Benefits of Wine Tourism in Australia

One of the world's fastest growing industries is 'Wine Tourism'. What is it? How can we best benefit from it?

Firstly, let's keep it simple. If tourism is simply the provision of goods and services that attract tourists, then 'wine tourism' is the same but has the added influence of wine. Wine tourism is not only associated with cellar door wineries, rather all business that are involved in the wine, tourism and associated industries with the wine region. This includes accommodation houses, tour operators, gift shops, national parks etc.

If the desired outcome of 'wine tourism' is attracting more tourists then the real secret to success is having a clear understanding of the needs of your potential customers. Once this is clear you can focus on attracting tourists to our wine regions, improve business and target specific customers to your region.

Queensland has the advantage of already having an established tourism industry. Many wineries don't appreciate how involved they are in the tourism industry. An area that most regions have identified as important to meeting customer expectations is the need to integrate wine with quality food. There is no question that food plays an important part in adding to a region's ambience and unique character.

To obtain long-term success, each region needs to focus on really defining their point of differences, rather than trying to out perform another region. Identifying and consistently delivering a unique wine experience is what each region must strive to achieve. This fits well into both Tourism Queensland's and the Department's strategy to promote regional tourism. Global trends indicate that tourism is one of the most dynamic growth sectors and the demand for a quality experience is rising rapidly.

Irrespective of the way tourism is formally defined, it is first and foremost a 'people industry' involving the development and supply of a range of facilities, services and experiences to meet the needs, aspirations and expectations of visitors. Tourism is complex and diverse, involving many different forms of commerce. Most tourism businesses are part of the much larger services industry. At the local and regional level, the industry comprises tourism operators, businesses not directly involved in tourism, local and regional tourism organisations, community groups, residents and local government. By working together destinations have the capacity to attract visitors, satisfy their leisure needs and expectations, and generate economic and other benefits for the whole community.

In Queensland more people are employed in tourism than in agriculture, forestry, fishing and mining combined. Queensland Treasury estimates that close to 10 % of the workforce, or 135,000 people, are working in tourism. And the outlook is bright: international visitor numbers are expected to double over the next eight years (Tourism Forecasting Council, 1999). Latest figures also show that domestic visitor nights in Queensland have increased by more than 20% over the year to June 1999 (Bureau of Tourism Research, June Quarter 1999). Treasury recognises the importance of the industry to Queensland?s economy. The strength of the State?s services sector continues to be underpinned by tourism and related services which have contributed 7.9% of Gross State Product in 1998-99 (Queensland Treasury, Annual Economic Report 1998-99).

Changing diet in penguins

By studying the tissue remains of penguins in Antarctica, scientists are not only learning more about the modern diet of the continent’s iconic seabird but also what was on the menu thousands of years ago. And that information can provide insight into past climate and penguin behavior, as well as how the species could respond to future climate changes.

Much of their work involves collecting tissue samples, such as eggshells and feathers, from existing penguin colonies and long-extinct ones around the Antarctic Peninsula and the Ross Sea regions. Then they analyze the samples in the lab, looking at the ratios of carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes, which can provide important clues to what’s been on the dinner plate throughout the year.

Now the scientists are testing the idea by looking at gentoos, another Pygoscelis penguin, a mostly subantarctic bird that is pushing its way across the northern end of the Antarctic Peninsula as the climate there warms and the Adélie population declines.

Fun & Interesting Facts About planet Pluto

• Pluto is only about half the width of the United States. Charon is about half the size of Pluto. Charon is the largest moon compared to the body it orbits (whether planet or dwarf planet) of any moon in the solar system.

• Almost all the planets travel around the Sun in nearly perfect circles. But Pluto does not. It takes an oval-shaped path with the Sun nowhere near its center. What's more, its path is quite tilted from the nice, orderly plane where all the other planets orbit. (Mercury has a slightly lop-sided orbit, although not nearly so much as Pluto's.)

• If you lived on Pluto, you'd have to live 248 Earth years to celebrate your first birthday in Pluto-years.

• If you lived on Pluto, you would see Charon from only one side of the planet. Charon's orbit around Pluto takes about six and one-half Earth days. Pluto's day (that is, one complete rotation) takes exactly the same amount of time. So, Charon always "hovers" over the same spot on Pluto's surface, and the same side of Charon always faces Pluto.

• At Pluto's current distance from the Sun, the temperature on its surface is about 400 degrees below zero Fahrenheit! It will get even colder as it moves farther from the Sun. From Pluto, the Sun looks like just a bright dot in the sky, the brightest star visible. The light from the Sun is as bright on Pluto as the light from the full Moon is on Earth.

• If you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, you would weigh only 7 pounds on Pluto!

• Pluto orbits in a far-out region of the solar system called the Kuiper (rhymes with viper) Belt. There are lots of icy, rocky objects out there. But they are so far from the Sun they are really hard to see, even with powerful telescopes.

A Message for Men about Health

Men may be catching up to women in lifespan. The life-expectancy gap between men and women has shrunk to 5.2 years, the narrowest since 1946. But men still need to pay more attention to their health. Why?

Compared to women, men are more likely to:

• Smoke and drink more, and generally lead less healthy lifestyles
• Put off routine checkups and even ignore symptoms of a health problem
• Join in fearless, risky, and dangerous behaviors

Working-aged men also are less likely than women to have a regular doctor.
The good news is that many of the diseases and health conditions that men face can be prevented — or treated if they are found early. To start taking better care of your health, learn about your risk factors. Risk factors are things in your life that increase your chances of getting a certain disease. Some risk factors you cannot change, such as your age or family history. But many are in your control. Find out what you can do to lower your risk factors and improve your overall health. Next, find out how often you should see a doctor for routine checkups and what screenings, tests, and vaccines you might need. By taking these steps, you will feel good knowing you are doing all you can to take charge of your health.

Small Technology to Clean Up Big Pollution Problems

EPA scientists are exploring ways to use some very small materials to clean up some very big environmental troubles. Research chemist Dr. Souhail Al-Abed and his colleagues have synthesized stimulated carbon with nanoparticles of iron/palladium bimetallic to construct a new nano-scale treatment to clean up pollutants. The new, tiny technology is offering promise where unadventurous technologies have been limited in detecting, treating, removing, and preventing environmental contaminants.

The research is proving particularly useful in dealing with PCBs, a family of persistent organic chemicals that have been linked to a host of dangerous health effects, including cancer. Dr. Al-Abed and his research group found that infusing the carbon with nanoparticles not only made it more effective at adsorbing contaminants, but also degraded the PCBs to less dangerous compounds.

Antarctica, Greenland helps scientists to understand past climate

Ice cores from Antarctica, Greenland and elsewhere in the world serve as a way for scientists to travel back in time to understand past climate. They analyze such things as the trapped bubbles of gas, chemicals, insoluble dust and trace metals found in the ice to reconstruct the cycles of glacial advance and retreat, the waxing and waning of temperature, the sudden appearance of droughts and volcanic eruptions.

But those long, skinny cylinders of ice can only tell so much of the story, according to Ryan Bay, a research physicist at the University of California Berkley. Bay and colleagues use an instrument they developed called an optical dust logger to measure the dust and particulates, or bits of matter, not captured by the original ice core.

Bay and team member Delia Tosi will take the latest and greatest version of their optical dust logger to Antarctica this coming field season. They’ll send the instrument down the deepest hole ever drilled in the ice sheet, where European scientists recovered the oldest ice to date from a high-altitude spot on the polar plateau called Dome C in East Antarctica.

The 3,270-meter-long ice core drilled by the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) reaches back at least 800,000 years. Bay said he is particularly interested in the last 100,000 years of climate history and finding signatures of volcanic eruptions and impacts from comets or asteroids that may have caused abrupt climate changes.

For instance, a major volcanic eruption can send a great amount of sulfate particles into the atmosphere. The sulfate aerosols reflect sunlight, effectively shielding the lower atmosphere of the planet and cooling it near the surface. Bay said this abrupt cooling event could then affect the succeeding climate for millennia.

Nokia Booklet 3G

A new portable device from Nokia, Nokia Booklet 3G is a small laptop PC witness the company step foot on computers.
Features:
Display: 10.1-inch HD display
Screen: 720p HD screen
Battery life: 12 hours
HDMI port for HD video out
Aluminium shell which measures in at just 2cm thin and tips the scales at around a kilogram to ensure it’s extremely portable.

Discovery’s next launch on Friday at 12:22 a.m

Teams at Kennedy Space Center have completed a portion of the testing of a liquid hydrogen fill and drain valve in space shuttle Discovery’s main propulsion system. The valve opened and closed when commanded five different times with no issues. This “cycle testing” of Discovery began at 6:28 p.m. EDT and finished at 6:59 p.m.

Teams are now performing a pressure test of the propulsion system, and recording the leak rate of small amounts of liquid hydrogen. Data from tonight’s tests will be brought to tomorrow’s mission management team for evaluation at the noon meeting.

NASA is targeting Discovery’s next launch attempt for no earlier than Friday, Aug. 28 at 12:22 a.m., depending on the results of the testing and a review of the data by the mission management team.

Discovery’s countdown is expected to resume at the T-11 hour point at 8:57 a.m. tomorrow.

Temporary tattoos and Henna can cause skin problems

Temporary tattoos, such as those applied to the skin with a moistened wad of cotton, fade several days after application. Many contain color additives approved for cosmetic use on the skin. However, FDA has received reports of allergic reactions to some temporary tattoos.

An Import Alert is in effect for several foreign-made temporary tattoos. According to Consumer Safety Officer Allen Halper of FDA's Office of Cosmetics and Colors, the temporary tattoos subject to the import alert are not allowed into the United States because they don't have the required ingredient declaration on the label or they contain colors not permitted for use in cosmetics applied to the skin.

Henna, a coloring made from a plant, is approved only for use as a hair dye, not for direct application to the skin, as in the body-decorating process known as mehndi. This unapproved use of a color additive makes these products adulterated and therefore illegal. An import alert is in effect for henna intended for use on the skin. FDA has received reports of injuries to the skin from products marketed as henna.

Since henna typically produces a brown, orange-brown, or reddish-brown tint, other ingredients must be added to produce other colors, such as those marketed as "black henna" and "blue henna." So-called "black henna" may contain the "coal tar" color p-phenylenediamine, also known as PPD. This ingredient may cause allergic reactions in some individuals. The only legal use of PPD in cosmetics is as a hair dye. It is not approved for direct application to the skin. Even brown shades of products marketed as henna may contain other ingredients intended to make them darker or make the stain last longer.

In addition to color additives, these skin-decorating products may contain other ingredients, such as solvents.

cholecystokinin plays an important role in the control of blood sugar.

A gut hormone called cholecystokinin (CCK) plays an important role in the control of blood sugar production in the liver, according to Canadian researchers.

"We show for the first time that CCK from the gut activates receptors to regulate glucose levels. It does so via a gut-brain-liver neuronal axis," Tony Lam of the University of Toronto said in a news release.CCK binds to local receptors on nerves of the small intestine, triggering a message to the brain which, in turn, tells the liver to stop producing glucose.

Lam and colleagues also found that rats fed a high-fat diet for a few days became resistant to CCK.
They said their findings suggest that CCK resistance, like insulin resistance, may be a major contributor to high blood sugar often seen in people with a high-fat diet. The results also suggest that drugs that target CCK receptors may help fight diabetes.

Biodefense and Bioterrorism

Terrorism refers to the use or threat of force or violence against people or property. A bioterrorist attack releases viruses, bacteria, or other germs to cause illness or death. These biological agents are typically found in nature. But they can sometimes be made more harmful by increasing their ability to cause or spread disease, or to resist medical treatment.

Biological agents spread through the air, water or in food. They can be very hard to detect, and they don't cause illness for several hours or days. Some agents can also be spread from person to person. Scientists worry that anthrax, botulism, hemorrhagic fever viruses such as Ebola, plague, or smallpox could be used as biological agents.

Biodefense involves medical measures to protect people against biological agents. This means medicines and vaccinations. It also means medical research and preparations to defend against bioterrorist attacks.

This Weekend Events in New York City

There are lots of events to enjoy this weekend in NYC, including the Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival in Queens, Summer Streets in Manhattan, the Metropolitan Opera Summer Recital Series: Tappen Park on Staten Island, Black Gold - Bronx River Art, and the Three Kings Day Parade in Brooklyn.

Dragon Boat Festival, which features paddlers of all ages racing in 40+ foot long dragon boats.

The Met’s annual concerts in New York City parks are one of the most beloved summer traditions in the city. This year, the company will present a six-performance series of recitals in the parks of all five boroughs. All performances in the Summer Recital Series are free and no tickets are required, except for the concert at Central Park.

Tattfoo Tan, Tea-Pi, is an interactive space constructed from unsold painting, tea, sandwiches and recorded audio conversations. Abigail DeVille, Original Ganstas, 2008, is a mixed media collage, 12 x 20 feet. Gallery hours are Mondays to Fridays 3-6.30PM and Saturdays 12-5PM. Free.

Scientific reasons to study climatic change at high latitudes are listed below:

Ice (including snow) is the predominant form of condensed water most of the year, both in the air and on the surface. Ice and snow scatter, transmit, and absorb sunlight and radiant heat much differently than water.

There is very little water vapor in the atmosphere, changing the impact of the atmosphere on the propagation of radiant energy, particularly radiant energy propagating upwards from the surface, and on the performance of some atmospheric remote sensing instruments.

The major "pumps" for the global ocean currents are at high latitudes, and there is good reason to believe that those pumps will be affected by climate-related changes in the atmosphere.

High latitude atmospheric processes over both land and sea must be characterized for incorporation into global climate models.

Longest solar eclipse

Millions of people across Asia will observe the longest solar eclipse that will take place on 22nd of July, most parts of India and China, the whole city of Shanghai and southern Japanese islands are pushed into darkness on Wednesday for about five minutes.

Stargazers in huge number and scientists around the world are traveling long distances to view the once-in-a-lifetime happening.

Astronomers expect the eclipse will release signs about the sun, while an astrologer in Myanmar predicts it could guide in confusion. A few in India are giving an opinion to pregnant relatives to stay indoors to follow a centuries-old tradition of keeping away from the sun's invisible rays.

For astronomers, it will be a possibility for a prolonged observation of the sun's corona, a white ring 1 million kilometers from the sun's surface. The earlier total eclipse, in August 2008, was two minutes and 27 seconds. This one will last 6 minutes and 39 seconds at its maximum point.

NASA to Offer Education Funding

NASA has announced a competitive funding opportunity for informal education that could result in the award of grants or cooperative agreements to several of the nation's science centers, museums and planetariums. Approximately $6 million is available for new awards.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which leads the Museum Alliance, will conduct an external peer review process for the proposals. Final award selection rests with the Office of Education at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Proposals for the Competitive Program for Science Museums and Planetariums are expected to use NASA resources to enhance informal education programs related to space exploration, aeronautics, space science, Earth science or microgravity. Full proposals are due Sept. 10, 2009.

Google Chrome Operating System

Google Inc is get readying to launch an operating system for personal computers next year.Called the Google Chrome Operating System, the new software will be targeted at netbook computers and be fast and lightweight, allow users to access the Web in a few seconds, Google said in a statement on Tuesday.

Netbooks running the new operating system - based on open-source Linux code - will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010, Google saidGoogle also said Google Chrome OS was a latest project, does nothing with Android mobile operating software found in smart phones.

"All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies," Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management at Google, said in the Google blog.

Google also gave information about how it works -Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

Source:googleblog
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html

Latest Nanotechnology news –“dry granular materials such as sands, seeds and grains have properties similar to liquid”

University of Chicago researchers recently showed that dry granular materials such as sands, seeds and grains have properties similar to liquid, forming water-like droplets when poured from a given source. The finding could be important to a wide range of industries that use "fluidized" dry particles for oil refining, plastics manufacturing and pharmaceutical production.

Researchers previously thought dry particles lacked sufficient surface tension to form droplets like ordinary liquids. But, in a first-time accomplishment, physicists from the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at the University of Chicago, led by Professor Heinrich M. Jaeger, used high-speed photography to measure minute levels of surface tension and detect droplet formation in flows of dry granular materials.

The science journal Nature reports the finding in its June 25 issue. The materials research center at the University of Chicago is supported by the National Science Foundation.
Until recently, studies of so-called "free falling granular streams" tracked shape changes in flows of dry materials, but were unable to observe the full evolution of the forming droplets or the clustering mechanisms involved.

"Previous studies of granular streams were able to detect clustering by performing experiments in vacuum and were able to establish that the clustering was not caused by the drag from the ambient air," said Jaeger. "However, the cause of the clustering remained a mystery."

Source: National Science Foundation. http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=114907&org=NSF&from=news

The earliest radio

The earliest radio could not broadcast sound or verbal communication and was called the "wireless telegraph." The first display of wireless telegraphy took place in the lecture theater of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History on August 14, 1894, conceded out by Professor Oliver Lodge and Alexander Muirhead. During the display a radio signal was sent from the adjacent Clarendon laboratory building, and received by device in the lecture theater.

In 1895 Alexander Stepanovich Popov built his initial radio receiver, which enclosed a coherer. Further developed as a lightning detector, it was offered to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society on May 7, 1895. A representation of Popov's lightning detector was printed in the Journal of the Russian Physical and Chemical Society the same year. Popov's receiver was shaped on the improved basis of Lodge's receiver, and in the beginning proposed for reproduction of its experiments.

Sony Company was the first to introduce transistorized radio in the year 1960. It was small in size that can fit in a vest pocket, and able to be powered by a small battery. It was tough, for the reason that it had no vacuum tubes to burn out. Digital transmissions was started and to be applied to broadcasting only in the late 1990s.

Space station's wings get a lift from robot arms

Astronauts used a pair of robotic cranes to unpack the International Space Station's last set of solar wing panels from shuttle Discovery's cargo bay on Wednesday, part of three-day effort to bring the orbital outpost up to full power.

Installing the power system is the primary purpose of NASA's 125th shuttle mission, which began Sunday with Discovery's blastoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The shuttle arrived at the station, orbiting 220 miles above Earth, on Tuesday for an eight-day stay.

The shuttle and station crews used robot arms on both spacecraft to delicately maneuver the 31,000-pound (13,950 kg) girder, which contains the solar power panels, out of the shuttle and over to the space station. It is scheduled to be installed on Thursday during the mission's first spacewalk.

Once in position, the station's 11-part spine will be complete after more than a decade of construction. NASA has up to nine shuttle missions remaining to finishing installing science laboratories and equipment to support an expanded, six-member space station crew.

The power system, built by Boeing, is designed to supply 124 kilowatts of electricity to the station -- enough to power 42 average-sized U.S. homes.

During their first in-flight interview, rookie astronauts said the rocket ride into space was smoother than they had expected.

"The time kind of sneaks up on you. You're sitting there waiting and waiting and waiting and all of sudden you're inside the nine-minute hold (in the launch countdown) and you know you're going to go," said Richard Arnold, one of Discovery's two teacher-astronauts.

"I was surprised at how relatively quiet it was -- a bit of shaking, a very smooth ride. I was expecting a bit more noise," he added.

For more information log onto : http://uk.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUKTRE52E09120090319

Space station's wings get a lift from robot arms

Astronauts used a pair of robotic cranes to unpack the International Space Station's last set of solar wing panels from shuttle Discovery's cargo bay on Wednesday, part of three-day effort to bring the orbital outpost up to full power.

Installing the power system is the primary purpose of NASA's 125th shuttle mission, which began Sunday with Discovery's blastoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The shuttle arrived at the station, orbiting 220 miles above Earth, on Tuesday for an eight-day stay.

The shuttle and station crews used robot arms on both spacecraft to delicately maneuver the 31,000-pound (13,950 kg) girder, which contains the solar power panels, out of the shuttle and over to the space station. It is scheduled to be installed on Thursday during the mission's first spacewalk.

Once in position, the station's 11-part spine will be complete after more than a decade of construction. NASA has up to nine shuttle missions remaining to finishing installing science laboratories and equipment to support an expanded, six-member space station crew.

The power system, built by Boeing, is designed to supply 124 kilowatts of electricity to the station -- enough to power 42 average-sized U.S. homes.

During their first in-flight interview, rookie astronauts said the rocket ride into space was smoother than they had expected.

"The time kind of sneaks up on you. You're sitting there waiting and waiting and waiting and all of sudden you're inside the nine-minute hold (in the launch countdown) and you know you're going to go," said Richard Arnold, one of Discovery's two teacher-astronauts.

"I was surprised at how relatively quiet it was -- a bit of shaking, a very smooth ride. I was expecting a bit more noise," he added.

For more information log onto : http://uk.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUKTRE52E09120090319

Having a cow over Gmail just misses the point

A big outage at Google Tuesday. Things go dark early while most of the U.S. is sleeping. Still, the Internet is without borders and so the glitch leaves millions of people who use Google Web mail and Google Apps, high and dry.

It was mild melodrama for a few hours but things returned to normal after a few hours. It's still unclear what happened, though Google says it's investigating the problem.

Truth be told, the walls of Jericho did not crumble, though the outage nonetheless triggered the (now thoroughly predictable) hand-wringing and bloviating from the usual cast of characters. Amusing to watch, but after this incident, there's also the wider context to consider.

Any outages are embarrassing. But while Gmail did crash a few times in 2008, this is the first time the service has gone down in quite a while. (As my colleague Stephen Shankland noted, Google extends a guarantee to corporate customers paying for any of its business Apps services, which rely on the cloud. The promise: they will be able to access Gmail at least 99.9 percent of the time every month. If not, Google pays them a penalty fee. So far Google says it hasn't fallen below that mark.)

If these sorts of outages occurred with more regularity, I suppose that would seriously retard cloud computing's growth. Google and Salesforce.com and Amazon and any other purveyors of cloud-based services obviously cringe when their connections fail. Not to underplay the anguish customers and vendors find themselves dealing with, but the real news here is how rare these cloud-computing outages have become.

A few years ago it seemed that eBay's Web site was seizing up all of the time. The reality was less severe but merchants and bidders would scream bloody murder. At the same time, eBay, Yahoo, Amazon, and Buy.com were dealing with repeated denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. Things got so bad that some even feared for the future of e-commerce.

We now know how the story turned out. Fact is that there are no 100 percent guarantees anymore, not in a world in which applications increasingly get hosted on the Internet. When things go bump in the night, as they inevitably will, there is going to be a commotion, albeit a temporary one. Get over it, already.

source:http://news.cnet.com/8301-10787_3-10171400-60.html

Infosys Technologies has set up Infosys Science Foundation, a not-for-profit trust to promote research in sciences and honour outstanding contributions and achievements by Indians.

The foundation will be funded by a corpus of Rs 21.5 crore and give out annual awards under different categories. The prize money under each will be Rs 50 lakh, one of the highest in the country for research.

Speaking at a media conference here on Tuesday, N R Narayana Murthy, chief mentor of Infosys, said: "India needs bright minds across all areas of academics
, government, business and society to strive for global excellence. We need to encourage research in the country to address our developmental problems. This award will honour outstanding researchers who will make a difference to our future.''

The jury panel for each area will consist of eminent international personalities and will be selected by the trustees of the foundation.

Infosys had earlier instituted a global award for computing excellence with a cash prize of $ 150,000. The annual award, instituted through the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), comes out of a corpus of $4 million given by Infosys.

Awards in five categories:

l Physical sciences (physics and chemistry)

l Mathematical sciences (mathematics and statistics)

l Engineering sciences (all branches of engineering)

l Life sciences (biology and medicine)

l Social sciences and economics (economics, history, sociology, political science and other social sciences)

source:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Bangalore/Infy_to_promote_science_research/articleshow/4145994.cms

Satellite tracking of Olive Ridley turtles in Orissa

KENDRAPARA (ORISSA): Orissa Forest department and Wildlife Institute of India has again embarked on a telemetry tracking of endangered marine species by establishing Platform Terminal Transmitters (PTT) linkage on three Olive Ridley turtles along Gahirma tha coast.

The telemetry experiment under the stewardship of a six-member team of WII researchers was successfully conducted on February 1 along Babuballi Island of Gahirmatha coast, according to forest officials.

The experiment which had earlier failed to yield desired results aims at exploring the mysterious path these aquatic species travel. “We intercepted two male turtles and a female along the deep sea water near unmanned Babuballi Island.

They were fitted with PTT telemetry objects weighing about 2 kilograms,'' said a forest official who took part in the exercise. The animals were kept under observation to ensure that foreign objects caused no discomfort to the marine visitors. The WII s cientists monitored their movements before they disappeared and plunged into the swirling sea water.

The entire exercise lasted for a little over an hour, he said. As male turtles never invade the nesting ground where females lay eggs, little is known with regard to their behavioural instinct and movement. – PTI

sources:http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blnus/14051454.htm

Study shows what makes locusts swarm

LONDON (Reuters) - A brain chemical that lifts people out of depression can transform solitary grasshoppers into swarming desert locusts, a finding that could one day help prevent the devastating plagues, researchers said on Thursday.

Increases of serotonin, the nerve-signaling chemical targeted by many antidepressants, appears to spark the behavior changes needed to turn the normally harmless insects into bugs that gang up to munch crops, they said.

"Our paper shows how this change in behavior changes what are essentially large grasshoppers living in the desert into swarming, destructive pests," said University of Cambridge researcher Stephen Rogers, who worked on the study.

"For a swarm to develop the locusts must transform from a solitary phase into a gregarious phase."

Vast swarms containing billions of locusts stretching over dozens of square kilometers periodically devastated parts of the United States when the West was settled and they continue to inflict economic hardship on parts of Africa and China.

The last big African swarm in 2004 cost $400 million simply to eradicate the pests, a tab that did not included money lost to destroyed crops, Rogers added.

"The gregarious phase is a strategy born of desperation and driven by hunger, and swarming is a response to find pastures new," he said.

Rogers and colleagues, who published their findings in the journal Science, wanted to find out what triggered the behavior change, which occurs when the insects gather in close quarters.

more information log onto:http://uk.reuters.com/article/scienceNewsMolt/idUKTRE50T04620090130

Help for British Nationals

FCO consular staff in Bahrain offers practical advice, assistance and support to an ever-increasing number of British nationals who travel or live in Bahrain.

Typical consular duties performed by the consular staff include issuing passports and registering births and deaths; handling cases of child abduction and forced marriages; and assisting Britons detained or imprisoned, who have fallen ill or been the victim of a crime. In addition, Consular staff use their local knowledge to assess objectively the risks to British nationals, which range from terrorism to natural disasters.

This information is distilled by the London travel advice unit into the FCO country advice notices, which is relied on by thousands of travellers, tour operators and travel agents.

Steve Jobs May Have Pancreas Removed After Cancer, Doctors Say

jan. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs could be facing surgery to remove his pancreas, doctors say.

Jobs said yesterday he’s taking a five-month leave of absence after discovering that his health problems are “more complex” than he thought last week.

Jobs had a procedure similar to a Whipple operation, which involves removing parts of the pancreas, bile duct and small intestine, after he was diagnosed with a rare type of pancreatic cancer in 2004. A potential side effect of this procedure is that the organ has to be removed to prevent pancreatic leak, and the patient has to be kept alive with insulin to regulate blood sugar, said Robert Thomas, head of surgery at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne.

“You might have to take the rest of the pancreas out,” said Thomas, 66, who first performed the Whipple’s procedure more than 20 years ago. “You’re on significant doses of insulin, and it’s not easy to manage. The person has the risk of severe diabetes.”

Jobs, who handed day-to-day operations to Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook, said he will remain involved in “major strategic decisions.”

Apple’s unwillingness to provide details on Jobs’s health has frustrated investors, who have watched the shares plummet with each new rumor about his condition. Apple didn’t give any details about Jobs’s health even as he appeared increasingly thin in 2008, saying only it was a private matter. Jobs said last week that he is suffering from a “hormone imbalance” that caused him to lose weight.

Shares Plunge

Apple, based in Cupertino, California, fell as much as 11 percent in extended trading yesterday after Jobs, 53, said he would remain CEO while taking a medical leave of absence until the end of June. Just last week, Jobs said his treatment should be “simple and straightforward.”

“There’s been too little information, and the information that’s come out has been vague -- creating more concern rather than conveying a sense of certainty,” said Nell Minow, founder of the Corporate Library, a research firm specializing in corporate governance based in Portland, Maine. “They have achieved confusion, and a sense of being unsettled.”

Apple is not providing information beyond the statement, said spokesman Steve Dowling. The company’s directors, including former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt, either couldn’t be reached or declined to comment.

“What they have done is the extraordinary accomplishment of coming out with a press release that is more opaque than the last one,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, associate dean of the Yale University School of Management. “They have now surrendered their credibility.”

‘Not Healthy’

Jobs, who co-founded Apple in 1976, returned as CEO in 1997 and has revived the Macintosh computer brand while pushing the company into new markets with the iPod media player and iPhone. He rarely gives interviews and once had a biography of him pulled from Apple’s corporate store. Andy Hertzfeld, one of the main architects of the Mac operating software, wrote in his book that those who worked with Jobs said he was surrounded by a “reality distortion field.”

Jobs hasn’t been seen in public since October.

“This should not have gone on this long -- it’s not healthy for the business,” said Charles Elson, director of the University of Delaware’s John Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance. “The fact the issue has played around for months makes you wonder at the responsiveness of the board.”

Jobs disclosed in August 2004 that he had surgery to remove a tumor related to a rare form of pancreatic cancer that wouldn’t require chemotherapy or radiation. Cook ran Apple while Jobs took a monthlong leave.

Cancer Surgery

Jobs told Apple’s board about his cancer and directors decided to say nothing, Fortune reported in March 2008. Larry Sonsini, the company’s attorney, told directors that Jobs’s right to privacy topped disclosure rules, the magazine said. Sonsini declined to comment yesterday.

Jobs appeared thinner while introducing the iPhone 3G at Apple’s developers’ conference in June last year, prompting investors to raise questions about his health. The company said at the time he was suffering from a “common bug.”

Jobs continued to appear frail at company events later in the year. Rumors escalated last month when Apple said Jobs wouldn’t deliver the keynote address at the Macworld conference in San Francisco -- ending an 11-year run.

Last week, Jobs said he was suffering a hormone imbalance that had caused him to lose weight and that the remedy is “relatively simple.”

‘Incomplete’

That disclosure “will strike many as incomplete,” in light of yesterday’s announcement, said John Coffee, a securities law professor at Columbia Law School in New York.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission may examine whether Jobs or Apple purposely misled investors about his condition, Coffee said. If the stock drops dramatically, shareholders may sue, Coffee said.

Some may give Jobs the benefit of the doubt. In December 1986, after MCI Communications Corp. founder Bill McGowan had a heart attack, two weeks passed before the company made an announcement. Four months later, when McGowan had a heart transplant, the company again was silent for several weeks. McGowan died in 1992.

Apple and Jobs may have made the disclosure last week in good faith, said Joe Grundfest, a professor of capital markets, corporate governance and securities litigation at Stanford University.

‘Unusual and Complicated’

“Mr. Jobs has an unusual and complicated medical condition,” Grundfest said. “When conditions are complicated, physicians have difficulty making clear decisions.”

Still, the pressure now is on Apple’s board to provide more information on the events leading up to Jobs’s decision to take leave, said James Post, a professor of management at Boston University.

“Has Steve Jobs and Apple’s board played fair with investors? There are a lot of unhappy and dissatisfied investors who are going to say the answer is no,” Post said. “The board members may not really answer the question of what did they know and when did they know it until there’s a discovery process in a lawsuit.”

sources:http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a6EZTtgfZyRg&refer=news

Obama team to review Afghanistan conflict: paper

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Barack Obama intends to sign off on Pentagon plans to send up to 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan to help buy time for the new administration to reappraise the war effort, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

The incoming administration does not anticipate that the new deployment would significantly change the direction of the conflict, the newspaper said.

Obama campaigned on a promised to "finish the job" in Afghanistan and said he would increase the U.S. military presence there. However, since the November election, he has been flooded with dire assessments of the war, the Post said.

"We have no strategic plan. We never had one," the newspaper quoted a senior U.S. military commander as saying about the Bush years.

Obama's first order of business will be to "explain to the American people what the mission is" in Afghanistan, the official told the newspaper.

Senior Obama team members and Bush administration officials interviewed for the article spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the presidential transition, the Post said.

A retired senior officer with long Afghan experience and ties to the Obama team was quoted as saying that they were going to have to agree on a set of options and a decision on a single strategy. "It's going to require a much more complex assessment by Obama," the source said.

The new administration says it will not be rushed into a decision on Afghanistan.

"We are taking a long, hard look at these issues now," a transition adviser told the newspaper

for more information: http://uk.reuters.com/article/usPoliticsNews/idUKTRE50C1B620090113

Obama team to review Afghanistan conflict: paper

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Barack Obama intends to sign off on Pentagon plans to send up to 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan to help buy time for the new administration to reappraise the war effort, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

The incoming administration does not anticipate that the new deployment would significantly change the direction of the conflict, the newspaper said.

Obama campaigned on a promised to "finish the job" in Afghanistan and said he would increase the U.S. military presence there. However, since the November election, he has been flooded with dire assessments of the war, the Post said.

"We have no strategic plan. We never had one," the newspaper quoted a senior U.S. military commander as saying about the Bush years.

Obama's first order of business will be to "explain to the American people what the mission is" in Afghanistan, the official told the newspaper.

Senior Obama team members and Bush administration officials interviewed for the article spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the presidential transition, the Post said.

A retired senior officer with long Afghan experience and ties to the Obama team was quoted as saying that they were going to have to agree on a set of options and a decision on a single strategy. "It's going to require a much more complex assessment by Obama," the source said.

The new administration says it will not be rushed into a decision on Afghanistan.

"We are taking a long, hard look at these issues now," a transition adviser told the newspaper

for more information: http://uk.reuters.com/article/usPoliticsNews/idUKTRE50C1B620090113

Patrick Swayze hospitalized for pneumonia

Patrick Swayze has developed pneumonia and has checked himself into a hospital for observation.

The news was revealed Friday at a press event for the Television Critics Association in Los Angeles.

"As we arrived here this morning we have some news," A&E President Abbe Raven told People. "Patrick Swayze has checked himself into the hospital. However, he asked us specifically to go forward with today's panel. We wish him the very best with his recovery."

The actor, who is battling pancreatic cancer, was going to appear at the TCA to talk about his new show, "The Beast," scheduled to air Jan. 15.

But don't count him out yet.

"Patrick is undergoing treatment and he's still fighting," a source tells People. "He felt so bad that he couldn't be at the TCAs. He's fighting and doing well, and that's all anybody can hope for at this stage. He is not at death's door. Nobody ever knows with cancer, but he's doing alright."

Good luck, Patrick. We're rooting — and praying — for you.

for more information:http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedishrag/2009/01/patrick-swayze.html

Patrick Swayze hospitalized for pneumonia

Patrick Swayze has developed pneumonia and has checked himself into a hospital for observation.

The news was revealed Friday at a press event for the Television Critics Association in Los Angeles.

"As we arrived here this morning we have some news," A&E President Abbe Raven told People. "Patrick Swayze has checked himself into the hospital. However, he asked us specifically to go forward with today's panel. We wish him the very best with his recovery."

The actor, who is battling pancreatic cancer, was going to appear at the TCA to talk about his new show, "The Beast," scheduled to air Jan. 15.

But don't count him out yet.

"Patrick is undergoing treatment and he's still fighting," a source tells People. "He felt so bad that he couldn't be at the TCAs. He's fighting and doing well, and that's all anybody can hope for at this stage. He is not at death's door. Nobody ever knows with cancer, but he's doing alright."

Good luck, Patrick. We're rooting — and praying — for you.

for more information:http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedishrag/2009/01/patrick-swayze.html

BlackBerry Curve, Bold, and Storm Fuse Into Curve 8900

LAS VEGAS – AT&T has the Bold. Verizon has the Storm. Now T-Mobile has their very own next-generation BlackBerry: the BlackBerry Curve 8900, which combines some of the top features from previous BlackBerry lines.

The hybrid Curve takes the Curve's much-loved separated keyboard, and combines it with the Bold's high-res 2.4-inch 360x480 screen, plus the Storm's 3.2-megapixel camera. The device was announced at the CES 2008 show here.

The 8900 is made from hard plastic, much like the Curve, though the black color is Bold-like and the sleek back cover takes a cue from the Storm. Measuring 4.29 inches x 2.36 inches x 0.53 inches and 3.87 ounces, it's ever so slightly slimmer and lighter than T-Mobile's existing popular Curve 8320. Like the 8320, it runs on T-Mobile's EDGE network, for decent but not great Internet speeds nationwide, and supplements that with Wi-Fi, including voice calls over T-Mobile's Wi-Fi "HotSpot Calling" system, formerly known as HotSpot@Home. That Wi-Fi calling feature offers unlimited voice calls for $10/month over any Wi-Fi network.

The innards of the 8900 seem more like the Bold's than the Curve's. It has a 528-MHz processor running the latest BlackBerry OS 4.6, including a pumped-up media player with native support for DivX, Xvid, MP4 and WMV video files, and pretty much all unprotected audio files. There's GPS, stereo Bluetooth, a speakerphone, and 480x352 video recording on the lovely 3.2-megapixel camera.

The beefy 1400 mAh battery is rated for 5.5 hours of talk time, but I think it'll get much longer than that on power-sipping EDGE networks; this device could last several days on a charge.

Like the Bold and Storm, the 8900 uses the latest version of the BlackBerry desktop software, which syncs with Outlook, Windows Media Player and iTunes on PCs. The BlackBerry desktop software is clunky – nowhere near as smooth as the iPhone's – but it definitely beats the T-Mobile G1, which has no direct PC syncing options at all.

In my experience, the Curve's keyboard layout has been extremely popular – much more popular than the Bold's close-together keys, though people like the Bold for other reasons. At this price, and on value-focused T-Mobile, I think the 8900 is going to be very successful. I'll have a full review in February.

The BlackBerry 8900 has been out in Canada, on Rogers Wireless, and in Germany on T-Mobile for a while, but this is its U.S. debut. It will be available in February; T-Mobile did not announce a price as yet.

Source : http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2337961,00.asp

Bakrid

Bakrid, to be rightly called Idul-Azha or the festival of sacrifice, is the second of the two festivals of Islam. This festival is observed by Muslims all over the world. It falls on the 10th of Dhul-Hagg, the last month of the lunar year. It is celebrated in commemoration of Abraham's willingness to offer his only son as a sacrifice at God's command.In Kerala as in other parts of the world, this day dawns with the resounding of Thakhir (Allahu Akbar), the declaration that God is great. Every Muslim house wakes up with the spirit of sacrifice and festivity. Men, women and children, dressed themselves in their best attire and reciting the Thakbir, proceed to Id-Gah which is the wide open space set apart for public prayers. The whole atmosphere is filled with the resonance of "Allahu-Akbar". The Assembly then prepares for the congregational prayer led by the Imam. After the ceremonial Id prayer, the leader addresses the devotees, exhorting them to be conscious of their duties to God and follow the example of Abraham. The prayer and the sermon over, the gathering exchange greetings and as an expression of affectionate brotherhood, hug each other. The festivity at home commence after the ceremonial prayer with hearty feasts followed by social visits. Women enjoy this occasion by paying visits to the neighbouring houses and engaging in singing and dancing. All festivals of Islam have some religious significance and are occasions to express their gratitude to God.In Kerala on the occasion of Bakrid, special meetings are held in which distinguished members of sister communities participate. This occasion serves to foster brotherly relationship among members of various communities. A spirit of tolerance, mutual understanding and universal brotherhood pervades such gatherings.

Venture capital trusts

Venture capital trusts (VCTs) were introduced by the government in 1995 to encourage investment in smaller unquoted companies. They provide a valuable source of capital for small companies and helps them to develop and grow.

A VCT is a company, run by a fund manager, which invests in other companies that are not quoted on a stock exchange but may be listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM).
VCTs themselves are listed on the London Stock Exchange, with strict limits laid down by HM Revenue – Customs (HMRC) on what they can invest in.

There are considerable tax advantages offered to investors in new VCTs. However, they are complex products which carry a certain level of risk. VCTs should be considered as long-term investments and it is important that you understand the risks as well as the benefits before .

Mandir Shri Brahma Ji

Cause of Establishment:Brahma performed a yajna to expiate the curse he was subjected to by Savitri who felt offended by him. At the completion of the yajna, Vishwamitra established this temple.

Brief of the Deity: With the idol of Lord Brahma (the father of all beings), there is also enshrined the idol of Gayatri. Besides, other idols of gods and goddesses are there.Brahma is the first member of the Hindu triad.He represented the supreme spirit mamifested as the active creator of the universe. He sprang from the mundance egg deposited by the supreme first cause he is the Prajapati or Lord and Father of all creation . He is sad to be of red color . He has four head . Originally he had five heads but was burnt by shiva .

Important Architectural Characteristics:Lord Shankaracharya renovated this temple. Afterwards in 1401 A.D. Maharaja Jawat Raj of Ratlam made more additions and repaired the old temple but the main temple over the centuries has retained its original form. Marble flooring from time to time was required. The temple Shikhar (Pinnacle) is 700' high.

Barite

Barite, also called barytes and heavy spar, is best known for its high specific gravity of 4.43 to 4.46. It comes in many colors including white, gray, colorless, yellow, brown, red, green, and blue. The luster is vitreous or pearly and the streak is white. It has a hardness of 3 to 3.5 and has perfect cleavage in one direction. The crystal system that barite belongs to is orthorhombic. Barite can be found in British Columbia, Colorado, South Dakota, and California.

National Family Welfare Programme

India launched the National Family Welfare Programme in 1951 with the objective of "reducing the birth rate to the extent necessary to stabilise the population at a level consistent with the requirement of the National economy. The Family Welfare Programme in India is recognised as a priority area, and is being implemented as a 100% centrally sponsored programme.

Tropical deforestation

Stretching out from the equator on all Earth’s land surfaces is a wide belt of forests of amazing diversity and productivity. Tropical forests include dense rainforests, where rainfall is abundant year-round; seasonally moist forests, where rainfall is abundant, but seasonal; and drier, more open woodlands. Tropical forests of all varieties are disappearing rapidly as humans clear the natural landscape to make room for farms and pastures, to harvest timber for construction and fuel, and to build roads and urban areas. Although deforestation meets some human needs, it also has profound, sometimes devastating, consequences, including social conflict, extinction of plants and animals, and climate change—challenges that aren’t just local, but global. NASA supports and conducts research on tropical forests from space-based and ground-based perspectives, helping provide the information that national and international leaders need to develop strategies for sustaining human populations and preserving tropical forest biodiversity.

Cochin Harbour and Willingdon Island

Cochin, one of the finest natural harbours in the world, and the only all weather harbour on the west coast, south of Bombay, affords a safe anchorage to ships,Willingdon Island is a man made one which was formed with materials dredged while deepening the Cochin Port and channel, It is the seat of the harbour and cochin Port Trust. The Southern Naval Command has its headquarters here. The seaport, naval airport and the railway terminus are all on this island.

What is the largest flower in the world?

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! It is a parasitic plant, with no visible leaves, roots, or stem. It attaches itself to a host plant to obtain water and nutrients. When in bloom, the Rafflesia emits a repulsive odor, similar to that of rotting meat. This odor attracts insects that pollinate the plant.

Another enormous flower found in Indonesia is the Amorphophallus titanum, or Titan arum. It is also known as the "corpse flower" for its unpleasant odor. Like the Rafflesia, the Titan emits the smell of rotting flesh to attract pollinators. Technically, the Titan arum is not a single flower. It is a cluster of many tiny flowers, called an inflorescence. The Titan arum has the largest unbranched inflorescence of all flowering plants. The plant can reach heights of 7 to 12 feet and weigh as much as 170 pounds!

Lengha

The lengha (lehnga) is one of South Asia's favourite garments, worn frequently at weddings and other formal occasions. It is a long skirt worn either with a choli or a longer kurti top (tunic). Lengha skirts come in many varieties which are described below:

Gaghara - A full flared skirt, usually with a broad fitted belt around the waist (as worn by this model).

Garara - A divided skirt, similar to culottes or flared bell-bottoms.

Sharara - This is similar to the gaghara, but it is cut in an A-line pattern and the flare usually begins at the knees.

What about vegetarian diets?

Some Americans eat vegetarian diets for reasons of culture, belief, or health. Most vegetarians eat milk products and eggs, and as a group, these lacto-ovo-vegetarians enjoy excellent health. Vegetarian diets are consistent with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and can meet Recommended Dietary Allowances for nutrients. You can get enough protein from a vegetarian diet as long as the variety and amounts of foods consumed are adequate. Meat, fish, and poultry are major contributors of iron, zinc, and B vitamins in most American diets, and vegetarians should pay special attention to these nutrients.

Vegans eat only food of plant origin. Because animal products are the only food sources of vitamin B12, vegans must supplement their diets with a source of this vitamin. In addition, vegan diets, particularly those of children, require care to ensure adequacy of vitamin D and calcium, which most Americans obtain from milk products.

Crude Oil

The petroleum industry often characterizes crude oils according to their geographical source, e.g., Alaska North Slope Crude. Oils from different geographical areas have unique properties; they can vary in consistency from a light volatile fluid to a semi-solid. Classification of crude oil types by geographical source is generally not a useful classification scheme for response personnel because they offer little information about general toxicity, physical state, and changes that occur with time and weathering. These characteristics are primary considerations in oil spill response. The classification scheme provided below is more useful in a response scenario.

Fruits and Vegetables Can Protect Your Health

Fruits and vegetables contain essential vitamins, minerals, and fiber that may help protect you from chronic diseases. Compared with people who consume a diet with only small amounts of fruits and vegetables, those who eat more generous amounts as part of a healthful diet are likely to have reduced risk of chronic diseases, including stroke and perhaps other cardiovascular diseases, and certain cancers.

The Goldfish

The common goldfish is remarkably hardy, and it is the most commonly kept pet animal in the world. It ahs been kept as an ornamental fish for centuries, and graced the garden pools & aquariums of kings and emperors for a thousand years.

The goldfish is renowned for its spectacular red-gold colour, can grow to about 20cm in length, and live upto 10 years or more.

The body is protected by rows of overlapping scales that never increase in number, but increase in size as the fish grows. The circuli, or rings of growth, are well-spaced in summer when growth is rapid, but are laid down close together in winter and at other times of poor growth. The tightly-bunched circuli of winter tend to show up as distinct bands, or annuli, and it is these that indicate the years of a fish's life to a trained scale reader.

Chestnut

Chestnut trees are cultivated for their nuts or as ornamentals. Probably the most notable species was the large and graceful ornamental American chestnut (C. dentata (Marsh.) Borkh.) (fig. 73), which extended from Maine southwest to Arkansas (Munns 1938). It has been almost completely destroyed by blight. The Japanese chestnut (C. crenata Sieb. and Zucc.) and the Chinese chestnut (C. mollisima Blume) are both cultivated for their nuts. Chestnut is a deciduous tree or shrub, which is cultivated in a similar manner to other deciduous nut trees. It bears brown nuts, about an inch in diameter, which are usually consumed after they are roasted. From one to nine nuts are produced in a spiny involucre or burr.

Bird Conservation Thematic Node

The Bird Conservation Node facilitates rapid access to North American bird population and habitat data maintained by a broad coalition of Federal, state, and non-governmental partners in conservation. Includes life history, range, and habitats [Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), National Biological Information Infrastructure]

Solar Spectrum

The total distribution of electromagnetic radiation emanating from the sun. The different regions of the solar spectrum are described by their wavelength range. The visible region extends from about 390 to 780 nanometers (a nanometer is one billionth of one meter). About 99 percent of solar radiation is contained in a wavelength region from 300 nm (ultraviolet) to 3,000 nm (near-infrared). The combined radiation in the wavelength region from 280 nm to 4,000 nm is called the broadband, or total, solar radiation.

Auto and White goods

This sector has several opportunities for investment due to the availability of raw materials at close proximity and a large consumer market for the product both in and around the State. These advantages include:

Presence of large steel plants as a source of easy freight; World class industries (in and around the State) create an excellent vendor base to support the sector; Several industries like Usha Martin, Timken, Cummins, Tinplate, Indal, etc. produce a wide range of engineering products; Various industrial units involved in activities like mining and coking coal; A good combined market for the sector is provided by Jharkhand along with Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh; Demand for white goods like refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners, etc is high in the State and is rapidly increasing, etc.

Education

Education encompasses both the teaching and learning of knowledge, good conduct, and technical aptitude. It thus focuses on the cultivation of skills, profession, trades sessions, as well as moral, mental & aesthetic development.

Proper education consists of systematic training, instruction and training by professional teachers. This consists of the application of pedagogy and the growth of curricula. In a liberal education tradition, teachers draw on many different disciplines for their lessons, including psychology, philosophy, in sequence technology, biology, linguistics and sociology. Teachers in expert professions such as astrophysics, law, or zoology may teach only in a narrow area, frequently as professors at institutions of higher learning. There is much specialist instruction in fields of trade for those who want specific skills, such as required to be a pilot, for example. Finally, there is an array of educational opportunity in the informal sphere- for this reason; society subsidizes institutions such as museums and libraries. Informal education also includes knowledge and skills learned and refined during the course of life, including education that comes from experience in practicing a profession.

2008 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony

The 2008 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony was conducted at the Beijing National Stadium, also called as the Bird's Nest. It started at 8:00 pm China Standard Time (UTC+8) on 8 of August 2008. The number 8 is linked with prosperity and self-confidence in Chinese culture. Organisers claim that the stadium was filled to its 91,000 capacity. The ceremony was co-directed by Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou and Chinese choreographer Zhang Jigang. It was renowned for its focus on ancient Chinese culture, and for its creativity. The musical score for the ceremony was set by composer Tan Dun. The final climb to the torch featured Olympic gymnast Li Ning, who appear to run through air around the top ring of the stadium. Featuring more than 15,000 performers, the ceremony lasted over four hours and was reported to have cost over $300 million to produce. The opening ceremony was lauded by audience and a variety of international presses as impressive and spellbinding.

Cargo

Cargo or freight is a word used to signify goods or produce being transported normally for commercial gain, usually on a plane, ship, train, truck or van. In modern times, containers are used in most intermodal long-haul cargo transport.

Cargo represents a concern to U.S. national security and is it was reported out of Washington, DC that in 2003 over 6 million cargo containers enter the United States each year. After the terrorist attacks of September 11th, the security of this extent of cargo has become highlighted. The latest US Government response to this threat is the CSI: Container Security Initiative. CSI is a program planned to help increase security for containerized cargo shipped to the United States from around the world.

Sundarbans National Park

The huge marshy delta of the two enormous Indian rivers, Ganges and brahamaputra enlarge over areas comprise of mangrove forests, forest island and swamps all intertwine in a network of small rivers and streams. It is a home of the royal Bengal tiger, covering an area of regarding 1330.10sq kms the largest mangrove forest in the world form the center of this area.The Sundarban region has got its name from Sundari trees, once set up in great quantity here. The Ganges and the Brahmaputra form this alluvial archipelago of 54 islands watered by the Bay of Bengal. The islands Goasaba, Sandeshkali and Basanti form the northern boundary of the Sundarbans; on the south is the sea; to the west side of the Sunderbans Park is the Matla and Bidya Rivers and to the east is the international boundary of Bangladesh.

Flora in Sundarbans National Park:

Motivating life forms await you in this largest estuarine delta in the world, Sunderbans. In April and May the flaming red leaves of the Genwa, edge the bright green islands. The crab like red flowers of the Kankara and the yellow blooms of Khalsi add to the amazing display.

Fitness boot camp

It is a kind of physical training program conducted by gyms, personal trainers, and former military personnel. These programs have been growing in popularity for the past several years. The training frequently combines running, interval training, and many other exercise using weights and/or body weight to lose body fat, increase cardiovascular efficiency, boost strength, and help people get into a practice of regular exercise. Many programs offer nutrition proposal as well. It is alled "boot camp" because it trains groups of people, typically outdoors, and may or may not be alike to military basic training.

The term 'Boot Camp' is currently used in the fitness industry to explain group fitness classes that support fat loss, camaraderie and team effort. They are designed to push people a little bit further than they would normally push themselves in the gym alone. Boot Camps are often prepared outdoors in parks using bodyweight exercises like push ups, squats and burpees, interspersed with running and competitive games. The idea is that everyone concerned works at their own pace as they team up and work towards one goal, either in pairs, small teams of 3 or 4, or even 2 teams head on. Everyone who joins a Boot Camp and sticks with it will see marked improvements in strength, endurance and stamina.

Archaeology

It is the study of human life and culture through progressively examining and interprets the material remains left behind. These material remains include archaeological sites (e.g. settlements, building features, graves), as well as cultural materials or artifacts such as tools and ceramic. Through the interpretation and categorization of archaeological materials, archaeologists work to be familiar with past human behavior from the initial evidence of cultural behavior (e.g. tool making of hominids) to today. In some countries, archaeology is often historical or art historical, with a strong emphasis on culture history, archaeological sites, and artifacts as art objects. In the New World, archaeology can be either a division of history and classical studies or anthropology. Anthropological archaeology is a method of analysis within cultural anthropology, which attempts to make out and reconstruct past life ways. In general, however, archaeology has stimulated on from an object-based collection of art objects, to a field that tries to understand motivations, causes, and effects in past cultures.

National sport

A national sport is a sport or game that is measured to be a popularly fundamental part of the culture or is the most popular sport of a country or nation. In American English the term national is pastime often to be used.

Although there are usually no official parameters towards defining what a national sport is, there is some general individuality that most national sports share the rules and objectives of the sport or game are known in fairly great detail in the country or nation. The game or sport is widely played or watched in the country or nation.

The game or sport has a long history of popularity or extreme current status in the country or nation. In some countries, sport or game can become the official national pastime by authorization of the government, such as in Canada with lacrosse and ice-hockey in 1994. In other countries, where the sport or game has such a long history, such as with baseball in the United States or sumo wrestling in Japan, the sport or game is often measured a de facto "official" national pastime. This article usually goes by the popularity of the sports in all the countries.

Electronic waste

Electronic waste, "e-waste" or "Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment" ("WEEE") is a waste type consisting of any broken or unwanted electrical or electronic machine. Recyclable electronic waste is sometimes further categorize as a "commodity" while e-waste which cannot be reuse is distinguished as "waste". Both types of e-waste have raised concern allowing for that many components of such equipment are considered toxic and are not biodegradable. Respond to these concerns, many European countries banned e-waste from landfills in the 1990s.

The European Union would further advance e-waste policy in Europe by realize the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive in 2002 which holds manufacturers in charge for e-waste disposal at end-of-life. Similar legislation has been enact in Asia, with e-waste legislation in the United States limited to the state level due to delayed efforts in the United States Congress regarding multiple e-waste legislation bills.

Due to the difficulty and cost of recycling used electronics as well as lackluster enforcement of legislation regarding e-waste exports, large amounts of used electronics have been sent to countries such as China, India, and Kenya, where inferior environmental standards and working conditions make processing e-waste more profitable.

Chat Rooms

Chat rooms enable users to engage in a live "conversation" with people across the street or around the world. They are similar to telephone conferences except that messages are typed instead of spoken. Usually, everyone in a chat room can see all the other participants' contributions.

Chat rooms are more popular with younger people and have not yet reached their curricular potential. Currently viewed by schools as a home-leisure pursuit rather than an educational communications medium, we can expect to see the role of chat rooms in schools change in coming years.

The value

*
Prejudices and stereotyping can be reduced in group work where there is neither a visual nor a vocal link between the participants.
*
It can be really helpful, particularly in adolescence, to talk openly with others of the same age, whom you know and trust, about some of the difficult issues of growing up.
*
Expertise gained from home use could be capitalized on within school.

The potential risks

Personal Safety

* Feeling uncomfortable

Receiving unpleasant messages can cause distress.

Users do not know who else is there, so it can be dangerous to say things in a chat room that wouldn't be appropriate in public. To some, this can appear exciting.

* Child protection

People do not necessarily tell the truth about who they are.

Providing personal information could lead to the user being traced and contacted by someone with harmful intentions.

Careless chatter could lead to others using that information and causing harm.

Some chat rooms are moderated and the moderator can remove someone who is acting in an inappropriate manner, but only after the damage has been done.

The moderator cannot protect a user from going into a private chat area with a person who might cause harm or prevent anyone from typing information that could put them at risk or in danger.

The recommendations

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Users should be aware that discussion can move off-topic and should be advised to avoid any chat room topic area that makes them feel uneasy.
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Curricular development programmes should explore the possible contribution of chat rooms to the learning process. One such related resource is The Cloakroom. (See Resources for further details)
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Schools should be prepared and confident to deal with chat room issues that arise in school or elsewhere.
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Personal Safety Programmes should include reference to chat room participants.

Painting

Painting is the practice of apply color to a surface such as, e.g. paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer or concrete. However, when used in an artistic sense, the term "painting" means the use of this action in combination with drawing, composition and other visual considerations in order to manifest the expressive and conceptual intention of the practitioner.

Paintings are used as a mode of representing, documenting and express all the varied intents and subjects that are as numerous as there are practitioners of the craft. Paintings can be naturalistic and representational as in a still life or landscape painting, photographic, abstract, be loaded with narrative content, symbolism, emotion or be political in nature. A large portion of the history of painting is dominated by spiritual motifs and ideas; sites of this kind of painting range from artwork depicting mythological figures on pottery to biblical scenes rendered on the interior walls and ceiling of The Sistine Chapel to depictions of the human body itself as a spiritual subject.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) are an animal rights organization. Base in the United States and with two million members and supporters there and in another place, PETA says it is the largest animal rights collection in the world.

Founded in 1980 and based in Norfolk, Virginia, the organization is a nonprofit, tax exempt 501(c) (3) corporation with 187 employees, fund nearly completely by its members. Outside the U.S., there are joined offices in Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, South Africa, Republic of China (Taiwan), and the United Kingdom. There is also the peta2 Street Team for high school and college-age activists, and the Foundation to Support Animal Protection, which manages PETA's assets. Ingrid Newkirk is PETA's international president.

PETA's slogan is "animals are not ours to eat, wear experiment on, or use for entertainment." In support of that position, it focuses on four core issues: factory farming, fur farming, animal testing, and animals in entertainment. It also campaigns against fishing, the killing of animals observe as pests, abuse of chained, backyard dogs, cock fighting, bullfighting and the utilization of meat. It aims to inform the public of its position through advertisements, secretly investigations, animal rescue, and lobbying.

The organization has been criticized for some of its campaigns and for the number of animals it euthanizes. It was also criticized in 2005 by Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, who stated that PETA had acted as a "spokes group" for the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front, after activist associated with those groups had devoted what Inhofe called "acts of terrorism.

Lighthouse of Alexandria

The lighthouse of Alexandria or the pharos of Alexandria, Greek was a tower built in the 3rd century BC between 285 and 247 BC on the island of pharos in Alexandria, Egypt to serve up as that port’s landmark and later, its lighthouse.

With a height variously predictable at between 115 -150 meters (377 - 492 ft) it was amongst the tallest man-made structures on Earth for many centuries, and was recognized as one of the Seven Wonders of the World by Antipater of Sidon. It may have been the third tallest building after the two Great Pyramids (of Khufu and Khafra) for its whole life. Some scholars estimate a much taller height more than 180 meters that would make the tower the tallest building up to the 14th century.

Seafood

It is one of the sea animals that are serving like food or fit for eating, this normally include seawater animal like fish and shellfish. By adding together in North America though not generally in UK, the word seafood is as well helpful to attach animal from fresh water and all apt for eating aquatic animals are together referred as the seafood.

The Edible seaweeds are almost not ever considered seafood, even though they come from seawater and are normally eaten around the world. The harvesting of seafood is well-known as fishing and the farming of seafood is known as aquaculture or simply fish farming. Seafood is the starting point of protein in many diets around the world.

Working capital

Working capital is also known as net working capital is a financial metric which represent the amount of day-by-day operating liquidity available to a business. Along with fixed assets such as plant and equipment, working capital is measured a part of operating capital. It is calculated as current assets less current liabilities. A company can be capable with assets and profitability, but short of liquidity, if these assets cannot readily be converted into cash.

When current assets are less than current liabilities, an entity has a working capital deficiency also called a working capital deficit.

Arbitrage

In economics and finance, arbitrage is the practice of taking benefit of a price differential between two or more markets: a mixture of similar deals is struck that take advantage of upon the imbalance, the profit being the difference between the market prices. When used by academics, an arbitrage is a transaction that involves no negative cash flow at any probabilistic or temporal state and a positive cash flow in at least one state; in simple terms, a risk-free profit. A person who engages in arbitrage is called an arbitrageur. The term is frequently applied to trading in financial instruments, such as bonds, stocks, derivatives, commodities and currencies.

If the market prices do not allow for profitable arbitrage, the prices are said to encompass an arbitrage equilibrium or arbitrage-free market. Arbitrage equilibrium is a precondition for a general economic equilibrium. The assumption that there is no arbitrage is used in quantitative finance to calculate a unique risk neutral price for derivatives.
Statistical arbitrage is an imbalance in predictable nominal values. A casino has a statistical arbitrage in almost every game of possibility that it offers - referred to as the house edge or house advantage or even the Vigorish.

River

A river is a natural waterway, which runs water diagonally the land from higher to lower elevations, and is the most significant part of the water cycle. The water within a river is commonly from rain through exterior runoff and release of stored water in natural reservoirs, like groundwater.

The start of a mountain river from their resource, all rivers flow downhill, naturally terminates in the sea or in a lake, all through a flowing together. In dry areas rivers at times end by losing water to evaporation. River water may as well gain way in to the soil or pervious rock, where it becomes groundwater. Extreme abstraction of water for use in industry, irrigation, etc., can as well source a river to dry before reaching its natural boundary.

International Monetary Fund

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a worldwide organization that oversees the global financial system by follow the macroeconomic policies of its member countries; in exacting those with a crash on exchange rates and the balance of payments. It also offers financial and technical support to its members, making it an international lender of last resort. Its headquarters are situated in Washington, D.C., USA.

What does Integration generally mean by its word?

Integration is a core model of advanced mathematics, particularly in the fields of calculus and mathematical analysis. Given a function f(x) of a actual variable x and an interval [a, b] of the real line, the integral is equal to the area of a region in the xy-plane bounded by graph of f, the x-axis, and the vertical lines x = a and x = b, by way of areas below the x-axis being subtracted.

The word "integral" may as well refer to the notion of ant derivative, a function F whose derivative is the given function f. In this casing it is called an indefinite integral, while the integrals discussed in this article are named definite integrals. Few authors maintain a distinction between ant derivatives and indefinite integrals.

Typewriter

A typewriter is a mechanical, electromechanical, or electronic device with a set of "keys" that, when pushed, causes characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. For much of the 20th century, typewriters were vital tools in business offices and for many professional writers. By the end of the 1980s, word processor applications on personal computers had largely replaced the tasks previously talented with typewriters. Typewriters, however, remain popular in the developing world and between some niche markets.

Vegetable

Vegetable is a cookery term which usually refers to an edible part of a plant. The definition is traditional rather than scientific and is somewhat random and subjective. All parts of herbaceous plants eaten as food by humans, whole or in part, are in general considered vegetables. Mushrooms, though belong to the biological kingdom fungi, and are also commonly considered vegetables. In common, vegetables are consideration of as being savory, and not sweet, although there are many exceptions. Nuts, grains, herbs, spices and culinary fruits are usually not exact vegetables.

Ring Finger

A finger ring is a band worn as kind of ornamental jewellery around a finger; it is the most ordinary current meaning of the word ring. Additional types of metal bands worn as ornaments are also called rings, such as arm rings and neck rings.

Rings are worn by both men and women, Rings can be made of metal, plastic, wood, bone, glass, gemstone and other equipment also. They may be set with a "stone" of some sort, which is really precious or semi-precious gemstone such as ruby, sapphire or emerald, but can also be of almost any material.

There are a variety of methods for determining ring size. Quantities of the main rings in the world are made for the winning team of the Super Bowl. The unofficial record for the largest championship ring ever accessible to a professional sports team belongs to the 2003 World Series champions Florida Marlins, with a weight of over 110 grams and with over 240 stones.

Rings can be worn on any finger, still on toe fingers also In Western society, the traditional "ring finger" for the wearing of an engagement or wedding ring is the fourth finger of the left hand with the thumb counting as finger number one. The signet ring, a ring designate dignity, is normally worn on the little (fifth) finger of the right or left hand, depending on nationality.

Bond market

The bond market is also known as the debt, credit, or fixed income market is a financial market where member can buy and sell debt securities, usually in the form of bonds. As of 2006, the size of the global bond market is a predictable $45 trillion, of which the size of the outstanding U.S. bond market debt was $25.2 trillion.

"Bond market" is usually refers to the government bond market, because of its size, liquidity, lack of credit risk and, therefore, compassion to interest rates. Because of the inverse relationship between bond valuation and interest rates, the bond market is regularly used to indicate changes in interest rates or the shape of the yield curve.

Mars

Mars (pronounced /'m?rz/) is the fourth planet from the Sun in the planetary System. The planet is name after Mars, the Roman god of war. It is also named as the "Red Planet" because of its reddish form as seen from Earth.

Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere, having surface features suggestive both of the impact craters of the Moon and the volcanoes, valleys, deserts and polar ice caps of Earth. It is the site of Olympus Moons, the highest known mountain in the Solar System, and of Valleys Mariners, the largest canyon. In addition to its geographical features, Mars’ rotational period and seasonal cycles are likewise alike to those of Earth.

Until the first flyby of Mars by Mariner 4 in 1965, it was speculate that there might be liquid water on the planet's surface. This was based on observations of periodic variation in light and dark patches, mainly in the polar latitudes, which looked like seas and continents, while long, dark striations were interpreted by some observer as irrigation channels for liquid water. These straight line features were later proven not to exist and were instead explain as optical illusions. Still, of all the planets in our Solar System further than Earth, Mars is the most likely to harbor liquid water, and perhaps life.

Venus

Venus (pronounced /'vi?n?s/) is the second-closest planet to the Sun, orbiting it each 224.7 Earth days. It is the brightest usual object in the night sky, except for the Moon, reaching an obvious magnitude of -4.6. Because Venus is a substandard planet, from Earth it never appears to venture far from the Sun: its elongation reaches a maximum of 47.8°. Venus reaches its maximum brightness shortly before sunrise or shortly after sunset, for which reason it is frequently called the Morning Star or the Evening Star.

Classified as a terrestrial planet, it is now and then called Earth's "sister planet", for the two are similar in size, gravity, and bulk composition. Venus is enclosed with an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid, preventing its surface from being seen from space in visible light; this was a subject of great speculation until some of its secrets were exposed by planetary science in the twentieth century. Venus has the densest atmosphere of all the terrestrial planets, consisting frequently of carbon dioxide, as it has no carbon cycle to lock carbon back into rocks and surface features, nor organic life to take up it in biomass. It has become so hot that the earth-like oceans the young Venus is supposed to have possessed have completely evaporated, leaving a dusty dry deserts cape with many slab-like rocks. The evaporated water vapor has dissociated and hydrogen has runaway into interplanetary space. The atmospheric pressure at the planet's external is 92 times that of the Earth, the great mass of it carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Juice

Juice is a liquid naturally controlled in fruit or vegetable tissue. Juice is prepared by mechanically squeezing or macerating fresh fruits or vegetables without the request of heat or solvents. For example, orange juice is the liquid take out from the fruit of the orange tree. Juice may be prepared in the home from fresh fruits and vegetables by means of variety of hand or electric juicers. Many commercial juices are drinkable to remove fiber or pulp, but high pulp fresh orange juice is marketed as an alternative. Juice may be marketed in deliberate form, sometimes frozen, require the user to add water to reconstitute the liquid back to its 'original state' (Generally, concentrates have a noticeably different taste than their comparable "fresh-squeezed" versions). Other juices are reconstituted before covering for retail sale. Common methods for protection and processing of fruit juices include canning, pasteurization, freezing, evaporation and spray drying.

A history of computer viruses

In the following report, “computer viruses” will be explained in aspect. A lengthy and educational description of the evolution and history on microcomputer viruses will be given; to give you a background of their origin for some understanding of how they came to be. The next segment in the statement is on how to battle computer viruses with the development of anti-virus applications.

The current status of microcomputer viruses will also be discuss, naming the most common types of viruses and the mass harmful type at this present point of time.
Details of the most new outbreaks of computer viruses, such as the “Melissa”, “I Love You” and the most recent “Anna Kournikova” viruses will be explained, and why they are so harmful.

Plantation

A plantation is a deliberate planting of a crop, on a larger scale, frequently for uses other than cereal production or pasture. The word is most frequently used for plantings of trees and shrubs. The word tends also to be used for plantings maintain on financial bases other than that of survival farming. Crops may be called plantation crops because of their relationship with an exact type of farming economy. Most of these fit into place a large landowner, raising crops with economic value rather than for survival, with a number of employees carrying out the work. Often crops recently introduced to a region. In past times it has been connected with slavery, indentured labour, and other economic models of high injustice. However, arable and dairy farming are both frequently (but not always) barred from such definitions. A comparable economic structure in ancient times was the latitudinal that produced commercial amount of olive oil or wine, for export.