can read a brief information about Muslims & Science in the past ..

Astronomy :

Muslims have always had a special interest in astronomy. The moon and the sun are of vital importance in the daily life of every Muslim. By the moon, Muslims determine the beginning and the end of the months in their lunar calendar. By the sun the Muslims calculate the times for prayer and fasting.

It is also by means of astronomy that Muslims can determine the precise direction of the Qiblah, to face the Ka'bah in Makkah, during prayer. The most precise solar calendar, superior to the Julian, is the Jilali, devised under the supervision of Umar Khayyam. The Qur'an contains many references to astronomy.

"The heavens and the earth were ordered rightly, and were made subservient to man, including the sun, the moon, the stars, and day and night. Every heavenly body moves in an orbit assigned to it by God and never digresses, making the universe an orderly cosmos whose life and existence, diminution and expansion, are totally determined by the Creator." [Qur'an 30:22]

These references, and the injunctions to learn, inspired the early Muslim scholars to study the heavens. They integrated the earlier works of the Indians, Persians and Greeks into a new synthesis. Ptolemy's Almagest (the title as we know it is Arabic) was translated, studied and criticized. Many new stars were discovered, as we see in their Arabic names - Algol, Deneb, Betelgeuse, Rigel, Aldebaran.

Astronomical tables were compiled, among them the Toledan tables, which were used by Copernicus, Tycho Brahe and Kepler. Also compiled were almanacs - another Arabic term. Other terms from Arabic are zenith, nadir, albedo, azimuth.

Muslim astronomers were the first to establish observatories, like the one built at Mugharah by Hulagu, the son of Genghis Khan, in Persia, and they invented instruments such as the quadrant and astrolabe, which led to advances not only in astronomy but in oceanic navigation, contributing to the European age of exploration.

Geography:

Muslim scholars paid great attention to geography. In fact, the Muslims' great concern for geography originated with their religion. The Qur'an encourages people to travel throughout the earth to see God's signs and patterns everywhere. Islam also requires each Muslim to have at least enough knowledge of geography to know the direction of the Qiblah (the position of the Ka'bah in Makkah) in order to pray five times a day. Muslims were also used to taking long journeys to conduct trade as well as to make the Hajj and spread their religion. The far-flung Islamic empire enabled scholar-explorers to compile large amounts of geographical and climatic information from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Among the most famous names in the field of geography, even in the West, are Ibn Khaldun and Ibn Batuta, renowned for their written accounts of their extensive explorations. In 1166, Al-Idrisi, the well-known Muslim scholar who served the Sicilian court, produced very accurate maps, including a world map with all the continents and their mountains, rivers and famous cities. Al-Muqdishi was the first geographer to produce accurate maps in color. It was, moreover, with the help of Muslim navigators and their inventions that Magellan was able to traverse the Cape of Good Hope, and Da Gama and Columbus had Muslim navigators on board their ships.

Humanity:

Seeking knowledge is obligatory in Islam for every Muslim, man and woman. The main sources of Islam, the Qur'an and the Sunnah (Prophet Muhammad's traditions), encourage Muslims to seek knowledge and be scholars, since this is the best way for people to know Allah (God), to appreciate His wondrous creations and be thankful for them. Muslims were therefore eager to seek knowledge, both religious and secular, and within a few years of Muhammad's mission, a great civilization sprang up and flourished. The outcome is shown in the spread of Islamic universities; Al-Zaytunah in Tunis, and Al-Azhar in Cairo go back more than 1,000 years and are the oldest existing universities in the world. Indeed, they were the models for the first European universities, such as Bologna, Heidelberg, and the Sorbonne. Even the familiar academic cap and gown originated at Al-Azhar University.

Muslims made great advances in many different fields, such as geography, physics, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, pharmacology, architecture, linguistics and astronomy. Algebra and the Arabic numerals were introduced to the world by Muslim scholars. The astrolabe, the quadrant, and other navigational devices and maps were developed by Muslim scholars and played an important role in world progress, most notably in Europe's age of exploration.

Muslim scholars studied the ancient civilations from Greece and Rome to China and India. The works of Aristotle, Ptolemy, Euclid and others were translated into Arabic. Muslim scholars and scientists then added their own creative ideas, discoveries and inventions, and finally transmitted this new knowledge to Europe, leading directly to the Renaissance. Many scientific and medical treatises, having been translated into Latin, were standard text and reference books as late as the 17th and 18th centuries.

Mathematics:

It is interesting to note that Islam so strongly urges mankind to study and explore the universe. For example, the Holy Qur'an states:

"We (Allah) will show you (mankind) Our signs/patterns in the horizons/universe and in yourselves until you are convinced that the revelation is the truth." [Qur'an, 14:53]

This invitation to explore and search made Muslims interested in astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, and the other sciences, and they had a very clear and firm understanding of the correspondences among geometry, mathematics, and astronomy.

The Muslims invented the symbol for zero (The word "cipher" comes from Arabic sifr), and they organized the numbers into the decimal system - base 10. Additionally, they invented the symbol to express an unknown quantity, i.e. variables like x.

The first great Muslim mathematician, Al-Khawarizmi, invented the subject of algebra (al-Jabr), which was further developed by others, most notably Umar Khayyam. Al-Khawarizmi's work, in Latin translation, brought the Arabic numerals along with the mathematics to Europe, through Spain. The word "algorithm" is derived from his name.

Muslim mathematicians excelled also in geometry, as can be seen in their graphic arts, and it was the great Al-Biruni (who excelled also in the fields of natural history, even geology and mineralogy) who established trigonometry as a distinct branch of mathematics. Other Muslim mathematicians made significant progress in number theory.

Medicine:

In Islam, the human body is a source of appreciation, as it is created by Almighty Allah (God). How it functions, how to keep it clean and safe, how to prevent diseases from attacking it or cure those diseases, have been important issues for Muslims.

Prophet Muhammad himself urged people to "take medicines for your diseases", as people at that time were reluctant to do so. He also said: "God created no illness, but established for it a cure, except for old age. When the antidote is applied, the patient will recover with the permission of God."

This was strong motivation to encourage Muslim scientists to explore, develop, and apply empirical laws. Much attention was given to medicine and public health care. The first hospital was built in Baghdad in 706 AC. The Muslims also used camel caravans as mobile hospitals, which moved from place to place.

Since the religion did not forbid it, Muslim scholars used human cadavers to study anatomy and physiology and to help their students understand how the body functions. This empirical study enabled surgery to develop very quickly.

Al-Razi, known in the West as Rhazes, the famous physician and scientist, (d. 932) was one of the greatest physicians in the world in the Middle Ages. He stressed empirical observation and clinical medicine and was unrivaled as a diagnostician. He also wrote a treatise on hygiene in hospitals. Khalaf Abul-Qasim Al-Zahrawi was a very famous surgeon in the eleventh century, known in Europe for his work, Concessio (Kitab al-Tasrif).

Ibn Sina (d. 1037), better known to the West as Avicenna, was perhaps the greatest physician until the modern era. His famous book, Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb, remained a standard textbook even in Europe, for over 700 years. Ibn Sina's work is still studied and built upon in the East.

Other significant contributions were made in pharmacology, such as Ibn Sina's Kitab al-Shifa' (Book of Healing), and in public health. Every major city in the Islamic world had a number of excellent hospitals, some of them teaching hospitals, and many of them were specialized for particular diseases, including mental and emotional. The Ottomans were particularly noted for their building of hospitals and for the high level of hygiene practiced in them.

Definition:

The word ISLAM has a two-fold meaning: peace, and submission to God. This submission requires a fully conscious and willing effort to submit to the one Almighty God. One must consciously and conscientiously give oneself to the service of Allah. This means to act on what Allah enjoins all of us to do (in the Qur'an) and what His beloved Prophet, Muhammad (pbuh) encouraged us to do in his Sunnah (his lifestyle and sayings personifying the Qur'an).

Once we humble ourselves, rid ourselves of our egoism and submit totally to Allah, and to Him exclusively, in faith and in action, we will surely feel peace in our hearts. Establishing peace in our hearts will bring about peace in our external conduct as well.

Islam is careful to remind us that it not a religion to be paid mere lip service; rather it is an all-encompassing way of life that must be practiced continuously for it to be Islam. The Muslim must practice the five pillars of the religion: the declaration of faith in the oneness of Allah and the prophet hood of Muhammad (pbuh), prayer, fasting the month of Ramadan, alms-tax, and the pilgrimage to Makkah; and believe in the six articles of faith: belief in God, the Holy Books, the prophets, the angels, the Day of Judgment and God's decree, whether for good or ill.

There are other injunctions and commandments which concern virtually all facets of one's personal, family and civic life. These include such matters as diet, clothing, personal hygiene, interpersonal relations, business ethics, responsibilities towards parents, spouse and children, marriage, divorce and inheritance, civil and criminal law, fighting in defense of Islam, relations with non-Muslims, and so much more.

Firefox claims world record after software downloaded 8million times in one day

2008-06-20T11:29:00.003+05:30

The new version of the web browser Firefox was downloaded a record 8 million times on its first day of release, the software's developers have claimed.

At its peak, the Firefox website was serving 17,000 copies a minute. Downloads came from some 200 countries, led by the United States, Germany, Japan, Spain and Britain.

The total could have been much higher if the huge demand hadn't overloaded the servers for more than an hour.

Tuesday's release was delayed after visitors checking for the update overloaded Firefox's web servers. The site was slow or unreachable for about two hours from 5.45pm (BST) on 17th June.

Firefox Logo

Firefox comes from Mozilla, an open-source community in which thousands of people, mostly volunteers, collectively develop free products. Firefox 3 is available in 50 languages.

They were seeking to set a world record for most software downloads in a 24-hour period. Their claim is currently being assessed by the Guinness Book of World Records.

Firefox is the number two web browser behind Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

The latest version, Firefox 3, includes enhancements to help users organize their frequently visited websites and block access to sites known to distribute viruses and other malicious software.

“We’re really proud of Firefox 3 and it just shows what a committed, energized global community can do when they work together,” said John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla.

The stunning fossil of a fish giving birth that proves animals had 'sex for fun' 380 million years ago

2008-05-29T12:02:00.003+05:30

Sex for pleasure is a lot older than we thought, according to a stunning new fossil find announced by scientists yesterday.

A fossil of an ancient, extinct Australian fish which died just before giving birth to a live baby is, according to the scientist who made the discovery, 'the earliest evidence of vertebrates having sex by copulation – not just spawning in water, but sex that was fun'.

These are the fossil remains of the 375-million fish - the oldest vertebrate mother ever discovered

The find, revealed in the journal Nature, is by far the oldest 'viviparous', or live, birth yet found by scientists.

The fish, one of a primitive extinct group called the 'Placoderms', lived in the seas of Devonian Earth and has been dated to 380 million years old.

The fossil, discovered by Professor John Long at Museum Victoria in Melbourne, shows the bones of the tiny baby fish, still attached by its umbilical cord. It is thought the mother fish was about to give birth to maybe three or four babies just before she was killed.

“When I first saw the embryo inside the mother fish my jaw dropped, I was silent, stunned like a mullet. I realised that in my hands was the oldest known vertebrate embryo.”

The embryo can clearly be seen in this image of the fossil - even, amazingly, the umbilical cord

The find was made in the Gogo rock formation east of the remote town of Fitzroy Crossing, Western Australia, and pushes back the record for a live birth by 200 million years.

The fish, a new species, has been named Materpiscis attenboroughi, 'Attenborough's mother-fish' in honour of Sir David, who featured the extraordinary fossil beds at Gogo in his 1979 TV series Life on Earth.

“The discovery is certainly one of the most extraordinary fossil finds ever made. It is not only the first time ever that a fossil embryo has been found with an umbilical cord, but it is also the oldest known example of any creature giving birth to live young,” said Dr Long.

“The existence of the embryo and umbilical cord within the specimen provides scientists with the first ever example of internal fertilisation - i.e sex - confirming that some placoderms had remarkably advanced reproductive biology. This discovery changes our understanding of the evolution of vertebrates,” he added.

Dr John Long points out the umbilical cord on the fossil, the fossilised remains of the oldest mother ever discovered

The fossilised fish has been named in honour of Sir David Attenborough

The vertebrates consist of the fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Only birds, among these, are exclusively egg-laying but live births among fishes were thought to be confined to the sharks and rays.

Like the sharks, this species of Placoderm possessed a pair of bony graspers with which the male grasped the female while fertilising her with his sperm. “It might have been fun, for the male at least,” said Dr Long.

Placoderms were fearsome looking creatures, with powerful nutcracker jaws, clad in bony armour plating and thought to be efficient predators. The fossil is of a specimen about the size of a mackerel but some placoderms grew to a length of nearly 20ft, and the group as a whole formed the dominant vertebrates of the Devonian era, a time when other species of fish were starting to crawl out onto the land and evolving into the first four-legged animals.

It is thought the placoderms became extinct as a result of climate change at the end of the Devonian; their place in the pecking order was taken by a new group of fishes to have evolved: the sharks.

The announcement of the finding was made at the grand opening of the refurbished Royal Institution in London yesterday, at which the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were present at the press conference.

The amazing telescope that lets you see New York from London's Tower Bridge

2008-05-28T09:27:00.002+05:30

Deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean, forgotten for the best part of a century, lies a tunnel linking London and New York.

It was built on the whim of a Victorian inventor with the aim of linking two great cities and developing the kind of friendship that still exists today.

London waving: Looking down the Telectroscope at Tower Bridge end

But bad fortune befell the venture - and the tunnel lay idle ever after.

Until today, that is, when the project was rekindled with a modern twist.

Using a giant "electronic telescope" and state-of-the-art technology, England and America were joined once again when the tunnel entrances were reopened beside Tower Bridge in London and Brooklyn Bridge in New York.

It meant that New Yorkers and Londoners could wave to each other across the sea and begin the kind of mute dialogue that was only a dream all those years ago for eccentric engineering entrepreneur Alexander Stanhope St George (deceased).

Or at least, that's the way the story goes.

What is certain is that now you can indeed stand on the South Bank of the UK end of the 21st century "Telectroscope" - and see someone standing 3,460 miles away across the water.

It's raining in New York: Taking in the view on Brooklyn bridge

And - oh dear - it didn't take us Brits too long to utilise it for a bit of fun at the expense of our American cousins.

First there was the chap unbuttoning his shirt for an interested party on the other side.

Then came the group whose hand-held banner urged an assembly of curious New York cops to hop on one leg (which, incidentally, they declined).

Goodness only knows what everyone will get up to when darkness falls. But artist and creator Paul St George is delighted that this reworking of his great-grandfather's project is helping to spread a little happiness.

It takes some while to grasp the concept of the Telectroscope, unless you're happy enough to accept as gospel the story behind its creation.

According to the publicity material being handed out yesterday, the original tunnel was pioneered by an orang-utan running its entire length in a safety test before disappearing with the wife of the New York City mayor. Perhaps you get the picture now.

The truth is that the Telectroscope - installed by Artichoke, the same people who spectacularly paraded a mechanical elephant through London two years ago - probably employs the latest broadband, camera and satellite technology to close the gap between our two great nations.

Anyone you asked today, however, simply put it down to magic.

The Telectroscope uses 6ft screens and a Jules Verne style telescope that gleams with brass and an array of Victorian dials. Participants peer into one end of the screen - and hey presto - they can see anyone standing at the other side.

Much of the first few hours of this morning were taken up by bemused-looking Americans gazing cautiously at the antics of the London transatlantic gazers before realising that it wasn't a set-up, that they weren't being filmed for a candid camera TV stunt, and that it wasn't a terrorist threat.

Aliens at City Hall? The London Telectroscope looks like something out of War Of The Worlds

One of them broke the ice with a message they must have thought was a subject close to British hearts - the weather.

"Raining here!" said the Yank's handwritten note, pressed tentatively to the screen. "Sunny here!" replied a trio of blondes in London, before fanning their faces and performing heat-wave actions in mime.

Jewellery company worker Annie McDonald, from North London, exchanged kisses at a stranger standing beneath Brooklyn Bridge after beginning a semaphore style conversation with him.

I tried it with a 30-something who looked as if she was on her way to work - but she just giggled, pointed to her watch, and disappeared from view. Ho hum. That's the thing about Telectroscope flirting - if you don't fancy it, you can just step aside.

So unless you happen to find someone in Brooklyn who can lip-read, it's impossible to talk the talk.

But you can still chalk the chalk. Thus, with the used of a liberated restaurant blackboard, I tried a transatlantic conversation with Todd Glass, 41, who was pushing his five-month-old son Simon in a buggy.

He assured me he was not a hologram - but, crucially perhaps, was unable to tell me who the next President would be. So was he really real? "You bet," he replied.

Andy Slater, 28, from Edinburgh, visited the Brooklyn screen with his girlfriend Sarah Cook, 33, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The message from these Brits abroad was classically simple: "Send Tea!"

Police chase: Keeping an eye on crime in New York from Tower Bridge

Visitors to the Telectroscope web site - www.tiscali.co.uk/telectroscope - have already revealed online that they will use its wizardry to bond with friends or relatives abroad, show off an unseen grandchild to grandparents in New York, and - who knows - maybe even to propose marriage.

One couple plan to use it so their Manhattan friend can flick through brochures of apartments they are trying to rent.

Designer: Paul St George

"Part of the idea is just to allow people to use it in whatever way they want," said Mr St George, 53, from Bristol, who insists he developed the Telectroscope after discovering his great-grandfather's dusty notes and diaries in an attic.

"The thought of a tunnel under the Atlantic is fascinating," he said.

"What child has never dug a hole at the beach and wondered how long it would take to go through to the other side of the world?

"The Telectroscope is a stage, and the people who use it are the performers.

"Their unpredictability is all part of it. It's encouraging people think about different ways of communicating, to see people living everyday lives thousands of miles away - and, perhaps, to study the way everyone reacts differently to something they're not quite sure about."

As we speak, another group of NYPD cops pulls up at the Brooklyn end in a squad car with flashing red lights.

At first they give only wooden waves to the Brits assembled at Tower Bridge. Then one of them - dressed in uniform and packing a handgun - is encouraged to assume a cowboy-style pose. Across the Atlantic, an unheard cheer goes up.

The cop becomes an instant hero. Here's lookin' at you, kid...

The Art of Extreme Sleeping!

2008-05-23T11:23:00.008+05:30

Sweet dreams are only part of the story

Like any extreme activity, it requires the nerves of steel, good choice of timing, location and the absence of suspicious cops. All this however is easier to achieve, because you are, well... asleep, so you can trust the unseen powers to take care of the rest. Long & restful sleep is by no means guaranteed, but perhaps somebody will take your picture and you'll wake up famous.

Location, Location, Location

The best site to explore (or to learn this useful skill) is Sleeping Chinese. It's a constantly growing collection of impossible sleeping positions:

Ignore the crowds

According to this site, Japan's Public Sleeping is a constantly evolving art:

Schools are made for sleeping

Studying obviously leads to extreme mental and physical fatigue:

Learn from kids

Of course, children are "professional" sleepers:

Amazing Science Facts

2008-03-26T12:57:00.000+05:30

1- Turtles can live for more than 100 years.

2- An elephant trunk has no bone but 40,000 muscles.

3- The cicada, a fly found in Africa, spends 17 years of its life sleeping; and only two weeks is awake during which mates and then dies.

4- The ant can lift things 10 times its own weight.

5- If your skin is laid flat it will cover an area of 18 square feet.

6- A Giraffe has the same number of bones in its neck as a man.

7- Ocean waves can travel as fast as a JET Plane.

8- The first drawings of a helicopter are nearly 500 years old.

9- A butterfly warms up its body up to 81 degrees Fahrenheit before flying.

10- A whale can swim for 3 months without eating.

11- A human being drinks 16,000 tons of water in a lifetime.

12- We blink 25 times a minute.

13- To melt away 1 pound of fat you will need to walk 34 miles.

14- The star fish is actually not a fish, its an animal. ( phylum : Echinodermate )

15- Male mosquitoes do not bite, so blame the females next time.

16- A person will die from total lack of sleep sooner than from starvation.

17- The body's largest internal organ is the small intestine at an average length of 20 feet.

18- Oysters can change from one gender to another and back again.

19- The small intestine is 7-8 meters long, making it the largest organ inside the human body. The large intestine is only 1-1.5 meters long!

20-The largest lizard in the world is the Komodo dragon which reaches up to 3 meters and sometimes longer was named because of it's fiery tongue. It is often longer than a car.

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Microsoft makes £22.4bn bid to take over internet giant Yahoo

2008-02-02T10:50:00.000+05:30

Microsoft is planning to challenge the dominance of Google with a £22billion buy-out of rival internet search engine Yahoo.

The company set up by Bill Gates has made an offer for Yahoo in what would be one of the biggest internet deals in history.

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates. The company's bid for Yahoo signals an attempt to grab a bigger chunk of business in online services

But the offer has led to further concerns about the growing power of Microsoft, which makes gross profits of about £20billion and has fought allegtions of anti-competitive behaviour in courts on both sides of the Atlantic.

Late last year it bought a £120million stake in the online networking sensation Facebook. Many fear that if the Yahoo deal does go through the company really will wield too much power.

Among the criticisms levelled at the company is that it deliberately locks customers into its products.

This has led to complaints that computers cannot be bought without a Microsoft operating system being pre-installed.

Many fear that if Microsoft gets hold of Yahoo it will be able to increase its influence over internet usage.

Currently Microsoft and Yahoo's search engines trail a long way behind Google - in America 56.3 per cent of searches are carried out through Google. Yahoo is in second place with 17.7 per cent and Microsoft follows with 13.8 per cent.

Google, founded by Sergey Brin, left, and Larry Page, right, faces an assault by Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates

Google's success has been based on the perception that its searches are wider and more relevant than rivals.

Microsoft say it wants to create 'credible alternative' to the domination of Google.

But if any deal is agreed it could be subject to heavy scrutiny by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic.

This is because, as well as both operating powerful search engines, Microsoft and Yahoo are players in the wider online advertising market.

Liberal Democrat culture spokesman Don Foster has called for UK competition authorities to look at the deal.

"Everybody should be concerned about the growing dominance of Microsoft in every aspect of our lives," he said.

"While they have done much good for us, we have to be incredibly careful that they don't become so dominant that innovation and creativity is stifled."

He urged the Competition Commission to look into the deal, if it was able to.

Yahoo's headquarters in Sunnyvale, in California's Silicon Valley

In the early days of the internet, Yahoo, founded by two U.S. students, was the most popular search engine.

The engines work by picking out key words from every internet page which can be accessed by its network. The contents of each page are analysed and categorised on an database.

When someone enters a query into a search engine it will search its index and come up with the best matches.

While it has been losing out in recent years to Google, it is still widely used for emailing and its news services.

The two Americans behind Yahoo are likely to pocket £2.2billion if the deal goes through.

Jerry Yang, 39 and David Filo, 41, started Yahoo as a website listing board while students at Stanford University in California in 1995.

Originally called Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web, Yang and Filo changed soon switched to Yahoo, named after a race of brutes in the Jonathan Swift novel Gulliver's Travels.

The unexpected offer comes as Yahoo and Microsoft have fallen behind Google in the race to capture online advertising.

Internet advertising is a massive growth industry and there are predictions that the online market will double in size to around £40.2billion by 2010.

The potential deal is so big that it boosted shares on the FTSE 100 index yesterday,

A Microsoft spokesman said: 'Today this market is increasingly dominated by one player.

"Together, Microsoft and Yahoo can offer a competitive choice while better fulfilling the needs of customers and partners."

Life on Mars? Amazing photos from Nasa probe reveal mystery figure on Red Planet

2008-01-24T00:00:00.001+05:30

Perched on a rock, she could be waiting for a bus.

But if so, she could be in for an awfully long wait.

This photo of what looks remarkably like a female figure with her arm outstretched, was taken on Mars.

Call me rocky: The intriguing image captured by Nasa on Mars

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it has set the Internet abuzz with claims that there really is life on the red planet.

Others may well feel that it is simply an optical illusion caused by a landscape.

Alien life: What seems to be a human-like Martian is pictured on Mars

The image was among many sent back to Earth by Spirit, Nasa's Mars explorer vehicle which landed there four years ago.

Initial inspections revealed nothing unusual, but closer examination by amateur astronomers has thrown up this intriguing picture.

Painstaking: Space enthusiasts spent four years analysing this image, which on much closer inspection shows the 'alien'

As one enthusiast put it on a website: "These pictures are amazing. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw what appears to be a naked alien running around on Mars."

Another, dismissing cynicism about the somewhat stony look of the "alien", wrote: "If you show me another rock in another photo from Mars, or Earth, that naturally looks like that, I will reconsider."

Say cheese: The mystery image was captured by Nasa's explorer vehicle, Spirit

A third contributor, who might have come closer to the majority view, said: "Ah, the human eye can be tricked so easily."

Some 3,800 young people homeless in New York

2007-12-15T12:36:00.000+05:30

An estimated 3,800 people under age 24 go homeless each night in New York City, but they blend in so well they are hard for social workers to find, according to the city's first-ever census of homeless youth.

Three-fourths come from minority groups, with black youths accounting for nearly half the total and Latino youths representing a quarter, said the survey, released on Friday
Gay, lesbian and bisexual youths were especially vulnerable, accounting for nearly a third of homeless cases.

"Young people who are homeless take great care to look like everyone else. They're unbelievably creative in their ability to find ways to make it look like they're not homeless at all," said Margo Hirsch, executive director of the Empire State Coalition of Youth and Family Services, which conducted the survey for the city.

While many homeless youth found temporary shelter with a friend or a relative, some 1,600 reported spending nights on the street, in an abandoned building or in a bus or train.

Selling sex, another 150 spent nights with a clients.

The count was conducted in July and surveyed just under 1,000 youth who were either homeless or at risk for homelessness.

Earlier this year, the New York City Department of Homeless Services reported that 3,755 New Yorkers of all ages, out of a total population of 8.2 million people, were living without shelter on any given night, down from 4,395 in 2005.

THE WORLD'S FASTEST HUMAN CALCULATOR

2007-12-13T20:20:00.000+05:30

The human calculator: 393 trillion answers - and he picks the right one in 70 seconds

When the answer is 2,407,899,893,032,210 you know the question is tough.

Not so tough, however, that Alexis Lemaire could not work it out in his head.

His challenge yesterday was to come up with the 13th root of a computer-generated 200-digit number.

And, with 393 trillion possible answers to choose from, the PhD student made it almost look easy.

A mere 70.2 seconds later, he cracked it and officially became the world's fastest human calculator.

A slight frown and a stare of deep concentration had been the only sign the 27-year-old "mathlete" was doing anything more than running through the eight times table.

Appropriately, the Frenchman broke his previous world record of 72.4 seconds at the Science Museum in London, where he had a backdrop of Charles Babbage's 1840s Difference Engine No2, the first successful mechanical calculator.

For those in the know, 13th roots are a yardstick in mental arithmetic for mathletes determined to show ever greater feats of brainpower.

A 13th root is - if your maths is no longer at Mr Lemaire's level - a number that multiplied by itself 13 times matches the initial figure.

Lemaire used a computer to generate a massive 200-digit number before working out its 13th root

Mr Lemaire, from Reims, began demonstrating his mental prowess by finding the 13th root of a random 100 digit number.

But this soon became too easy. The first time he tried a 200-digit challenge, it took him 40 minutes.

Since then, he has put himself through a mental training regime that has seen him repeatedly cut his time.

Cracking the answer is, apparently not all about maths, it also owes a lot to memory. Mr Lemaire, who is single, has memorised thousands of combinations of 13th root numbers.

"It's a bit like multiplication tables but with huge digits," he said. "It's a combination of techniques, partly memory and partly maths."

Asked to explain further, he would only say: "I won't give you my secret."

He did, however, agree to try the Daily Mail's 30-Second Challenge, and finished the advanced task in eight seconds.

It was a more than respectable performance - but, for a champion "13th rooter", it didn't seem that impressive.

Perhaps he was still tired after his world record.

Record-busting scorpion was bigger than man

2007-11-24T12:07:00.000+05:30

Paris: This was a bug you couldn’t swat and definitely couldn’t step on. British and German researchers reported Wednesday that they had discovered the giant fossilised claw of an ancient sea scorpion that, hundreds of millions of years ago, would have been over 8 feet long - much taller than the average man, and almost as long as a car.

The find, in a quarry near the German town of Pruem, is the biggest specimen of arthropod ever found, they said in a study published by Biology Letters, a journal of Britain’s Royal Society.

“This is an amazing discovery,” said Simon Braddy, from the University of Bristol in England.

“We have known for some time that the fossil record yields monster millipedes, super-sized scorpions, colossal cockroaches and jumbo dragonflies, but we never realised until now just how big some of these ancient creepy-crawlies were”

The 18.4-inch claw was wielded by a species of sea scorpion called the Jaekelopterus rhenaniae, which lived between 460 and 255 million years ago.

Using the claw as a benchmark, the scientists believe its owner was between 7.57 and 8.41 feet long.

Chelicerae - wand-like appendages used to grasp food and bring it to the beast’s mandibles - would have added another 1.6 feet.

“This exceeds the previously-recorded maximum body length of any arthropod by almost half a metre, the chelicerae not included,” their study says.

Despite their name, sea scorpions, known as eurypterids, were not true scorpions. Equipped with long, flat, jointed carapaces, they stalked warm shallow sea waters from around 500 million to 250 million years ago, eventually moving into fresh water.

Biologists delving into Earth’s distant past are divided as to how some arthropods were able to develop into such monstrous size.

Some suggest that they benefit from an oxygen-rich atmosphere, while others argue that they had to get bigger in order to keep up with the super-sizing of their likely prey, the early armoured fish.

“There is no simple single explanation,” said Braddy. “It is likely that some ancient arthropods were big because there was little competition from the vertebrates, as we see today. If the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere increased suddenly, it doesn’t mean all the bugs would get bigger.”

A new speed record, but not a good one

2007-11-03T10:17:00.001+05:30

Olympique Lyon's Czech forward Milan Baros was caught speeding at 168 miles per hour in his Ferrari, a club source confirmed Friday.

Local newspaper Le Progres quoted police as saying the former Liverpool player had broken the record for speeding for that French region, set by a motorcyclist who reached 154 mph in 2000.

Baros was driving on a motorway not far from Lyon on Thursday when he was caught by French police, who confiscated the black Ferrari and took his driving license.

The 26-year-old, sidelined by an injury, had to take a taxi back to Lyon. He faces a heavy fine and a three-year driving ban.

Could Ming the mollusc hold the secret to Nature's greatest mystery?

2007-10-31T13:23:00.002+05:30

Growing old and and dying is inevitable yet meet the mighty Ming who has been around for 405 years

Growing old and dying is as inevitable as paying taxes.

However much we may moan and rage or smear ourselves with youth-preserving potions, we'll be lucky to blow out the candles on our 90th birthday cake.

For one of our fellow creatures, however, nine decades is scarcely the length of its childhood. The ocean quahog (a type of deep-sea clam) can, it seems, chug on and on and on for several centuries.

In fact, one specimen that has been dredged from the Atlantic sea-floor off the coast of Iceland has just set a record as the oldest living creature on the planet.

Meet the mighty Ming, whom scientists say has been around for a grand total of 405 years.

And no, he wasn't named after the former Lib Dem leader. This chap was given his title in honour of the Imperial dynasty that ruled China at the time of his birth — at the start of the 17th century.

Record-breaker: Ming was 405 years old when he died

Having seen off Queen Elizabeth I, the English Civil War, the entire Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, two World Wars and the advent of reality TV, Ming was caught last year when scientists from the University of Bangor were dredging the seabed near Iceland as part of a study into climate change.

He was taken back to the laboratory where tests were conducted on his shell to determine his age. As the quahog's shell grows at different rates at different times of the year, it consists of hundreds of distinct layers that can be counted like rings in a tree trunk to give its age.

Researcher Alan Wanamaker found the first layers of Ming's shell were made more than four centuries ago.

That made him 32 years older than the previous oldest recorded creature (another quahog) whose shell is now in a German museum.

But that is not the only reason why scientists have got so excited about the discovery. For although Ming may be small — he'd fit in the palm of your hand — he could hold a mighty secret.

Creatures like him may show us why some species are able to cheat ageing and death for so much longer than others.

And perhaps — just perhaps — he can show us that our own lifespan is not so inevitable after all.

That's the hope of charity Help the Aged, which has given the marine biologists from Bangor University £40,000 to investigate why this animal lives so long.

For if we discover how a living creature can live into its fifth century, then we might be able to do something to extend human longevity as well, or at least make old age a little more palatable.

That is the theory, anyway. In the meantime, we still have to get to grips with just why there are such fantastic differences in the lifespans of different species.

Some Galapagos tortoises, for instance, have been recorded to reach nearly 200 years.

And bowhead whales have been found recently with antique harpoons embedded in their skulls dating from the 1790s.

Unless these were a freak, this means that in the sea today there may be large, intelligent animals that pre-date the invention of the railway engine.

Other Methuselahs include orange roughy, a Pacific fish increasingly popular as food.

These cold-water fish can live to more than 150 years old, meaning that your dinner could date back to a time when Queen Victoria was still middle-aged.

But how do these creatures live so long?

In fact, while the lifespans of different species may seem random, there is a pattern.

Generally, big creatures live longer than small ones — and this goes for plants as well as animals.

At one end of the scale are mice and shrews, which live just a couple of years, while at the other are large animals like rhinos, hippos, giant tortoises, lions and elephants, which have life expectancies measured in decades — or even centuries.

But there are some interesting anomalies.

Humans, for instance, live longer than is to be expected for our size — the record stands at 122 years, achieved by the Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who personally knew Vincent van Gogh and died in 1997.

We certainly do better than our closest relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees, which are lucky to make 70, even in pampered captivity.

Horses and cattle, however, do badly despite their large size, while some parrots live for 70 years or more despite being small.

And fish and molluscs can, as we have seen, survive for centuries.

So, what determines how long a species can live? Biologists used to think that animals (and plants) die because, like machines, they simply wear out.

But unlike machines, animals' bodies are equipped with efficient repair mechanisms.

The question is: why do these fail and what determines how old we are when they do?

The evolutionary theory of ageing, now widely accepted, states simply that animal lifespans reflect the amount of time an organism can expect to survive in the wild before being killed by predators, cold, disease or starvation.

This explains why big animals tend to live longer than small ones — they are simply less likely to be eaten or die of starvation, so their bodies have evolved to age and develop more slowly, as time is not of the essence for them.

The theory also explains the anomalies: bats and birds have long lifespans because they can fly, making them far safer from predators than comparably sized ground-living creatures.

Tortoises, too, live a long time because they are armour-plated — as are clams.

Few things eat whales, or large crocodiles, and it takes a long time for a big animal to die of starvation.

Mice, on the other hand, are so vulnerable to being eaten or squashed that their bodies are designed for speed, not endurance.

They have rapid, high-octane metabolisms that help them do just one thing — make lots of babies, very quickly, before getting eaten.

However, these fast, superheated metabolisms take a toll on their bodies.

Flooded with sex hormones and corrosive sugars, small mammals soon succumb to cancers and other ageing diseases, even if protected in the lab.

But is it possible to use this knowledge to increase human longevity?

Could we tweak our metabolisms in some way so that we could live as long as Ming the clam?

The answer is almost certainly yes, but not any time soon.

Some scientists believe it may be possible to fool our bodies into ticking over more slowly by going on a very low-calorie diet, living in a state of near-starvation.

But in the future, our best hope probably lies with genetic manipulation, combined with drug therapies to defuse the genetic timebombs left in our DNA by our savannah ancestry.

That's all a long way off.

But the good news for our generation is that while the human lifespan is probably unassailable for now, human life expectancy is not.

In other words, the numbers of us who can expect to live close to the current maximum possible age for humans is growing all the time.

A girl, born to affluent middleclass parents in the world's richer countries, now has a life expectancy of more than 85 (80 for boys) and this will increase further.

This alone may cause us problems, as the ratio of pensioners to workers changes dramatically.

What would happen in a world where people lived to be 405 can only be guessed at.

As for Ming? Well, he's already paying the price of fame.

By the time the mollusc had been inspected in the lab, and his record confirmed, he'd passed over to that great ocean bed in the sky.

No one can say it wasn't an impressive innings.

British Teens Top Pregnancy Rates

2007-10-18T10:36:00.001+05:30

The UK has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in western Europe, according to a worldwide report on sexual health.

It ranked Britain as one of the safest countries regarding health risks to women.

But, at 19th safest, the UK still lagged behind countries like Croatia, Estonia, Cuba and the Czech Republic.

The report's authors warned that teenagers, who often had unplanned pregnancies, ran a higher risk of complications in pregnancy and childbirth.

A Department of Health spokeswoman said: "Reducing teenage pregnancy and improving sexual and reproductive health are priority areas for the UK Government.

"Teenage pregnancy rates are at their lowest for 20 years. Between 1998 and 2005 the under-16 conception rate has fallen by 12.1%."

She added: "The UK is one of the safest countries in the world in which to have a baby."

The report, released by Population Action International, also found that the lifetime risk of maternal death is more than 250 times higher in developing countries than in developed countries.

It ranked 130 countries, comprising 96% of the world population, into categories from highest to lowest sexual and reproductive risk for women.

Report authors looked at factors including HIV prevalence, teenage birth rates, maternal deaths and infant mortality rates.

The Netherlands had the lowest risk of all, ranked at 130, while the UK was placed at 112.

The highest sexual and reproductive health risk was in Niger, ranked at number one. Chad, Mali, Yemen and Ethiopia are also in the highest risk category.

Weird And Wonderful Ways To Set Records

2007-09-28T11:57:00.000+05:30

Remarkable Records

The 2008 edition of the Guinness World Records book features brand new weird and wonderful achievements from around the globe.

Let's start with a category that must be one of the most hotly contested.

It's no wonder he looks chuffed after setting the record for unhooking the most bras.

Who said sofas were for couch potatoes?
And who would have thought there was a record for the fastest furniture?

Now that is some serious squirting.
Don't try this at home or you'll be crying over spilt milk.

"When I grow up I want to be just like you."
The tallest and smallest horses suss each other out.

Here's a record that will make your head spin.
89 times in one minute to be precise.

How many hula hoops could you handle?

The appropriately named Bigfoot 5 makes it into the book as the largest monster truck.

What looks like steps to the sun is actually a tower of milk crates balanced on the chin.

Look Mum, no feet!
Helium balloons are probably not the most reliable form of air travel but they are great for setting a wacky record.

It's not worth walking over hotplates for anything, or is it?

Well maybe if you get your name in the Guinness World Records book...................................

The world's tiniest baby - born at 24 weeks and weighing just 10oz

2007-09-27T23:53:00.000+05:30

Tiny Kimberley Mueller weighed just over 10 ounces when she was born - making her the world's smallest surviving baby.

Her chances of living were rated at worse than 1,000-1 when she was born 15 weeks prematurely.

These incredible pictures published for the first time today show that Kimberley was about the size of a mobile phone at birth.

Now six months old, the miracle baby has been allowed home for the first time.

The size of a mobile phone: Kimberley Mueller weighed just over 10 ounces when she was born in Hanover, Germany - making her the world's smallest surviving baby

But Kimberley, who was just 10.2cm long, spent months on a life support system as doctors in Germany fought to save her.

The tiny mite was kept in an incubator for warmth and drip-fed, while a respirator help her breathe.

British birth experts said it was "incredible" that she had survived.

Now six months, Kimberley has been allowed home for the first time (Above with mother Petra and father Andreas)

Dr Arvind Shah, consultant paediatrician at Great Ormond Street's Middlesex unit, said: "This is amazing - she must be a little fighter.

"Now we have more sophisticated equipment premature babies do have a better chance of living. But there are obviously huge health risks."

Kimberley's chances of living were rated at worse than 1,000-1 when she was born 15 weeks prematurely

Kimberley's mother Petra Mueller, from Hanover, said: "I was allowed to stroke her with my finger and I always spoke to her.

"It was the nicest thing when she would grip my finger in her tiny hands."

Scientists create the world's first see-through frog

2007-09-27T14:16:00.000+05:30

Frogs come in nearly every colour of the rainbow - from the dull greens of British species, to the vivid yellows and reds of their tropical relatives.

But Japanese scientists have gone one step further than mother nature - and created a transparent frog.

The creature's see-through skin allows researchers to see details of its internal organs and blood vessels. They say this could bring huge benefits to medicine, making it easier and cheaper to study diseases such as cancer.

Professor Masayuki Sumida, who led the project at the Institute for Amphibian Biology at Hiroshima University, said scientists could look at the effect of drugs and chemicals on the frog's internal organs and blood vessels without the animals having to be killed and dissected.

'Because the frogs remain transparent from their birth to adulthood, organs of the same frog could be studied throughout,' he said. 'This is simple and cheap when studying, for instance, how certain chemicals influence bones.'

By attaching green fluorescent markers to a stretch of DNA and injecting it into the frog, researchers can also study the behaviour of genes in a living organism.

The transparent frog (pictured) is the offspring of common Japanese brown frogs. It was created through traditional selective breeding, rather than genetic modification, using wild frogs with a mutation that gives them pale skin.

By mating the palest frogs they could find and then breeding from their palest offspring the researchers were able to create the see-through strain.

The scientists say they plan to patent the technique but have yet to perfect the process. Only one in 16 frogs they breed has transparent skin and they have not succeeded in getting the transparent frogs to breed see-through offspring.

Most of the world's natural see-through creatures live underwater. Animals such as jellyfish, sea worms, sea snails and octopuses evolved transparency as a form of camouflage. In an environment where there are few hiding places, being see-through can give them an edge.

Strange facts about the human body

2007-09-22T16:25:00.000+05:30

1- Every single day you, unless you are already bald, will lose as many as 100 strands of hair ? that?s 36,500 in a year. This is rather worrying as the average human scalp has 100,000 hairs.

2- A sneeze can blast out of your nose at a speed greater 100 mph.

3- The ashes of the average cremated person weighs 9 pounds.

4- The human body can survive longer without food than without sleep. While starvation takes a few weeks you would die after about 10 days without sleep.

5- An average human drinks about 16, 000 gallons of water in a lifetime.

6- Babies are born with 300 bones, but by adulthood we have only 206 in our bodies.

7- Your heart beats some 37,000,000 times in a year. During your life it�s will beat some two-and-a-half billion times.

8- Every square inch of your body is populated by an about 32 million bacteria.

9- Your largest internal organ is the small intestine at an average length of 20 feet. If cut into pasta size pieces it would serve four.

10- 85% of your brain is water.

11- Three-hundred-million cells die in the human body every minute.

12- The largest human organ is the skin, with a surface area of about 25 square feet.

13- Humans shed about 600,000 particles of skin every hour - about 1.5 pounds a year. By 70 years of age, an average person will have lost 105 pounds of skin.

14- Humans shed and regrow outer skin cells about every 27 days - almost 1,000 new skins in a lifetime.

15- It takes 17 muscles to smile --- 43 to frown.

16- The average duration of sexual intercourse for humans is 2 minutes. ?see pigs

17- It is impossible to kill yourself by holding your breath.

18- The human heart creates enough pressure to squirt blood 30 feet.

19- You blink about 84 million times in a year.

20- When you sneeze, all bodily functions stop-- even your heart!

21- 40 people are sent to the hospital for dog bites every minute.

22- Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until they are 2 -6 years old.

23- In the course of a lifetime the average person will grow 2 Metres of nose hair.

24- Ladies in nudist camps tend to use more makeup than ladies elsewhere.

25- A team of medical experts in Virginia contends you're more likely to catch the common cold virus by shaking hands than by kissing.

26- The human tooth has 55 miles of canal in it.

27- Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as 170 miles per hour.

28- People have legs of slightly different lengths.

29- The average cough comes out the mouth at 60 mph.

30- Men / women The average person speaks about 31,500 words per day.

31- Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin.

32- It is estimated that at any one time, 0.7% of the world's population are drunk.

33- Number of times intestines can wrap round

Scientists ponder future of space exploration

2007-09-22T15:53:00.000+05:30

PASADENA, Calif. — In the next 50 years of space exploration, scientists are hopeful that we will find other life in the universe.

Weeks away from the 50th anniversary of space flight, a group of aerospace engineers, space entrepreneurs and astronauts met here Thursday at the California Institute of Technology to reflect on the past and discuss the coming 50 years of space exploration.

The two-day conference, called 50 Years in Space, is marked by the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik on October 4, 1957. Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, astronaut and former U.S. Senator, called that event an "intellectual earthquake" for science and the first trigger of interest in space. To be sure, the United States formed NASA in November of the following year; and in 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced that Americans would land on the moon by the end of the decade. On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 landed the first man on the moon.

More than that milestone, early space flight paved the way for decades of technological innovation and scientific discovery and brought about a multibillion-dollar space industry. Scientists believe that new technology and knowledge about the universe will easily push us further in the years to come.

"The first 50 years have given us a new view of the physical places in the universe, new knowledge; and obviously new technology was essential," Ed Stone, director emeritus of NASA's research center, the Jet Propulsion Lab at Caltech, said during a morning keynote speech.

"An unexpected diversity in the universe has given us a new view. That diversity promises that there is so much more to be discovered and beckons us to expand new frontiers into space."

Paul Dimotakis, chief technologist at JPL and professor at Caltech, added that considering that all of the matter on Earth comprises only 4% of what's in the universe, "the next 50 years may well reveal (whether) we have company."

Stone named five frontiers of space: physical, knowledge, technology (developing the capability to travel to space), human and applications. "In the last 50 years, we've made remarkable progress in exploring and pushing those frontiers," Stone said. He gave some examples of new views of the universe brought about by work in those areas. Through the Cassini mission to Saturn, for example, scientists have seen plumes erupting from the surface, posing the question, "Where is this energy coming from?" Stone asked.

In another example, the Mars rover mission, which landed in 2004, has yielded findings from crater bedrocks that indicate there was once a vast amount of water on the planet. "Here on Earth, wherever you find water you find life," he said.

Gentry Lee, chief engineer for the JPL's Planetary Flight Systems Directorate and a science fiction author, said the changes in his profession as space engineer over the last 50 years have been dramatic, especially considering there was no such profession when he was a child.

He attributed one of the biggest changes to computers. At the beginning of the space program, for example, all simulations were done through hardware. Now, 99% of flight simulations are done through software, he said. For the Viking robotic mission to Mars in 1976, for example, the team might have run simulations of entry and landing on Mars all night on a mainframe computer. Now it would take "10 minutes on my desktop," said Lee, who worked on the Viking project for 12 years.

"Where the computer has been a magnificent tool, there is a downside, too," Lee said. "Often the people using the computer programs didn't have a hand in building them, so we as engineers must remember that the computer and processes are tools there to guide us, and not the engineering substance itself."

The one common denominator between now and 50 years ago, he said, is the human factor. "The right processes, tools and computers are not enough, you must have the right people who can tie it all together and reduce the risks," Lee said.

Funniest image !!!!!

2007-09-21T10:52:00.000+05:30

Search startup ready to challenge Google

2007-09-20T00:41:00.000+05:30

Barney Pell - President and CEO of Powerset, a new search engine that uses ‘natural-language’ technology to make Web search easier - hopes to demonstrate that Google isn’t as smart as most people think

There’s no business like search business. And this is precisely why a US-based start-up called Powerset is pursuing a particularly challenging goal: It’s aiming to outshine Internet’s search giants, Google, with its own new search software.

After nearly two years of hushed development, the San Francisco-based company is finally providing a peek at a “natural-language” technology that is supposed to make it easier to communicate with search engines.

The algorithms in Powerset are programmed to understand search requests submitted in plain English, a change from the “keyword” system used by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and the owners of the other leading engines.

The distinction means Web surfers will theoretically be able to get more meaningful results by typing more precise search requests in the form of straightforward questions like “What did Steve Jobs say about Apple?” instead of entering an ungrammatical mishmash like “Apple Steve Jobs said.”

Barney Pell, Powerset’s co-founder and chief executive, likens the hit-and-miss-process of searching with keywords to talking to a 2-year-old.

“In one sense, you are happy you can talk to it at all, but you still really want it to grow up so you can hold a real conversation,” he said.

This isn’t the first time a search engine has tried to understand simple English, but Powerset has drawn more attention because its natural-language technology is being licensed from the Palo Alto Research Centre.

Better known as PARC, the Xerox Corp subsidiary is renowned for hatching breakthroughs – such as the computer mouse and the graphical interface for personal computers – that were later commercialised by other companies.

“We have the best natural-language search technology that has ever been developed,” Pell, an artificial intelligence expert, said.

Backed by $12.5 million in venture capital, Powerset is gradually opening its testing ground, dubbed Powerlabs, to 16,000 people who signed up to get an early glimpse at the search engine.

The start-up is so confident that its methods are superior to Google that Powerlabs will present some answers alongside what its rival returns when asked the same questions. Powerset is requiring its users to vote on which engine produced better results before they are allowed to enter another search request.

Search Antecedents

Other search engines have previously promised to understand conversational English with little success.

Ask Jeeves was founded in the 1990s on the premise that Internet search requests should be presented as simple questions. It frustrated users with too many irrelevant answers.

After nearly failing in the dot-com bust, the company embraced the keyword approach to search and abandoned its mascot – a cartoon butler named Jeeves – to distance itself from the days it relied on natural-language algorithms. It is now known simply as Ask.com.

Industry analyst Charlene Li of Forrester Research is sceptical about Powerset’s prospects, too. She doubts Powerset will be able to comprehend all the different ways that people seeking the same type of information can phrase their questions.

For instance, the questions “What caused the collapse of Enron?” and “What caused the downfall of Enron?” typically produce different search results even though they are essentially asking the same thing, Li said. That’s because computers have trouble recognising synonyms and other subtle nuances in language.

“Understanding the meaning of many words is difficult without people involved,” she said.

Google Turns 10

2007-09-16T12:39:00.000+05:30

Google is 10Born 10 years ago, the Google Internet search engine has grown into the electronic center of human knowledge by indexing billions of Web pages as well as images, books and videos.

On September 15, 1997 Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Stanford University students, registered the domain name of “google.com.” Google started as a research project by Larry page and Sergey Brin when they were 24 and 23 years respectively. Google's mission statement is to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

From Googol to GoogleInitially, Larry and Sergey Brin called their search engine BackRub, named for its analysis of the of the Web's “back links.” The search for a new name began in 1997, with Larry and his officemates starting a hunt for a number of possible new names for the rapidly improving search technology.

The word is a variation of ‘googol,’ which refers to the number 10 to the power of 100, a term popularised by US mathematician Edward Kasner. Page and Brin incorporated Google one year later, on September 7, 1998, in a household garage in northern California.

Growing in millions
Soon after its launch this search engine became a motor that “absorbed” Web pages across the Internet, at a rate of billions per day.

News of Google spread largely thanks to the efficient way the search engine classified results through algorithms, and it quickly became one of the most used methods to find information on the Internet.

Google has become the most popular Internet search engine in the world outside of China, Japan and Russia, handling more than 500 million visits a day.

Google bank
To search for Internet documents it is necessary to permanently contact each site and memorise its pages, a colossal task for the Google data bank, which is constantly renewed, allowing the users to search for key words. Google needs several weeks to troll the Internet and renew its data bank.

The basis of Google's search technology is called PageRank, and assigns an “importance” value to each page on the Web and gives it a rank to determine how useful it is. However, that's not why it is called PageRank. It's actually named after Google co-founder Larry Page.

Hitting BoursesWhen Google went public in August 2004 its shared initially sold at $85. Today, its shares are valued at $525 and Google has a stock market value worth some $164 billion.

In 2006 Google reached $13.4 billion in revenue -- the third part based on Internet ads -- and profits of $3.7 billion.

In the past years Google has expanded at a breakneck pace, and currently has some 13,700 employees. The company thrives on a culture of innovation. Google asks employees to dedicate 20 per cent of their time to develop ideas for the company.

Page and Brin, now in their mid-30s, each have some $16 billion in personal wealth.

Healthy, wealthy and...

In 2000 Google began to sell ads linked to key words. At the time, as the dotcom bubble was bursting and scores of Web-based operations were declaring bankruptcy, Google was making a healthy profit.

In 2006 Google bought YouTube, the largest and most popular video exchange website, and soon after bought DoubleClick, one of the Internet's most powerful ad services.

Google also launched free e-mail -- Gmail -- as well as a word processing programme, picture editing programmes and a calender that competes directly with products from software giant Microsoft.

Stay away from evil
Despite the company motto of “Don't be Evil,” it seems that the Google's ubiquitous presence increasingly generates hostility. Both Google and YouTube have been sued by media groups that charge that they have stolen content. Its ads are directed at a very specific public based on their Internet searches.

Google's photographing of city streets has also been criticized, but also admired and widely used. The human rights group Privacy International is lukewarm on Google's respect for private data. “At it most blatant it is hostile, and at its most benign is ambivalent,” the group said.

Google goes to moon
Many have heard of Google Earth, but not many know there is a site called Google Moon, which maps the Lunar surface.

Google Moon is an extension of Google Maps and Google Earth that, courtesy of NASA imagery, enables you to surf the Moon's surface and check out the exact spots that the Apollo astronauts made their landings.

Guinness Book of Records Facts

2007-09-08T00:49:00.000+05:30

1. Highest walk on air balloon. Mike Howard (Mike Howard) from Britain walked the beam that can extend between two balloons at an altitude of 6522 m. near the city Yovil, County Somersetshir, UK, September 1, 2004 This feat was captured on videotape for the television show "Guinness records : 50 years, 50 of Records."

2. The most stretchable skin. Harry Turner (Garry Turner) from Britain could spread to the abdominal skin to see 15,8 This is due to a rare disease known as syndrome Elersa- Danlosa violation connective tissue, affecting the skin, ligaments and internal organs. Collagen, strengthens skin, and is responsible for its elasticity, damaged, which, among other things, is the weakening of the skin and joints razboltannost. In more severe cases, this can result in the destruction or rupture of blood vessels, leading to death.

3. The longest dog ears.The longest dog ears and see the size 34,9 34,2 cm-right and left, respectively, measured on September 29, 2004 They belong Tiggeru (Tigger), Jr., whose owners Brian and Christine Flessner (Bryan and Christina Flessner) lived in the city of St. Joseph, Illinois.

4. The highest paid attraction in slow decline. The highest attraction slow fall called "Sky Jump" (Leap from the sky) and is located in the tower and entertainment center crossovers Macau. Fall begins with a 61-level towers at a height of 233 m. over land, and continues for 17-20 seconds. Solemn leap committed A. J. Hackett (A. J. Hackett) from New Zealand on August 17, 2005

5. The heaviest apple. The heaviest weighing 1.849 kg apple. Chisato raised Iwasaki (Chisato Iwasaki) for its apple farm in the town of Hirosaki (Hirosaki), Japan, which was thwarted by October 24, 2005

6. An old man, who committed lowering a rope. The oldest person spustivshimsya a rope from a height of more than 30 metres. a britanka Doris Long (Doris Long), which on June 10, 2006 has descend from the building Millgate House-60 m. from the roof to the ground, at the age of 92 years and 24 days (she was born on May 18, 1914). The building is located in an area of St. George in the city of Portsmouth, England.

7. The biggest hamburger, which can be bought. The biggest hamburger weighing 35.6 kg. included in the menu bar grill Bob's BBQ & Grill on the beach in Pattaya, Thailand on July 31, 2006

8. The largest mirror ball. The largest mirror ball is 5.01 m. in diameter. Imaginate Events. His boat Nigel Burrows (Nigel Burrows) from the company Imaginate Events. Shaer was demonstrated in the city of Reading, England, October 13, 2006

9. The quickest office. The quickest office is a table specially equipped to ride on the roads, and moving with a maximum speed of 140 km / h. His boat Briton Edd China (Edd China), and he also has held across Westminster Bridge in London on November 6, 2006 on the Day Guinness World Records.

10. The biggest leap riding on a lion. The biggest leap riding on a lion to a distance of 2.3 m. Askold committed and Edgar Zapashnye (both Russian) - Russian State Circus performers, the circus scene Perm July 28, 2006

Most notorious viruses in PC history

2007-09-05T18:39:00.000+05:30

The computer virus has completed 25 years. The sinister computer programme that still gives computer users jitters has come a long way since the days of 'Elk Cloner', the first computer virus which started circulating in 1982. While some of the early viruses clogged networks, later ones corrupted or wiped documents or had other destructive properties.

More recently, viruses have been created to steal personal data such as passwords or to create relay stations for making junk e-mail more difficult to trace. While the earliest viruses spread through floppy disks, the growth of the Internet gave a new way to spread viruses: e-mail.

Today, viruses have found several platforms: instant-messaging, file-sharing software, rogue web sites; images etc. As these malicious programmes go more sophisticated and their numbers increase on a daily basis, here's a look into some of the most notorious virus attacks over the last twenty-five years.

Elk Cloner (1982)
Regarded as the first virus to hit personal computers worldwide, "Elk Cloner" spread through Apple II floppy disks. The programme was authored by Rich Skrenta, a ninth-grade student then, who wanted to play a joke on his schoolmates.

The virus was put on a gaming disk, which could be used 49 times. On 50th time, instead of starting the game, it opened a blank screen that read a poem that read: "It will get on all your disks. It will infiltrate your chips. Yes it's Cloner! It will stick to you like glue. It will modify RAM too. Send in the Cloner!" The computer would then be infected.

Elk Cloner was though a self-replicating virus like most other viruses, it bears little resemblance to the malicious programmes of today. However, it surely was a harbinger of all the security headaches that would only grow as more people get computers -- and connected them with one another over the Internet.

Brain (1986)
"Brain" was the first virus to hit computers running Microsoft's popular operating system DOS. Written by two Pakistani brothers, Basit Farooq Alvi and his brother Amjad Farooq Alvi, the virus left the phone number of their computer repair shop.

The Brain virus was a boot-sector virus. It infected the boot records of 360K floppy disks. The virus would fill unused space on the floppy disk so that it could not be used. The first "stealth" virus, it hides itself from any detection by disguising the infected space on the disk.

The virus is also known as Lahore, Pakistani and Pakistani Brain. BusinessWeek magazine called the virus the Pakistani flu.

The brothers told TIME magazine they had written it to protect their medical software from piracy and it was supposed to target copyright infringers only.

Morris (1988)
Written by a Cornell University graduate student, Robert Tappan Morris, the virus infected an estimated 6,000 university and military computers connected over the Internet. Incidentally, Morris's father was a top government computer-security expert,

The computers Morris invaded were part of the Arpanet, an international grid of telephone lines, buried cables, and satellite hookups established by the Department of Defense in 1969.

Interestingly Morris later claimed that the worm was not written to cause damage, but to gauge the size of the Internet. An unintended consequence of the code, however, led to the damage caused.

Melissa (1999)
'Melissa' was one of the first viruses to spread over e-mail. When users opened an attachment, the virus sent copies of itself to the first 50 people in the user's address book, covering the globe within hours.

The virus known as Melissa -- believed to have been named after a Florida stripper its creator knew -- caused more than $80m in damage after it was launched in March 1999. Computers became infected when users received a particular e-mail and opened a Word document attached to it.

First found on March 26, 1999, Melissa shut down Internet mail systems at several enterprises across the world after being they got clogged with infected e-mails carrying the worm.

The worm was first distributed in the Usenet discussion group alt.sex. The creator of the virus, David Smith, was sentenced to 20 months imprisonment by a United States court.

Love bug (2000)
Travelling via e-mail attachments, "Love Bug" exploited human nature and tricked recipients into opening it by disguising itself as a love letter. The virus stunned security experts by its speed and wide reach. Within hours, the pervasive little computer programme tied up systems around the world.

The virus which was similar to the earlier Melissa worm, spread via an e-mail with the tantalising subject line, "I Love You." When a recipient opened the attachment, the virus sent copies of itself to his entire address book. It then looked for files with .jpeg, .mp3, .mp2, .css and .hta extensions and overwrote them with itself, changing the extensions to .vbs or .vbe. These files then could not be retrieved in searches.

The bug affected companies in Taiwan and Hong Kong -- including Dow Jones Newswires and the Asian Wall Street Journal.

Companies in Australia had to close down their email systems to keep the virus from spreading (80 per cent of the companies in Australia reportedly got hit). The victims also included Parliaments of Britain and Denmark. In Italy, the outbreak hit almost the entire country. In the United States too, the e-mail systems were shut down at several companies.

Code Red (2001)
Said to be one of the most expensive viruses in history, the self-replicating malicious code, 'Code Red' exploited vulnerability in Microsoft IIS servers. Exploiting the flaw in the software, the worm was among the first few "network worms" to spread rapidly as they required only a network connection, not a human opening like attachment worms. The worm had a more malicious version known as Code Red II.

Both worms exploited a bug in an indexing service shipped with Microsoft Window's NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 operating systems.

In addition to possible website defacement, infected systems experienced severe performance degradation. The virus struck multiple times on the same machine.

Code Red II affected organisations ranging from Microsoft to the telecom company Qwest to the media giant Associated Press.

According to a research firm Computer Economics, the virus caused damage worth above $2 billion.

Incidentally, Microsoft had issued a patch to fix the vulnerability almost a month earlier, however, most system operators failed to install it.

Blaster (2003)
'Blaster' (also known as Lovsan or Lovesan) took advantage of a flaw in Microsoft software. The worm alongwith 'SoBig' worm which also spread at the same time prompted Microsoft to offer cash rewards to people who helped authorities capture and prosecute the virus writers.

The worm started circulating in August 2003. Filtering by ISPs and widespread publicity about the worm curbed the spread of Blaster.

On August 29, 2003, Jeffrey Lee Parson, an 18-year-old from Hopkins, Minnesota was arrested for creating the B variant of the Blaster worm; he admitted responsibility and was sentenced to an 18-month prison term in January 2005.

Sasser (2004)

Another worm to exploit a Windows flaw, 'Sasser' led to several computers crashing and rebooting themselves.

Sasser spread by exploiting the system through a vulnerable network port. The virus, which infected several million computers around the world, caused infected machines to restart continuously every time a user attempted to connect to the Internet. The worm also severely impaired the infected computer's performance.

The first version of worm struck on April 30, 2004. The worms three modified versions have followed it since then, known as Sasser.B, Sasser.C and Sasser.D.

The companies affected by the worm included the Agence France-Presse (AFP), Delta Air Lines, Nordic insurance company If and their Finnish owners Sampo Bank.

Ancient diamonds hint at Earth’s age

2007-09-04T23:39:00.000+05:30

Diamonds more than 4 billion years old – nearly as old as the Earth itself – have been discovered in Australia, giving scientists vital clues about the early history of our planet.

Found trapped in zircon crystals, the small gems are the oldest identified fragments of the Earth’s crust and their existence suggests the Earth may havecooled faster than previously thought, experts said on Wednesday.

The time between the creation of the Earth around 4.5 billion years ago and the formation of the oldest known rocks some 500 million years later is known as the Hadean period – the “dark ages” of geology.

Many geologists have traditionally thought of it as a time when the surface of the planet was a mass of molten lava. But the discovery of the ancient diamonds, reported in the journal Nature, challenges that view.

Martina Menneken of Westfalische Wilhelms-Universitat Muenster, Germany, and colleagues said the presence of diamonds – which are created under intense pressure – implied there was a relatively thick continental crust as early as 4.25 billion years ago.This suggests it may have taken only around 200 million years for the Earth’s surface to cool enough for water to condense and oceans to form.

“These latest findings indicate that the planet was already cooling and forming a crust much earlier than previously thought,” said Alexander Nemchin, an expert in geochemistry at Australia’s Curtin University of Technology and one of Menneken’s co-researchers. “We’re dealing with the oldest material on the planet.

”Radioactive dating showed the crystals from Australia varied in age from 3.06 billion to 4.25 billion years, making them almost one billion years older than the previous oldest-known diamonds.

Martin Van Kranendonk, a senior geologist with the Geological Survey of Western Australia, said unravelling the history of the crystals was a boon for researchers.

“Any information about the very early Earth is fantastic. It’s like a Christmas present for geoscientists,” he said.

What spider could construct such a massively creepy web?

2007-08-31T19:48:00.000+05:30

There are times when you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in this eerie spider web.

Officials at Lake Tawakoni State Park say the sprawling spider web is a big attraction for some visitors, while others will not go anywhere near it.

Now entomologists are debating the origin and rarity of the web that blankets several trees, shrubs and the ground along a 200-yard (182-metre) stretch of trail in a North Texas park.

The webs bring to mind the terrifyingly large spiders featured in the Harry Potter movies

"At first, it was so white it looked like fairyland," said Donna Garde, superintendent of the park about 45 miles (72 kilometres) east of Dallas. "Now it's filled with so many mosquitoes that it's turned a little brown. There are times you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in those webs."

Spider experts say the web may have been constructed by social cobweb spiders, which work together, or could be the result of a mass dispersal in which the arachnids spin webs to spread out from one another.

"I've been hearing from entomologists from Ohio, Kansas, British Columbia - all over the place," said Mike Quinn, an invertebrate biologist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department who first posted photos online.

Herbert A. "Joe" Pase, a Texas Forest Service entomologist, said the massive web is very unusual. "From what I'm hearing it could be a once-in-a-lifetime event," he said.

But John Jackman, a professor and extension entomologist for Texas A&M University, said he hears reports of similar webs every couple of years.

"There are a lot of folks that don't realise spiders do that," said Jackman, author of "A Field Guide to the Spiders and Scorpions of Texas."

"Until we get some samples sent to us, we really won't know what species of spider we're talking about," Jackman said.

Garde invited the entomologists out to the park to get a firsthand look at the giant web.

"Somebody needs to come out that's an expert. I would love to see some entomology intern come out and study this," she said.

Park rangers said they expect the web to last until fall, when the spiders will start dying off.

Total Lunar Eclipse Visible in U.S.

2007-08-28T19:40:00.000+05:30

The Earth's shadow will creep across the moon's surface early Tuesday, slowly eclipsing it and turning it to shades of orange and red.

Aug. 28: The moon glows red during a lunar eclipse seen in Sydney, Australia.

The total lunar eclipse, the second this year, will be visible in North and South America, especially in the West. People in the Pacific islands, eastern Asia, Australia and New Zealand also will be able to view it if skies are clear.

People in Europe, Africa or the Middle East, who had the best view of the last total lunar eclipse in March, will not see this one because the moon will have set when the partial eclipse begins at 4:51 a.m. EDT. The full eclipse will begin an hour later at 5:52 a.m. EDT.

An eclipse occurs when Earth passes between the sun and the moon, blocking the sun's light. It is rare because the moon is usually either above or below the plane of Earth's orbit.

Since the Earth is bigger than the moon, the process of the Earth's shadow taking a bigger and bigger "bite" out of the moon, totally eclipsing it before the shadow recedes, lasts about 3 1/2 hours, said Doug Duncan, director of the University of Colorado's Fiske Planetarium. The total eclipse phase, in which the moon has an orange or reddish glow, lasts about 1 1/2 hours.

The full eclipse will be visible across the United States, but East Coast viewers will only have about a half-hour to see it before the sun begins to rise and the moon sets. Skywatchers in the West will get the full show.

In eastern Asia, the moon will rise in various stages of eclipse.

During the full eclipse, the moon will not be completely dark because some light still reaches it around the edges of the Earth. The light is refracted as it passes through our atmosphere, scattering blue light — which is why the sky is blue — but sending reddish light onto the moon.

"When someone asks why is it [the moon] red, you can say because the sky is blue," Duncan said.

The next total lunar eclipse occurs Feb. 21, 2008, and will be visible from the Americas, Europe and Asia.

Weirdest Accidents of All Time

2007-08-28T13:08:00.000+05:30

Magazine Illusions

2007-08-27T14:06:00.000+05:30

World's tallest women

2007-08-26T17:02:00.000+05:30

In 1976 Sandy Allen was declared the “world’s tallest woman - living” by Guinness Book of World Records. Allen is a towering lady at 7′ 7 1/4″. Amazingly this is not far beyond the recognized world’s tallest living man - Xi Shun (7′ 8.95″). Allen has since spent her life traveling around the world encouraging people that it is OK to be different. Allen was born in 1955, at age 22 she underwent surgery to stop her growth. Without this she would have continued to grow and suffer further medical problems associated with gigantism.

At age 11, she had already grown to 188 cm, and was 203 cm at age 15. Her parents, poor peasants from the Chinese province of Anhui, sold her to a circus, where she was enslaved as an attraction during her adolescence. Later, she returned to her mother (who, surprisingly enough, is only 4 ft 8 in tall), where she is still living now.

Yao Defen of China, (born 15 July 1972), claims to be the tallest female in the world. She states that her height is 2.36 meters (7 ft 8 in) tall and that she weighs 200 kg, though this has yet to be confirmed by Guinness World Records. Her gigantism is the result of a tumor that is located within her pituitary gland. She is currently under observation in Shanghai and is expected to undergo surgery to remove the tumor in 2007.

‘World's fattest mouse’ appears immune to diabetes

2007-08-24T14:55:00.000+05:30

The “world’s fattest mice”, genetically engineered to overproduce a key hormone, weigh five times as much as normal mice do – but bizarrely do not develop diabetes, reveals a new study. The findings shed light on how current diabetes medications work and point to new drug targets to treat the disease, say the study's researchers.

A mouse (pictured on the left) engineered to overproduce the hormone adiponectin weighs 100 grammes – five times as much as a normal mouse (pictured on the right)

Philipp Scherer at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, US, and his colleagues studied mice that had been genetically engineered to overeat. The mice gorged on food because they lacked the ability to produce an important appetite-suppressing hormone called leptin.

The researchers then bred a subgroup of these leptin-deficient mice to overproduce another key hormone that gets released by fat cells, called adiponectin, by about threefold. Under normal circumstances, an increase in adiponectin levels signals that an animal has entered "starvation mode" because it has not eaten for some time.

All of the leptin-deficient mice ate non-stop, but those bred to overproduce adiponectin packed on almost twice as much weight by the end of the 20-week experiment.

Location, location, location

Whereas a normal, healthy mouse weighs about 20 grammes, the mice lacking leptin weighed roughly 60 grammes. The adiponectin over-producers weighed about 100 grammes.

"It's probably the most obese mouse that's ever been reported," Scherer says of their particular mouse strain.

Interestingly, none of the rodents that made extra adiponectin developed symptoms of diabetes, such as high blood sugar. By comparison, all of the other leptin-deficient mice developed this disease during the course of the experiment.

When Scherer and his team examined the distribution of body fat within the mice, they found that the obese rodents with an abundance of adiponectin had a great deal of fat stored under the skin, but very little fat within organs such as the liver.

This unusual allocation of fat might explain why the animals remained in good health – extra fat in the liver can make the organ less sensitive to insulin, thereby leading to diabetes.

Scherer firmly believes that the distribution of fat can make all the difference in terms of whether obesity will lead to diabetes. "It's a little bit like real estate; it's location, location, location."

Sudden death

Adiponectin appears to help the body store fat under the skin by increasing the number of fat cells there.

Notably, in the weeks following the formal end of the experiment, about 10% of the mice that overproduced adiponectin experienced sudden death. But this was due to the fact that their vital organs stopped functioning under the crushing weight of their fat, not because of a particular disease.

Some of the 100-gramme mice also developed enlarged hearts, which in humans can predispose people to heart failure.

The new findings might lead to new ways of treating diabetes in the future, says Scherer. He notes that many drugs currently used to treat diabetes lead to an increase in adiponectin levels in patients.

Scherer says that giving adiponectin itself would not work well since the protein gets broken down very quickly in the body. But he adds that scientists might want to look for compounds that can act directly on the adiponectin signalling pathway to migrate fat out of the liver of obese patients.

First Olympic bullet trains arrive in Britain

2007-08-23T21:00:00.000+05:30

The first of the 140mph Japanese bullet trains that will go into service on the UK rail network in 2009 arrived in Britain.

The six-car Hitachi Class 395 train reached Southampton on board a roll-on, roll-off ferry.

The bullet trains will be used by the Southeastern train company for domestic services on the soon-to-be-completed final section of the Channel Tunnel Rail link from Kent into central London.

The trains will also play a key role in 2012 London Olympics transport provision by taking spectators from St Pancras station in London to the Olympics site at Stratford, east London, in just seven minutes in a service to be known as the Olympic Javelin.

All aboard: The first of four bullet trains is unloaded at Southampton

St Pancras International station is due to open in November 2007.

Manufactured in Kasado, Japan by Hitachi, the train which arrived today is the first of four which will be delivered over the coming months.

The remaining 25 trains will arrive in 2009 in time for the start of the new services in December of that year.

Alistair Dormer, general manager at Hitachi Rail Systems London, said: "Hitachi is delighted to deliver the first Class 395 train to the UK, on time and on budget.

"Today is a major milestone for Hitachi and for everyone involved in the Class 395 project. We now look forward to working with our partners to complete testing and delivering the trains ready for service in 2009."

The new-look St Pancras station opens in November 2007

Southeastern managing director Charles Horton said: "The arrival of the first high-speed train into the UK is great news. When these trains enter service, they will slash journey times across the region, encourage more people to travel by train and bring new standards of comfort and reliability.

"They will also play a key role in providing fast and easy access to the London Olympic Games at Stratford in 2012, with a journey time to and from London St Pancras of just seven minutes. Our ambition to create a growing railway for a growing region has taken an important step forward."

Artist's impression of the new train in action

Recently, the Government announced that Hitachi UK was one of three organisations shortlisted to compete to build a new generation of express trains for the UK's rail network in a contract expected to be worth around £4 billion.

Hitachi Europe is up against Alstom-Barclays Rail Group and the Express Rail Alliance - a consortium involving four companies, including Bombardier and Angel Trains.

Fact box
1. Using both high-speed and existing lines, journeys to St Pancras will be slashed after two years of trials from 83 to 37 minutes from Ashford, 102 to 61 minutes from Canterbury, and 98 to 63 minutes from Dover.

2. In the mid-Seventies, British Rail's Intercity 125 was outpaced only by the Japanese, but since then Britain has stayed at 125mph and been overtaken by 186mph railways around the world.

3. The new trains will be quicker than any service except Eurostar.

The world’s fastest, smallest mobile chip

2007-08-21T20:56:00.000+05:30

Seoul: South Korea’s Hynix Semiconductor announced it has developed the world’s fastest and smallest one-gigabyte chip for mobile phones.

The new chip is capable of processing 1.6 GB of data per second, the company said.

The company added that the chip – which can be applied to “ultra-small electronic devices and memory products” – would start production on a large scale in early 2008.

The cycling jacket with built-in brake lights and indicators

2007-08-19T23:09:00.000+05:30

It's every cyclist's nightmare - it's dark or getting that way, you have just given a hand signal, but will other road users have seen it?

Well, they will now, thanks to an innovative jacket with flashing indicators on the sleeves and brake lights in the back.

Its inventor Michael Chen has landed a design award for the high-tech coat and hopes to find a manufacturer to produce it on a mass scale.

Amber indicators are triggered to flash by a "tilt-switch" when the wearer raises their arm to give a hand signal.

And a device called an "accelerometer" is used to turn an LED, woven into the jacket's back, green when the rider is moving forward or red when they apply the brakes.

London-based Mr Chen, 28, got the idea watching cyclists in the capital. He said: "There is a lot of hostility from bus and cab drivers towards cyclists.

"Cyclists are brave. It is so dangerous without bike lanes. When I visited Korea last year, I noticed their cities had better bike lanes than London."

Scroll to the bottom of the page to see the jacket being road tested...

The right signals: Inventor Michael Chen with a cyclist modelling his high-tech coat

According to the latest official statistics, 148 cyclists were killed on roads in the UK in 2005 - up ten per cent on the previous year - and thousands more were injured.

The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety blamed the increase on more inexperienced cyclists taking to the roads.

Now Mr Chen, who studied design engineering at Middlesex University, hopes his jacket will make cycling safer.

He said: "My prototype had lights taped to it that everyone thought was pretty ugly. But when I put the wiring inside, it looked more normal.

"Riding around London, people wave and chase me down the street, asking, 'Where did you buy that jacket?'"

The invention has already impressed British judges of the prestigious James Dyson design awards, who chose Mr Chen for a first prize of £2,000. His jacket will now go through to the global stage of the competition.

Mr Chen hopes the jacket be on sale by Christmas, for about £100.

Beans illusion

2007-08-19T13:17:00.000+05:30

Can you find the human face which is hidden in these coffee beans?

Doctors have concluded that if you can find the face in the coffee beans in 3 seconds, the right half of your brain is better developed than most people.

If you find the face between 3 seconds and 1 minute, your right half of the brain is developed normally.

If you find the face between 1 minute and 3 minutes, then the right half of your brain is functioning slowly and you need to eat more protein.

If you have not found the face after 3 minutes, the advice is to look for more of this type of exercise to make that part of the brain stronger!

Google AdSense to distribute videos

2007-08-18T00:02:00.000+05:30

Short Internet videos from the creator of the animated TV show "Family Guy" and Raven-Symone, star of the Disney Channel show "That's So Raven," will be distributed over Google Inc's AdSense network.

Media Rights Capital, the financing company that backed last year's film "Babel," is supporting the two projects. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The programmes will appear in a video box that a user would click on to start. The box will be packaged with banner advertising and video ads that will appear either before or after the programming.

The videos will be distributed to numerous Web sites served by AdSense, which places targeted advertising across the Internet. AdSense signed a similar distribution deal last year with Viacom Inc's MTV Networks.

Media Rights Capital will work with Google to target Web sites most appropriate for its content, the company said.

"We feel this partnership answers the question of how best to reach viewers online, because the Web is fragmented into millions and millions of viewing destinations," said Asif Satchu, co-chief executive of Media Rights Capital.

Seth MacFarlane, creator of "Family Guy," will produce short videos featuring new characters, while Raven-Symone will be in a "how-to" show, the company said.

The company said the distribution deal was preferable to aggregating content on one site. Distributing content through AdSense means the videos reach a broader audience, which would include new sites as they pop up.

Scientists unlock the secrets of the Rubik's cube

2007-08-17T16:02:00.000+05:30

Remember the Rubik's Cube? That little box of multi-coloured squares that you could only complete by carefully steaming off all of the stickers and then re-sticking them in the right positions?

A team of US scientists has used a powerful number-crunching supercomputer to work out that the minimum moves needed to complete a Rubik's Cube from any starting position, is 26, one less than the previous record.

In reaching this figure Daniel Kunkle and Gene Cooperman from Northeastern University in Boston developed algorithms that can be useful for all kinds of different applications from scheduling air flights to determining how proteins will fold.

Scroll down for more...

The Rubik's cube was a huge success in the 1980s - despite the frustration it caused

As a Rubik's Cube has approximately 43 billion billion (43,000,000,000,000,000,000) possible positions it would have taken too long for even the most powerful supercomputer to work through all of the different configurations.

So Kunkle and his advisor Gene Cooperman developed some clever mathematical and computational strategies to make the puzzle more manageable.

They programmed the supercomputer to arrive at one of 15,000 half-solved solutions. They knew they could fully solve any of these 15,000 cubes with a few extra moves.

The final results showed that any disordered cube could be fully solved in a maximum of 29 moves, but that most cubes could be completed in 26 moves.

Many mathematicians still believe that it should take only 20 moves to solve any Rubik's cube, but no one has been able to prove this theory yet.

Failing that, a steaming kettle and some deft fingerwork should do the trick.

At this year's Caltech 2007 competition American Rubik's Cube expert Dan Dzoan broke the world record for one-handed cube-solving by completing one in an incredible 17.9 seconds.

The world's strangest laws

2007-08-17T00:38:00.000+05:30

Did you know it's illegal in France to name a pig Napoleon? Or that in Ohio you're not allowed to get a fish drunk? Alex Wade celebrates the spirit of the silly season with a list of the world's most ridiculous laws

Did you know that in France it is forbidden to call your pig Napoleon?

25- It is illegal for a cab in the City of London to carry rabid dogs or corpses.

24- It is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament.

23- It is an act of treason to place a postage stamp bearing the British monarch upside down.

22- In France, it is forbidden to call a pig Napoleon.

21- Under the UK’s Tax Avoidance Schemes Regulations 2006, it is illegal not to tell the taxman anything you don’t want him to know, though you don’t have to tell him anything you don’t mind him knowing.

20- In Alabama, it is illegal for a driver to be blindfolded while driving a vehicle.

19- In Ohio, it is against state law to get a fish drunk.

18- Royal Navy ships that enter the Port of London must provide a barrel of rum to the Constable of the Tower of London.

17- In the UK, a pregnant woman can legally relieve herself anywhere she wants – even, if she so requests, in a policeman’s helmet.

16- In Lancashire, no person is permitted after being asked to stop by a constable on the seashore to incite a dog to bark.

15- In Miami, Florida, it is illegal to skateboard in a police station.

14- In Indonesia, the penalty for masturbation is decapitation.

13- In the UK, all men over the age of 14 must carry out two hours of longbow practice a day.

12- In London, Freemen are allowed to take a flock of sheep across London Bridge without being charged a toll; they are also allowed to drive geese down Cheapside.

11- In San Salvador, drunk drivers can be punished by death before a firing squad.

10. In the UK, a man who feels compelled to urinate in public can do so only if he aims for his rear wheel and keeps his right hand on his vehicle.

9- In Florida, unmarried women who parachute on Sundays can be jailed.

8- In Kentucky, it is illegal to carry a concealed weapon more than six-feet long.

7- In Chester, Welshmen are banned from entering the city before sunrise and from staying after sunset.

6- In the city of York, it is legal to murder a Scotsman within the ancient city walls, but only if he is carrying a bow and arrow.

5- In Boulder, Colorado, it is illegal to kill a bird within the city limits and also to “own” a pet – the town’s citizens, legally speaking, are merely “pet minders”.

4- In Vermont, women must obtain written permission from their husbands to wear false teeth.

3- In London, it is illegal to flag down a taxi if you have the plague.

2- In Bahrain, a male doctor may legally examine a woman’s genitals but is forbidden from looking directly at them during the examination; he may only see their reflection in a mirror.

1- The head of any dead whale found on the British coast is legally the property of the King; the tail, on the other hand, belongs to the Queen - in case she needs the bones for her corset.

World’s tiniest art

2007-08-17T00:15:00.000+05:30

This image from IBM shows an atomic-sized image resulting from scientific work at IBM’s labs. Made of 48 iron atoms using IBM’s low temperature Scanning Tunneling Microscope, this tiny work of art will be featured in an exhibition in the US titled ‘The Art of Invention’.

While experimenting with materials that might make up future computer chips and storage components, IBM scientists built images with individual atoms such as this stadium-shaped ‘Quantum Corral’

The Top 10 Weirdest Keyboards ever

2007-08-15T13:43:00.000+05:30

Keyboards come in many shapes - from the simplest computer grey $9.99 standard 102-key keyboard to variants that seem to come straight out of a Star Trek episode. Here's our Top 10 list of the weirdest keyboards ever.

10. Roll-up keyboard

This keyboard has the same measurements as a standard 102-key keyboard, but there's a big difference. You can roll this one up and put it in your pocket. Nice.

9. The wrist keyboard

This one might be useful if you're in the need to type stuff while doing practical work in tough climates - but if you would wear this keyboard at the office, you might be considered a bit geeky.

8. Maltron 3D Ergonomic Keyboard

Things are starting to get a bit more weird, ey? Getting used to this keyboard isn't something you'll do in 10 minutes or so - it will take a while for sure. But if you have medical problems with your hands, this might be a good choice since it's a very ergonomic keyboard. It looks very weird though!

7. The SafeType keyboard

Just take a look at this one. Do you understand how to use it? The idea is that your hands and arms shall be in a more relaxed position while working with the SafeType compared to a traditional keyboard.

6. Virtual Laser Keyboard

Wow, it's heating up, don't you agree? This is more cool than weird though. This laser gadget projects a virtual keyboard on a table or other suitable material, and then interpret your finger movement and pass them on to your PDA or whatever you have it connected to. Cool.

5. The frogpad

The frogpad is a tiny, tiny keyboard - or it would be more suitable to call it a keypad actually. The manufacturer say that you can get up to 40 words per minute if you practice between 6 to 10 hours with it. Any idea why they are calling it a frogpad?

4. The Twiddler 2

What do you say about the Twiddler 2? It looks to be quite painful to use, or what do you think? According to the testimonials at their site, it will take you 'a weekend' to learn typing 30 words per minute, so the frogpad wins that round.

3. The Orbitouch

This one could be a leftover from Area 51, or a prop from the set of any science fiction movie. Wonder how it works? Here's what the manufacturer say: "The orbiTouch creates a keystroke when you slide the two domes into one of their eight respective positions. You type the different characters by sliding the domes to create letters and numbers. The orbiTouch also has an integrated mouse, so moving the domes gives you full mouse and keyboard capability!" The target group for this keyboard is of course people who have limited or no motion in their fingers or hands, and that's a very good thing - but anyway, it's a weird keyboard.

2. The Datahand

This product is aimed for people who get pain in their hands from typing with a traditional keyboard - and that's a good thing. It's still looks like a very strange keyboard. Everytime I see this one I think of the movie Predator with Arnold Schwarzenegger, don't know why. I love this one - the keyboard, not the movie.

1. The Tidy Tippist

Isn't this one lovely? The keyboard is hidden inside a decorative, washable tablecloth. The electronic is woven into a fabric, which finds itself between layers of water resistant felt as sandwich material. The soft felt surface makes it a pleasure for fingers to tip - a cosy keyboard. Awesome, hehe.

Nail biters to be treated in a special treatment centre in the Netherlands

2007-08-15T00:50:00.000+05:30

The world's first treatment centre for nail biters is to open in the Netherlands next month.

Director of the new centre in Venlo, Alain-Raymond van Abbe of the Institute for Pathological Onychophagy (IPO) says he and his team have invented an aid to make nail-biting impossible.

"This is the first place ever to tackle this very serious problem," he explained. "We are expecting clients from all over the world."

He said initial trials had been almost 100 per cent successful and that people attending the centre could expect to be completely cured within four weeks.

"The treatment has been successful for 98 per cent of the first trial patients. Very few fall back into the habit," he said.

There are about 2 million people who bite their nails in the Netherlands, according to officials at the centre.

Studies have shown that as many as 15 per cent of adults, 33 per cent of young children and 45 per cent of adolescents bite their nails.

The centre fits a special device to the hands that allow normal activities but prevent nail biting, and at the same time gives patients extensive therapy and counselling to get them to stop.

Nokia Recalls 46 Million Phone Batteries

2007-08-14T19:54:00.000+05:30

Nokia warned Tuesday that up to 46 million batteries used in some of its cell phones could be faulty and pose a risk of overheating.

The advisory applies to batteries manufactured by Matsushita from December 2005 to November 2006, the world's largest mobile phone maker said. Matsushita Battery Industrial Co. Ltd. of Japan is one of several suppliers that have together made some 300 million BL-5C batteries.

The lithium-ion battery is one of 14 different types of battery used in Nokia phones.

Nokia said 100 incidents of overheating of the Matsushita-made BL-5C batteries have been reported worldwide, but added that "no serious injuries or property damage have been reported."

"Consumers with a BL-5C battery subject to this advisory should note that all of the approximately 100 incidents have occurred while charging the battery," the Finnish company said. "According to Nokia's knowledge this issue does not affect any other use of the mobile device."

Nokia said it will swap out all affected batteries.

Last year, Sony Corp. recalled more than 10 million laptops after it discovered that lithium-ion batteries used in them could overheat and catch fire. The recalls included notebooks made by other major computer makers, including Dell Inc., Lenovo Inc., Apple Inc. and Acer Inc.

Nokia sells products in 130 countries and employs 110,000 people worldwide. In the second quarter, it sold 100 million mobile devices, claiming a 38 percent share of the global market.

Major World Markets Rebound

2007-08-13T19:59:00.000+05:30

Major world markets rebounded Monday, regaining some territory lost in a global plunge last week, as central banks continued a steady supply of liquidity to soothe rattled investors.

Minutes after Wall Street opened in the United States, the Fed said that it would add at least $2 billion in liquidity in a one-day repurchase.

The European Central Bank, which injected another 47.67 billion euros ($65.3 billion) into the banking system to ease fear in the credit markets, said conditions were "normalizing" _ but some analysts said the bounce could be a short one with continuing worries about a credit crunch.

The Bank of Japan also acted again, injecting 600 billion yen ($5 billion) into money markets to try to bring more stability to the markets.

The U.K.'s FTSE 100 Index rose 2.6 percent to 6,194.70 points, France's CAC-40 gained 1.8 percent to 5,546.11, while Germany's DAX Index advanced 1.5 percent to 7,452.73.

Still, some analysts were cautious. The FTSE-100 lost 3.7 percent on Friday _ its biggest percentage drop in four years.

"It would be naive to think the worst is behind us," said David Jones, chief market analyst at CMC Markets.

Charles Stanley analyst Jeremy Batstone agreed, saying Monday's rebound was unlikely to mark the end of the volatility.

"This entire period of economic expansion has been built on a vast amount of debt," he said. "Increase the cost of that debt, tighten loan conditions and one might be in for a bit more than just risk aversion."

The Nikkei 225, benchmark for the Tokyo Stock Exchange, edged up 0.2 percent to 16,800.05, recouping some of Friday's drop as investors bought back into stocks with strong earnings. Hong Kong's blue chip Hang Seng Index rose 0.45 percent to 21,891.10. South Korea's benchmark stock index rose 1.1 percent to close at 1,849.26.

But there was no firm conviction the volatility of the last few weeks has ended.

"The Hong Kong market is in directionless trade. Aftershocks of U.S. subprime mortgage woes are likely to continue rippling through markets in the Asia-Pacific region," said Peter Lai, director of DBS Vickers Securities Ltd. in Hong Kong.

Yutaka Miura, manager at Shinko Securities in Tokyo, said gains Monday weren't expected to be very big, and most investors kept one eye on the U.S. markets.
"This was mainly a technical rebound from Friday," he said.

The Dow Jones industrials closed out a volatile week Friday, ending with just a 31-point loss for the day and managing to post a gain for the week. On Thursday the Dow had fallen 387 points and extended a series of triple-digit moves that began in late July.

Wall Street opened higher Monday after the Federal Reserve and other central banks added more cash to their banking systems, helping investors set aside some concerns about credit tightness.

Just before the market opened, Goldman Sachs Group announced it had lined up $3 billion in additional funding for one of its biggest hedge funds that has seen its value plunge amid market volatility. The investment bank said its Global Equity Opportunities fund "suffered significantly" as global markets sold off on worries about debt and credit.

Last week, the U.S., European, Australian and Japanese central banks poured funds into money markets as stocks dropped on concerns over U.S. mortgages.

The ECB had provided 95 billion euros ($130 billion) in funds to banks on Thursday and injected a further 61 billion euros ($83.6 billion) on Friday. On Friday, the Bank of Japan injected 1 trillion yen ($8.39 billion; 6.15 billion euros) into money markets to curb rises in a key overnight interest rate.

The chief economist of Germany's DekaBank, Ulrich Kater, said on N24 television that central banks "have the liquidity bottleneck under control."

"It is they who can supply the markets with liquidity ... and they did so to the degree that was necessary last week, and continue to do so," he added. "That of course helps to calm the markets. The markets will continue to function."

The World Trade Center site in New York, in September of 2001.

2007-08-13T14:31:00.000+05:30

These photos were taken at Ground Zero, the World Trade Center site in New York, in September of 2001.

They were taken by someone named "Ed" who was allowed into the area by a member of the emergency response crew, at a time when all civilians -- including most journalists -- were forbidden to enter the area. As a result, these photos are among the few close-ups ever taken of the World Trade Center site so soon after the 9/11 attacks.

The person who submitted these pictures had originally been under the impression that they were taken on September 13, 2001, but recent examination of other Ground Zero photos suggest that in fact the photos on this page were taken later in September, perhaps ten days after 9/11.

This satellite photo, for example, was taken on September 15, 2001 and shows that the West Side Highway, which runs alongside the west edge of Ground Zero, had still not been fully cleared of debris at the time the photo was taken. Yet the photos on this page show the same street substantially cleared of debris, which means they must have been taken several days afterward.

This image of Ground Zero taken by photographer Joel Meyerowitz and published in his book Aftermath was taken on September 23 and shows the debris cleared away to a somewhat greater degree than in the photos here, meaning that the Meyerowitz photo was taken perhaps a couple of days later. Other rare Ground Zero images from the time also suggest that these "Ed" pictures -- while still unique -- were most likely taken nearer to September 21, 2001, and not on September 13 as was originally reported.

We apologize for the confusion. In any event, here are the photos, which remain a powerful testimony to the destruction of 9/11:

Overview of the wreckage looking west.

Overview of the wreckage looking east.

Overview of the wreckage looking northwest.

Overview of the wreckage looking north.

A scene from inside the Bankers' Trust lobby.

The wreckage of the North Tower.

Overview of the site.

Overview of the site looking west.

View of the Bankers' Trust building.

View of the punctured Financial Center.

Another view of the punctured Financial Center.

The center of the site.

More smoke drifting over the wreckage.

A surviving footbridge.

A view from street level.

Police and troops guarding the site.

Wreckage seen through plate glass.

Cranes beginning to work on the cleanup.

Another street-level scene.

Workers at Ground Zero.

Funny face ever

2007-08-12T10:44:00.000+05:30

Top Photos From Around The World

2007-08-11T12:46:00.000+05:30

Fireworks light up the skyline of Singapore's financial district during celebrations for the city-state's 42nd year of independence.

Activists from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), wearing skull masks and dressed in black hooded costumes, representing "horsemen of the apocalypse", pose for the photographers as they demonstrate outside Smithfield meat market in central London. The activists protested outside the market where meat has been bought and sold for more than 800 years, to highlight the "pestilences" resulting from factory-farm methods of rearing animals and advocating vegetarianism as the solution.

Indian Paramilitary soldiers chase a Kashmiri protester during a demonstration against the arrest of Kashmiri girl Naseema Akhtar, in Maloora, on the outskirts of Srinagar, India. Paramilitary soldiers fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of angry protesters demonstrating against the arrest of Akhtar.

An young Iraqi girl peeks out as women pilgrims line up for a security checkpoint leading to the shrine of Imam Moussa al-Kadhim in the primarily Shiite Kazimiyah neighborhood of north Baghdad, Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims went for the annual march, to commemorate the eighth-century death of Imam Moussa al-Kadhim, a key Shiite saint.

Family members watch sarcophagus of animal statues with bones of some 14 corpses are burnt during a mass cremation ceremony in Sukawati, Bali, Indonesia. The previously buried corpses have to be dug up and placed in a temporary shrine in the ceremony for cremation. Balinese believe the ceremonial burning of the corpses of the dead liberates their souls so that they can enter the higher world and free for reincarnation into better beings.

Kashmiri protesters run over burning tires during a protest against the arrest of a girl by paramilitary soldiers in a raid in Maloora, on the outskirts of Srinagar, India. Paramilitary soldiers fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of angry protesters demonstrating against the arrest.

Protestors burn an effigy of "Wal-Mart" during a demonstration, in New Delhi, India. A broad alliance of small shop owners, trade unions and left-wing activists planned rallies across India on Thursday to protest moves by Wal-Mart and other foreign mega stores to enter the Indian market.

South Korean protesters burn North Korean flags during an anti-North Korea rally against two Koreas summit near the President House in Seoul, South Korea. South Korea insisted Thursday that this month's summit with North Korea would help efforts to rid the communist nation of nuclear weapons, while Washington said the international focus on disarming the North remained with six-nation talks that include the U.S. and regional powers.

Protesters burn an effigy of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo during a rally in celebration of the International Day for Indigenous People in Manila as a member of the tribal Filipinos looks on. The protesters called for justice for victims of political killings and the stop of mining operations that had encroach into their ancestral lands of tribal Filipinos. Text on mock shield reads, "End the U.S.-Arroyo regime".

Bangladeshi women hold relief material, as others await their turn outside a relief center in Munshigonj, about 12.5 miles south of the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, Bangladesh. More than two weeks of monsoon rains across much of northern India, Bangladesh and Nepal have flooded rivers and inundated plains, killing at least 457 people and stranding some 19 million more, officials said.

Pope Benedict XVI gestures to the faithful during a special audience for Spanish pilgrims, from the balcony of his residence in Castelgandolfo, on the outskirts of Rome.

A man jumps over a collapsed pavement as he passes cars and rubble piled up by flood waters, following a flood due to heavy rainfall in Roche, western Switzerland. Continuing rainfall caused floods in many parts of Switzerland on Wednesday, although the weather situation seems to be improving.

A wildlife ranger examines Franska, a Slovenian brown bear released last year in the Pyrenees as part of a repopulation effort, which is lying on a road outside Viger, a village in southern France near Lourdes. Franska was killed Thursday when it was hit by a car. Brown bears nearly disappeared from the Pyrenees in the 1980's, and the last native brown bear to the region, Cannelle, died in 2004. A repopulation effort in 1996 introduced a few more brown bears to the mountainous region on the French-Spanish border, and environmental officials introduced five Slovenian brown bears last year. Franska and the other four captured the hearts of many French. Farmers, however, staged protests, fearing attacks on their flocks.

Investigators talk in the entrance of a restaurant, which was the stage of an overnight shooting in Vancouver, Canada. Two people were killed and six hospitalized with gunshot wounds after two masked men burst into a Chinese restaurant in Vancouver early Thursday morning and sprayed it with bullets.

National Cadet Corps members participate in a torch rally during the August Kranti Divas celebration, marking the Quit India movement and to commemorate 150 years of the First War of Independence, in Ahmadabad, India. India will celebrate its 60th Independence Day on Aug. 15.

60 Interesting Facts of World & Earth

2007-08-10T16:53:00.000+05:30

1- Earth is the only planet on which water can exist in liquid form on the surface.

2- Antarctica is the highest, driest, and coldest continent on Earth.

3- The dormant volcano Mauna Kea (on the Big Island of Hawaii) could be considered the tallest mountain in the world. If you measure it from its base in the Hawaiian Trough (3,300 fathoms deep) to its summit of 13,796 feet, it reaches a height of 33,476 feet.

4- Earth is referred to as the BLUE PLANET. WHY? Because from space, the oceans combined with our atmosphere make our planet look blue.

5- The world’s deadliest recorded earthquake occurred in 1557 in central China, more than 830,000 people were killed.

6- The World’s largest hot desert is the Sahara in North Africa, at over 9,000,000 km², it is almost as large as the United States.

7- Earth travels through space at 66,700 miles per hour.

8- Mount Everest 8850 meter (29035 ft) Nepal/China is the tallest mountain.

9- The sunrays reached at the earth in 8 minutes & 3 seconds.

10- Only 11 percent of the earth's surface is used to grow food.

11- The coldest temperature ever measured on Earth was -129 Fahrenheit (-89 Celsius) at Vostok, Antarctica, on July 21, 1983.

12- About 70% of the world’s fresh water is stored as glacial ice.

13- Only 3% water of the earth is fresh, rest 97% salted. Of that 3%, over 2% is frozen in ice sheets and glaciers. Means less than 1% fresh water is found in lakes, rivers and underground.

14-The warmest sea in the world is the Red Sea, where temperatures range from 68 degrees to 87.8 degrees F depending upon which part you measure.

15- The hottest planet in the solar system is Venus, with an estimated surface temperature of 864 F (462 C)

16- Angel Falls in Venezuela is the worlds highest waterfall, The water of Falls drops 3,212 feet (979 meters).

17- Asia Continent is covered 30% of the total earth land area, but represent 60% of the world’s population.

18-The total surface area of the Earth is 197 million square miles.

19- El Azizia in Libya recorded a temperature of 136 degrees Fahrenheit (57.8 Celsius) on Sept. 13, 1922 - the hottest ever measured.

20- A 1960 Chilean earthquake was the strongest earthquake in recent times, which occurred off the coast, had a magnitude of 9.6 and broke a fault more than 1000 miles (1600 kilometers) long.

21- The lowest dry point on earth is the Dead Sea in the Middle East is about 1300 feet (400 meters) below sea level.

22- The Largest Ocean of the World is the Pacific Ocean (155,557,000 sq km), It covers nearly one-third of the Earth's surface.

23- The distance from the surface of Earth to the center is about 3,963 miles (6,378 kilometers).

24- The saltiest sea in the world is the Red Sea with 41 parts of salt per 1,000 parts of water.

25- The Angel Falls in Venezuela is the world's highest waterfall (979 meters / 3212 ft.), three times the size of the Eiffel Tower.

26- The Earth is the densest major body in the solar system.

27- The age of the earth is Loudly proclaimed by the scientific establishment of evolution believers and the mass media as being around 4.6 billion years old.

28- Baikal Lake in Russian Fed. is the deepest lake (5315 ft) in the world.

29- Lightning does not always create thunder. In April 1885, five lightning bolts struck the Washington Monument during a thunderstorm, yet no thunder was heard.

30- The Sarawak Chamber in Malaysia is the largest cave in the world is 2300 feet (701 meters) long, 1300 feet (400 meters) wide, and more than 230 feet (70 meters) high.

31- The Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii is the largest volcanoon on Earth. It rises more than 50,000 feet (9.5 miles or 15.2 kilometers) above its base, which sits under the surface of the sea.

32- Due to gravitational effects, you weigh slightly less when the moon is directly overhead.

33- One-tenth of the Earth's surface is always under the cover of ice. And almost 90 per cent of that ice is to be found in the continent of Antarctica.

34- The coldest seas are found near the poles such as the Greenland, Barents, Beaufort, Kara, Laptev & East Siberian Seas found near the north pole & Weddell & Ross Seas found in the south poles. The Baltic Sea is also considered one of the coldest seas.

35- The Nile River in Africa is the longest river (6,825 kilometers) of the earth.

36-Caspian Sea, Asia-Europe is the major lake (371,000 sq km) in the world.

37- Depending upon the amount of salt in the water, sea water freezes at about 28 degrees F.

38- The most dangerous animal in the world is the common housefly. Because of their habits of visiting animal waste, they transmit more diseases than any other animal.

39- The Peregrine Falcon around 200mph (320 km/h) is the fastest bird on the planet, the top speed recorded is 242.3mph (390 km/h).

40- The largest eggs in the world are laid by a shark.

41-The deepest hole ever made by humans is in Kola Peninsula in Russia, was completed in 1989, creating a hole 12,262 meters (7.6 miles) deep.

42- Total fertility rate of the world is 2.59 children born/woman.

43- An African woman's lifetime risk of dying from pregnancy related causes is one in 16, in Asia, its one in 65. In Europe, its one in 1,400.

44- There are roughly 4,000 known minerals, although only about 200 are of major importance.

45- About 400 billion gallons water is used worldwide each day.

46- Aluminum cans take 500 years to break down.

47- Total fertility rate of the world is 2.59 children born/woman. Niger is 7.46 (highest), India is 2.73, US is 2.09 & Hong Kong is 0.95 only (Lowest).

48- Northern Mariana Islands is only the country where death rate (2.29/1000) is lowest in the world.

49- Earth's oceans are an average of 2 Miles deep

50- Shanghai, China is the largest city by population (13.3 million) in the world.

51- English is the second most spoken language (Native speakers 512 million) & the first is Chinese Mandarin (more then 1 billion speakers).

52- The flower with the world's largest bloom is the Rafflesia arnoldii. This rare flower is found in the rainforests of Indonesia. It can grow to be 3 feet across and weigh up to 15 pounds.

53- At least 1,000 million grams, or roughly 1,000 tons of material (dust) enters the atmosphere every year and makes its way to Earths surface.

54- The gravity on Mars is 38% of that found on Earth. So a 100 pounds person on Earth would weigh 38 pounds on Mars.

55- The world’s population has been increased 3.1 billion in last 40 years.

56- Global Positioning System (GPS) is the only system today that can show your exact position on the Earth anytime, in any weather, no matter where you are!

57- The water that falls on a single acre of land during one inch of rainfall, it would weigh 113 tons that is 226,000 pounds.

58- 180 million nos. of Valentine’s Day cards exchanged annually, making Valentine’s Day the second-most popular greeting-card-giving occasion.

59- Plastics take 500 years to break down.

60- Each year, more than 500,000 women (approximate 1 every minute) die from pregnancy related causes. The vast majority of these deaths occur in developing countries.

Funny Image Ever

2007-08-10T12:36:00.000+05:30

Global warming will step up after 2009

2007-08-09T23:53:00.000+05:30

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Global warming is forecast to set in with a vengeance after 2009, with at least half of the five following years expected to be hotter than 1998, the warmest year on record, scientists reported on Thursday.

Climate experts have long predicted a general warming trend over the 21st century spurred by the greenhouse effect, but this new study gets more specific about what is likely to happen in the decade that started in 2005.

To make this kind of prediction, researchers at the Met Office made a computer model that takes into account such natural phenomena as the El Nino pattern in the Pacific Ocean and other fluctuations in ocean circulation and heat content.

A forecast of the next decade is particularly useful, because climate could be dominated over this period by these natural changes, rather than human-caused global warming, study author Douglas Smith said by telephone.

In research published in the journal Science, Smith and his colleagues predicted that the next three or four years would show little warming despite an overall forecast that saw warming over the decade.

"There is ... particular interest in the coming decade, which represents a key planning horizon for infrastructure upgrades, insurance, energy policy and business development," Smith and his co-authors noted.

The real heat will start after 2009, they said.

Until then, the natural forces will offset the expected warming caused by human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels, which releases the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

'HINDCASTS' FOR THE FUTURE

"There is ... particular interest in the coming decade, which represents a key planning horizon for infrastructure upgrades, insurance, energy policy and business development," Smith and his co-authors noted.

To check their models, the scientists used a series of "hindcasts" -- forecasts that look back in time -- going back to 1982, and compared what their models predicted with what actually occurred.

Factoring in the natural variability of ocean currents and temperature fluctuations yielded an accurate picture, the researchers found. This differed from other models which mainly considered human-caused climate change.

"Over the 100-year timescale, the main change is going to come from greenhouse gases that will dominate natural variability, but in the coming 10 years the natural internal variability is comparable," Smith said.

In another climate change article in the online journal Science Express, U.S. researchers reported that soot from industry and forest fires had a dramatic impact on the Arctic climate, starting around the time of the Industrial Revolution.

Industrial pollution brought a seven-fold increase in soot -- also known as black carbon -- in Arctic snow during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, scientists at the Desert Research Institute found.

Soot, mostly from burning coal, reduces the reflectivity of snow and ice, letting Earth's surface absorb more solar energy and possibly resulting in earlier snow melts and exposure of much darker underlying soil, rock and sea ice. This in turn led to warming across much of the Arctic region.

At its height from 1906 to 1910, estimated warming from soot on Arctic snow was eight times that of the pre-industrial era, the researchers said.

Scientists draw code of ethics for robotics

2007-08-08T06:13:00.000+05:30

Seoul: With the advent of robots in the service sector – from those guarding borders to those caring for the elderly – their interaction with humans is on the rise.

Now, South Korea – which has set an ambitious goal of a robot in every home by 2013 – is attempting to draw up a code of ethics for robotic technology.

“We are setting rules on how far robotic technology can go and how humans live together with robots,” said Kim Dae-Won, a professor at Myongji University who heads a team of 12 scientists, doctors, psychologists and robot developers that is writing what it believes will be the world’s first Robot Ethics Charter.

It will be released by year’s end.

“A society in which robots and humans live together may come soon, probably within 10 years,” Dae-Won said.

Many scientists expect the use of babysitting or dishwashing robots by 2050.

The Korean charter will set guidelines to curb the use of robots for undesirable or dangerous purposes.

“The purpose of this charter is to find ways of coexistence between humans and robots, not to restrict the development of robotics,” Kim said.

Key considerations include ensuring that humans maintain control over robots, preventing their illegal use, protecting data acquired by robots and ensuring they can be clearly identified and traced.

Military robots will require separate rules not covered in the charter, Kim said, as the question of legal liability may create hurdles.

Future Robots, now South Korea last year unveiled a high-tech, machine gun-toting sentry robot designed eventually to support troops guarding their borders.

Min Young-Gi, a manager of the Korea Advanced Intelligent Robot Association set up by manufacturers, does not oppose a charter but noted: “The robot industry requires practical guidelines, not a broad, non-binding declaration.

” The association forged a deal with a nursery school chain in July to provide 8,000 network robots that are programmed to play with or teach kids, and provide extra security.

Korean scientists have developed a variety of robots – some devoted to work and others to play.

The state-run Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has developed EveR-2 Muse, a robot version of a woman in her 20s who can hold a conversation, sing a song, make eye contact and express emotions.

Claiming a breakthrough, KAIST said in July it had developed an artificial brain system which enables a robot to make a decision based on context, or check its surroundings before opting how to behave.

Also, about 300 Korean scientists are working on developing robot caregivers which could tackle chores and monitor the health of the elderly. The project is due for completion in 2013.

Sim Hag-Bong, director of the Commerce Ministry’s Robot Industry Division, said the proposed charter “reflects our determination to secure the upper hand in the field of service robots.”

Like a fish to water

2007-08-07T18:15:00.000+05:30

Inspired by the efficient swimming motion of fish, researchers are building a mechanical fin that could forever change the way robotic submarines are made

Propeller-driven submarines, or autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), currently perform a variety of functions, from mapping the ocean floor to surveying shipwrecks.

But a US-based team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) hopes to create a more manoeuvrable, propeller-less underwater robot by mimicking the action of the bluegill sunfish. The robot could be used for military tasks such as sweeping mines and inspecting harbours.

“If we could produce AUVs that can hover, turn, store energy, and do all the things a fish does, they’ll be much better than the remotely operated vehicles we have now,” said James Tangorra, an MIT postdoctoral associate working on the project.

The researchers chose to copy the bluegill sunfish because of its distinctive swimming motion, which results in a constant forward thrust with no backward drag.

Tangorra and his team have built several prototypes of a mechanical fin that successfully mimics the sunfish fin. They reported the successful testing of their most recent fin, which is made of a cutting-edge polymer that conducts electricity, in the June issue of the Bioinspiration & Biomimetics journal.

Learning from nature

Work at George Washington University by Dr Meliha Bozkurttas was crucial to the fins built at MIT, said Tangorra. Bozkurttas broke down the fin movement of the sunfish into 19 components and analysed which ones are critical to achieving the fish’s powerful forward thrust.

“We don’t want to replicate exactly what nature does,” said Tangorra. “We want to figure out what parts are important for propulsion and copy those.

”The fin is able to replicate two motions that the researchers identified as critical to the propulsion of the sunfish fin: the forward sweep of the fins and the simultaneous cupping of the upper and lower edges of the fin.

Swimming with currents

The latest fin is made of a thin, flexible polymer material that conducts electricity.

When an electric current is run across the base of the fin, it sweeps forward, just like a sunfish fin. By changing the direction of the electric current, the researchers can make the fin curl forward at the upper and lower edges.

The researchers’ new approach, using the polymer, could eliminate the need for electric motors.

“This gives us the potential to build machines or robots in a manner closer to how nature creates things,” said Tangorra.

In future research, the team plans to look at interactions between different fins and between fins and the body. That will help in adapting nature’s principles to designing robotic vehicles, Tangorra said.

“To be appropriate for AUVs, you can’t just look at these as propeller replacements,” he added.

Right: Professor Ian Hunter (standing), and James Tangorra in MIT’s Bioinstrumentation Lab are working to create a robotic version of the bluegill sunfish’s fin. Such a robotic fin, like the one Tangorra is holding, could improve the manoeuvrability of autonomous underwater vehicles. Left: A bluegill sunfish swims in a laboratory tank near a prototype of a robotic fin designed with the fish’s fin as a guide

Google working on own-brand handset to grab share of $11bn mobile adverts

2007-08-04T05:55:00.000+05:30

Google is angling for a huge slice of the potential $11 billion (£5.4 billion) mobile advertising market with the launch of a “Google phone” especially tailored to its services.

The internet search giant is understood to be developing a handset that is customised to showcase its products, such as its search engine, e-mail and Google Maps.

The GPhone, about which the Californian group has already held talks with mobile operators, including Spain’s Telefónica, is aimed at helping it to secure a chunk of the rapidly growing mobile advertising market.

It hopes to replicate its runaway success with internet advertising by acting as “broker” for mobile advertisements.

The failure of 3G services on mobile phones and a lack of “web friendly” handsets has held back the market for mobile advertising.

However, with phones becoming ever more sophisticated and mobile network speeds faster – more than 20 per cent of UK mobile subscribers are expected to have access to the mobile internet at broadband speeds by the end of this year – mobile is now seen as the next battleground for advertisers.

Sir Martin Sorrell, the chief executive of WPP, the marketing group, recently highlighted the growing importance of mobile. Figures compiled by WPP suggested that mobile phones will account for a 5 per cent share of all advertising spending in Britain by 2010. Research by Informa Telecoms & Media forecasts that the market for advertising on mobile phones is set to be worth more than $11.3 billion annually in 2011.

A Google-branded phone could go head-to-head with Apple’s iPhone, which is set to be launched in the UK before Christmas.

Mobile is deemed so valuable in part because of the targeting that the devices allow. Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, said recently that mobile phone ads are “twice as profitable or more than nonmobile phone ads because they are more personal”.

Google has already brokered deals with mobile phone companies, including Vodafone, the British operator.

Google’s search engine also comes preloaded on handsets made by companies including Samsung and LG.

However, some mobile companies are thought to have been reluctant to hand over too big a share of their revenues to Google.

This year some operators, including France Télécom, which owns Orange, held talks about creating a search engine to challenge the likes of Google and Yahoo!. Google is now hoping to create its own branded and designed handset and to develop more advanced services for phones.

Sources familar with Google said that any notion of a Google phone was “speculative”. A spokesman for Google in the UK said: “We are partnering with almost all the carriers and manufacturers to get Google search and other Google applications on to their devices and networks.”

Top 10 Views from an Astronaut-Photographer

2007-08-03T23:58:00.000+05:30

Top 10 Views from an Astronaut-Photographer

Expedition 10 Commander Leroy Chiao on the ISS took more than 24,000 pictures out the window. Here are his 10 favorites.

Number 10: Progress approaches the International Space Station

Backdropped by the blackness of space and Earth's horizon, an unpiloted Progress supply vehicle approaches the International Space Station. The Progress 17 resupply craft docked to the aft port of the Zvezda Service Module as the Station flew 225 statute miles over the equator west of Africa.

Number 9: Beijing, China

The large city Beijing (Peking), China is featured in this image photographed by Expedition 10 Commander Leroy Chiao on the International Space Station.

Number 8: New York City

Manhattan Island and its easily recognizable Central Park are featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 10 crewmember on the International Space Station. Some of the other New York City boroughs (including parts of Queens and Brooklyn) are also shown, as are two small sections of the New Jersey side of the Hudson River (left).

Number 7: The Himalaya Mountains

The Himalaya Mountains are featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 10 crewmember on the International Space Station.

Number 6: Cape Cod National Seashore

The northernmost parts of the Cape Cod National Seashore are featured in this image photographed by Expedition 10 Commander Leroy Chiao on the International Space Station.

Number 5: Chinese Launch Complex

Chinese Launch Complex at Jiuquan is featured in this image photographed by Expedition 10 Commander Leroy Chiao on the International Space Station.

Number 4: The Great Wall of China and Inner Mongolia

The Great Wall of China and Inner Mongolia are featured in this image photographed by Expedition 10 Commander Leroy Chiao on the International Space Station.

Number 3: Algerian desert

The Algerian desert is featured in this image photographed by Expedition 10 Commander Leroy Chiao on the International Space Station.

Number 2: Lake Nasser

Egypt's Lake Nasser, centered roughly at 22.64 degrees north latitude and 32.45 degrees east longitude, was captured with an electronic still camera by Expedition 10 Commander Leroy Chiao onboard the International Space Station. Sunglint on the lake makes it more easily visible.

Number 1: Full Moon

A full moon is visible in this view above Earth’s horizon and airglow, photographed by Expedition 10 Commander Leroy Chiao on the International Space Station.

World's First Cryochick Hatches At Audubon

2007-08-03T08:03:00.000+05:30

NEW ORLEANS -- He's less than two months old, but a Mississippi sandhill crane is already making history.

Researchers at the Audubon Institute said the crane is the world's first cryochick -- a bird created by fertilizing an egg with semen that had been frozen.

The male chick hatched June 20 at the Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species.

According to the Audubon Institute, Mississippi sandhill cranes are endangered, with fewer than 100 found at or near the Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge in Gautier, Miss.

Disappearing habitat is believed to be the primary reason for their reduced numbers.

The Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species has released more than 130 chicks to the refuge over the past 10 years. The chicks are raised by a staff member carefully trained to mimic natural crane feeding and dressed in a crane costume.

The cryochick chick will be raised the same way and will be sent to the refuge when it is older.

World’s largest carpet

2007-08-02T01:26:00.000+05:30

A view of the handmade carpet at the Imam Khomeini grand mosque in Tehran on Tuesday.

Iran has unveiled what it said was the world’s largest handwoven carpet, worth $5.8 million and larger than a football pitch, to be laid out in a United Arab Emirates mosque.

Iranian officials say the 6,000 square-metre carpet is the biggest handmade carpet in the world and will be carried to the Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan mosque in Abu Dhabi, UAE

The biggest hand-woven carpet in the world has been unveiled in Iran. The sumptuous masterpiece, which measures 5,625 square metres (60,500sq ft), is almost big enough to cover the football pitch at Wembley Stadium (7,140 sq m).

The carpet is called the Qasr al-Alam (The Palace of the World) and took Ali Khaliqi, an Iranian artist, eight months to design. It was woven by 1,200 women, aged between 15 and 60, over 16 months. Working in three villages in northeastern Iran, they tied 2.2 billion knots and used 38 tonnes of the finest mothproof wool and cotton. They were supervised by 50 men acting as technical experts.

The carpet, worth £2.8 million ($5.5 million), will grace the floor of the main prayer hall in a huge mosque in Abu Dhabi named after Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, the late President and founder of the United Arab Emirates. Given the unprecedented size of the carpet, it had to be knotted on nine looms and the nine pieces will be stitched together in Abu Dhabi.

Photographers had to board helicopters yesterday to capture the magnificent carpet in full when it was revealed for the first time on an open-air prayer ground in Tehran.
Several lorries were needed to haul the carpet to the location and it will be taken to the UAE in two aircraft.

The predominantly green and cream carpet features the traditional Persian motifs of swirling vines and five medallion centrepieces. Twenty-five colours were used incorporating 20 different natural dyes.

125 Interesting Real Facts

2007-08-01T00:46:00.000+05:30

1 -69% Americans use Internet & 5.5% Indians only.

2 -El Azizia in Libya recorded a temperature of 136 degrees Fahrenheit (57.8 Celsius) on Sept. 13, 1922 - the hottest ever measured.

3 -Plastics take 500 years to break down.

4 -America has 30.30% airports of the world & India has only 0.70%.

5 -There are roughly 4,000 known minerals, although only about 200 are of major importance.

6 -The total surface area of the Earth is 197 million square miles.

7 -Crocodile only animal & reptile that sheds tear while eating.

8 -The world’s deadliest recorded earthquake occurred in 1557 in central China, more than 830,000 people were killed.

9 -Angel Falls in Venezuela is the worlds highest waterfall, The water of Falls drops 3,212 feet (979 meters).

10 -The sunrays reached at the earth in 8 minutes & 3 seconds.

11 -8.7 million of United State residents who were born in Asia.

12 -The world’s population has been increased 3.1 billion in last 40 years.

13 -180 million nos. of Valentine’s Day cards exchanged annually, making Valentine’s Day the second-most popular greeting-card-giving occasion.

14 -3,467 Nos. of confectionery nut stores in the United States, they are among the best sources of sweets for Valentine’s Day.

15 -4% people drink cold drink daily.

16 -Traffic lights are being used before the invention of motor car.

17 -More than 50 million Americans said they had a disability; for 32.5 million of them, the disability was severe.

18 -About 40% Proportion of all Valentine card purchases which parents account for.

19 -First Stock Exchange of America was in Philadelphia & it was established in 1791.

20 -Girls however are slightly more likely than boys to use home computers for e-mail, word processing and completing school assignments than playing games.

21 -A normal person laughs five times in a day.

22 -Approximate 300 million film tickets are sold every year in India.

23 -In Britain 70% mothers go for work.

24 -More artists live in California than any other state in the United States. There are 10,000 arts organizations in California.

25 -Alfred Southwick developed the idea of using electric current & Professionally he was a Dentist (MDS, DDS).

26 -A man says average 4850 words in 24 hours.

27 -The world's populaton is approximately 6.53 billion (2006), India & China represent 36.92% of the world's populations.

28 -Look at your zipper. See the initials YKK? It stands for Yoshida Kogyo kabushikigaisha, the world's largest zipper manufacturer.

29 -40 percent of McDonald's profits come from the sales of Happy Meals.

30 -315 entries in Webster's 1996 Dictionary were misspelled.

31 -Chocolate can be killed dogs! True, chocolate affects a dog's heart and nervous system. A few ounces is enough to kill a small sized dog.

32 -Ketchup was sold in the 1830's as a medicine.

33 -Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time.

34 -Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.

35 -There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.

36 -Leonardo da Vinci invented scissors.

37 -Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to slow a film down so you could see his moves. That's the opposite of the norm.

38 -The original name for the butterfly was "flutterby"!

39 -By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you can't sink in quicksand.

40 -Mosquito repellents don't repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito's sensors so they don't know you're there.

41 -Dentists recommend that a toothbrush be kept at least six feet away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush.

42 -The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's gum.

43 -Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than the entire Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.

44 -Adolf Hitler's mother seriously considered having an abortion but was talked out of it by her doctor.

45 -The three most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.

46 -To escape the grip of a crocodile's jaws, prick your fingers into its eyeballs. It will let you go instantly.

47 -The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.

48 -The "pound" (#) key on your keyboard is called an octothorp.

49 -The only domestic animal not mentioned in the Bible is the cat.

50 -Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

51 -The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.

52 -Dreamt" is the only word in the English language that ends in "mt".

53 -It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

54 -In Chinese, the KFC slogan "finger lickin' good" comes out as "eat your fingers off".

55 -A cockroach can live for 10 days without a head.

56 -We shed 40 pounds of skin a lifetime.

57 -Yo-Yos were once used as weapons in the Philippines.

58 -Mexico City sinks abut 10 inches a year.

59 -Brains are more active in sleeping than watching TV.

60 -Blue is the favorite color of 80 percent of Americans.

61 -When a person shakes their head from side to side, he is saying "yes" in Sri Lanka.

62 -There are more chickens than people in the world.

63 -The thumbnail grows the slowest, and the middle nail grows the fastest.

64 -There are more telephones than people in Washington, D.C.

65 -The average four year-old child asks over four hundred questions a day.

66 -The average person presses the snooze button on their alarm clock three Times each morning.

67 -The three wealthiest families in the world have more assets than the Combined wealth of the forty-eight poorest nations.

68 -The first owner of the Marlboro cigarette Company died of lung cancer.

69 -Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

70 -The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.

71 -Our eyes remain the same size from birth onward, but our noses and ears Never stop growing.

72 -You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching TV.

73 -A normal person will die from total lack of sleep sooner than from starvation. Death will occur about 10 days without sleep, while starvation takes a Few weeks.

74 -Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.

75 -The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows.

76 -When the moon is directly overhead, you weigh slightly less.

77 -Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, never telephoned His wife or mother because they were both deaf.

78 -A psychology student in New York rented out her spare room to a Carpenter in order to nag him constantly and study his reactions. After Weeks of needling, he snapped and beat her repeatedly with an axe Leaving her mentally retarded

79 -Colgate faced a big obstacle marketing toothpaste in Spanish speaking Countries because Colgate translates into the command "go hang Yourself."

80 -Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different.

81 -"Bookkeeper" is the only word in English language with three consecutive Double letters.

82 -The sentence "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every Letter in the English language.

83 -If the population of China walked past you in single line, the line Would never end because of the rate of reproduction

84 -China has more English speakers than the United States.

85 -Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell.

86 -Each square inch of human skin consists of twenty feet of blood vessels.

87 -An average person uses the bathroom 6 times per day.

88 -Babies are born with 300 bones, but by adulthood we have only 206 in our Bodies.

89 -Beards are the fastest growing hairs on the human body. If the average Man never trimmed his beard, it would grow to nearly 30 feet long in his Lifetime.

90 -According to Genesis 1:20-22, the chicken came before the egg.

91 -The longest place name still in use is: Taumatawhakatangihangaoauauotameteaturi- Pukakpikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu - a New Zealand hill.

92 -If you leave Tokyo by plane at 7:00am, you will arrive in Honolulu at Approximately 4:30pm the previous day.

93 -Scientists in Australia's Parkes Observatory thought they had positive Proof of alien life, when they began picking up radio-waves from space. However, after investigation, the radio emissions were traced to a Microwave in the building.

94 -More than 40,000 parasites and 250 types of bacteria are exchanged during a French kiss.

95 -Men can read smaller print than women, but women can hear better.

96 -Coca-Cola was originally green.

97 -The most common name in the world is Mohammed.

98 -There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.

99 -TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.

100 -Women blink nearly twice as much as men!!

101 -You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.

102 -It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.

103 -The "sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is said to be the toughest tongue twister in the English language.

104 -If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib. If you try to suppress a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and die.

105 -Each king in a deck of playing cards represents great king from history. Spades - King David, Clubs - Alexander the Great, Hearts - Charlemagne, Diamonds - Julius Caesar.

106 -111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

107 -If a statue of a person in the park on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle.

108 -If the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle.

109 -If the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

110 -Question - This is the only food that doesn't spoil. What is this? Ans. - Honey

111 -A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

112 -A snail can sleep for three years.

113 -All polar bears are left handed.

114 -American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first-class.

115 -Butterflies taste with their feet.

116 -Elephants are the only mammal that can't jump.

117 -In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

118 -On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.

119 -Shakespeare invented the word 'assassination' and 'bump'.

120 -Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand.

121 -The ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.

122 -The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.

123 -Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over million descendants.

124 -The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.

125 -Most lipstick contains fish scales.

An eggcellent idea

2007-07-31T07:39:00.000+05:30

Staff at US-based Smithsonian’s National Zoo use telemetric devices, such as this one, to record important information about how birds incubate their eggs. The electronic egg is put under the adult bird and records incubation temperature and the rate the parent birds turn the egg. The data is sent from the egg to a receiver and recorded throughout the day. This information is vital to better understand the complete biology of bird species

World’s oldest prosthesis?

2007-07-30T06:46:00.000+05:30

London: An artificial big toe attached to the foot of an Egyptian mummy could be the world’s oldest prosthetic body part, British researchers said Friday.

The fake toe, which is made of wood and leather and is currently on display at the Cairo Museum in Egypt, dates from between 1000 and 600 BC.

Researchers at Manchester University in north-west England hope to prove it was used to help someone who had lost their original big toe to walk.

If they do, it could mean that prosthetic body parts were in use up to 700 years earlier than was previously thought.

The oldest known prosthesis is a bronze Roman leg, dating from about 300 BC, which was kept at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. Unfortunately, it was destroyed during a German bombing raid in the Second World War.

A second false big toe, which is on display at the British Museum, will also be tested by scientists in Manchester.

“If either one is functional, it may be interesting to manufacture it with modern materials and trial it for use on people with missing toes,” said Jacky Finch, a researcher working on the study.

She added that the Cairo toe is the most likely to have been a prosthesis, because it shows signs of wear and is attached to a “well-healed” amputation site.

The London toe, by contrast, does not bend and is, therefore, more likely to have been cosmetic, she said.

Fridge magnets go high-tech

2007-07-29T08:14:00.000+05:30

You are at work and forgot to remind your children to buy milk, so you email... your fridge!

The Israeli branch of Taiwanese high-tech firm Winbond Electronics Corp has developed prototypes of devices with software giant Microsoft that transmit data from a computer to a portable screen, such as one on a refrigerator magnet.

The devices incorporate a technology called SideShow, a feature in Windows Vista, which was released earlier this year. They can connect to a computer up to 100 metres away with a Bluetooth wireless connection, even if the PC is turned off.

The gadgets allow you to write notes, check and send email, view pictures and read news, stock reports and more.

Among the devices Winbond is working on is the Scribbler, a palm-sized, one-inch thick magnet with a touch-pad monitor.

The user can use these monitors without going to the PC. Using a stylus pen commonly used for pocket computers, a person could scrawl notes on The Scribbler or send emails from work that they can read on the device.

The gadgets are expected to be launched later this year.

The aircraft of the future?

2007-07-28T07:05:00.000+05:30

The X-48B Blended Wing Body


Edwards Air Force Base, California: An experimental jet that resembles a flying
wing flew successfully for the first time in a program that could lead to more 
fuel-efficient, quieter and higher-capacity aircraft, NASA said on Thursday.
 
The remotely controlled, 230-kg, three-engine jet with a 21-foot wingspan took 
off July 20, climbed to an altitude of 7,500 feet and landed about a half-hour 
later, NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Centre said.
 
The X-48B Blended Wing Body aircraft was controlled by a pilot at a ground 
station. NASA and Boeing said data from the flight are already being compared
with data from wind tunnel tests.
 
The aircraft and a duplicate were designed by Boeing Co’s Phantom Works in 
cooperation with NASA and the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright 
Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, USA. 
 
Built by Cranfield Aerospace in Bedford, England, they are 8.5 per cent-scale 
versions of a future full-size design.
 
The X-48B resembles a flying wing, but the wing blends into a wide, flat and 
tail-less fuselage, NASA and Boeing said.
 
The design is intended to provide more lift with less drag compared to the 
cylindrical fuselage of a traditional aircraft, reducing fuel consumption while 
cruising.
 
The engines are located high on the back of the aircraft, which should mean 
it is quieter inside and less noise reaches the ground during flights.
 
The planes are initially flying at low speeds to gather information about the 
stability and flight-control characteristics of the design, particularly during 
take-off and landing.
 
Another X-48B used for wind tunnel testing is available as a backup for flight 
tests.

iPhone hacked ......

2007-07-26T00:10:00.000+05:30

Menlo Park, USA: A well-known hacker claims to have overcome restrictions on Apple’s iPhone, allowing highly technical users to bypass AT&T’s network to use the phone’s Internet and music features.

As of now, the iPhone, can only be used in conjunction with service providers AT&T in US states where the telecom provider runs its network. Apple has yet to reveal network operator deals in markets outside the US.

In a post dated July 3 on his blog, Jon Johansen, 23, a prolific Norwegian hacker of electronics gadgets, said “I’ve found a way to activate a brand new unactivated iPhone” without signing up for AT&T service.

“The iPhone does not have phone capability, but the iPod and Wi-Fi work. Stay tuned!” he wrote on his blog, which is combatively named “So Sue Me.”

The site contained technical details for other hackers, as well as links to software necessary to complete the process.

One potential use would be for an iPhone user living or travelling outside the US to access the iPhone’s music player and Internet service over Wi-Fi connections without using the phone.

AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said it was necessary to activate the iPhone on AT&T’s network to ensure optimum performance.

Using the phone without AT&T’s two-year service contract was unauthorised under the phone carrier’s exclusive network service contract with Apple, Siegel added.

“We’ll monitor situations like this and if necessary we will take appropriate action,” he said. “Our terms and conditions are very clear.”

Neither Apple nor AT&T have disclosed iPhone sales figures since it went on sale in the US on June 29, but some analysts have estimated sales of up to 7,00,000 units.

Johansen became known as DVD Jon” earlier this decade for helping to reverse engineer the code used to protect DVD movies against piracy, saying he did so in order to play them on his Linux computer.

The computer activist has engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with Apple to bypass copyright controls on various Apple products, including QuickTime, iTunes and Apple TV.

Coexisting with dinos

2007-07-21T09:41:00.000+05:30

Dinos were not alone. New fossil findings suggest the earliest dinosaurs, who were not as large as the ones we are used to, lived with their primitive ancestors for close to 20 million years

The coexistence of dinosaur precursors Dromomeron romeri, lower left,and a Silesaurus-like animal, bottom centre, and the dinosaurs Chindesaurus bryansmalli, top centre, with a crocodylomorph in its mouth, and a Coelophysoid theropod, upper right, indicates that the rise of dinosaurs was prolonged rather than sudden

The ascent of the mighty dinosaurs to the throne of the animal kingdom may have been more gradual than previously believed, scientists said on Thursday.

New fossil discoveries dating from about 215 million years ago showed some of the earliest dinosaurs lived for millions of years side-by-side with related animals long seen as their ancestors and precursors, the scientists said.

Many scientists had thought these reptiles – very much like dinosaurs, but more primitive – died out around the time of the appearance of the first true dinosaurs, which were dog-sized beasts and not giants, roughly 230 million years ago.

“When dinosaurs first evolved, they were not very common and they were pretty small,” said Randall Irmis of the US-based University of California-Berkeley, who worked on the study.

“So they’re not the dominant creatures on land at all during most of the Triassic period. And it’s only until the Jurassic when they really explode in diversity and reach these huge sizes we’re so familiar with,” Irmis added.

Scientists had previously hypothesised that the first dinosaurs quickly out-competed their more primitive cousins, known as ‘basal dinosauromorphs,’ condemning them to extinction. But the new findings indicate that any such competition was prolonged.

The newly found fossils from New Mexico, dating from the Triassic period, showed that the first dinosaurs co-existed with these animals – “dinosaur wannabes,” as one scientist called them – for perhaps 15 to 20 million years.

“For the first time, we’re finding the earliest dinosaurs and their closest relatives together,” said one of the researchers, palaeontologist Kevin Padian of the University of California-Berkeley.

“That tells us that the transition to the beginning of the age of dinosaurs was not a very rapid affair and that, therefore, it wasn’t instant competitive superiority.” Irmis said these dinosaur precursors are not thought to have been direct ancestors of the dinosaurs, but rather having shared a close common ancestor.

NEWLY DISCOVERED BEASTS

The scientists discovered new dinosaur precursors including one 3 to 5 feet long called Dromomeron and another unnamed one about three times larger that walked on four legs and ate plants with a beaked snout.

Relatively small bipedal carnivorous dinosaurs also were found, including Chindesaurus, which measured about 6 feet long, as well as remains of an apparent close relative of the well-known Triassic dinosaur, the carnivore Coelophysis.

The fossils were found at the Hayden Quarry at Ghost Ranch, USA, a site that over the decades has yielded many exquisite fossils. For example, hundreds of Coelophysis fossils were found in the 1940s at Ghost Ranch, thus making it among the best documented of all dinosaurs.

These early Triassic dinosaurs were not the bullies and behemoths that later appeared in the Jurassic period, which started around 200 million years ago.

In fact, they were mere pipsqueaks next to some of their nasty neighbours. The scientists found remains of crocodile-like phytosaurs up to 25 feet long, and a relative of the equally long and vicious four-legged predator Postosuchus.

At the time these animals lived, the New Mexico site was a lush environment with a river system, flood plains and forests with towering large conifer trees.

New products boosting Microsoft

2007-07-20T08:36:00.000+05:30

Demand for new products such as the Vista Windows system saw Microsoft make profits of $3.03bn (£1.47bn) in the past quarter, up 11% on last year.

For 2007-2008 as a whole, the software giant reported a $14bn profit on total sales of more than $51.1bn.

Profits in the past three months were hampered by costs stemming from repairs to the Xbox 360 computer games console.

Microsoft said its core businesses were "healthy" and it would continue to invest in growth opportunities.

Innovation

Microsoft acknowledged this month that it is facing a bill of more than $1bn to cover the cost of offering extended warranties to Xbox 360 owners after problems with the console.

Surpassing $50bn in annual sales is a testament to the innovation and value that our product groups delivered
Kevin Turner, Microsoft

Excluding these charges, the firm would have made a fourth quarter profit of $3.78bn.
Sales from the division which includes Vista, launched in January, rose 14% to $38.1bn in the past three months.

Total sales rose 13% to $13.3bn over the same period.

Microsoft said it had had an extremely strong year.

"Surpassing $50bn in annual sales is a testament to the innovation and value that our product groups delivered into the marketplace," said chief operating officer Kevin Turner.

In the upcoming year, Microsoft said it expected sales to rise to between $56bn and $57bn.

Microsoft shares rose nearly 2% before it announced its results but fell in after-hours trading amid concerns it had only met market expectations not exceeded them.

Google ranked 'worst' on privacy

2007-07-19T08:56:00.000+05:30

Google has the worst privacy policy of popular net firms, says a report.

Rights group Privacy International rated the search giant as "hostile" to privacy in a report ranking web firms by how they handle personal data.

The group said Google was leading a "race to the bottom" among net firms many of whom had policies that did little to substantially protect users.

In response Google said the report was mistaken and that it worked hard to keep user data confidential.

Hostile approach

The report by the veteran cyber rights group is the result of six months' research which scrutinised 20 popular net firms to find out how they handle the personal information users gave up when they started using such services.

None of the firms featured in the report got a "privacy friendly" rating.

Yahoo and AOL were said to have "substantial threats" to privacy as were Facebook and Hi5 for the allegedly poor way they dealt with user data.

Microsoft, one place higher in the rankings than these four firms, was described as having "serious lapses" in its privacy policy.

Other net sites, such as BBC.com, eBay and Last.fm were described in the report as "generally privacy aware but in need of improvement".

But Privacy International singled put Google at the bottom of its rankings for what the group called its "numerous deficiencies and hostilities" to privacy.

"We are aware that the decision to place Google at the bottom of the ranking is likely to be controversial," the group said in the report.

Privacy International placed Google at the bottom of its ranking because of the sheer amount of data it gathers about users and their activities; because its privacy policies are incomplete and for its poor record of responding to complaints.

"While a number of companies share some of these negative elements, none comes close to achieving status as an endemic threat to privacy," read the report.

Responding to the report Nicole Wong, general counsel for Google, said in a statement: "We are disappointed with Privacy International's report which is based on numerous inaccuracies and misunderstandings about our services."

Ms Wong added: "We recognise that user trust is central to our business and Google aggressively protects our users' privacy."

Privacy International said it planned to release a more detailed report in September produced after detailed consultation with the firms covered in the first draft.

Microsoft’s copy protection cracked... again!

2007-07-19T08:48:00.000+05:30

Seattle: Microsoft is once again on the defensive against hackers after the launch of a new program that gives average PC users tools to unlock copy-protected digital music and movies.

The latest version of the program, FairUse4M, which can crack Microsoft’s digital rights management (DRM) system for Windows Media audio and video files, was published online late Friday.

FairUse4M has a simple drag-and-drop interface. And PC users can turn the protected music files they bought online into DRM-free tunes that can be copied and shared, or converted into MP3 files.

“We knew at the start that no DRM technology is going to be impervious to circumvention,” said Jonathan Usher, a director in Microsoft’s consumer media technology group.

He did not say how many songs have been stripped of copy protection, or how long it will take for Microsoft to combat the hack again.

But the music industry is aware of the nature of Microsoft’s technology, he said, and added that he does not expect record labels to lose patience with the process.

While Usher said Microsoft will remain committed to copy protection, attitudes around the industry are starting to shift.

Apple’s chief, Steve Jobs, for one, has started calling for an end to digital music-locking earlier this year. In fact, Apple, as well as Web retailer Amazon.com, have already jumped on the DRM-free bandwagon.

Josh Bernoff, an industry analyst, said he expects music DRM to fade out in the next few years as record companies begin to realise selling unprotected tracks online won’t hurt sales.

Dubai's Mega Projects

2006-12-10T18:00:00.000+05:30

Palm Island. Three artificial islands in the shape of palm trees will shelter nearly 500 apartments, 2 000 villas, 25 hotels and 200 shops of luxury. Palm Jumeirah, the most advanced, will be completed as of the end of 2005. Hundred twenty-five kilometers of coast additional.

Palm Island

The World. With broad of Dubaï, nearly 300 artificial islands, seen sky will form a planisphere. If you want to acquire one of these islands, it will cost some to you between 6,2 to 36,7 million dollars. Work of fill, already begun, should be completed at the end of 2005.

The World

Dubai Waterfront. Advancing on water of the Gulf, this whole of islands in the shape of crescent will extend on 81 square kilometres. Becoming the greatest sea front in the world, it détrône thus the island from Manhattan in New York.

Dubai Waterfront

Old Town. It is the final district of the building site located at the foot of the tower Burj Dubai. This great real complex will include the highest tower of the world, the greatest shopping centre of the world as well as a gigantic residential district

Old Town

Hydropolis. Entirely assembled in Germany, this underwater hotel will be immersed with broad of Dubai at the end of 2006. It will comprise 220 continuations whose panoramic windows will give on sea-beds. The price of a room for the night would rise with 500 dollars.

Hydropolis

Burj Dubai. This phenomenal tower from which construction began last January and will end in 2008 should reach the 800 meters height. The building, built in three parts around a central column, finishes in spiral. It will count 160 stages.

Burj Dubai

Madinat Al Arab. Here the representation of the one of the districts of the future greater sea front in the world, Dubai Waterfront. This sight accounts for the architectural ambition and the spectacular development of real constructions with Dubaï.

Madinat Al Arab

Dubai Marina. new city, of a total cost of 10 billion dollars, will be built on a way of artificial navigation of 4,5 km. It will be able to lodge 120 000 people. Three principal towers will be set up and will bear the name of Arab perfumes.

Dubai Marina

Dubai Sports City. This immense sporting complex of 7.5 km² will accomodate sports such as the cricket, the golf, Rugby, football, the sports of ground, track, and interior (tennis shoe, handball, volley ball). Hotels, residences and villas are also envisaged.

Dubai Sports City

Golden Dome. With its 455 m height and its 2,2 million m² of total surface, it will be one of bulkiest and higher buildings of the world. It will shelter 500 000 m² offices, commercial spaces like 3 000 residential apartments.

Golden Dome

Dubailand Ski Dome. This ski resort indoor, will comprise inter alia a directional ski piste and tracks of snowboard (with 6 000 tons of true snow). "Pinguinarium", aquariums four seasons, spa cold and hot... are also envisaged with the program.

Dubailand Ski Dome

Space Science World. Space is one of the subjects exploited in the immense park with topics of Dubailand which has the ambition to become the largest tourist park and of attractions in the world.

Space Science World