Amazing Facts !

Top 5 Most Expensive Desserts in the World

2011-09-12T20:34:00.000+05:30

When it comes to luxury, dessert won't be left out. And these desserts will make you sit down and think. Made of chocolate, cream, flour, gold, and diamonds, we give you a list of the five most expensive (and mouthwatering) desserts in the world

Diamond-Studded Fruitcake: You read that right! There indeed exists a fruitcake, created by Japanese pastry chef Jeong Hong-yong, which is studded with diamonds and costs a whopping $1.65 million. It took six months to develop and a whole month to convert it from an idea to the edible luxury cake that it is. Studded with 223 small diamonds, this cake is the most expensive dessert in the world. All the other ingredients that went into this cake, besides the diamonds, remain a mystery. What we do know however is that this fruitcake, made in 2005, went on display in an exhibit called "Diamonds: Nature's Miracle" at Takashimaya Department Store and was put up for sale during Christmas that year.

Strawberries Arnaud: Coming in a close second, is the Strawberries Arnaud. An expensive twist to what was a normal strawberries and cream dessert; it was a one-off available at Arnaud's restaurant in New Orleans' French Quarter. The dessert cost a cool $ 1.4 million. Why would anyone pay that much for strawberries served with mint and cream? Because nestled in the dessert was a 4.7-carat pink diamond ring that once belonged to Sir Ernest Cassel, an English royal finance advisor. And that's not all. While the diner dug into this one-of-a-kind luxury treat, white gloved servers poured only the finest port wine out of a $25,000 Charles X crystal cave set.

Platinum Cake: Japanese pastry chef Nobue Ikara's platinum cake is one for a wedding. Decorated with plain white frosting, the cake came adorned with fine jewellery - necklaces and pendants - and edible platinum flakes. He dedicated this cake to famous Japanese women and hoped to encourage more people to wear platinum jewellery. And at $130,000 you better be encouraged! The cake was showcased by Platinum Guild International, a company that promotes platinum jewellery, in 2007.

Frozen Haute Chocolate: Hot chocolate has always been a staple for chocoholics. And it only gets better. Serendipity 3, in New York now presents Frozen Haute Chocolate priced at an amazing $25,000. This hot chocolate is made from a blend of 28 cocoas from around the world and consists of five grams of edible 23 carat gold. It is also presented in a goblet lined with edible gold with an 18 carat gold and diamond bracelet at its base. To add to this already extravagant line up of ingredients, the dessert is topped with whipped cream and served with a side of Le Madeline au Truffle shavings. Last but not the least is the gold spoon that comes with this dessert. It is set with white and chocolate covered diamonds.

The Fortress Stilt Fisherman Indulgence: In fifth place is the Fortress Stilt Fisherman Indulgence, created in 2007. Available on special request at The Fortress, a Sri Lankan luxury hotel, this dessert consists of an Italian Cassata with gold leaf and Irish cream, mango and pomegranate compote, and a champagne based sabayon enlighten. Also on the plate is a miniature chocolate fisherman sculpture hanging onto a stilt. Underneath him is an 80 carat aquamarine. At $14,500, this dessert pays special tribute to the Sri Lankan pastime of stilt fishing. And if you order this dish, the jewel is your reward.
Image courtesy: Reuters

Another recession Ahead!

2011-08-09T11:57:00.000+05:30

Are we moving towards another recession? The global economic developments after Standard & Poor's (S&P) downgraded the U.S. credit rating, point towards the advent of a global economic meltdown. Leading rating agency S&P for the first-time downgraded its long-term sovereign credit rating on the U.S. from 'AAA' to 'AA+' and kept a negative outlook. The debt ceiling could not prevent the S&P downgrading. The historical downgrading also worsened the word economy which is already on the brink of a recession driven by the weakened U.S. financial recovery and the debt-ridden European economy.

While the debt crisis is likely to hit banking, manufacturing, real-estate and pharmaceutical sectors in the U.S., the crisis is said to cause only a minimal impact on India. It will presumably result in less capital flow to the Indian economy and our capital markets may face volatility head. Being the 14th-largest creditor to the U.S., India has exposure to close to $41 billion in U.S. treasury bonds. U.S. has an overall national debt of around $15 trillion of which the country owes $4.5 trillion to foreign countries holding government debt securities. However, the recession fears have gripped the world economy and here is a short peek into its impact across the globe.

Asia

Despite the assurance from S&P that the U.S. credit rating is unlikely to have any immediate impact on Asia-Pacific sovereign ratings; the Asian markets nose-dived on Monday. Likewise, amid repeated assurance from the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee that the U.S. credit downgrade will not hit India, the shares fell more than 3 percent on Monday trading, the lowest level in more than a year. South Korean stock market plunged more than 7 percent initially and later recovered partially to close down at 3.8 percent while Tokyo and Hong Kong lost more than 2 percent. China is the largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasuries which is about $1.2 trillion and this make the communist nation highly vulnerable to U.S. fiscal policy.

Europe

The massive increases in the public debt and budget deficits in European countries have brought them to the brink of a fiscal crisis. The debt-ridden countries are riding the world to a weakened economy and the European Central Bank's (ECB) pledge to calm down the financial markets has reportedly failed as most global stock markets sank again on Monday. Britain's FTSE 100 index of leading British shares slipped to 1.7 percent at 5,160 while France's CAC-40 fell 2 percent to 3,214. Germany's DAX was 2.3 percent lower at 6,096. Amidst the intense activities from ECB, Group of 20 and G-7 countries are increasingly engaged in constant discussions to prevent a second recession.

Middle East

The debt crisis in U.S. and downgrading of its debt rating by Standard & Poor's have shook the trading world in the Middle East. The first day of the trading week saw about stock markets slipping about four in Dubai and Egypt. The impact was worse in Israel where even delaying the opening of Tel Aviv Stock Exchange by 45 minutes could not avoid panic. The U.S. developments caused the Israeli stock markets to be plunged by seven percent. The Middle East economy is totally affected by the U.S. situation and the fear of the advent of a new recession is already giving jitters to the market. Israelis, severely affected by the skyrocketing price of housing, food and gasoline, took it to the stress in pretest which saw a quarter of a million Israelis demanding the government to lower taxes, subsidize housing and bring prices down. Saudi Arabian market plunged 5.5 percent when it opened on Saturday. Dubai experienced the steepest decline in the region tumbling more than 5 percent in early trading. Other Middle East markets including the Abu Dhabi and Qatar market indexes each slumped 2.5 percent.

Two years after the "official" end of the Great Recession, the U.S. Economy continues to struggle as many Americans believe the Recession has not ended. 55% think that the recession remains, while 29% believe it feels more like a depression! The recovery has been the weakest and the most lopsided of any since the 1930's.

In previous recessions, people in all income groups have benefited in the recovery; not so in this one. This time, the middle class Americans are still struggling with job security, too much debt and the absence of pay increases to keep up with inflation. The economy's gains are going to the wealthiest individuals. A large amount of the monies have gone to investors in the form of higher corporate profits.

Corporate profits are up by almost half since the recession ended in June 2009, where the typical CEO of a major company earned $9 million last year; up 25% from 2009. Driven by high profits, the Dow Jones industrial average has rallied 90% since bottoming at 6,547 in March, 2009. The stock market gains typically benefits the top 10% of the population.

Here are some disturbing facts:

Unemployment has never been so high this long after the end of a recession since World War II.
The average worker's hourly wages after accounting for inflation are 1.6% lower in May than a year ago.
The jobs that are being created pay less than the ones that vanished in the recession.
A record 18% of Americans are dependent on social programs with 45 millions people on food stamps.
The average household debts equal 119 percent of annual after-tax income.

Americans are industrious and hopeful, yet it is going to take a long time for a solid recovery and a positive change in lifestyle, for many. My advice is to continue to learn new skills, limit expenses and gain more education/training to increase your value in the marketplace. Place pressure on your elected officials to help institute positive changes in government policies that will actually help the middle class, instead of just raise our taxes!

Top 10 Scams in India

2011-08-08T12:00:00.000+05:30

Top 10 Scams in India

The series of scams in India has degraded the integrity and dignity that the country has carried at the International front. The theoretical and bogus rules framed in the law books have not been enough to control this ever growing phenomenon of corruption here. However anti-corruption social activists-Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal has instilled some hope in the hearts of millions in their fight against corruption. India's records of past scams will tear you apart and will diminish the hope of enlightenment created by these activists.

Here is the list of ten biggest scams that rocked India:

1. 2G scam:

None can beat this one, the infamous 2G scam, a fiddle of 1.76-lakh crore in the telecom industry of India. According to the CAG report, the former Telecom minister, A Raja evaded norms at every level as he distributed the dubious 2G license awards in 2008 at a throw-away price which were pegged at 2001 prices. The cases are still on in the Special CBI Court and seem to be unearthing more swindles.

2. Commonwealth Games Scam (CWG)

India was to proudly boast of having hosted the prestigious 2010 Commonwealth Games, but no one knew what lay ahead. The grand event even before it started downhearted many as it was already entwined with allegations of corruption.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report indicted that out of Rs Rs 7000 crore intended to be spent on the Games, only half the amount was spent on Indian Sportspersons. Not only did the scam put Suresh Kalmadi, the sacked CWG Chairperson behind bars, but the recent report has also indicted Sheila Dikshit, Chief Minister, New Delhi of causing financial irregularities which led to huge losses to the government.

3. Telgi Scam

One of the most dramatic scams in India, Abdul Karim Telgi was the mastermind behind the whole idea of printing forged duplicate stamp papers that made its way into the banks and other institutions. Estimated at a massive cost of Rs 20000 crore, the fake stamp paper and stamp had infiltrated 12 states.

Reports also suggest that the kingpin had government backing which was held responsible for the selling and production of high security stamps.

4. Satyam Scam

The 7,000 crore by Satyam Computer Services scam is one of the biggest scams that the corporate world would ever want to forget.

Ramlinga Raju, ex-chairman of the company was held on the charges of falsifying the accounts of the company for years together gain profit. The company was however overtaken by Tech Mahindra after it offered to buy a equity of 20 crore in Satyam.

5. Bofors Scam

The Bofors scandal is one of the biggest scam that cripple India. The Bofors scam was a major corruption scandal in India in the 1980s; when the then PM Rajiv Gandhi and several others including a powerful NRI family named the Hindujas, were accused of receiving kickbacks from Bofors AB for winning a bid to supply India's 155 mm field howitzer.

The Swedish State Radio had broadcast a startling report about an undercover operation carried out by Bofors, Sweden's biggest arms manufacturer, whereby $16 million were allegedly paid to members of PM Rajiv Gandhi's Congress.

6. The Fodder Scam

The famous 1996 fodder scam also famously known as the Chara Ghotala scam involved a whopping amount of Rs 950 crore. The fabricated case involved taking reimbursement from the state's treasury that included animal husbandry equipment, medicine and fodder for 'vast herds of fictitious livestock.

7. The Hawala Scandal:

The $18 million scam came to light after the country's top political leaders were involved in receiving payments through hawala brokers. The Jain brothers were the main accused in the whole scandals who were apprehended by the police in 1995.

8. IPL Scam

India who proudly boast over its frenzy created by IPL 20-20 cricket also carries the same of a scadle with IPL. Most of us are aware about the recent scam in IPL and embezzlement with respect to bidding for various franchisees. The scandal already claimed the portfolios of two big-wigs in the form of Shashi Tharoor and former IPL chief Lalit Modi.

9. Stock Market Scam

Harshad Mehta & Ketan Parekh Stock Market Scam came as ashocker for many. There is no way that the investor community could forget the unfortunate 4000 crore Harshad Mehta scam and over 1000 crore Ketan Parekh scam which eroded the shareholders wealth in form of big market.

10. Citibank Fraud:

Citibank fraud was a major blow to Indian financial service industry. The real sulprit behind this scene is Mr. Shivraj Puri, who was working as the relationships manger with Gurgaon branch of Citibank. He lured investors into a fake scheme with the help of forged circulars from Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) with a hope to cash on very high interest rates. He came into light when the bank started receiving complaints from various clients about a scheme which was non-existent for the bank.

10 things that bosses should do to that their subordinates and co-workers will respect them.

2011-01-21T19:51:00.001+05:30

Do you like your boss? Let's be honest, a majority of employees will definitely come with a negative answer to this question. Yes, bosses are not always there to be liked. But is there any fun being a boss who is not respected or ineffective at managing staff? Of course not, so let's have a look at what it takes to be a good boss. Below are 10 things that bosses can do to guarantee that their subordinates and co-workers will respect them.

1. Praise the staff in public, correct them in private

Good bosses know it very well that praising and encouraging the staff is the key to have a positive atmosphere within the office and it helps to bring the best in them. If someone does something well, a good boss should recognize them for their efforts. People need to know when they are doing well and that they are appreciated. However, if someone is not doing so well, speak to them privately, instead of calling them out in front of a group.

2. Pay people what they are worth

While paying your staff, don't think you are losing in extra expense. Pay your staff what they're worth. While determining annual bonuses or profit-sharing for all employees, keep in mind that if you are paying them extra, you'll certainly gain in performance.

3. Allot responsibilities, not tasks

In order to attain professional growth, it is very important for the bosses that they give their employees responsibilities and not tasks. Dumping tasks on workers can never boost productivity. Bosses should always make sure that they hold people accountable.

4. Push, but back off

Sometimes employees want to be challenged to do their best, and if they like their work, they will strive to give that. Good bosses always keep in mind that. Therefore, like an ideal coach, the bosses should know when to push and when to back off in order to draw out the best from the team.

5. Empower the staff to take vital decisions

If the boss has done well in training his staff, he must have firm belief in them that they are doing their best to act in the company's interest. What if they make a wrong decision? Not a big deal. Don't shout at them. Instead, take it as yet another training opportunity. Listen to their reasons and figure out the flaws.

6. Share experiences and insights

Sharing experiences and giving insights is the best way a boss can make his employees learn. To be frank, they don't need a friend. What they need is a mentor who can teach them the best ways and at the same time shows enough generosity to share his own experiences.

7. Build team spirit

In any organization a good team spirit is always important for better performance. A great team can always do better than great individuals. Bosses should take suitable steps as to create and strengthen the team spirit among the employees.

8. Treat employees as they deserve

All employees should be respected and valued. But treating each and everyone as equals with same respect is not the right thing to do. Being a good boss, you should keep in mind that an employee must earn the respect he or she wants to be treated with.

9. Be open-minded and an effective listener

Someone in the team may come up with a new and different way of looking at a problem. You may not agree with that new idea, but first listen to that and make your people know that you are willing to hear out a new point of view. It will make people more responsible by making them feel that they are contributing to the project.

10. Don't play favourites

Human beings always like somebody better than others. It's natural. But this favouritism should not have any place in the office. Being a good boss, you should find common ground with every employee, regardless of employees' hometowns, ages or ethnicities.

Statue of Unity - The Tallest statue in the World by India

2011-01-18T12:09:00.000+05:30

The Statue of Unity. As the largest statue in the world at 182 meters it was only natural that the location for the monument should also befit it and what could be a better site than the Sardar Sarovar. It was this man who single handedly using his huge powers of persuasion, tact & indomitable will convinced the rulers of the princely states to cede to the Union of India. And, the person is none other than our very own. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel - The Iron Man of India. He can rightly be called the architect of Modern United India. Presenting Gujarat's vision for the Iron Man of India Presenting the largest statue in the world.

Can current travel through Flash light of camera to your body?

2010-11-16T20:14:00.000+05:30

yes it is 100% true

Reason

4 days back this boy had gone to Amravati (One of the district place located in State of Maharashtra ) on study tour. After their study was over, he, his classmates & his teachers, all of them were standing on "Badnera" railway station to catch the train. "Badnera" is the name of the railway station for " Amravati " city.As soon as they arrived on Badnera Railway station, many of them started taking pictures of their friends using "Mobile Phones" and/or "Digital Camera". One of them complained that, in his camera, he was not able to capture more number of friends in one frame. He was not able to catch the angle. Another boy suggested that let's climb on train boogie and take picture so that all of them can be accommodated in single frame.

At that there was one goods wagon (all of them were oil tankers) train resting between 2 main railway lines.

Kumar Aditya climbed up oil boogie. Above his head, 40,000 volts electrical line was passing through. As soon as he clicked the digital camera? 40,000 volt current passed through the camera flash light to his camera and then from his camera to his fingers and then from his fingers to his body. All this happened within fraction of minutes. Next moment he was thrown from the top. His body was half burned on the spot.

At that time, his father (my friend) was traveling in Bangkok . His many friends in Pune came to know about this via mobile SMS. They instantly arranged air ambulance in Amravati and his burned body was brought to Keshavani Hospital , Mumbai. i was told that this is the best hospital in Mumbai. For 1 and 1/2 day or so he was talking to his relatives. When he was admitted to the hospital, at that time only, doctor informed his relatives that don't keep great hopes. Because of lot of complex issues in half burned body? He died yesterday morning.

Now how many of us are aware about this technological threats & dangers? Honestly, Kumar Aditya and his father was not aware. His family was not aware. Our entire friend circle of more than 12,000, we were not aware. Now should we call ourselves as fully educated and fully knowledgeable people? Please Think of it.

Please avoid mobile phones on petrol outlets.

Please avoid talking on mobile phones while driving. I also know many of my friends who do not bother about this good suggestion and each one of them have opted for "Chalta Hai Yaar Attitude".

Please avoid talking on mobile phones while they are in charging mode.
Please avoid charging mobile phones near Your bed and/or near wooden furniture. Avoid mobile phones near high voltage electrical lines like railway stations and use flash lights.

My friend, his family members and we all friends learned our lesson with loss of young life. Now Would You like to empower Your friends about this accident so as to avoid future accidents? We can save human life by empowering all the IT users who are in Your network?

What can we do ?
Please Please DO request U to forward this very important life threatening information to your loved ones..... and share the unknown.

Does the heart fall in love, or the brain?

2010-10-27T18:35:00.001+05:30

Remember the expression 'losing your heart to someone'? Well you might have lost your brain instead, according to a new study that claims it's your brain and not your heart that makes you fall in love.

Stephanie Ortigue at Syracuse University said that falling in love can elicit not only the same euphoric feeling as using cocaine, but also affects intellectual areas of the brain –what's more – it only takes about a fifth of a second to fall in love.

Results from Ortigue's team revealed when a person falls in love, 12 areas of the brain work in tandem to release euphoria-inducing chemicals such as dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline and vasopression.

The feeling also affects sophisticated cognitive functions, such as mental representation, metaphors and body image.

So, does the heart fall in love, or the brain?

"I would say the brain, but the heart is also related because the complex concept of love is formed by both bottom-up and top-down processes from the brain to the heart and vice versa," said Ortigue.

"Some symptoms we sometimes feel as a manifestation of the heart may sometimes be coming from the brain," she added.

The team also found that blood levels of nerve growth factor, or NGF were also high in couples, which had just fallen in love. This molecule involved plays an important role in the social chemistry of humans, or the phenomenon 'love at first sight.'

"These results confirm love has a scientific basis," said Ortigue.

The findings have major implications for neuroscience and mental health research because when love doesn't work out, it can be a significant cause of emotional stress and depression.

By identifying the parts of the brain stimulated by love, doctors and therapists can better understand the pains of love-sick patients.

Source:Times of India

What is your salary per Minute......

2010-08-24T12:58:00.000+05:30

Shah Rukh Khan

What: Actor
How much: Rs 247 per minute

The King Khan, who started off modestly as a 'Fauji', made about Rs 13 crore last year. This included his endorsement deals for Pepsi, Hyundai Santro - and of course, wetting himself in a bathtub, surrounded by women for HLL's Lux. How much per minute?

Brij Mohan Lall Munjal

What: Chief of Hero Group
How much: Rs 255 per minute

The patriarch of the Hero Group received the Life-time achievement award for 'Excellence in Corporate Governance' by the Institute of CompanySecretary of India this year. Brij Mohan Lall Munjal earned about Rs 13.4 crore last year. He continues to be the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer and fuels his bank balance with Rs 255 per minute.

Sachin Tendulkar

What: Cricketer
How much: Rs 1,163 per minute

India's most loved sportsman makes a lot more than most CEOs of Indiancompanies; going by his annual remuneration for 2004-2005. Breaking itdown, his three-year contract for endorsements is worth Rs 180 crores. He is also paid Rs 2,35,000 for a five-day test match and Rs 2,50,000 for one dayers.

A little bit of elementary math: This highest paid cricketer in the worldmakes around Rs 61.15 crore a year, or Rs 1,163 per minute

Mukesh Ambani

What: CMD of Reliance Industries Ltd
How much: Rs 413 per minute

Head honcho of the $16.5 billion Reliance Industries Limited, Mukesh Ambani was ranked the world's 56th richest man in Forbe's list. But since this is only about salaries (and the like), we'll completely ignore his other earnings. Last year, Mr Amb a ni earned Rs 21.72 crore; a neat growth of 87 per cent over his previous year's earnings. He makes not less than Rs 413
per minute.

Amitabh Bachchan

What: Actor
How much: Rs 361 per minute

Kaun Banega Crorepati? Apparently, Mr Bachchan! With more endorsements and film releases per year than successful actors half his age, Bachchan's take-home last year was around Rs 19 crore - that's Rs 361 per minute.

Indra Nooyi

What: New Pepsi Chief
How much: Rs 2,911 per minute (from October 11)

Chennai-born 50-year-old Indra Nooyi was the Chief Financial Officer (CFO)of PepsiCo, the US-based soft drink major. In that capacity, her remuneration stood at $5 million (over Rs 23 crore). With her promotion this year, Nooyi becomes one of the highest paid CEOs in the world, with an announced remuneration of $33 million (approximately Rs 153 crores). This means Nooyi makes a whopping Rs 2,911 per minute.

DON'T start calculating your salary.
Such currency (fraction of paise) is yet to be invented. :P

Solar Tsunami from Sun may hit Earth on Tuesday

2010-08-03T15:35:00.001+05:30

The Earth is in the path to be hit by a wave of violent space weather as early as Tuesday after a massive explosion of the sun, scientists have warned.

Astronomers witnessed the huge flare above a giant sunspot the size of the Earth, the explosion aimed directly towards Earth.

It sent a "solar tsunami" racing 93 million miles across space, which is likely to hit the planet on Tuesday.

The wave of supercharged gas is likely to spark spectacular displays of the aurora or northern and southern lights.

However, a really big solar eruption could shut down global communication grids and destroy satellites, if it reaches today.

A recent warning by NASA said that Britain could be at the receiving end of widespread power blackouts for a long time after the earth is hit by a once-in-a-generation "space storm".

"It looks like the first eruption was so large that it changed the magnetic fields throughout half the Sun's visible atmosphere and provided the right conditions for the second eruption," said Dr Lucie Green, of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, Surrey.

"This means we have a very good chance of seeing major and prolonged effects, such as the northern lights at low latitudes," she added.

Asia's Most Expensive Cup Of Coffee

2010-07-30T12:08:00.001+05:30

In its efforts to estimate the cost-of-living for a well-heeled expatriate, consulting firm Mercer gathers information about the cost of over 200 items in 214 urban centers. For this list, used data about the price of a cup of coffee from cities in the Asia-Pacific region. Mercer's researchers try to use the same international chains across countries. Where there is no international chain available, they use the cost of a cup of coffee at an upscale hotel. Here are the 20 most expensive Asian cities for java drinkers.

Bangladesh

Dhaka: $2.02

International chain Coffee World opened its first store in the nation in its capital, Dhaka, in 2005. It currently has five locations in Bangladesh,

The Philippines

Manila: $2.16

As late as the 1980s, the country was a top producer of coffee beans, according to the quarterly journal Tea and Coffee Asia, but now it grows on its own soil less than half of what it consumes annually. The main reasons for the slowdown, the journal says, are "high land taxes, a lack of government support and infrastructure and labor-intensive harvesting."

Pakistan

Karachi: $2.24

Tea consumption in Pakistan is among the highest in the world, according to a May 2010 report by research firm Euromonitor, but coffee has growth potential as "consumers develop a taste for the product." India's biggest coffee chain, Café Coffee Day, opened a store in Pakistan's largest city, Karachi, in 2006--the first place outside of India and Vienna it targeted for expansion--and the U.K.'s largest coffee chain, Costa Coffee, built an outpost there in 2005.

Sri Lanka

Colombo: $2.36

First Dutch then British colonists started producing coffee in Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon, during the 18th and 19th centuries, according to the quarterly journal Tea and Coffee Asia, and by 1870 coffee exports had reached 100 million pounds (weight) annually. But a lethal fungus devastated the crop, and colonists later decided to cultivate tea instead.

Cambodia

Phnom Penh: $2.85

Coffee was originally introduced to much of the region by European colonizers, according to the quarterly journal Tea and Coffee Asia, and it was the French who brought it to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. In April Australian chain Gloria Jean's Coffees opened its first store in capital Phnom Penh.

Indonesia

Jakarta: $3.41

Vietnam and Indonesia (12.6% and 4.59% of global production respectively) are the two largest coffee producers in ASEAN, according to the quarterly journal Tea and Coffee Asia. Dutch colonists introduced the production of coffee to Indonesia, and it is now the world's fifth-largest producer of coffee beans and the world's largest supplier of robusta, a type of bean that is resistant to rust. Consumption is also on the rise--from both local and international shops--albeit mostly of a lesser quality coffee than is produced for export.

Brunei

Bandar Seri Begawan: $3.54

An Islamic country with a largely Malay population, alcohol is banned in Brunei. Most residents drink water, tea, fruit juices, soft drinks or coconut milk, and coffee is consumed in large quantities. In 2001 the first branch of American chain The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf opened in Brunei; there are currently four locations open in the country.

India

Chennai: $2.59; New Delhi: $2.91; Bangalore: $3.02; Mumbai $3.75

India has the potential to produce 300,000 tons of coffee beans a year, while domestic consumption is about 80,000 tons, according to the quarterly journal Tea and Coffee Asia. Experts expect the domestic market to grow about 10% per year. The nation's biggest coffee chain, Café Coffee Day, has over 400 outlets and competes with Barista Coffee Company (bought by Italian coffee company Lavazza), Costa, Coffee World, Gloria Jean's and others.

Myanmar

Yangon: $3.67

Myanmar grows a very small percentage--about 0.05%--of the world’s coffee, according to the quarterly journal Tea and Coffee Asia, with 60% being the arabica variety and 40% robusta. Many growers run small operations and most locals drink tea, and in any case the price of a cup of coffee is more than the average daily per-capita income in Myanmar, formerly Burma.

Vietnam

Hanoi: $3.48; Ho Chi Minh City: $3.75

Along with Indonesia and India, Vietnam is a major coffee-producing nation in the region, according to the quarterly journal Tea and Coffee Asia. French missionaries introduced a coffee-growing culture to their colony, and today Vietnam is the second-largest coffee producer and exporter in the world, after Brazil. Coffee consumption is also high, with Vietnamese-style coffee shops and international chains populating most cities.

New Zealand

Auckland: $3.83

New Zealand's coffee market is relatively well-developed compared with countries in Southeast Asia. Consumers there are more particular about the type of coffee they drink; they often inquire into its origin--whether it is fair trade or organic, its degree of sustainability--according to an April 2010 report by research firm Euromonitor. There are over 120 roasters in New Zealand.

Thailand

Bangkok: $4.07

While the nation is the third-largest coffee producer in Southeast Asia, according to the quarterly journal Tea and Coffee Asia, it was only in the 20th century that production was ramped up after the realization that Thailand was importing eight times more coffee than it produced. Much of the coffee grown in Thailand eventually gets turned into instant coffee, but purists remain hopeful that farmers will improve the quality of their crop.

Australia

Sydney: $3.55; Melbourne: $3.55; Canberra: $3.63; Perth: $3.99; Brisbane: $4.08; Adelaide: $4.25

In 2000 Starbucks opened its first store in Sydney through a joint venture, but in 2002 it acquired 100% of its operations there. The Australian Coffee Traders Association says that virtually all coffee consumed in the country is imported. Coffee consumption per capita has doubled over the last 30 years, according to the ACTA. While instant coffee comprises 80% of sales, the premium, roast and ground coffee segments are growing as consumer tastes become more sophisticated.

Malaysia

Kuala Lumpur: $4.39

British colonists started cultivating arabica in the country during the 18th century, according to the quarterly journal Tea and Coffee Asia, and less than 10,000 tons of coffee are produced there each year. Most of the coffee grown is a relatively obscure type called liberica. Malaysians are big coffee drinkers, especially in local kopi shops; in 2008 Starbucks opened its 100th store there.

Singapore

Singapore: $4.60

Though it grows little to none of its own coffee, Singapore is an exporting hub and its diverse Malay, Chinese, Indian and Arab residents are avid java drinkers, according to the quarterly journal Tea and Coffee Asia. A February 2010 report by research firm Euromonitor noted that sales of hot drinks didn't dive noticeably during 2009's global recession, buoyed not only by robust coffee sales but by increased consumption of fruit and herbal teas.

South Korea

Seoul: $5.19

Sales of hot drinks increased significantly in 2009, due mostly to consumers' growing preference for coffee, according to a March 2010 report by research firm Euromonitor. The proliferation of Western-style coffee shops plus improved sales of instant coffee helped boost the drink's status. Euromonitor expects prices of fresh coffee, sold through these retail chains, to climb. In 2004 Starbucks opened its 200th store in South Korea.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong: $5.79

In recent decades a coffee culture has grown in Hong Kong, known as a tea-drinker's city. (Though one drink served at traditional diners is a concoction that is half-coffee, half-tea.) A March 2010 report by research firm Euromonitor noted that as consumers are attracted to high-end shops that boast high quality drinks, the number of specialist coffee shops is increasing.

Taiwan

Taipei: $5.92

Taiwan's strong café culture helps keep coffee and tea sales high, a March 2010 report by research firm Euromonitor. Even convenience stores like 7-Eleven and Family Mart serve freshly brewed coffee. Parts of Taiwan, like Gukeng, grow coffee, but most of the beans are exported. One popular signature drink of 85C Bakery Café, a coffeehouse chain in Taiwan with more outlets in the country than Starbucks, is the sea-salt latte.

Japan

Nagoya: $4.99; Osaka: $6.10; Tokyo: $6.65

Tokyo was home to the first Starbucks outpost outside of North America, which opened in 2001; in 2006 Starbucks opened its 600th store in Japan. Commodities Nowreported that Japan is now the world's third-largest coffee-consuming nation and is home to more than 10,000 coffee shops. Japan is also likely to remain the leading per capita consumer of coffee products in Asia, according to the quarterly journal Tea and Coffee Asia.

China

Tianjin: $4.39; Nanjing: $4.39; Chengdu: $5.12; Qingdao; $5.56; Shenzhen: $5.86; Shenyang: $5.86; Shanghai: $6.59; Guangzhou: $7.03; Beijing: $7.17

Though per-capita consumption is still relatively low, Commodities Nowreported that coffee drinking in the world's most populous nation has doubled since 2002. In fact, China--and India--are seen as the fastest-growing markets for coffee consumption in the region, according to the quarterly journal Tea and Coffee Asia.It hasn't yet achieved its full potential when it comes to producing fine coffees, but urbanization and the spread of international chains like Starbucks will help propel the drink's popularity.

Source: forbes.com

The TOP 5 Things That Keep You From Success

2010-07-26T12:17:00.001+05:30

A lot of people want to be successful. Yet, only a few people are willing to pay the price. There is a price to success as there is a price to failure. Here are 5 reasons that keep people from accomplishing their dreams.

A lack of motivation. Success comes from loving what you do. Is your current job your passion? When your study highly successful people, you understand that they have at least 1 thing in common: they love what they do and they do what they love. Is this the case for you? If the answer is no, you can start by identifying your passion. This is the best way to get motivated.

A lack of faith. Faith is a firm belief in yourself, God or others that you can do it. Build up a strong vision of what you want to accomplish. In developing a vision, the law of attraction is going to work for you. You are going to attract people, opportunities and money that will allow you to develop an unstoppable confidence.

The fear of failure. The fear of failure doesn't exist. Neither does the fear of success. Fear stands for False Evidence Appearing Real. Micheal Jordan said himself that "Fear is an illusion". It is hard to overcome fears. One simple way to overcome the fear of failure is to read inspirational stories and quotes of people that achieved their dreams. Read one every morning. That will give you strength and hope.

The wrong strategies. When you want to build a business, to achieve something really big, you need to have mentors. You can't allow yourself to loose time, money and energy. Mentors are people that will give you the right strategies; they will provide the right information and will inspire you. They will coach you through the process. Choose correctly your experts, your models. Work with them and adopt the same thinking patterns, the same strategies, the same beliefs. If he did it, you can do it too.

Limiting beliefs. Often times we have limiting beliefs about what we want to achieve. For example, you can really want to achieve a goal but at the same time something tells you: "It's not for you, you don't deserve that" or "You can't do it, remember". These thoughts pollute our minds and darken our life. A quick way to stop these damaging thoughts is to use the power to say no! First, represent in your mind the "limiting belief" and say NO! To it. Now, represent in your mind what you want in its place and say a big YES! You will be amazed how your attitude suddenly changed about the old belief. Can you remember it?

Smart cars with intel smart car system - self driving - black boxes, connected to the Internet and vision systems on cars

2010-07-05T19:18:00.000+05:30

Computer scientists in the US are developing technology that will transform cars into intelligent vehicles fitted with aircraft-style black boxes that can record information about driving behaviour during accidents.

The car, which is being developed by researchers at computer chip giant Intel, will record information about the vehicle speed, steering and braking along with video footage from inside and outside the vehicle, The Telegraph reported.

This would be automatically sent to police and insurance companies in the event of an accident to make it easier to determine the cause of car crashes and identify the person responsible.

The device forms part of an intelligent car envisaged by researchers at Intel. They are developing technology that will transform cars into smart vehicles that are able to detect dangers on the road and even take over control from motorists.

They have been in discussions with car manufacturers about developing cars that are permanently connected to the Internet and other vehicles using wireless technology.

Camera systems that can recognise street signs and then take over control of a car if the motorist tries to drive the wrong way up a one-way street, for example, are being developed for use in vehicles.

On board sensors will also be able to detect pot holes in the road and report their location to road maintenance authorities as the car is moving.

The cars will also be able to track the location of surrounding vehicles and alert drivers if they get too close or try to change lanes when another vehicle is in their blind spot.

The technology was revealed at a research showcase by Intel in Santa Clara, California, last week. The company has been in discussions with car manufacturers about putting the technology into new vehicles.

Justin Ratner, the director of Intel Laboratories and chief technology officer, said: 'We are looking at a whole range of enhancements that will improve the driving experience, safety and security of vehicles.

'The intelligent vehicle is what we are talking about here. Once a car is connected, more or less on a continuous basis, all sorts of interesting possibilities present themselves.

'With vision systems on cars, it is perfectly reasonable for a car on its own to see the sign that says 'wrong way' or 'do not enter' and bring the vehicle to a halt at the side of the road so we don't have these senseless accidents where someone has failed to recognise a sign.

'We have talked to highway maintenance departments about using sensors that are already in cars to report the GPS coordinates for pot holes in the road to the maintenance department.'

Insurance companies are expected to welcome on-board car systems that will reduce the risk of accidents.

A spokesman for the Association of British Insurers said that aviation style black box technology for recording the circumstances around accidents could also help speed up payouts by reducing delays in determining causes of accidents.

Global Peace Index 2010 - Inda Ranks 128 in GPI Index

2010-06-10T19:08:00.000+05:30

The table below provides the GPI ranking for the countries analyzed this year. Countries most peace are ranking first. A lower score indicates a more peaceful country.

GPI Index 2010
Rank	Country	Score
1	New Zealand	1.188
2	Iceland	1.212
3	Japan	1.247
4	Austria	1.29
5	Norway	1.322
6	Ireland	1.337
7	Denmark	1.341
7	Luxembourg	1.341
9	Finland	1.352
10	Sweden	1.354
11	Slovenia	1.358
12	Czech Republic	1.36
13	Portugal	1.366
14	Canada	1.392
15	Qatar	1.394
16	Germany	1.398
17	Belgium	1.4
18	Switzerland	1.424
19	Australia	1.467
20	Hungary	1.495
21	Slovakia	1.536
22	Malaysia	1.539
23	Oman	1.561
24	Uruguay	1.568
25	Spain	1.588
26	Costa Rica	1.59
27	Netherlands	1.61
28	Chile Chile	1.616
29	Poland	1.618
30	Singapore	1.624
31	United Kingdom	1.631
32	France	1.636
33	Botswana	1.641
34	Lao Democratic Republic	1.661
35	Taiwan,	1.664
36	Bhutan	1.665
37	Tunisia	1.678
38	Viet Nam	1.691
39	Kuwait	1.693
40	Italy	1.701
41	Croatia	1.707
42	Lithuania	1.713
43	Korea	1.715
44	United Arab Emirates	1.739
45	Romania	1.749
46	Estonia	1.751
47	Mozambique	1.779
48	Ghana	1.781
49	Egypt	1.784
50	Bulgaria	1.785
51	Malawi	1.813
51	Zambia	1.813
53	Sierra Leone	1.818
54	Latvia	1.827
55	Tanzania	1.832
56	Libyan Arab Jamahiriya	1.839
57	Burkina Faso	1.852
58	Morocco	1.861
59	Namibia	1.864
60	Bosnia and Herzegovina	1.873
61	Panama	1.878
62	Greece	1.887
63	Gambia	1.89
64	Nicaragua	1.924
65	Albania	1.925
66	Moldova	1.938
67	Indonesia	1.946
68	Jordan	1.948
68	Equatorial Guinea	1.948
70	Bahrain	1.956
71	Argentina	1.962
72	Cuba	1.964
73	Swaziland	1.966
74	Gabon	1.981
75	Rwanda	2.012
76	Cyprus	2.013
77	Madagascar	2.019
77	Paraguay	2.019
79	Senegal	2.031
80	China	2.034
81	Bolivia	2.037
82	Nepal	2.044
83	Macedonia	2.048
83	Brazil	2.048
85	United States	2.056
86	Angola	2.057
87	Bangladesh	2.058
88	Montenegro	2.06
89	Peru	2.067
90	Serbia	2.071
91	Guyana	2.095
92	Mongolia	2.101
93	Dominican Republic	2.103
94	Trinidad and Tobago	2.107
95	Papua New Guinea	2.113
95	Kazakhstan	2.113
97	Ukraine	2.115
98	Jamaica	2.138
99	Liberia	2.148
100	Uganda	2.165
101	Ecuador	2.185
102	Congo	2.192
103	El Salvador	2.195
104	Iran	2.202
105	Belarus	2.204
106	Cameroon	2.21
107	Saudi Arabia	2.216
107	Mexico	2.216
109	Mali	2.24
110	Uzbekistan	2.242
111	Cambodia	2.252
112	Guatemala	2.258
113	Armenia	2.266
114	Haiti	2.27
115	Syrian Arab Republic	2.274
116	Algeria	2.277
117	Turkmenistan	2.295
118	Cote D	2.297
119	Azerbaijan	2.367
120	Kenya	2.369
121	South Africa	2.38
122	Venezuela	2.387
123	Mauritania	2.389
124	Thailand	2.393
125	Honduras	2.395
126	Turkey	2.42
127	Ethiopia	2.444
128	India	2.516
129	Yemen	2.573
130	Philippines	2.574
131	Burundi	2.577
132	Myanmar	2.58
133	Sri Lanka	2.621
134	Lebanon	2.639
135	Zimbabwe	2.678
136	Central African Republic	2.753
137	Nigeria	2.756
138	Colombia	2.787
139	Korea	2.855
140	Congo	2.925
141	Chad	2.964
142	Georgia	2.97
143	Russian	3.013
144	Israel	3.019
145	Pakistan	3.05
146	Sudan	3.125
147	Afghanistan	3.252
148	Somalia	3.39
149	Iraq	3.406

Confirmed what many ladies already knew : Men tell more lies than women.

2010-05-20T12:23:00.001+05:30

A new study has confirmed what many ladies already knew: Men tell more lies than women.

According to the study, on an average, a man will tell three lies a day, racking up 1,092 whoppers in a year. However, an average woman will come out with 728, fibbing just twice a day, reports The Daily Express.

The study, which was commissioned by researchers at the Science Museum in London, found that 82 per cent of females questioned said telling a lie ate away at their conscience but only 70 per cent of men confessed to suffering pangs of guilt.

"Lying may seem to be an unavoidable part of human nature but it's an important part of social interaction," said Katie Maggs, the museum's associate medical curator.

"The jury is still out as to whether human quirks like lying are the result of our genes, evolution or our upbringing."

OnePoll spoke to 3,000 adults for the survey.

The top 10 lies men tell their partners include "I had no signal", "I'm on my way", "I'm stuck in traffic", "Sorry, I missed your call", "You've lost weight" and "It's just what I've always wanted".

Source: Yahoo News

Forbes Magazine Top 10 Most Wanted Fugitives

2010-05-18T14:10:00.000+05:30

Underworld don and India's most wanted fugitive Dawood Ibrahim, mastermind of the 1993 Mumbai bombings, figures third on the Forbes' Most Wanted list which has been topped by Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden.

The list, carried in the latest edition of the Forbes magazine, also has Mexico's most powerful drug trafficker Joaquin Guzman in no.2.

The magazine, which has been releasing a list of most wanted fugitives for the past three years, pointed out that Dawood, who is believed to be hiding in Pakistan, possibly had a hand in aiding LeT execute the 2008 Mumbai attacks and also shares smuggling routes with Al-Qaeda.

The list go's here....

Osama Bin Laden

The most wanted man in the world is believed to be hiding in Pakistan, perhaps in the Waziristan region. U.S. President George W. Bush has said Bin Laden is wanted dead or alive. But for six years, Bin Laden has been able to evade the largest manhunt in international history by sticking to the unruly tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, is the world's biggest terrorist. He has been indicted in federal court in New York for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 200 people. Bin Laden has also been charged for conspiring to kill Americans outside the U.S. He has claimed responsibility for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. that killed 3,000 people, including both Americans and foreign nationals. The State Department has put a $25 million reward on his head. The Saudi-born Bin Laden is probably 51 years old.

Joaquin Guzman

Mexico's most powerful drug trafficker has taken over the drug racket once dominated by Colombians like Pablo Escobar. Guzman, known as el Chapo, or shorty, heads the Sinaloa Cartel, specializing in importing cocaine from Colombia and smuggling it into the U.S., often through elaborate tunnels. Ruthless and determined, Guzman has lorded over a bloody power struggle in Mexico over transport corridors to the U.S. that have left thousands dead.

After the Mexican courts ruled he could be extradited to the U.S. in 2001, Guzman escaped from prison in a laundry truck. Since then he has evaded close encounters with the Mexican military. The U.S. government has indicted Guzman and placed a $5 million bounty on this fugitive.

Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov

Originally from Uzbekistan, Tokhtakhounov is the face of the modern Russian mob, especially since Semion Mogilevich was detained earlier this year. Tokhtakhounov is known as "Taiwanchik" for his Asian features. The U.S. government calls him a "major figure in international Eurasian Organized Crime" who has been involved in "drug distribution, illegal arms sales and trafficking in stolen vehicles."

He is suspected of fixing everything from beauty pageants to Olympic events in Utah. In 2002, the U.S. government indicted him for bribing Olympic figure skating judges to favor the French team, robbing Canadians Jamie Sale and David Pelletier of gold medals in the pairs competition. The U.S. tried to get him after he was arrested in Italy, but the Italians eventually freed Tokhtakhounov, who has since disappeared and is probably in Russia.

Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar

India's most wanted man heads D-Company, an organized crime group based in Mumbai. This son of a policeman reputedly oversees a criminal empire involved in all sorts of international activity, including drug trafficking, counterfeiting, weapons smuggling and murder. Ibrahim is suspected of having organized the 1993 Bombay Blasts that killed 257 people and wounded 713.

He is believed to have associated with Al Qaeda. The U.S. has declared him a global terrorist and the United Nations has attempted to freeze his assets. Though the Pakistani government denies it, the 52-year-old Ibrahim is probably in Pakistan. He is believed to have close links to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency and travels on passports from India, Yemen, Pakistan. There are rumors that he has had plastic surgery to alter his appearance.

Matteo Messina Denaro

The world's most famous organized crime network remains powerful and arguably its most formidable fugitive member is Denaro, who is also known as "Diabolic." The Italian mafia's playboy, Denaro is known for living a fast lifestyle, driving Porches and fancying Rolex watches. He is believed to be taking over the mafia's operations in the fallout surrounding the capture of long time Cosa Nostra leaders, most notably Bernardo Provenzano, who Italian authorities finally grabbed in 2006. Denaro played an important role in a Cosa Nostra campaign in 1993 involving deadly bomb attacks to force the government to stop its mafia crackdown.

Felicien Kabuga

The most wanted man in Africa is accused of being the driving force behind one of the worst genocides in human history. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda is seeking Kabuga for "serious offences under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, crimes against humanity and genocide," in connection with the massacre of over 800,000 Rwanda men woman and children in 100 days of terror in 1994.

The rich businessman is accused of bankrolling the Hutu militias that committed the murders. Kabuga's radio station propagated extremist Hutu ideology and incited violence against the Tutsi population of Rwanda. He also provided weapons, uniforms and transportation that assisted the militias and made massive purchases of machetes and hoes that were used as weapons. Kabuga fled Rwanda and is believed to be elsewhere in Africa, possibly Kenya.

Pedro Antonio Marin

Known as Manuel Marulanda, Marin is the long-time leader of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionaria Colombia, or FARC, a Marxist group set up in the 1960s in the spirit of Fidel Castro. Marin is now accused of venturing into the drug business and other criminal activity, like conducting for-ransom kidnappings. The U.S. government, which designated FARC a terrorist group, says they control most of Colombia's cocaine production and supply more than half the world's cocaine. The U.S. government has put a $5 million bounty on his head.

UPDATE: In late May 2008 it was revealed that Marulanda had died of an apparent heart attack. His death, coupled by other recent developments, pointed toward the diminishing power of the FARC as a political force, but raised concerns that its remnants would increasingly turn to criminal activities and violence.

Joseph Kony

The head of the Lord's Resistance Army, a guerrilla group trying to establish a theocratic government in Uganda using brutal means. Under Kony, the LRA has displaced 2 million people and created the highest child abduction rate in the world. Kony has directed the abduction of 60,000, including 30,000 children, forcing them to fight in his campaign of murder, rape, mutilation and sexual slavery. He reputedly forces children to murder their own parents as part of their initiation into his group. The International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for his arrest, indicting Kony on 33 charges, including crimes against humanity and war crimes.

James "Whitey" Bulger

Leader of the Winter Hill Gang, an Irish American crime family based in Boston that controlled illicit drug trade and extortion rackets in South Boston. Bulger has shown how hard it can be to capture a criminal. The FBI has pursued Bulger for more than a decade for Bulger's alleged roles in numerous murders. His wealth is estimated between $30 million and $50 million and he has associated with major criminal enterprises throughout North America and Europe, including the Irish Republican Army. The 78-year-old is using the wealth and contacts he developed through his criminal operations to stay out of the reach of law enforcement and is believed to be on the run with his longtime girlfriend. The FBI has a $1 million price tag on him, but by concealing his appearance and using false identities, Bulger has evaded the substantial effort to bring him to justice. There are indications that he recently traveled to Sicily.

Omid Tahvili

Tahvili is the kingpin of a Persian organized crime family in Canada connected to various Triads and other global criminal groups. Known as Nino, Tahvili walked out the door of a maximum security prison in British Columbia in November after bribing a guard with the promise of $50,000. He was awaiting sentencing after being convicted of kidnapping and sexual assault. Tahvili, 37, had tortured a relative of someone he suspected stole $500,000 of his drug money. The U.S. government wants him for his alleged operation of a fraudulent telemarketing business that scammed $3 million from elderly American victims. The scamsters told victims they would win a lottery if they would pay a bogus advance fee. Tahvili is believed to have connections throughout Europe and the Middle East, and remains an international operator.

Brooke Greenberg - the key to ageing, 17 year old girl with 16lb in weight and just 30in tall

2010-05-10T13:35:00.002+05:30

Brooke Greenberg (born January 8, 1993), is a 17 year old girl from Reisterstown, Maryland, who has remained physically and cognitively similar to a toddler, despite her increasing age. She is about 30 inches (76 cm) tall, weighs about 16 pounds (7.3 kg), and has an estimated mental age of 9 months to 1 year. Brooke's doctors have termed her condition Syndrome X.

Brooke was born on January 8th, 1993 at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, one month prior to her due date, weighing just four pounds (1.8 kg). She was born with anterior hip dislocation, a condition which caused her legs to be swiveled upwards, awkwardly, toward her shoulders; this was corrected surgically. Otherwise, Brooke appeared to be a normal infant.

In her first six years, Brooke Greenberg went through a series of unexplained medical emergencies from which she recovered. She had seven perforated stomach ulcers. She also suffered a seizure. This was followed by what was later diagnosed as a stroke; weeks later, no damage was detected. At age five, Brooke had a mass in her brain that caused her to sleep for 14 days. The doctors diagnosed the mass as a brain tumor. However, Brooke later awoke, and physicians found no tumor present. Brooke's pediatrician, Dr. Lawrence Pakula, states that the source of her sudden illness remains a mystery.

According to a preliminary study of her DNA, her failure to grow could be linked to defects in the genes that make the rest of humanity grow old.

If confirmed, the research could give scientists a fresh understanding of ageing and even suggest new therapies for diseases linked to old age, reports The Times.

"We think that Brooke's condition presents us with a unique opportunity to understand the process of ageing," said Richard Walker, a professor at the University of South Florida School of Medicine, who is leading the research team.

"We think that she has a mutation in the genes that control her ageing and development so that she appears to have been frozen in time.

"If we can compare her genome to the normal version then we might be able to find those genes and see exactly what they do and how to control them."

This is how information comes from internet at your pc !!!

2010-04-21T16:12:00.000+05:30

How to detect HIDDEN CAMERA in Trial Rooms

2010-04-20T16:00:00.000+05:30

In front of the trial room take your mobile and make sure that mobile can make calls........
Then enter into the trail room, take your mobile and make a call.....
If u can't make a call......!!!!

There is a hidden camera......

This is due to the interference of fibre optic during the signal transfer......

Please forward this to link to your friends to educate this issue to the public......
To prevent our innocent sisters and ladies from HIDDEN CAMERA............

I'M SWITCHING OFF! ARE YOU ? EARTH HOUR 2010

2010-03-26T11:50:00.002+05:30

Earth Hour started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia when 2.2 million homes and businesses turned their lights off for one hour to make their stand against climate change. Only a year later and Earth Hour had become a global sustainability movement with more than 50 million people across 35 countries participating. Global landmarks such as the, Sydney Harbour Bridge, The CN Tower in Toronto, The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and Rome’s Colosseum, all stood in darkness, as symbols of hope for a cause that grows more urgent by the hour.

In March 2009, India along with hundreds of millions of people took part in the third Earth Hour. Over 4000 cities in 88 countries officially switched off to pledge their support for the planet, making Earth Hour 2009 the world’s largest global climate change initiative.

Earth Hour 2010 takes place on Saturday 27 March at 8.30pm- 9:30pm and is a global call to action to every individual, every business and every community throughout the world. It is a call to stand up, to take responsibility, to get involved and lead the way towards a sustainable future. Iconic buildings and landmarks from India to Australia to America will stand in darkness. People across the world from all walks of life will turn off their lights and join together in celebration and contemplation of the one thing we all have in common – our planet.So sign up now and let’s make 2010 the biggest Earth Hour yet!.

It’s Showtime! Show the world what can be done.

Why get involved?

Put simply, because our future depends on it!

Earth Hour has done a lot to raise awareness on climate change issues. But there’s more to it than switching off lights for one hour once a year. It’s all about giving people a voice on the future of our planet and working together to create a sustainable low carbon future for our planet.

The future can be bright

New economic modelling indicates the world has just five years to initiate a low carbon industrial revolution before runaway climate change becomes almost inevitable. But it can be done, and the long term benefits will be enormous.

So now's the time to take a stand and give world leaders the mandate they need to make the right climate deal.

Earth Hour 2010

Earth Hour 2010 continues to be a global call to action to every individual, every business and every community. A call to stand up, to show leadership and be responsible for our future.

In what we hope will be the world’s largest mass participation event, Earth Hour 2010 will be the culmination of over one billion people around the globe, in more than 6000 cities, towns turning off lights for one hour on one night. Iconic buildings and landmarks across Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and The Americas will go dark.

In India, we hope to make Earth Hour 2010 even bigger and better than last year. Besides Delhi & Mumbai , this year we are taking Earth Hour to Pune, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Bangaluru, Chennai and Kolkata, apart from several other cities where people will be encouraged to participate and turn-off the lights in their homes, offices and buildings from 8:30pm - 9:30pm on Saturday, 27 March 2010. Our participation will go a long way in showing to the world that India is united on its stand against global warming and is demanding immediate action.

We want to let the world leaders know that the world is still watching, post the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen in 2009 and that we, the citizens of the planet, demand commitment to actions that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the benefit of the planet.

Climate change and Earth Hour: What is the connection?

What is climate change?

Climate Change is a phenomenon which takes place when green house gases (the most common amongst which is CO2) that are released into the atmosphere, form a layer preventing the heat from the earth’s surface to be reflected back to the sun. This phenomenon popularly known as the ‘greenhouse effect’ causes the earth’s temperature to rise, giving way to many potentially catastrophic changes in weather patterns, oceanic currents, rainfall patterns etc.

Who is responsible for releasing these green house gases?

There are essentially five greenhouse gases that are most commonly observed in the atmosphere. These include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, water vapor and cfc’s. The sectors responsible for the emissions of these gases can be informally divided into the: the power sector, industrial sector, transport sector and household sector.

How does the power sector contribute to the release of co2 in the atmosphere?

From amongst all these sectors the power sector contributes 50% of India’s carbon emissions. In India, coal fired power plants dominate the power generation capacity. This makes the power sector extremely pollution intensive since coal as a source of energy has a very high global warming potential. In India 53% of the installed capacity and 70-80% of generation of power is from coal fired power plants The share of renewable sources of energy in the power sector such as wind, solar, geothermal etc comprises only a mere 7.7%. These sources of energy are not only renewable but also clean.

How can the power sector reduce its co2 emissions?

Thus the need of the hour is to look at ways which can help in the mitigation of, and adaptation to climate change. From amongst the mitigation options available to a country

Shift to low carbon sources of energy: One option for mitigation is to shift dependence away from fossil fuel ( coal, oil and natural gas) based power generation towards generating power through renewable and cleaner sources of energy such as wind, solar, geothermal etc. However this shift is expensive because the technology is not readily available or extremely costly to purchase and therefore cannot be implemented in the short term without adequate financial and technical assistance from the developed world.
Become more efficient in your use of energy: That is, to use less energy to provide the same level of energy services, for example, by using energy efficient appliances or investing in insulation to prevent heat loss in buildings thus reducing the energy used for heating.
Adopt an energy saving attitude: Use energy only when it is absolutely essential and not be wasteful in its use. This is the messaging of the Earth Hour, an initiative that hopes to instill behavioral change in the energy consuming attitude of people by asking them to use their power efficiently and switch off the non essential lights and other energy consumer devices when not in use.

Wipro employee commits $4 Million fraud

2010-02-18T15:52:00.002+05:30

Bangalore: IT major Wipro has tightened internal control in the finance division after it was noticed that one of its employees embezzled crores of rupees in the last three years. The employee, who was working in the 'controllership' division within the finance department in the last three years, stole a password and transferred funds from Wipro's account at a bank, reports M.V. Ramsurya and Pankaj Mishra of Economic Times.

Suresh C Senapaty, Wipro's CFO has also confirmed the incident. "This has been a case of embezzlement, which we discovered in December, and it's very unfortunate that this person succumbed to this," he said. According to him, the company has carried out an investigation and is undertaking actions with respect to stricter adherence to processes.

Following this, Wipro has disbanded the controllership unit. Wipro officials have succeeded in recovering about half the money, but will still face a loss of about $2 million. The CFO said the incident did not involve more than one Wipro employee. "Our investigations have revealed that only this employee was involved, and nobody else in the team had any clue," Senapaty said.

Apart from setting up an internal investigation team, Wipro has also taken help from external auditors and investigation experts who will vet its processes and certify the soundness of its controls. Wipro has always taken pride in the sound work ethics of its employees and in the strictness of its controls. "We have to be more alert in monitoring, and we need to tighten the processes for ensuring an early warning system and make it tougher," Senapaty said.

Now, Wipro plans to make it compulsory for its employees to sign an undertaking about sharing of passwords and any unauthorized transactions. The company is also planning to frequently rotate its employees, who are working in sensitive functions within the finance department. Currently, employees in such functions spend around three years before a transfer.

10 reasons why people quit IT Jobs

2010-01-27T13:03:00.004+05:30

With the worst behind and signs of positive demand for outsourcing and offshoring from the U.S. and European markets, which account for about 80 percent of Indian software exports, the IT industry is gearing up for a gradual recovery in the new year. But Indian IT industry still continues to face the problem of attrition, especially when companies are now offering strong pay packages to make up for the lost ground. What really drives employees to jump jobs? Is it only due to bad bosses or there are other reasons involved as well?

While we were sure that organization and management play a crucial part in the decision, there were many other reasons as well which may have become more relevant in recent times. "While most people including the managers are of the opinion that majority of people leave because they are unhappy with their compensation, nothing could be farther from the truth. There has been enough research done globally and across industry segments to prove that unhappiness with compensation is only one of the many reasons that people think about quitting," said Puneet Jetli, Senior Vice President and Head - People Function, MindTree.

1. Mismatch between the promised job and the situation on hand

Employees are often promised certain things on what exactly the jobs consist of but after joining the company they find out a completely different picture. It becomes painfully clear to the new hire that the company played a bait-and-switch game and now they are trapped in doing something that they don't want to.

2. Limited opportunity for personal growth and skills

"Every ambitious person is looking to further their career in the shortest possible span of time. Hence despite being in a high growth sector if there isn't ample opportunity for reasonably quick vertical or lateral growth; then it is usually time to move on," says Pradeep Thomas Abraham, Managing Director of Paytronic Networks limited. The most successful employers find ways to help employees develop new skills and responsibilities in their current positions.

3. Boss too much to handle

Prashant Hannovar, Manager of Human Resource of NextBiT Computing has had a fair deal of experience in dealing with different kinds of candidates. He says, "Employee leaves the organization because of a manager's leadership style or bad management style. Employee leave because of managers who puts the blame on the other employee, making others a scape goat, a Micro manager-who is known for having no trust/confidence in self and on the team."

4. Lack of recognition of the good work being put-in

Individual accomplishments should be considered by the company and should be pointed out in praise that will help to further increase productivity, make the employee feel appreciated, and create an example for other employees to follow, knowing that they will be rewarded. "Many employees who have quit and answered the exit interviews have revealed on not getting recognized despite of hard work/good Performance," says Hannovar.

5. Management freezes raises and promotions

Money is not always a very important category for people to quit, but it definitely ranks high. Many employees quit the Organization as they get better compensation/salaries with the competitors. Also with the salaries, many of the Techies (engineers) today are offered Onsite opportunity too. This is the normal phenomena in the IT Industry which nothing much can be worked out.

6. Poor work culture/work ethic

Another important factor that results in undesired attrition is the bad work culture. Bad work culture constitutes unhealthy political work environment where you can find lot of rumors/grape wines, partiality, favoritism, lack of trust, lack of good HR best practices like restrictions imposed on the employees on clothing, leaves and many more.

7. Inability to maintain/achieve a healthy work-life balance

In the light of the recent trend of laying off huge number of employees, many employees (who are not fired) feel the heat of too much work. Sometimes they find themselves doing the work of more than two people which often result into work taken home and extended office hours. Too much work often creates stress which can force the employee to quit.

8. Lack of Feedback Mechanisms

Lot of managers don't provide the proper feedback at regular intervals on the employee performance. Many employees look for feedback which helps them to grow in their career. Lack of feedback makes an employee or the team members frustrated, feel out of the team or lost, which leads to the rise in the attrition level in the organization.

9. Lack of decision-making power

A lot of managers simply do not know how to delegate effectively. This results in undue micro management by the immediate superior that shakes the faith and self confidence of the employee. A manager should empower employees and allow them the freedom to make suggestions and to take decisions.

10. No fun or enjoyment in job/ unchallenged

Two scenarios can fit into this. One is when employee becomes dull of the daily routine. Same job, with same skills and everything becomes dull, then it's time for employees to move on. The second scenario can be when employee don't feel challenged with the current job. Employees sometime need more responsibilities and work to challenge their skills or they leave in hunt of another job for fresh challenges.

There are many more reasons which may be valid from person to person but these are the top ten reasons which the IT industry must really look upon to improve on to reduce attrition. "The only way to work on retention is to pro-actively focus on establishing policies, practices, systems and culture that help reduce triggers on these counts".

Top 5 Unsolved Brain Mysteries

2010-01-21T19:02:00.006+05:30

Introduction to the Top 5 Unsolved Brain Mysteries

When you compare the brain's detectives, neuroscientists, to other detectives, the neuroscientists seem to fall short in solving mysteries. After all, Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple needed only about 250 pages each to get to the bottom of their cases. Ditto for Nancy Drew. On television, Jessica Fletcher and Kojak were all able to find their answers in an hour or less, while Veronica Mars needed only about the length of a television season. Even the pride of South Florida, Encyclopedia Brown, was able to solve his cases with little more than a casebook, his trusty sneakers and a wide variety of miscellaneous factoids. If Encyclopedia Brown only required 25 cents per day (plus expenses) to solve his cases, then what's taking neuroscientists so long to unravel the mysteries of the brain?

OK, so the brain is a bit more complex than Encyclopedia Brown's nemesis, Bugs Meany. But with the brain only weighing in at 3 pounds (1.4 kg), you could be forgiven for wondering if neuroscientists are just big slackers. As it is, mysteries galore abound in those 3 pounds, and until fairly recently, scientists lacked the equipment to accurately study the brain. With the advent of brain imaging technology, it's possible that they'll continue to learn more.

The workings of the brain, however, determine such fundamental questions about personhood that we may never know everything about what's going on. That doesn't mean we can't speculate, though. While we may not be able to solve these capers with clues that point to Colonel Mustard in the library with a revolver, we can dive into the current thinking on some of the brain's famous unsolved mysteries. Get your casebook ready and go to the next page for our first puzzler.

Top 5 Unsolved Brain Mysteries

1: The Conundrum of Consciousness
2: Whodunit and Other Questions of Memory
3: The Secrets of Sleep and Dreams
4: The Puzzle of Why the Brain Stops Functioning
5: The Case of Nature vs. Nurture

1: The Conundrum of Consciousness

This section might just "blow your mind," to use a common expression. But do you even have a mind? Scientists don't know where the brain ends and the mind begins. Are they the same thing? What about souls? Are these located in our brains? What is responsible for all of the unique thoughts and feelings that make us who we are? Everyone from philosophers to physicists has taken up this question of consciousness and come up empty.

For a long time, the study of consciousness was considered too far out to study. How do you scientifically study something so subjective? How can what one person feels become something that another person can quantify? But now, in their relentless pursuit to understand every single thing about the world, scientists are trying to figure out what exactly is going on with consciousness.

Though deep metaphysical questions about the nature of a soul, a mind and brain leave questions as to whether this issue is in the realm of scientists, the brain is likely involved in some way with our conscious thoughts. With the help of brain imaging, scientists can watch different parts of the brain light up, and they know they can alter the brain and our consciousness with surgeries or chemicals [sources: Eagleman, Pinker]. But what scientists don't know is at what stage of the process a firing neuron becomes a conscious thought. The things that make up consciousness may be scattered all over the brain, with different cranial parts responsible for different pieces of a person. But, as we've mentioned, there are tons of other brain mysteries about how these parts might work together.

Scientists are also trying to figure out the relationship between conscious and unconscious experiences. There are some things -- like breathing and maintaining a regular heart beat -- that we don't have to think about. How are these unconscious actions wired differently than the conscious ones? Is there any difference at all? We like to think we make our own decisions, but one recent study shows that we may not even do that. This study found that by using brain scanners, researchers could predict how a person was going to act a full seven seconds before the person knew that a decision had been made [source Keim]. Our consciousness might just be an illusion.

It's possible that something like free will could enter into the equation at the last possible moment, overriding the decision made by the brain. The researchers in the study also admitted that this test was best suited to a simple laboratory test that involved pushing a button, as opposed to a more important decision like taking a job [source: Keim]. TOP

2: Whodunit and Other Questions of Memory

In the 2004 film "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," the characters played by Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet undergo a process to erase all memories of their relationship from their minds. The film uses a variety of methods to show how the memories disintegrate and disappear, and it becomes a race against time when Carrey's character decides he doesn't want to complete the process. He tries to protect his memories about Winslet's character by hiding them in unrelated memories.

Good luck, Jim. Not even scientists are completely sure how memories are formed, how we retrieve them or how they disappear. There are many types of memory; we humans are pack rats who file away information ranging from how to make our grandmother's favorite pie to how to solve algebra equations. But which things does the brain decide to save? Where does it put this information, and why can't we get to some of that information when we really want it?

Scientists have been able to pinpoint where certain types of memory are stored. They've also discovered how neurons fire and synapses are strengthened when storing these memories. But they don't know exactly what goes into that neuron to store the memory, or how to dissolve that synaptic connection if you want to forget something. In September 2008, new clues about memory emerged that may eventually help us crack this cold case. In one study, researchers found that the neurons activated in the recall of a memory are likely the ones that fired when the event originally occurred [source: Carey]. So when you talk about reliving old memories, you actually are, because the brain is doing the exact same thing it did the first time.

But what if there wasn't a first time? One of the problems of getting to the bottom of memory is that it seems to play tricks on the brain sometimes. For example, we often create false memories. On July 7, 2005, London experienced a series of bombings. A follow-up study found that four out of 10 people have false memories of the event because they claimed to have seen nonexistent television footage [source: Randerson]. If we're storing things that are unreliable, does memory serve any purpose at all? According to thinkers as ancient as Aristotle, we might only need memories as a way to predict and anticipate the future [source: Eagleman]. TOP

3: The Secrets of Sleep and Dreams

"Sweet dreams are made of this," sang Annie Lennox during her stint in the Eurythmics in the 1980s. But you might notice that Lennox is suitably vague about what exactly "this" is. And really, no one knows what sweet dreams are made of, why we have them or even what we're doing sleeping our life away anyway.

Can you believe that? Every night we carve out a few hours of shut-eye, and scientists don't even know why! They do know that it's extremely damaging if a person doesn't get enough sleep, and it's possible that sleep once served some sort of evolutionary benefit. Sleep would be an extremely beneficial distraction if early man had wanted to take a midnight stroll at the time when saber-tooth tigers were on the prowl [source: BBC]. On the other hand, it's not a particularly advantageous trait to carry forward in this age of electricity as the process takes up a lot of time (about a third of our life) and renders the dreamer defenseless against predators [source: Eagleman].

There are a few theories as to why we need so much sleep. One idea is that sleep is restorative to the body, giving it an opportunity to rest. But if rest is the goal, why does our brain remain hard at work? It's possible that while we sleep, the brain is practicing and running problem-solving drills before completing actions in the real world. There are several studies that show that learning can't take place without sleep to reinforce the knowledge [source: Schaffer].

Some of these studies may have real implications for students. One researcher claims that it would be better for students to review information until they were tired, then slept, as opposed to pulling an all-nighter [source: BBC]. Some schools have changed the time of that first bell so that middle and high school students can get a little more snooze time [source: Boyce, Brink].

So let's say these students actually go to sleep, as opposed to engaging in more nefarious behaviors. What happens then? When the dreaming state of REM sleep was discovered in 1951, it was described as a "new continent in the brain" [source: Schaffer]. Though scientists have tried to make inroads on this uncharted continent, mysteries remain about its topography. Like sleep, dreaming may represent some sort of personal gym time for the brain, with dreams allowing a person to work out emotional issues and solidify thoughts and memories.

Or, it's possible that life is but a dream, as the song "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" taught us. When you're asleep, you're experiencing a ton of visual stimuli that the brain is somehow processing. In an awake state, there may be additional stimuli for different senses, but the brain may be doing the same thing with them. If the brain works just as hard sleeping as it is when we're awake, then maybe life is a waking dream [source: Eagleman]. TOP

4: The Puzzle of Why the Brain Stops Functioning

When a killer is on the loose in novels or on the silver screen, there's a special urgency for the detective on the case. It's a race against time to capture the culprit before he or she strikes again. The mystery of how brain cells are killed off by degenerative neurological diseases is no different. As millions of individuals and their families can attest, a brain disorder or injury can be frightening, frustrating and ultimately fatal.

One thing that makes these disorders especially fearsome is just how little is known about why they happen or what you can do about them. Take, for example, the case of Alzheimer's. This disorder leaves behind two very important clues: amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. But what do these clues mean? Does their presence begin the process of Alzheimer's, or do they develop as a result? And if these two features are the perps, what can be done about keeping them off the scene of the brain? As of yet, there's no magic bullet that can restore brain function or re-grow brain cells after they're lost.

In 1990, President George H.W. Bush declared that the last decade of the 20th century would be known as the "Decade of the Brain." Bush's proclamation regarding the brainy decade acknowledged the advances that had been made in understanding how the brain works while pointing out just how much more needed to be learned about what happens up there [source: Bush]. The president cited a number of neurological disorders he hoped to understand further, including Alzheimer's disease, stroke, schizophrenia, autism, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease and muscular dystrophy.

As you might guess, just one decade of the brain was not enough to solve all of the problems that plague the lump atop our spinal cord. To understand how the brain stops working, researchers need to do more work on how the brain actually functions. While scientists know the general function of various parts of the brain, there's only a very basic sense of how the brain's systems work together, especially with all of the functions a person requires of it in a single day. How does it work so fast? What other systems in the body does it use or rely upon? TOP

5: The Case of Nature vs. Nurture

Twins -- when Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have them, it's fascinating. When they appear to Jack Nicholson in the corridors of the Overlook Hotel in the film "The Shining," it's freaky. When Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito claim to be them, it's comedy gold. And while multiple births represent one of the great wonders of life in their own right, they provide important clues in the mysterious case of nature versus nurture.

This case is concerned with how much of our personhood is due to what we came into the world with -- our genes. Do our genes determine how smart we'll be? Who we'll love? What we'll prefer to eat for dinner? Or does what happens once you're in the world make a bigger difference? Will parents or peers or pop stars ultimately shape the person you become? One way for researchers to figure out where genes end and where environment begins is in the study of identical twins, who share the same genes. Scientists have been studying twins to figure out the impact of genes on everything from math ability to predisposition for breast cancer. Twins represent such a rich research minefield for neuroscientists that an annual festival in Twinsburg, Ohio serves as a recruitment party of sorts [source: Revill, Asthana].

The separation of twins is when scientists may be able to really examine nature versus nurture. So far, however, only one study has ever looked at separated twins from infancy through adulthood, and we won't know the results of that study until 2066. In the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, child psychiatrist Peter Neubauer and child psychologist Viola Bernard led a study in which twins and triplets that were given up for adoption at a certain New York adoption agency were separated and studied throughout the duration of their lives [source: Wright].

When the siblings were placed with their respective families, the parents were told that the child was part of an ongoing research study that would require regular interviews and evaluations. No one, however, was told that the child was a twin or triplet, or that the study involved the influence of nature versus nurture. In 1981, the state of New York began requiring that siblings be kept together in the adoption process, and Neubauer realized that the public might not be receptive to a study that used this separation method [source: Richman]. The results were sealed and placed at Yale University until 2066.

The memoir "Identical Strangers" is the story of Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein, who were a part of the study. The sisters were reunited when they were both 35 years old; all but four subjects of the 13-child study have found their missing sibling [source: Richman]. In promoting the book, Bernstein and Schein may provide a sneak peek at Neubauer and Bernard's results. Bernstein and Schein say it's undeniable that genetics play a major role; Bernstein puts the number at more than 50 percent [source: Sunday Herald Sun]. The women discovered they had things in common that included a habit of sucking on the same fingers and the same major in college [source: Sunday Herald Sun]. As for other matters, the women report that they are, as Bernstein put it in an interview with National Public Radio, "different people with different life histories" [source: Richman]. TOP

Why Separate Telangana | Separate Telangana Movement | Hyderabad

2009-12-18T14:07:00.003+05:30

Telangana was a separate state until 1956. There were certain rules while merging it with Andhra like Mulki rules, Presidential orders, Six Principles, GO610, 6th Zone etc as Telangana people were not interested in merging. None of these conditions were followed in last 50 years in combined AP. Telangana people waited patiently for last 50 years. Nothing happened but this discrimination increased. IT IS THE DUTY OF ALL TELANGANA PEOPLE to see that our next generations don’t suffer the similar fate.
Discrimination of Telangana is MULTI-FOLD

Click To Know True Facts Behind Lagadapati Raj Gopal.. Samkhya Andhra (SUM + Ekhys Andhra)

1) Water
2) Jobs
3) Derogatory remarks about Telanganites
4) Development and Revenue generated
5) Political Power
6) Hyderabad

TELANGANA

If Telangana is created, none of Non-Telangana people will have any problem for their business or houses or jobs if they are already living in Telangana/Hyderabad. Few Non-Telangana politicians for their Real estate business interests and other personal gains, opposing Telangana state.
Naxalism is just a reason for the other area leaders to oppose Telangana. Telangana will have more benefits even with Naxalism if separate state is created, because we need IRRIGATION WATER, we need JOBS, we need DEVELOPMENT, we need RESPECT for Telangana culture and people. WE ARE ASKING FOR OUR RIGHTFUL SHARE OF THESE, not somebody’s share of water/jobs etc

WATER

Two major rivers Krishna Godavari pass through Telangana and there is no major irrigation project in Telangana. Total irrigated area in entire Telangana is lessthan what’s there in Guntur dist. alone. Height of discrimination: Projects built on Telangana land for the benefit of Non-Telangana areas. AP major irrigation minister Ponnala Lakshmaiah constituency doesn’t have drinking water also forget about irrigation water, but he takes water from Pothireddypadu (Telangana) to Rayalaseema 400 KM away

JOBS

Govt. jobs (though 20-30%) are important as they control the rest of all other jobs (70-80%). They decide which area to develop, who should be promoted, where an industry/infrastructure should be developed, who should get govt benefits etc.
Any state govt. office in Hyderabad like secretariat, irrigation, R&B, police, home ministry, high court is filled with 90 of Non-Telangana employees. None of them make any project proposal in Telangana and won’t release funds to Telangana areas. This is due to recommendations and political dominations of non-Telangana leaders

DEROGATORY REMARKS ABOUT TELANGANITES

Non-Telangana people make very derogatory remarks about Telanganites in movies. Just because they dominate entire Telugu Film Industry doesn’t mean, they should do such things. Other thing they say Telangana people are lazy. I strongly object this comment. Generally, it’s the hard working people who migrate for better earning and quality living. Migrated people compare with some local lazy guy and say Telangana people are lazy. Lazy people are there everywhere, usually lower 20% in any region falls in this. If you go to Non-Telangana area they will be there in equal numbers. DON’T COMPARE A MIGRATED PERSON WITH LOCAL PERSON.

DEVELOPMENT AND REVENUE GENERATED

Even before merging Telangana with Andhra, it had surplus revenue generated in Hyd state. Now Telangana contributes 60% total revenue/tax generated for AP and most of this is spent in non-Telangana areas. There is no major industry, development in Telangana apart from what’s there in Hyd. No development corridors(like Coastal corridor), major ports, irrigation water which benefit locals. Even for the development of Hyderabad, it’s the TELANGANA people who lost their land & water for roads, road expansions, airport projects, SEZs projects and GOT NOTHING in return.
For the people who say Non-Telangana people invested/developed Hyderabad, they did it for their business gains, NOT FOR DEVELOPING TELANGANA and they are getting their profits for it. Even for building any of these major projects its 90% Telangana labour who worked on this.

POLITICAL POWER

It is one of the important factors for any area development. In the combined AP history of last 53 years, Andhra CMs ruled for 24 years, Rayalseema CMs rules for 22 years and Telangana CMs for 6 years. In this 6 years, 3 Telangana CM were used as make-shift arrangements while changing some of non-Telangana CMs. Telangana CMs never got power as CM and were never allowed to be CM by other area leaders. Each ruled for hardly a year or so before they were removed. Somuch discrimination wouldn’t had occurred, if Telangana CMs were also allowed to rule. If Non-Telangana CMs are smarter/brighter, why they never developed anything in Telangana area? Why no govt jobs/benefits/water projects in Telangana?

HYDERABAD

Hyderabad is the capital of Telangana from 400 years. It’s all surrounded by Telangana districts on all sides. Hyderabad is not like Chandigarh on the boarder of two states to make it Union Territory. It’s the hard work and tax collected from Telangana people by Nizams over 400 years, Hyderabad is built. HIGH COURT, ASSEMBLY, OSMANIA HOSPITAL/UNIVERSITY, HUSSAIN SAGAR, KACHEGUDA, BEGUMPET AIRPORT, all of these were built by Telangana people.

When Andhra separated from Madras state, it didn’t get Chennai. When Gujrat separated from Maharastra, they didn’t get Mumbai. Similarly Hyderabad belongs to Telangana people.
Investments made by Non-Telangana people in Hyderabad much less compared to what they invested in Bangalore. And many Telugus live and do business in Bangalore, so they need Bangalore?

The Best Inventions of 2009

2009-12-03T12:30:00.005+05:30

From a rocket of the future to a $10 million lightbulb, here are TIME's picks for the best new gadgets and breakthrough ideas of the year

The Best Inventions list:

1. The Best Invention of the Year: NASA's Ares Rockets
2. The Tank-Bred Tuna
3. The $10 Million Lightbulb
4. The Smart Thermostat
5. Controller-Free Gaming
6. Teleportation
7. The Telescope for Invisible Stars
8. The AIDS Vaccine
9. Tweeting by Thinking
10. The Electric Eye
11. The Mercury Probe
12. The Personal Carbon Footprint
13. The Solar Shingle
14. The Handheld Ultrasound
15. The YikeBike
16. Vertical Farming
17. The Planetary Skin
18. The $20 Knee
19. A Watchdog for Financial Products
20. The Electric Microbe
21. The Bladeless Fan
22. The Custom Puppy
23. The Cyborg Beetle
24. The Biotech Stradivarius
25. The Nissan Leaf
26. The Robo-Penguin
27. The Universal Unicycle
28. YouTube Funk
29. Dandelion Rubber
30. Wooden Bones
31. The Living Wall
32. The School of One
33. The No-Punt Offense
34. The Human-Powered Vending Machine
35. The Handyman's X-Ray Vision
36. Meat Farms
37. Packing, Improved
38. The Foldable Speaker
39. The Levitating Mouse
40. The Edible Race Car
41. The High-Speed Helicopter
42. The Supersuit
43. The Eyeborg
44. Spiderweb Silk
45. The Sky King
46. The Smart Bullet
47. The Fashion Robot
48. The 3-D Camera
49. The Newest Cloud
50. The World's Fastest (Steam-Powered) Car

Source: time.com

The Best Invention of the Year: The World's Fastest Car

2009-12-03T12:28:00.001+05:30

On Aug. 25, Charles Burnett III smashed a record that had stood for more than a century: the land-speed record for a steam-powered car. On a track at Edwards Air Force Base in California, Burnett was clocked at up to 151 m.p.h. (243 km/h) in his British Steam Car, which is 25 ft. (7.6 m) long, has 12 separate boilers and contains more than 2 miles (3 km) of tubing. It's affectionately nicknamed "the fastest kettle in the world."

View the full list for "The 50 Best Inventions of 2009

Source:time.com

The Best Invention of the Year: The Human-Powered Vending Machine

2009-12-03T12:24:00.001+05:30

When it comes to building a healthier vending machine, lesser minds have considered only swapping out the sodas and Snickers for apples and granola bars. But Pep Torres has a better idea. At his Barcelona workshop, Stereo-Noise, he attached a stationary bicycle to a vending machine so a customer who wants a product would have to pedal a certain distance to get it. Thus far, Stereo-Noise has had just one taker — a Spanish baked-goods company — but Torres has high hopes for the device. "We'd like to see it in subway stations and schools," he says. "That way, people can eat their potato chips and still get in shape."

View the full list for "The 50 Best Inventions of 2009

Source:time.com

The Best Invention of the Year: The Newest Cloud

2009-12-02T20:56:00.003+05:30

Members of the international Cloud Appreciation Society are buzzing about a new kind of cloud. Known as undulatus asperatus, this ominous-looking formation has been described as resembling a rolling seascape — seen from below. It has been proposed for membership in that most exclusive of meteorological clubs, the International Cloud Atlas. The last cloud admitted? Cirrus intortus, in 1951.

View the full list for "The 50 Best Inventions of 2009

Source:time.com

The Best Invention of the Year: The 3-D Camera

2009-12-02T20:54:00.003+05:30

This year the maker of the world's first digital camera, Fujifilm, introduced a 3-D digital camera: the FinePix Real 3D W1. The 10-megapixel FinePix has two lenses, set about as far apart as human eyes, which snap shots of an object from slightly different angles. Those images are then combined into one, creating the illusion of depth. Its 3-D images can be viewed — without clumsy 3-D glasses — on the camera's back LCD screen or displayed in a special digital photo frame.

View the full list for "The 50 Best Inventions of 2009

Source:time.com

The Best Invention of the Year: The Fashion Robot

2009-12-02T20:44:00.003+05:30

It might have the diet of a model — and at 95 lb. (43 kg), the weight — but at 5 ft. 2 in. (1.6 m), the HRP-4C robot model lacks the height of the Giseles and Naomis of catwalk fame. That didn't stop the HRP-4C from making its debut in March, modeling a wedding dress by designer Yumi Katsura on its black-and-silver frame. Researchers at Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology developed the $2 million HRP-4C, which is equipped with doelike eyes and shoulder-length hair, as well as sound-recognition sensors and motors in her face to mimic human expressions. But with the HRP-4C's unusually long arms, rigid gait and expected price of about $200,000, flesh-and-blood models needn't worry about losing their jobs to futuristic fashionistas quite yet.

View the full list for "The 50 Best Inventions of 2009

Source:time.com

The Best Invention of the Year: The Smart Bullet

2009-12-02T20:41:00.005+05:30

You fire a bullet, and it explodes where you tell it to. That's the essence of the XM25, a gun that fires explosive rounds able to neutralize enemies camped out behind cover. Using the gun's laser range finder and the bullets — which are equipped with microchips capable of registering distance according to the number of times they've rotated — a soldier can program a round to detonate beyond an obstruction — no impact required. The practical value? Soldiers in urban environments can fire over or past walls sheltering their enemies, and the bullets will explode on the other side. The weapon is currently under development for the U.S. military by Alliant Tech systems, Heckler & Koch and L-3 Brashear.

View the full list for "The 50 Best Inventions of 2009

Source:time.com

The Best Invention of the Year: The Sky King

2009-12-02T20:31:00.005+05:30

In early April, Takuo Toda, chairman of the Japan Origami Airplane Association, set the world record for the longest flight by a paper airplane: he bested the previous record of 27.6 sec. by 0.3 sec. Toda's record-breaking design, called the Sky King, was made from a single sheet of paper, with no cuts and no gluing. He aspires to launch his planes one day from space — and then retrieve them once they've sailed to Earth.

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The Best Invention of the Year: Spiderweb Silk

2009-12-02T20:25:00.005+05:30

Spiders spin webs with a stretchy material that's stronger than steel and far more flexible. But attempts to use the creepy crawlers for making fabrics have had little success — until now. This year British textiles expert Simon Peers and American fashion designer Nicholas Godley unveiled an 11-ft.-long (3.4 m) spider-silk cloth made in Madagascar. Creating it wasn't easy. Each day 70 people collected thousands of golden orb spiders. Workers carefully spooled out the saffron-hued filament from each spider before releasing it. All told, the feat took four years, half a million dollars and more than a million spiders — and, yes, they sometimes bite.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The Eyeborg

2009-12-02T20:16:00.006+05:30

Rob Spence, a 37-year-old Canadian filmmaker, sustained permanent damage to his right eye when he was 9. Fast-forward to 2009, when Rob's quest to regain vision in his right eye takes an unusual spin. With the help of Kosta Grammatis, John Polanski, Martin Ling, Phil Bowen and camera provider OmniVision, he is attempting to replace his prosthetic eye with a battery-powered, wireless video camera, thereby making himself into an "Eyeborg," with the power to record exactly what he's looking at as digital video.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The Supersuit

2009-12-02T20:10:00.005+05:30

Arena, an Italian waterwear brand, has created the unthinkable: a high-tech swimsuit that outraced Michael Phelps — and it doesn't even have some kind of motor. At the world championships in Rome this summer, German Paul Biedermann, wearing Arena's Powerskin X-Glide racing suit, handed Phelps his first major individual international defeat in four years, in the 200-m freestyle. The light, polymeric surface of Arena's full-body supersuit traps air to boost a swimmer's buoyancy, reducing drag in the water. Biedermann admitted the suit gave him an advantage, and Phelps' coach threatened to pull the phenom from future meets if it wasn't banned. Starting Jan. 1, the X-Glide and other swimsuits made from plastic derivatives are no longer permitted in international competition.
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The Best Invention of the Year: The High-Speed Helicopter

2009-12-02T20:05:00.004+05:30

Helicopters are good for hauling cargo and rescuing mountaineers. But if you need to cover a long distance fast, you'd be better off taking a plane, as helicopters today struggle to top 180 m.p.h. (290 km/h). Sikorsky's X2 Technology helicopter aims to annihilate that speed barrier. Unlike ordinary choppers, which pair a single rotor on top with an antitorque tail rotor, the X2 has two main rotors spinning in opposite directions and an airplane-like propeller at the rear. This highly stable setup should allow the X2 to cruise at a zippy 290 m.p.h. (467 km/h) — about the same speed as some small turboprop planes. Don't expect to see this real-life Airwolf hovering above your house anytime soon, however: the chopper will be tied up in tests for the next decade.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The Edible Race Car

2009-12-02T20:03:00.005+05:30

If it's impossible for a race car to be "good" for the environment, maybe it can at least be a little friendlier. Meet the WorldFirst F3 project, a Formula 3 race car developed at England's University of Warwick: it has carrot fibers in its steering wheel, potato starch in its side mirrors and cashew-nut shells in its brake pads. The whole thing runs on a biodiesel mix of chocolate and vegetable oil.

In a small effort to make the car even greener than it already is, the designers coated the radiator in a substance that converts ozone emissions into oxygen

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The Best Invention of the Year: The Levitating Mouse

2009-12-02T19:52:00.006+05:30

A few very disoriented mice could hold the keys to safer space travel. Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, led by Yuanming Liu, have figured out how to make the tiny critters float in midair using magnets. The effects of the levitation on the mice could provide insight into how to prevent adverse health effects — like bone loss — on astronauts who spend long periods of time in low gravity. According to the scientists who conducted the experiment, the weightless mice were initially confused and flung themselves into rapid spins. The scientists sedated the rodents, which helped, but said eventually even fully conscious mice were able to acclimate to the weightless conditions enough to eat and drink normally.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The Foldable Speaker

2009-12-02T19:45:00.006+05:30

Taking an entertainment center on the road can be a pain, as even the smallest portable speakers weigh a pound or two and take up valuable space. Chicago-based OrigAudio has come up with an ingenious solution: self-powered, 1-watt speakers made of heavy-duty recycled paper. Assembly is easy: simply fold the paper into a 3-in. (7.6 cm) cube. For travel, unfold it and slip the flat sheet into your laptop sleeve. Sold through the company's website, Origaudio.com, and at select retailers, the speakers ($16 a pair) can be hooked up to any audio device with a headphone jack. Part of the proceeds supports the nonprofit Music National Service, which brings music to public schools and low-income communities. Origami has never sounded so good.

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The Best Invention of the Year: Packing, Improved

2009-12-02T19:38:00.004+05:30

Johannes Schneider may not have the coolest invention on this list, but it sure is practical. The University of Mainz researcher and his team developed an algorithm that broke the record for fitting a given number of different-size discs into the smallest circle. The algorithm improves on its competitors (yes, there are competitors) in that it's better at detecting false starts and backtracking when it hits on an inelegant configuration. Schneider believes that his algorithm could benefit packaging and shipping companies by helping them use their resources more efficiently.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The Meat Farms

2009-12-02T19:30:00.005+05:30

"Fifty years hence ... we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium." When Winston Churchill wrote those words in 1932, in vitro meat was science fiction. Now a team of Dutch scientists is closing in on culturing stem cells from pigs and growing muscle in a petri dish. The in vitro meat project is the brainchild of Willem van Eelen, a Dutch businessman who nearly starved to death in a Japanese prison camp and became convinced that artificial meat would solve world hunger.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The Handyman's X-Ray Vision

2009-12-02T19:19:00.004+05:30

Home-improvement projects are daunting enough without the worry of hidden wires and pipes. Walleye Technologies may have the solution: a handheld microwave camera that lets you see through walls. The device weighs less than 3 lb. (1.4 kg) and will cost less than $500 — it's smaller and cheaper than previous microwave imaging equipment — and it emits less radiation than a cell phone. It will be in hardware stores in 2010.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The No-Punt Offense

2009-12-02T19:09:00.006+05:30

As Sports Illustrated explained in a recent story, Kevin Kelley, coach of the Pulaski Academy football team in Little Rock, Ark., has called for only a single punt in the past two years. Like a seasoned gambler, Kelley has figured out that punting on fourth and long near your own end zone decreases the odds of the other team's scoring by only a relatively slim amount. So going for it will pay off in the long run: Pulaski won a state championship last year and is in the hunt this year too.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The School of One

2009-12-02T19:03:00.003+05:30

This past summer, in a sixth-grade math class, New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein piloted a small program in which individualized, technology-based learning takes the place of the old "let's all proceed together" approach. Each day, students in the School of One are given a unique lesson plan — a "daily playlist" — tailored to their learning style and rate of progress that includes a mix of virtual tutoring, in-class instruction and educational video games. It's learning for the Xbox generation.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The Living Wall

2009-12-02T18:50:00.004+05:30

Patrick Blanc specializes in vertical gardens: verdant patches that climb the walls of office buildings, shopping malls, museums and public spaces around the globe. His newest creation is the green-bearded exterior of the Athenaeum Hotel, on which some 260 species of plants (more than 12,000 in all) form a forest façade rising eight stories over London's ritzy Mayfair district. Recognizing that not all plants need soil to grow, Blanc affixes synthetic felt to a frame onto which roots can cling. Part gardener, part botanist, Blanc uses automated irrigation and fertilization systems to keep his specimens healthy and arranges them so that each enjoys optimal growth conditions.

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The Best Invention of the Year: Wooden Bones

2009-12-02T18:44:00.005+05:30

It's odd to think of putting sticks of wood inside people as a revolutionary medical procedure, but that's exactly what a group of Italian scientists is working on. They're using wood — red oak, rattan and sipo work best — to create an artificial bone replacement called carbonated hydroxyapatite. Because of the sponginess of the wood, live bones are expected to grow into the structure faster than with traditional titanium or ceramic implants, decreasing the time it takes to mend a broken bone. The procedure isn't quite ready for human testing, so sheep are currently testing the artificial bones.

Researchers say that with the bone substitute, which takes approximately one week to process, they can create virtually any size or shape

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The Best Invention of the Year: Dandelion Rubber

2009-12-02T18:11:00.003+05:30

A fast-spreading fungus is ravaging the world's rubber trees. But thanks to researchers at Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology, there's now an alternative: dandelions. Scientists have long known that the weed's sap contains latex, but it's difficult to harvest because dandelion ooze polymerizes — goes gummy — when it hits the air. The Fraunhofer team overcame that sticky problem by switching off a key enzyme. The new, improved dandelion produces 500% more usable latex than the old weed does.

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The Best Invention of the Year: YouTube Internet celebrity

2009-12-02T17:21:00.006+05:30

It took Kutiman just two months to finish ThruYOU, the project that would make him both a musical pioneer and an Internet celebrity. Kutiman — a.k.a. Ophir Kutiel, an Israeli musician — took footage posted on YouTube by amateur musicians and mixed it together (drums, piano, synth, theremin, vocals, whatever he could find) into video jams of amazing funkiness, in the process creating an all-new art form that combines DJing, video montage and found art. Some of the players are just goofing around. Some aren't even very good. What makes it work is the performers' unjaded enthusiasm, the hypnotic effect of the looped samples and the sheer serendipitous grooviness that brings it all together as if it were meant to be.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The Universal Unicycle

2009-12-02T17:17:00.004+05:30

No, it's not a Segway or a unicycle. Honda's U3-X "personal mobility" contraption is a device that combines technology from Honda's ASIMO robot project with its omnidirectional driving system, which allows riders to scoot in any direction simply by shifting their weight. What appears to be a single-wheeled design actually includes several smaller motorized wheels, which make side-to-side movement possible. Still in the experimental-model stage, the U3-X has a top speed of 3.7 m.p.h. (6 km/h) and weighs less than 22 lb. (10 kg). A fully charged battery can power it for up to an hour.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The Robo-Penguin

2009-12-02T17:13:00.005+05:30

Penguins may be ungainly on land, but they're speedy swimmers and expert divers. That agility inspired scientists at Festo's Bionic Learning Network to develop the AquaPenguin, an Adélie-size self-navigating bot that "flies" underwater just like the real birds. Highly flexible, it can maneuver in cramped spaces and turn on a dime. Unlike its live counterparts, the bionic bird can also swim backward. Each AquaPenguin behaves differently, but an intelligent 3-D sonar system similar to that used by dolphins and bats enables the bots to travel in groups without colliding. Festo envisions adapting AquaPenguin for automated production systems. It has already built a gripping device sensitive enough to manipulate fragile objects.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The Nissan Leaf

2009-12-02T17:06:00.005+05:30

It's not the world's first electric car, but the Nissan Leaf, launched in August, is the first fully electric vehicle built for mass production for the global market. To help drivers shift their thinking from gas to green, Japan's third largest automaker has about 30 partnerships worldwide focused on developing an infrastructure of battery-recharging stations to keep electric vehicles on the roads. The car's top speed is more than 90 m.p.h. (145 km/h), and its range is 100 miles (160 km) on a full charge. When it moves, it makes a futuristic sound like the flying cars in Blade Runner. Nissan will produce 50,000 Leafs each year at its Oppama plant, southwest of Tokyo, starting in the fall of 2010.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The Biotech Stradivarius

2009-12-02T17:03:00.004+05:30

The Best Invention of the Year: The Biotech Stradivarius

On Sept. 1, an audience of experts took part in a blind test of five violins. One of the violins was a $2 million Stradivarius, made in 1711 by the greatest stringed-instrument maker of all time. Another was a modern violin made of wood that had been specially treated by Professor Francis Schwarze of the Swiss Federal Laboratory for Materials Testing and Research. Schwarze used two fungi to alter Norwegian spruce and sycamore to closely resemble the wood Stradivarius used, then commissioned a violin maker to build an instrument with them. The listeners were asked to identify the Strad, and 113 picked Schwarze's violin. The actual Stradivarius got only 39 votes.

One theory has it that Stradivarius' violins sound better because the craftsman lived in a brief climatic period that produced particularly high-quality wood

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The Best Invention of the Year: The Cyborg Beetle

2009-12-02T16:51:00.006+05:30

Man has yet to master nature, but now he can make it turn left. Armed with funding from the Pentagon's research wing, an engineering team at the University of California, Berkeley, has devised a method of remotely controlling the flight of beetles. By attaching radio antennas and embedding electrodes in the insects' optic lobes, flight muscles and brains, professors Michel Maharbiz and Hirotaka Sato can manipulate their subjects into taking off, hovering in midair and turning on command. The trick? Wirelessly delivering jolts to a microbattery fastened to a circuit board atop the hapless insects, whose agility and capacity to tote valuable payloads could make the tiny creatures the ultimate fly on the wall.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The Custom Puppy

2009-12-02T16:48:00.004+05:30

In 1997, the year scientists announced they had created Dolly the cloned sheep, Lou Hawthorne began wondering what it would take to create a genetic replica of his mother's dog Missy. In 2007, his company BioArts did it, and in 2009, Hawthorne delivered puppies to five customers who paid an average of $144,000 for copies of their canines. (The company also created, pro bono, five clones of a search-and-rescue dog that worked at the World Trade Center after 9/11.) BioArts has since said the pet-cloning market is too small to be commercially viable, but for pet owners who jumped at the chance for a second chance, the puppy love lives on.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The Bladeless Fan

2009-12-02T16:42:00.005+05:30

Ever since Schuyler Skaats Wheeler introduced the electric fan 127 years ago, there hasn't been much innovation in the field. The old adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" comes to mind. But who ever said it was perfect? Certainly not James Dyson, which leads us to the bladeless, nonbuffeting Air Multiplier. Air is pulled in through vents in the base and then pushed out by a hidden impeller over a circular airfoil-shaped ramp that runs inside the rim of the halo, creating an uninterrupted stream of cool air. Because it's bladeless, the Air Multiplier is safer than conventional fans, and it retains normal functions like tilt, oscillation and speed control. It looks cooler too.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The Electric Microbe

2009-12-02T16:38:00.006+05:30

Bacteria have always gotten a bad rap. But we should be thankful for one especially talented microbe, Geobacter, which has tiny hairlike extensions called pili that it uses to generate electricity from mud and wastewater. Professor Derek Lovley and his team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst have engineered a strain of Geobacter that's eight times as efficient as other strains at producing power. The next step: creating Geobacter-based fuel cells that can generate cheap, clean electricity.

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The Best Invention of the Year: A Watchdog for Financial Products

2009-12-02T16:34:00.005+05:30

The Consumer Financial Protection Agency is still just a bill, but if it winds up getting passed and created — as the Obama Administration has been pushing for — Americans will have a bold new ally every time they sign up for a credit card, write a check or take out a home loan. The goal: to make sure that financial products aren't rigged in favor of the firms selling them and that ordinary people have a shot at wading through complicated contracts and fee structures to really understand what they're getting themselves into.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The $20 Knee

2009-12-02T16:30:00.005+05:30

Tens of thousands of amputees in the developing world wear an inexpensive prosthetic called the Jaipur Foot. But poor patients who lose a knee joint have few options: a titanium replacement can cost $10,000, and crude models don't work very well. Now a team of Stanford engineering students has designed a knee that's not only dirt cheap — just $20 — but also mimics the natural joint's movements. Developed with the Jaipur Foot group, the JaipurKnee is made of self-lubricating, oil-filled nylon and is both flexible and stable, even on irregular terrain. The device is being tested in India; more than 300 people have been fitted so far.

The JaipurKnee comprises five pieces of plastic and four nuts and bolts. It requires no special tools and takes just a few hours to manufacture

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The Best Invention of the Year: The Planetary Skin

2009-12-02T16:17:00.005+05:30

What happens to Earth when a forest is razed or energy use soars? We don't know because environmental data are collected by isolated sources, making it impossible to see the whole picture. With the theory that you can't manage what you can't measure, NASA and Cisco have teamed up to develop Planetary Skin, a global "nervous system" that will integrate land-, sea-, air- and space-based sensors, helping the public and private sectors make decisions to prevent and adapt to climate change. The pilot project — a prototype is due by 2010 — will track how much carbon is held by rain forests and where.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The Vertical Farming

2009-12-02T16:13:00.005+05:30

Real estate — the one thing we're not making any more of. That might be good news for landlords but not for the world's farmers, who have finite cropland to feed a growing global population. The answer: build up by farming vertically. Valcent, a company based in El Paso, Texas, is pioneering a hydroponic-farming system that grows plants in rotating rows, one on top of another. The rotation gives the plants the precise amount of light and nutrients they need, while the vertical stacking enables the use of far less water than conventional farming. But best of all, by growing upward instead of outward, vertical farming can expand food supplies without using more land.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The YikeBike

2009-12-02T15:45:00.005+05:30

It's like getting your first Big Wheel all over again — and you don't even have to pedal. An innovative bicycle-design concept derived from the old-fashioned penny-farthing, the YikeBike is a folding electric bicycle out of New Zealand. The rider sits on the seat, holds on at the sides and zooms around at a top speed of 12 m.p.h. (20 km/h). You lean left or right to steer, and it even comes with electronic antiskid brakes. The first 100 YikeBikes will be road-ready by mid-2010 in New Zealand as well as the U.K. and selected other countries in Europe.

The YikeBike weighs roughly 20 lb. (9 kg) and runs on a lithium phosphate battery that can be charged to 80% capacity in 20 minutes

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The Best Invention of the Year: The Handheld Ultrasound

2009-12-02T15:38:00.005+05:30

The stethoscope of the 21st century may have arrived. On Oct. 20, GE unveiled the Vscan, a medical imaging tool as compact as a cell phone and as powerful as a large ultrasound console. Doctors can use it to look inside a patient's body and instantly see fluid around the heart, for example, or a baby in the breech position. In a field where minutes can make the difference between life and death, the Vscan — not yet commercially available — could improve the way medicine is practiced everywhere, from cutting-edge ERs to makeshift village clinics.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The Solar Shingle

2009-12-02T15:11:00.004+05:30

The Dow Chemical Co. has developed a new roof shingle that doubles as a solar panel. The shingles, which can be incorporated into rooftops alongside traditional asphalt shingles, use low-cost thin-film cells of copper indium gallium diselenide. While Dow expects to profit greatly from the Powerhouse Solar Shingle — the company predicts it will bring in as much as $10 billion in revenue by 2020 — there will be significant benefits for consumers too. The innovative shingle is expected to cost 10% to 15% less than traditional solar panels and will be cheaper and quicker to install.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The Personal Carbon Footprint

2009-12-02T14:56:00.005+05:30

Negotiations over carbon emissions resemble the end of a Quentin Tarantino film, when everyone has a gun pointed at everyone else and no one can make a move. Rich nations (like the U.S.) need to make the first cuts, but they won't until developing nations (like China) do — and vice versa. Researchers from Princeton University suggest working on the individual level instead. It's the well-off people of the world — in Indiana or India — who are responsible for most carbon emissions. A strategy focused on rich individuals instead of rich countries might just get us out of this.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The Mercury Probe

2009-12-02T14:52:00.004+05:30

If the solar system has a flame-roasted planet, it's Mercury, where the sun pushes surface temperatures to 800°F (426°C). That brutal environment is one reason no NASA probe has visited Mercury since 1975. But Messenger — the space agency's new Mercury ship — can take the heat. Having just completed a flyby a mere 141 miles (228 km) above the planet's surface, it's preparing to enter Mercury's orbit in 2011. The probe will survey parts of the world never before seen — and will do so in comfort. Covered in an insulating ceramic skin, it will endure temperatures of 700°F (370°C) on its exterior; inside, it will operate at a room-temperature 70°F (20°C).

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The Best Invention of the Year: The Electric Eye

2009-12-02T14:50:00.004+05:30

MIT researchers are developing a microchip that could help blind people regain partial eyesight. Though it won't completely restore normal vision, it will enable a blind person to recognize faces and navigate a room without assistance. The chip, which is encased in titanium to prevent water damage, will be implanted onto a patient's eyeball. The patient will then wear a pair of eyeglasses equipped with a tiny camera that transmits images directly to the chip, which in turn sends them to the brain. With any luck, human trials are only a few years away.

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The Best Invention of the Year: Tweeting by Thinking

2009-12-02T14:46:00.005+05:30

Plenty of people's Twitter feeds appear to be connected directly to their egos, but one scientist's is actually wired to his brain. In April, University of Wisconsin doctoral student Adam Wilson — working with adviser Justin Williams, above — tweeted 23 characters just by thinking. He focused his attention on one flashing letter after another on a computer screen while wearing a cap outfitted with electrodes that monitored changes in his brain activity to figure out which character he wanted. His efforts spelled out "USING EEG TO SEND TWEET," among other messages. The feat marks a major step forward in establishing communication for people with "locked in" syndrome, which paralyzes the body, except for the eyes, but leaves the mind alert. For now, though, it's slow going: with the speediest brain tweeters reportedly managing just eight characters a minute, it's a good thing they're limited to 140.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The AIDS Vaccine

2009-12-02T14:43:00.005+05:30

A vaccine is not exactly a novel invention, but one that's designed to fight HIV certainly is. More than 20 years after the AIDS virus was identified, researchers have devised the first immunization to protect people against HIV infection. A six-year trial showed that the vaccine, which consists of two shots that given individually had failed to protect against HIV, is modestly effective, reducing infection 31% among those receiving the regimen vs. those getting a placebo. Scientists are still trying to figure out how the vaccine decreases infection risk, since the shots did not affect the level of virus in the blood of volunteers. And some experts question whether the small effect is indeed significant. The vaccine is not approved for use yet, but it's the first to make any headway against HIV, and that's a start.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The Telescope for Invisible Stars

2009-12-02T14:40:00.003+05:30

It's no secret that space is cold. But in some places, it's so frigid that light can't radiate in the visible spectrum, which makes celestial bodies invisible. Now the Herschel Space Observatory is exposing them. Launched in May by the European Space Agency, Herschel scans the skies in the infrared spectrum. In order to avoid infrared interference and temperature fluctuations from Earth, it hovers in space at the second Lagrange point, about 930,000 miles (1.5 million km) away, where the gravity of the Earth and sun balance out. Herschel will operate for at least three years, during which it will watch stars and planets being born, revealing more about how the universe came to be.

Herschel is equipped with a mirror 11.5 ft. (3.5 m) in diameter, the largest ever built for use in space. The spacecraft itself is nearly 25 ft. (7.5 m) tall

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The Best Invention of the Year: Teleportation

2009-12-02T14:37:00.004+05:30

Inching our reality ever closer to Star Trek's, scientists at the University of Maryland's Joint Quantum Institute successfully teleported data from one atom to another in a container a meter away. A landmark in the brain-bending field known as quantum information processing, the experiment doesn't quite have the cool factor of body transportation; one atom merely transforms the other so it acts just like the original. Still, atom-to-atom teleportation has major implications for creating super-secure, ultra-fast computers.

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The Best Invention of the Year: Controller-Free Gaming

2009-12-02T14:33:00.004+05:30

Since time immemorial — or at least since Pong — one barrier that has stood between gamers and total Tron-like immersion in their video games has been the controller: the joystick, trackball, mouse, light gun or whatever. This year Microsoft demonstrated a technology, code-named Project Natal, that enables players to control games using only body movements and voice commands, no controller required — the gamer's body becomes the controller. Project Natal uses several cameras, plus a highly specialized microphone and a lot of fancy software, to track the gamer's body and interpret his or her voice. You move your hand, and the Master Chief (or whoever) moves his hand. It's that simple. And that cool.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The Smart Thermostat

2009-12-02T14:30:00.004+05:30

A couple of years ago, Seth Frader-Thompson was driving a Prius. Priuses have little screens on the dashboard that tell you what gas mileage you're getting, in real time, as you drive. It crossed Frader-Thompson's mind that houses should have something similar. So he built the EnergyHub Dashboard, a little device, with a screen, that can talk wirelessly to your furnace and your various appliances and let you know exactly how much electricity (or gas) each one is using and how much it's costing you. It can also turn appliances on and off and raise or lower the temperature in your house so you can rein in the real power hogs. EnergyHub is currently partnering with utilities for trials and will be available direct to consumers in early 2010.

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The Best Invention of the Year: The $10 Million Lightbulb

2009-12-02T14:24:00.003+05:30

With the flick of a switch, Philips Electronics may have just dramatically lowered America's electric bill. In September the Dutch electronics giant became the first to enter the U.S. Department of Energy's L Prize competition, which seeks an LED alternative to the common 60-watt bulb. Sixty-watt lights account for 50% of the domestic incandescent market; if they were replaced by LED bulbs, the U.S. could save enough electricity per year to light 17.4 million households. If Philips wins the L Prize, it will claim a cash award and federal purchasing agreements worth about $10 million.

Philips' LED bulb emits the same amount of light as its incandescent equivalent but uses less than 10 watts and lasts for 25,000 hours — or 25 times as long

View the full list for "The 50 Best Inventions of 2009

Source:time.com

The Best Invention of the Year: The Tank-Bred Tuna

2009-12-02T13:11:00.004+05:30

At 8:47 a.m. on March 12, fish history happened in Port Lincoln, Australia. A tankful of southern bluefin tuna — regal, predatory fish prized for their buttery sashimi meat — began to spawn, and they didn't stop for more than a month. "People said, 'It can't be done, it can't be done,'" says Hagen Stehr, founder of Clean Seas, the Australian company that operates the breeding facility. "Now we've done it." Scientists believe the breeding population of the highly migratory southern bluefin has probably plummeted more than 90% since the 1950s. Others have gotten Pacific bluefin to spawn and grow in ocean cages, but by coaxing the notoriously fussy southern bluefin to breed in landlocked tanks, Clean Seas may finally have given the future of bluefin aquaculture legs. (Or at least a tail.)

View the full list for "The 50 Best Inventions of 2009

Source:time.com

The Best Invention of the Year: NASA's Ares Rockets

2009-12-02T12:59:00.006+05:30

Metal has no DNA; machines have no genes. But that doesn't mean they don't have pedigrees — ancestral lines every bit as elaborate as our own. That's surely the case with the Ares 1 rocket. The best and smartest and coolest thing built in 2009 — a machine that can launch human beings to cosmic destinations we'd never considered before — is the fruit of a very old family tree, one with branches grand, historic and even wicked.

There are a lot of reasons astronauts haven't moved beyond the harbor lights of low-Earth orbit in nearly 40 years, but one of them is that we haven't had the machines to take us anywhere else. The space shuttle is a flying truck: fine for the lunch-bucket work of hauling cargo a couple of hundred miles into space, but nothing more. In 2004, however, the U.S. committed itself to sending astronauts back to the moon and later to Mars, and for that, you need something new and nifty for them to fly. The answer is the Ares 1, which had its first unmanned flight on Oct. 28 and dazzled even the skeptics.

From a distance, the rocket is unprepossessing — a slender white stalk that looks almost as if it would twang in the Florida wind. But up close, it's huge: about 327 ft. (100 m) tall, or the biggest thing the U.S. has launched since the 363-ft. (111 m) Saturn V moon rockets of the early 1970s. Its first stage is a souped-up version of one of the shuttle's solid-fuel rockets; its top stage is a similarly muscled-up model of the Saturn's massive J2 engines.

If that general body plan doesn't exactly break ground, that's the point. NASA tried breaking ground with the shuttles and in doing so broke all the rules. Shuttle astronauts sit alongside the fuel — next to the exploding motor that claimed Challenger, beneath the chunks of falling foam that killed Columbia. And when you fly a spacecraft repeatedly as opposed to chucking it after a single use, there's a lot of wear to repair.

When NASA engineers gathered to plan the next generation of America's rockets, they thus decided to go back to the future — way back. The Saturn V was the brainchild of Wernher von Braun, the German scientist whose bright genius gave the U.S. its finest line of rockets — and whose dark genius gave Hitler the V2 missile that rained terror on London. Von Braun had, in turn, drawn insights from American rocket pioneer Robert Goddard. Goddard built on the work of 17th century artillery innovator Kazimierz Siemienowicz, a Pole.

The Ares 1 is a worthy descendant of their rockets and others, with lightweight composites, better engines and exponentially improved computers giving it more reliability and power. The Ares 1 will launch an Apollo-like spacecraft with four crew members — perhaps by 2015. Alongside it, NASA is developing the Brobdingnagian Ares V, a 380-ft. (116 m) behemoth intended to put such heavy equipment as a lunar lander in Earth orbit, where astronauts can link up with it before blasting away to the moon. Somewhere between the two rockets is the so-called Ares Lite — a heavy-lift hybrid that could carry both humans and cargo and is intended to be a design that engineers can have in their back pockets if the two-booster plan proves unaffordable.

The new rockets could take astronauts to some thrilling places. The biggest costs — and risks — associated with visiting other celestial bodies are from landing and taking off again. But suppose you don't land? An independent commission appointed by the White House to make recommendations for NASA's future recently returned its 154-page report and made strong arguments for bypassing the familiar boots-in-the-soil scenario in favor of a flexible path of flybys and orbits.

Under the new thinking, astronauts could barnstorm or circle the moon, Mars and Mars' twin moons, deploying probes to do their rock-collecting and experiments for them. They could similarly sample near-Earth objects like asteroids. They could also travel to what is known as the Lagrange points — a scattering of spots between Earth and the moon and Earth and the sun where the gravitational forces on the bodies are precisely balanced and spacecraft simply ... hang where they are. These would serve as ideal spots for deploying probes and conducting cosmic observations.

Troublingly for Ares partisans, the same commission that called for such creative uses for the new rockets also called into question how affordable they are, arguing that it might be better simply to modify boosters now used to carry satellites and put a capsule on top. Maybe — but there's the question of safety too. NASA designers say the Ares line will be 10 times as safe as the shuttle and two to three times as safe as competing boosters.

There's no way of knowing if those projections are too rosy, but if history teaches us anything, it's that the space program's grimmest chapters — the launchpad fires and shuttle disasters — unfold when policy planners lean too hard on engineers. The finest moments occur when the bureaucrats give the designers a clean sheet of drafting paper and let them dream. There's genius in knowing how to create a truly big invention — and there's wisdom in knowing how to recognize it and use it.

View the full list for "The 50 Best Inventions of 2009

Source:time.com

Contact lenses with built-in virtual graphics..

2009-11-18T12:14:00.002+05:30

We might soon get to see contact lenses with built-in virtual graphics, as researchers are working on the idea of projecting images into the eye from a contact lens.

Scientists at the University of Washington are labouring on a contact lens that is a prototype of a device that could display information beamed from a mobile device. The proposal was the brainchild of Babak Parviz, at the University of Washington, in Seattle. "Our hope is to create images that effectively float in front of the user perhaps 50 cm to one meter away," News Scientist quoted Parviz as saying.

The expert further said that future versions would be able to gather power from a user's cell phone without obscuring the wearer's view. Mark Billinghurst, Director of the Human Interface Technology Laboratory, in Christchurch, New Zealand added, "A contact lens that allows virtual graphics to be seamlessly overlaid on the real world could provide a compelling augmented reality experience." The team is due to present their prototype at the Biomedical Circuits and Systems (BioCas 2009) conference at Beijing.

Source: siliconindia

India ranks 84th place as world's most corrupt nations

2009-11-18T12:05:00.002+05:30

India is still perceived to be one of the most corrupt countries by Transparency International in its annual corruption perceptions. The country ranks 84th in the list of 'World's most corrupt nations' due to high public-sector corruption.

India's integrity score, a major component of the survey, stands at 3.4 out of the highest score of 10, which indicates that the country has a long way to go as far as eradicating corruption is concerned.

While releasing the names of the world's most corrupt countries, the international watchdog has for the first time recommended that tax havens like Switzerland and Liechtenstein should do away with the secrecy in banking laws.

"Corrupt money must not find safe haven. It is time to put an end to secrecy in banking laws," said the Berlin-based group's Head Huguette Labelle. The bottom five nations were Somalia, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Sudan and Iraq, while the cleanest countries with ranking close to perfect 10 were New Zealand, Denmark and Singapore.

Even China scored 3.6 on the scale, thereby indicating slightly better position than India in terms of perception of corrupt countries. In India's other neighbouring countries, Nepal was at 143rd position much below India, Pakistan scored 2.4 claiming 139th position along with Bangladesh while Sri Lanka scored 3.1 and stood at 97th position.

"Transparency international has found that strong correlation between corruption and poverty continued to exist, jeopardising the global fight against poverty and threatening to derail the United Nations Millennium Development Goals," Admiral (Retd.) R H Tahiliani, Chairman of Transparency International India said in a statement.

Source: Siliconindia

67 World's Most Powerful People

2009-11-17T12:07:00.001+05:30

The 67 heads of state, criminals, financiers and philanthropists who really run the world.

"I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies." --Napoleon Bonaparte

Power has been called many things. The ultimate aphrodisiac. An absolute corrupter. A mistress. A violin. But its true nature remains elusive. After all, a head of state wields a very different sort of power than a religious figure. Can one really compare the influence of a journalist to that of a terrorist? And is power unexercised power at all?

In compiling our first ranking of the World's Most Powerful People we wrestled with these questions--and many more--before deciding to define power in four dimensions. First, we asked, does the person have influence over lots of other people? Pope Benedict XVI, ranked 11th on our list, is the spiritual leader of more than a billion souls, or about one-sixth of the world's population, while Wal-Mart ( WMT - news - people ) CEO Mike Duke (No. 8) is the largest private-sector employer in the United States.

Then we assessed the financial resources controlled by these individuals. Are they relatively large compared with their peers? For heads of state we used GDP, while for CEOs, we looked at a composite ranking of market capitalization, profits, assets and revenues as reflected on our annual ranking of the World's 2000 Largest Companies. In certain instances, like New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller (No. 51), we judged the resources at his disposal compared with others in the industry. For billionaires, like Bill Gates (No. 10), net worth was also a factor.

Next we determined if they are powerful in multiple spheres. There are only 67 slots on our list--one for every 100 million people on the planet--so being powerful in just one area is not enough to guarantee a spot. Our picks project their influence in myriad ways. Take Italy's colorful prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi (No. 12) who is a politician, a media monopolist and owner of soccer powerhouse A.C. Milan, or Oprah Winfrey (No. 45) who can manufacture a best-seller and an American President. More...

Click here for the complete List of 67 heads of state, criminals, financiers and philanthropists who really run the world.

The Less Knowledge you have , The More Money You Make.. Salary Theorem

2009-10-29T12:55:00.002+05:30

"Salary Theorem" states that "Engineers and Scientists can never earn as much as Business Executives and Sales People."

This theorem can now be supported by a mathematical equation based on the following two postulates:

1. Knowledge is Power.
2. Time is Money.

As every engineer knows:
Power = Work / Time

Since:
Knowledge = Power
Time = Money

It follows that:
Knowledge = Work/Money.

Solving for Money, we get:
Money = Work / Knowledge.

Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, Money approaches infinity, regardless of the amount of work done.

Conclusion:
The less you know,the more you make.

Diwali Celebrations Do's and Dont's

2009-10-16T15:39:00.006+05:30

Diwali is thoroughly enjoyed by people of all age groups as they love the splendor and sparkle of fireworks. The earthen lamps that we light on Diwali night are generally placed on balcony and window ledges. So ensure that these are not near any flammable material like wood, cloth or paper. Usually, decorative lights are used on special occasions only and as such not much care is given to one's life. The electric lights should never be tied to any metal poles as any current leak can energize the pole and give a shock to anyone who touches the pole. All accidents due to fireworks occur as a result of carelessness, negligence and ignorance. But these can certainly be avoided by observing some very simple precautions. All of us enjoy the pleasure of light and sound but when disaster strikes the injured has to bear the cross. If you're going to set off fireworks at home this year, please take a few minutes to read through the guidelines.

Diwali is just round the corner

Let's Celebrate Diwali With Following tips,

Do's:

Look for an open space and ensure there are no combustible and inflammatory things around. If so remove them at once
Always buy fire works for licensed and reliable sellers
Keep small children away from the bursting area
Use a sparkler, agarbatti or a long fire wood to burst a cracker as they keep you at a safe distance and do not possess open flames
Read the label on the crackers and follow the instructions carefully.
While igniting aerial fire works like rockets ensure that they are not facing any opening like an open window, door or an open building which may cause fire accidents.
Keep fireworks stock away while lighting a particular firework.
Wear footwear while lighting fireworks.
Keep and a bucket full of water handy.
Be Prepared for Emergency.
Organize a community display of fireworks rather than individuals handling crackers.
Keep first aid & two buckets of water handy. In the event of fire, extinguish flame by pouring water from the buckets. Every major fire is small when it starts.
Light only one firework at a time, by one person. Others should watch from a safe distance.
In case of burns, pour large quantity of water on the burnt area.
In case of major burns, after extinguishing the fire, remove all smoldering clothes. Wrap the victim in a clean bed sheet.
The patient should be taken to a burns specialist or a major hospital. Don't panicky.
In case of eye burns, wash the eye with tap water for 10 minutes and take the victim to a hospital.

Don'ts:

Don't wear Nylon clothes prefer cotton while bursting crackers.
Strictly avoid using matches and lighters for bursting crackers as they have open flames which can be dangerous
Never ignite aerial fireworks (like rockets) if there is any overhead obstruction present like trees and wires etc.
Never ever leave a lit match, agarbatti or sparkler s near unused crackers.
Never experiment with crackers or make your own fire works
Avoid bursting fire works on roads
Never ever light a cracker in your hand. See to it that you put it down and ignite it.
Don't keep your face close to the cracker while trying to ignite it.
Do not throw fire works at people
Never give ANY firework item to small children
Never try to burst crackers indoors or from inside a vehicle.
Do not have fire works in your pocket while igniting another
Do not tend to burst crackers when some one else is trying to ignite one
When crackers take time or do not ignite immediately, do not indulge in trying to burst them. Rush to a safe place immediately. Throw some water to diffuse them.
Never try to light used fireworks.
Don't ignite fireworks in any container.
Don't approach immediately to the misfired fireworks.
Don't tamper with misfired fireworks.
Don't wear loosely hanging clothes; secure all clothes properly.
Don't apply any cream or ointment or oil on burnt area.

Have Fun but Play Safe, Play Cool !!! ...

Happy Diwali.....

Got 10 minutes for your country? If yes, then read - Dr. Abdul Kalam

2009-10-15T16:39:00.006+05:30

Why is the media here so negative..?

Why are we in India so embarrassed to recognize our own strengths, our achievements?

We are such a great nation. We have so many amazing success stories but we refuse to acknowledge them. Why?
We are the first in milk production.
We are number one in Remote sensing satellites.
We are the second largest producer of wheat.
We are the second largest producer of rice.
Look at Dr. Sudarshan , he has transferred the tribal village into a self-sustaining, self-driving unit. There are millions of such achievements but our media is only obsessed in the bad news and failures and disasters.
I was in Tel Aviv once and I was reading the Israeli newspaper. It was the day after a lot of attacks and bombardments and deaths had taken place. The Hamas had struck. But the front page of the newspaper had the picture of a Jewish gentleman who in five years had transformed his desert into an orchid and a granary. It was this inspiring picture that everyone woke up to. The gory details of killings, bombardments, deaths, were inside in the newspaper, buried among other news.
In India we only read about death, sickness, terrorism, crime.. Why are we so NEGATIVE? Another question: Why are we, as a nation so obsessed with foreign things? We want foreign T.Vs, we want foreign shirts. We want foreign technology.

Why this obsession with everything imported. Do we not realize that self-respect comes with self-reliance? I was in Hyderabad giving this lecture, when a 14 year old girl asked me for my autograph. I asked her what her goal in life is. She replied: I want to live in a developed India . For her, you and I will have to build this developed India . You must proclaim. India is not an under-developed nation; it is a highly developed nation.

Do you have 10 minutes? Allow me to come back with a vengeance.

Got 10 minutes for your country? If yes, then read; otherwise, choice is yours.

YOU say that our government is inefficient.
YOU say that our laws are too old.
YOU say that the municipality does not pick up the garbage.
YOU say that the phones don't work, the railways are a joke. The airline is the worst in the world, mails never reach their destination.
YOU say that our country has been fed to the dogs and is the absolute pits.

YOU say, say and say. What do YOU do about it?

Take a person on his way to Singapore. Give him a name - 'YOURS'. Give him a face - 'YOURS'. YOU walk out of the airport and you are at your International best. In Singapore you don't throw cigarette butts on the roads or eat in the stores. YOU are as proud of their Underground links as they are. You pay $5 (approx. Rs. 60) to drive through Orchard Road (equivalent of Mahim Causeway or Pedder Road) between 5 PM and 8 PM. YOU come back to the parking lot to punch your parking ticket if you have over stayed in a restaurant or a shopping mall irrespective of your status identity… In Singapore you don't say anything, DO YOU? YOU wouldn't dare to eat in public during Ramadan, in Dubai . YOU would not dare to go out without your head covered in Jeddah.
YOU would not dare to buy an employee of the telephone exchange in London at 10 pounds (Rs.650) a month to, 'see to it that my STD and ISD calls are billed to someone else.'YOU would not dare to speed beyond 55 mph (88 km/h) in Washington and then tell the traffic cop, 'Jaanta hai main kaun hoon (Do you know who I am?). I am so and so's son. Take your two bucks and get lost.' YOU wouldn't chuck an empty coconut shell anywhere other than the garbage pail on the beaches in Australia and New Zealand .
Why don't YOU spit Paan on the streets of Tokyo? Why don't YOU use examination jockeys or buy fake certificates in Boston??? We are still talking of the same YOU. YOU who can respect and conform to a foreign system in other countries but cannot in your own. You who will throw papers and cigarettes on the road the moment you touch Indian ground. If you can be an involved and appreciative citizen in an alien country, why cannot you be the same here in India?

Once in an interview, the famous Ex-municipal commissioner of Bombay, Mr. Tinaikar, had a point to make. 'Rich people's dogs are walked on the streets to leave their affluent droppings all over the place,' he said. 'And then the same people turn around to criticize and blame the authorities for inefficiency and dirty pavements. What do they expect the officers to do? Go down with a broom every time their dog feels the pressure in his bowels?
In America every dog owner has to clean up after his pet has done the job. Same in Japan.

Will the Indian citizen do that here?' He's right.. We go to the polls to choose a government and after that forfeit all responsibility.
We sit back wanting to be pampered and expect the government to do everything for us whilst our contribution is totally negative. We expect the government to clean up but we are not going to stop chucking garbage all over the place nor are we going to stop to pick a up a stray piece of paper and throw it in the bin. We expect the railways to provide clean bathrooms but we are not going to learn the proper use of bathrooms.
We want Indian Airlines and Air India to provide the best of food and toiletries but we are not going to stop pilfering at the least opportunity.
This applies even to the staff who is known not to pass on the service to the public.

When it comes to burning social issues like those related to women, dowry, girl child! and others, we make loud drawing room protestations and continue to do the reverse at home. Our excuse? 'It's the whole system which has to change, how will it matter if I alone forego my sons' rights to a dowry.' So who's going to change the system?
What does a system consist of? Very conveniently for us it consists of our neighbours, other households, other cities, other communities and the government. But definitely not me and YOU. When it comes to us actually making a positive contribution to the system we lock ourselves along with our families into a safe cocoon and look into the distance at countries far away and wait for a Mr.Clean to come along & work miracles for us with a majestic sweep of his hand or we leave the country and run away.
Like lazy cowards hounded by our fears we run to America to bask in their glory and praise their system. When New York becomes insecure we run to England . When England experiences unemployment, we take the next flight out to the Gulf. When the Gulf is war struck, we demand to be rescued and brought home by the Indian government. Everybody is out to abuse and rape the country. Nobody thinks of feeding the system. Our conscience is mortgaged to money.

Dear Indians, The article is highly thought inductive, calls for a great deal of introspection and pricks one's conscience too…. I am echoing J. F. Kennedy's words to his fellow Americans to relate to Indians…..

'ASK WHAT WE CAN DO FOR INDIA AND DO WHAT HAS TO BE DONE TO MAKE INDIA WHAT AMERICA AND OTHER WESTERN COUNTRIES ARE TODAY'

Lets do what India needs from us.

Thank you,

Dr. Abdul Kalam

What's Inside your Coffee cup?

2009-10-07T15:00:00.000+05:30

Caffeine
This is why the world produces more than 16 billion pounds of coffee beans per year. It's actually an alkaloid plant toxin (like nicotine and cocaine), a bug killer that stimulates us by blocking neuroreceptors for the sleep chemical adenosine. The result: you, awake.

Water
Hot H2O is a super solvent, leaching flavors and oils out of the coffee bean. A good cup of joe is 98.75 percent water and 1.25 percent soluble plant matter. Caffeine is a diuretic, so coffee newbies pee out the water quickly; java junkies build up resistance.

2-Ethylphenol
Creates a tarlike, medicinal odor in your morning wake-up. It's also a component of cockroach alarm pheromones, chemical signals that warn the colony of danger.

Quinic acid
Gives coffee its slightly sour flavor. On the plus side, it's one of the starter chemicals in the formulation of Tamiflu.

3,5 Dicaffeoylquinic acid
When scientists pretreat neurons with this acid in the lab, the cells are significantly (though not completely) protected from free-radical damage. Yup: Coffee is a good source of antioxidants.

Dimethyl disulfide
A product of roasting the green coffee bean, this compound is just at the threshold of detectability in brewed java. Good thing, too, as it's one of the compounds that gives human feces its odor.

Acetylmethylcarbinol
That rich, buttery taste in your daily jolt comes in part from this flammable yellow liquid, which helps give real butter its flavor and is a component of artificial flavoring in microwave popcorn.

Putrescine
Ever wonder what makes spoiled meat so poisonous? Here you go. Ptomaines like putrescine are produced when E. coli bacteria in the meat break down amino acids. Naturally present in coffee beans, it smells, as you might guess from the name, like Satan's outhouse.

Trigonelline
Chemically, it's a molecule of niacin with a methyl group attached. It breaks down into pyridines, which give coffee its sweet, earthy taste and also prevent the tooth-eating bacterium Streptococcus mutans from attaching to your teeth. Coffee fights the Cavity Creeps.

Niacin
Trigonelline is unstable above 160 degrees F; the methyl group detaches, unleashing the niacin—vitamin B3—into your cup. Two or three espressos can provide half your recommended daily allowance.

Source:wired.com

Think before drinking tea while travelling by Indian Railway

2009-10-06T11:28:00.000+05:30

Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited (IRCTC) has firmed up plans to set up over 50 multi-cuisine food plazas at major railway stations throughout the country during the current year. The Food plazas will have contemporary decor , air conditioned ambiance and round the clock operation to suit passenger convenience with market driven competitive pricing. Indian Railways span global volumes in hospitality and catering sectors with services provided to 13 million passengers everyday.

But Think before drinking tea while travelling by Indian Railway

Check the following images how the tea in a train is made...............

Caters use toilet water for making tea

Bath heater is used for making tea.

Your tea is made in a special zone near toilet.

These snaps were taken by a person while traveling in Konkan Railway (Janshatabadi Exp.)

Jago Grahak Jago......

Why NATHURAM GODSE Killed Gandhi...

2009-10-01T16:34:00.001+05:30

Godse is often a misunderstood character. He is referred to as a Hindu fanatic. It is often hard to understand Godse because the Government of India had suppressed information about him. His court statements, letters etc. were all banned from the public until recently. Judging from his writings one thing becomes very clear – He was no fanatic. His court statements are very well read out and indicate a calm and collected mental disposition. He never even once speaks ill about Gandhi as a person, but only attacks Gandhi’s policies which caused ruin and untold misery to Hindus. Another interesting point to note is that Godse had been working with the Hindu refugees fleeing from Pakistan. He had seen the horrible atrocities committed on them. Many women had their hands cut off, nose cut off, even little girls had been raped mercilessly. Despite this Godse did not harm even single Muslim in India which he could easily have. So it would be a grave mistake to call him a Hindu fanatic.

Let us start by studying the motive behind Godse’s act. By seeing the nature of the assassination in public space and Godse’s act of turning himself over to the Police, we can see that Godse did not do this for personal reasons. He very well knew that he would be hanged and his name would be disgraced as Gandhi was considered a saint. And again Godse could have ran away and escaped punishment. But he did the reverse. He called a police officer and courted arrest. Before we proceed it would be wise to understand the backdrop of the assassination.

The central government had taken a decision — Pakistan will not be given Rs 55 crores. On January 13 Gandhi started a fast unto death that Pakistan must be given the money. On January 13, the central government changed its earlier decision and announced that Pakistan would be given the amount. On January 13, Nathuram decided to assassinate Gandhi.

Nathuram Godse was a learned man, very sharp and intelligent – editor of “Agrani” (one of the most famous newspaper of that time – with Nana Aapte). In his last editorial of “Agrani” which he changed overnight – he said “Gandhi must be stopped – at any cost” and he justified why Gandhiji’s assassination was not only inevitable but also a delayed action, sth tht shud’ve happened LONG AGO.

In Nathuram’s words - “ I don’t refute Gandhi’s theory of non-violence. He may be a saint but he is not a politician. His theory of non-violence denies self-defence and self-interest. The non-violence that defines the fight for survival as violence is a theory not of non-violence but of self-destruction.The division of the nation was an unnecessary decision. What was the percentage of the Muslim population as compared to the population of the nation? There was no need for a separate nation. Had it been a just demand, Maulana Azad would not have stayed back in India. But because Jinnah insisted and because Gandhi took his side, India was divided, in spite of opposition from the nation, the Cabinet. An individual is never greater than a nation.

In a democracy you cannot put forward your demands at knife-point. Jinnah did it and Gandhi stabbed the nation with the same knife. He dissected the land and gave a piece to Pakistan. We did picket that time but in vain. The Father of our Nation went to perform his paternal duties for Pakistan! Gandhi blackmailed the cabinet with his fast unto death. His body, his threats to die are causing the destruction — geographical as well as economical — of the nation. Today, Muslims have taken a part of the nation, tomorrow Sikhs may ask for Punjab. The religions are again dividend into castes, they will demand sub-divisions of the divisions. What remains of the concept of one nation, national integration? Why did we fight the British in unison for independence? Why not separately? Bhagat Singh did not ask only for an independent Punjab or Subhash Chandra Bose for an independent Bengal?

I am going to assassinate him in the open, before the public, because I am going to do it as my duty. If I do it surreptitiously, it becomes a crime in my own eyes. I will not try to escape, I will surrender and naturally I will be hanged. One assassination, one hanging. I don’t want two executions for one assassination and I don’t want your involvement, participation or company. (This was for Nana-Apte and Veer Savarkar as they were against ghandhi’s policies too, Godse wanted to assassinate gandhi all by himself and took promise from Nana Apte that he will continue helping Veer Savarkar in rebuilding India as a strong free nation.)

On January 30, I reached Birla Bhavan at 12 pm. Gandhi was sitting outside on a cot enjoying the sunshine. Vallabhbhai Patel’s granddaughter was sitting at his feet. I had the revolver with me. I could have assassinated him easily then, but I was convinced that his assassination was to be a punishment and a sentence against him, and I would execute him. I wanted witnesses for the execution but there were none. I did not want to escape after the execution as there was not an iota of guilt in my mind. I wanted to surrender, but surrender to whom? There was a good crowd to collect for the evening prayers. I decided on the evening of January 30 as the date for Gandhi’s execution.

Gandhi climbed the steps and came forward. He had kept his hands on the shoulders of the two girls. I wanted just three seconds more. I moved two steps forward and faced Gandhi. Now I wanted to take out the revolver and salute him for whatever sacrifice and service he had made for the nation. One of the two girls was dangerously close to Gandhi and I was afraid that she might be injured in the course of firing. As a precautionary measure I went one more step ahead, bowed before him and gently pushed the girl away from the firing line. The next moment I fired at Gandhi. Gandhi was very weak, there was a feeble sound like ‘aah’ (There are proof that Gandhi did NOT say “Hey Raam” at that time – it’s just made up stuff ) from him and he fell down.

After the firing I raised my hand holding the revolver and shouted, ‘Police, police’. For 30 seconds nobody came forward and I scanned the crowd. I saw a police officer. I signalled to him to come forward and arrest me. He came and caught my wrist, then a second man came and touched the revolver… I let it go…”

This is Nathuram Godse’s speech in court.

    Born in a devotional Brahmin family, I instinctively came to revere Hindu religion, Hindu history and Hindu culture. I had, therefore, been intensely proud of Hinduism as a whole. As I grew up I developed a tendency to free thinking unfettered by any superstitious allegiance to any isms, political or religious. That is why I worked actively for the eradication of untouchability and the caste system based on birth alone. I openly joined anti-caste movements and maintained that all Hindus were of equal status as to rights, social and religious and should be considered high or low on merit alone and not through the accident of birth in a particular caste or profession. I used publicly to take part in organized anti-caste dinners in which thousands of Hindus, Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, Chamars and Bhangis participated. We broke the caste rules and dined in the company of each other.I have read the speeches and writings of Dadabhai Nairoji, Vivekanand, Gokhale, Tilak, along with the books of ancient and modern history of India and some prominent countries like England, France, America and’ Russia. Moreover I studied the tenets of Socialism and Marxism. But above all I studied very closely whatever Veer Savarkar and Gandhiji had written and spoken, as to my mind these two ideologies have contributed more to the moulding of the thought and action of the Indian people during the last thirty years or so, than any other single factor has done.

    All this reading and thinking led me to believe it was my first duty to serve Hindudom and Hindus both as a patriot and as a world citizen. To secure the freedom and to safeguard the just interests of some thirty crores (300 million) of Hindus would automatically constitute the freedom and the well being of all India, one fifth of human race. This conviction led me naturally to devote myself to the Hindu Sanghtanist ideology and programme, which alone, I came to believe, could win and preserve the national independence of Hindustan, my Motherland, and enable her to render true service to humanity as well.

    Since the year 1920, that is, after the demise of Lokamanya Tilak, Gandhiji’s influence in the Congress first increased and then became supreme. His activities for public awakening were phenomenal in their intensity and were reinforced by the slogan of truth and non-violence, which he paraded ostentatiously before the country. No sensible or enlightened person could object to those slogans. In fact there is nothing new or original in them. They are implicit in every constitutional public movement. But it is nothing but a mere dream if you imagine that the bulk of mankind is, or can ever become, capable of scrupulous adherence to these lofty principles in its normal life from day to day. In fact, honour, duty and love of one’s own kith and kin and country might often compel us to disregard non-violence and to use force. I could never conceive that an armed resistance to an aggression is unjust. I would consider it a religious and moral duty to resist and, if possible, to overpower such an enemy by use of force. [In the Ramayana] Rama killed Ravana in a tumultuous fight and relieved Sita. [In the Mahabharata], Krishna killed Kansa to end his wickedness; and Arjuna had to fight and slay quite a number of his friends and relations including the revered Bhishma because the latter was on the side of the aggressor. It is my firm belief that in dubbing Rama, Krishna and Arjuna as guilty of violence, the Mahatma betrayed a total ignorance of the springs of human action.

    In more recent history, it was the heroic fight put up by Chhatrapati Shivaji that first checked and eventually destroyed the Muslim tyranny in India. It was absolutely essentially for Shivaji to overpower and kill an aggressive Afzal Khan, failing which he would have lost his own life. In condemning history’s towering warriors like Shivaji, Rana Pratap and Guru Gobind Singh as misguided patriots, Gandhiji has merely exposed his self-conceit. He was, paradoxical, as it may appear, a violent pacifist who brought untold calamities on the country in the name of truth and non-violence, while Rana Pratap, Shivaji and the Guru will remain enshrined in the hearts of their countrymen forever for the freedom they brought to them.

    The accumulating provocation of thirty-two years, culminating in his last pro-Muslim fast, at last goaded me to the conclusion that the existence of Gandhi should be brought to an end immediately. Gandhi had done very well in South Africa to uphold the rights and well being of the Indian community there. But when he finally returned to India he developed a subjective mentality under which he alone was to be the final judge of what was right or wrong. If the country wanted his leadership, it had to accept his infallibility; if it did not, he would stand aloof from the Congress and carry on his own way. Against such an attitude there can be no halfway house. Either Congress had to surrender its will to his and had to be content with playing second fiddle to all his eccentricity, whimsicality, metaphysics and primitive vision, or it had to carry on without him. He alone was the Judge of everyone and everything; he was the master brain guiding the civil disobedience movement; no other could know the technique of that movement. He alone knew when to begin and when to withdraw it. The movement might succeed or fail, it might bring untold disaster and political reverses but that could make no difference to the Mahatma’s infallibility. ‘A Satyagrahi can never fail’ was his formula for declaring his own infallibility and nobody except himself knew what a Satyagrahi is.

    Thus, the Mahatma became the judge and jury in his own cause. These childish insanities and obstinacies, coupled with a most severe austerity of life, ceaseless work and lofty character made Gandhi formidable and irresistible. Many people thought that his politics were irrational but they had either to withdraw from the Congress or place their intelligence at his feet to do with, as he liked. In a position of such absolute irresponsibility Gandhi was guilty of blunder after blunder, failure after failure, disaster after disaster.

    Gandhi’s pro-Muslim policy is blatantly in his perverse attitude on the question of the national language of India. It is quite obvious that Hindi has the most prior claim to be accepted as the premier language. In the beginning of his career in India, Gandhi gave a great impetus to Hindi but as he found that the Muslims did not like it, he became a champion of what is called Hindustani. Everybody in India knows that there is no language called Hindustani; it has no grammar; it has no vocabulary. It is a mere dialect; it is spoken, but not written. It is a bastard tongue and crossbreed between Hindi and Urdu, and not even the Mahatma’s sophistry could make it popular. But in his desire to please the Muslims he insisted that Hindustani alone should be the national language of India. His blind followers, of course, supported him and the so-called hybrid language began to be used. The charm and purity of the Hindi language was to be prostituted to please the Muslims. All his experiments were at the expense of the Hindus.

    From August 1946 onwards the private armies of the Muslim League began a massacre of the Hindus. The then Viceroy, Lord Wavell, though distressed at what was happening, would not use his powers under the Government of India Act of 1935 to prevent the rape, murder and arson. The Hindu blood began to flow from Bengal to Karachi with some retaliation by the Hindus. The Interim Government formed in September was sabotaged by its Muslim League members right from its inception, but the more they became disloyal and treasonable to the government of which they were a part, the greater was Gandhi’s infatuation for them. Lord Wavell had to resign as he could not bring about a settlement and he was succeeded by Lord Mountbatten. King Log was followed by King Stork.

    The Congress, which had boasted of its nationalism and socialism, secretly accepted Pakistan literally at the point of the bayonet and abjectly surrendered to Jinnah. India was vivisected and one-third of the Indian territory became foreign land to us from August 15, 1947. Lord Mountbatten came to be described in Congress circles as the greatest Viceroy and Governor-General this country ever had. The official date for handing over power was fixed for June 30, 1948, but Mountbatten with his ruthless surgery gave us a gift of vivisected India ten months in advance. This is what Gandhi had achieved after thirty years of undisputed dictatorship and this is what Congress party calls ‘freedom’ and ‘peaceful transfer of power’. The Hindu-Muslim unity bubble was finally burst and a theocratic state was established with the consent of Nehru and his crowd and they have called ‘freedom won by them with sacrifice’ – whose sacrifice? When top leaders of Congress, with the consent of Gandhi, divided and tore the country – which we consider a deity of worship – my mind was filled with direful anger.

    One of the conditions imposed by Gandhi for his breaking of the fast unto death related to the mosques in Delhi occupied by the Hindu refugees. But when Hindus in Pakistan were subjected to violent attacks he did not so much as utter a single word to protest and censure the Pakistan Government or the Muslims concerned. Gandhi was shrewd enough to know that while undertaking a fast unto death, had he imposed for its break some condition on the Muslims in Pakistan, there would have been found hardly any Muslims who could have shown some grief if the fast had ended in his death. It was for this reason that he purposely avoided imposing any condition on the Muslims. He was fully aware of from the experience that Jinnah was not at all perturbed or influenced by his fast and the Muslim League hardly attached any value to the inner voice of Gandhi.

    Gandhi is being referred to as the Father of the Nation. But if that is so, he had failed his paternal duty inasmuch as he has acted very treacherously to the nation by his consenting to the partitioning of it. I stoutly maintain that Gandhi has failed in his duty. He has proved to be the Father of Pakistan. His inner-voice, his spiritual power and his doctrine of non-violence of which so much is made of, all crumbled before Jinnah’s iron will and proved to be powerless.

    Briefly speaking, I thought to myself and foresaw I shall be totally ruined, and the only thing I could expect from the people would be nothing but hatred and that I shall have lost all my honour, even more valuable than my life, if I were to kill Gandhiji. But at the same time I felt that the Indian politics in the absence of Gandhiji would surely be proved practical, able to retaliate, and would be powerful with armed forces. No doubt, my own future would be totally ruined, but the nation would be saved from the inroads of Pakistan. People may even call me and dub me as devoid of any sense or foolish, but the nation would be free to follow the course founded on the reason which I consider to be necessary for sound nation-building. After having fully considered the question, I took the final decision in the matter, but I did not speak about it to anyone whatsoever. I took courage in both my hands and I did fire the shots at Gandhiji on 30th January 1948, on the prayer-grounds of Birla House.

    I do say that my shots were fired at the person whose policy and action had brought rack and ruin and destruction to millions of Hindus. There was no legal machinery by which such an offender could be brought to book and for this reason I fired those fatal shots.

    I bear no ill will towards anyone individually but I do say that I had no respect for the present government owing to their policy, which was unfairly favourable towards the Muslims. But at the same time I could clearly see that the policy was entirely due to the presence of Gandhi. I have to say with great regret that Prime Minister Nehru quite forgets that his preachings and deeds are at times at variances with each other when he talks about India as a secular state in season and out of season, because it is significant to note that Nehru has played a leading role in the establishment of the theocratic state of Pakistan, and his job was made easier by Gandhi’s persistent policy of appeasement towards the Muslims.

    I now stand before the court to accept the full share of my responsibility for what I have done and the judge would, of course, pass against me such orders of sentence as may be considered proper. But I would like to add that I do not desire any mercy to be shown to me, nor do I wish that anyone else should beg for mercy on my behalf. My confidence about the moral side of my action has not been shaken even by the criticism levelled against it on all sides. I have no doubt that honest writers of history will weigh my act and find the true value thereof some day in future.

    -NATHURAM GODSE