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.

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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.

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.

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."

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.