Thursday, July 30, 2009

Artificial Brain By 2019


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A leading scientist has claimed that an Artificial Brain could be built within a decade.

Henry Makram, director of research group the Blue Brain Project, has already created parts of a fully functioning rat brain and hopes to build a human one in the next 10 years. He told the TED Global conference in Oxford that a synthetic Human Brain would be of particular use finding treatments for mental illnesses, reports the BBC.

“It is not impossible to build a human brain and we can do it in 10 years. And if we do succeed, we will send a hologram to TED to talk,” he said. The Blue Brain Project, launched in 2005, aims to engineer a brain from laboratory data, with a software model of “tens of thousands of neurons” reconstructing the brain’s circuitry and processes.

“It’s a new brain,” he explained. “The mammals needed it because they had to cope with parenthood, social interactions complex cognitive functions. “It was so successful an evolution from mouse to man it expanded about a thousand fold in terms of the numbers of units to produce this almost frightening organ.”

Source: health.taragana.net

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Sam

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Thinking Out of Box


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Try to answer the following questions!


Question(A):

You are driving along in your car on a wild, stormy night, it's raining heavily, when suddenly you pass by a bus stop, and you see three people waiting for a bus.

  1. Old lady who looks as if she is about to die.
  2. An old friend who once saved your life.
  3. perfect partner you have been dreaming about.

Which one would you choose to offer a ride to, knowing very well that there could only be one passenger in your car?

This is a moral/ethical dilemma that was once actually used as part of a job application.
  1. You could pick up the old lady, because she is going to die, and thus you should save her first.
  2. You could take the old friend because he once saved your life, and this would be the perfect chance to pay him back.
  3. However, you may never be able to find your perfect mate again.

The candidate who was hired (out of 200 applicants) had no trouble coming up with his answer. Guess what was his answer?


Answer(A):

"I would give the car keys to my Old friend and let him take the lady to the hospital. I would stay behind and wait for the bus with the partner of my dreams."

Question(B):

Interviewer (To a student Girl candidate) - One morning you woke up & found that you were pregnant, what will you do?

Answer(B):

"I will be very excited and take an off to celebrate with my husband."

Normally an unmarried girl will be shocked to hear this, but why should one think it in the wrong way!

Question(C):

The interviewer asked the candidate "This is your last question of the interview. Please tell me the exact position of the center of this table where u have kept your files."

Answer(C):

Candidate confidently put one of his finger at some point at the table and told that this was the central point at the table.

Interviewer asked how did u get to know that this being the central point of this table. He answers quickly that, "sir you are not likely to ask any more question, as it was the last question that u promised to ask!

The candidate was selected because of his presence of mind with humor.

Thinking outside the box means coming up with creative ways to solve problems, new ways to look at things.

How can you do it? First you have to understand what the "box" is. Then you can look at how to get outside of it. The "box" is the normal way of looking at things, doing things, and all the assumptions that almost everyone involved is making. Your best way to start thinking out of the box then, is to identify and challenge all the assumptions that make up the thinking inside the box.
  • Willingness to take new perspectives to day-to-day work.
  • Openness to do different things and to do things differently.
  • Focusing on the value of finding new ideas and acting on them.
  • Striving to create value in new ways.
  • Listening to others.
  • Supporting and respecting others when they come up with new ideas.
тнιηк συтѕι∂є тнє вσχ!

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Sam

Go Green Save Trees


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σвנє¢тѕ ιη тнє мιяяσя αяє ¢ℓσѕєя тнαη тнєу αρρєαя

We the inhabitants on earth, have reached that stage where we need to redesign and reconsider our lifestyles for further survival on this planet. If we want the generations to look forward to a healthy and green earth, then we really have to change ourselves at the earliest.


The forest has drastically depleted over a period of time owing to the human needs and activities. One contributing factor towards this is the paper industry.

Worldwide more than 300 million metric tons of paper and paperboard is produced every year. Of the total global wood harvest for industrial use. 42 per cent goes into paper making and it is expected to reach 50 per cent in the next fifty years. In every country they have paper mills producing different varieties of paper. On an average each one of us uses 700 pounds of paper products every year. For the production of paper special kind of tree plantations are made called as the managed timberlands.


These managed timberlands comprises of the special kind of trees, which are required for the pulp and paper manufacturing like the softwood tress (pine, fir etc). It means the diverse natural forests have been replaced by these managed plantations (like fast growing conifers), which has a direct impact on the biodiversity of the whole forest. Designing of the managed timberlands for pulp generation means the loss of valuable wildlife habitats, poor soil quality and ecosystem. They have 90 per cent fewer species than the natural forests. The managed timberlands often use chemical herbicides and pesticides in order to ensure fast production rates, causing acute environmental pollution.

Paper can be made from a variety of other materials like cotton, hemp, grass and even elephant dung but unfortunately in most parts of the world it is made by sacrificing the trees only. Paper products are the largest ingredients at a waste disposal sites. Pulp and paper production industry is the third largest producer of air and water pollutants, waste products and the gases responsible for climatic changes (green house gases). Pulp and paper production is the largest industrial consumer of energy, water and forest resources.

Huge water consumption involved in paper making process can lead to reduced water levels, required for fish and other aquatic flora and fauna along with alterations in the water temperature. Air discharges of the pulp industry include certain hormone disrupting and carcinogenic chemicals like the polyclinic aromatic hydrocarbons. About one fifth of the contents of household dustbins consist of paper and card, of which half is newspapers and magazines. Industrial nations with 20 per cent of the world's population consume 87 per cent of the world's writing and printing papers.

In front of all these facts and figures, now the question is what can we do to turn the situation into our favour.


There are many things that can be done like recycling of the paper, avoiding wastage of the paper or the development of non-tree based paper production methodologies etc.

But one much simpler and easier way to cut down the use of paper is to emphasise on the use of soft copies of the information and data rather than the hard (printed) form. With almost each and every sector of the world being computerised and connected through the Internet, all forms of organisations should give stress on using the soft data thereby avoiding the use of printed matter.

Source: merinews

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Sam

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

The Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy may collide In about 3 billion years


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If mankind can stick it out on Earth for another two billion years, our descendants may witness quite a show in the night sky. Researchers estimate that the Milky Way will collide with its nearest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, at around that time—well before the sun collapses into a white dwarf, perhaps destroying the Earth in the process. This close encounter of the galactic kind could easily kick our solar system to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, and there is a small chance we might even take up residence in Andromeda.

Astronomers simulated the collision by estimating the relative speed between the two galaxies and the amount of gas and dark matter in the intervening space, which exerts a drag on their motions. Andromeda is currently 2.3 million light-years from our galaxy. Researchers know that the two neighbors are approaching each other at 120 kilometers per second, but they are far less certain of Andromeda's sideways speed. If moving fast enough to the side, it would miss us entirely.

Taking their cue from the latest models of the galaxies' structures, Andromeda would first graze the Milky Way two billion years from now, they report in a paper submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The two galactic cores would orbit each other for another three billion years before merging.

During that time, the stars making up the two spiral galaxies would slowly coalesce into a more elliptical combo galaxy, "Milkomeda" (or the Andromedy Way, if you prefer). Although most of the stars would be too sparsely spaced to bump together, one galaxy's gravity would jostle the other stars.


The fate of the sun, which is expected to last at least until the simulated merger, would depend on where it was in its 24,000 light-year-wide orbit around the galactic core. The researchers estimate that by the time the cores had fused, the solar system would have a 50 percent chance of being swept to a wispy tail extending from Milkomeda, three times further out from galactic center than it is now. There is 3 percent chance of the sun being nudged into orbit around Andromeda when the two galaxies first collide. Of course, they note, different assumptions for the simulation would likely result in different outcomes.

Wonderful Album: How Small We Are [Dont Miss]

Source: ScientificAmerican

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Sam

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