Image of the Day

The Blackness of Space

Spacewalker Michael Good, barely visible in his white spacesuit against the station, participated in the STS-132 mission's third and final spacewalk. During the six-hour, 46-minute spacewalk, Good and fellow NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman completed the installation of the final two new batteries for the B side of the port 6 solar array.

'Quantum dot' promises super-fast, super-powerful computing

Australian scientists have developed a new transistor in a computer chip that is 10 times smaller than those currently in use.

The invention marks the start of a new age of super-fast, super-powerful computing, has been described in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

At the heart of the electronic device lies a "quantum dot", measuring four-billionths of a metre - so small that it contains only seven atoms, compared to the millions that usually make up a laptop chip.

"We're basically controlling nature at the atomic scale," The Age quoted study co-author, Michelle Simmons, director of the University of New South Wales centre of excellence for quantum computer technology, as saying.

She added: "This is one of the key milestones in building a quantum computer."

According to Prof. Simmons, devices made at this scale would allow more complex computations at much greater speeds.

Their use would also improve database searching and eventually lead to "100 percent secure communication".

Prof. Simmons said: "It has many implications for national security and for the financial system and transferring information of any kind."

Explaining the reason for using silicon, she said: "All our computers contain silicon chips.

"Building transistors at the atomic-scale means that anything electrical like computers and mobile phones will get smaller and faster while their functionality increases dramatically."

Image of the Day

Earth's Horizon

Earth's horizon and the blackness of space provide the backdrop for Atlantis' aft section while it was docked with the International Space Station during the STS-132 mission.

A Feat of Daring Display

Anchored to a Canadarm2 mobile foot restraint, astronaut Garrett Reisman continued his work during the first of three planned spacewalks for the STS-132 mission. During the seven-hour, 25-minute spacewalk, Reisman and NASA astronaut Steve Bowen installed a second antenna for high-speed Ku-band transmissions and added a spare parts platform to Dextre, a two-armed extension for the station’s robotic arm.

Image of the Day

Docked at the StationThis image features the Atlantis' cabin and forward cargo bay and a section of the International Space Station while the two spacecraft remain docked, photographed during the STS-132 mission's first spacewalk.

Formula One to amend safety car rules

Formula One's governing body has moved to amend the sport's safety car rules after Michael Schumacher was penalised for an overtaking move at last weekend's Monaco Grand Prix.

The International Automobile Federation (FIA) said in a statement on Thursday that there was "a lack of clarity" in the application of a rule prohibiting overtaking when the safety car was deployed on the last lap of a race.

"Adjustments to the regulations are necessary to clarify the procedure that cars must meet when the last lap is controlled by the safety car whilst also ensuring that the signaling for teams and drivers is made more clear," it added.

"The Formula One Commission, upon a proposal of the F1 Sporting Working Group will submit an amendment to the sporting regulations to address this issue."

The FIA said the amendments would be considered by its World Motor Sport Council at a meeting in Geneva on June 23.

Seven times world champion Schumacher overtook Ferrari's Fernando Alonso for sixth place at the final corner of the race moments after the safety car had turned into the pit lane.

The Mercedes driver, making a comeback this season at the age of 41, was then handed a 20 second penalty which demoted him to 12th.

Mercedes had planned to appeal the penalty but said on Tuesday they had decided not to in the best interests of the sport.

The team argued that while the rules state that no overtaking is allowed if a race finishes under safety car conditions, that was not apparent in Monaco with marshals waving green flags while race control sent messages declaring the track to be clear.

'Wow' Aluminium bats hit Indian cricket

Get over mongoose and double blade bats as its time for eco-friendly 'Wow' aluminium bats to further revolutionise cricketing in India. Brain-child of an Indian IIT engineer, Wow aluminium bats are the latest innovations to hit tennis ball cricket and will be formally unveiled in the capital on May 21, while those to be used by leather ball cricket would be introduced three months later.

"Wow! Aluminium bats are made using aeronautical grade aluminium. Each machine-made bat is balanced so as to produce a perfect piece," said IIT Roorkee alumni Vivek Lakhotia, who is the designer and innovator of the bat.

Placed within the factory price range of Rs 500-800, Wow aluminium bats weighs less than the wooden bat and have a life which is at least five times more than a wooden cricket bat, Lakhotia said. These eco-friendly bats use recycled aluminium and will help save willow trees of Kashmir currently used in making of cricket bats, he added.

Lakhotia has also applied for four patents of the bat - cutting edge design, process, actual product and the innovation itself. "Patents, once granted will help in protecting the design and product from being copied by others", said Diljeet Titus, senior partner of law firm Titus and Co and general secretary of Policy Planning Group (PPP) under whose aegis the launch is being organised.

"It is a very good bat and all my wards have come up with good response to the bat. They said it doesn't feel like they are playing with an aluminium bat as they can play all their strokes easily with this latest bat," said Mansoor Baig, secretary of Rajasthan Tennis Ball cricket Association.

The Wow aluminium bat can also be used for training purposes by different age-groups as it provides the option of setting the bat at a preferable weight by putting extra grams. "Some players want to train with a light bat while some prefers heavy bats like Sachin Tendulkar. It can be used for both purposes as one can add extra weight to the bat and make its bottom heavy or light," Lakhotia said. Lakhotia has already given bats for testing to the various State Association.

"It is very good and the weight is also same as the wooden bat. I am very satisfied with it and I think it is a great concept. Since the boys have been using it for a few days now, I think within the next two months they would get more accustomed with the bat," said Mohd Latif, International co-ordinator of Tennis Ball Cricket Federation Of India.

Agrees Secretary of Delhi Tennis ball cricket Association, Usman Siddique. "It is a good creation and the first impression has been positive from the kids. We have a junior national camp here from May 25. I think the boys will get a better feel of the bat during the camp," said Siddique.

It was one-year ago that Lakhotia, who manages an aluminium company, had thought of this idea which can help young cricketers and lovers of the game to make a contribution to the environment.

"Around 25 crore children and adults in India play this game. There are 5000 tournaments of tennis ball in a year in India and if they continue to play with the wooden bat, it will lead to deforestation soon. I feel Aluminium bat will at least give everybody a chance to contribute to the environment by using an eco-friendly product," he said.

What are India’s greatest unsolved mysteries?

(1)That Aryans invaded India or not? Some believe that Dravids were the original inhabitants of India, which were then pushed to the South because of Aryan invasion. There is no proof to this theory. However some historians support it.

(2) There is evidence that Shah Jahan did not built Taj Mahal.Some say the Taj Mahal pre-dates Shah Jahan by several centuries and was originally built as a Hindu or Vedic temple/palace complex.
Shah Jahan merely acquired it from its previous owner, the Hindu King Jai Singh.

(3) The Adam's Bridge is also an unsolved mystery. NASA said it is nothing more than a long chain of sandbanks. However some believe it was built during Ramayana's era.

De-clutter your digital life

We've got multiple e-mail ids, social networks, blogs, e-calendars, phone contacts and online bills coming out of our ears and screen after screen after screen of computer stuff to back up, share and sync. "We're drowning in information," says Douglas C Merrill, former chief information officer for Google, a Ph.D in cognitive science and someone who helps people manage digital clutter.

Merrill, struggled with dyslexia as a kid, so de-cluttering - digital and otherwise - is a huge priority for him, so much that he has written a book on the subject with James Martin, Getting Organized in the Google Era. Merrill offers tips to declutter digital life.

Search, don't fileAbandon the notion of "filing" and "folders" as a way to alleviate anxiety over a messy computer desktop, Merrill says. Folders, the paper and digital kind, must be maintained, and your brain must remember what you have put in them. "The problem is we never find the information we've stored, so we wind up with folders and folders we don't know what to do with.

Search can set us free from the clutter of our imperfect minds by allowing us to get a little messy." No time is lost on meticulously filing and hunting for folders when well-defined searches are used. Simple tools such as Google Desktop or Spotlight allow you to search with the same ease you enjoy for the Web. Quicksilver is popular with geeks.

Some paper is okYou would think Mr Google would have no use for paper. Not true. "Paper's great for certain things," Merrill says. He plasters huge sheets on his walls when he's brainstorming a big idea. They're easy to move around as his thoughts firm up. "The idea of a paperless office has been bounced around for three decades. But paper is still very important," he concludes with a smile.

9 ways to declutter

Ban cables and clutter from your desktop


Automate your folder and file organisation


Clean up your contacts


Compact and manage social network alerts


Clean up your hard drive


Free up space in Gmail


Pack a more efficient laptop


Use dropbox - for almost everything


Build yourself Gmail filters

Reisman's Self-Portrait

NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman takes a self-portrait visor while participating in the first of three spacewalks scheduled for the Atlantis crew and their Expedition 23 hosts. Though three spacewalks will involve only three astronauts (two on each occasion) who actually leave the shirt-sleave environments of the two docked spacecraft, all twelve astronauts and cosmonauts have roles in supporting the work. Part of the space station and the blue and white Earth are among the objects seen in his visor. Fellow spacewalker Steve Bowen, mission specialist, is out of frame.

So far, 2010 is warmest ever in recorded history

The year 2010 is turning out to be the warmest ever in recorded history, with the first four months reporting an average temperature of 13.3 degrees Celsius which is 0.69 degrees above the 20th century average.

The combined global land and ocean surface temperatures for the period between January and April were the warmest on record, and April was the warmest individual month ever, America's climate agency has said in its latest report.

The combined April global land and ocean average surface temperature was the warmest on record at 14.5 degrees Celsius (58.1 degrees F).

This is 0.76 degrees Celsius above the 20th century average of 13.7 degrees Celsius, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said.

The earth's temperature for January-April at 56.0 degrees Fahrenheit (13.3°C), is 1.24 degrees Fahrenheit or (0.69°C) above the 20th century average, it said.

While the global ocean surface temperature was 0.57 degrees C above the 20th century average of 16 degrees and the warmest on record for April, the global land temperature was 1.29 degrees Celsius above the 20th century average of 8.1, the third warmest on record for April.

The report said the warmth was most pronounced in the equatorial portions of major oceans, especially the Atlantic.

Warmer-than-normal conditions dominated the globe, with the most prominent warmth in Canada, Alaska, eastern US, Australia, South Asia, northern Africa and northern Russia.

Cooler-than-normal places included Mongolia, Argentina, far eastern Russia, the western contiguous United States and most of China, it said.

The El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a climate pattern that occurs across the tropical Pacific Ocean on average every five years, weakened in April, as sea-surface temperature anomalies decreased across the equatorial Pacific.

The climate pattern is known for its association with floods, droughts and other weather disturbances in many regions of the world, which vary with each event.

The weakening contributed significantly to the warmth observed in the tropical belt and the warmth of the overall ocean temperature for April.

According to NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, El Niño is expected to continue through June.

The agency said the Arctic sea ice was below normal for the 11th consecutive April, and 2.1 per cent below the 1979-2000 average extent. It was, however, the largest April Arctic sea ice extent since 2001.

Further, satellite observations showed snow cover extent was fourth-lowest on record since 1967.

Latest YouTube hit - water walking!

Three athletic young adventurers have produced a video claiming to show 'one of the most impossible-looking activities that anyone has ever seen' - walking on water.

Ulf Gartner and his friends Sebastian Vanderwerf and Miguel Delfortrie call it 'liquid mountaineering', a new sport that is not only challenging the laws of gravity but is also encouraging thousands of fans to slip on watertight shoes and run as fast as possible into the nearest lake.

Over 2 million people have watched the YouTube video in the past fortnight.

The video shows the men racing in turns into a lake in Portugal. After several false starts they manage up to nine or 10 high-speed tiptoe-like strides before their legs buckle beneath them.

"All you have to do is start running towards the bank of the lake and keep running with top speed. As soon as you touch the water your legs should be going like a sewing machine. You should be just like a stone skimming the surface," the Times quoted Gartner as saying.

Gartner says that rather than a miracle, you just need 'good-quality rubber running shoes'.

Even those who think it is a trick agree it would be one of the cleverest hoaxes on the Internet.

"It might be fake but I have no idea how they made it look so real," one Internet visitor concluded.

Atlantis Lifts Off

Space shuttle Atlantis lifted off from Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the STS-132 mission to the International Space Station at 2:20 p.m. EDT on May 14. The third of five shuttle missions planned for 2010, this was the last planned launch for Atlantis. The Russian-built Mini Research Module-1, also known as Rassvet, or "dawn," will be delivered and it will provide additional storage space and a new docking port for Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft. The laboratory will be attached to the bottom port of the station's Zarya module. The mission's three spacewalks will focus on storing spare components outside the station, including six batteries, a communications antenna and parts for the Canadian Dextre robotic arm.

Atlantis Launch

Space shuttle Atlantis gears up for final launch

The space shuttle Atlantis blasts off Friday on the last mission of its 25-year career, taking astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) one last time before becoming a museum piece.

The 32nd and final voyage for Atlantis, which first launched in 1985, will take six astronauts to the orbiting space research facility, delivering an integrated cargo carrier and a Russian-built mini research module.

Lift-off is scheduled for 1820 GMT from Kennedy Space Center near Cape Canaveral in Florida, weather-permitting.

A poignant moment for NASA as the US space agency counts down towards the end of an era in human spaceflight, Atlantis will be retired on its safe return home.

"The vehicle is in great shape... and from a Space Shuttle Program and ISS Program standpoint, we're ready to launch Atlantis and get this mission under way," NASA launch manager Mike Moses said yesterday.

His team gave Atlantis a unanimous 'go' for liftoff on mission STS-132 and weather forecasts were 70 per cent favorable, reflecting some concern over possible low cloud.

During a mission of almost 13 days, most of which will be spent moored to the ISS, Atlantis and the crew will deliver more than 12 tonnes of equipment, including power storage batteries, a communications antenna and a radiator.

The biggest single element being transported is the five-ton Rassver research module, or MRM-1, which will provide additional storage space and a new docking port for Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft.

Have aliens taken over Voyager 2 spacecraft?

After leaving Earth's surface 33 years ago, the Voyager 2 spacecraft may have been hijacked by aliens, it has been claimed.

Scientists had installed a 12-inch disk containing music and greetings in 55 languages in case intelligent extraterrestrial life ever found it, but the spacecraft is sending signals in an unknown format.

"It seems almost as if someone had reprogrammed or hijacked the probe - thus perhaps we do not yet know the whole truth," The Daily Telegraph quoted alien expert Hartwig Hausdorf as saying.

The spacecraft late last month began sending science data 8.6 billion miles to Earth in a changed format that mission managers could not decode.

Engineers are working to solve the data transmissions and have since instructed Voyager 2 to only transmit data on its own health and status while they work on the problem.

Launched in 1977, Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, explored the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and kept on going. Nearly 33 years later, they are the most distant human-made objects.

Voyager 1 is 10.5 billion miles from Earth and in about five years is expected to pass through the heliosphere, a bubble the sun creates around the solar system, and enter interstellar space. Voyager 2 will follow after that.

Anand cements place among all-time greats of chess

World champion Viswanathan Anand on Tuesday retained his crown by winning the world chess championship title after wrapping up the final game against Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria.

Anand achieved an improbable win playing with black in the final game to retain the world title by 6.5-5.5 margin after the end of the 12th and final game here.

Experts all over the world had predicted that Topalov, at his worst, will draw the last game under normal time control and then the match will head into the rapid tiebreaker.

However, it was not to be as Topalov, trying to look for complications, went haywire in a slightly difficult position and could not recover as Anand kept dealing one lethal blow after another to notch up his fourth world title in 11 years to remain the undisputed king of the game once again.

Do read more 

Dictionary mistake goes unnoticed for 99 years

Those who swear by the dictionary for uses of words may need to cross check as the meaning explained in the bible of lexicon may not be error free.

The error may be slight, but it's an error nonetheless, said Stephen Hughes, a physicist with Queensland University of Technology, who spotted a 99-year-old mistake in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Hughes claims he has discovered that the dictionary's definition of the word 'siphon' has been incorrect since 1911.

The definition in the Oxford dictionary and many other dictionaries stated that atmospheric pressure was the force behind a siphon. But in fact it is the force of gravity at work.

'It is gravity that moved the fluid in a siphon, with the water in the longer downward arm pulling the water up the shorter arm,' Hughes was quoted as saying by The Sydney Morning Herald.

Hughes alerted the dictionary's revision team, which had just completed revising words beginning with the letter 'R'.

'I thought, 'Oh good, just in time,' because S is next,' he said.

The physicist discovered the error after viewing an enormous siphon in South Australia, transferring the equivalent of 4000 Olympic swimming pools from the Murray River system into the depleted Lake Bonney.

'I thought this example would make a great education paper ... but in my background research I discovered there was much contention about the definition of the word 'siphon',' Hughes said.

'I found that almost every dictionary contained the same misconception that atmospheric pressure, not gravity, pushed liquid through the tube of a siphon'.

The dictionary's review team has agreed to re-examine the definition.

Hughes is now determined to set the record straight, and says the issue should not be taken lightly.

'We would all have an issue if the dictionary defined a koala as a species of bear, or a rose as a tulip,' said Hughes, who has now turned his attention towards dictionaries in other languages.

'I would like to know if the siphon misconception exists in dictionaries in other languages, and also if there are incorrect definitions of siphon in school text books,' he added.

Download Oxford Dictionary for pc

Cricket

While cricket fever is gripping the whole world, I am trying to show live score on my website. vcricket.com offers a free Scorecard for your site at no cost simply put some code on your site and show snap of score card during the cricket match. You do not have to register for this as it is completely free.

Live Cricket Scorecard would always bring in more traffic and is an important tool to retain your traffic who love cricket.
You can choose from different sizes and at the same time you have an option to choose your favorite country to display Cricket Scorecard. The Scorecard is generated from the servers of vcricket.com so you do not have to worry about bandwidth.

T20 World cup live streaming links

T20 World cup live streaming links:

You will get thousands of sites offering live T20 World cup live streaming links from Google . Almost all them need sopcast and TUV player get them here .

Download Sopcast player .
Download TUV player .

Willow.TV offers high quality live streaming links to ICC world cup Twenty20 matches .

But there is a charge associated with each package .

Watch demo live cricket streaming .

Willow.TV uses Windows media player browser plugin for live streaming ,and the service needs you to be on internet explorer .

Get T20 World cup live cricket scores in Firefox :


HitWicket is Firefox addon that lets you to get instant cricket sores and alerts on Firefox browser windows You don’t need to visit cricket sites and refresh them to keep updated with the scores . HitWicket Firefox addon automatically refreshes at predefined interval and displays the scores on Firefox status bar .

Download HitWicket Firefox addon

Get T20 World cup live cricket scores in Windows Desktop:

For this you need Windows Vista or Windows XP with Google desktop . Search for cricket widgets from menu . These widgets uses live streaming feeds from Cricinfo and other popular Cricket websites .

Download Google desktop .

IAS Topper 2010

Shah Faesal

Shah Faesal, a doctor from Srinagar and son of a school teacher killed by militants, became the first Kashmiri to top the civil services exam. The results were announced on Thursday.

“I have no words to describe my happiness,” Faesal, a 2008 batch graduate of the Jhelum Valley Medical College, said in Delhi on Thursday.

“My achievement has helped break a stereotype about my community,” said Faesal, who cracked the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) exam in his first attempt. “I will be an inspiration and set a precedent for the people of Kashmir”

An RTI activist, a columnist in a Srinagar daily and a doctor, Faesal always wanted to “do something big”, said his mother Mubeena.

“Its a matter of great honour for the family,” said Mubeena, a teacher. Her eyes brimming with tears. She only wished her husband Ghulam Mohd Shah, were alive to share the family’s joy. Ghulam was killed in 2002.

“I really miss my father at this point in time,” Faesal said.

This was the second violent death in the family. Earlier, Mubeena’s brother, Irshad had died “in cross-firing”. Mubeena said.

The top 25 candidates comprise 15 males and 10 females, it said.

A total of 409,110 candidates applied for the civil services examination in 2009. As many as 193,091 candidates appeared for the preliminary examination and 12,026 candidates qualified for the main examination.

A total of 2,432 candidates were shortlisted for the personality test conducted in March-April 2010.

Faesal said he had first-hand experience with insurgency violence, and wanted to “bridge the communication gap between the people of Kashmir and the government”.

Of the 875 candidates who qualified the 2009 civil services exam, 680 are men and 195 women. Prakash Rajpurohit, an engineering graduate from IIT-Delhi came second. Iva Saha from JNU, who bagged the third rank, was the first among woman candidates.

quite true perhaps!!

The Large Hadron Collider

Our understanding of the Universe is about to change...

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a gigantic scientific instrument near Geneva, where it spans the border between Switzerland and France about 100 m underground. It is a particle accelerator used by physicists to study the smallest known particles – the fundamental building blocks of all things. It will revolutionise our understanding, from the minuscule world deep within atoms to the vastness of the Universe.

Two beams of subatomic particles called 'hadrons' – either protons or lead ions – will travel in opposite directions inside the circular accelerator, gaining energy with every lap. Physicists will use the LHC to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang, by colliding the two beams head-on at very high energy. Teams of physicists from around the world will analyse the particles created in the collisions using special detectors in a number of experiments dedicated to the LHC.

There are many theories as to what will result from these collisions, but what's for sure is that a brave new world of physics will emerge from the new accelerator, as knowledge in particle physics goes on to describe the workings of the Universe. For decades, the Standard Model of particle physics has served physicists well as a means of understanding the fundamental laws of Nature, but it does not tell the whole story. Only experimental data using the higher energies reached by the LHC can push knowledge forward, challenging those who seek confirmation of established knowledge, and those who dare to dream beyond the paradigm.


Facts and figures(These are the important things)

John C. Mather(The Nobel Prize in Physics 2006)

John C. Mather(The Nobel Prize in Physics 2006)

Interview
John Mather Answers Questions on the NobelPrize YouTube Channel

As the first in a series of Q&A sessions with Nobel Laureates on YouTube, John Mather, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2006 for his research in cosmic microwave background radiation, has answered a selection of questions on the NobelPrize YouTube channel. His answers range from what happened before the Big Bang to what the consequences are of receiving a Nobel Prize.

Watch 42 questions and the answers!

Aliens exist, but avoid them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

According to leading scientist Stephen Hawking, aliens are out there but humans should avoid any contact with them.

Aliens exist, but don't talk to them, says Stephen Hawking 

read more.

Did Einstein Predict Dark Energy?

Oddly enough, dark energy — for all the surprise around its discovery — is not an entirely new concept in physics. There is historical background for this idea, and it comes from the preeminent astronomer of the 20th century, Albert Einstein.

DARK ENERGY

Scientists using the hubble space telescope have recently found that an unexplained force is changing our universe,forcing galaxies to move farther and farther apart.streching the fabric of space at an increasing speed.
If unchecked this could mean the DEATH of universe as the increasing universe could even tear apart it's atoms

This mysterious thing is termed as dark energy

for more information on this issue, including videos and slide shows do visit the link: http://hubblesite.org/hubble_discoveries/dark_energy/  (a must visit for all)

Indians knew gravity laws 500 yrs before Newton!!!!!!!!!!

Ancient Indian mathematician Bhaskaracharya, in his book Siddhanta Shriromani, had defined laws of gravity in 12th century, 500 years before Newton defined them for us. The speed of light was known to Indians since Vedic period, centuries before it was calculated by the Western world.

Blogs

hi friends,i just created some blogs a few days ago(so as of now they dont have much content but they will build up) with the urls given,do visit them at regular intervals

1.http://success-entrance.blogspot.com/ (for updated entrance exams information like question papers,cutoffs......)

2.http://onlineinfo-aayush.blogspot.com/ (for cool softwares,though this would take a lot of time to reach some level ,but i'll try my best to provide the latest)

3.http://aayushahujaonline.blogspot.com/ (for general topics including space,science ,events etc.)

open to any comments . do forward to all ur friends and follow the blogs.