Demands More From Batsmen

Mithali Raj, one of the senior batsmen in the Indian women's team, has demanded an improved batting performance during the upcoming World Cup in Australia. India have lost their previous nine completed ODIs - defeated 4-0 by England and going down 5-0 to Australia - in which the batsmen struggled to put up competitive scores.

"A score of 200-plus is a bare minimum. Gone are the days in women's cricket where a team scored 170 and defended it," Mithali was quoted as saying in the Times of India. "Our openers haven't done well and that means the middle order was exposed to the new ball almost every time. That was the problem in Australia and England."

She was pleased with the team's effort during training, when they scored in excess of 200 in both their practice games.The team, she said, had also prepared for faster pitches by batting against bowling machines at the Mumbai Cricket Association's Bandra-Kurla Complex ground.

Though India had a demoralising tour of Australia late last year, Mithali was confident of a better show next month. "It's the end of the season and the wickets won't be too bouncy. If anything they will keep low."

India were runners-up in the previous edition in South Africa in 2005, losing in the final to Australia. They are placed in Group A with Sri Lanka, Pakistan and England, and will face Pakistan in the tournament opener at the Bradman Oval in Bowral on March 7.

Researchers for HIV work

Even as Connecticut considers reducing funding for AIDS programs, state public health researchers are winning accolades for their work with those living with HIV.

A program developed at the University of Connecticut's Center for Health, Intervention and Prevention is among a group of eight intervention programs commended recently by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Under the program, known as "Options," clinicians are trained to counsel HIV-positive patients during routine medical appointments to avoid risky behavior, such as unprotected sex and drug use, developing a list of behavioral prescriptions for patients to follow as they live with the virus.

"Most interventions focus on people not infected with HIV and not likely to become infected," said Jeffrey D. Fisher, a social psychology professor at UConn and director of the intervention center. "But we also need to help people who have HIV to practice safer sex and drug use."

Such precautions are necessary not just to protect the health of those living with HIV or AIDS, which make patients substantially more susceptible to infection and disease, but also to ensure that continued risky behavior doesn't spread HIV to those with whom diagnosed people share needles or have sex.

Fisher developed the program in the late 1990s with his brother, Bill Fisher, a professor at the University of Western Ontario, and three other researchers from CHIP and Yale University.

The Options program was developed from current behavioral theory and a process of collaboration with those struggling with HIV diagnosis and problems with substance abuse or risky sex, Fisher said. The intervention plan asks clinical workers to work with patients to develop strategies for reducing risk, and to evaluate each patient's willingness to change.

The program was included this year in "The 2008 Compendium of Evidence-based HIV Prevention Interventions," which is compiled annually by the CDC, and recognizes programs that have proven successful at reducing HIV infection and behavior that can increase the chance of contracting sexually transmitted diseases.

The CDC estimates that 46,000 people were infected with HIV in the U.S. in 2006, the most recent year for which data was available.

Source: theday.com/re.aspx?re=76b88ed9-71a3-4510-a675-6361d367da02

Programming languages

A programming language is an extreme case of a formal language that can be used to control the behavior of a machine, particularly a computer, to perform specific tasks. Programming languages are defined using syntactic and semantic rules, to determine structure and meaning respectively.

Programming languages are used to facilitate communication about the task of organizing and manipulating information, and to express algorithms precisely. Some authors restrict the term "programming language" to those languages that can express all possible algorithms; sometimes the term "computer language" is used for artificial languages that are more limited.

CD-Text

CD-Text is an extension of the Red Book specification for audio CD that allows for storage of additional text information (e.g., album name, song name, artist) on a standards-compliant audio CD. The information is stored either in the lead-in area of the CD, where there is roughly five kilobytes of space available, or in the subcode channels R to W on the disc, which can store about 31 megabytes.