Play Soccer with fingers

Miranda- DON

Good but funny Video..:-)

YAHOO! & MSN (MICROSOFT) have joined forces.

Many third party IM applications are available which will club all your yahoo & msn messenger contacts in one. But now Yahoo & MSN have come together. Now you can use yahoo messenger for chatting with your contacts in yahoo & msn IMs.
PS: You must have new yahoo messenger with voice (Beta)

Here is what yahoo! says:

It's a great day for the world of instant messaging. Working hand-in-hand with our friends at Windows Live™ (MSN), we've connected our IM communities, making it even easier for you to stay in touch.

From the new Yahoo! Messenger with Voice, you can see when your Windows Live™ (MSN) Messenger contacts are online and send them instant messages. Keep all your friends in one place and IM with them anytime, right from Yahoo! Messenger. How cool is that?

To start sharing instant messages with your Windows Live™ (MSN) Messenger contacts, please sign out of Yahoo! Messenger and sign back in.

Then just click the Add a Contact button on your main Yahoo! Messenger window to start inviting your Windows Live Messenger friends to join the fun.

Once you click on add new friend you can see a messege popping out of drop box alerting you about new feature introduced by yahoo! Once you invite your friend who is using msn messenger, your friend will get an alert [See picture below :) ]

One more series of bomb blasts in Mumbai-India

(Picture courtesy: today.reuters.com/news)
A series of 7 bomb explosions rocked Mumbai this evening around 6:00 PM (local time). All seven explosion took place in a span of 30 minutes across seven locations in western Mumbai. The blast took place during the peak hour, when many working people start going back to their homes.
Till now official claim is that around 145 people have been killed and 250 people are injured. But in reality the actual numbers always outnumber the official figures. Looking at the timing of the blast, location of the blast, I suspect around 250-300 people might have been killed.


Related stories on Mumbai blast:
Serial blasts halt Mumbai's Western Railway
90 killed in Mumbai blasts
Serial blasts rock Mumbai(Pictures)
Bombs hit trains in Mumbai, at least 135 dead

Some more related links(07/12/2006):
Eight explosions hit train network
World leaders condemn Mumbai explosions
Mumbai's spirit shines through
Picture courtesy: Times of India - Mumbaites helping each other in the hour of crises
(This picture really touch my heart. Look at the old woman's spirit. Hats off to her.)
Terrorists will be defeated: PM to countrymen

National Geographic:Stone Age Elephant Found at Ancient U.K. Hunt Site

James Owen reports in National Geographic News that there is an evidence of human life UK during stone age. Here is an excerpt drawn from National Geographic site :

The 400,000-year-old remains of a massive elephant discovered near
London provide the first evidence that Stone Age humans in Britain hunted
and ate the ancient animals, scientists say.

PICTURE:Workers excavate the tusks of a prehistoric elephant found in 2004 near London, England. Researchers were able to date the site to approximately 400,000 years ago, using the teeth of voles (inset)—small rodents resembling rats—that were found near the elephant's remains.The discovery is the first evidence found in Britain of early humans having hunted and eaten ancient elephants. Photographs courtesy: Francis Wenban-Smith

The early humans butchered the elephant at the kill site and ate the meat raw, the archaeologists add. The male straight-tusked elephant—a member of the extinct species Palaeoloxodon antiquus—weighed about 9 tons (9.1 metric tons), twice as large as elephants living today.
Workers unearthed the remains in 2004 in the town of Ebbsfleet, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) east of London (see map of the United Kingdom), during construction of a new railway line to the Channel Tunnel.
The elephant was found on the edge of an ancient lake along with stone tools that archaeologists say were used to cut up its flesh.
The mammal was probably killed by a group of hunter-gatherers armed with wooden spears, the study team adds.
Read more details on National Geographic site .

(Excerpts are drwan from: news.nationalgeographic.com)

Discovery: Study: Baboons Talk With Hands

Have you ever wondered how Baboons & chimpanzees communicate? Hahaha..read here a quite interesting report from Jennifer Viegas of Discovery News. Really very good article. I'm putting excerpts from discovery news here..

PICTURE:More Than Arm Waving

Right hand dominance in gestures among non-human primates may hint at the origins of language.

A baboon hand gesture appears to send the message "go ahead, make my day" to other baboons — suggesting that gesturing may have been a precursor to human language, according to a new study.

The findings could help to explain why humans often gesture with their hands, and particularly the right hand, when they speak.

Since the right hand is controlled by the brain’s left hemisphere, which is the source of most linguistic functions, scientists believe communication by hand likely existed in apes 30 million years ago and was a forerunner to spoken and written language among people.

PICTURE:Monkey Business

This right-handed gesture is a signal to other baboons to keep away, say researchers who studied the animals.

Researchers Adrien Meguerditchian and Jacques Vauclair studied a particular hand gesture in 60 captive baboons. The gesture consists of quick and repetitive rubbing or slapping of the hand on the ground, and is used to threaten or intimidate others.

Meguerditchian and Vauclair, who work in the Research Center of Psychology of Cognition, Language and Emotion at the University of Provence, France, told Discovery News that this motion "might be comparable in humans to the slap of ... one hand toward the palm of the other hand."

For the study, which is published in the current issue of the journal Behavioral Brain Research, the researchers observed this gesture as it occurred naturally.

They also triggered it by having a human abruptly shake his head and then glance at a baboon. Head shaking is another threatening move in the ape and monkey world, which includes all sorts of communicative gestures.

"A nonhuman primate can effectively raise an arm to ask a social partner to groom it ... give another a little slap as an invitation to play, touch furtively the hand or genitals of another to greet it, slap the ground to threaten," the researchers wrote in an e-mail to Discovery News.

Among the baboons in the test group that favored a certain hand, 78 percent were right-handed and tended to gesture with this hand. Other studies have shown that most human babies and deaf individuals also communicate with their right hands.

"There is little chance that our (primate) cousins will evolve language skills in the near future," Meguerditchian and Vauclair said.

"Monkeys and apes and their specific communication systems result from other evolutionary roads than those of humans...It is very unlikely that the natural selection for primate species will reproduce exactly the same phylogenetic path that gave linguistic skills to humans."

William Hopkins, a psychology professor at Berry College and an expert on the evolution of brain development in primates, told Discovery News, "I agree with the findings and think this is a very good and interesting paper.

In many ways the results are nearly identical to those we have previously found in chimpanzees."

He explained that both chimps and baboons seem to use right hand gestures for communication. This suggests the brain is asymmetrical when it comes to language, meaning that the left hemisphere tends to dominate.

Hopkins added, "It will be interesting to see whether the asymmetries in hand use seen in the baboon link at all to brain asymmetries as we have found in the chimpanzees."

(Excerpts drawn from: dsc.discovery.com/news)

In Depth: Long-Range Missiles Are Tough to Master

Why long range missiles are touch to master? A complete story is available on Discovery channel's website. I'm putting the Excerpts from discovery, quite interesting(If you like scinence and technology :P). Here it goes ..

PICTURE: U.S. Missile Made to Defend
A ground-based Interceptor missile launches from the Ronald Reagan Test Site in the Marshall Islands during a test in December, 2005. In response to North Korea's movements toward testing a long-range missile, the United States moved its ground-based interceptor missile defense system from test mode to operational in June 2006.

North Korea's test fire this week of a long-range missile, the Taepodong 2, raises questions about the country's intention for launching a nuclear weapon into U.S. territory, roughly 7,200 kilometers (about 4,500 miles) away.

Defying international pressure is one thing, but developing a missile that can travel a quarter of the distance around the globe while carrying a nuclear payload is quite another.

So-called intercontinental ballistic missiles are riddled with countless and costly technological challenges that include everything from the fuel to the missile's structure; from the rockets to the payload.

To work well, the system must work flawlessly, and the failure of Taepodong 2 just 40 seconds after launch suggests that North Korea is not quite there — yet.

To date, the United States, Russia and China have some of the largest long-range missiles that, on record, can reach distances between 11,500 and 13,000 kilometers (between 7,145 and 8,077 miles).

North Korea, on the other hand, has yet to test a missile that can reach anything beyond 1,000 kilometers (621 miles), said David Wright, co-director and senior scientist in the Global Security program at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Mass.

"It's the reason that I was not at all surprised that this launch failed," said Wright, who in the 1990s focused a great deal of technical analysis on North Korea's missile technology.

A Matter of Thrust

The challenge in launching an intercontinental missile is that in order for it to go far, it needs to go fast. That's because ballistic missiles are powered early in flight and then rely on gravity to fall toward their destination. It's just like throwing a baseball: if you want to throw it long, you have to throw it hard.

To maximize the thrust and minimize the weight of fuel and fuel tanks, engineers typically design long-range missiles with two or three separate rockets. The first rocket launches the missile just beyond the upper atmosphere before breaking off and falling away.

A smaller second (and later, third) rocket automatically ignites, using less fuel in the thinner air to boost the missile to the top speed of its trajectory.

"Not only does the missile have to be robust enough to withstand the extreme temperatures experienced during blast-off and high altitude flight, it must be reliable enough to separate each stage of the booster rocket so it falls away without altering the trajectory of the missile," said Minh Luong, assistant director of International Security Studies at Yale University.

If a fuel line breaks or an O-ring cracks, the entire system can fail.

"The [Taepodong 2] didn't even get to the end of the first stage before it blew," said Owen Cote, associate director of the Security Studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Even the fuel itself could cause flaws. According to Luong and Wright, the North Koreans use liquid fuel instead of the more reliable but more chemically complex and technologically sophisticated solid fuel.

The liquid fuel, a mixture of kerosene and nitric acid, which helps it burn, makes fueling the rockets a very dangerous process.

"A spark caused by metal-to-metal contact could ignite the fuel and there would be a tremendous explosion," said Luong.

What's more, the fuel decomposes over time and the nitric acid can quickly corrode seals, seams, sensors, pumps, pipes, and other important components.

"Once you fill the missile, the clock starts ticking," said Wright.

Packing a Lightweight Punch

If the rocket manages to launch error-free and propel the missile into its trajectory, it still needs to achieve a high orbit and withstand the tremendous speed and intense heat that will rattle it upon reentry into the atmosphere.

And even if it can do all of that, a long-range ballistic missile is only as dangerous as the weapon it carries. It has taken the United States 30 years and billions of dollars of weapon development to build a nuclear bomb that weighs just a few hundred pounds, said Cote.

The Taepodong 2 would have been capable of lifting just 100 or 200 pounds.

"It's unlikely that the North Koreans are capable of producing nuclear weapons that weigh that little," said Cote.

In the near term, the country's long-range missile program doesn't appear to pose an immediate threat, at least to the United States.

But for those within short range, such as Japan, it's another story.

(Excerpts drwan from: dsc.discovery.com/news)

Taiwan Test Fires Missile, which can hit China easily..

Taiwan plans to test-fire a missile capable of hitting China, alarming the island's main ally, the United States, a cable news network said on Thursday.

The Hsiung Feng III, developed by Taiwan's Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology, has a range of 600 km (360 miles) and is accurate to within half a meter, the online edition of cable news network ETTV (http://www.ettoday.com) said, quoting unnamed military sources.
Read more on yahoo news.

(Excerpts drawn from: news.yahoo.com & ettoday.com)

DilBert Comic...refresh yourself.. :-)

Funny pictures of Microsoft

txtDrop.com ->SMS to your cell phone from your blog visitors

txtDrop.com a web based text messaging company is now providing free widgets for your website, which will create a button on your website or blog. So cool haaa.. Now visitors to your website or blog can directly send SMS or text message to you free of cost.

What do you think? Is it useful? If a blog or website has hundreds of users everyday, then what would happen to the website/blog owner ;-) ?

PS: THIS SERVICE IS AVAILABLE ONLY IN USA & CANADA (very bad....What about people in other countries )

Nano soccer pitch etched onto glass

A German scientist has used nanotechnology to create what he believes is the world's smallest soccer pitch.

Dr Stefan Trellenkamp, from the University of Kaiserslautern, made the pitch by using an electron beam to engrave lines onto a tiny piece of acrylic glass.

The pitch measures 500 by 380 nanometres and can only be seen through an electron microscope.

"I am really, really proud," the nanotechnology researcher says.

"The only problem is that I really don't know what to do with it. I can't put it on show as no one can see it," he says. "I guess it'll just stay in my drawer for the time being."

Trellenkamp says it took him a whole day to etch the pitch, which is so small that 20,000 of them could fit onto the tip of a human hair.

(Excerpts are drawn from:/www.abc.net.au)

Monkey teasing Dog

Face/Off

Who has forgotten this Nicholas Cage & John Travolta starrer, hollywood blockbuste released in 1997. It's one of the best action movies of hollywood. Well why i'm mentioning about this movie now? Yup there is reason behind it. The major scene of this movie is a medical technique, using which a FBI agent undercovers to take the physical appearence of major criminal (That's what the movie title also indicates).

Well now the French doctors have comeup with something similar to it. The Lancet, one of the prestigious journal, has reported it.

Here are excerpts drawn from ABC Online:

Face transplant details made public

The world's first partial face transplant, carried out by French doctors last November, has been acclaimed by the medical establishment as a historic achievement, although major risks remain unresolved.

Controversy had swirled around the pioneering operation carried out by a team led by Professor Bernard Devauchelle in Amiens, northern France, with critics suggesting it was fraught with surgical and psychological peril.

But, in a sign that the exploit has been accepted by the core of the medical community, Devauchelle provides a detailed account of the transplant procedure in the prestigious, peer-reviewed journal The Lancet.

He also says that the patient's state, at the four-month mark, was fine.

"The technical feasibility of the procedure has been clearly demonstrated, with no surgical complication," says Devauchelle, whose paper is published online.

"The functional result will be assessed in the future, but this graft can already be deemed successful with respect to appearance, sensitivity, and acceptance by the patient."

The patient, Isabelle Dinoire, 38, lost her nose, lips and right cheek after she was savaged by a dog.

On 27 November, a triangular-shaped part of the face of a 46-year-old woman, who was declared brain dead after suffering a severe stroke, was grafted on to Dinoire's face.

Thinking of rejection

Microsurgery was used to suture arteries, veins and motor nerves, and Dinoire was given immunosuppressant drugs aimed at thwarting rejecting of the transplanted organ.

She was also given two grafts of bone marrow, four days and 11 days after the transplant, to help produce white blood cells to fight off infection, a frequent consequence of taking immunosuppressors.

Bone-marrow transplants are themselves risky, sometimes causing life-threatening complications.

One of the surgeons who took part was Professor Jean-Michel Dubernard, who carried out the world's hand-forearm transplant.

Two analyses of the operation, also published online by The Lancet, pay tribute to Devauchelle's work.

But they also raise questions over the longer term.

German facial surgeon Dr Patrick Warnke of the University of Kiel hailed the operation as "a new milestone".

But he warned, "failure of the [immunosuppressant] regimen chosen could prove devastating, with the possible loss of the transplanted face at any time".

In addition, heavy use of these drugs also boosts the risk of cancer, meaning that a woman who before the operation was otherwise healthy despite her major handicap "is now at great risk", he says.

The ethics of transplants

Dr Edgardo Carosella of the St Louis Hospital in Paris and Thomas Pradeu of Sorbonne University says the ethical dilemma of a face transplant remain unresolved.

In the case of the first hand transplant, the recipient, New Zealander Clint Hallam began to view the organ as alien, stopped taking immunosuppressant drugs and eventually begged, successfully, for the hand to be amputated.

"Every graft of a visible organ leads to an identity split, the consequences of which can be very serious if the recipient does not succeed in psychologically accepting the organ and in rebuilding its social expression in everyday life," say Carosella and Pradeu.

These and other issues are being mulled by UK medical watchdogs as they vet an application by London surgeons to carry out the world's first full-face transplant.

(Excerpts drawn from: http://www.abc.net.au)

Bad Luck..

Really this is what is known as Badluck.. :-)

Optical illusion (?)

Windows 98 & Windows Millenium will be executed..

From 11th July 2006 microsoft will stop support for Windows 98, Windows 98 second edition, Windows Me.
Excerpts from Microsoft :

End of support for Windows 98 and Windows Me

July 11, 2006 will bring a close to Extended Support for Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Me as part of the Microsoft Lifecycle Policy. Microsoft will retire public and technical support, including security updates, by this date.

Existing support documents and content, however, will continue to be available through the Microsoft Support Product Solution Center Web site. This Web site will continue to host a wealth of previous How-to, Troubleshooting, and Configuration content for anyone who may need self-service.

Microsoft is retiring support for these products because they are outdated and can expose customers to security risks. We recommend that customers who are still running Windows 98 or Windows Me upgrade to a newer, more secure Microsoft operating system, such as Windows XP, as soon as possible.

Customers who upgrade to Windows XP report improved security, richer functionality, and increased productivity.

For more info go here, here and here :) ..

The Hindu - On the plains of Cambodia

Picture: ANGKOR WAT TEMPLE ( A World Heritage Site )

It is an incredible sight to see the temples on the plains of Cambodia. These 100 or so temples were built when Hindu kings reigned over a period of time from the 9th to 13th century. These magnificent temples were constructed out of stones, which were reserved for the gods while the people dwelt in houses made of wood and mud.

Of great beauty

Some of the bas-reliefs depicted on the temple walls show various Hindu mythological legends such as the samudramanathana which was supposed to bring out the nectar of eternal life by churning the ocean using vasuki, the serpent king. On one side were the devatas and the other side the asuras.

The most important temple complex is near the town of Siem Reap. The Angkor Wat, built in the 12th century A.D., has been declared a World Heritage Site. The visitor is struck by the grand design of the temple with its five soaring towers and intricate terraces on whose walls bas-relief depicts legends, warriors, battle scenes and ordinary Khmer life.

The temple was built during the reign of Suryavaraman II and was dedicated to Lord Vishnu whose idol adorned the sanctum. However, with the advent of Buddhism, the idol of Buddha replaced Vishnu. The temple was meant as a funerary temple though no royal was buried within its precinct.

Another important temple in this region is The Bayon built during the reign of Jayavaraman VII, Kher's greatest builder, which is a Buddhist complex with the giant faces of Avalaokiteswara adorning the temple towers to scare away would be intruders. The Bapuhon is a small but magnificent temple whose pyramidal structure represents Mount Meru of Hindu mythology. Ta Prohm is a complex temple structure, which has been kept as it was discovered with many huge cottonwood trees taking root right in the temple posing a serious danger to the structure.

King Jayavarman VII dedicated the temple to the royal mother. In the height of its glory, it has been recorded that 20,000 men were required to maintain the temple.

A study of these ancient Hindu/Buddhist temples gives the visitor first hand information about the architectural skills of the ancient Khmers.

Moreover, the bas-relief shows the life of Khmers during the period 9th and 13the century A.D. These people have left an indelible footprint on the architectural wonders of the world.

(Excerpts are drwn from:thehindu.com)

FEELINGS

I feel the pain of a hundred souls,
Shut in on themselves by fear,
I feel the pain they dig like the moles,
Lest it should come out to the air.
Scared they are of their own feelings,
Trapped from the past in their care,
If only they could stand and cry,
They would no longer be shy.

SOUND OF MY HEART

Listen the sound of my heart, oh! sweetheart,

taking your love on 'love bullock cart'.

Just departed, long way to go,

you don't know I love you so.

In this journey, will you be with me,

and love me, all the way to thee.

Whenever you touch me, my heart pounds,

your one touch, fills all the wounds.

Piano of my heart, start playing song,

the moment you and I sing along.

Oh, sweetheart, for me, don't have hate,

the strings of this piano are very delicate.

They will break, if you'll stop singing,

And the days of my life will start ringing.

(Excerpts drawn from: esnips.com/web/Sam-stuff)

Livin la vida loca - Ricky Martin

One of the Ricky Martin hits.... I like it..

Wow.....

See this TGV commercial..you'll definately say..WOW :-)

Real Pain... My Blog is Broken

Sorry guys..
Somehow unexpectedly some code in my blog page is broken.
Working on to fix this problem. I hope i'll do it as soon as possible.
God bless me..