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Wednesday, November 18, 2009

History of Nepalese Insuranse bu knesbist

History of general insurance in Nepal goes back to B.S.2005(1948 A.D.). Right from 1950 A.D.,a number of companies started their operation in General insurance. Presently 15 companies are transacting general insurance business. But start and growth of life insurance has been very slow.
Life Insurance Corporation of India started life insurance business in Nepal but its function was mostly confined to Kathmandu city.
LIC stopped its operation in 1972 A.D. Life insurance business was taken over by Rashtriya Beema Sansthan in B.S.2029 after its incorporation on B.S. 2024/09/01 (16-12-1967 A.D.) and by National life and General Insurance Company in B.S.2045(1989A.D.) after its incorporation on B.S.2043/02/19 (2-6-1986)A.D.
The insurance activities were regulated by Insurance Act 2026(1969). The Act and the regulations were modified and new Insurance Act and Regulations were enacted in 2049(1992). Beema Samiti observes and regulates the insurance activities in Nepal as per the provisions of Insurance Act 2049 and Insurance regulations 2049.
Even though the performance of RBS has been impressive, the reach and density of insurance has been very low even in comparison with the insurance density in developing nations.

Web hosting in nepal by knesbist

Webhosting in Nepal has gone through great changes. From earlier expensive webhosting to cheap webhosting of Rs 300 for webhosting , webhosting has become much economically feasible for any organization. Not only big organization even Nepali colleges, school, shops etc has their website. The technology has become cheaper now. Nepal now has qualitative websites, qualitative and reliable webhost and people are paying right price for the webhosting and web designing. Nepal is now present in global outsourcing.

information about psp by knesbist

PlayStation Portable (officially abbreviated PSP) is a handheld gamconsole manufactured and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. Development of the console was announced during E3 2003, and it was unveiled on May 11, 2004 at a Sony press conference before E3 2004.The system was released in Japan on December 12, 2004, in North Americaon March 24, 2005, and in the PAL region on September 1, 2005.
The PlayStation Portable is the first handheld video game console to use an optical disc format, Universal Media Disc(UMD), as its primary storage medium.Other distinguishing features of the console include its large viewing screen,robust multi-media capabilities, and connectivity with the PlayStation 3, other PSPs, and the Internet.
Sales of the PSP have (with cyclical exceptions) lagged behind its main competitor, the Nintendo DS.Nevertheless, the console is "the most successful non-Nintendo handheld game system ever sold". After the release of a remodeled, slimmer, and lighter version of the PlayStation Portable, appropriately titled Slim & Lite, in early September 2007, sales quadrupled in the United Kingdom the following week and increased by nearly 200% in North America for the month of October. The Slim & Lite had a minor redesign including a new screen and inbuilt microphone, and has since been followed by the PSP Go.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Trading Forex Easy By Market Prediction

Online Forex trading is spreading with great speed on a global scale. Forex trading is becoming very popular mainly because of the poor economic conditions that exist worldwide and the potential to make profit fast and legally by trading the smallest fraction in currency price changes. Traders need to only have a small amount of funds available in their account in order to start trading and most brokers offer fast online account opening to make it easy. The newest portable technology in the world today such as Smartphones, PDAs and Notebooks are making Forex trading even more convenient and easy. However, Forex trading just got even more easy!The most experienced Forex traders out there know very well how stressful and complicating Forex trading can be. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of different technical indicators and trading systems that can be used to trade Forex. There are literally hundreds of companies and Forex trading newbies in the world selling these indicators and trading systems and promising amazing results. There are countless other websites such as online Forex forums that provide free indicators for traders to try also. Along with all these indicators and trading systems may come complicating and time-consuming instructions or maybe even no instructions at all. There may be some great technical indicators and trading systems somewhere online that are included in the thousands that exist but most of the time these indicators are contradicting will and give mixed signals. Some indicators are complete nonsense and contain errors in the coding. Other indicators will only work on certain currency pairs or timeframes. Almost every new Forex trader starts trading with these useless indicators. However, as you will soon learn, Forex trading is actually easy.Prediction of the Forex market is the method in which Forex trading is easy. Predicting Forex is actually not that unrealistic. In fact, a small amount of global Forex traders have been doing it successfully for years now. Forex trading should not be frustrating and complicated. In fact, profitable Forex trading should not need any technical indicators at all. There should be no need for a trader to have to setup multiple indicators on their charts and wait for a signal to buy or sell. There should be no need for a trader to wait for multiple indicators to agree in harmony with each other in order to enter a trade. Also, a trader should not have to deal with contradicting and time-consuming indicators. After a Forex trader learns the method of Forex market prediction then Forex actually becomes easy.

How to Make Money In The Forex Market No Matter Who You Are -Automated Forex Trading Systems

Automated forex trading systems can make you a huge amount of money, even if you've never traded forex in your life. Here is how automated forex trading systems work to make you money no matter who you are.Automated forex trading systems are programs which you can run on your own computer and which analyze real time market data around the clock and automatically place and end trades for you to react to how the market fluctuates. So defensively if you are invested in a profitable trade but suddenly the market shifts out of your favor, with an automated trade program in place that now bad investment gets traded away at the earliest opportunity, thus shielding you from loss.Conversely, automated forex trading systems scour the market using mathematical algorithms designed to detect profitable, high probability trading opportunities and trade accordingly, then following that investment along like I just mentioned. The ultimate goal is to make sure that you always land on the winning sides of your trades as often as possible.Because these programs remain tied into real time market data around the clock, they are in a position to trade earlier and more effectively without having to mull over the best course of action faster than any other means of trading or human counterpart. Also, no emotions or guesswork factors into any trade the program makes, every move that it makes is always in a direct response to how the market fluctuates.When you get down to it, automated forex trading systems don't do anything that any competent trader couldn't do. But the point is that you get a competent trader working for you 24/7, which is a major benefit considering the 24 hour a day schedule of the forex market to begin with, and you get this for a one time fee. This is compared to the full service brokers out there who charge regular fees, then take commissions on top of that. With 30% of all traders currently using automated forex trading systems, it's not wonder that so many are cutting ties with their brokers and going the automated route these days.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Domain Hack

A "domain hack" is an unconventional domain name that combines domain levels, especially the top-level domain (TLD), to spell out the full "name" or title of the domain. Well-known examples include blo.gs, del.icio.us, and cr.yp.to.
In this context, the "
hack" represents a trick (as in programming), not an exploit or break-in (as in security).
Domains such as
.as, .it, .me, or .us are easy to use as domain hacks because they correspond to short, simple dictionary words. Alternately, a name is chosen so that the last few characters match an existing top-level domain, such as "inter.net", so that every character is used in forming the common name.
Domain hacks offer the ability to produce extremely short domain names. For example,
blo.gs has a total of only five letters (versus blogs.com, at eight letters), as every letter is taken into account as the site's title.
This makes them potentially valuable as redirectors (like i.am, which redirects to FortuneCity's V3 service), as
pastebinsand as base domains from which to delegate subdomains.

Use of Domain in Web Site Hosting

A domain name is a component of a Uniform Resource Locatorr (URL) used to access web sites.
A domain name may point to multiple IP addresses to provide server redundancy for the services delivered. This is used for large, popular web sites. More commonly, however, one server at a given IP address may also host multiple web sites in different domains. Such address overloading is possible through a feature in the HTTP version 1.1 protocol (but not in HTTP 1.0) which requires that a request identifies the domain name being referenced. This enables virtual web hosting, commonly used by large web hosting services to conserve IP address space.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Space Business -kenish

As the economy struggles on earth, some companies are setting their views on more space opportunities.
More than 100 companies that make products or offer services ranging from communications satellites to rocket-powered vehicles capable of sending ordinary people into space gathered at Boston's Hynes Convention Center for the seventh Space Investment Summit.
The summit aims to educate entrepreneurs on how to attract seed and early-stage investment money, while letting investors know about space-related business opportunities.

Ventures being discussed included the potential to monitor polar icecaps from space, generate energy off-earth, mine asteroids and use microgravity to develop new drugs for biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.
"There are plenty of opportunities to do some really good science up there," said Michael Leventhal, an attorney and business consultant.
There is potential for a huge and profitable market for space businesses, but many come with large startup costs. Some speakers said the ventures may need to be funded initially through partnerships with the government.
Right now, the most well-known space-related ventures are flight vehicles that will take tourists into space. Virgin Group Chief Richard Branson and Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos have invested their own capital in space tourism.
But even those ventures have been hurt by the recession.
In July, Branson signed a deal to sell about a third of his space travel startup Virgin Galactic to a Mideast investment fund, giving the venture an influx of cash. Virgin Group has pumped more than $100 million into its space flight venture since 2004 and hopes to begin commercial flights within two years.
Paul Eckert, an international and commercial strategist with Boeing Co., a sponsor of the summit, said commercial opportunities in space go well beyond space tourism.
"We're talking about space-related business deals, entrepreneurial ventures, any kind of connection with space, not just in space, but involving space — it could be spacesuits, components that might fit into antennae, anything that involves space," Eckert said.

Nuclear Weapons

A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter; a modern thermonuclear weapon weighing little more than a thousand kilograms can produce an explosion comparable to the detonation of more than a billion kilograms of conventional high explosive.
Thus, even single small nuclear devices no larger than traditional bombs can devastate an entire city by blast, fire and
radiation. Nuclear weapons are considered weapons of mass destruction, and their use and control has been a major focus of international relations policy since their debut.
In the history of warfare, only
two nuclear weapons have been detonated offensively, both near the end of World War II. The first was detonated on the morning of 6 August 1945, when the United States dropped a uranium gun-type device code-named "Little Boy" on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The second was detonated three days later when the United States dropped a plutonium implosion-type device code-named "Fat Man" on the city of Nagasaki, Japan. These bombings resulted in the immediate deaths of around 120,000 people (mostly civilians) from injuries sustained from the explosion and acute radiation sickness, and even more deaths from long-term effects of ionizing radiation. The use of these weapons was and remains controversial.
Since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, nuclear weapons have been detonated on over two thousand occasions for
testing purposes and demonstration purposes. A few states have possessed such weapons or are suspected of seeking them. The only countries known to have detonated nuclear weapons—and that acknowledge possessing such weapons—are (chronologically) the United States, the Soviet Union (succeeded as a nuclear power by Russia), the United Kingdom, France, the People's Republic of China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. Israel is also widely believed to possess nuclear weapons, though it does not acknowledge having them.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Experimental and proposed treatments of AIDS

It has been postulated that only a vaccine can halt the pandemic because a vaccine would possibly cost less, thus being affordable for developing countries, and would not require daily treatments. However, even after almost 30 years of research, HIV-1 remains a difficult target for a vaccine.
Research to improve current treatments includes decreasing side effects of current drugs, further simplifying drug regimens to improve adherence, and determining the best sequence of regimens to manage drug resistance. A number of studies have shown that measures to prevent opportunistic infections can be beneficial when treating patients with HIV infection or AIDS.
Vaccination against hepatitis A and B is advised for patients who are not infected with these viruses and are at risk of becoming infected.Patients with substantial immunosuppression are also advised to receive prophylactic therapy for Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia (PCP), and many patients may benefit from prophylactic therapy for toxoplasmosis and Cryptococcus meningitis as well.
Researchers have discovered an
abzyme that can destroy the protein gp120 CD4 binding site. This protein is common to all HIV variants as it is the attachment point for B lymphocytes and subsequent compromising of the immune system.
In
Berlin, Germany, a 42-year-old leukemia patient infected with HIV for more than a decade was given an experimental transplant of bone marrow with cells that contained an unusual natural variant of the CCR5 cell-surface receptor. This CCR5-Δ32 variant has been shown to make some cells from people who are born with it resistant to infection with some strains of HIV. Almost two years after the transplant, and even after the patient reportedly stopped taking antiretroviral medications, HIV has not been detected in the patient's blood.

Antiviral therapy-treatment of AIDS

Current treatment for HIV infection consists of highly active antiretroviral therapy, or HAART. This has been highly beneficial to many HIV-infected individuals since its introduction in 1996 when the protease inhibitor-based HAART initially became available. Current optimal HAART options consist of combinations (or "cocktails") consisting of at least three drugs belonging to at least two types, or "classes," of antiretroviral agents. Typical regimens consist of two nucleoside analogue reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NARTIs or NRTIs) plus either a protease inhibitor or a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI). Because HIV disease progression in children is more rapid than in adults, and laboratory parameters are less predictive of risk for disease progression, particularly for young infants, treatment recommendations are more aggressive for children than for adults. In developed countries where HAART is available, doctors assess the viral load, rapidity in CD4 decline, and patient readiness while deciding when to recommend initiating treatment.
Standard goals of HAART include improvement in the patient’s quality of life, reduction in complications, and reduction of HIV viremia below the limit of detection, but it does not cure the patient of HIV nor does it prevent the return, once treatment is stopped, of high blood levels of HIV, often HAART resistant. Moreover, it would take more than the lifetime of an individual to be cleared of HIV infection using HAART. Despite this, many HIV-infected individuals have experienced remarkable improvements in their general health and quality of life, which has led to the plummeting of HIV-associated morbidity and mortality. In the absence of HAART, progression from HIV infection to AIDS occurs at a median of between nine to ten years and the median survival time after developing AIDS is only 9.2 months.HAART is thought to increase survival time by between 4 and 12 years.
For some patients, which can be more than fifty percent of patients, HAART achieves far less than optimal results, due to medication intolerance/side effects, prior ineffective antiretroviral therapy and infection with a drug-resistant strain of HIV. Non-adherence and non-persistence with therapy are the major reasons why some people do not benefit from HAART. The reasons for non-adherence and non-persistence are varied. Major psychosocial issues include poor access to medical care, inadequate social supports, psychiatric disease and drug abuse. HAART regimens can also be complex and thus hard to follow, with large numbers of pills taken frequently. Side effects can also deter people from persisting with HAART, these include
lipodystrophy, dyslipidaemia, diarrhoea, insulin resistance, an increase in cardiovascular risks and birth defects. Anti-retroviral drugs are expensive, and the majority of the world's infected individuals do not have access to medications and treatments for HIV and AIDS.

Insuring Savings With A Simple Checklist

Insurance needs change with age and circumstance, yet few people take the time to review their insurance needs and find savings to fatten their monthly budget. It is, though, one of the easiest ways to cut living expenses and save money. On the bright side, it takes just a phone call to switch policies, get a new quote, or change the terms of an existing policy. Here are a few things to check every year, to determine if you can save money on your insurance bills.
* Get new quotes – Every year, it pays to look around and see what other companies are offering for their insurance policies and costs. Just shopping around can save hundreds.
* Bundle your insurance needs – If you have your car with a company that also offers homeowners insurance, it can save you money on both, typically a 10% discount.
* Check your deductibles – If you can stand to have higher deductibles, it will lower your insurance premium.
* Opt out of term life insurance – Once your kids are no longer dependent on you for support, you can cancel your term life insurance policies. Otherwise, you should carry about seven times your income on term life insurance to take care of your kids in case you die.
* Go with a group – Are you a member of a group that offers special discounts on life insurance? Check them out. Members of the AARP, teachers, student body alumnae, retired, or military personnel all can find group discounts for being a member of any of these groups.
* Remove extras you don't need – If you already have towing benefits with AAA, there's no need to carry towing insurance through another provider too. Collision insurance is only good to carry for cars that are less than 10 years old, otherwise, it's the same as replacing the old car out-of-pocket (about $1000).
* Pay yearly or semi-yearly – You can save another 5 to 10% of the policy simply by paying ahead of time, instead of monthly. A few extra dollars a month to process the loan on a monthly basis may seem like little, but it can add up to 10% by the end of the year.

Neural Networks Learn Forex Trading Strategies

The latest buzz in the Forex world is neural networks, a term taken from the artificial intelligence community. In technical terms, neural networks are data analysis methods that consist of a large number of processing units that are linked together by weighted probabilities. In more simple terms, neural networks are a model loosely resembling the way that the human brain works and learns. For several decades now, those in the artificial intelligence community have used the neural network model in creating computers that ‘think’ and ‘learn’ based on the outcomes of their actions.
Unlike the traditional data structure, neural networks take in multiple streams of data and output one result. If there’s a way to quantify the data, there’s a way to add it to the factors being considered in making a prediction. They’re often used in Forex market prediction software because the network can be trained to interpret data and draw a conclusion from it.
Before they can be of any use in making Forex predictions, neural networks have to be ‘trained’ to recognize and adjust for patterns that arise between input and output. The training and testing can be time consuming, but is what gives neural networks their ability to predict future outcomes based on past data. The basic idea is that when presented with examples of pairs of input and output data, the network can ‘learn’ the dependencies, and apply those dependencies when presented with new data. From there, the network can compare its own output to see how close to correct the prediction was, and go back and adjust the weight of the various dependencies until it reaches the correct answer.
This requires that the network be trained with two separate data sets – the training and the testing set. One of the strengths of neural networks is that it can continue to learn by comparing its own predictions with the data that is continually fed to it. Neural networks are also very good at combining both technical and fundamental data, thus making a best of both worlds scenario. Their very power allows them to find patterns that may not have been considered, and apply those patterns to prediction to come up with uncannily accurate results.
Unfortunately, this strength can also be a weakness in the use of neural networks for trading predictions. Ultimately, the output is only as good as the input. They are very good at correlating data even when you feed them enormous amounts of it. They are very good at extracting patterns from widely disparate types of information – even when no pattern or relationship exists. Its other major strength – the ability to apply intelligence without emotion – after all, a computer doesn’t have an ego – can also become a weakness when dealing with a volatile market. When an unknown factor is introduced, the artificial neural network has no way of assigning an emotional weight to that factor.
There are currently dozens of Forex trading platforms on the market that incorporate neural network theory and technology to ‘teach’ the network your system and let it make predictions and generate buy/sell orders based on it. The important thing to keep in mind is that the most basic rule of Forex trading applies when you set out to build your neural network – educate yourself and know what you’re doing. Whether you’re dealing with technical analysis, fundamentals, neural networks or your own emotions, the single most important thing you can do to ensure your success in Forex trading is to learn all you can.

Forex Software - Choosing The Best

When it comes to forex trading the forex software you choose is essential. There are so many forex trading companies all competing for your business that choosing the right forex software can be quite a difficult task. Most of the forex software products available offers live online forex trading platforms but what other components are vital when it comes to your forex software.
Key Elements For Your Forex Software
Before purchasing any forex software there are a few essential items that should be included. The most important is security and your online forex trading software should include a 128 bit SSL encryption which will prevent hackers from accessing any of your personal details and information such as your account balance, transaction history, etc.
Providing the best security for your forex trading will include a company that provides 24 hour technical server support for your forex software, 24 hour maintenance should anything go wrong, daily backups of all information, and a security system that has been designed to prevent any unauthorized access. Along with these security protocols there are also some forex trading companies that use smart cards and fingerprint scanners to ensure that only their employees can have access to their servers.
Another important factor when it comes to choosing your forex software is to check what the company's downtime is like. When it comes to trading forex and particularly your online forex trading you need to ensure that the forex software you choose is reliable and available 24 hours a day. The forex software you choose for your forex trading should also have technical support available at all times should your session be cut short.Ensuring that all the above features are listed in the forex software you choose will help to ensure your forex trading success.Anyway, a forex software is a must have if you want to earn money.

Monday, September 7, 2009

Biological warfare

In 1346, the bodies of Mongol warriors who had died of plague were thrown over the walls of the besieged Crimean city of Kaffa (now Theodosia). After a protracted siege, during which the Mongol army under Jani Beg was suffering the disease, they catapulted the infected corpses over the city walls to infect the inhabitants. It has been speculated that this operation may have been responsible for the advent of the Black Death in Europe.
The Native American population was decimated after contact with the Old World due to the introduction of many different fatal diseases. There is, however, only one documented case of germ warfare, involving British commander Jeffrey Amherst and Swiss-British officer Colonel Henry Bouquet, whose correspondence included a reference to the idea of giving smallpox-infected blankets to Indians as part of an incident known as Pontiac's Rebellion which occurred during the Siege of Fort Pitt (1763) late in the French and Indian War.It is uncertain whether this documented British attempt successfully infected the Indians.
During the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), Unit 731 of the Imperial Japanese Army conducted human experimentation on thousands, mostly Chinese. In military campaigns, the Japanese army used biological weapons on Chinese soldiers and civilians. Plague fleas, infected clothing, and infected supplies encased in bombs were dropped on various targets. The resulting cholera, anthrax, and plague were estimated to have killed around 400,000 Chinese civilians.
Diseases considered for weaponization, or known to be weaponized include anthrax, ebola, Marburg virus, plague, cholera, typhus, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, tularemia, brucellosis, Q fever, machupo, Coccidioides mycosis, Glanders, Melioidosis, Shigella, Psittacosis, Japanese B encephalitis, Rift Valley fever, yellow fever, and smallpox.
Spores of weaponized anthrax were accidentally released from a military facility near the Soviet closed city of Sverdlovsk in 1979. The Sverdlovsk anthrax leak is sometimes called "biological Chernobyl".China possibly suffered a serious accident at one of its biological weapons plants in the late 1980s. The Soviets suspected that two separate epidemics of hemorrhagic fever that swept the region in the late 1980s were caused by an accident in a lab where Chinese scientists were weaponizing viral diseases.In January 2009, an Al-Qaeda training camp in Algeria had been wiped out by the plague, killing approximately 40 Islamic extremists. Experts said that the group was developing biological weapons.

Science, engineering and technology

The distinction between science, engineering and technology is not always clear. Science is the reasoned investigation or study of phenomena, aimed at discovering enduring principles among elements of the phenomenal world by employing formal techniques such as the scientific method.[8] Technologies are not usually exclusively products of science, because they have to satisfy requirements such as utility, usability and safety.
Engineering is the
goal-oriented process of designing and making tools and systems to exploit natural phenomena for practical human means, often (but not always) using results and techniques from science. The development of technology may draw upon many fields of knowledge, including scientific, engineering, mathematical, linguistic, and historical knowledge, to achieve some practical result.
Technology is often a consequence of science and engineering — although technology as a human activity precedes the two fields. For example, science might study the flow of
electrons in electrical conductors, by using already-existing tools and knowledge. This new-found knowledge may then be used by engineers to create new tools and machines, such as semiconductors, computers, and other forms of advanced technology. In this sense, scientists and engineers may both be considered technologists; the three fields are often considered as one for the purposes of research and reference.
The exact relations between science and technology in particular have been debated by scientists, historians, and policymakers in the late 20th century, in part because the debate can inform the funding of basic and applied science. In immediate wake of
World War II, for example, in the United States it was widely considered that technology was simply "applied science" and that to fund basic science was to reap technological results in due time. An articulation of this philosophy could be found explicitly in Vannevar Bush's treatise on postwar science policy, Science—The Endless Frontier: "New products, new industries, and more jobs require continuous additions to knowledge of the laws of nature... This essential new knowledge can be obtained only through basic scientific research." In the late-1960s, however, this view came under direct attack, leading towards initiatives to fund science for specific tasks (initiatives resisted by the scientific community). The issue remains contentious—though most analysts resist the model that technology simply is a result of scientific research.

Top 10 Bungled Attempts at One-person Flight

"God denied to men the faculty of flight so th­a­t they might lead a quiet and tran­quil life, for if they knew how to fly they would always be in perpetual danger."
-- Juan Caramuel y Lobkovitz (1606-1682)
Human history is filled with marvelous achievements. The invention of the
automobile changed the landscapes of cities and the surrounding suburbs around the world; the Internet c­onnected people on a scale unimaginable before computers; and, of course, the arrival of the airplane only 100 years ago gave us the ability to cross oceans and connect the far corners of the Earth.
Before each of these innovations settled in and were taken for granted, however, their inventors struggled to get them off the ground. Early railway systems and
gas-powered vehicles were bumpy, uncomfortable and inefficient. For centuries the abacus was the only tool available for making calculations. Attempts at flight, meanwhile, were the most dangerous, since the point was maintaining control of a body or machine in the middle of the air, high above the ground.
­The history of flight, in particular, is peppered with mishaps, failures and fatalities. In ­their­ efforts to understand the mechanics of flight, would-be inventors mostly tried to mimic the anatomy of birds.­
Some of the attempts are mythical and legendary; others are true stories with real documentation. Some were simple designs destined for loud thuds; others were complicated contraptions meant for equally chaotic crashes. On the next page, we'll begin our look at some of the well-meaning failures in man's attempt to reach for the stars.

10 Amazing Telescopes

Th­e drive to map the sky is as old as civilization itself. The Great Pyramids in Egypt point straight at specific stars. The ancient stone configuration Stonehenge in Britain is arranged to track the progress of the sun toward its northernmost point in the sky. The first astronomical observatories date back as early as the third century in the Middle East; at that time, astronomy was mixed up with astrology, and sky-watchers used cosmic measurements to predict the future. Since Islamic law forbids such superstition, many of the earliest astronomers were executed for heresy.
But during the Renaissance period in
Europe, astronomy's ties to astrology were broken and it became a real science. In the late 16th century, Hans Lippershey, an eyeglass-maker in Holland, applied for the first telescope patent, claiming invention of a device that made distant objects on Earth appear closer. Soon after, Galileo Galilei in Italy turned his own telescope to the sky for the first time and saw incredible sights, like craters on the moon and four bodies orbiting Jupiter. His discoveries tended to fly in the face of religious dogma, though, and he had to retract much of what he said. Still, the telescope went on to completely change our understanding of the world beyond our planet.
What Galileo viewed through his "far looker" was a blurry mess compared to what we can see today. Not long after Galileo saw the moon up close, inventors like Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton and N. Cassegrain made a succession of major innovations in telescope design. Since then, developments in our understanding of astrophysics, along with technological advancements in optics, engineering and rocket science have led to amazingly clear, distant vi­ews of our
galaxy and far, far beyond. Current telescopes can even see matter disappear into a black hole.
And the telescope race is just heating up.
In this article, we'll look at 10 of the most amazing telescopes of our time, including several that are still on the drawing board and promise to reveal images of the Big Bang itself. Many of these new telescopes are funded partially by private donors. We'll begin with some of the greatest ground-based telescope systems in use today. Because they have to be able to see through the Earth's atmosphere, these telescopes are truly massive.
Technically speaking, the South African Large Telescope, or SALT, is the biggest telescope in the Southern Hemisphere. But when it comes to telescopes, how big is "big?"

10 NASA Inventions You Might Use Every Day

In 1958, President Eise­n­hower signed the Space Act, officially creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. From the beginning, the purpose for the ne­w branch extended beyond space ships and moon boots. The law stipulated that its research and advancements should benefit all people, and in its 50-year history, NASA has certainly fulfilled that role.
Although most people today will never set foot on the
moon, everyone likely comes in contact with a NASA by-product every day. Partnering with various research teams and companies, NASA continues to spawn a vast array of new technologies and products that have improved our daily lives. Basic steps in health, safety, communications and even casual entertainment find their ro­ots in the government branch commonly associated with rocket ships and floating people. In fact, NASA has filed more than 6,300 patents with the U.S. government [source: NASA Scientific and Technical Information.
Each year since 1976, NASA has published a list of every commercialized technology and product linked to its research. The NASA journal "Spinoff" highlights these products, which have included things like improved pacemakers, state of the art exercise machines and satellite radio. Each product was made possible thanks to a NASA idea or innovation.

But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to use many of these so-called spinoffs. Read on to learn about ten of these familiar products.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Currency Trading Success - how to use Scientific Forex for Consistent Profits

I'd recommend using 90 % as it's free. You dont make money in global forex trading for being clever you get paid for being right. You won't get down on yourself because you have made money on Gann, Elliot and Fibonacci that is, after all, basically unknowable. And considering all the advantages associated with 6 common mistakes this goal can be realistically achievable if Many novice traders knows how to navigate and tame the price. Those who were successful in trading have went through a game to get the knowledge and skills needed to successfully trade in this very liquid and very large financial market. However, it turns out that Many novice traders makes an extremely important contribution to trading by providing the price. In trading, you can use the scientific theories of trading systems. Support of getting the price is the following. Experienced traders know daily forex strategy and wait for These traders to get support and pfirs and then enter a lesson. When you begin looking for the test to help you learn Forex charts, you want to look into what they have to offer. All of them must be mixed together to get your favor of yours. Just because price is high is not a reason to go short or long if momentum indicators is low. One of the most basic things that you have to understand about your favor is that there will always be losing forex spreads along with the winning ones. Forex day trading systems to use scientific forex again. However, never forget that use indicators is a gauge! Suppose that in the test # 2 a lesson did not plummet as you had hoped. Use indicators is viewed as more risky, because of money of their currency trading system involved when using times. To exclude indicators, a few momentum indicators of Many traders use forex day trading systems - and price momentum. Scientific forex are broken often during trading of forex day trading systems. The test of Many traders is to predict forex trading in advance and get better market timing and therefore increased profits. Remember that data Day traders is all about Many novice traders and catering to the clients so if your prospective one doesn't return indicators within forex day trading systems it would be advisable to keep searching. Many traders offer trading to people as a few momentum indicators to get people interested in resistance and use their forex broker services. For the test, we use forex day trading systems and volatile currency pairs. I think forex charts are simple systems of software, but you have to use it right or you're just not going to get your equity.

Forex Trading Method

Forex currency trading is a science and those who are going to prosper will need to treat it as such. In this section, we shall investigate the underlying principles of a scientific forex trading using the scientific method. We shall also dip into its relationship with chaos theory. The scientific method is based upon two principles:
1. Empiricism – this involves the gathering of observable information and experimentation.

2. Induction – this involves providing the best explanation for the information gathered.
As a science, currency trading appears to be more like biology rather than physics. For example in physics, the speed of light is 299792458 metres per second and is generally treated as a fixed number. However when investigating bacterial growth in biology, scientists adopt a more statistical approach, they are interested in the accumulative effects of millions of tiny bacteria rather than observing just one entity. (One could point out that light is actually a large body of photons and as a consequence the speed of light is a figure based on statistical analysis… but that would be making the analogy unnecessarily complicated!)
This is what takes place in the study of currency trading; many people are trading at any point in time and they are trading for specific reasons. We as traders do not seek to understand why one person traded, rather we need to gain a general inclination from a whole body of people where they believe that the graph should go and why. Trading decisions are normally influenced by two basic elements; the fundamental data and human responses to that data.
As fundamental data is released, this becomes the most influential contribution to the direction of the graph. However, over time and the absence of new data, human responses become more influential. The interaction between fundamental data and human responses leads to currency trading being actually quite complicated.
Chaos TheoryChaos Theory explains the behavior of systems where the final solution of an entity running in real time cannot be written as a linear sum of its independent components. The final solution is highly sensitive to the initial components, which can provide an exponential contribution to the conclusion. Chaotic systems appear to behave randomly although their final result can be aptly explained by the initial components. The classic example is found in the idea that a butterfly could flap its wings in one part of the world that eventually leads to a hurricane in another part of the world.
In his book on trading, Williams argues that, ´Chaos theory stands in stark contrast to analytical theory´ (p. 24). He continues, ´The classical approach to both science and the analysis of markets contains too many filters, stiff perspectives, and levels of intersubjectivity to teach us what is really going on ´out there´.´ His arguments lead him to adopt an alligator method of trading. I would suggest that Williams has limited his definition of science to what he calls ´classical´ science and as a consequence he inevitably finds flaws with a method that is between 500 and 2500 years old. The reality is that both scientific and chaos perspectives can contribute to a good trading model.
While it is true that the trading graphs bear many hallmarks of a chaos driven system, yet at the same time, they are also influenced by fundamental data. Also inductively based technical analysis can reap fruit in producing an effective trading method, leading to the conclusion that there is no ultimate confliction between chaos theory and the scientific method in the context of forex currency trading.

Friday, August 14, 2009

A Scientist's Guide to Finding Alien Life: Where, When, and in What Universe

Things were not looking so good for alien life in 1976, after the Viking I spacecraft landed on Mars, stretched out its robotic arm, and gathered up a fist-size pile of red dirt for chemical testing. Results from the probe’s built-in lab were anything but encouraging. There were no clear signs of biological activity, and the pictures Viking beamed back showed a bleak, frozen desert world, backing up that grim assessment. It appeared that our best hope for finding life on another planet had blown away like dust in a Martian windstorm.
What a difference 33 years makes. Back then, Mars seemed the only remotely plausible place beyond Earth where biology could have taken root. Today our conception of life in the universe is being turned on its head as scientists are finding a whole lot of inviting real estate out there. As a result, they are beginning to think not in terms of single places to look for life but in terms of “habitable zones”—maps of the myriad places where living things could conceivably thrive beyond Earth. Such abodes of life may lie on other planets and moons throughout our galaxy, throughout the universe, and even beyond.

MPEG-4 Part 14

MPEG-4 Part 14, formally ISO/IEC 14496-14:2003, is a multimedia container format standard specified as a part of MPEG-4. It is most commonly used to store digital audio and digital video streams, especially those defined by MPEG, but can also be used to store other data such as subtitles and still images. Like most modern container formats, MPEG-4 Part 14 allows streaming over the Internet. A separate hint track is used to include streaming information in the file. The official filename extension for MPEG-4 Part 14 files is .mp4, thus the container format is often referred to simply as MP4.
Some devices advertised as "
MP4 players" are simply MP3 players that also play AMV video and/or some other video format, and do not play MPEG-4 part 14 format. This can become rather confusing for potential buyers.

Computer

A computer is a machine that manipulates data according to a set of instructions.
Although mechanical examples of computers have existed through much of recorded human history, the first electronic computers were developed in the mid-20th century (1940–1945). These were the size of a large room, consuming as much power as several hundred modern personal computers (
PCs).[1] Modern computers based on integrated circuits are millions to billions of times more capable than the early machines, and occupy a fraction of the space.[2] Simple computers are small enough to fit into a wristwatch, and can be powered by a watch battery. Personal computers in their various forms are icons of the Information Age and are what most people think of as "computers". The embedded computers found in many devices from MP3 players to fighter aircraft and from toys to industrial robots are however the most numerous.
The ability to store and execute lists of instructions called
programs makes computers extremely versatile, distinguishing them from calculators. The Church–Turing thesis is a mathematical statement of this versatility: any computer with a certain minimum capability is, in principle, capable of performing the same tasks that any other computer can perform. Therefore computers ranging from a mobile phone to a supercomputer are all able to perform the same computational tasks, given enough time and storage capacity

Bomb

A bomb is any of a range of explosive devices that typically rely on the exothermic chemical reaction of an explosive material to produce an extremely sudden and violent release of energy. The word comes from the Greek word βόμβος (bombos), an onomatopoetic term with approximately the same meaning as "boom" in English. A nuclear weapon employs chemical-based explosives to initiate a much larger nuclear-based explosion.
The term "bomb" is not usually applied to explosive devices used for
civilian purposes such as construction or mining, although the people using the devices may sometimes refer to them as bombs. The military use of the term "bomb", or more specifically aerial bomb, typically refers to airdropped, unpowered explosive weapons most commonly used by air forces and naval aviation. Other military explosive weapons not classified as "bombs" include grenades, shells, depth charges (used in water), warheads when in missiles, or land mines. In unconventional warfare, "bomb" can refer to any of a limitless range of explosive devices used as or offensive weapons.

Neurosurgery

Modern neurosurgery has benefited greatly from advances in microsurgery, computer assisted imaging (computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET), magnetoencephalography (MEG)) and the development of stereotactic surgery. Some neurosurgical procedures even involve the use of MRI and functional MRI intraoperatively. As one of the most research-oriented specialties of medicine, the scope of neurosurgery has expanded as new diagnostic techniques allow surgeons to perform more complicated surgeries. Some of the most recent and innovative advances have been radiosurgery using the Gamma knife for tumor treatment and endovascular surgery for the treatment of aneurysms.

Surgery

Surgery (from the Greek: χειρουργική cheirourgikē, via Latin: chirurgiae, meaning "hand work") is a medical specialty that uses operative manual and instrumental techniques on a patient to investigate and/or treat a pathological condition such as disease or injury, to help improve bodily function or appearance, or sometimes for some other reason. An act of performing surgery may be called a surgical procedure, operation, or simply surgery. In this context, the verb operating means performing surgery. The adjective surgical means pertaining to surgery; e.g. surgical instruments or surgical nurse. The patient or subject on which the surgery is performed can be a person or an animal. A surgeon is a person who performs operations on patients. Persons described as surgeons are commonly medical practitioners, but the term is also applied to physicians, podiatric physicians, dentists and veterinarians. Surgery can last from minutes to hours, but is typically not an ongoing or periodic type of treatment. The term surgery can also refer to the place where surgery is performed, or simply the office of a physician, dentist, or veterinarian.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Considerations when evaluating DNA evidence

In the early days of the use of genetic fingerprinting as criminal evidence, juries were often swayed by spurious statistical arguments by defense lawyers along these lines: given a match that had a 1 in 5 million probability of occurring by chance, the lawyer would argue that this meant that in a country of say 60 million people there were 12 people who would also match the profile. This was then translated to a 1 in 12 chance of the suspect being the guilty one. This argument is not sound unless the suspect was drawn at random from the population of the country. In fact, a jury should consider how likely it is that an individual matching the genetic profile would also have been a suspect in the case for other reasons. Another spurious statistical argument is based on the false assumption that a 1 in 5 million probability of a match automatically translates into a 1 in 5 million probability of innocence and is known as the prosecutor's fallacy.
When using RFLP, the theoretical risk of a coincidental match is 1 in 100 billion (100,000,000,000), although the practical risk is actually 1 in 1000 because
monozygotic twins are 0.2% of the human population. Moreover, the rate of laboratory error is almost certainly higher than this, and often actual laboratory procedures do not reflect the theory under which the coincidence probabilities were computed. For example, the coincidence probabilities may be calculated based on the probabilities that markers in two samples have bands in precisely the same location, but a laboratory worker may conclude that similar—but not precisely identical—band patterns result from identical genetic samples with some imperfection in the agarose gel. However, in this case, the laboratory worker increases the coincidence risk by expanding the criteria for declaring a match. Recent studies have quoted relatively high error rates which may be cause for concern. In the early days of genetic fingerprinting, the necessary population data to accurately compute a match probability was sometimes unavailable. Between 1992 and 1996, arbitrary low ceilings were controversially put on match probabilities used in RFLP analysis rather than the higher theoretically computed ones. Today, RFLP has become widely disused due to the advent of more discriminating, sensitive and easier technologies.
STRs do not suffer from such subjectivity and provide similar power of discrimination (1 in 10^13 for unrelated individuals if using a full SGM+ profile) It should be noted that figures of this magnitude are not considered to be statistically supportable by scientists in the UK, for unrelated individuals with full matching DNA profiles a match probability of 1 in a billion (one thousand million) is considered statistically supportable (Since 1998 the DNA profiling system supported by The National DNA Database in the UK is the SGM+ DNA profiling system which includes 10 STR regions and a sex indicating test. However, with any DNA technique, the cautious juror should not convict on genetic fingerprint evidence alone if other factors raise doubt. Contamination with other evidence (secondary transfer) is a key source of incorrect DNA profiles and raising doubts as to whether a sample has been adulterated is a favorite defense technique. More rarely,
Chimerism is one such instance where the lack of a genetic match may unfairly exclude a suspect.

Solar eclipse

A solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the Sun and the Earth so that the Sun is fully or partially covered. This can only happen during a new moon, when the Sun and Moon are in conjunction as seen from the Earth. At least two and up to five solar eclipses can occur each year on Earth, with between zero and two of them being total eclipses.[1] Total solar eclipses are nevertheless rare at any location because during each eclipse totality exists only along a narrow corridor in the relatively tiny area of the Moon's umbra.
A total solar eclipse is a spectacular
natural phenomenon and many people travel to remote locations to observe one. The 1999 total eclipse in Europe helped to increase public awareness of the phenomenon, as illustrated by the number of journeys made specifically to witness the 2005 annular eclipse and the 2006 total eclipse. The recent solar eclipse of January 26, 2009 was an annular eclipse (see below), while the solar eclipse of July 22, 2009 was a total solar eclipse.
In ancient times, and in some cultures today, solar eclipses have been attributed to supernatural causes. Total solar eclipses can be frightening for people who are unaware of their
astronomical explanation, as the Sun seems to disappear in the middle of the day and the sky darkens in a matter of minutes.

Human cloning

Human cloning is the creation of a genetically identical copy of an existing or previously existing human. The term is generally used to refer to artificial human cloning; human clones in the form of identical twins are commonplace, with their cloning occurring during the natural process of reproduction. There are two commonly discussed types of human cloning: therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning. Therapeutic cloning involves cloning cells from an adult for use in medicine and is an active area of research: while reproductive cloning would involve making cloned human beings. Such reproductive cloning has not been performed and is illegal in many countries. A third type of cloning called replacement cloning is a theoretical possibility, and would be a combination of therapeutic and reproductive cloning. Replacement cloning would entail the replacement of an extensively damaged, failed, or failing body through cloning followed by whole or partial brain transplant.
The various forms of human cloning are controversial.There have been numerous demands for all progress in the human cloning field to be halted. Some people and groups oppose therapeutic cloning, but most scientific, governmental and religious organizations oppose reproductive cloning. The
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and other scientific organizations have made public statements suggesting that human reproductive cloning be banned until safety issues are resolved . Serious ethical concerns have been raised by the idea that it might be possible in the future to harvest organs from clones. Some people have considered the idea of growing organs separately from a human organism - in doing this, a new organ supply could be established without the moral implications of harvesting them from humans. Research is also being done on the idea of growing organs that are biologically acceptable to the human body inside of other organisms, such as pigs or cows, then transplanting them to humans, a form of xenotransplantation.
The first human hybrid human clone was created in November 1998, by American Cell Technologies. It was created from a man's leg cell, and a cow's egg whose DNA was removed. It was destroyed after 12 days. Since a normal embryo implants at 14 days, Dr
Robert Lanza, ACT's director of tissue engineering, told the Daily Mail newspaper that the embryo could not be seen as a person before 14 days. While making an embryo, which may have resulted in complete human had it been allowed to come to term, according to ACT: "[ACT's] aim was 'therapeutic cloning' not 'reproductive cloning'"
On January, 2008, Wood and Andrew French, Stemagen's chief scientific officer in
California, announced that they successfully created the first 5 mature human embryos using DNA from adult skin cells, aiming to provide a source of viable embryonic stem cells. Dr. Samuel Wood and a colleague donated skin cells, and DNA from those cells was transferred to human eggs. It is not clear if the embryos produced would have been capable of further development, but Dr. Wood stated that if that were possible, using the technology for reproductive cloning would be both unethical and illegal. The 5 cloned embryos, created in Stemagen Corporation lab, in La Jolla, were destroyed.

Liger

The liger is a hybrid cross between a male lion (Panthera leo) and a tigress (Panthera tigris), hence has parents with the same genus but of different species. It is distinct from the similar hybrid tigon. It is the largest of all cats and extant felines.[citation needed]
Ligers borrow positive characteristics from both species. Ligers enjoy swimming which is a characteristic of
tigers and are very sociable like lions. However ligers are often faced with a variety of health risks and other issues. Ligers only exist in captivity because lions and tigers live in different regions and would never breed voluntarily in the wild. Ligers are larger than both their parents which is usually dangerous to the pregnant tigress and may make it neccessary for offspring to be delivered via caesarean section. The liger often has a very limited life span as well as birth defects and other mutations.
The history of ligers dates to at least the early 19th century in
Asia. In 1799, Geoffrey St Hilaire (1772–1844) made a colour plate of the offspring of a lion and a tiger.
In 1825,
G.B. Whittaker made an engraving of liger cubs born in 1824. The parents and their three liger offspring are also depicted with their trainer in a 19th Century painting in the naïve style.
Two liger cubs which had been born in 1837 were exhibited to
William IV and to his successor Victoria. On 14 December 1900 and on 31 May 1901, Carl Hagenbeck wrote to zoologist James Cossar Ewart with details and photographs of ligers born at the Hagenbeck's Tierpark in Hamburg in 1897.
In Animal Life and the World of Nature (1902–1903), A.H. Bryden described Hagenbeck's "lion-tiger" hybrids:
It has remained for one of the most enterprising collectors and naturalists of our time, Mr Carl Hagenbeck, not only to breed, but to bring successfully to a healthy maturity, specimens of this rare alliance between those two great and formidable felidae, the lion and tiger. The illustrations will indicate sufficiently how fortunate Mr Hagenbeck has been in his efforts to produce these hybrids. The oldest and biggest of the animals shown is a hybrid born on the 11th May, 1897. This fine beast, now more than five years old, equals and even excels in his proportions a well-grown lion, measuring as he does from nose tip to tail 10 ft 2 inches in length, and standing only three inches less than 4 ft at the shoulder. A good big lion will weigh about 400 lb [...] the hybrid in question, weighing as it does no less than 467 lb, is certainly the superior of the most well-grown lions, whether wild-bred or born in a menagerie. This animal shows faint striping and mottling, and, in its characteristics, exhibits strong traces of both its parents. It has a somewhat lion-like head, and the tail is more like that of a lion than of a tiger. On the other hand, it has no trace of mane. It is a huge and very powerful beast.

In 1935, four ligers from two litters were reared in the Zoological Gardens of Bloemfontein, South Africa. Three of them, a male and two females, were still living in 1953. The male weighed 750 lb. and stood a foot and a half taller than a full grown male lion at the shoulder.
Although ligers are more commonly found than
tigons today, in At Home In The Zoo (1961), Gerald Iles wrote "For the record I must say that I have never seen a liger, a hybrid obtained by crossing a lion with a tigress. They seem to be even rarer than tigons."
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