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2009-03-26T21:39:00.000-07:00

Ryder Scores Double Ton, NZ Declare At 619-9

New Zealand declared their first innings at 619 for nine in the second Cricket Test against India at the McLean Park in Napier on Friday.

Jesse Ryder's double century, his second hundred against India in three innings, powered New Zealand to a mammoth 592 for six at tea. If India had hoped they could run through the rest of the Kiwi batting after they rid Ryder from the wicket at 477, they were driven to despair by Brendon McCullum (103) and Daniel Vettori (43), who posted 115 runs for the unbroken seventh wicket partnership.

After Ryder (201) had frustrated India in the first session, McCullum took charge in the post-lunch period, carving the ball to all parts of the park to bring up his third Test hundred. His unbeaten 103 included 11 hits to the fence.

Earlier, Ryder, resuming at his overnight 137, went on to become only the third Kiwi to score a double hundred against India. He was on top of his game before he dragged Zaheer Khan on his stumps immediately after bringing up his 200 with a pull.

ForMoreInfo: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/ryder-scores-double-ton-nz-declare-at-6199/439771/

2009-03-18T02:37:00.000-07:00

Honda Announced Launching Its New Jazz In India

Honda announced yesterday that it would launch its new hatchback 'Jazz' in India in mid-2009. According to Masahiro Takedagawa, president and chief executive officer, Honda Siel Cars India, "Honda Jazz is a premium hatchback and the company does not expect that it will overcome the sales numbers of the City sedan in India."

The Jazz will be powered by a 1.2-litre intelligent variable valve timing and lift electronic control (i-VTEC) petrol engine. The premium hatchback will have 70 per cent local content initially, which will be scaled up in phases.

Based on the Honda City platform, the 5-door compact car is speculated to be priced above Rs 4.5 lakh, and would be rolled out from the company's Greater Noida facility. Once launched, it will be pitted against other super-hatches like Skoda Fabia, Maruti Suzuki Swift, Ford Fusion and Hyundai i20, and the yet-to-be-launched Fiat Grand Punto in the Indian market.

It is widely believed that Jazz is coming in early in view of the importance of small cars in India and the enthusiastic response to the car at the January 2008 Auto Expo in Delhi. However, pricing may be a problem, as it is priced higher than the City in foreign markets, but this may not be possible in India.

Takedagawa said the Jazz will be a premium segment hatchback with an engine specifically made for the Indian market. This will be Honda's first small car for the domestic market, which means that under government specifications, it must be less than 4-m long, with maximum engine capacity of 1.2 litres and 1.5 litres for the petrol and diesel versions respectively.

Jazz gets the premium tag due to the company's focus on luxury and safety by adding features like airbags, active headrests, pre-tensioner seat belts, ABS, and G-CON Technology (an advanced passive shield that offers extra protection in an accident). Honda believes that customers would be willing to pay for the additional features.

2009-03-12T22:20:00.000-07:00

Successful Trial Of Its Cancer Drug

NEW YORK (AP) — Pfizer Inc. said Thursday it ended a successful trial of its cancer drug Sutent early after data showed the drug met its goal of slowing the progression of pancreatic cancer.

The results sent Pfizer shares up nearly 10 percent.

The trial showed that Sutent significantly improved progression-free survival, meaning it extended the time patients survived and their disease did not spread, compared to a combination of standard treatment and a placebo. Because the trial was halted early, patients will have the option to keep taking Sutent or switch to Sutent from the standard treatment.

Pfizer hopes to have the drug approved as a treatment for advanced tumors in the islet cells of the pancreas, and the ending of the trial speeds up Pfizer's path to approval. Sutent is already marketed for renal cell carcinoma and as a secondary treatment for gastrointestinal stromal tumors.

Pfizer stopped the trial after getting a positive recommendation from an independent committee. The company described the cancer as rare, with limited options for treatment.

Sutent is an oral drug that is designed to block molecules that help cancers grow and spread throughout the body. It is already the New York-based company's best-selling cancer drug, with $847 million in sales in 2008, including $254 million in the U.S.

Pfizer shares rose $1.23, or 9.6 percent, to $14.02. The stock had lost about a quarter of its value since Jan. 26, when Pfizer agreed to buy smaller rival Wyeth for $68 billion.

2009-03-05T22:18:00.000-08:00

The Ultimate Goal

The scientists' ultimate goal is to find new ways to purge those latent virus particles from every AIDS-infected person, and thereby forestall permanent dependence on those overwhelmingly expensive drugs.

In their challenge to AIDS researchers worldwide, the U.S. scientists have published a review paper in the journal Science with Delaney listed as co-author. The paper, which is also dedicated to Delaney because of his participation as a "friend and colleague," appears Friday.

Its authors include Douglas D. Richman of UC San Diego, Warner C. Greene of UCSF's Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology, Daria Hazuda of pharmaceutical giant Merck, Roger J. Pomerantz of Johnson & Johnson and David M. Margolis of the University of North Carolina.

Their paper is titled "The Challenge of Finding a Cure for HIV Infection."

By killing virtually all the latent viruses in the cells of infected people - even in those who live in good health while taking the anti-viral drugs, the researchers hope the immune systems of those who are infected would be empowered to cope with any few virus particles that remain without ever requiring more antiviral drug therapy.

"The big question," said Greene in an interview, "is how do we turn against a silent virus when we can't kill it until it expresses itself? It calls for a fundamentally different approach to cure the HIV infection, and it's an extremely tough goal that may not even succeed."

2009-02-20T00:50:00.000-08:00

Researchers for HIV work

Even as Connecticut considers reducing funding for AIDS programs, state public health researchers are winning accolades for their work with those living with HIV.

A program developed at the University of Connecticut's Center for Health, Intervention and Prevention is among a group of eight intervention programs commended recently by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Under the program, known as "Options," clinicians are trained to counsel HIV-positive patients during routine medical appointments to avoid risky behavior, such as unprotected sex and drug use, developing a list of behavioral prescriptions for patients to follow as they live with the virus.

"Most interventions focus on people not infected with HIV and not likely to become infected," said Jeffrey D. Fisher, a social psychology professor at UConn and director of the intervention center. "But we also need to help people who have HIV to practice safer sex and drug use."

Such precautions are necessary not just to protect the health of those living with HIV or AIDS, which make patients substantially more susceptible to infection and disease, but also to ensure that continued risky behavior doesn't spread HIV to those with whom diagnosed people share needles or have sex.

Fisher developed the program in the late 1990s with his brother, Bill Fisher, a professor at the University of Western Ontario, and three other researchers from CHIP and Yale University.

The Options program was developed from current behavioral theory and a process of collaboration with those struggling with HIV diagnosis and problems with substance abuse or risky sex, Fisher said. The intervention plan asks clinical workers to work with patients to develop strategies for reducing risk, and to evaluate each patient's willingness to change.

The program was included this year in "The 2008 Compendium of Evidence-based HIV Prevention Interventions," which is compiled annually by the CDC, and recognizes programs that have proven successful at reducing HIV infection and behavior that can increase the chance of contracting sexually transmitted diseases.

The CDC estimates that 46,000 people were infected with HIV in the U.S. in 2006, the most recent year for which data was available.

Source: theday.com/re.aspx?re=76b88ed9-71a3-4510-a675-6361d367da02

2009-02-09T01:17:00.000-08:00

International auxiliary languages

Some languages, most constructed, are meant specifically for communication between people of different nationalities or language groups as an easy-to-learn second language. Several of these languages have been constructed by individuals or groups. Natural, pre-existing languages may also be used in this way - their developers merely catalogued and standardized their vocabulary and identified their grammatical rules. These languages are called naturalistic. One such language, Latino Sine Flexione, is a simplified form of Latin. Two others, Occidental and Novial, were drawn from several Western languages.

To date, the most successful auxiliary language is Esperanto, invented by Polish ophthalmologist Zamenhof. It has a relatively large community roughly estimated at about 2 million speakers worldwide, with a large body of literature, songs, and is the only known constructed language to have native speakers, such as the Hungarian-born American businessman George Soros. Other auxiliary languages with a relatively large number of speakers and literature are Interlingua and Ido.

2009-02-02T23:19:00.000-08:00

Super Video CD

Super Video CD (Super Video Compact Disc or SVCD) is a format used for storing video media on standard compact discs. SVCD was intended as a successor to VCD and an alternative to DVD-Video, and falls somewhere between both in terms of technical capability and picture quality.

SVCD has two-thirds the resolution of DVD, and over 2.7 times the resolution of VCD. One CD-R disc can hold up to 60 minutes of standard quality SVCD-format video. While no specific limit on SVCD video length is mandated by the specification, one must lower the video bit rate, and therefore quality, in order to accommodate very long videos. It is usually difficult to fit much more than 100 minutes of video onto one SVCD without incurring significant quality loss, and many hardware players are unable to play video with an instantaneous bit rate lower than 300 to 600 kilobits per second.

2009-01-26T22:34:00.000-08:00

Open ocean

The great expanse of open ocean habitat is huge, and many species can be found passing through it and living in it. The term "open ocean" usually is meant to refer to the vast stretches of water between points of land, or between undersea mounts. Contrary to popular notions the open ocean is often not the place where marine animals spend the majority of their lives. Most species simply pass through the open ocean on their ways to other places. Larger species are the main ongoing inhabitants.

2009-01-19T22:52:00.000-08:00

Bodhi Tree

The Bodhi Tree, also known as Bo (from the Sinhalese Bo), was a large and very old Sacred Fig tree (Ficus religiosa) located in Bodh Gaya (about 100 km/62 mi from Patna in the Indian state of Bihar), under which Siddhartha Gautama, the spiritual teacher and founder of Buddhism later known as Gautama Buddha, achieved enlightenment, or Bodhi. In religious iconography, the Bodhi tree is recognizable by its heart-shaped leaves, which are usually prominently displayed.

The term "Bodhi tree" is also widely applied to currently existing trees, particularly the Sacred Fig growing at the Mahabodhi Temple, which is probably a direct descendant of the original specimen. This tree is a frequent destination for pilgrims, being the most important of the four holy sites for Buddhists. Other holy Bodhi trees which have a great significance in the history of Buddhism are the Anandabodhi tree in Sravasti and the Bodhi tree in Anuradhapura. Both are believed to have been propagated from the original Bodhi tree.

2009-01-12T23:18:00.001-08:00

Adansonia

Baobab is the common name of a genus (Adansonia) containing eight species of trees, native to Madagascar (having six species), mainland Africa and Australia (one species in each). The mainland African species also occurs on Madagascar, but it is not a native of that country.

Other common names include boab, boaboa, bottle tree, upside-down tree, and monkey bread tree. The species reach heights of 5 to 30 metres (16 to 98 ft) and trunk diameters of 7 to 11 metres (23 to 36 ft). An African Baobab specimen in Limpopo Province, South Africa, often considered the largest example alive, has a circumference of 47 metres (150 ft) and an average diameter of 15 metres (49 ft).

Some baobabs are reputed to be many thousands of years old, which is difficult to verify as the wood does not produce annual growth rings, though radiocarbon dating may be able to provide age data.

The Malagasy species are important components of the Madagascar dry deciduous forests. Within that biome, A. madagascariensis and A. rubrostipa occur specifically in the Anjajavy Forest, sometimes growing out of the tsingy limestone itself.

Beginning in 2008, there has been increasing interest for developing baobab as a nutrient-rich raw material for consumer products.

2009-01-07T03:09:00.000-08:00

Hemp

Hemp (from Old English hænep, see cannabis (etymology)) is the common name for plants of the entire genus Cannabis, although the term is often used to refer only to Cannabis strains cultivated for industrial (non-drug) use.

Industrial hemp has many uses, including paper, textiles, biodegradable plastics, health food, and fuel. It is one of the fastest growing biomasses known,[citation needed] and one of the earliest domesticated plants known. It also runs parallel with the "Green Future" objectives that are becoming increasingly popular. Hemp requires little to no pesticides, no herbicides, controls erosion of the topsoil, and produces oxygen. Furthermore, hemp can be used to replace many potentially harmful products, such as tree paper (the processing of which uses bleaches and other toxic chemicals, and contributes to deforestation), cosmetics, and plastics, most of which are petroleum-based and do not decompose easily.

Cannabis sativa L. subsp. sativa var. sativa is the variety grown for industrial use in Europe, Canada, and elsewhere, while C. sativa subsp. indica generally has poor fiber quality and is primarily used for production of recreational and medicinal drugs. The major difference between the two types of plants is the appearance and the amount of Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) secreted in a resinous mixture by epidermal hairs called glandular trichomes. Strains of Cannabis approved for industrial hemp production produce only minute amounts of this psychoactive drug, not enough for any physical or psychological effects. Typically, Hemp contains below 0.3% THC, while Cannabis grown for marijuana can contain anywhere from 6 or 7 % to 20% or even more.

2009-01-01T23:40:00.000-08:00

Beaverhead crater

Beaverhead is an impact structure in central Idaho and western Montana in the United States.Estimated at 37 miles in diameter (60 km), it is one of the largest impact craters on Earth. Its age is estimated to be about 600 million years (early Neoproterozoic).

The structure is named after the area in southwest Montana where evidence of an impact was first discovered in 1990. Other than the original shatter cones found on the perimeter, there is little visible evidence of the structure.

2008-12-25T23:43:00.000-08:00

Subject Object Verb

In linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb (SOV) is the type of languages in which the subject, object, and verb of a sentence appear or usually appear in that order. If English were SOV, then "Sam oranges ate" would be an ordinary sentence, as opposed to the proper "Sam ate oranges".

Among natural languages with a word order preference, SOV is the most common type (followed by Subject Verb Object; the two types account for more than 75% of natural languages with a preferred order). Languages that prefer SOV structure include Ainu, Akkadian, Amharic, Armenian, Aymara, Basque, Bengali, Burmese, Burushaski, Elamite, Hebrew, Hindi, Hittite, Hopi, Itelmen, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Kurdish, Manchu, Marathi, Mongolian, Navajo, Nepali, Nivkh, Nobiin, Pāli, Pashto, Persian, Punjabi, Quechua, Sanskrit, Sinhalese and most other Indo-Iranian languages, Somali and virtually all other Cushitic languages, Sumerian, Tamil, Tibetan, Telugu, Tigrinya, Turkic languages, Urdu, Yukaghir, and virtually all Caucasian languages.

2008-12-15T22:34:00.000-08:00

Chromatin

Chromatin is the complex combination of DNA, RNA, and protein that makes up chromosomes. It is found inside the nuclei of eukaryotic cells, and within the nucleoid in prokaryotic cells. It is divided between heterochromatin (condensed) and euchromatin (extended) forms.The major sugars involved in chromatin are histone proteins, although many other chromosomal proteins have prominent roles too. The functions of chromatin are to package DNA into a smaller volume to fit in the cell, to strengthen the DNA to allow mitosis and meiosis, and to serve as a mechanism to control expression and DNA replication. Chromatin contains genetic material-instructions to direct cell functions. Changes in chromatin structure are affected by chemical modifications of histone proteins such as methylation (DNA and proteins) and acetylation (proteins), and by non-histone, DNA-binding proteins.

2008-12-03T21:11:00.000-08:00

Cognitive science

Cognitive science may be broadly defined as the multidisciplinary study of mind and behavior. It draws on multiple empirical disciplines, including psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, linguistics, anthropology, computer science, sociology and biology. The term cognitive science was coined by Christopher Longuet-Higgins in his 1973 commentary on the Lighthill report, which concerned the then-current state of Artificial Intelligence research. In the same decade, the journal Cognitive Science and the Cognitive Science Society were founded.

2008-11-28T03:35:00.000-08:00

Causes cold water pollution

A layer of cold water forms deep within large dams contained by walls higher than 15 metres. It is from this bottom layer that water is typically released through the outlets in the older, major dams of NSW.The water released can be up to 12 C colder than the water in the river upstream of the dam. Large volumes of cold water flowing from dams lower the natural temperature of the river downstream, damaging aquatic ecology over long distances. The effect is greatest during the warmer months from Spring to Autumn when large volumes of water are released for irrigation.

2008-11-19T04:11:00.000-08:00

Etymology and definitions

The English word 'emotion' is derived from the French émotion and émouvoir. This is based on the Latin emovere, where e- (variant of ex-) means 'out' and movere means 'move'. The related term "motivation" is also derived from movere. Emotions can be divided between 'cognitive' theories of emotions and 'non-cognitive' theories of emotions; or instinctual emotions (from the amgdala), and cognitive emotions (from the prefrontal cortex). Some psychologists divide emotions into basic and complex categories, where base emotions lead to more complex ones. Emotions can be categorized by its duration. Some emotions occur over a period of seconds (e.g. surprise) where others can last years (e.g. love). No definitive taxonomy exists.

A related distinction is between the emotion and the results of the emotion, principally behaviours and emotional expressions. People often behave in certain ways as a direct result of their emotional state, such as crying, fighting or fleeing. Yet again, if one can have the emotion without the corresponding behaviour then we may consider the behaviour not to be essential to the emotion. However some theorists such as the Dutch psychologist Nico Frijda hold a functionalist approach to emotions. Frijda argues that emotions have evolved for a particular function, such as to keep the subject safe. If the behaviours associated with an emotion are the determining factor for the very existence of that emotion then goal-directed behaviour should be regarded as essential to the emotion. Yet since we recognise that the behaviour need not necessarily occur, we can stipulate that emotions involve what are called 'action tendencies'. So for instance, fear involves the tendency to flee, which means that the probability that the subject will flee from a given situation is increased when he is undergoing fear.

2008-11-19T04:10:00.001-08:00

Emotion

An emotion is a term for a mental and physiological state associated with a wide variety of feelings, thoughts, and behavior. Emotions are subjective experiences, or experienced from a individual point of view. Emotion is often associated with mood, temperament, personality, and disposition. For example: confused, excited, guilty, anxious, angry, sad, confident, embarrassed, happy, disgusted, frightened, cautious, smug, lonely, lovestruck, joy, jealous, surprised, shy, apathetic, powerful, unfair, pleasure, and euphoric.

2008-11-13T01:07:00.000-08:00

Hearing

Hearing or audition is the sense of sound perception. Since sound is vibrations propagating through a medium such as air, the detection of these vibrations, that is the sense of the hearing, is a mechanical sense akin to a sense of touch, albeit a very specialized one. In humans, this perception is executed by tiny hair fibres in the inner ear which detect the motion of a membrane which vibrates in response to changes in the pressure exerted by atmospheric particles within a range of 20 to 22000 Hz, with substantial variation between individuals. Sound can also be detected as vibrations conducted through the body by tactition. Lower and higher frequencies than that can be heard are detected this way only. The inability to hear is called deafness.

2008-11-04T23:04:00.000-08:00

Gatling gun

The Gatling gun is considered by some to have been the very first machine gun: although it did not automatically reload under its own power, it was capable of firing continuously. Each barrel fires a single shot as it reaches a certain point in the cycle after which it ejects the spent cartridge, loads a new round, and in the process, somewhat cools down. This configuration allowed higher rates of fire without the problem of an overheating single barrel. The Maxim gun, invented in 1884, was the first self-powered machine gun. The first Gatling gun relied on a hand crank for external power. Some time later, Gatling-type weapons were invented that diverted a fraction of gas from the chamber to turn the barrels. Later still, electric motors supplied external power. The gun was designed by the American inventor Dr. Richard J. Gatling in 1861 and patented in 1862.

2008-10-30T02:06:00.000-07:00

Blood plasma

Blood plasma is the liquid component of blood, in which the blood cells are suspended. It makes up about 55% of total blood volume. It is composed of mostly water (90% by volume), and contains dissolved proteins, glucose, clotting factors, mineral ions, hormones and carbon dioxide (plasma being the main medium for excretory product transportation). Blood plasma is prepared simply by spinning a tube of fresh blood in a centrifuge until the blood cells fall to the bottom of the tube. The blood plasma is then poured or drawn off. Blood serum is blood plasma without fibrinogen or the other clotting factors.

2008-10-22T00:04:00.000-07:00

Photomultiplier

Photomultiplier tubes (photomultipliers or PMTs for short), members of the class of vacuum tubes, and more specifically phototubes, are extremely sensitive detectors of light in the ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum. These detectors multiply the signal produced by incident light by as much as 100 million times (i.e., 160 dB), enabling (for example) single photons to be detected individually when the incident flux of light is very low.

The combination of high gain, low noise, high frequency response, and large area of collection has earned photomultipliers an essential place in nuclear and particle physics, astronomy, medical diagnostics including blood tests, medical imaging, motion picture film scanning (telecine), and high-end image scanners known as drum scanners. Semiconductor devices, particularly avalanche photodiodes, are alternatives to photomultipliers; however, photomultipliers are uniquely well-suited for applications requiring low-noise, high-sensitivity detection of light that is imperfectly collimated. While photomultipliers are extraordinarily sensitive and moderately efficient, research is still underway to create a photon-counting light detection device that is much more than 99% efficient. Such a detector is of interest for applications related to quantum information and quantum cryptography. Elements of photomultiplier technology, when integrated differently, are the basis of night vision devices.

2008-10-13T22:26:00.000-07:00

Digital Marketing – Pull

Pull digital marketing technologies involve the user having to seek out and directly grab (or pull) the content. Web site/blogs and streaming media (audio and video) are good examples of this. In each of these examples, users have a specific link (URL) to view the content.

Pros:

No restrictions in terms of type of content or size as the user determines what they want.

No technology required to send the content, only to store/display it.

No regulations or opt-in process required.

Cons:

Considerable marketing effort required for users to find the message/content.

Limited tracking capabilities – only total downloads, page views, etc.

No personalization – content is received and viewed the same across all audiences

2008-10-02T21:58:00.000-07:00

Photogeneration of charge carriers

When a photon hits a piece of silicon, one of three things can happen:

the photon can pass straight through the silicon — this (generally) happens for lower energy photons,

the photon can reflect off the surface,

the photon can be absorbed by the silicon, if the photon energy is higher than the silicon band gap value. This generates an electron-hole pair and sometimes heat, depending on the band structure.

When a photon is absorbed, its energy is given to an electron in the crystal lattice. Usually this electron is in the valence band, and is tightly bound in covalent bonds between neighboring atoms, and hence unable to move far. The energy given to it by the photon "excites" it into the conduction band, where it is free to move around within the semiconductor. The covalent bond that the electron was previously a part of now has one fewer electron — this is known as a hole. The presence of a missing covalent bond allows the bonded electrons of neighboring atoms to move into the "hole," leaving another hole behind, and in this way a hole can move through the lattice. Thus, it can be said that photons absorbed in the semiconductor create mobile electron-hole pairs.

A photon need only have greater energy than that of the band gap in order to excite an electron from the valence band into the conduction band. However, the solar frequency spectrum approximates a black body spectrum at ~6000 K, and as such, much of the solar radiation reaching the Earth is composed of photons with energies greater than the band gap of silicon. These higher energy photons will be absorbed by the solar cell, but the difference in energy between these photons and the silicon band gap is converted into heat (via lattice vibrations — called phonons) rather than into usable electrical energy.

2008-09-23T02:53:00.000-07:00

Uses of dynamic IP addressing

Dynamic IP addresses are most frequently assigned on LANs and broadband networks by Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) servers. They are used because it avoids the administrative burden of assigning specific static addresses to each device on a network. It also allows many devices to share limited address space on a network if only some of them will be online at a particular time. In most current desktop operating systems, dynamic IP configuration is enabled by default so that a user does not need to manually enter any settings to connect to a network with a DHCP server. DHCP is not the only technology used to assigning dynamic IP addresses. Dialup and some broadband networks use dynamic address features of the Point-to-Point Protocol.

2008-09-19T00:31:00.000-07:00

Bluetooth 1.1

As IEEE Standard 802.15.1-2002.

Many errors found in the 1.0B specifications were fixed.

Added support for non-encrypted channels.

Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI).

2008-09-09T23:14:00.001-07:00

Community Ecology Data and methods

There are two methods of data collection: direct and indirect. Direct data come from vital statistics registries that track all births and deaths as well as certain changes in legal status such as marriage, divorce, and migration (registration of place of residence). In developed countries with good registration systems (such as the United States and much of Europe), registry statistics are the best method for estimating the number of births and deaths.

The census is the other common direct method of collecting demographic data. A census is usually conducted by a national government and attempts to enumerate every person in a country. However, in contrast to vital statistics data, which are typically collected continuously and summarized on an annual basis, censuses typically occur only every 10 years or so, and thus are not usually the best source of data on births and deaths. Analyses are conducted after a census to estimate how much over or undercounting took place. Censuses do more than just count people. They typically collect information about families or households, as well as about such individual characteristics as age, sex, marital status, literacy/education, employment status and occupation, and geographical location. They may also collect data on migration (or place of birth or of previous residence), language, religion, nationality (or ethnicity or race), and citizenship. In countries in which the vital registration system may be incomplete, the censuses are also used as a direct source of information about fertility and mortality; for example the censuses of the People's Republic of China gather information on births and deaths that occurred in the 18 months immediately preceding the census.

Indirect methods of data collections are required in countries where full data are not available, such as is the case in much of the developing world. One of these techniques is the sister method, where survey researchers ask women how many of their sisters have died or had children and at what age. With these surveys, researchers can then indirectly estimate birth or death rates for the entire population. Other indirect methods include asking people about siblings, parents, and children.

2008-09-04T04:02:00.000-07:00

Architecture Development Method

The Architecture Development Method (ADM) is applied to develop an enterprise architecture which will meet the business and information technology needs of an organization. It may be tailored to the organization's needs and is then employed to manage the execution of architecture planning activities. The process flow can be seen as an image located here: Architecture Development Cycle .The process is iterative and cyclic. Each step checks with Requirements. Phase C involves some combination of both Data Architecture and Applications Architecture.Additional clarity can be added between steps B. and C. in order to provide a complete Information Architecture.Performance Engineering working practices are applied to the Requirements phase, and to the Business Architecture, Information System Architecture, and Technology architecture phases. Within Information System Architecture, it is applied to both the Data Architecture and Application Architecture.

2008-08-25T23:07:00.000-07:00

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humanity. Anthropology has origins in the natural sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences. Ethnography is both one of its primary methods and the text that is written as a result of the practice of anthropology and its elements.

Since the work of Franz Boas and Bronisław Malinowski in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, anthropology has been distinguished from other social science disciplines by its emphasis on in-depth examination of context, cross-cultural comparisons (socio-cultural anthropology is by nature a comparative discipline), and the importance it places on long-term, experiential immersion in the area of research, often known as participant-observation. Cultural anthropology in particular has emphasized cultural relativity and the use of findings to frame cultural critiques. This has been particularly prominent in the United States, from Boas's arguments against 19th-century racial ideology, through Margaret Mead's advocacy for gender equality and sexual liberation, to current criticisms of post-colonial oppression and promotion of multiculturalism.

2008-08-20T02:58:00.000-07:00

Neolithic

"Neolithic" means "New Stone Age." This was a period of primitive technological and social development, toward the end of the "Stone Age." Beginning in the 10th millennium BCE (12,000 BP), the Neolithic period saw the development of early villages, agriculture, animal domestication, tools and the onset of the earliest recorded incidents of warfare.The Neolithic term is commonly used in the Old World, as its application to cultures in the Americas and Oceania that did not fully develop metal-working technology raises problems.

2008-08-13T02:18:00.001-07:00

Wi-Fi Standard devices

A wireless access point connects a group of wireless devices to an adjacent wired LAN. An access point is similar to a network hub, relaying data between connected wireless devices in addition to a (usually) single connected wired device, most often an ethernet hub or switch, allowing wireless devices to communicate with other wired devices.

Wireless adapters allow devices to connect to a wireless network. These adapters connect to devices using various external or internal interconnects such as PCI, miniPCI, USB, ExpressCard, Cardbus and PC card. Most newer laptop computers are equipped with internal adapters. Internal cards are generally more difficult to install.

Wireless routers integrate a WAP, ethernet switch, and internal Router firmware application that provides IP Routing, NAT, and DNS forwarding through an integrated WAN interface. A wireless router allows wired and wireless ethernet LAN devices to connect to a (usually) single WAN device such as cable modem or DSL modem. A wireless router allows all three devices (mainly the access point and router) to be configured through one central utility. This utility is most usually an integrated web server which serves web pages to wired and wireless LAN clients and often optionally to WAN clients. This utility may also be an application that is run on a desktop computer such as Apple's AirPort.

Wireless network bridges connect a wired network to a wireless network. This is different from an access point in the sense that an access point connects wireless devices to a wired network at the data-link layer. Two wireless bridges may be used to connect two wired networks over a wireless link, useful in situations where a wired connection may be unavailable, such as between two separate homes.

Wireless range extenders or wireless repeaters can extend the range of an existing wireless network. Range extenders can be strategically placed to elongate a signal area or allow for the signal area to reach around barriers such as those created in L-shaped corridors. Wireless devices connected through repeaters will suffer from an increased latency for each hop. Additionally, a wireless device connected to any of the repeaters in the chain will have a throughput that is limited by the weakest link between the two nodes in the chain from which the connection originates to where the connection ends.

2008-08-05T02:15:00.000-07:00

Tassel

The tassel or sword knot is a lanyard -- usually of leather but sometimes of woven gold or silver bullion or more often metallic lace -- looped around the hand to prevent the sword being lost if it is dropped. Although they have a practical function, sword knots often had a decorative design. For example, the British Army generally adopted a white leather strap with a large acorn knot made out of gold wire for infantry officers at the end of the 19th century; such acorn forms of tassels were said to be 'boxed', which was the way of securing the fringe of the tassel along its bottom line such that the strands could not separate and become entangled or lost. Many sword knots were also made of silk with a fine, ornamental alloy gold or silver metal wire woven into it in a specified pattern.

The art and history of tassels are known by its French name, passementerie, or Posamenten as it was called in German. The military output of the artisans called passementiers (ornamental braid, lace, cord, or trimmings makers) is evident in catalogs of various military uniform and regalia makers of centuries past. The broader art form of passementerie, with its divisions of Decor, Clergy and Nobility, Upholstery, Coaches and Livery, and Military, is covered in a few books on that subject, none of which are in English

2008-07-29T06:35:00.000-07:00

Adaptive Compliant Wing

The Adaptive Compliant Wing is a wing design developed by FlexSys, Inc. which is flexible so that its shape can be changed in flight.

The wing design features a variable-camber trailing edge which can be deflected up to +/- 10°, so that it acts like a flap-equipped wing, but without the individual segments and gaps typical in a flap system. The wing itself can be twisted up to 1° per foot of span. The wing's shape can be changed at a rate of 30° per second, which is ideal for gust load alleviation.

The development of the Adaptive Compliant Wing is being sponsored by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory. Initially, the wing was tested in a wind tunnel, and then a 50-inch section of wing was flight tested on board the Scaled Composites White Knight research aircraft in a seven-flight, 20-hour program operated from the Mojave Spaceport.

2008-07-21T22:51:00.000-07:00

Reintroduction of the dye transfer process

After its reintroduction in 1997, the dye transfer process was (somewhat unexpectedly) used in several big-budget, modern Hollywood productions. These included Bulworth, Pearl Harbor, and Toy Story. The distinct "look" this process achieves, often sought after by film makers looking to re-create the period of time at which Technicolor was at its most prominent, is difficult to obtain through conventional, high-speed printing methods and is one explanation for the enduring demand and credibility of the process.

The latest motion picture dye IB (imbibition) transfer process developed during the 1990s is greatly superior to the process used during the 1970s and of much higher quality than modern Eastmancolor stocks. The prints exhibited a higher color gamut and color satauration than modern Eastmancolor stock and could be made consistently and accurately for large numbers of prints. There were no longer visible density and contrast variations that occurred most often with earlier three color Technicolor. The new process was also about as sharp as modern Eastmancolor process with slightly higher contrast, but they appeared sharper due to the higher contrast.

Technicolor was purchased by French company Thomson in 2001 from the British company Carlton Communications, which discontinued the dye-transfer process in 2002.
The visual aesthetic of dye transfer Technicolor continues to be used in Hollywood, usually in films set in the mid-20th century. Parts of The Aviator, the 2004 biopic of Howard Hughes, were digitally manipulated to imitate color processes that were available during the periods each scene takes place. The two-color look of the film is incorrectly cited as looking like Technicolor's two-color systems, and is in fact a facsimile of Hughes' own color system, Multicolor. The "three-strip" Technicolor look begins after the newsreel footage of Hughes making the first flight around the world.

2008-07-15T23:25:00.001-07:00

Geological paradigm shift

The acceptance of the theories of continental drift and sea floor spreading (the two key elements of plate tectonics) may be compared to the Copernican revolution in astronomy (see Nicolaus Copernicus). Within a matter of only several years geophysics and geology in particular were revolutionized. The parallel is striking: just as pre-Copernican astronomy was highly descriptive but still unable to provide explanations for the motions of celestial objects, pre-tectonic plate geological theories described what was observed but struggled to provide any fundamental mechanisms. The problem lay in the question "How?". Before acceptance of plate tectonics, geology in particular was trapped in a "pre-Copernican" box.

However, by comparison to astronomy the geological revolution was much more sudden. What had been rejected for decades by any respectable scientific journal was eagerly accepted within a few short years in the 1960s and 1970s. Any geological description before this had been highly descriptive. All the rocks were described and assorted reasons, sometimes in excruciating detail, were given for why they were where they are. The descriptions are still valid. The reasons, however, today sound much like pre-Copernican astronomy.

One simply has to read the pre-plate descriptions of why the Alps or Himalaya exist to see the difference. In an attempt to answer "how" questions like "How can rocks that are clearly marine in origin exist thousands of meters above sea-level in the Dolomites?", or "How did the convex and concave margins of the Alpine chain form?", any true insight was hidden by complexity that boiled down to technical jargon without much fundamental insight as to the underlying mechanics.

With plate tectonics answers quickly fell into place or a path to the answer became clear. Collisions of converging plates had the force to lift the sea floor to great heights. The cause of marine trenches oddly placed just off island arcs or continents and their associated volcanoes became clear when the processes of subduction at converging plates were understood.

Mysteries were no longer mysteries. Forests of complex and obtuse answers were swept away. Why were there striking parallels in the geology of parts of Africa and South America? Why did Africa and South America look strangely like two pieces that should fit to anyone having done a jigsaw puzzle? Look at some pre-tectonics explanations for complexity. For simplicity and one that explained a great deal more look at plate tectonics. A great rift, similar to the Great Rift Valley in northeastern Africa, had split apart a single continent, eventually forming the Atlantic Ocean, and the forces were still at work in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

We have inherited some of the old terminology, but the underlying concept is as radical and simple as was "The Earth moves" in astronomy.

2008-07-07T23:24:00.001-07:00

Dried plasma

"Dried plasma" was developed and first used in WWII. Prior to the United States' involvement in the war, liquid plasma and whole blood were used. The "Blood for Britain" program during the early 1940s was quite successful (and popular in the United States) based in part on Dr. Charles Drew's contribution. A large project was begun in August of the year 1940 to collect blood in New York City hospitals for the export of plasma to Britain. Dr. Drew was appointed medical supervisor of the "Plasma for Britain" project. His notable contribution at this time was to transform the test tube methods of many blood researchers, including himself, into the first successful mass production techniques.

Nonetheless, the decision was made to develop a dried plasma package for the armed forces as it would reduce breakage and make the transportation, packaging, and storage much simpler.

The resulting Army-Navy dried plasma package came in two tin cans containing 400 cc bottles. One bottle contained enough distilled water to completely reconstitute the dried plasma contained within the other bottle. In about three minutes, the plasma would be ready to use and could stay fresh for around four hours.

Following the "Plasma for Britain" invention, Dr. Drew was named director of the Red Cross blood bank and assistant director of the National Research Council, in charge of blood collection for the United States Army and Navy. Dr. Drew argued against the armed forces directive that blood/plasma was to be separated by the race of the donor. Dr. Drew argued that there was no racial difference in human blood and that the policy would lead to needless deaths as soldiers and sailors were required to wait for "same race" blood.[citation needed]

By the end of the war the American Red Cross had provided enough blood for over six million plasma packages. Most of the surplus plasma was returned to the United States for civilian use. Serum albumin replaced dried plasma for combat use during the Korean War.

2008-07-01T05:32:00.000-07:00

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms and some viruses. The main role of DNA molecules is the long-term storage of information. DNA is often compared to a set of blueprints or a recipe, since it contains the instructions needed to construct other components of cells, such as proteins and RNA molecules. The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in regulating the use of this genetic information.

Chemically, DNA consists of two long polymers of simple units called nucleotides, with backbones made of sugars and phosphate groups joined by ester bonds. These two strands run in opposite directions to each other and are therefore anti-parallel. Attached to each sugar is one of four types of molecules called bases. It is the sequence of these four bases along the backbone that encodes information. This information is read using the genetic code, which specifies the sequence of the amino acids within proteins. The code is read by copying stretches of DNA into the related nucleic acid RNA, in a process called transcription.

Within cells, DNA is organized into structures called chromosomes. These chromosomes are duplicated before cells divide, in a process called DNA replication. Eukaryotic organisms (animals, plants, and fungi) store their DNA inside the cell nucleus, while in prokaryotes (bacteria and archae) it is found in the cell's cytoplasm. Within the chromosomes, chromatin proteins such as histones compact and organize DNA. These compact structures guide the interactions between DNA and other proteins, helping control which parts of the DNA are transcribed.

2008-06-23T22:55:00.000-07:00

Break beat

A break beat is the sampling of breaks as drum loops (beats), originally from soul tracks, and using them as the rhythmic basis for hip-hop and rap songs. It was invented by DJ Kool Herc, the first to buy two copies of one record so as to be able to mix between the same break[citation needed] or, as Bronx DJ Afrika Bambaataa describes, "that certain part of the record that everybody waits for--they just let their inner self go and get wild," extending its length through repetition (Toop, 1991). The dance the boys and girls ended up doing to break beats was called the Break, break dancing. Breaking was abandoned in favor of doing the Freak in 1978[citation needed] until it was revived and enhanced by Crazy Legs, Frosty Freeze, and the Rock Steady Crew. More recently electronic artists have created "break beats" from other electronic music. Compare with "breakbeat" below.

Although DJ Kool Herc is usually credited with being the first to cut between two copies of a record, it is likely that there were a number of like-minded DJ's developing the technique at the same time. For example, Walter Gibbons was noted in first-hand accounts by his peers for cutting two copies of the same record in his Discoteque gigs of the mid 1970s[citation needed].

Hip hop break beat compilations include Hardcore Break Beats and Break Beats, and Drum Drops (Toop, 1991).

2008-06-16T23:40:00.000-07:00

Safety and Security Technology Deployment

Over the past several years, FMCSA has been involved in efforts to test, evaluate, and encourage the deployment of onboard safety and security systems, such as collision warning systems with adaptive cruise control, stability control systems, lane departure warning systems, and vehicle tracking systems. Through systematic deployment planning for onboard systems, FMCSA continues to be engaged in industry-government partnerships to conduct studies and relay information to promote commercial motor vehicle (CMV) safety and security.

Through this collaboration, functional specifications were developed to relay a better understanding of the functions of onboard safety and security systems and to provide insight into the safety and efficiency benefits of using the systems. FMCSA has recently released Commercial Motor Vehicle Onboard Safety and Security Systems Technology Product Guides on its website, which provides a portfolio of existing and emerging safety and security system technologies for the motor carrier industry. The purpose of this information on this site is to assist carriers, drivers, fleet managers, and other interested individuals in learning more about available safety and security systems. Currently, FMCSA is working on completing analyses of the costs and benefits of these systems and assessing the use of the systems by the industry. In the future, FMCSA plans to perform expanded testing of onboard safety systems to identify and resolve technology adoption issues, confirm and extrapolate safety and productivity benefits to the broader industry, and develop focused deployment efforts to promote expanded adoption of the systems by industry.

2008-06-11T04:31:00.000-07:00

Architecture Development Method

The Architecture Development Method (ADM) is applied to develop an enterprise architecture which will meet the business and information technology needs of an organization. It may be tailored to the organization's needs and is then employed to manage the execution of architecture planning activities. The process flow can be seen as an image located here: Architecture Development Cycle .The process is iterative and cyclic. Each step checks with Requirements. Phase C involves some combination of both Data Architecture and Applications Architecture.Additional clarity can be added between steps B. and C. in order to provide a complete Information Architecture.Performance Engineering working practices are applied to the Requirements phase, and to the Business Architecture, Information System Architecture, and Technology architecture phases. Within Information System Architecture, it is applied to both the Data Architecture and Application Architecture.

2008-06-03T03:34:00.000-07:00

Trafic Nagative impacts

Wasting time of motorists and passengers ("opportunity cost"). As a non-productive activity for most people, congestion reduces regional economic health.
Delays, which may result in late arrival for employment, meetings, and education, resulting in lost business, disciplinary action or other personal losses.
Inability to forecast travel time accurately, leading to drivers allocating more time to travel "just in case", and less time on productive activities.
Wasted fuel increases air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions contributing to global warming owing to increased idling, acceleration and braking. Increased fuel use may also in theory cause a rise in fuel costs.
and tear on vehicles as a result of idling in traffic and frequent acceleration and braking, leading to more frequent repairs and replacements.
Stressed and frustrated motorists, encouraging road rage and reduced health of motorists.
Emergencies: blocked traffic may interfere with the passage of emergency vehicles traveling to their destinations where they are urgently needed.
Spillover effect from congested main arteries to secondary roads and side streets as alternative routes are attempted ('rat running'), which may affect neighborhood amenity and real estate prices.

2008-05-28T23:44:00.001-07:00

Evolution of leaves

The lycopod Isoetes bears microphylls with a single
vascular trace.Leaves today are, in almost all
instances, an adaptation to increase the amount of
sunlight that can be captured for photosynthesis. Leaves
certainly evolved more than once, and probably
originated as spiny outgrowths to protect early plants
from herbivory.

The rhyniophytes of the Rhynie chert comprised nothing
more than slender, unornamented axes. The early to
middle Devonian trimerophytes, therefore, are the first
evidence we have of anything that could be considered
leafy. This group of vascular plants are recognisable by
their masses of terminal sporangia, which adorn the ends
of axes which may bifurcate or trifurcate. Some
organisms, such as Psilophyton, bore enations. These are
small, spiny outgrowths of the stem, lacking their own
vascular supply.

Around the same time, the zosterophyllophytes were
becoming important. This group is recognisable by their
kidney-shaped sporangia, which grew on short lateral
branches close to the main axes. They sometimes branched
in a distinctive H-shape. The majority of this group
bore pronounced spines on their axes. However, none of
these had a vascular trace, and the first evidence of
vascularised enations occurs in the Rhynie genus
Asteroxylon. The spines of Asteroxylon had a primitive
vasuclar supply - at the very least, leaf traces could
be seen departing from the central protostele towards
each individual "leaf".

2008-05-27T07:41:00.001-07:00

Publishing on the school website

Schools are contributing to this rich vein of online information by publishing information on the web about their activities. These websites are available to Internet users across the world.

The value

A school website encourages communication with a wider audience including schools in other countries, parents, past pupils, business and the community, and provides up to date information about the school's activities.

The development of such a site by pupils and staff is truly cross-curricular.

The potential risks

Personal Safety

* Feeling uncomfortable

If a website includes a pupil's picture, then this could be downloaded from the web, and edited in an unpleasant or embarrassing way. This new image could be circulated via newsgroups or on another webpage.

Parents have concerns that information about their children may be made available worldwide by schools, and that their children can be identified and traced.

Schools could find themselves the centre of unwarranted media attention if the content of a school's website is not carefully overseen. For example, search engines deal with words individually rather than in context, and deliver sites to the browser based upon those individual words. A website that included the phrase "Ourtown school is a single sex education establishment", could be proffered to a web user who was looking for occurrences of "sex".

* Child protection

A pupil could be traced if their name and picture appear on the school's website. It would be possible for them to be contacted by someone wishing them harm.

The recommendations

* Education Authorities should be approached for guidelines concerning parental permission for publishing pupils' pictures on the web.

* Schools may wish to consider whether pupils are put at risk when pictures of them appear on the school website.

* References to specific pupils should only be made if they do not conflict with the school's Personal Safety Programmed and Child Protection Guidelines.

* School website developers should take special care that pupils' safety and justifies are not compromised.

* The methods that search engines use to index the contents of websites should be borne in mind when producing text for a school website.

2008-05-22T08:07:00.001-07:00

Preparing for Safe Internet Use

Although a new experience for many, the Internet is no more than another medium with associated risks, and general risk avoidance strategies are applicable. It remains true that good advice online has its roots in good advice offline.

Every aspect of life brings its own risk and schools cope by: -

* identifying the risks

* understanding the context

* assessing the level of risk

* introducing strategies to maximize the gain, whilst limiting the risk

* integrating new concepts into the curriculum

* sharing best practice

2008-05-07T04:56:00.000-07:00

WHAT COULD HAPPEN IF YOU HAD A BIKE CRASH AND WEREN'T WEARING A HELMET?

* "You could be paralyzed, killed, or you could suffer damage."

* "You could bust your head open on the sidewalk or a rock."

* "You could go into a coma."

* "You could break your neck or crack your head.

* "You could have serious brain damage and you might have to learn all you know over again."

2008-04-28T06:03:00.000-07:00

Bicycle Fact Sheet

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates that over 600,000 persons suffered bicycle-related injuries serious enough to require hospital emergency room treatment in 1994. Here are some typical cases:

"Karen applied her hand brakes and lost control of her bicycle. She went down an embankment into a creek, and fractured her shoulder."

"As Jimmy was riding his bicycle downhill, the front wheel of his bicycle suddenly became loose and twisted. Jimmy lost control, fracturing his knee."

"Bob was riding a bike without a chain guard when his foot caught between the pedal and chain. He fell, suffering a concussion and skull fracture."

"Michele was riding her bike alongside a friend's. As her friend moved his bike to the right, the two front wheels collided, causing Michele to fall. She suffered a concussion and fractured a wrist."

These case histories illustrate some major accident patterns associated with bicycles. They are:

* Collision with a car or another bicycle.

* Loss of Control -- This occurs because of a number of factors, including: difficulty in braking; riding too large a bike; riding too fast; riding double; stunting; striking a rut, bump, or obstacle; and riding on slippery surfaces.

* Mechanical and Structural Problems -- These include brake failure; wobbling or disengagement of the wheel or steering mechanism; difficulty in shifting gears; chain slippage; pedals falling off, or spoke breakage.

* Entanglement of a person's feet, hands, or clothing in the bicycle.

* Foot slippage from pedal.

To make bicycles safer, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission developed a mandatory safety standard for bicycles to help eliminate injuries due to mechanical and structural failures.

The CPSC regulations establish strict performance and construction standards for the brakes, wheels, steering system and frame. They require reflectors on the front, back, sides and pedals to make bicycles visible at night; require elimination of uncovered sharp edges and jutting parts; and require brakes on bicycles with seat height of 22 inches or more. New bicycles are required to meet the standards.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission offers the following safety tips when shopping for a new bike or taking care of an old one:

Selecting the Bicycle

* If you're buying a bicycle for a child, choose one to fit the child's size today, not one he or she will "grow into" later.

* A bicycle should suit the rider's ability and kind of riding.

* Check hand and foot brakes for fast, easy stops without instability or jamming.

* Avoid slippery plastic pedals. Look instead for rubber-treated pedals, or metal pedals with serrated rattrap edges or with firmly attached toe clips.

Using the Bicycle

* Always wear a helmet to help prevent head injuries. CPSC is setting a new mandatory standard for bike helmets.

* Observe all traffic laws and signals, just as automobiles must do. Graphic of a bicycle with safety features pointed out

* Don't ride double or attempt stunts.

* Ride near the curb in the same direction as traffic.

* Find alternate routes, rather than ride through busy intersections and heavy or high-speed traffic.

* Walk -- don't ride -- your bicycle across busy intersections and left turn corners.

* Avoid riding in wet weather. When wet, handbrakes may require a long distance to stop.

* Avoid riding in the dark. If you do, be sure the bike is equipped with a headlight, a taillight and reflectors. Apply retro-reflective trim to clothing, or wear reflective vests and jackets.

* Avoid loose clothing or long coats that can catch in pedals or wheels. Leg clips or bands keep pants legs from tangling in the chain.

* Avoid crossing raised sewer grates.

2008-04-21T06:35:00.001-07:00

Net Pegs (Anchor Types)

These tapered, metal stakes should be used to secure only the NET to the ground. Net pegs should NOT be used to anchor the movable soccer goal 6. Guidelines for Goal Storage or Securing When Goal is Not in Use The majority of the incidents investigated by CPSC did not occur during a soccer match. Most of the incidents occurred when the goals were unattended. Therefore, it is imperative that all goals are stored properly when not being used. When goals are not being used always:
a) Remove the net,
b) Take appropriate steps to secure goals such as:
1) Place the goal frames face to face and secures them at each goalpost with a lock and chain,
2) Lock and chain to a suitable fixed structure such as a permanent fence (see Figure 4.2),
3) Lock unused goals in a secure storage room after each use,
4) If applicable, fully disassemble the goals for seasonal storage, or
5) If applicable, fold the face of the goal down and lock it to its base.

2008-04-14T05:09:00.000-07:00

Semi permanent (Anchor Types)

This anchor type is usually comprised of two or more functional components. The main support requires a permanently secured base that is buried underground. One type (3.2a) of semi permanent anchor connects the underground base to the soccer goal by means of 2 tethers. Another design (3.2b) utilizes a buried anchor tube with a threaded opening at ground level. The goal is positioned over the buried tube and the bolt is passed through the goal ground shoes (bar) and rear ground shoe (bar) and screwed into the threaded hole of the buried tube.

2008-04-07T06:58:00.001-07:00

Rules of Soccer

From the Federation of International De Football Associations (FIFA) Laws of the Game, Guide for Referees, July 1993.
"Goal-posts and cross-bars must be made of wood, metal, or other approved material as decided from time to time by the International Football Association Board. They may be square, rectangular, round half round or elliptical in shape."
"Goal-posts and cross-bars made of other materials and in other shapes are not permitted. The goal-posts must be white in color."
"The width and depth of the cross-bar shall not exceed 5 inches (12 cm)."
From the National Federation of State High School Associations' (NFSHSA) 1994-95 National Federation Edition-Soccer Rules Book.
"They shall consist of 2 upright (posts) 4 inches but not more than 5 inches (0.10m by 0.12m)...the tops of the posts shall be joined by a 4 inches but not more than 5 inches (0.10m by 0.12m) horizontal crossbar..."
From the National Collegiate Athletic Associations (NCAA) Rules for Soccer.
"...and shall consist of two wooden or metal posts, ...the width or diameter of the goal-posts and crossbar shall not be less than 4 inches (10.16 cm) nor more than 5 inches (12.7 cm)."

2008-03-30T19:50:00.001-07:00

Parade marks start of Torino 2006 Paralympic Winter Games

The Paralympic flame passed by B.C.-Canada Place on via Accademia Albertina today, marking the start of the Torino 2006 Paralympic Winter Games. More than 100 people gathered on the sidewalk outside the house, waving Canadian flags and a large Vancouver 2010 sign to cheer on the athletes and the parade. The crowd was even able to enjoy the turn-over of the torch to the next runner.

2008-03-24T06:06:00.000-07:00

Movable Soccer Goals Can Fall Over On Children

Movable soccer goals can fall over and kill or injure children who climb on them or hang from the crossbar. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has reports of at least 28 deaths since 1979 resulting from soccer goals falling over. Both homemade and professionally manufactured soccer goals are involved in these incidents. To help prevent deaths and injuries associated with soccer goals, follow these safety suggestions.
* Securely anchor or counter-weight movable soccer goals at all times (see illustration).
* Never climb on the soccer net or goal framework.
* Always instruct soccer players on the safe handling of and potential dangers associated with movable soccer goals.
* Use movable soccer goals only on level (flat) fields.
* Check all connecting hardware before every use. Replace damaged or missing fasteners immediately.
* Ensure safety labels are clearly visible.
* Remove nets when goals are not in use.
* Anchor or chain goals to nearby fence posts, dugouts, or similar sturdy fixtures when not in use.
* Fully disassemble goals for seasonal storage.

2008-03-17T07:01:00.000-07:00

Safe snowmobiling rules for recreational snowmobiling:

1. Never drive your snowmobile alone or on unfamiliar ground have someone ride along with you, so you can help each other in case of breakdown or accident.

2. Drive only on established and marked trails or in specified use areas.

3. Avoid waterways Frozen lakes and rivers can be fatal. It is almost impossible to judge adequate ice coverage or depth.

4. Avoid driving in bad weather. Check warnings for snow, ice, and wind chill conditions before starting

. 5. Watch the path ahead to avoid rocks, trees, fences (particularly barbed wire), ditches, and other obstacles.

6. Slow down at the top of a hill a cliff, snow bank, or other unforeseen hazard could be on the other side.

7. Don't hurdle snow banks you have control only when your skis are on the ground.

8. Learn the snowmobile traffic laws and regulations for the area. Many states prohibit using snowmobiles on public roads some states have mini-mum age requirements for drivers.

9. be sensible about stopping at roads or railroad tracks. Signal your turns to other drivers avoid tailgating Control speed according to conditions.

10. Use extra caution if driving at night, because un-seen obstacles could be fatal do not drive faster than your headlights will allow you to see Do not open new trails after dark.

11. Never drink while driving your snowmobile. Drinking and driving can prove fatal.

12. be sure the snowmobile is properly maintained in good operating condition. Some cases report that the throttle sticks, leading to loss of control Snowmobiles manufactured before 1983 may not have a "throttle interruption device" designed to shut off the snowmobile in the event the throttle sticks.

2008-03-10T04:25:00.000-07:00

MS-DOS

MS-DOS (MicroSoft Disk Operating System) is an operating system commercialized by Microsoft. It was the commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems and was the dominant operating system for the PC compatible platform during the 1980s. It has gradually been replaced on consumer desktop computers by a variety of generations of the Windows operating system.

MS-DOS was initially released in 1981 and had eight major versions released before Microsoft stopped development in 2000. It was the key product in Microsoft's growth from a programming languages company to varied software development firm, providing the company with essential revenue and marketing resources.

2008-02-22T21:18:00.001-08:00

Dallasaurus
Dallasaurus (Bell et Polcyn, 2005) is a basal mosasauroid from the Upper Cretaceous of North America. The genus is based upon two partial skeletons recovered from the Arcadia Park Shale (lower Middle Turonian), approximately 15 meters above its contact with the older Kamp Ranch Limestone in Dallas County in north-central Texas.

The holotype specimen (TMM 43209-1, Texas Memorial Museum, University of Texas at Austin) consists of an incomplete and disarticulated skull, along with considerable portions of the postcranial skeleton. The second referred specimen (DMNH 8121-8125, 8143-8149, and 8161-8180, Dallas Museum of Natural History) lacks any skull material and consists entirely of disarticulated postcranial remains.

2008-02-18T23:34:00.000-08:00

Spoofing

Caller ID is a simple string of data that can be read and generated very simply by small computer programs and even some inexpensive devices. Although the caller ID information is transmitted in between the first and second rings, before the phone call is connected, it is possible to mislead the phone company as to the origin of the call, thus defeating caller ID. Although misleading the phone company by generating ANI code or by other electronic means is very complex, simpler means do exist. Using services like Vonage or Skype, calling from a payphone, or using a calling card are easy means to fool caller ID.

2007-11-14T23:32:00.000-08:00

The real facts about Saturn

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second biggest. Saturn has been identified from the time when prehistoric times. Galileo was the first to analysis it with a telescope in 1610; he noted its odd look but was confused by it. Early observations of Saturn were complex by the fact that the Earth passes through the plane of Saturn's rings all few years as Saturn moves in its orbit. A low resolution image of Saturn therefore changes considerably. It was not in anticipation of 1659 that Christian Huygens properly inferred the geometry of the rings. Saturn's rings remained exclusive in the known solar system until 1977 when extremely faint rings were discovered around Uranus.

Saturn is clearly flattened (oblate) when viewed through a small telescope; its equatorial and polar diameters differ by almost 10% (120,536 km vs. 108,728 km). This is the end result of its rapid rotary motion and fluid state. The other gas planets are also oblate, but not so a lot so. Saturn's rings are very thin: though they're 250,000 km or more in thickness they're less than one kilometer thick. In spite of their impressive appearance, there's actually very little material in the rings -- if the rings were compressed into a single body it would be no more than 100 km across.

Saturn's outermost ring, the F-ring, is a difficult structure made up of number of smaller rings along which "knots" are visible. Scientists guess that the knots may be clumps of ring material, or mini moons. The odd braided appearance visible in the Voyager 1 images (right) is not visible in the Voyager 2 images perhaps for the reason that Voyager 2 imaged regions where the part rings are generally parallel. They are well-known in the Cassini images which as well show some as yet unexplained wispy spiral structures. The source of the rings of Saturn (and the other Jovian planets) is unidentified. Though they may have had rings since their formation, the ring systems are not firm and must be regenerated by continuing processes, perhaps the breakup of bigger satellites. The present set of rings may be only a few hundred million years old.

2007-10-28T22:19:00.001-07:00

Kolkata

Calcutta is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. It is located in eastern India on the east bank of the River Hooghly. The city has a population of almost 11 million, with an extended metropolitan population of over 14 million, making it the third-largest urban agglomeration and the third-largest city in India.

The city was very populated and served as the capital of India during the British Raj until 1911. Once the centre of modern education, science, culture and politics in India, Kolkata witnessed economic stagnation in the years following India's independence in 1947. However, since the year 2000, an economic rejuvenation has arrested the morbid decline, leading to a spurt in the city's growth. Like other large cities, Kolkata continues to struggle with urbanisation problems like poverty, pollution and traffic congestion.

A vibrant city with a distinct socio-political culture, Kolkata is noted for its revolutionary history, ranging from the Indian struggle for independence to the leftist and trade union movements.

2007-10-16T21:49:00.000-07:00

God and his attributes:

God most normally refers to the holy being worshipped by followers of monotheistic and monolatrist religions, whom they accept as true to be the creator and ruler of the world.

Theologians have ascribed various attributes to a variety of conceptions of God. The most ordinary among these consist of omniscience, perfect goodness, omnipotence, omnipresence, divine simplicity, and everlasting and necessary existence. God has also been conceived as being incorporeal, a personal being, the source of the entire moral obligations, and the "greatest conceivable existent". These attributes were all supported to varying degrees by the early Christian, Jewish and Muslim theologian philosophers, including Augustine of Hippo, Al-Ghazali, and Maimonides. Many famous medieval philosophers developed arguments for the existence of God, attempting to fight with the obvious contradictions implied by many of these attributes.

2007-10-09T00:09:00.000-07:00

China wall

The Great Wall is the world's longest human-made arrangement, stretching over about 6,400 km (4,000 miles) from Shanhai Pass in the east to Lop Nur in the west, along an arc that roughly delineates the southern edge of Inner Mongolia. It is also the biggest human-made structure ever built in terms of surface area and mass. A number of walls, referred to as the Great Wall of China, were built since the 5th century BC, the most famous being the one built between 220 BC and 200 BC by the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. That wall was much farther north than the current wall, built through the Ming Dynasty, and little of it remains.

2007-09-25T00:18:00.000-07:00

Asia

Asia is the world's biggest and most populous continent. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area (or 29.4% of its land area) and, with almost 4 billion people, it contains more than 60% of the world's present human population.

Chiefly in the eastern and northern hemispheres, Asia is conventionally defined as part of the landmass of Africa-Eurasia – with the western portion of the latter occupied by Europe – lying east of the Suez Canal, east of the Ural Mountains, and south of the Caucasus Mountains and the Caspian and Black Seas. It is surrounded to the east by the Pacific Ocean, to the south by the Indian Ocean, and to the north by the Arctic Ocean.
Given its size and diversity, Asia – a toponym dating back to classical antiquity – is more a cultural concept incorporating a number of regions and peoples than a homogeneous, physical entity.

2007-09-13T23:15:00.000-07:00

Apple Computer

Apple Computer, Inc. NASDAQ: AAPL is a Silicon Valley company based in Cupertino, California, whose core trade is computer technologies. Apple helped start the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II microcomputer and has since further shaped it with the Macintosh. Apple is known for its innovative, well-designed hardware, such as the iPod and iMac, as well as software offerings exemplified through iTunes as part of the iLife suite and Mac OS X, its flagship operating system.

They were hand-built in Jobs' parents' garage, and it was first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club. Fifty units were sold to The Byte Shop at $500 each. In 1977 Apple released the Apple II; it was accessible to the public at the first West Coast Computer Faire on April 16 and 17, 1977. By the 1980s, Apple faced rising competition in the personal computing business due to IBM's open hardware standard created with the IBM PC, which bundled Microsoft's MS-DOS. As a result Apple released the Apple III, a large failure for the company, and in 1983 released their second attempt at a business-oriented computer, the Apple Lisa.

The Apple Macintosh was launched in 1984 with a now prominent Super Bowl advertisement based on George Orwell's novel 1984, declaring, "On January 24, Apple Computer will launch Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like '1984'" — the implication being that the Mac's new, "user friendly" graphical user interface would revolutionize and liberate computing and information from the elite of large corporations and technocrats. Macintosh also spawned the concept of Mac evangelism which was pioneered by Apple employee, and later Apple Fellow, Guy Kawasaki.

2007-09-06T00:46:00.001-07:00

Vegetable

Vegetable is a culinary term which usually refers to an edible part of a plant. The definition is traditional rather than scientific and is somewhat capricious and subjective. All parts of herbaceous plants eaten as food by humans, entire or in part, are normally considered vegetables. Mushrooms, though belonging to the biological realm fungi, are also commonly considered vegetables. In general, vegetables are thought of as being savory, and not sweet, even though there are many exceptions. Nuts, grains, herbs, spices and culinary fruits (see below) are usually not considered vegetables.

2007-08-22T00:46:00.000-07:00

Traffic Claming

Traffic calming is a set of strategies used by urban planners and traffic engineers which aims to slow down traffic and get better safety for pedestrians and bicyclists, although some of these features can also be hazardous to cyclists. It is now comparatively common in Europe, especially Northern Europe; less so in North America.Traffic calming has conventionally been justified on the grounds of pedestrian safety and reduction of noise and local air pollution which are side effects of the traffic. However, it has become more and more apparent that streets have many social and recreational functions which are severely impaired by fast car traffic. For much of the twentieth century, streets were designed by engineers who were charged only with ensuring traffic flow and not with development other functions of streets. The rationale for traffic reassuring is now broadening to include designing for these functions.

2007-08-13T21:24:00.000-07:00

Lighthouse of Alexandria

The Pharos of Alexandria was a big tower built in the 3rd century BC (between 285 and 247 BC) on the island of Pharos in Alexandria, Egypt to give out as that port's landmark, and later, its lighthouse.

With a height variously estimated at between 115 and 150 meters (383 - 450 ft) it was among 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 was the third tallest building after the two Great Pyramids (of Khufu and Khafra) for its whole life. Some scientists approximate a much taller height exceeding 180 metres that would make the tower the tallest building up to the 14th century.

2007-07-30T01:52:00.001-07:00

Fresh skin-care tips

Select fresh, organically grown fruit and vegetables for the highest benefits. Avoid making more than you require for a single application.Clean and sanitize all countertops and mixing utensils ahead of making any of the recipes. Clean all fruit and vegetables before using as ingredients. Leave all ingredients out of the fridge for up to an hour before integration. Don't let fruit acquire any warmer than room temperature.

Fresh fruit and vegetables are especially high in acids. If you apply anything to your skin and encounter a burning sensation, take out immediately and apply cool water.If you are in the care of a dermatologist and on acne medications, please consult with your physician first.

2007-07-23T00:14:00.000-07:00

Salad

Salad is a light meal — or, as part of a larger meal, much more of an taster — consisting of mixed vegetables (usually including at least one leaf vegetable) or fruit, frequently with a dressing or sauce, occasionally nuts and sometimes with the addition of meat, fish or cheese. It is generally seen as a healthy dish, although not always low in calories, salt, sugar, or fat because of the dressing that is often added.The word "salad" comes from the French salade of the same meaning, which in twist is from the Latinsalata, "salty", from sal, "salt".

2007-07-16T02:04:00.001-07:00

Salad

2007-07-09T22:12:00.000-07:00

Management information system

Management Information Systems (MIS) is a general name for the educational discipline casing the application of people, technologies, and procedures —together called information systems — to solve business problems. MIS are distinctive from normal information systems in that they are used to evaluate other information systems applied in operational activities in the organization. Rationally, the term is commonly used to refer to the group of information management methods attached to the automation or support of human decision making, e.g. Decision Support Systems, Expert systems, and Executive information system

2007-07-05T22:47:00.001-07:00

Accumulator

In a computer CPU, an accumulator is a register in which intermediary arithmetic and logic results are stored. Without a register like an accumulator, it would be necessary to write the result of each calculation (addition, multiplication, shift, etc.) to main memory, possibly only to be read right back again for use in the next operation. Access to main memory is slower than access to a register like the accumulator because the technology used for the huge main memory is slower (but cheaper) than that used for a register.

The canonical example for accumulator use is adding a list of numbers. The accumulator is initially set to zero, then each number in spin is added to the value in the accumulator. Only when all numbers have been added is the result seized in the accumulator written to main memory or to another, non-accumulator, CPU register.

2007-07-01T22:34:00.000-07:00

Shark

Sharks are fish with a full cartilaginous skeleton and a streamlined body. They respire with the use of five to seven gill slits. Sharks have a covering of dermal denticles to protect their skin from injure and parasites and to improve fluid dynamics; they also have replaceable teeth.Sharks include species ranging from the hand-sized pygmy shark, Euprotomicrus bispinatus, a deep sea class of only 22 centimetres (9 in) in length, to the whale shark, Rhincodon typus, the largest fish, which grows to a length of about 12 metres (39 ft) and which, like the great whales, feeds only on plankton through filter feeding. The bull shark, Carcharhinus leucas, is the best known of several species to swim in both salt and fresh water and in deltas.

2007-06-27T22:19:00.001-07:00

Superscalar

A superscalar CPU architecture implements a form of parallelism called Instruction-level parallelism within a solitary processor. It thereby allows faster CPU throughput than would otherwise be possible at the same clock rate. A superscalar architecture executes more than one instruction during a single pipeline stage by pre-fetching several instructions and at the same time dispatching them to redundant functional units on the processor.

History

Seymour Cray's CDC 6600 from 1965 is often mentioned as the first superscalar plan. The Intel i960CA and the AMD 29000-series 29050 microprocessors were the first commercial single-chip superscalar microprocessors. RISC CPUs like these brought the superscalar idea to micro computers because the RISC design results in a simple core, allowing straightforward instruction send off and the inclusion of multiple functional units on a single CPU in the inhibited design rules of the time. This was the reason that RISC designs were faster than CISC designs through the 1980s and into the 1990s.

2007-06-24T22:18:00.001-07:00

Grafting

Grafting is a method of plant propagation extensively used in horticulture, where the tissues of one plant are encouraged to fuse with those of another. It is most usually used for the propagation of trees and shrubs grown commercially.
In most cases, one plant is chosen for its roots, and this is called the stock or rootstock. The other plant is chosen for its stems, leaves, flowers, or fruits and is called the scion.
In stem grafting, a common grafting method, a shoot of a chosen, desired plant cultivar is grafted onto the stock of another type. In another common form called budding, a dormant side bud is grafted on the stem of another stock plant, and when it has fused successfully, it is encouraged to grow by cutting out the stem above the new bud.
For successful grafting to take place, the vascular cambium tissues of the stock and scion plants must be located in contact with each other. Both tissues must be kept alive till the graft has taken, typically a period of a few weeks. Successful grafting only requires that a vascular connection takes place between the two tissues. A physical weak point often still occurs at the graft, because the structural tissue of the two distinct plants, such as wood may not fuse.

2007-06-19T22:33:00.001-07:00

Swan

Swans are large water birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the intimately related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae.

Swans typically mate for life, though "divorce" does sometimes occur, mainly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch is between 3–8.
The word is derived from Old English swan, akin to German Schwan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe; an adult female is a pen .

2007-06-15T22:47:00.001-07:00

Tide

Tides are the cyclic rising and falling of Earth's ocean surface caused by the tidal forces of the Moon and the sun acting on the oceans. Tides cause changes in the depth of the marine and estuarine water bodies and produce oscillating currents known as tidal streams, making prediction of tides important for coastal navigation. The strip of seashore that is submerged at high tide and exposed at low tide, the intertidal zone, is an important ecological product of ocean tides The changing tide produced at a given location is the result of the changing positions of the Moon and Sun relative to the Earth coupled with the effects of Earth rotation and the local bathymetry.Sea level measured by coastal tide gauges may also be strongly affected by wind. More generally, tidal phenomena can occur in other systems besides the ocean, whenever a gravitational field that varies in time and space is present

2007-06-11T22:52:00.001-07:00

2007-06-07T22:53:00.001-07:00

Rose

A rose is a flowering shrub of the genus Rosa, and the flower of this shrub. There are more than a hundred classes of wild roses, all from the northern hemisphere and typically from temperate regions. The species form a group of normally prickly shrubs or climbers, and sometimes trailing plants, reaching 2–5 m tall, hardly ever reaching as high as 20 m by climbing over other plants.
Rose hips are sometimes eaten, mostly for their vitamin C content. They are typically pressed and filtered to make rose-hip syrup, as the fine hairs surrounding the seeds are unpleasant to eat. They can also be used to create herbal tea, jam, jelly and marmalade.

2007-06-01T23:41:00.000-07:00

Industrial metal

Industrial metal is a musical genre which draws elements from industrial music and heavy metal music. Industrial metal music is typically centered around metal guitar riffs and industrial synthesizer/sequencer lines, heavily distorted, very low pitched guitars, as well as harsh vocals, but in some instances can have clean vocals. This term is used quite loosely, telling everything from industrial bands sampling metal riffs to heavy metal groups augmented with sequencers. Industrial metal encompasses industrial subgenres such as aggro-industrial and coldwave and often overlaps some elements of nu-metal and post-punk.

It is difficult to distinguish many industrial metal artists and industrial rock because both genres leave much room for ingenuity and creativity. By convention, all industrial metal artists may be more vaguely described as industrial rock as well, but not all industrial rock artists are properly described as industrial metal. The general rule of thumb is the speed and "crunchiness" of the guitars. If the guitars are fast and heavily distorted, it is likely industrial metal.

2007-05-28T23:35:00.001-07:00

Genetics

Genetics is the science of heredity and variation in living organisms.Knowledge that desired characteristics were present at birth has been implicitly used since prehistoric times for improving crop plants and animals through selective breeding. However, the modern science of genetics, which seeks to understand the mechanisms of inheritance, only began with the work of Gregor Mendel in the mid-1800s.

Mendel observed that inheritance is basically a discrete process with specific traits that are inherited in an independant manner. These basic units of inheritance is now known as "genes". In the cells of organisms, genes exist actually in the structure of the molecule DNA and the information genes contain is used to create and control the components of cells. Although genetics plays a large role in determining the appearance and behavior of organisms, it is the interaction of genetics with the environment an organism experiences that determines the ultimate outcome. For example, while genes play a role in determining a person's height, the nutrition and health that person experiences in childhood also have a large effect.

2007-05-24T22:36:00.001-07:00

Mental health

Mental health is a idea that refers to a human individual's emotional and psychological well-being. Merriam-Webster defines mental health as "A state of emotional and psychological well-being in which an individual is able to use his or her cognitive and emotional capabilities, function in society, and meet the ordinary demands of everyday life."

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there is no one "official" definition of mental health. Cultural differences, subjective assessments, and competing professional theories all affect how "mental health" is defined. In general, most experts agree that "mental health" and "mental illness" are not opposites. In other words, the absence of a recognized mental disorder is not of necessity an indicator of mental health.
One way to think about mental health is by looking at how efficiently and successfully a person functions. Feeling capable and competent; being able to handle normal levels of stress, preserve satisfying relationships, and lead an independent life; and being able to "bounce back," or recover from difficult situations, are all signs of mental health.
Encompassing your emotional, social, and—most importantly—your mental well-being; All these aspects—emotional, physical, and social—must function jointly to achieve overall health.

2007-05-20T22:09:00.001-07:00

Refrigerator

A typical refrigerator with its door open refrigerator is a cooling machine comprising a thermally insulated compartment and a mechanism to transfer heat from it to the outside environment, cooling the contents to a temperature below ambient. Refrigerators are widely used to store foods which deteriorate at ambient temperatures; spoilage due to bacterial growth and other processes is much slower at low temperatures. Devices described as "refrigerators" maintain a temperature a few degrees above the freezing point of water; similar devices which maintain temperatures below the freezing point of water are called "freezers". The refrigerator is a relatively modern creation amongst kitchen appliances. It replaced the common icebox which had been a household item for almost a century and a half prior, and is sometimes still called by the original name "icebox".

2007-05-15T22:42:00.000-07:00

Superscalar

A superscalar CPU architecture implements a form of parallelism called Instruction-level parallelism within a solitary processor. It thereby allows faster CPU throughput than would otherwise be possible at the same clock rate. A superscalar architecture executes more than one instruction during a single pipeline stage by pre-fetching several instructions and at the same time dispatching them to redundant functional units on the processor.

History
Seymour Cray's CDC 6600 from 1965 is often mentioned as the first superscalar plan. The Intel i960CA and the AMD 29000-series 29050 microprocessors were the first commercial single-chip superscalar microprocessors. RISC CPUs like these brought the superscalar idea to micro computers because the RISC design results in a simple core, allowing straightforward instruction send off and the inclusion of multiple functional units on a single CPU in the inhibited design rules of the time. This was the reason that RISC designs were faster than CISC designs through the 1980s and into the 1990s.

2007-05-11T23:24:00.000-07:00

Key

A key is a device which is used to open a lock. It typically consists of a specially-shaped piece of flat metal, with cut notches (forming teeth), and/or milled grooves which fit the shape of the lock and can open the properly combinated lock by (usually) being turned in the lock housing. This portion of the key is referred to as the blade. The wider grip, referred to as the bow, is establish at the top of the key to facilitate turning. regularly, there are only a small number of keys which can work a certain lock. In some residential locks, all of the keys for a lock are given to the purchaser of the lock. Duplicates of the key can usually be made by anyone with the correct key blank and key machine. Some manufacturers assign an identification number to each lock and key combination. Knowing the identification number of such a lock allows a duplicate key to be made at certain places. Many residential keys are recognized by the key cuts stamped on the key bow.
Most people in modern society use keys on a daily basis, to secure their home, their vehicle, or to access their workplace, among other uses. Those that use a number of keys will typically place them on a ring or key chain, often with other items such as key fobs.

2007-05-07T23:30:00.000-07:00

Ancient Tamil gods and goddesses

The religion of the ancient Tamils directly followed Hinduism.although persisting with its roots of nature worship. The most popular deity was Murugan, who has from a very early date been recognized with Karthikeya, the son of Siva. Muruga might have been a different deity at first stemming from a local deity. According to the noted expert on Tamil culture Kamil V. Zvelebil, "Subrahmanya-Murugan is one of the most complicated and baffling deities for analysis". The worship of Amman or Mariamman, consideration to have been derived from Kotravai, an ancient mother goddess, also was very common. Kannagi, the heroine of the Cilappatikaram, was worshipped as Pathini by many Tamils, particularly in Sri Lanka. There were also many temples and devotees of Thirumaal, Siva, Ganapathi, and the other common Hindu deities.

2007-05-02T22:28:00.000-07:00

Traffic calming

Traffic reassuring is a set of strategies used by urban planners and traffic engineers which aims to slow down traffic and improve safety for pedestrians and bicyclists, although some of these features can also be dangerous to cyclists. It is now relatively common in Europe, especially Northern Europe; less so in North America.
Traffic calming has traditionally been justified on the grounds of pedestrian security and reduction of noise and local air pollution which are side effects of the traffic. However, it has become increasingly apparent that streets have many social and recreational functions which are severely impaired by fast car traffic. For example, residents of streets with light traffic had, on average, three more friends and twice as many acquaintances as the people on streets with heavy traffic which were otherwise similar in dimensions, income, etc. For much of the twentieth century, streets were designed by engineers who were charged only with ensuring traffic flow and not with fostering the other functions of streets. The rationale for traffic calming is now broadening to include designing for these functions.
Displaced traffic is not fully pushed onto other routes, as some travelers may begin to walk or use other modes such as public transit and bicycles to get where they are going. Still, in most cases the affected motorists have few alternatives aside from either navigating the newly erected obstacles or finding a more palatable route. This happens because high traffic tends to be generated by motorists passing through the area and not by the local residents.

It should be noted the some of these measures have a tendency to irritate and annoy drivers rather than calm them and others can actually increase traffic throughput. Some drivers who slow down at calming points, however, accelerate and speed after passing them in order to "catch up for lost time". For this reason, more advanced methods integrated into the design of the street, which make slower speeds seem more natural to drivers and less of an artificial imposition, are now preferred - the goal is to slow down the driver through psychological, at least partly subconscious means instead of simply forcing him to do so.

One major side effect of traffic reassuring is the impedance to emergency services. A police car can easily navigate most traffic reassuring measures. The same cannot be said for fire trucks and ambulances, however. They often have to slow down to safely cross speed bumps or chicanes. In some locales, the law prohibits traffic calming measures along the routes used by the urgent situation services.
There are 3 "E"'s that traffic engineers refer to when discussing traffic reassuring: engineering, education, and enforcement. Because neighborhood traffic management studies have shown that often it is the residents themselves that are largely contributing to the perceived speeding problem within the neighborhood, it is strained that the most effective traffic calming plans will entail all three components, and that engineering measures alone will not produce satisfactory results.

2007-04-29T21:46:00.000-07:00

Lightning

Lightning is an influential natural electrostatic release produced during a thunderstorm. Lightning's abrupt electric release is accompanied by the emission of visible light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation. The electric current passing through the release channels quickly heats and expands the air into plasma, producing acoustic shock waves in the atmosphere.

Early lightning investigate
During early investigations into electricity via Leyden jars and other instruments, a number of people planned that small scale sparks shared some similarity with lightning.

Benjamin Franklin, who also imaginary the lightning rod, endeavored to test this theory by using a spire which was being erected in Philadelphia. Whilst he was waiting for the spire completion some others conducted at Marly in France, what became to be known as the Philadelphia experiments that Franklin had optional in his book?

Franklin typically gets the credit for being the first to perform this research. The Franklin myth goes like this:

Whilst coming up for completion of the spire, he got the idea of using a flying object, such as a kite in its place. During the next shower, in June 1752, he raised a kite, accompanied by his son as an assistant. On his end of the string he emotionally involved a key and tied it to a post with a silk thread. As time passed Franklin noticed the loose fibers on the string stretching out; he then brought his hand close enough to the key and a flash jumped the gap. The rain which had fallen during the storm had covered with water the line and made it conductive.

However, in his memoirs, Franklin obviously states that he only performed this research after those made in France.

As news of the research and its specifics spread, it was met with attempts at duplication. Experiments involving lightning are always risky and commonly fatal. The most well known death during the rash of Franklin-imitators was Professor George Richman, of Saint Petersburg, Russia. He had shaped a setup similar to Franklin's, and was attending a meeting of the Academy of Sciences, when he heard thunder. He ran home with his engraver to capture the event for posterity. While the research was underway, a large ball lightning showed up, collided with Richman's head, and killed him, leaving a red spot. His shoes were blown open, parts of his clothes singed, the engraver knocked out, the doorframe of the room was split, and the door itself ragged off its hinges.

2007-04-23T22:37:00.001-07:00

Northern Mockingbird

The Northern Mockingbird, Mimus polyglottos, is the mockingbird commonly originate in North America.Adults are grey on the head and upperparts with pale yellow eyes and a slim black bill with a slight downward curve; the underparts are light. They have a long dark tail by means of white edges and long dark legs. They have white wing bars and show white wing patches in flight.Their breeding habitat is areas with a mix of open areas and dense shrubs from southern Canada to Mexico, but is most common in the southern United States. They build a twig nest in a dense shrub or tree. This bird forcefully defends its nest against other birds and animals, including humans. When a predator is persistent mockingbirds from adjacent territories, summoned by a distinct call, may join the attack. Other birds may gather to watch as the mockingbirds harass the intruder.
They are usually permanent residents; northern birds may move south during harsh weather. However, this species has occurred in Europe as an extreme rarity.These birds forage on the ground or in vegetation; they also fly down from a perch to capture food. They mainly eat insects and berries. While foraging they will regularly spread their wings in a peculiar two-step motion to display the white patches underneath. The purpose of this behavior is disputed. Some ornithologists claim this is merely a territorial display, while others say that flashing the white patches startles hiding insects and forces them into the open. Both theories seem to have some merit.
This bird imitates the calls of other birds, animal sounds and yet machine noises. It is often found in urban areas. They often call through the night and may continue year-round apart from for the summer moulting season. Mockingbirds usually sing the loudest in the twilight of the early morning when the sun is on the horizon. While singing on a high perch they will often bolt more than a few feet into the air in a looping motion, with wings outstretched to display their white underside, then land back on the perch without breaking a note. That serves as a territorial display.Mockingbirds have a strong preference for certain trees, such as maple, sweet gum (green 5-pointed leaves and prickly porous balls), and sycamore. They normally avoid pine trees. In urban areas, mockingbirds rarely come down to the ground, unlike most birds. Also, they have a particular preference for high places, such as the topmost branches of trees and the tops of telephone poles.

2007-04-18T22:15:00.000-07:00

Motorcycle racing

There are a range of sports involving racing motorcycles. FIM is the international sanctioning body for many such events.As motorcycles vary very much in design, there are several different types of motorcycle racing contest, including:Road racing in its purest form is racing on public roads, such as the Isle of Man TT course, the Macau Grand Prix and some courses in Ireland. Due to the inherent dangers that these street venues often carry such as narrow lanes, curbs, and adjacent walls, most road racing is now carried out on purpose-built tracks.Circuit racing where specially designed racing bikes or modified "production" bikes race each other on particularly designed road circuits. MotoGP and Superbike are the top level racing and production classes.Classic Racing is where participants race heavily customized bikes from an earlier era - usually pre mid '70s bikes.
Motocross and its cousin supercross are held on dirt courses, characteristically featuring large jumps in which motorcycles are launched over considerable distances. Supermoto is a crossover motorcycle racing between road racing and motocross. The motorcycles are primarily motocross types with road racing tires. The racetrack is also mixed between road and dirt courses, mostly handcrafted.
Motorcycle speedway and ice speedway are held on oval circuits where riders slide their machines around turns.

2007-04-09T22:08:00.001-07:00

Radio

Radio is the wireless transmission of signals, by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of light.
Radio waves.Radio waves are a form of electromagnetic radiation, formed whenever a charged object accelerates by a frequency that lies in the radio frequency (RF) portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. This is the variety from a few tens of hertz to a few hundred gigahertz.Electromagnetic radio spectrum
Other types of electromagnetic radiation, with frequencies above the RF range are infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays. Since the energy of an individual photon of radio frequency is too low to remove an electron from an atom, radio waves are classified as non-ionizing radiation.Radio transmission diagram and electromagnetic waves.Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space equally well, and does not need a medium of transport induces an alternating current and voltage in the conductor. This can be transformed into audio or other signals that carry information. Although the word 'radio' is used to explain this phenomenon, the transmissions which we know as television, radio, radar, and cell phone are all classed as radio frequency emissions.

2007-04-05T22:57:00.000-07:00

Transistor

The transistor is a solid state semiconductor device which can be used for amplification, switching, voltage stabilization, signal modulation and many other functions. It acts as a changeable valve which, based on its input current (BJT) or input voltage (FET), allows a precise amount of current to flow through it from the circuit's voltage supply.In essence, a transistor has three terminals. A current or voltage applied through/across two terminals controls a larger current through the other terminal and the common terminal. In analog circuits, transistors are used in amplifiers. Analog circuits include audio amplifiers, stabilised power supplies and radio frequency amplifiers. In digital circuits, transistors function basically as electrical switches. Digital circuits include logic gates, RAM (random access memory) and microprocessors.Transistor was also the common name in the sixties for a transistor radio, a portable radio that used transistors (rather than vacuum tubes) as its active electronic components. This is still one of the dictionary definitions of transistor.

2007-04-01T22:09:00.000-07:00

Sugarcane

Sugarcane or Sugar cane (Saccharum) is a type of between 6–37 species of tall grasses (family Poaceae, tribe Andropogoneae), native to warm temperate to tropical regions of the Old World. They have stout, jointed fibrous stalks 2–6 m tall and sap rich in sugar. All the species interbreed, and the major commercial cultivars are complex hybrids.
Saccharum officinarum grown in Hawaii. There are 13 million hectares (32 million acres) of sugar cane plantations worldwide, with over 100 countries growing the crop. The top twenty producing countries harvested 1200 million metric tons of sugar cane in 2002 (more than 6 times the amount of sugar beet produced). The largest producers are Brazil, India, and China.
Raw sugar has a yellow to brown color. If a white product is preferred, sulfur dioxide may be bubbled through the cane juice prior to evaporation. This bleaches many color-forming impurities into colorless ones. Sugar bleached white by this sulfitation process is called mill white, plantation white or crystal sugar. This form of sugar is the most usually consumed form of sugar in sugarcane-producing countries.

2007-04-01T22:07:00.001-07:00

2007-03-27T22:16:00.001-07:00

Lens

A lens is a device for either concentrating or diverging light, normally formed from a piece of shaped glass. Analogous devices used with other types of electromagnetic radiation are also called lenses: for instance, a microwave lens can be made from paraffin wax.
The earliest records of lenses date to Ancient Greece, with Aristophanes' play The Clouds (424 BC) mentioning a burning-glass (a convex lens used to focus the sun's rays to produce fire). The writings of Pliny the Elder also show that burning-glasses were recognized to the Roman Empire, and mentions what is possibly the first use of a corrective lens: Nero was known to watch the gladiatorial games throughout a concave-shaped emerald (presumably to correct for myopia). Seneca the Younger (3 BC--65) described the magnifying effect of a glass globe filled with water.Widespread use of lenses did not happen until the invention of spectacles, probably in Italy in the 1280s.

2007-03-22T22:06:00.000-07:00

Ship

A ship is a large, sea-going watercraft, sometimes with multiple decks. A ship generally has enough size to carry its own boats, such as lifeboats, dinghies, or runabouts. A rule of thumb saying goes: "a boat can fit on a ship, but a ship can't fit on a boat". Often local law and regulation will define the exact size which a boat requires to become a ship. During the age of sail, ship signified a ship-rigged vessel, that is, one with three or more masts, generally three, all square-rigged. Such a vessel would usually have one fore and aft sail on her aftermost mast which was usually the mizzen. Almost invariably she would also have a bowsprit but this was not part of the definition. The same economic pressures which increased sizes to the point of carrying four or five masts, also introduced the fore and aft rig to larger vessels, so few ship-rigged vessels were built with more than three masts. The five-masted Preussen was the outstanding example but the big German ships and barques were built partly for prestige reasons.
Nautical means connected to sailors, particularly customs and practices at sea. Naval is the adjective pertaining to ships though in common usage, it has come to be more mainly associated with the noun 'navy'.

2007-03-16T22:36:00.001-07:00

White flight

White flight is a colloquial term for the demographic tendency of upper and middle class white people moving away from (predominantly non-white) inner cities, finding new homes in nearby suburbs or even moving to new locales completely, e.g. from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt. In some of the United States' largest cities, the trend reversed itself in the 1990s
White flight in the United States
White flight has been taking place in many American cities and regions, particularly in the Northeastern, Midwestern, and Western sections of the United States since the 1950s.
The effects of white flight have been important for the cities that have been hit by this phenomenon, in particular Detroit, Michigan and St. Louis, Missouri, which lost more than half of their peak populations mainly due to white flight. In New York City many whites have moved from parts of the Bronx and Brooklyn to Staten Island, suburban Long Island, and suburban New Jersey. Other U.S. cities that have been obviously affected by white flight include Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Cleveland, Ohio, the West and South Sides of Chicago, Illinois, the Greater Los Angeles Area, Baltimore, Maryland, Newark, New Jersey, and numerous smaller cities.

2007-03-12T21:55:00.001-07:00

Quinzhee

A quinzhee, or quinzee, is a kind of snow shelter made by making a pile of snow, waiting for it to settle together, then hollowing out the inside. In difference, an igloo is made by carefully stacking cut blocks of snow.
It is not easy to make a quinzhee, although it will be warmer and stronger if certain techniques are carefully followed. For strength, the quinzhee needs to be a dome and the lower walls must not support too much weight. The walls should be very thick at the base and get slightly thinner towards to the top of the dome.
For warmth, the entrance of the quinzhee should be a tunnel with an upward sloping floor such that the floor is somewhat higher than the top of the entrance.
Caution: Care must be taken when camping conditions are marginal, such as at temperatures near freezing, or when it is raining. Under these conditions the ceiling of the quinzhee may collapse gradually because the snow is soft. Moreover, the entrance tunnel may become too narrow to permit escape. Hence, under these conditions it is unsafe to spend too much time inside the structure because you may become trapped.

2007-03-07T21:42:00.001-08:00

Graphic design

Graphic design is a type of communicating visually using text and/or images to present information, or promote a message. The art of graphic design embraces a range of cognitive skills and crafts with typography, image development and page layout. Graphic design is applied in communication design and fine art. Like other forms of communication, graphic design often refers to both the process (designing) by which the communication is created, and the products (designs) such as creative solutions, imagery and multimedia compositions. Graphic design is usually applied to static media, such as books, magazines and brochures. Additionally, since the arrival of computers, graphic design is utilized in electronic media - often referred to as interactive design, or multimedia design.
There are varying degrees of graphic design. Graphic designer participation may range from verbally communicated ideas, to visual rough drafts, to final production. In commercial art, client edits, technical preparation and mass production are generally required, but regularly not considered to be within the scope of graphic design unless the client is also a graphic designer.

2007-03-02T21:45:00.000-08:00

Tourism in New York City

40 million foreign and American tourists visit New York City each year.Major destinations comprise of the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, Broadway productions, scores of museums from the El Museo del Barrio to the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum (closed until 2008 for repairs), Washington Square Park, the Bronx Zoo and New York Botanical Garden, luxury shopping along Fifth and Madison Avenues, and events such as the Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village, the Tribeca Film Festival, and free performances in Central Park at Summer stage. Many of the city's ethnic enclaves, such as Jackson Heights, Flushing, and Brighton Beach are major shopping destinations for first and second generation Americans up and down the East Coast.
New York City has 28,000 acres (113 km²) of parkland and 14 miles (22 km) of public beaches. Manhattan's Central Park, intended by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, is the most visited city park in the United States.Prospect Park in Brooklyn, also planned by Olmsted and Vaux, has a 90 acre (36 Hectare) meadow. Flushing Meadows Park in Queens, the city's third largest, was the setting for the 1939 World's Fair and 1964 World's Fair.
New York's food culture, influenced by the city's immigrants and large number of dining patrons, is diverse. Jewish and Italian immigrants made the city famous for bagels and New York style pizza. Some 4,000 mobile food vendors approved by the city, many immigrant-owned, have made Middle Eastern foods such as falafels and kebabs standbys of contemporary New York street food.The city is also home to many of the finest haute cuisine restaurants in the United States.

2007-02-26T21:05:00.001-08:00

Space term-In geography

Geographical space is called land, and has a related to ownership. While some cultures assert the rights of the individual in terms of ownership, other cultures will identify with a communal approach to land ownership, while still other cultures, rather than asserting ownership rights to land, invert the relationship and consider that they are in fact owned by the land. Spatial planning is a way of regulating the use of space at land-level, with decisions made at regional, national and international levels. Space can also impact on human and cultural behaviour, being an important factor in architecture, where it will impact on the design of buildings and structures, and on farming.
Ownership of space is not limited to land. Ownership of airspace and of waters is determined internationally. Other forms of ownership have been newly asserted to other spaces — for example to the radio bands of the electromagnetic spectrum or to cyberspace.
Public space is a word used to define areas of land is collectively owned by the community, and managed in their name by delegated establishment. Such spaces are open to all, while private property is the land owned by an individual or company, for their own use and happiness.
Abstract space is a word used in geography to refer to a hypothetical space characterized by complete homogeneity. When modeling movement or behavior, it is a conceptual tool used to limit extraneous variables such as terrain.

2007-02-21T21:19:00.001-08:00

Glass artifacts

Since glass is strong and non-reactive, it is a very useful object. Many household objects are made of glass. Drinking glasses, bowls, and bottles are frequently made of glass, as are light bulbs, mirrors, cathode ray tubes, and windows. In laboratories doing research in chemistry, biology, physics and lots of other fields, flasks, test tubes, lenses and other laboratory equipment are often made of glass. For these applications, borosilicate glass (such as Pyrex) is regularly used for its strength and low coefficient of thermal expansion, which gives greater resistance to thermal shock and allows for greater accuracy in laboratory measurements when heating and cooling experiments. For the most difficult applications, quartz glass is used, although it is very difficult to work. Most such glass is mass-produced using a variety of industrial processes, but most large laboratories need so much custom glassware that they keep a glassblower on staff. Volcanic glasses, such as obsidian, have long been used to make stone tools, and flint knapping techniques can simply be adapted to mass-produced glass.

2007-02-15T21:59:00.000-08:00

Music

Music is composed and performed for several purposes, ranging from aesthetic satisfaction, religious or ceremonial purposes, or as an entertainment creation for the marketplace. Amateur musicians compose and make music for their own pleasure, and they do not attempt to take their income from music. Professional musicians are engaged by a range of institutions and organizations, with equipped forces, churches and synagogues, symphony orchestras, broadcasting or film making companies, and music schools. As well, professional musicians work as freelancers, seeking contracts and arrangements in a variety of settings.
Although amateur musicians vary from professional musicians in that amateur musicians have a non-musical source of income, there are often many links between amateur and professional musicians. Beginning amateur musical group take lessons with professional musicians. In community settings, highly developed amateur musicians perform with professional musicians in a variety of ensembles and orchestras. In some rare cases, amateur musicians reach a professional level of competence, and they are able to perform in professional performance settings.
A difference is often made between music performed for the advantage of a live audience and music that is performed for the use of being recorded and distributed through the music retail system or the broadcasting system. However, there are also many cases where a live performance in front of an audience is recorded and spread (or broadcast).