Wednesday, November 14, 2007

A general view on Mainframe computer

Mainframes (often colloquially known to as big iron) are large and "expensive" computers used largely by government institutions and large companies for mission important applications, typically mass data processing such as censuses, ERP, industry/consumer statistics, and financial transaction processing.

The word originated during the near the beginning 1970s with the introduction of smaller, less difficult computers for example the DEC PDP-8 and PDP-11 series, which became recognized as minicomputers or just minis. The industry/users then coined the word "mainframe" to describe bigger, earlier types (before known simply as "computers").

Mainframes often maintain thousands of simultaneous users who gain right of entry through "dumb" terminals or terminal emulation. Early mainframes either supported this timesharing mode or operated in batch mode where users had no straight access to the computing service, it exclusively providing back office functions. At this time mainframes were so called for the reason that of their very substantial size and requirements for specialized HVAC and electrical power. Nowadays mainframes support right of entry via any user interface, including the Web. Blade servers rather than mainframes are currently increasingly requiring "exotic" cooling technologies.

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Types of Boxes

Permanent Boxes

Numerous types of boxes are used in eternal installations. Some types are designed to be for the time being inhabited by workers.
Permanent boxes include the following:
Equipment boxes - Fuse box
Compartments - Luxury box , Mailbox
Shelters or booths - Police box , Signal box , Telephone box

Permanent boxes
Numerous types of boxes are used in stable installations. Some types are designed to be provisionally inhabited by workers.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

The real facts about Uranus

Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun and the third biggest (by diameter). Uranus is bigger in diameter but smaller in mass than Neptune. Uranus is composed mainly of rock and various ices, with only about 15% hydrogen and a little helium (in compare to Jupiter and Saturn which are mostly hydrogen). Uranus (and Neptune) is in numerous ways alike to the cores of Jupiter and Saturn minus the huge liquid metallic hydrogen envelope. It appears that Uranus does not have a stony core like Jupiter and Saturn but rather that its material is more or less consistently distributed.

Like the other gas planets, Uranus has bands of clouds that carry around rapidly. But they are very faint, visible only with radical image improvement of the Voyager 2 pictures (right). Recent observations with HST (left) show bigger and more pronounced streaks. Additional HST observations show even more activity. Uranus is no longer the ordinary boring planet that Voyager saw! It now seems understandable that the differences are due to seasonal effects since the Sun is now at lesser Uranian latitude which may because more pronounced day/night weather effects. By 2007 the Sun will be unswervingly over Uranus's equator.

Like the additional gas planets, Uranus has rings. Like Jupiter's, they are extremely dark but like Saturn's they are composed of quite large particles ranging up to 10 meters in diameter additionally to fine dust. There are 11 recognized rings, all very faint; the brightest is identified as the Epsilon ring. The Uranian rings were the first after Saturn's to be discovered. This was of great importance since we now know that rings are a common feature of planets, not a peculiarity of Saturn alone. Uranus' fascinating field is odd in that it is not centered on the center of the planet and is tilted almost 60 degrees with respect to the axis of rotary motion. It is almost certainly generated by motion at relatively shallow depths within Uranus.

Friday, October 26, 2007

The real facts about Neptune

Neptune is the eighth planet from the Sun and the fourth largest (by diameter) of the planet. Neptune is smaller in diameter but bigger in mass than Uranus. Neptune's composition is almost certainly alike to Uranus': various "ices" and rock with about 15% hydrogen and a little helium. Like Uranus, but unlike Jupiter and Saturn, it can not have a distinct internal layering but rather to be more or less uniform in composition. But there is most expected a small core (about the mass of the Earth) of rock-strewn material. Its atmosphere is generally hydrogen and helium with a minute amount of methane.

Neptune's blue color is mainly the result of absorption of red light by methane in the atmosphere but there is a number of additional as-yet-unidentified chromophore which gives the clouds their rich blue tint. Like Jupiter and Saturn, Neptune has an inner heat source -- it radiates more than, twice as much energy as it receives from the Sun.

Neptune also has rings. Earth-based observations showed just faint arcs rather than complete rings, but Voyager 2's images showed them to be entire rings with bright clumps. One of the rings looks to have a curious twisted structure (right). Like Uranus and Jupiter, Neptune's rings are extremely dark but their composition is unknown.

Neptune's rings have been noted names: the outermost is Adams (which contains three important arcs now named Liberty, Equality and Fraternity), next is an unnamed ring co-orbital with Galatea, then Leverrier (whose outer extensions are called Lassell and Arago), and lastly the faint but broad Galle. Neptune's magnetic field is, like Uranus', oddly oriented and most likely generated by motions of conductive material (probably water) in its middle layers.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Cookie

In the United States and Canada, a cookie is a tiny, round, flat cake. In most English-speaking countries outer North America, the most common word for this is biscuit; in many regions both terms are used, while in others the two words have diverse meanings—a cookie is a bun in Scotland, while in the United States a biscuit is a kind of quick bread not unlike a scone.

Cookies can be baked until crisp or just long enough that they stay soft. Depending on the kind of cookie, some cookies are not cooked at all. Cookies are made in a broad variety of styles, using an array of ingredients including sugars, spices, chocolate, butter, peanut butter, nuts or dried fruits. The smoothness of the cookie may depend on how long it is baked.

Monday, October 08, 2007

Mainframes

Mainframes (often colloquially referred to as big iron) are huge and expensive computers used mainly by government institutions and large companies for mission critical applications, usually bulk data processing such as censuses, industry/consumer statistics, ERP, and financial transaction processing.
The term originated during the early 1970s with the introduction of smaller, fewer complex computers such as the DEC PDP-8 and PDP-11 series, which became known as minicomputers or just minis. The industry/users then coined the term "mainframe" to describe bigger, earlier types (previously known simply as "computers").

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Traffic Light

A traffic light or traffic signal is a signalling device positioned at a road junction or pedestrian crossing to indicate when it is safe to drive, ride or walk, using a universal color code.Traffic lights for usual vehicles or pedestrians always have two main lights, a red one that means stop and a green one that means go. Generally, the red light contains some orange in its hue, and the green light contains some blue, to provide some support for people with red-green color blindness. In most countries there is also a yellow (or amber) light, which when on and not flashing means stop if able to do so securely. In some systems, a flashing amber means that a motorist may go in advance with care if the road is clear, giving way to pedestrians and to other road vehicles that may have precedence. A flashing red effectively means the same as a regular stop sign. There may be additional lights (usually a green arrow or "filter") to allow turns (called a lead light in the U.S., because it is usually leading the main green light).

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Goshawk

The Goshawk is an average large bird of quarry in the family Accipitridae which also includes many other diurnal raptors such as eagles, buzzards and harriers.

It is an extensive species all through the moderate parts of the northern hemisphere. In North America it is named as the Northern Goshawk. It is typically inhabitant, but birds from colder regions of north Asia and Canada journey south for the winter.


Goshawk in flight this species nests in trees, building a new nest each year. It hunts birds and mammals in woodland, relying on revelation as it flies from a perch or hedge-hops to catch its quarry ignorant. Animals as large as hares and Pheasant are taken. Its call is a ferocious screech. Many older goshawks reject to attack hares, if it was earlier seriously kicked by a hare which it tried to catch.

This bird is a raptor with short large wings and a long tail, both adaptations to maneuvering through trees. The male is blue-grey above and banned grey below, 49-56 cm long with a 93-105 cm wingspan. The much larger female is 58-64 cm long with a 108-127 cm wingspan, slate grey above grey below. The youthful is brown above and barred brown below. The flight is a characteristic "slow flap – slow flap – straight glide".

In Eurasia, the male is confusable with a female Sparrow hawk, but is superior, much bulkier and has moderately longer wings. In spring, he has an impressive roller-coaster display, and this is the best time to see this enigmatic forest bird.

Goshawk

The Goshawk is an average large bird of quarry in the family Accipitridae which also includes many other diurnal raptors such as eagles, buzzards and harriers.

It is an extensive species all through the moderate parts of the northern hemisphere. In North America it is named as the Northern Goshawk. It is typically inhabitant, but birds from colder regions of north Asia and Canada journey south for the winter.


Goshawk in flight this species nests in trees, building a new nest each year. It hunts birds and mammals in woodland, relying on revelation as it flies from a perch or hedge-hops to catch its quarry ignorant. Animals as large as hares and Pheasant are taken. Its call is a ferocious screech. Many older goshawks reject to attack hares, if it was earlier seriously kicked by a hare which it tried to catch.

This bird is a raptor with short large wings and a long tail, both adaptations to maneuvering through trees. The male is blue-grey above and banned grey below, 49-56 cm long with a 93-105 cm wingspan. The much larger female is 58-64 cm long with a 108-127 cm wingspan, slate grey above grey below. The youthful is brown above and barred brown below. The flight is a characteristic "slow flap – slow flap – straight glide".

In Eurasia, the male is confusable with a female Sparrow hawk, but is superior, much bulkier and has moderately longer wings. In spring, he has an impressive roller-coaster display, and this is the best time to see this enigmatic forest bird.

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Tumor

Tumor or tumour is an irregular growth or mass of tissue. A tumor can be either malignant or benign. Almost all tumors are examples of neoplasia, although certain developmental malformations or inflammatory masses may occasionally be referred to as tumors.

Neoplastic tumors are caused by mutations in DNA of cells, which interfere with a cell's capability to regulate and limit cell division. An accumulation of mutations is needed for a tumor to emerge. Mutations that activate oncogenes or repress tumor suppressor genes can eventually lead to tumors. Cells have mechanisms that repair DNA and other mechanisms that cause the cell to destroy itself by apoptosis if DNA damage gets too severe. Mutations that repress the genes for these mechanisms can also ultimately guide to cancer. A mutation in one oncogene or one tumor repressor gene is usually not enough for a tumor to occur. A combination of a number of mutations is essential.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Microcomputer

A microcomputer is mainly often taken to mean a computer with a microprocessor (µP) as its CPU. Another general characteristic of these computers is that they take up physically small amounts of space.Desktop computers, video game consoles, laptop computers, tablet PCs, and a lot of handheld devices may all be considered examples of microcomputers.Most microcomputers serve only a single user at a time, but some, in the form of PCs and workstations running e.g. a UNIX(-like) operating system, may cater to a number of users concurrently. The µP does the majority of the job of calculating on and manipulating data that all computers do.

Monday, August 13, 2007

Salad

Salad is a light meal — or, as part of a larger meal, much more of an taster — consisting of mixed vegetables (usually including at least one leaf vegetable) or fruit, frequently with a dressing or sauce, occasionally nuts and sometimes with the addition of meat, fish or cheese. It is generally seen as a healthy dish, although not always low in calories, salt, sugar, or fat because of the dressing that is often added.The word "salad" comes from the French salade of the same meaning, which in twist is from the Latin salata, "salty", from sal, "salt".

Monday, July 30, 2007

Traffic Claming

Traffic calming is a set of strategies used by urban planners and traffic engineers which aims to slow down traffic and get better safety for pedestrians and bicyclists, although some of these features can also be hazardous to cyclists. It is now comparatively common in Europe, especially Northern Europe; less so in North America.Traffic calming has conventionally been justified on the grounds of pedestrian safety and reduction of noise and local air pollution which are side effects of the traffic. However, it has become more and more apparent that streets have many social and recreational functions which are severely impaired by fast car traffic. For much of the twentieth century, streets were designed by engineers who were charged only with ensuring traffic flow and not with development other functions of streets. The rationale for traffic reassuring is now broadening to include designing for these functions.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Lighthouse of Alexandria

The Pharos of Alexandria was a big tower built in the 3rd century BC (between 285 and 247 BC) on the island of Pharos in Alexandria, Egypt to give out as that port's landmark, and later, its lighthouse.

With a height variously estimated at between 115 and 150 meters (383 - 450 ft) it was among the tallest man-made structures on Earth for many centuries, and was recognized as one of the Seven Wonders of the World by Antipater of Sidon. It was the third tallest building after the two Great Pyramids (of Khufu and Khafra) for its whole life. Some scientists approximate a much taller height exceeding 180 metres that would make the tower the tallest building up to the 14th century.

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Bay of Bengal

The Bay of Bengal is a bay that forms the northeastern ingredient of the Indian Ocean. It resembles a triangle in form, and is bordered on the east by Malay Peninsula, and on the west by India. On the northern pour of the "bay" lies the Bengal region, comprising the Indian state of West Bengal and the country of Bangladesh, thus the name. The southern extremes arrive at the island country of Sri Lanka, and the Indian Union Territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

The Bay of Bengal occupies an region of 2,172,000 km². It is bounded by India and Sri Lanka to the West, Bangladesh to the North, and Myanmar and the southern part of Thailand to the East. Its southern border extends as an imaginary line from Dondra Head at the southern end of Sri Lanka to the northern tip of Sumatra. A number of huge rivers – Ganges, Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, Godavari, Mahanadi, Krishna and Cauvery – flow into the Bay of Bengal. Among the vital ports are Yangon, Kolkata/Calcutta, Chittagong, Cuddalore, Kakinada, Machlipatnam, Madras, Paradip and Vishakapatnam.

Monday, July 09, 2007

Marketing

Marketing is one of the most significant functions in business. It is the regulation required to understand customers' needs and the benefits they seek. Academia does not have one commonly agreed upon description. Even after a better part of a century the dispute continues. In a nutshell it consists of the social and managerial processes by which goods or services and value are exchanged in order to fulfill the needs and wants of individuals or groups. Although many people appear to think that "marketing" and "advertising" are synonymous, they are not. Advertising is simply one of the lots of processes that together constitute marketing.

Thursday, July 05, 2007

CPU Socket

The term CPU socket (or CPU slot) is commonly used to describe the connector linking the motherboard to the CPU in certain types of desktop and server computers, particularly those compatible with the Intel x86 architecture.

Most CPU sockets and processors in use today are built around the pin grid array (PGA) architecture, in which the pins on the base of the processor are inserted into the socket. To aid installation, zero insertion force (ZIF) sockets are usually used, allowing the processor to be inserted without any confrontation, while gripping the pins firmly once the processor is in place to ensure a reliable contact. In contrast to CPU sockets, slot-based processors and CPUs use a single-edged connection rather than a socket, and slot into the motherboard on their side. Slot architectures are not often used today

Sunday, July 01, 2007

Swan

Swans are large water birds of the family Anatidae, which also includes geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the intimately related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae.

Swans typically mate for life, though "divorce" does sometimes occur, mainly following nesting failure. The number of eggs in each clutch is between 3–8.
The word is derived from Old English swan, akin to German Schwan, in turn derived from Indo-European root *swen (to sound, to sing), whence Latin derives sonus (sound). Young swans are known as cygnets, from the Latin word for swan, cygnus. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe; an adult female is a pen .

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

RISC (reduced instruction set computer)

In the mid-1980s to early-1990s, a crop of new high-performance RISC microprocessors appeared, which were initially used in special purpose machines and UNIX workstations, but have since become almost universal in all roles except the Intel-standard desktop.

The first commercial design was released by MIPS Technologies, the 32-bit R2000. The R3000 made the design truly practical, and the R4000 introduced the world's first 64-bit design. Opposing projects would result in the IBM POWER and Sun SPARC systems, respectively. Soon every major vendor was releasing a RISC design, including the AT&T CRISP, AMD 29000, Intel i860 and Intel i960, Motorola 88000, DEC Alpha and the HP-PA.

Market forces have "weeded out" many of these designs, leaving the PowerPC as the main desktop RISC processor, with the SPARC being used in Sun designs only. MIPS continue to supply some SGI systems, but are first and foremost used as an embedded design, notably in Cisco routers. The rest of the original crop of designs have either disappeared, or are about to. Other companies have attacked niches in the market, notably ARM, originally intended for home computer use but since focused at the embedded processor market. Today RISC designs based on the MIPS, ARM or PowerPC core are the vast majority of computing devices.

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Neem cake

Neem cake natural manure is the by-product obtained in the process of cold pressing of Neem fruits and kernels, and the solvent removal process for neem oil cake. It is a potential source of organic manure under the Bureau of India Standards, Neem has established considerable potential as a fertilizer. For this purpose, neem cake and neem leaves are particularly promising. Puri , in his book on neem has given details about neem seed cake as manure and nitrification inhibitor. The author has described that after processing neem cake can be used for partial replacement of poultry and cattle feed.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Tide

Tides are the cyclic rising and falling of Earth's ocean surface caused by the tidal forces of the Moon and the sun acting on the oceans. Tides cause changes in the depth of the marine and estuarine water bodies and produce oscillating currents known as tidal streams, making prediction of tides important for coastal navigation. The strip of seashore that is submerged at high tide and exposed at low tide, the intertidal zone, is an important ecological product of ocean tides
The changing tide produced at a given location is the result of the changing positions of the Moon and Sun relative to the Earth coupled with the effects of Earth rotation and the local bathymetry.Sea level measured by coastal tide gauges may also be strongly affected by wind. More generally, tidal phenomena can occur in other systems besides the ocean, whenever a gravitational field that varies in time and space is present

Friday, June 15, 2007

Canoe

A canoe is a small narrow boat, classically human-powered, but also commonly sailed. Canoes usually are pointed at both bow and stern and are normally open on top, but can be covered.In its human-powered form, the canoe is propelled by the use of paddles, with the number of paddlers depending on the size of the canoe. Paddlers face in the direction of travel, either seated on supports in the hull, or kneeling directly upon the hull. In this way paddling a canoe can be contrasted with rowing, where the rowers face away from the direction of travel. Paddles may be single-bladed or double-bladed.Sailing canoes are propelled by means of a variety of sailing rigs. Common classes of modern sailing canoes include the 5m² and the International 10m² Sailing canoes. The latter is otherwise known as the International Canoe, and is one of the fastest and oldest competitively sailed boat classes in the western world. The log canoe of the Chesapeake Bay is in the modern sense not a canoe at all, though it evolved through the enlargement of dugout canoes.

Canoe

A canoe is a small narrow boat, classically human-powered, but also commonly sailed. Canoes usually are pointed at both bow and stern and are normally open on top, but can be covered.In its human-powered form, the canoe is propelled by the use of paddles, with the number of paddlers depending on the size of the canoe. Paddlers face in the direction of travel, either seated on supports in the hull, or kneeling directly upon the hull. In this way paddling a canoe can be contrasted with rowing, where the rowers face away from the direction of travel. Paddles may be single-bladed or double-bladed.Sailing canoes are propelled by means of a variety of sailing rigs. Common classes of modern sailing canoes include the 5m² and the International 10m² Sailing canoes. The latter is otherwise known as the International Canoe, and is one of the fastest and oldest competitively sailed boat classes in the western world. The log canoe of the Chesapeake Bay is in the modern sense not a canoe at all, though it evolved through the enlargement of dugout canoes.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Krill fishery

Krill fishery is the commercial fishery of krill, small shrimp-like marine animals that live in the oceans world-wide. Estimates for how much krill there is vary wildly, depending on the methodology used. They range from 125–725 million tonnes of biomass globally. The total global harvest of krill from all fisheries amounts to 150 – 200,000 tonnes annually, mainly Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) and North Pacific krill

Krill are rich in protein (40% or more of dry weight) and lipids . Their exoskeleton amounts to some 2% of dry weight of chitin. They also contain traces of a wide array of hydrolytic enzymes such as proteases, carbohydrases, nucleases and phospholipases, which are intense in the digestive gland in the cephalothorax of the krill.

Most krill is used as aquaculture feed and fish bait; other uses comprise livestock or pet foods. Only a small percentage is prepared for human consumption. Their enzymes are interesting for medical applications, an expanding sector since the early 1990s.

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Deadheading

Deadheading is the act of removing spent flowers or flowerheads for aesthetics, to prolong bloom for up to several weeks or endorse rebloom, or to put off seeding.
Deadheading is beneficial to most herbaceous ornamental plants. It can get better overall look of a plant, give a fresh new look to an otherwise finished or even distracting item, and can promote vegetative and root increase rather than seed production and help retain the plant's healthy appearance.

Friday, June 01, 2007

Fire

Fire is a rapid oxidation procedure that creates light, heat, smoke, and releases energy in varying intensities. It is commonly used to explain either a fuel in a state of combustion or a violent, destructive and uncontrolled burning (e.g., in buildings or a wildfire). The discovery of how to make fire is considered one of humankind's most important advances, allowing higher hominids to ward off wild animals, cook food, and control their own source of light and warmth.

Monday, May 28, 2007

JAR

In computing, a JAR file (or Java ARchive) file used to distribute a set of Java classes. It is used to store compiled Java classes and linked metadata that can constitute a program.

* WAR (file format) (Web Application aRchive) files are also Java archives which store XML files, java classes, Java Server Pages and other objects for Web Applications.
* EAR (file format) (Enterprise ARchive) files are also Java archives which store XML files, java classes and other objects for Enterprise Applications.
* RAR (file format) (Resource Adapter aRchive) files are also Java archives which store XML files, java classes and other objects for J2EE Connector Architecture (JCA) applications.

JAR files can be created and extracted using the "jar" command that comes with the JDK. It can be done using zip tools, but as WinZip has a habit of renaming all-uppercase directories and files in lower case, this can raise support calls with whoever shaped the JAR or the tool authors themselves. WinRAR, on the other hand, retains the original case of filenames.

A JAR file has a manifest file located in the path META-INF/MANIFEST.MF. The entries in the manifest file determine how the JAR file will be used. JAR files which are intended to be executed as standalone programs will have one of their classes specified as the "main" class. The manifest file would have an entry such as
Main-Class: myPrograms.MyClass

Such JAR files are typically started with a command similar to

java -jar foo.jar

These files can also include a Classpath entry, which identifies other JAR files to be loaded with the JAR. This entry consists of a list of absolute or relative paths to other JAR files. Although intended to simplify JAR use, in practice, it turns out to be notoriously brittle as it depends on all the relevant JARs being in the exact locations specified when the entry-point JAR was built. To change versions or locations of libraries, a new manifest is needed.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Nutrition

Nutrition is a science which studies the relationship between diet and states of health and disease. Dietitians are Health professionals who are particular in this area of expertise. They are also the only extremely trained health professionals able to provide safe, evidence-based and accurate dietary advice and interventions.

Between extremes of optimal health and death from starvation or malnutrition, there is an array of disease states that can be caused or alleviated by changes in diet. Deficiencies, excesses and imbalances in diet can produce negative impacts on health, which may lead to diseases such as scurvy, obesity or osteoporosis, as well as mental and behavioral problems. Moreover, excessive ingestion of elements that have no apparent role in health, (e.g. lead, mercury, PCBs, dioxins), may incur toxic and potentially lethal belongings, depending on the dose. The science of nutrition attempts to understand how and why exact dietary aspects influence health.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Organization in sociology

In sociology "organization" is tacit as planned, synchronized and decided action of human beings to construct or compile a common tangible or intangible product. This action is usually framed by official membership and form. Sociology distinguishes the term organization into planned formal and unplanned informal organizations. Sociology analyses organizations in the first line from an institutional viewpoint. In this sense, organization is a permanent agreement of elements. These elements and their actions are resolute by rules so that a certain task can be fulfilled through a system of coordinated the division of labour.

An organization is defined by the rudiments that are part of it, its communication, its independence and its rules of action compared to outside events. By coordinated and planned cooperation of the elements, the organization is able to solve tasks that lie beyond the abilities of the single elements. The price paid by the elements is the restriction of the degrees of freedom of the elements. Advantages of organizations are enhancement, addition, and extension. Disadvantages are inertness and loss of interaction.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Stamp Collecting

Stamp collecting is the collecting of postage stamps and related objects, such as. It is one of the world's most trendy hobbies, with estimates of the number of collectors ranging up to 20 million in the US alone.
Collecting is not the similar as philately, which is the study of stamps. A philatelist often does, but need not, collect the objects of study, nor is it required to closely study what one collects. Many informal collectors enjoy accumulating stamps without worrying about the tiny details, but the creation of a large or wide-ranging collection generally requires some philatelic knowledge.
History
The primary postage stamp, the One Penny Black, was issued by Britain in 1840. It pictured a young Queen Victoria, was formed without perforations, and accordingly had to be cut from the sheet with scissors in order to be used. While unused examples of the "Penny Black" are quite scarce, used examples are common, and may be purchased for $25 to $150, depending upon state.
Queen Victoria's outline was a staple on 19th century stamps of the British Empire; here on a half-penny of the Falkland Islands, 1891.During the late 1800s many of those collectors, now adults, began to systematically study the available postage stamps and published research works on their manufacture, plate flaws, etc.

Friday, May 11, 2007

Paint

Paint is any liquid, liquifiable, or mastic composition which after application to a substrate in a thin layer is transformed to an opaque solid film.
Paint is used to protect, decorate (such as adding color), or add functionality to an object or outside by covering it with a pigmented coating. An example of protection is to retard corrosion of metal. An example of decoration is to add festive trim to a room interior. An example of added functionality is to alter light reflection or heat radiation of a surface.
As a verb, painting is the application of paint. Someone who paints creatively is usually called a painter, while someone who paints commercially is often referred to as a painter and decorator, or house painter.
Paint can be applied to almost any kind of object. It is used, among many other uses, in the production of art, in industrial coating, as a driving aid, or as a barrier to prevent corrosion or water damage. Paint is a semifinished product, as the final product is the painted article itself.

Monday, May 07, 2007

Belt (clothing)

A belt is a flexible band, characteristically made of leather or heavy cloth, and worn around the waist.belt supports trousers or other articles of clothing, and it serves for style and decoration.Historically, a belt was also used by educators for spanking children, and by masters for spanking servants. This use has frequently declined in the Western world, as it is viewed as too barbaric and uncontrollable a form of corporal punishment.At one end of the belt is a belt buckle that is shaped onto the other end of the belt. The other end of the belt contains several holes, into which a prong (which is part of the buckle) is inserted into it for the purpose of securing the belt. Sometimes, there is a clamp system so that no holes are wanted. In Western civilizations, men usually insert the belt through the pant loops in a counter-clockwise manner, while women tend to insert the belt through the pant loops in a clockwise direction.Since belts must be drawn firmly around the waist in order to hold up the pants, they may be less comfortable than suspenders, which allow trousers to hang loosely about the body.

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Speed limit

A speed limit is the highest speed allowed by law for vehicles on a road.

Design speed
Speed limits are only peripherally interrelated to the design speed of the road.
In the United States, the design speed is "a selected speed used to establish the various geometric design features of the roadway" according to the 2001 AASHTO Green Book, the highway design manual. It has been changed from previous versions which considered it the "highest safe speed that can be maintained over a specific section of highway when conditions are so positive that the design facial appearance of the highway governs."

The design speed has largely been discredited as a sole basis for establishing a speed limit. Current U.S. standards for design speed derive from outdated, less-capable automotive technology. Also, the design speed of a given roadway is the theoretical maximum safe speed of the roadway's worst feature .The design speed usually underestimates the highest safe speed for a roadway and is therefore considered only a very conservative "first guess" at a limit.

85th percentile rule
An automobile dashboard viewing the speedometer with primary markings in miles per hour.Since the 1950s, United States traffic engineers have been taught the 85th Percentile Rule. The idea is that the speed limit should be set to the speed below which 85% of vehicles are traveling. The 85th percentile closely corresponds to one normal deviation above the mean of a normal distribution.
Every state in the United States statutorily or administratively picks a particular speed for a speed limit cap, meaning that no speed limit in that state may be set higher than the cap. A practical effect of this cap is that nearly every rural roadway in the U.S. has a speed limit that is well below the 85th percentile speed.

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Lighting rod

A lightning rod is a metal narrow piece or rod, typically of copper or similar conductive material, used as part of lightning security to guard tall or isolated structures from lightning damage. Its formal name is lightning finial. Sometimes, the system is informally referred to as:

A lightning conductor,
A lightning arrester, or
A lightning discharger.
However, these terms really refer to lightning guard systems in general or specific mechanism within them.

Lightning rod dissipaters make a structure less nice-looking by which charges can flow to the air around it. This then reduces the voltage between the point and the storm cloud, making a strike less likely. The most common charge dissipaters appear as slightly-blunted metal spikes sticking out in all information from a metal ball. These are mounted on short metal arms at the very top of a radio antenna or tower, the area by far most likely to be struck. These devices diminish, but do not eradicate, the risk of lightning strikes.

Monday, April 23, 2007

American Robin

The American Robin is a migratory songbird of the thrush family.
The American Robin is 25-28 cm (10-11 in) long. It has gray upperparts and head, and orange underparts, typically brighter in the male; the similarity between this coloring and that of the smaller and unrelated European Robin led to its common name. There are seven races, but only T . m. confinus in the southwest is mainly distinctive, with pale gray-brown underparts
During the breeding season, the adult males grow distinctive black feathers on their heads; after the breeding season they lose this eye-catching plumage.
This bird breeds all through Canada and the United States. While Robins infrequently overwinter in the northern part of the United States and southern Canada, most winter in the southern parts of the breeding range and beyond, from the southern USA to Guatemala. Most depart south by the end of August and begin to return north in March. This species is a very rare vagrant to western Europe. In autumn 2003, migration was displaced eastwards leading to massive movements through the eastern USA. most probably this is what led to no less than three American Robins being found in Great Britain, with two attempting to overwinter in 2003-4, one eventually being taken by a Sparrowhawk

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Auto racing

Auto racing (also known as automobile racing, autosport or motorsport) is a sport involving racing automobiles. Motor racing or motorsport may also mean motorcycle racing, and can comprise motorboat racing and air racing. It is one of the world's most popular spectator sports and perhaps the most thoroughly commercialized.Auto racing began almost immediately after the construction of the first successful petrol-fuelled autos. In 1894, the first contest was organized by Paris magazine Le Petit Journal, a consistency test to determine best performance.A year later the first real race was staged in France, from Paris to Bordeaux. First over the line was Émile Levassor but he was ineligible because his car was not a necessary four-seater.

Monday, April 09, 2007

"Wireless" factories and vacuum tubes

Marconi opened the world's first "wireless" factory in Hall Street, Chelmsford, England in 1898, employing around 50 people. Around 1900, Tesla opened the Wardenclyffe Tower facility and advertised services. By 1903, the tower structure neared completion. Various theories exist on how Tesla planned to achieve the goals of this wireless system. Tesla claimed that Wardenclyffe, as part of a World System of transmitters, would have permitted secure multichannel transceiving of information, universal navigation, time synchronization, and a global location system.
The next great invention was the vacuum tube detector, invented by a team of Westinghouse engineers. On Christmas Eve, 1906, Reginald Fessenden ransmitted the first radio audio broadcast in history from Brant Rock, Massachusetts. Ships at sea heard a broadcast that included Fessenden playing O Holy Night on the violin and reading a passage from the Bible. The world's first radio news program was broadcast August 31, 1920 by station 8MK in Detroit, Michigan. The world's first regular wireless broadcasts for entertainment commenced in 1922 from the Marconi Research Centre at Writtle near Chelmsford, England.

Thursday, April 05, 2007

Space missions

Unmanned space missions are those using remote-controlled spacecraft.
The first such mission was the Sputnik I mission, launched October 4, 1957. Some missions are more appropriate for unmanned missions rather than manned space missions, due to lower cost and lower risk factors.
Since the early 1970s, most unmanned space missions have been based on space probes with built-in mission computers, and as such may be classified as embedded systems.
Most American unmanned missions have been synchronized by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and European missions by the European Space Operations Centre, part of ESA (the European Space Agency).
ESA has conducted comparatively few space exploration missions. ESA has, however, launched a variety of spacecraft to carry out astronomy, and is a collaborator with NASA on the Hubble Space Telescope.
There has been a large number of very successful Russian space missions. There were also a few Japanese and Chinese missions.

Sunday, April 01, 2007

Sand Hill Road

Sand Hill Road is a road in Menlo Park, California, prominent for the concentration of venture capital companies there. Its significance as a symbol of private equity in the United States may be compared to that of Wall Street in the stock market. Connecting El Camino Real and Interstate 280, the road provides easy access to Stanford University and Silicon Valley. For several years during the Dotcom boom of the late 1990s, commercial real-estate on Sand Hill Road was more expensive than anywhere else in the U.S. (even Manhattan).Some of the areas Sand Hill Road venture capitalists invest in:Sand Hill Road also serves as home to the Stanford Linear Accelerator.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Sunglasses

Sunglasses are a kind of visual correction aid, variously termed spectacles or glasses, which feature lenses that are coloured or darkened to screen out strong light from the eyes.
Many people find direct sunlight too bright to be comfortable, particularly when reading from paper on which the sun directly shines. In outdoor activities like skiing and flying, the eye can receive more light than usual. It has been recommended to wear these kind of glasses on sunny days to protect the eyes from ultraviolet radiation, which can lead to the development of a cataract. Sunglasses have also been linked with celebrities and film actors mainly due to the desire to mask identity, but in part due to the lighting involved in production being typically stronger than natural light and uncomfortable to the naked eye.
Augusto Pinochet sits with sunglasses in the front of the Chilean JuntaContents

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Aircraft carrier

An aircraft carrier is a warship whose main role is to deploy and recover aircraft—in effect acting as a sea-going airbase. Aircraft carriers thuo depend on local bases for land-based aircraft. Modern navies, who work such ships, treat aircraft carriers as the centerpiece of the fleet, a role before played by the battleship. The change, part of the growth of air power as a significant part of warfare, took place during World War II. Unescorted carriers are careful vulnerable to attack by other ships, aircraft, submarines or missiles and so travel as part of a carrier battle group.
Flight deck configuration
Aircraft carriers have a flat-top deck, the flight deck that serves as a take-off and landing area for aircraft. Aircraft take off to the front, into the wind, and land from the rear. The carrier steams at up to 35 knots (65 km/h) straight into the wind throughout take-off in order to increase the apparent wind speed, thereby reducing the necessary speed of the aircraft relative to the ship. A steam-powered catapult is used to propel the aircraft forward assisting the power of its engines and allowing it to take off in a shorter distance than would otherwise be necessary, even with the headwind effect of the ship's course. on the other hand, when landing on a carrier, aircraft rely upon a tailhook that catches on arrestor wires stretched across the deck to bring them to a stop in a shorter distance than normal. Since the end of WWII it has been ordinary to direct the landing recovery area off to port at an angle to the line of the ship. This allows launching of aircraft at the same time as others land.
The above deck areas of the warship are intense to the starboard side of the deck in a comparatively small area called an "island". Only a very few carriers have ever been intended or built without an island and such a configuration has not been seen in a fleet sized carrier.
A more recent configuration, used by the Royal Navy, has a 'ski-jump' ramp at the front end of the flat deck. This was developed to help launch VTOL (or STOVL) aircraft (aircraft that are able to take off and land with little or no forward movement) such as the Sea Harrier. Though the aircraft are capable of flying vertically off the deck, using the ramp is more fuel efficient. As catapults and arrestor cables are unnecessary, carriers with this arrangement reduce weight, complexity, and space wanted for equipment.

Friday, March 16, 2007

Gliders

Gliders are aircraft with no internal powerplant. Model gliders are generally hand-launched or catapult-launched (using an elastic bungee.) The newer "discus" style of wingtip handlaunching has mostly supplanted the earlier "javelin" type of launch. Other launch methods include ground based power winches, hand-towing, and towing aloft using a second powered aircraft. As gliders are unpowered, flight must be sustained throughout exploitation of the natural wind in the environment. A hill or slope will often produce updrafts of air which will sustain the flight of a glider. This is called slope soaring, and when piloted skillfully, R/C gliders can stay airborne for as long as the updraft prevails. Another means of attaining height in a glider is exploitation of thermals, which are bubbles or columns of warm rising air created by hot spots on the ground. As with a powered aircraft, lift is obtained by the action of the wings as the aircraft moves through the air, but in a glider, height can only be gained by flying through air that is rising faster than the aircraft is sinking relative to the airflow.
Sailplanes are flown using available thermal lift. As thermals can only be indirectly experiential through the reaction of the aircraft to the invisible rising air currents, pilots find sailplane flying challenging yet rewarding.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Igloo

An igloo ,translated sometimes as snowhouse, is a shelter constructed from blocks of snow, normally in the form of a dome. Although igloos are regularly associated with all Inuit, they were mostly constructed by people of Canada's Central Arctic and Greenlands Thule area. Other Inuit people tended to use snow to insulate their houses which consisted of whalebone and hides. The use of snow is due to the fact that snow is an insulator (due to its low density). On the outside, temperatures may be as low as -45 °C (-49 °F), but on the inside the temperature may range from -7 °C (19 °F) to 16 °C (61 °F) when warmed by body heat alone

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Cheese

Cheese is a solid food prepared from the milk of cows, goats, sheep, and other mammals. Cheese is made by curdling milk using a mixture of rennet (or rennet substitutes) and acidification. Bacteria acidify the milk and play a role in essential the texture and flavor of most cheeses. Some cheeses also feature molds, either on the outer rind or all through.
There are hundreds of types of cheese produced all over the world. Different styles and flavors of cheese are the result of using milk from various mammals or with different butterfat contents, employing particular species of bacteria and molds, and varying the length of aging and other dealing out treatments. Other factors contain animal diet and the addition of flavoring agents such as herbs, spices, or wood smoke. Whether the milk is pasteurized may also affect the flavor. The yellow to red coloring of many cheeses is a result of adding annatto. Cheeses are eaten both on their own and cooked as part of a variety of dishes; most cheeses melt when heated.
For a few cheeses, the milk is curdled by adding together acids such as vinegar or lemon juice. Most cheeses, however, are acidified to a lesser degree by bacteria, which turn milk sugars into lactic acid, followed by the addition of rennet to complete the curdling. Rennet is an enzyme mixture conventionally obtained from the stomach lining of young cattle, but now also laboratory created. Vegetarian alternatives to rennet are available; most are formed by fermentation of the fungus Mucor miehei, but others have been extracted from a variety of species of the Cynara thistle family.

Friday, March 02, 2007

Random access memory

Random access memory (usually known by its acronym, RAM) is a kind of data storage used in computers. It takes the figure of integrated circuits that allow the stored data to be accessed in any order — that is, at random and without the physical group of the storage medium or a physical reading head.
The word "random" refers to the fact that any piece of data can be returned rapidly, and in a constant time, inspite of its physical location and whether or not it is linked to the previous piece of data. This contrasts with storage mechanisms such as tapes, magnetic disks and optical disks, which rely on the physical movement of the recording medium or a analysis head. In these devices, the movement takes longer than the data transfer, and the retrieval time varies depending on the physical location of the next item.

Monday, February 26, 2007

Concrete

In construction, concrete is a composite building material made from the mixture of total and a cement binder.The most general form of concrete consists of Portland cement, mineral aggregates and water.
Concrete does not solidify from drying after mixing and placement, the water reacts with the cement in a chemical process known as hydration. This water is absorbed by cement, which hardens, gluing the other components together and ultimately creating a stone-like material. When used in the generic sense, this is the material referred to by the word concrete.
Concrete is used more than any other man-made material on the planet. It is used to create pavements, building structures, foundations, and motorways/roads, overpasses, parking structures, brick/block walls and bases for gates, fences and poles.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Crystal

The word crystals originates from the Greek word "Krystallos" meaning clear ice, and once referred mainly to quartz, rock crystal.
In general, crystals form when they undergo a process of solidification. Under ideal conditions, the result may be a single crystal, where all of the atoms in the solid fit into the equal crystal structure. However, normally, many crystals form simultaneously during solidification, foremost to a polycrystalline solid. For example, most metals encountered in everyday life are polycrystals. Crystals are often symmetrically intergrown to figure crystal twins.
Which crystal structure the fluid will form depends on the chemistry of the fluid, the conditions in which it is being solidified, and also on the ambient pressure. The process of forming a crystalline formation is often referred to as crystallization.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Chickens as food

The meat of the chicken, also called "chicken," is a type of poultry. Because of its somewhat low cost among meats, chicken is one of the most used meats in the world. Almost all parts of the bird can be used for food, and the meat is fit to be eaten in many different ways around the world. Popular chicken dishes consist of fried chicken, chicken soup, marinated chicken wings, tandoori chicken, butter chicken, and chicken rice. Chicken is also a pin of fast food restaurants such as KFC (most products), McDonald's (chicken sandwiches, chicken nuggets) and Burger King. Chicken has a quite neutral flavour and texture, and is used as a reference point for describing other foods; many are said to 'taste like chicken' if they are indistinctive.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

The computer

A computer is a machine for manipulate data according to a list of commands known as a program. Computers are tremendously adaptable. In fact, they are universal information-processing machines. According to the Church–Turing theory, a computer with a positive minimum entrance capability is in principle capable of performing the responsibilities of any other computer. Therefore, computers with capability ranging from those of a personal digital supporter to a supercomputer may all achieve the same tasks, as long as time and memory capacity are not consideration. Therefore, the same computer design may be modified for tasks ranging from doling out company payrolls to controlling unmanned spaceflights. Due to technical progression, modern electronic computers are exponentially more capable than those of preceding generations. Computers take plentiful physical forms. Early electronic computers were the size of a large room, while whole modern embedded computers may be lesser than a deck of playing cards. Even today, huge computing conveniences still exist for focused scientific computation and for the transaction processing necessities of large organizations. Smaller computers designed for personage use are called personal computers. Along with its convenient equivalent, the laptop computer, the personal computer is the ubiquitous in order processing and communication tool, and is typically what is meant by "a computer". However, the most general form of computer in use today is the embedded computer. Embedded computers are usually comparatively simple and physically small computers used to control one more device. They may control equipment from fighter aircraft to industrial robots to digital cameras. in the beginning, the term "computer" referred to a person who performed numerical calculations, frequently with the aid of a mechanical calculating device or analog computer. In 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard made an improvement to the presented loom designs that used a series of punched paper cards as a program to weave involved patterns. The resulting Jacquard loom is not considered a true computer but it was an essential step in the growth of modern digital computers.
Charles Babbage was the first to conceptualize and design a completely programmable computer as early as 1820, In 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard made an improvement to the presented loom designs that used a series of punched paper cards as a program to weave involved patterns. The resulting Jacquard loom is not considered a true computer but it was an essential step in the growth of modern digital computers.
but due to a combination of the restrictions of the technology of the time, limited finance, and an incapability to resist tinkering with his design, the device was never really constructed in his lifetime. By the end of the 19th century a number of technologies that would later prove helpful in computing had appeared, out such as the punch card and the vacuum tube, and large-scale automated data giving using punch cards was performed by tabulating equipment designed by Hermann Hollerith.During the first half of the 20th century, many technical computing wants were met by increasingly difficult special-purpose analog computers, which used a direct mechanical or electrical model of the problem as a base for subtraction (they became ever more rare after the development of the programmable digital computer). Sequence of gradually more powerful and stretchy computing devices were construct in the 1930s and 1940s.

Sunday, February 04, 2007

The Real Miracle

As far as Miracles is concern, turning salty seawater in to sweet water is quite amazing. Regardless of the scientific clarification being doled out—surplus freshwater flowing from the Mahim River into the sea—the thousand mass to Mahim Creek near the beachfront in Mumbai will pretty see the ‘transubstantiation’ as the deed of the late Haji Maqdoom Baba, whose shrine is in the area. Mass hysteria, of course, is only a term to clarify the hordes of believers filling plastic bottles and drinking the water. But the real miracle would be if those glugging the ‘miraculous’ water manages to flee succumbing to serious gastric illness.
The water of Mahim Creek, sweetened or otherwise, is dirty and would scandalize not only the likes of Sunita Narain of the Centre for Science and Environment. Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and officials of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai have already request to people not to drink the water. Industrial waste is not the finest ingredient for a miracle. But telling this to goggle-eyed people facing even more goggle-eyed TV cameras is as worthwhile as persuasive people that a Ganesh idol sipping milk is caused by suction and not godly lactose tolerance.
Fortunately, rumors of the sweetened water turning back to its original brackish form might stop a future surge. Now we only wait for the real miracle of no one complaining of sickness.

Friday, January 26, 2007

Journalism Basics

Journalism is a concrete, professionally oriented major that involves gathering, interpreting, distilling, and other reporting information to the general audiences through a variety of media means. Journalism majors learn about every possible kind of Journalism (including magazine, newspaper, online journalism, photojournalism, broadcast journalism, and public relations).
That's not all, though. In addition to dedicated training in writing, editing, and reporting, Journalism wants a working knowledge of history, culture, and current events. You'll more than likely be required to take up a broad range of courses that runs the range from statistics to the hard sciences to economics to history. There would also be a lot of haughty talk about professional ethics and civic responsibility too - and you'll be tested on it. To top it all off, you'll perhaps work on the university newspaper or radio station, or possibly complete an internship with a magazine or a mass media conglomerate.