wap33

KNOW YOUR SANTA CLAUS BETTER...!!!

2008-09-15T10:49:00.000-07:00

The American version of the Santa Claus figure received its inspiration and its name from the Dutch legend of Sinter Klaas, brought by settlers to New York in the 17th century.
As early as 1773 the name appeared in the American press as "St. A Claus," but it was the popular author Washington Irving who gave Americans their first detailed information about the Dutch version of Saint Nicholas. In his History of New York, published in 1809 under the pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker, Irving described the arrival of the saint on horseback (unaccompanied by Black Peter) each Eve of Saint Nicholas.
This Dutch-American Saint Nick achieved his fully Americanized form in 1823 in the poem A Visit From Saint Nicholas more commonly known as The Night Before Christmas by writer Clement Clarke Moore. Moore included such details as the names of the reindeer; Santa Claus's laughs, winks, and nods; and the method by which Saint Nicholas, referred to as an elf, returns up the chimney. (Moore's phrase "lays his finger aside of his nose" was drawn directly from Irving's 1809 description.)
The American image of Santa Claus was further elaborated by illustrator Thomas Nast, who depicted a rotund Santa for Christmas issues of Harper's magazine from the 1860s to the 1880s. Nast added such details as Santa's workshop at the North Pole and Santa's list of the good and bad children of the world. A human-sized version of Santa Claus, rather than the elf of Moore's poem, was depicted in a series of illustrations for Coca-Cola advertisements introduced in 1931. In modern versions of the Santa Claus legend, only his toy-shop workers are elves. Rudolph, the ninth reindeer, with a red and shiny nose, was invented in 1939 by an advertising writer for the Montgomery Ward Company.
In looking for the historical roots of Santa Claus, one must go very deep in the past. One discovers that Santa Claus as we know him is a combination of many different legends and mythical creatures.
The basis for the Christian-era Santa Claus is Bishop Nicholas of Smyrna (Izmir), in what is now Turkey. Nicholas lived in the 4th century A.D. He was very rich, generous, and loving toward children. Often he gave joy to poor children by throwing gifts in through their windows.
The Orthodox Church later raised St. Nicholas, miracle worker, to a position of great esteem. It was in his honor that Russia's oldest church, for example, was built. For its part, the Roman Catholic Church honored Nicholas as one who helped children and the poor. St. Nicholas became the patron saint of children and seafarers. His name day is December 6th.
In the Protestant areas of central and northern Germany, St. Nicholas later became known as der Weinachtsmann. In England he came to be called Father Christmas. St. Nicholas made his way to the United States with Dutch immigrants, and began to be referred to as Santa Claus.
In North American poetry and illustrations, Santa Claus, in his white beard, red jacket and pompom-topped cap, would sally forth on the night before Christmas in his sleigh, pulled by eight reindeer, and climb down chimneys to leave his gifts in stockings children set out on the fireplace's mantelpiece.
Children naturally wanted to know where Santa Claus actually came from. Where did he live when he wasn't delivering presents? Those questions gave rise to the legend that Santa Claus lived at the North Pole, where his Christmas-gift workshop was also located.
In 1925, since grazing reindeer would not be possible at the North Pole, newspapers revealed that Santa Claus in fact lived in Finnish Lapland. "Uncle Markus", Markus Rautio, who compared the popular "Children's hour" on Finnish public radio, revealed the great secret for the first time in 1927: Santa Claus lives on Lapland's Korvatunturi - "Ear Fell"
The fell, which is situated directly on Finland's eastern frontier, somewhat resembles a hare's ears - which are in fact Santa Claus's ears, with which he listens to hear if the world's children are being nice. Santa has the assistance of a busy group of elves, who have quite their own history in Scandinanvian legend.
Over the centuries, customs from different parts of the Northern Hemisphere thus came together and created the whole world's Santa Claus - the ageless, timeless, deathless white-bearded man who gives out gifts on Christmas and always returns to Korvatunturi in Finnish Lapland.
Since the 1950s, Santa has happily sojourned at Napapiiri, near Rovaniemi, at times other than Christmas, to meet children and the young at heart. By 1985 his visits to Napapiiri had become so regular that he established his own Santa Claus Office there. He comes there every day of the year to hear what children want for Christmas and to talk with children who have arrived from around the world. Santa Claus Village is also the location of Santa's main Post Office, which receives children's letters from the four corners of the world.

why do u dream...???

2008-09-15T09:47:00.000-07:00

The Falling Asleep Process
During the day when we are a awake, our body and brain are working tirelessly to operate our body, and as they do so they slowly degrade at a cellular level. A person will get progressively tired from this bodily breakdown, because sleep gives us a chance to build and replace the cells and resolve our end of day homeostatic imbalances.
If you have not slept for a while, the decrease in the efficiency and effectiveness of the body begins to tell, and you will begin to feel sleepy as less energy is available to you. The longer we stay up the more likely we will fall asleep.
If certain conditions prevail, like a state of inactivity or relaxing in a warm dry place, there is a higher chance of us falling asleep due to the preferable conditions for us to do so.
Sleeping
When we fall asleep, our metabolic rate slows down, as does almost every other function across the board, we effectively go into hibernation mode. The amount of adrenaline in our body promoting awareness decreases and somatotrophin, controlling the repair of tissue is more abundant. This is effectively the healing process of sleep that revitalises us.
The synaptic nerve connections containing recollections about the last day are also strengthened, hence when you wake up the more you realised you did yesterday. This localised area of memory is what many of our dreams consist of, our past recollections of the day. You may have dreamt something twice, and on the second time it was only because you thought of that first dream the day before you dreamt the second. When looking at it like this, it confirms the reason why you have the same dream, your conscious thought about it accesses that part of the brain thus 'remembers' it at night.
Dreams Telling the Future?
Some people believe that dreams tell the future. But, when 6 billion people dream every night, there is bound to be a coincidence when there are trillions of dreams every year. Those people who have dreamed of winning the lottery are one of many.
I, personally don't believe they tell the future, though could be a sign of intelligence, the brain interpreting possibilities in the future from the knowledge of past events. This would be perfectly viable, as it would be a case of the brain 'adapting' to its future environment, and preparing you for the possible future.
REM
REM stands for rapid eye movement and is the points in time during sleep where dreams occur. They occur after periods of deep sleep.
As suggested, rapid eye movement occurs in REM, while the body is under a state of paralysis.
In effect, our brain takes us on a virtual reality of our thoughts while it steadily repairs itself for the next day. The most vivid and deepest dreams will occur in the periods between REM while drowsy, almost conscious dreams occur in the REM stages.
Our Environment Outside Sleep
Have you ever had a dream where someone next door is playing music, and the music is conveniently woven into your dream? This is your body trying to lessen the chances of you awakening while it is repairing itself.
However, sleep deprived people go into much deeper sleep, and may not detect such noises. The overriding point here is, that sleep is essential to the body, and that there are compensations made to our usual behaviour (like paralysis) that enables our body to do what is required for itself.
Sleep Troubles
The older we get, the less sleep we require. Teenagers buck the trends in needing the most sleep of us all, due to the growth spurt occurring at puberty that involves a larger turnover of materials and energy.
Newborn babies can sleep up to 60% of the day
Adults require around 7 hours minimum
With aging, the amount required is less due to the gradual degeneration of parts of the body that are not getting repaired.
Certain drugs are available to induce sleeping, but most are addictive and require controlled and responsible use. The next page looks at the works of famous past neurologists like Carl Gustav Jung and Sigmund Freud, who both actively pursued the way in which we dream as a career in neurology.

want to impress girls......???

2008-09-15T09:41:00.000-07:00

Everyone can name someone who's nice, pretty, smart, funny, etc. Want to impress that certain girl? Here's what to do and what not to do.
Steps

Be well-groomed. Brush your teeth, floss, shower, wash your hair, and apply acne medicine (if you have a problem with your skin) daily. Don't wear your pants off your butt, it's not that attractive to the majority of girls. This is essential if you are even going to approach an attractive girl. Wear clean, attractive clothes (if in doubt, get an older sister or close female friend to help you in this department).
Have a good attitude. No girl likes to watch a guy put on a show, so be yourself. Don't try to impress everyone - girls like humble guys. At the same time, a sense of humor is always a plus.
Show respect. If you respect everyone and give them their space, they'll all respect you. With girls, it works even better. If they see you respecting everyone, and not getting pushed around while you're at it, they will be reassured that you will treat them right. Be kind to all.
Have good conversations. Don't talk about how you beat the big-bad-boss on level 23 gazillion of a video game...unless you know them well enough that you know they play that game, or are at least semi-interested (otherwise, it's just a big jumble to her). Try to aim for you both to be speaking 50% of the time, but make sure that you are saying something worthwhile; it's not attractive when only one person talks endlessly.
Show interest in her - let her talk. The #1 mistake when talking to a girl is focusing on yourself. Girls are way more comfortable when they talk about common interests. Ask about their interests, hobbies, favorite books, music, etc. but not in that stalker kind of way. If she asks you a question, answer it in a few, short sentences and then redirect the question back at her. This engages her in the conversation. When in doubt, compliment her.
Try flirting! If you both make eye contact, do not be the one to look away, but do not stare for too long. When you both make eye contact, just give a slight smile. She may look away and she might blush a little. Be careful though; you don't want to stare her down. A good move is to look away, and if she likes you she will shoot you glances. Watch for that.
Respect her friends and their ideas and opinions. Always speak highly of her and never talk trash about her. It will damage her reputation and yours and she'll possibly dump you. Of course, her friends are going to tell her that you trash talked her. Hopefully then it will work both ways - she will be tolerant of your friends. Be careful not to compliment her friends too much, however. Example: You may say "Your friends seem cool. We should hang out with them and my friends some time, I think they'd get along". You may not say "Sally is so hot. She has the nicest eyes".
Have your friends be nice to her It's a fantastic thing when your friends don't make a total fool of you. Warn them ahead of time and avoid topics pertaining to embarrassing moments of your past or awkward jokes that make very little sense.
Be polite to her parents. Be kind to everyone, especially them. Don't be too over-the-top charming with the parents, however, or they'll think that you have something to hide.
Don't criticize her. Unless she asks for constructive criticism.
Be romantic, but not over the top. If you've been dating for a while you may attempt a grand romantic gesture (note: "A while"=a month MINIMUM) otherwise, you'll look like a stalker.
Start talking to her casually. If you don't know her, make friendly conversation. Ask for the time, and/or compliment her watch.
Do not play "hard to get". Sure, you'll get their attention for a day or two then after a while, the girl will end up frustrated or think that you hate her for whatever reason, and she'll think you don't find interest in her anymore. Or if she likes a guy who's like that, her friends might not like you because you're acting like a jerk (this happens way too much).
Be careful with what you say. Remember, Hotty McHotterson is not your pal Lenny. Do not discuss bodily functions in her presence, or make jokes of a sexual nature unless she starts doing so.
Hum a few bars of a song she likes around her. She might think of you whenever she hears that song. And she'll probably be impressed by your good taste in music. Some girls have actually dumped guys or stopped liking guys when they insulted the music they like. So, it's OK not to like her music, but don't be insulting her favorite singer/band! Try to agree with her as much as possible but not so over the top that she knows your not being yourself. Make sure the song is not overtly feminine however. For instance, a Killers song is okay, an Ashley Tisdale song, not so much.
Start an inside joke with her! She will feel included and become closer to you. It also gives you an easy-to-come-up-with conversation starter. Try not to overuse it and kill the joke.
End later meetings with a hug, or plans to meet some other time, if you can.
Do not tell her that you "like her". Ask her out. If she rejects you, all is well. Example: You: "Betty, want to go to dinner on Saturday night?" Betty: "Sorry, I just think of you as a friend" You: "Oh, no offense. A bunch of us were talking about going, and I thought you might like to join us."
Try to get her attentions to your plus and away from minus , but be original !!!
Touch her ocassionally, like on the shoulder or hand.(but be sure to do it in a non-threatening way)!
Opposites attract. Be a courageous gentleman, not coy like a lady might be. Stand up for her,

Tips

If you hold a girl around her hips, it will seem like a romantic move for her. Girls LOVE romantic moves. She will feel important, and that someone actually likes her. If she says to stop, stop. Nothing is worse then then a girl seeing you as a harrasser. If she acts a little odd, stop. Don't take it personally because some girls just don't know how to act around guys. Do it another day if this happens.
Show sympathy and affection. If the girl you really enjoy being around is sad or hurt, give her a quick hug. Don't just say that you're sorry and you hope she feels better. Hold your left arm around her waist, right hand at the base of her neck or holding her head.
If you have braces, glasses and acne... don't be disheartened! Wear contacts, use some Proactiv/Accutane, and voila. Girls put a lot of effort into their appearance, perhaps you should do the same. But don't think just because you have braces, glasses, or acne, that the world is over, sometimes it works! Many people believe that braces are a fashion statement!
Have good posture!
Don't act tough or try to be a thug. This doesn't attract girls.
Don't follow her around everywhere. It automatically gives you a reputation as a stalker, and it will freak her out. Even following her just a little can create a stalker rep., depending on how you act. How you act can determine weather she will actually want you to be around her all the time or if even just seeing your face is too much contact. if you know she see's you as a stalker, lay off because trying to do damage control tends to just worsen your situation, instead try to get a friend of your or of hers to help your issue.
If she just doesn't get that you like her (which most likely won't happen because girls are pretty good at detecting this kind of stuff!) drop hints.
Don't play games. Waiting a few days to call her , showing up a little late to things or anything like that is only proving you are unreliable, a fake and a loser. Likewise, don't tolerate it if she does any of these things to you.
Use correct grammar when texting her or talking to her. If you don't then she will think that you aren't very intelligent and that will turn certain girls off.
While it's important to connect to her friends, you must avoid coming off as a player. If a girl's friends do not approve of you, this will influence her opinion of you.
Don't be weird around her.
Don't be a fake.

Warnings

If you have followed all the steps above and it didn't work, don't feel disheartened. Be proud that you made an effort and accept that it wasn't meant to be. If you decide to still be friends, don't be bitter if she moves on to a new guy.
Also, it says above that some girls like to talk about themselves- remember, some girls do. Some also would rather not have you obsessing about her hobbies, sports, etc. Be cool. Relate what she's saying to something about you, and then continue the conversation.
[Remember to talk about yourself and your own hobbies etc. That way you come off as a good conversationalist and as a person with a life.]
Every girl is different! Find out if she likes tattoos before you show her the skull and crossbones tattoo on your chest! (It's probably a bad idea to get a skull and crossbones tattoo on your chest (or elsewhere))
Never rush her or pressure her or show her a bad attitude.
Don't talk about her weight or ask her anything related to this subject. Even the girls with the most attractive bodies have insecurities. Even a comment intended as a joke could seriously hurt her feelings. Leave this subject alone.
At the same time, keep your own weight in check. Eat healthfully and work out. Don't go too crazy with the body building, but being toned never hurts. Watch out for skinny-fat (where you are skinny but flabby).
Girls love confident guys, but don't be cocky. A cocky guy turns girls off.
If you have problems with shyness, think of the most confident person you know and of what they would do in each situation. Don't be fake, just change your mindset.
Girls like that you care enough to buy them something. Don't go overboard and get flowers for her unless the time calls for it or she is very likely to think you did something wrong.
Some girls don't really know what to talk about with a guy so they might tend to talk about things you don't care about or go on and on about who said what. Don't be mean about it even though you're fighting boredom because it could of taken her a lot of courage to talk to you. Just show interest and change the subject to something more interesting, or politely exit the conversation.
Do not chew gum when talking to her. You should throw it away, if there are no trash bins, do not chew with your mouth open, pop, or blow bubbles.

how to impress guys..???

2008-09-15T09:36:00.000-07:00

Not really sure how to catch his attention? Here's how to impress him and show him that you're confident and happy

Smile if you get near him or see him once he looks at you.
Twirl your hair or talk to your fellow classmate acting happy. 'Do not look sad or change your tone. A guy could notice that easily.
Make the first move. Most girls don't think they should, but it's normally worth it. A guy would love to know that a girl isn't so shy and is setting a comfortable environment around him.
Ask him a question. Guys love that a girl is actually the one who flirts with him first. Once you get to know him better, don't be afraid to start giving him hugs and such because it will help the guy know you like him.
Compliment him. You could say, "I like your shirt," or, "I love your hair," but make it kind of casual, guys like feeling confident.
Also act as if your flirting, but when you go up to him, just compliment him on something you admire him for. He will feel less pressured to go to you and talk then

TIPS>>>

Be yourself. Don't act like someone you're not. Guys really don't like that.
Don't be afraid to be different either. Most guys prefer girls who are not the exact same as every other girl on the planet. Don't feel like you have to fit all the latest trends or do what the popular kids do.
Try to look your best when doing this. Do not let other girls get in the way of you trying to impress your crush/ex-crush.
Scrunch hair, curl hair, straight and shiny, or do a messy do. It's a hot trend for guys.
Do not wear with tight shirts or short skirts all the time when you want to impress him. All he will be doing is checking you out. Guys don't remember what you wear and really don't care.
Guys always like a cute smile and a flirtatious scent.
Try to look as cute as possible without getting all of the other guys to look at you.
Make sure that you aren't impressing the wrong guy.
If you have tried to get the same guy once before and failed, try looking cute every day and ignore him. He will pick up that you really care for him.
Do not try too hard. This is a major turn off, and it makes it look like you're obsessed. Even if you are obsessed, you don't want to show it.
Don't act exactly like him, he's going to think your trying too hard, and boys, they don't play that, they want a unique individual just try to stay yourself just like you would with your guy friends, just a bit more flirtacious.
WARNING

Don't act too flirty with him, just enough for him to take the bait.
Don't flirt with his best friend/friends ever.
Don't physically hurt him if he flirted with you. This isn't grade school. Be nice, be gentle, make him smile, not cry.
IMPORTANT**Don't forget that us guys (mostly) fend for ourselves, and (most) girls wait for guys to ask. So some guys might be a little shy around you, but guarentee that he'll lose it in the first month or so, just give it time.
Don't feel weird when you smile. Us guys think it's one of the cutest things in the world when you smile.
If your trying to impress your ex then do something that will make him remember when yall were going out. That will let the guy know that you really like him and might get his attention
When you're walking together down the halls, stay close to his side. Don't make a big deal of it, act natural. This will show him you aren't afraid to be close to him.
Act nice to his friends. He will see that you are a nice person but dont flirt with his friends or he'll get the wrong message.

want to lose weight...???

2008-09-15T09:22:00.000-07:00

Want a flat tummy? Read this article. We will explain everything that you need to know to accomplish your aim! This article explains all the concepts of weight loss and how you can “actually” and “practically” loose weight.If you have tried to loose weight in the past and did not get results, it is probably because you were doing something wrong. There is a LOT of weight loss advice out there! Most of this advice is just a scam! There are a lot of misconceptions about weight loss too. In this article, we will explain weight loss in a scientific and practical way. You will be able to decide what you need to do to accomplish your weight loss aims and you will be able to do it!Okay, lets begin….

Why do you gain weight?

Kilogram is a unit of weight. What do we mean by this? By this we mean that, wherever you go and tell someone that you want 5Kg of something, he will know much you are asking for. Kilogram is a standard that everyone accepts. Everyone knows that when you say “kilogram” there is pre-decided value you are asking for. That is what we mean by a unit. A unit is an accepted or decided value of something.So, when we say that a calorie is a unit of energy, we mean that a particular amount of energy is called a calorie. So, if you eat a sandwich and some amount to energy is obtained from the sandwich, we can say that the sandwich is worth 50 calories or the sandwich is worth 20 calories depending on how much energy is obtained from the sandwich.Why is all this important? All this is important because “counting the calories you consume” is big part of the loosing weight process. You see, as we said earlier, everyday you need a certain amount of energy i.e. everyday you need a certain amount of calories. Now, you generally get these calories from the food you eat. But, if you require 2,500 calories per day and you eat food worth 3000 calories, then you have 500 excess calories per day.
As we said, the body saves all this excess energy in the form of fat. This, is basically why you gain weight! You eat more than your body needs! So if you have to eat just the right amount, you need to know…

The body is a very very “efficient” machine. It is very sophisticated and evolved. One of the main things your body is made for is “survival”. You know, that you need energy to live and do the things that you do. This energy comes from food. The food you eat is converted into energy. When you “feel hungry”, that is the body telling you that you need to take in some food because the body needs some energy. As you probably know, energy is NOT ONLY required for actually doing things. You need energy to walk, talk, push, pull etc. But, besides that, the body still needs energy even if you are doing nothing! Even if you are just lying down on your bed, the body still needs energy. Why? The body needs this energy to keep the heart pumping, keep all the different organs functioning etc. All these internal processes take up some energy. So whether you do something or do nothing you still need a certain amount of energy each day to stay alive. Now, as we said earlier, the body is very sophisticated and made for survival! It prepares for a “rainy day” or a situation where you will have nothing to eat. The average adult can survive for a few weeks without any food before he/she has any serious medical problems. This is possible because the body saves any excess energy that is taken in!Here is the part we are interested in: The excess energy that you take in, is stored in the body in the form of “fat”!To understand all this properly, you need to understand the concept of “calories”..

What are calories? - Why are they so important?

Calories are NOT fat! Calories are energy! Or more correctly speaking, calories are a unit of energy. Just incase you are not sure what a “unit of energy means”, let us try to understand the concept of a “unit”.

How much energy does your body need?

Depending on your age, weight, the activities you do, etc. you will need a certain amount of calories. If you go for a run every morning, you will require more energy and more calories per day. If you are an athlete you will require more calories per day. If you sit, and work on a computer all day, you will require fewer calories per day. How many calories do you require, can be roughly calculated by using a calculator like this one. So, now what? Now that you know how many calories per day you need, then what? Now you got to figure out, how many calories per day you consume. How do you do this? As your day progresses, make a note of everything that you eat. Each and everything, no matter how small it is. Then, after that, use this calculator. Put in all the things that you ate into the calculator. For each thing you put, you will get a “Calorie” value. Note that value. (You will also get a “Fats” value. Forget about that!) After you have noted all the values, add them all up. This will be your total calorie intake for that day.

Origin Of GOD and Vacuum

2008-09-15T09:14:00.000-07:00

If God created us, who created God? This is the question often raised by atheists. Most theists will answer this question by saying that God has no cause (discussion). Similarly, if you ask a physicist: what is the origin of the physical laws? He may answer that the physical laws have no cause.
We know our universe has something, but something cannot arise from nothing. We must assume certain things that are self existent (the aseity). In theology, God is the aseity while in science physical laws are the aseity. Since we are trying to understand the Kingdom of God from a scientific point of view, we shall accept physical laws as the aseity.
The "Physical God"
Most people will agree that "God" can be defined as the creator of the three-dimensional world that we live in. According to the string theory, our three dimensional world is a braneworld embedded in a higher dimensional space (possibly 10 dimensions). As shown in previous articles, our braneworld could be created by the highly intelligent life living in the bulk space (the space outside of any branes). The highly intelligent life in the bulk space is the "God" we are referring to.
By this definition, God should also be made up of matter. The elementary particles that constitute His matter are entirely different from us (see What is the Kingdom of God Made of?). However, they should still be governed by the physical laws that apply to all kinds of particles. These general physical laws include the conservation of energy, the second law of thermodynamics, the Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, and the Einstein's equation that relates energy to the mass of a particle: E = mc2.
We do not know the initial condition of the bulk universe. The most natural assumption is that it started with an empty space. That is, before any matter was created, the bulk universe contained only vacuum. As shown below, physical laws allow highly intelligent life (God) to evolve from the vacuum.
How could matter be created from vacuum?
According to Einstein's equation, the particles that constitute matter contain energy. On the other hand, the energy conservation law states that the total energy of a closed system must be a constant. It is impossible to create or reduce the total energy. Then, how could matter be created from vacuum? Would it violate the energy conservation law?
The key point that matter can be created from vacuum is that the gravitational potential energy is negative, which may cancel the positive mass energy of the matter. This possibility even surprised Albert Einstein, as told by George Gamow in his book My World Line. In the 1940s, a colleague of George Gamow had an idea that a star could be created out of nothing if its negative gravitational energy precisely cancels out its positive mass energy. One day, Gamow mentioned this idea to Einstein while they were walking in Princeton. Einstein immediately stopped in his tracks and fell into deep thought. Since they were crossing a street, several cars had to stop to avoid running them down.
In reality, a star is unlikely to be created out of nothing because its gravitational energy is too small to cancel out its huge mass energy. However, there is a mechanism that can facilitate the creation of small particles from vacuum: quantum fluctuation.
Quantum fluctuation
According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, we cannot determine energy and time precisely. Therefore, it is possible for a group of particles with non-zero total energy to appear naturally and then disappear within a short time. The more the total energy is created, the shorter the lifetime. This process is known as the quantum fluctuation. Because of quantum fluctuation, the vacuum cannot be absolutely nothing. It should still have some energy (the vacuum energy).
In the past several decades, quantum fluctuation has been widely used by cosmologists to explain the origin of the Big Bang that started our braneworld. However, the Big Bang involves the creation of a huge amount of energy that is unlikely to arise from quantum fluctuation. A more likely scenario is that the Big Bang was created by God in the bulk space and the Kingdom of God was created by quantum fluctuation.
Although the lifetime of the particles created by quantum fluctuation is short, they may decay into other types of particles or interact with each other to form stable particles during their lifetime. As time proceeded, some structures equivalent to our atoms could be formed. Eventually, a habitable environment and life could be developed. Since the bulk universe is eternal, there was plenty of time for an intelligent life to evolve from tiny particles.
Restriction in our braneworldNearly all elementary particles that constitute ordinary matter in our braneworld contain electric charges. These matter particles are restricted by the charge conservation law. Thus, the creation of a particle usually requires the creation of its antiparticle (with identical mass, but opposite charge). However, a particle can annihilate its antiparticle, making self-creation of matter particles by quantum fluctuation virtually impossible in our braneworld. In the labs, physicists can only observe the self-creation of the lightest particles, the electron-positron pair (positron is the antiparticle of the electron), which exists only for a very short time.
The elementary particles in the Kingdom of God are entirely different from ordinary particles in our braneworld. Most of them may not have electric charges. Without the charge-conservation restriction, the self-creation of particles may be quite common in the bulk space.

History of Tattoo

2008-09-14T12:28:00.000-07:00

The word Tattoo has been derived from the Polynesian word 'tatao', which means tapping or marking something. This term was first coined by Captain James Cook in the year 1769, when he met the Tahitians during his voyage, who had decorated their bodies with tattoos. At that time, tattooing was a very painful procedure. The technique of tattooing has now undergone a major modification. Read on to know more about the origin & history of tattoo.
Initially this body art involved piercing into the body, which was done by dropping a sharp-pointed comb into lampblack and then inserting it into the skin. Despite the trouble involved, many people got their bodies tattooed, especially arms. The tradition of tattooing, which was originally practiced in Tahiti and other Polynesian islands spread its influence in Europe too. In those days, it was mainly worn by the sailors, drunkards and criminals.The archeological excavations have revealed that this tradition of tattooing has been an integral part of many ancient cultures. In the year 1992, in the Alp region that lies between the border of Austria and Italy, a properly preserved body of a man was found. According to the estimations of the archeological department, it is expected that this man died near about 5000 years ago. He had 58 tattoos all over his body. Most of the ancient Egyptian mummies had tattoos. The Greeks and Romans of the bygone times used tattoo for identifying the slaves and criminals.

nanomaterials

2008-09-14T12:16:00.000-07:00

Nanomaterials are materials with morphological features smaller than a one tenth of a micrometre in at least one dimension. Despite the fact that there is no consensus upon the minimum or maximum size of nanomaterials, some authors restricting their size from 1 to ~30 nm, a logical definition would situate the nanoscale between microscale (0.1 micrometre) and atomic/molecular scale (about 0.2 nanometers).

Fundamental concepts

A unique aspect of nanotechnology is the vastly increased ratio of surface area to volume present in many nanoscale materials which opens new quantum mechanical effects, for example the “quantum size effect” where the electronic properties of solids are altered with great reductions in particle size. This effect does not come into play by going from macro to micro dimensions. However, it becomes dominant when the nanometer size range is reached. Additionally, a number of physical properties change when compared to macroscopic systems. Novel mechanical properties of nanomaterials is the subject of nanomechanics research. Their catalytic activity reveals novel properties in the interaction with biomaterials.
Nanotechnology can be thought of as extensions of traditional disciplines towards the explicit consideration of these properties. Additionally, traditional disciplines can be re-interpreted as specific applications of nanotechnology. This dynamic reciprocation of ideas and concepts contributes to the modern understanding of the field. Broadly speaking, nanotechnology is the synthesis and application of ideas from science and engineering towards the understanding and production of novel materials and devices. These products generally make copious use of physical properties associated with small scales.
Materials reduced to the nanoscale can suddenly show very different properties compared to what they exhibit on a macroscale, enabling unique applications. For instance, opaque substances become transparent (copper); inert materials become catalysts (platinum); stable materials turn combustible (aluminum); solids turn into liquids at room temperature (gold); insulators become conductors (silicon). Materials such as gold, which is chemically inert at normal scales, can serve as a potent chemical catalyst at nanoscales. Much of the fascination with nanotechnology stems from these unique quantum and surface phenomena that matter exhibits at the nanoscale.
Nanosize powder particles (a few nanometres in diameter, also called nanoparticles) are potentially important in ceramics, powder metallurgy, the achievement of uniform nanoporosity and similar applications. The strong tendency of small particles to form clumps ("agglomerates") is a serious technological problem that impedes such applications. However, a few dispersants such as ammonium citrate (aqueous) and imidazoline or oleyl alcohol (nonaqueous) are promising additives for deagglomeration.

Size concerns

Another concern is that the volume of an object decreases as the third power of its linear dimensions, but the surface area only decreases as its second power. This somewhat subtle and unavoidable principle has huge ramifications. For example the power of a drill (or any other machine) is proportional to the volume, while the friction of the drill's bearings and gears is proportional to their surface area. For a normal-sized drill, the power of the device is enough to handily overcome any friction. However, scaling its length down by a factor of 1000, for example, decreases its power by 10003 (a factor of a billion) while reducing the friction by only 10002 (a factor of "only" a million). Proportionally it has 1000 times less power per unit friction than the original drill. If the original friction-to-power ratio was, say, 1%, that implies the smaller drill will have 10 times as much friction as power. The drill is useless.
This is why, while super-miniature electronic integrated circuits can be made to function, the same technology cannot be used to make functional mechanical devices in miniature: the friction overtakes the available power at such small scales. So while you may see microphotographs of delicately etched silicon gears, such devices are curiosities with limited real world applications, for example in moving mirrors and shutters. Surface tension increases in the same way, causing very small objects to tend to stick together. This could possibly make any kind of "micro factory" impractical: even if robotic arms and hands could be scaled down, anything they pick up will tend to be impossible to put down. The above being said, molecular evolution has resulted in working cilia, flagella, muscle fibers, and rotary motors in aqueous environments, all on the nanoscale. These machines, however, exploit the increase of the frictional forces found at the micro or nanoscale. Unlike an oar, paddle or propeller the mechanics of which are dominated by normal frictional forces (the frictional forces perpendicular to the surface) for propulsion, cilia, etc., develop motion resulting from the exaggerated drag or laminar forces (frictional forces parallel to the surface) present at micro and nano dimensions. To develop meaningful "machines" at the nanoscale, the relevant forces need to be considered. We are faced with the development and design of relevant machines rather than the simple reproductions of macroscopic ones.
All these scaling issues have to be kept in mind while evaluating any kind of nanotechnology

Materials used in nanotechnology

Materials referred to as "nanomaterials" generally fall into two categories: fullerenes, and inorganic nanoparticles. See also Nanomaterials in List of nanotechnology topics

Fullerenes

The fullerenes are a class of allotropes of carbon which conceptually are graphene sheets rolled into tubes or spheres. These include the carbon nanotubes which are of interest due to both their mechanical strength and their electrical properties.
For the past decade, the chemical and physical properties of fullerenes have been a hot topic in the field of research and development, and are likely to continue to be for a long time. In April 2003, fullerenes were under study for potential medicinal use: binding specific antibiotics to the structure to target resistant bacteria and even target certain cancer cells such as melanoma. The October 2005 issue of Chemistry and Biology contains an article describing the use of fullerenes as light-activated antimicrobial agents. In the field of nanotechnology, heat resistance and superconductivity are some of the more heavily studied properties.
A common method used to produce fullerenes is to send a large current between two nearby graphite electrodes in an inert atmosphere. The resulting carbon plasma arc between the electrodes cools into sooty residue from which many fullerenes can be isolated.
There are many calculations that have been done using ab-initio Quantum Methods applied to fullerenes. By DFT and TDDFT methods one can obtain IR, Raman and UV spectra. Results of such calculations can be compared with experimental results.

Nanoparticles

Nanoparticles or nanocrystals made of metals, semiconductors, or oxides are of interest for their mechanical, electrical, magnetic, optical, chemical and other properties. Nanoparticles have been used as quantum dots and as chemical catalysts.
Nanoparticles are of great scientific interest as they are effectively a bridge between bulk materials and atomic or molecular structures. A bulk material should have constant physical properties regardless of its size, but at the nano-scale this is often not the case. Size-dependent properties are observed such as quantum confinement in semiconductor particles, surface plasmon resonance in some metal particles and superparamagnetism in magnetic materials.
Nanoparticles exhibit a number of special properties relative to bulk material. For example, the bending of bulk copper (wire, ribbon, etc.) occurs with movement of copper atoms/clusters at about the 50 nm scale. Copper nanoparticles smaller than 50 nm are considered super hard materials that do not exhibit the same malleability and ductility as bulk copper. The change in properties is not always desirable. Ferroelectric materials smaller than 10 nm can switch their magnetisation direction using room temperature thermal energy, thus making them useless for memory storage. Suspensions of nanoparticles are possible because the interaction of the particle surface with the solvent is strong enough to overcome differences in density, which usually result in a material either sinking or floating in a liquid. Nanoparticles often have unexpected visible properties because they are small enough to confine their electrons and produce quantum effects. For example gold nanoparticles appear deep red to black in solution.
Nanoparticles have a very high surface area to volume ratio. This provides a tremendous driving force for diffusion, especially at elevated temperatures. Sintering can take place at lower temperatures, over shorter time scales than for larger particles. This theoretically does not affect the density of the final product, though flow difficulties and the tendency of nanoparticles to agglomerate complicates matters. The surface effects of nanoparticles also reduces the incipient melting temperature.

Safety of Manufactured Nanomaterials

Nanomaterials behave differently than other similarly-sized particles. It is therefore necessary to develop specialized approaches to testing and monitoring their effects on human health and on the environment. The OECD Chemicals Committee has established the Working Party on Manufactured Nanomaterials to address this issue and to study the practices of OECD member countries in regards to nanomaterial safety

While nanomaterials and nanotechnologies are expected to yield numerous health and health care advances, such as more targeted methods of delivering drugs, new cancer therapies, and methods of early detection of diseases, they also may have unwanted effects.

Increased rate of absorption is the main concern associated with manufactured nanoparticles.
When materials are made into nanoparticles, their surface area to volume ratio increases. The greater specific surface area (surface area per unit weight) may lead to increased rate of absorption through the skin, lungs, or digestive tract and may cause unwanted effects to the lungs as well as other organs. However, the particles must be absorbed in sufficient quantities in order to pose health risks

NIKOLA TESLA'S WIRELESS TRANSMISSION

2008-09-14T11:35:00.000-07:00

We are now only days away from our manuscript-delivery-deadline for the Damn Interesting book. Once that's behind us, we can return to our regularly scheduled writing. In the meantime, here's a re-run from 10 July 2007.
Wardenclyffe TowerIn 1905, a team of construction workers in the small village of Shoreham, New York labored to erect a truly extraordinary structure. Over a period of several years the men had managed to assemble the framework and wiring for the 187-foot-tall Wardenclyffe Tower, in spite of severe budget shortfalls and a few engineering snags. The project was overseen by its designer, the eccentric-yet-ingenious inventor Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 - 7 January 1943). Atop his tower was perched a fifty-five ton dome of conductive metals, and beneath it stretched an iron root system that penetrated more than 300 feet into the Earth's crust. "In this system that I have invented, it is necessary for the machine to get a grip of the earth," he explained, "otherwise it cannot shake the earth. It has to have a grip… so that the whole of this globe can quiver."
Though it was far from completion, it was rumored to have been tested on several occasions, with spectacular, crowd-pleasing results. The ultimate purpose of this unique structure was to change the world forever.
Tesla's inventions had already changed the world on several occasions, most notably when he developed modern alternating current technology. He had also won fame for his victory over Thomas Edison in the well-publicized "battle of currents," where he proved that his alternating current was far more practical and safe than Edison-brand direct current. Soon his technology dominated the world's developing electrical infrastructure, and by 1900 he was widely regarded as America's greatest electrical engineer. This reputation was reinforced by his other major innovations, including the Tesla coil, the radio transmitter, and fluorescent lamps.
In 1891, Nikola Tesla gave a lecture for the members of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in New York City, where he made a striking demonstration. In each hand he held a gas discharge tube, an early version of the modern fluorescent bulb. The tubes were not connected to any wires, but nonetheless they glowed brightly during his demonstration. Tesla explained to the awestruck attendees that the electricity was being transmitted through the air by the pair of metal sheets which sandwiched the stage. He went on to speculate how one might increase the scale of this effect to transmit wireless power and information over a broad area, perhaps even the entire Earth. As was often the case, Tesla's audience was engrossed but bewildered.
Back at his makeshift laboratory at Pike's Peak in Colorado Springs, the eccentric scientist continued to wring the secrets out of electromagnetism to further explore this possibility. He rigged his equipment with the intent to produce the first lightning-scale electrical discharges ever accomplished by mankind, a feat which would allow him to test many of his theories about the conductivity of the Earth and the sky. For this purpose he erected a 142-foot mast on his laboratory roof, with a copper sphere on the tip. The tower's substantial wiring was then routed through an exceptionally large high-voltage Tesla coil in the laboratory below. On the night of his experiment, following a one-second test charge which momentarily set the night alight with an eerie blue hum, Tesla ordered his assistant to fully electrify the tower.
Though his notes do not specifically say so, one can only surmise that Tesla stood at Pike's Peak and cackled diabolically as the night sky over Colorado was cracked by the man-made lightning machine. Colossal bolts of electricity arced hundreds of feet from the tower's top to lick the landscape. A curious blue corona soon enveloped the crackling equipment. Millions of volts charged the atmosphere for several moments, but the awesome display ended abruptly when the power suddenly failed. All of the windows throughout Colorado Springs went dark as the local power station's industrial-sized generator collapsed under the strain. But amidst such dramatic discharges, Tesla confirmed that the Earth itself could be used as an electrical conductor, and verified some of his suspicions regarding the conductivity of the ionosphere. In later tests, he recorded success in an attempt to illuminate light bulbs from afar, though the exact conditions of these experiments have been lost to obscurity. In any case, Tesla became convinced that his dream of world-wide wireless electricity was feasible.
In 1900, famed financier J.P. Morgan learned of Tesla's convictions after reading an article in Century Magazine, wherein the scientist described a global network of high-voltage towers which could one day control the weather, relay text and images wirelessly, and provide ubiquitous electricity via the atmosphere. Morgan, hoping to capitalize on the future of wireless telegraphy, immediately invested $150,000 to relocate Tesla's lab to Long Island to construct a pilot plant for this "World Wireless System." Construction of Wardenclyffe Tower and its dedicated power generating facility began the following year.
Tesla's lab at pike's peakIn December 1901, a scant few months after construction began, a competing scientist named Guglielmo Marconi executed the world's first trans-Atlantic wireless telegraph signal. Tesla's investors were deeply troubled by the development despite the fact that Marconi borrowed from seventeen Tesla patents to accomplish his feat. Though Marconi's plans were considerably less ambitious in scale, his apparatus was also considerably less expensive. Work at Wardenclyffe continued, but Tesla realized that this his competitor's success with simple wireless telegraphy had greatly diminished the likelihood of further investments in his own, much grander project.
In 1908, Tesla described his sensational aspirations in an article for Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony magazine:
"As soon as completed, it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe, without any change whatever in the existing equipment. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing, or print can be transferred from one to another place. Millions of such instruments can be operated from but one plant of this kind. More important than all of this, however, will be the transmission of power, without wires, which will be shown on a scale large enough to carry conviction."
In essence, Tesla's global power grid was designed to "pump" the planet with electricity which would intermingle with the natural telluric currents that move throughout the Earth's crust and oceans. At the same time, towers like the one at Wardenclyffe would fling columns of raw energy skyward into the electricity-friendly ionosphere fifty miles up. To tap into this energy conduit, customers' homes would be equipped with a buried ground connection and a relatively small spherical antenna on the roof, thereby creating a low-resistance path to close the giant Earth-ionosphere circuit. Oceangoing ships could use a similar antenna to draw power from the network while at sea. In addition to electricity, these currents could carry information over great distances by bundling radio-frequency energy along with the power, much like the modern technology to send high-speed Internet data over power lines.
Nikola TeslaGiven his supporting experimental data and previous engineering accomplishments, there was little reason to doubt the veracity of Tesla's claims. But building the power station, the huge wooden tower, and the fifty-five ton conductive dome depleted the original investment money relatively quickly, leading to chronic funding shortages. The complications were further compounded by a stock market crash in 1901 which doubled the cost of building materials and sent investors scurrying for financial cover.
The Wardenclyffe team tested their tower a handful of times during construction, and the results were very encouraging; but the project soon devoured Tesla's personal savings, and it became increasingly clear that no new investments were forthcoming. In 1905, having exhausted all practical financial options, the construction efforts were abandoned. Regarding the project's demise, Tesla stated:
"It is not a dream, it is a simple feat of scientific electrical engineering, only expensive — blind, faint-hearted, doubting world! […] Humanity is not yet sufficiently advanced to be willingly led by the discoverer's keen searching sense. But who knows? Perhaps it is better in this present world of ours that a revolutionary idea or invention instead of being helped and patted, be hampered and ill-treated in its adolescence — by want of means, by selfish interest, pedantry, stupidity and ignorance; that it be attacked and stifled; that it pass through bitter trials and tribulations, through the strife of commercial existence. So do we get our light. So all that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combatted, suppressed — only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle."
If Tesla's plans had come to fruition, the pilot plant would have been merely the first of many. Such "magnifying transmitter" towers would have peppered the globe, saturating the planet with free electricity and wireless communication as early as the 1920s. Instead, the futuristic facility's potential went untapped for over a decade, until the tower was finally demolished for salvage in 1917.
The fall of Wardenclyffe thrust the brilliant inventor into a deep depression and financial distress, and in the years that followed his colleagues began to seriously doubt his mental well-being. His eccentricities became increasingly exaggerated, underscored by his tendency to bring home and care for the injured pigeons he encountered during his daily visits to the park. He also developed an unnatural fear of germs, washing his hands compulsively and refusing to eat any food which had not been disinfected through boiling. But his mind remained pregnant with groundbreaking ideas, as he demonstrated when he described radar technology in 1917, almost twenty years before it became a reality. Tesla in front of the spiral coil of his high-frequency transformer.In 1928, aged seventy-two years, he filed one of his last patents; it described an ingenious lightweight flying machine that was an early precursor to today's tilt-rotor Vertical Short Takeoff and Landing (VSTOL) planes such as the V-22 Osprey.
Nikola Tesla shuffled off this mortal coil in 1943, suffering a heart attack alone in his hotel room. Though he kept copious diaries of his experiments and ideas throughout his life, they were notoriously vague and lacking in technical details. He preferred to rely on his photographic memory for such nuances, therefore much of his knowledge went with him to the grave. Some modern investigations and calculations, however, do support Tesla's contention that wireless electricity is not only feasible, but it may have even been a superior alternative to the extensive and costly grid of power lines which crisscross our globe today.
Had Wardenclyffe been completed without interruption, Tesla may have once again managed to alter the course of history. Instant access to power, information, pirated phonograph cylinders, and lewd photos of bare-ankled floozies on the TeslaNet may have ushered in the Information Age almost a century ahead of schedule, making today's world a very different place indeed. Perhaps one day we will enjoy the future that Tesla envisioned, albeit a bit behind schedule.
Happy 151st birthday, Nikola.

Are the mobile phone Towers SAFE..???

2008-09-14T11:19:00.000-07:00

Huge, bulky telecommunication towers on top of tall buildings is not an uncommon site in the major cities these days. But there is a possibility that these towers may not be safe for humans living near it in ways more than one..

THERE IS a widespread apprehension among people that some mobile operators have constructed the towers on top of structurally weak buildings in the city and any physical damage caused to the buildings by these towers may put the lives of the people living in and around such installations at grave risk.
There is also a serious concern that since we are living in Seismic Zone-V, these towers could cause devastating damage, in case an earthquake, if not designed properly. Therefore, it is necessary to monitor and appropriately regulate the erection of mobile phone towers on top of buildings.
Structural safety of the buildings has to be accorded top priority before giving permission for the construction of mobile towers. The agencies empowered to give building permissions should not allow erection of mobile towers on buildings, which have been constructed without valid permission. These measures will also put an end to the alleged unregulated erection of hoardings and other outdoor displays on top of the buildings in the city.
Mobile phone towers should also be subject to the enforcement of building laws along with the unauthorised buildings. A structural engineer should inspect and sign the site plan and drawings of the mobile phone towers, certifying that necessary safety measures have been taken and that the structure is safe and earthquake resistant.
There are, so far, no restrictions on the locations of towers. A city like Srinagar requires numerous towers, as telephone operators need large number of towers for better coverage and transmission. At the same time, number of towers needs to be kept at minimum in the interest of proper urban planning, public health and safety.
Base stations are usually tall structures servicing large areas (cells). In recent times, there has been a trend towards smaller antennas servicing smaller cells. The aerials are normally erected on tall buildings to cover the widest area possible. Operators need to replace old model towers with single pole towers. There are four telecom operators in the city: BSNL, Airtel, Aircel and Reliance. Three or more firms should share each tower, and no individual firm should be allowed to set up a separate tower for itself.
It is difficult to confine the construction of mobile towers to non-residential areas, as the distance between two towers is determined by factors such as transmission frequency, density of consumers and the desired sound quality, among others. However, telecommunication towers atop buildings in residential areas may need to be relocated, where they are considered to be a hazard. There are fears that the people living in and around such installations are susceptible to health hazards.
Electromagnetic radiations emitted from the towers are debated all over the world. However, there is no conclusive study stating that radiation emitted by mobile phones affects health adversely. Medical research material is available on health-related effects of electromagnetic radiation emitted from antennae on telecommunication towers, yet no conclusive evidence of hazards to human health has been established for possible exposure levels from the cellular towers.
Modified currents and voltage generate oscillation of the electrical and magnetic field, which propagates in space. The electric and magnetic components oscillate at right angels to each other, these waves are termed as Electro Magnetic Radiations (EMRs). Mobile phone towers emit electro magnetic rays with a frequency of 1900 MHz. With this high frequency, they can easily pass through our bodies and concrete walls. Our immune system can be harmfully affected when these EMR rays pass through our body. Mobile phone towers’ radioactivity can thus affect every living thing in one square kilometer range.
Density ranges of this radioactivity are 17,100 - 72,000 micro watt per square metre. Mobile towers, installed on top of buildings can penetrate radio activity among those who live in the same buildings. Electromagnetic field of these towers attract Radon gas from atmosphere. EMR can cause memory loss, headache, allergy and skin diseases mostly affecting those who live nearby. Sperm-count in men is known to reduce with daily use of cell phone.
The mobile phone operators however, argue that Radio Frequency (RF) emissions from antennas used for wireless transmissions such as cellular and Personal Communication Systems (PCS) signals are within safe limits. Therefore, there is no reason to believe that such towers could constitute a potential health hazard to nearby residents. They claim that the roof of the building absorbs large amounts of the RF energy.
Cell phones communicate with nearby base stations even when these are not being used for a call. This is necessary to tell the system where the user is, in case a call should come in. Thus, even while they are inactive, the phones are a source of RF energy exposure to the user. Hands-free kits reduce exposure to a user by removing the phone from the vicinity of the head. There is no identifiable health benefit in using the kits, but there is no detriment either and using them may increase a user’s peace of mind.
There is not much that you can do if there is already a phone tower on the roof of your own or a nearby building, except getting the building assessed by a structural engineer, for its safety and in case it is found that the building is not capable of taking the load and stresses of the telecommunication towers, these should be relocated immediately, to safe guard the lives of people. Before the installation of a mobile tower aerial on your roof top, make sure that the required safety measures have been taken.
Ensure that the building has had a proper structural survey done by a qualified structural engineer, to see if it is capable of taking the weight of the aerial. The calculations should include effect of earthquake and wind resistance on the aerial to make sure that it will be able to stand up to severe winds.
There remains a lack of consensus among the experts about whether and at what levels electric magnetic fields and electromagnetic radiation can affect humans. The reality is also that there is a high level of concern regarding possible effects. The best approach to adopt, therefore, is a precautionary one. Should health be put at potential risk by waiting for proof of harm beyond all reasonable doubts before preventative action is taken; or should the action be taken as a precaution before any conclusive evidence is found to prevent any potential harm?
It is possible that EMFs and EMR at the current levels are harmless, but it may not be the case.
The question is whether we wait for overwhelmingly convincing proof, by which time many people may have been harmed or whether we take precautionary preventative steps now. At the rate that demand for mobile phones is increasing, there will soon be more mobile phone towers standing than trees.
Without waiting for a single day, the municipal authorities need to immediately assess the safety of all buildings where mobile towers have been erected and ensure that in future no permission is given unless the building is certified to be structurally safe and is capable of taking the load of the tower and bear all effects of earthquake and severe winds. On our part, we should prefer landline phones over cell phones and wherever we use cell phones, we should use a proper head-set.

photoelectric cell

2008-09-14T11:15:00.000-07:00

An electronic device having an electrical output that varies in response to incident radiation, especially to visible light. Also called electric eye.

A device incorporated in an electric circuit; in response to light that falls on the cell, the electrical output or the resistance varies; used in measuring devices and in control devices that depend on illumination level or the interruption of a light beam.

photoelectric cell
or photocell, device whose electrical characteristics (e.g., current, voltage, or resistance) vary when light is incident upon it. The most common type consists of two electrodes separated by a light-sensitive semiconductor material. A battery or other voltage source connected to the electrodes sets up a current even in the absence of light; when light strikes the semiconductor section of the photocell, the current in the circuit increases by an amount proportional to the intensity of the light. In the phototube, an older type of photocell, two electrodes are enclosed in a glass tube—an anode and a light-sensitive cathode, i.e., a metal that emits electrons in accordance with the photoelectric effect. Although the phototube itself is now obsolete, the principle survives in the photomultiplier tube, which can be used to detect and amplify faint amounts of light. In this tube, electrons ejected from a photosensitive cathode by light are attracted toward and strike a positive electrode, liberating showers of secondary electrons; these are drawn to a more positive electrode, producing yet more secondary electrons—and so on, through several stages, until a large pulse of current is produced. Besides its use in measuring light intensity, a photomultiplier can be built into a television camera tube, making it sensitive enough to pick up the visual image of a star too faint to be seen by the human eye. The photovoltaic type of photoelectric cell, when exposed to light, can generate and support an electric current without being attached to any external voltage source. Such a cell usually consists of a semiconductor crystal with two zones composed of dissimilar materials. When light shines on the crystal, a voltage is set up across the junction between the two zones. A phototransistor, which is a type of photovoltaic cell, can generate a small current that acts like the input current in a conventional transistor and controls a larger current in the output circuit. Photovoltaic cells are also used to make solar batteries (see solar cell). Since the current from a photocell can easily be used to operate switches or relays, it is often used in light-actuated counters, automatic door openers, and intrusion alarms. Photocells in such devices are popularly known as electric eyes.

other languages:

Dansk (Danish)n. - fotocelle
Nederlands (Dutch)foto-elektrische cel
Français (French) n. - cellule photo-électrique
Deutsch (German) n. - Photozelle
Ελληνική (Greek) n. - (τεχνολ.) φωτοηλεκτρικό κύτταρο
Italiano (Italian) cellula fotoelettrica
Português (Portuguese) n. - fotocélula (f)
Русский (Russian) фотоэлемент, электронный "глаз"
Español (Spanish) n. - célula fotoeléctrica
Svenska (Swedish) n. - fotocell
中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified)) 光电池
中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional)) n. - 光電池
한국어 (Korean) n. - 광전지
日本語 (Japanese) n. - 光電セル, 光電池
العربيه (Arabic) ‏(الاسم) خليه ضوئيه أو كهروضوئيه‏
עברית (Hebrew) n. - ‮תא פוטואלקטרי, תא חשמל-אורי‬

How to increase your adsense revenue

2008-09-14T10:58:00.000-07:00

In this lesson you will learn to boost your Adsense revenue. You must have heard about peoples achieving high payments per click with AdSense. For high total earnings, your website requires a lot of page views and a high click-through rate. So to boost your Adsense revenue you need high traffic on your web site along with high click-through rates. By using this tutorial you will learn how to increase web traffic and click-through rates. In short you can increase your Adsense income by increasing Impressions, Click-through and Effective CPM. Improving your web statistics in any, or preferably, all of these three key areas will increase your Adsense revenue.
Increasing Impressions (Increasing web traffic)

Basically the impressions are the number of times your web pages with Adsense ads have been viewed. So it is directly proportional to the number or visitors to your web site. So, you can increase Impressions by increasing traffic to your web site.

In short here are some of the best ways to increase targeted traffic to your web pages:
More web pages means more traffic. So, create more web pages, with relevant, laser focused content.
Increase the link popularity for your web site
List your website/s under relevant categories in more directories
Set up a directory of relevant sites on your website and accept relevant reciprocal links
Write articles relevant to your web site and submit in the article directories
Increasing Adsense click-throughEven if your web site is receiving a lot of traffic, you will be earn only if your visitors clicks on the Adsense Ads and visits the advertiser web site. Clickthroughs are nothing but it is percentage of viewers who click on your Adsense ads. You can increase click-through by increasing the relevance of Adsense ads on your site, and by tweaking the format and placement of your ads. You can try different placements and colors of the ads, but be careful that the ads mixes with the content of your web site style.Try to make the different pages with different kinds of content. And make sure that these content pages are very clearly focused. Then Google will be able to serve highly relevant AdWords to your visitors. And in this way your visitors will be more interested in the ads, which results in higher click through rates -- and more money for you! Increasing Adsense CPMYou can also increase your Adsense income by increasing Adsense CPM. The effective CPM is a measure of your average earnings, per thousand clicks. The CPM can be increased by selecting topics (keywords) that attract high bids from Adsense advertisers in your web pages. You can use overture bid tool http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/USm/search/tools/bidtool/ to find the bid amount for your key words. On the internet there are a number of keyword research tools available, both free and paid, that you can use to find the high paid key words.In short here is steps that you should follow to Increase your total Adsense revenue:
Develop your web site using high paying key words
Design layout of your web site and put the ads focusing on the maximum click-through
Promote your web site in search engines and get more traffic on your web site

******

I also recomend you to use adbrite, you can make some bucks in here....!!!

The Life and Death of Stars

2008-09-14T10:50:00.000-07:00

Where are Stars Born?

Astronomers believe that molecular clouds, dense clouds of gas located primarily in the spiral arms of galaxies are the birthplace of stars. Dense regions in the clouds collapse and form "protostars". Initially, the gravitational energy of the collapsing star is the source of its energy. Once the star contracts enough that its central core can burn hydrogen to helium, it becomes a "main sequence" star.

Main Sequence Stars

Main sequence stars are stars, like our Sun, that fuse hydrogen atoms together to make helium atoms in their cores. For a given chemical composition and stellar age, a stars' luminosity, the total energy radiated by the star per unit time, depends only on its mass. Stars that are ten times more massive than the Sun are over a thousand times more luminous than the Sun. However, we should not be too embarrassed by the Sun's low luminosity: it is ten times brighter than a star half its mass. The more massive a main sequence star, the brighter and bluer it is. For example, Sirius, the dog star, located to the lower left of the constellation Orion, is more massive than the Sun, and is noticeably bluer. On the other hand, Proxima Centauri, our nearest neighbor, is less massive than the Sun, and is thus redder and less luminous.
Since stars have a limited supply of hydrogen in their cores, they have a limited lifetime as main sequence stars. This lifetime is proportional to f M / L, where f is the fraction of the total mass of the star, M, available for nuclear burning in the core and L is the average luminosity of the star during its main sequence lifetime. Because of the strong dependence of luminosity on mass, stellar lifetimes depend sensitively on mass. Thus, it is fortunate that our Sun is not more massive than it is since high mass stars rapidly exhaust their core hydrogen supply. Once a star exhausts its core hydrogen supply, the star becomes redder, larger, and more luminous: it becomes a red giant star. This relationship between mass and lifetime enables astronomers to put a lower limit on the age of the universe.

Death of an "Ordinary" Star

After a low mass star like the Sun exhausts the supply of hydrogen in its core, there is no longer any source of heat to support the core against gravity. Hydrogen burning continues in a shell around the core and the star evolves into a red giant. When the Sun becomes a red giant, its atmosphere will envelope the Earth and our planet will be consumed in a fiery death.
Meanwhile, the core of the star collapses under gravity's pull until it reaches a high enough density to start burning helium to carbon. The helium burning phase will last about 100 million years, until the helium is exhausted in the core and the star becomes a red supergiant. At this stage, the Sun will have an outer envelope extending out towards Jupiter. During this brief phase of its existence, which lasts only a few tens of thousands of years, the Sun will lose mass in a powerful wind. Eventually, the Sun will lose all of the mass in its envelope and leave behind a hot core of carbon embedded in a nebula of expelled gas. Radiation from this hot core will ionize the nebula, producing a striking "planetary nebula", much like the nebulae seen around the remnants of other stars. The carbon core will eventually cool and become a white dwarf, the dense dim remnant of a once bright star.

Death of a Massive Star

Massive stars burn brighter and perish more dramatically than most. When a star ten times more massive than Sun exhaust the helium in the core, the nuclear burning cycle continues. The carbon core contracts further and reaches high enough temperature to burn carbon to oxygen, neon, silicon, sulfur and finally to iron. Iron is the most stable form of nuclear matter and there is no energy to be gained by burning it to any heavier element. Without any source of heat to balance the gravity, the iron core collapses until it reaches nuclear densities. This high density core resists further collapse causing the infalling matter to "bounce" off the core. This sudden core bounce (which includes the release of energetic neutrinos from the core) produces a supernova explosion. For one brilliant month, a single star burns brighter than a whole galaxy of a billion stars. Supernova explosions inject carbon, oxygen, silicon and other heavy elements up to iron into interstellar space. They are also the site where most of the elements heavier than iron are produced. This heavy element enriched gas will be incorporated into future generations of stars and planets. Without supernova, the fiery death of massive stars, there would be no carbon, oxygen or other elements that make life possible.

The fate of the hot neutron core depends upon the mass of the progenitor star. If the progenitor mass is around ten times the mass of the Sun, the neutron star core will cool to form a neutron star. Neutron stars are potentially detectable as "pulsars", powerful beacons of radio emission. If the progenitor mass is larger, then the resultant core is so heavy that not even nuclear forces can resist the pull of gravity and the core collapses to form a black hole.
Learn more about the late stages of stellar evolution from the Chandra mission's web pages:
White Dwarfs
Neutron Stars
Black Holes
Supernovae

Do You Know About Chimpanzee Communication

2008-09-14T10:46:00.000-07:00

Human speech is commonly recognized as the dividing line between ourselves and the rest of the animal world. The reason why the ability to speak is such a sharply defined boundary goes deeper than the mere existence of a method of communication, it is what we have done with language that counts. Language paved the way for all the special human abilities that we so value- self-awareness, higher emotion and personal memories (McCrone 48). As we search into the origin, variety and composition of human language, it is important to examine our language at its root. As human beings, we share 99% of our genetic make-up with our closest relative, the chimpanzee. Therefore, by studying the communication abilities and development of language in chimps and other great apes, we can learn more about ourselves and our own language capabilities.
To begin to examine the communication of the chimpanzee, one must first gain a general understanding of primate communication in general. For the most part, the great apes are fairly quiet, while monkeys are noisy creatures, chattering and shrieking to one another using different alarm cries to signal different types of danger (McCrone 144). Apes do not depend as much on calls and cries to keep their group acting in harmony. The orangutan lives a fairly solitary life, not requiring such calls, while the slow-paced life of gorillas does not perhaps need cries to coordinate the action of the band. The chimp is the noisiest ape, yet still only uses about a dozen different noises, such as grunts, hoots, screeches and whimpers compared to the hundreds of sounds the human vocal organs can produce.
The simple, instinctive alarm call of monkeys can be seen in sharp contrast to the expressive or emotional cry which is commonly used by the great apes. In this type of communication, an animal is able to vent its inner feelings, not just the need for food or warn about a source of danger. A chimp, for example, might hoot with anger or screech with fear. These responses are genetically programmed like a call, since a chimp does not have to learn to screech or hoot and has quite standard responses to its feelings. The difference is that an emotional cry does not trigger a guaranteed response in the listener who needs a certain intelligence to interpret the reason for the unhappy noises and to react appropriately(McCrone 146). Calls and cries are effective but they are not what we should describe as true forms of communication, where an animal deliberately sends a message to another member of its group rather than just giving voice to an emotion. In true communication, signaling comes under the control of the conscious cortex rather than the subconscious emotional system.
Chimpanzees can indeed communicate in this deliberate fashion (McCrone 146). Chimps employ a rich variety of gestures and facial expressions to keep in touch with each other, and more importantly, there is intelligence behind the exchanges that makes for a level of understanding unseen elsewhere in the animal world. This sort of communication ability is what makes chimps appear far more socially advanced than any other animal. They may have a simple repertoire of noises and body language, but the intelligence with which these signals are used and interpreted makes a big difference.
Only recently has it been realized how well chimpanzees can communicate. Most of the observations have come from a troop of wild chimps at the Gombe Stream Reserve on the shores of Lake Tanganyika and from a captive group in Holland's Arnhem Zoo (McCrone 147). Chimps make use of simple gestures, waving their hand in the direction they want another chimp to look or holding out a begging hand for support then relying on the intelligence of the other animal to sum up the situation and react (McCrone 149). Some chimps even develop their own special signals. These observations indicate that chimps are the most intelligent communicators in the animal world, even compared to other highly social species such as lions, wolves and monkeys. This level of communication comes from chimps' deep understanding of the social world around them, which means that each chimp must be able mentally to model the impact of its own actions on the group as well as being able to guess the intentions of others (McCrone 150).
Highly social animals also need to be able to mentally model the social world of their group, remembering such things as who is dominant, who is bad-tempered, and what actions are likely to follow a particular grunt or screech. Because these sorts of things are less predictable and obvious than the events of the natural world, social animals like chimps and humans need bigger brains to cope with the complexity of their social lives (McCrone 150). A chimpanzee may have a deep understanding of the world and the brain power to model both physical and social relationships, but that knowledge stays locked away in the gray background of the memory banks until roused by events actually happening in the chimp's presence. Either another chimp draws its attention to the event, like the nervous mother nudging mama to tell her about the squabbling kids, or a chimp gives vent to its emotions and the others correctly guess the reason for its display, like the dominant chimp hooting at the young male for getting too friendly with the female (McCrone 156).
Perhaps chimps also invent their own personal noises, maybe using particular grunts to mean certain things. But such personal noises are not as obvious as gestures to human observers. The point is that it is quite possible for chimps- or early man- to make symbolic use of noises, even if these "protowords" have a fixed meaning only for the individuals uttering them. This use of personal noises would at least be the first step toward language. The next would be for the symbolic noise to be picked up and used by all the members of a troop. Learned behaviors can spread through a troop, but they tend to spread most easily from mother to child. youngsters are attentive and playful enough to imitate their mother's actions, whereas other adults rarely take the necessary interest to learn from each other (McCrone 157).
The modern chimp may be making the first steps toward language. Countless generations of chimpanzees have probably made similar first steps toward speech without their leading to anything, for young chimps do not repeat the close relationship they have with their mothers when they grow up and mix with other adult chimps. They do not pair off with a partner and thus have a chance to develop a more mature two-way form of conversation. Any private language that emerged would almost inevitably be lost with each generation, getting trampled underfoot in the rough-and-tumble world of the adult (McCrone 158).
Evidence of this progression toward more fluid communication skills is demonstrated in recent primate research. In the 1960's and 1970's, the discovery that apes could use hand gestures and symbols to communicate resulted in many primate language research facilities. For example, Koko, a gorilla, was trained to use American Sign Language to express her feelings and desires. Since that time, many great apes have been taught to sign or use symbol communication such as using colored plastic shapes or computer keyboard lexigrams to represent lexical concepts.
Also in the early 1970's, a chimpanzee named Washoe was taught to communicate in American Sign Language (ASL) by Beatrix and Allen Gardner at the University of Nevada in Reno. She was immersed in an environment where she learned to use ASL in daily interactions with her human companions. Washoe learned 132 different words in her time with the Gardners. In time since, four other chimps have also been taught to sign and they, along with Washoe, are the subject of study by Roger and Deborah Fouts. These five chimps, who consider themselves a family, now use many more signs than they were ever expected to learn (Washoe herself can use up to 240 reliable signs) ,and sign not only to the humans, but also to each other to communicate. Washoe even taught her own adopted son to sign without human intervention (Fouts).
Many linguists still believe that apes have no real grasp of human language, but are merely imitating their human companions. They insist that while apes may understand individual symbols or words, they do not understand the concepts of syntax, or how words are put together to form a complete idea. However, evidence is continually proving that the nonhuman primate mind is capable of advanced thought (Rayl 89).
Chimpanzees have shown the ability to communicate using ASL to human observers and other chimpanzees about the normal course of surrounding events. They use signs to create natural language categories; for example, they will sign "dog" when shown many different species of dogs and "shoe" whether it be a slipper or a cowboy boot. They can invent new signs and combine signs to metaphorically express something different, for example: calling a radish "cry hurt food" or referring to a watermelon as a "drink fruit" (Fouts). They can comprehend and produce novel prepositional phrases, understand vocal English, translate words into ASL and even transmit their signing skills to the next generation without human intervention.
Studying how chimps acquire and use sign and other symbolic language gives us a better understanding of how humans acquire language skills and provides another model with which we can study the role of language in communication. It also helps us to better understand the roots of our human language. In addition, chimp language research has been used to help non-communicating children to sign, and has aided autistic, cerebal palsied, and developmentally disabled children (Fouts).
If we view the chimpanzee not as if he were our contemporary, but as if he were some ancestor of ours, the value of studying chimpanzee communication and use of language may be more fully seen. As has been demonstrated, chimps have a rich social life and good communication skills. Many researchers feel that chimpanzees show through their communication that they are developing toward the threshold of speech. The desire and potential for communication of specific ideas is there The conclusion may be drawn that early man about two million years ago must have been at least as socially advanced as the modern chimp, and has since evolved to the language-speaking species we are today.
In the words of Dr. Roger S. Fouts, "While our human awareness and compassion is rapidly expanding to include a greater concern for our biosphere and its inhabitants, our ignorance still remains a critical problem. Fundamental to removing ignorance and replacing it with understanding is communication. We feel that communication is the one behavior most critical for future survival. Washoe has helped replace some of our ignorance about communication with an understanding of ourselves, as well as other beings. This is one reason why we have committed our lives to a research project that focuses on the understanding of communication and chimpanzees."

how do people fall in love

2008-09-14T10:42:00.000-07:00

By Joe Beam

Several years ago I developed a model that explains the process of “falling” in and out of love. It’s simple, practical, and extremely valid to the human experience. An amazing serendipity about the model is that when one understands the process of love, the person also learns how to fall in love all over again. We’ve used this model to help people fall in love again even after they had reached a point in their relationship where they were disinterested in each other, tired of each other, didn’t like each other any more, or outright hated each other.
Joe's latest book: Becoming OneBuy it online! I intend to share parts of the model with you over the next several weeks so that no matter how good or bad your relationship, you can be in love with each other again.
Let’s start where we should, at the beginning of every relationship. In our Love & Marriage seminar we ask people what first attracts them to another. Men tend to mention certain anatomical features. Interestingly, women do too. They talk about noticing a man’s height, the width of his shoulders, the flatness of his stomach, or the shape of his buttocks. Yes, even in church audiences!
So what’s my point?
Simply this: The first thing attracting any human to another is ALWAYS sensual.
When we first meet another human, we mentally register what we see, hear, or smell and instantly find ourselves attracted, neutral, or repulsed by that person. Since each of us is unique in our tastes, what one person finds alluring, another may find repelling, and another may not register as worthy of notice at all.
How does what we find physically attractive affect our “falling” in love? The chances of developing or maintaining love decrease proportionately with the degree of unattractiveness we perceive in another. For example, if you perceive a person as very unattractive, you likely aren’t going to be open to pursuing a relationship unless there is something else attracting you more strongly than their appearance is repelling you. That just makes sense doesn’t it?
When we were single, we accepted that truth. We kept our bodies trim, carefully coifed our hair, and wore only the most fashionable clothes. We knew that the people we met would immediately react either positively or negatively to our fragrance, voice, and appearance. We kept ourselves as attractive to the opposite sex as possible.
So why should it be any different after marriage?
So why should it be any different after marriage? A very common complaint we hear from both husbands and wives is the loss of their desire for a spouse who has forgotten the lure of the sensual. As one man said, “My wife is a beautiful woman when she wants to be. But she seems more focused on enjoying rich foods than being attractive to me. When I say anything about it, she just cries and tells me I don’t love her. I’ve learned to live with the fact that my wife will never be beautiful again because she doesn’t care to be. I guess I’m not as important to her as chocolate cake.”
I understand his dilemma. I’ve heard people reject loudly the idea that they should continue to be attractive to their spouses. When I probe their anger, I usually discover that the person objecting doesn’t feel attractive any more because of aging or some other factor. Because of that negative personal perception, he or she wants the mate to no longer be affected by physical attractiveness. They say things like, “A spiritual person wouldn’t care what I looked like!”
Interesting that they didn’t feel that way when they were looking for a mate. I often ask, “Were you spiritual when you first noticed the person you married? Did you question your spirituality when you were attracted by his/her physical beauty and attractiveness?”
God made us as we are—beings that are both physical and spiritual. We have needs to be fulfilled in both those dimensions of ourselves. He didn’t make all of us gorgeous, but He designed into the human race the ability for us to make ourselves attractive to others.
Think of it this way. Beauty is made, not born. No one has to match what he or she was during the early 20s. But none of us have the right to say, “Well, you married me. Now you have to blithely accept whatever I want to be like or look like!”
Whether you like it or not, you will be either attracted or repelled by what your senses register as long as you live. So will your spouse. Do you want your mate to be attracted to you? If so, you cannot demand his or her passion and desire just because you want it to exist. You have to understand the way God made us and make yourself as desirable as you can as long as you live together.
It’s the most basic step of falling in love. Or falling in love again.

The Origin of Life on Earth

2008-09-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

There are two basic ideas about how life on Earth originated. The first is that life (or at least the chemical precursors of life) arose on other planets followed by a diaspora (migration) to various parts of the galaxy including Earth. This idea is know as panspermia (see BP p. 398-399). Recent support for this idea comes from Mars rocks found in the Antarctic that appear to contain fossilized organisms resembling bacteria. There is also some evidence from Martian probes suggesting the possibility of life existing either in the past or even currently on Mars or Europa.

The alternate hypothesis about how life arose on Earth is that of Spontaneous Generation. Not the spontaneous generation of the17th century that Reddi, Leeuwenhoek, Spallanzalli, Tyndall, and Pasteur put to rest, but the 1936 spontaneous generation of Oparin, a Russian biochemist, that non-cellular macromolecular precursors developed into cells.
Oparin's argument goes something like this:
1. The Universe formed approximately 20 billion years ago, followed by our solar system (the Sun and planets) about 4-5 billion years ago. Our solar system formed from a cloud of dust and gas which condensed into a single compact mass resulting in tremendous heat and pressure. Because of the heat and pressure, thermonuclear reactions were initiated creating the Sun. Lesser centers of condensation occurred to the Earth and other planets.
Earth's condensation (and other terrestrial plants too) resulted in stratification of the components giving rise to Fe + Ni at the Earth's center (the heavy metals) and H2 + He + other gases (the lighter elements) as the primordial atmosphere. But, because of the size of the Earth and its weak gravitational field, these gases escaped nearly immediately. As a result the Earth became a bare, rocky globe with no oceans or atmosphere.
Time passes and gravity compresses the earth more. Radioactive decay occurs to produce heat and create a molten interior. More stratification occurs to produce a core of molten Fe + Ni and a mantel of Fe and magnesium silicates. The heat of the core forces gases and water out by volcanic action. These gases formed a second atmosphere, the evolutionary atmosphere.

As the Earth cooled, water vapor would have condensed and torrential rains would have fallen. The rain would have dissolved minerals (i.e., mineral weathering would have occurred) and the run-off from topographic highs would have collected in topographic lows to form oceans. If CH4 and NH3 were present in the atmosphere, then they would have also dissolved to some extent in the rain and ended up in the forming oceans.
2. The next step in the evolution of life would have been the formation of small organic molecules. The combination of minerals, NH4+, CH4 , H2, and H2O that formed the oceans is a very stable mixture so how could the building blocks of life arise? Some sort of energy source was necessary. An abundance of energy sources was available on early Earth in the form of solar radiation (visible light, ultra-violet light, x-rays), lightning, heat, cosmic rays, radioactive decay, or volcanic explosions.
In 1953, Stanley Miller did an experiment in which he combined an atmosphere containing CH4 , H2, H2O, and NH3 in a reaction vessel. Using an electrical spark, he was able to generate several small organic molecules including urea (CO(NH2)2), hydrogen cyanide (CHN), acetic acid (CH3COOH), and lactic acid (CH3COH2COOH). To eliminate the criticism that microbial activity was the source of the organic compounds, Miller ran the experiment under sterile conditions and without an electrical spark. When no spark was used, no organic compounds were formed. When the experiment was conducted under sterile conditions, no organic compounds were formed.
Since Miller's experiment many other similar experiments have been done with various atmospheric component combinations with similar results. All 20 of the most common amino acids have been produced by these types of experiments. In fact the experiments have been so successful under so many conditions that it is unlikely that organic compounds weren't formed in this manner!!!!
Some have argued that the organic compounds formed by these means would have been destroyed as fast as they formed. It has been suggested the small organic compounds would have oxidized, but there was no O2 in the early atmosphere for this to happen. It has been suggested that the small organic compounds would have decayed, but there were no microorganisms to decay them. It has been suggested that the high levels of UV light would have destroyed the small organic compounds. This is true to some extent, but because UV doesn't penetrate water very well, small organic molecules formed in water would have been shielded from UV destruction by the water. Soooo, it seems highly likely that small organic molecules would have formed and survived on early Earth. But is the formation of small organic molecules sufficient for the beginning of life? NO!
3. The next step in evolution of life on Earth would have been the formation of macromolecules or polymers. It is unlikely that sufficient concentrations of small organic molecules would have formed in the early oceans. A concentration process would have been necessary to encourage formation of polymers like polypeptides (precursors of proteins) or polynucleotides (precursors of DNA and RNA). Several processes easily could have occurred on early Earth to allow for polymer formation. For example, small organic molecules could have been concentrated by adsorption on clay particles or adsorption on pyrites in black smokers (see BP p. 398). Another concentration mechanism would have been evaporation in small pools or puddles on beaches or in lagoons. Additionally, UV light could have served as an energy source to produced polymers. To demonstrate that these mechanisms have the potential to produce polymers from small organic molecules, Sidney Fox heated dry mixtures of amino acids to produce a variety of polypeptides in the laboratory.
4. Once polymers were formed the next step in creating life on Earth would have been the formation of molecular aggregates and primitive "cells". The term cells is used very loosely here. When polypeptides or polynucleotides are combined in solution they form one of two types of complex units: one that Oparin called coacervate droplets and the other that Stanley Fox called proteinoid microspheres. Coacervate droplets are macromolecules that are surrounded by a shell of water molecules which are rigidly oriented relative to the macromolecule forming a "membrane". The coacervate droplets will adsorb and absorb chemicals from the surrounding medium and can se highly selective (lets only certain things in and certain things out) like a cell membrane. The coacervate droplets can become complex and show internal structure which becomes more and more pronounced as more materials pass the "membrane" and are incorporated into the droplet.
Proteinoid microspheres form when hot aqueous solutions of polypeptides are cooled. Proteinoid microspheres are much more stable than coacervate droplets and have the following characteristics: swell in a high salt solution, shrink in a low salt solution, have a double-layered outer boundary which is very similar to a cell membrane, show internal movement similar to cytoplasmic streaming "grow" in size and complexity, "bud" in a manner superficially similar to yeast cell reproduction, have electrical potential differences across the outer boundary which is necessary for cell membranes to generate ATP, and aggregate into clusters.
In either case (coacervate droplets or proteinoid microspheres) these "prebionts" are structurally complex and sharply separated from their environment creating a situation in which chemical reactions can take place inside the prebionts that would not happen in the surrounding medium.
On early Earth, many types of prebionts would have formed. Some would have been unstable. Others may have contained especially favorable combinations of chemicals. If they were to continue to exist, they must have had synthetic ability and thus a mechanism for handling energy. Energy demands probably would have been handled through ATP since all living things use ATP as their energy currency. Sidney Fox showed that proteinoid microspheres can use ATP to make polypeptides and nucleic acids. As a result proteinoid microspheres can increase in size. They are also susceptible to fragmentation to produce smaller droplets of similar composition - or they demonstrate a kind of reproduction.
There is a third hypothesis about formation of prebionts called the naked gene hypothesis. The basis for this hypothesis is the observation that self-replicating macromolecules (nucleotides) can accumulate a shell of other substances in a manner analogous to a modern day virus. Modern day viruses contain either DNA or RNA and are surrounded by a protein shell. BUT, modern day viruses are parasites that require living cells to reproduce and so are thought to be recent evolutionary products. Evidence for the naked gene hypothesis comes from discovery of prions, which are naked pieces of DNA that have been associated with cancer.
The difference between the naked gene hypothesis and the coacervate droplet or proteinoid microsphere hypotheses is that the later two prebionts showed primitive reproduction first followed by development of a genetic control system while the naked gene prebiont evolved a genetic control system first followed by cytoplasm and a membrane. Regardless of which hypothesis is correct, CELLS HAPPEN HERE!!!!
The oldest cell fossils are all procaryotic (bacterial) and are 3.5 billion years old. Procaryotes (lacking a "true" nucleus) are cells in which the chromosome is not surrounded by a nuclear membrane. They also lack the specialized cellular organelles that other types of cells have with the exception of ribosomes. There are many other distinguishing characteristics of procaryotic cells but these characteristics, while fascinating, are outside the scope of EVSC 101.
5. Once cells arrived on the scene, they would have had to evolve biochemical pathways. The oceans of early Earth would have been a soup that contained lots of energy rich organic matter the first cells could have used to produce ATP. However, as the number of organisms increased the supply of organic compounds would have decreased, becoming limiting, because the natural rate of organic matter formation is very slow. Thus, these early organisms were faced with a minor crisis - limited energy sources. To overcome this, some organisms began to use alternate forms of organic matter, converting it to chemical compounds similar to those they used previously to generate energy. As the process continued, the chain of reactions cells were capable of carrying out would have become longer and longer leading to the very complex series of chemical reactions all cells carry out today. Because these early cells all used pre-formed organic materials, they were all heterotrophs.
As the number of cells increased even further, the demand for abiotically formed organic materials would have out striped the rate at which they could be formed leading to a major crisis in the evolution of life on Earth - the first famine.
5. By the time the first famine occurred, cells had evolved very complex biochemical pathways. The lack of available energy sources to these early organisms would have created selective pressure for evolution of an alternative to small organic molecules as a way to obtain energy. That alternative was to capture light energy and convert it to chemical energy in the form of ATP. This process is what we know as photosynthesis, but not the type of photosynthesis that green plants carry out. The first photosynthetic organisms were bacteria that used H2S instead of H2O as a source of reducing power or H+. As a result, the end products of bacterial photosynthesis were organic matter and sulfide, not O2 like green plants produce. However, because the supply of H2S on early Earth would have also been limited, selective pressure would have existed for the evolution of an alternative to H2S. That alternative was H2O, which was very abundant and serves as an excellent source of H+ for photosynthesis. The first organisms to make the leap from using H2S to H2O were the blue-green bacteria or the Cyanobacteria (you will often hear these organisms referred to incorrectly as the blue-green algae).
This new type of photosynthesis (based on H2O) created the second major crisis for life on Earth. One of the products of H2O-dependent photosynthesis is O2 - a highly toxic gas. Oxygen is toxic to many critical biochemicals in cells and as a result early organisms had to either avoid O2 or evolve mechanisms to detoxify or protect the cell biochemicals from O2. In addition to the affect on cells, accumulation of O2 in the atmosphere lead to the formation of the ozone (O3) layer, which reduced the rate of mutation and significantly slowed the rate of evolution. Development of oxygenic photosynthesis is an excellent example of organisms altering their environment.
6. The accumulation of O2 in the atmosphere forced the next major evolutionary step - the evolution of aerobic organisms. The procaryotic organisms that evolved prior to this were all anaerobes - that is they didn't require O2 for cellular respiration or were fermentors. Aerobes require O2 for cellular respiration. The advantage of respiration using O2 is that it is very efficient compared to fermentation and somewhat more efficient than anaerobic respiration. Consequently aerobic organisms had a selective advantage over organisms that ferment or respire anaerobically.
So at this point, after about 3 billion years in the story of evolution of life on Earth the organisms that have evolved are all procaryotic (bacteria) and are:
A. anaerobes
i. fermentors
ii. respirers
iii. photosynthesizers
B. aerobes
i. photosynthesizers
ii. respirers
7. The rest of evolution on Earth is simple - the eucaryotes evolve. The first eucaryotic fossils are 1.5 billion years old. From these very first eucaryotes (cells with a "true" nucleus - or one enclosed in a nuclear membrane) all other eucaryotes (protozoa, fungi, plants, and animals) evolved. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain how eucaryotic cells arose: the invagination hypothesis and the symbiont hypothesis (see BP figure on p. 402). The invagination hypothesis proposes that a procaryotic cell enclosed a portion of itself to become an organelle to form either a mitochondrion or a chloroplast like those typical of eucaryotic cells. The symbiont hypothesis suggests that independent, free-living procaryote cells formed a symbiotic relationship with one another in which one of the procaryotes was resident inside the other procaryotic. As the relationship evolved the "invader" lost its ability to live independently and became either a mitochondrion ("invader" was a heterotroph) or a chloroplast ("invader" was a photosynthetic autotroph).

what is plasma tv

2008-09-13T09:52:00.000-07:00

Plasma televisions are much thinner than traditional TV sets (usually no more than 4 inches thick). The diminutive size necessitates a special stand to display the TV. There are several different types and an almost endless array of styles of plasma television stands. Plasma TV owners should choose a style that is compatible for their TV and complements their décor.
Modern Plasma Television Stands for Modern Plasma Televisions
Because plasma televisions are the highest end home entertainment piece currently available, they are rightfully viewed as high tech and ultra-modern. Plasma television stand designs reflect this focus. Most stands are made of metal or plastic and feature bare bones styles and modernistic lines.
A focus on geometric shapes and a tendency to provide platforms or shelves but not necessarily cabinets on which the TV rests is also common. Often these types of plasma television stands are no more than a series of platforms, the highest of which holds the television, and lower ones that hold other home entertainment components. Modernistic plasma television stands tend to complement the TV very well, but may not mesh with the style of every home in which they are placed.
Not to fear, other options do exist. A Google search for “plasma television stand” reveals an impressively long list of about 13,000 sites, most of which feature plasma television stands for sale. More traditional styles, made of hardwood or veneer, are available, as are cabinet style stands.
With the latter type of stand, a basic TV cabinet, similar to those used with traditional televisions is outfitted with a special mount to base to hold the plasma television. These plasma television stands make a good for choice for more traditionally decorated homes, or for owners who need storage for videotapes, DVDs and other peripherals. In contrast to more modernistic styles, cabinet type stands tend to enclose peripherals, videos, etc. and hide them from view.
Regardless of the style of plasma television stand chosen, it’s very important to make sure the stand is compatible with the owner’s particular model of plasma TV. Some brands produce custom plasma television stands that are designed to work with specific models; in fact, during some promotional events, plasma televisions come with complementary stands.
Should you fail to find any plasma television stand that meets your needs, you could always consider another option – wall mounting your plasma television. Although many people associate this idea with more contemporary décor, the wall-mounted plasma television would be relatively attractive in any environment

Upcoming PS3 Games

2008-09-13T09:45:00.000-07:00

PS3 game fans are some of the most devoted fans in the world. They take their games seriously and follow the characters and story lines of their favorite franchises closely. These are the fans who are in line at the store the moment a new release hits the shelves.
Click Here For Upcoming PS3 Games!
Whether you are a passionate PS3 fan or a casual one, we've got information you can use right here. Our gaming channel has the current scoop on all the upcoming PS3 games on the market. You can find out plot details, read reviews and get spoilers galore all in one convenient online location

Get Inside Information on Upcoming PS3 Games

For a PS3 gaming fan, coming to CraveOnline.com's gaming channel is like visiting Disney World. Our information on upcoming PS3 games includes some of the truest reviews you'll find anywhere. Our reviewers are all PS3 game fans themselves and have no problem telling it like it is about new games. We always have a new and extensive supply of PS3 game reviews on our site. We also offer strategy guides and preview clips for upcoming and existing games. We even have periodic interviews with professionals in the gaming world.
Explore our gaming channel while you're here. The channel has several subsections, as well, including one on strategy and one on role-playing video games. If you find something really thought-provoking or just feel like talking to someone about a game, head to our message boards. There are always lots of people just like you waiting to discuss all the latest info on upcoming and old-school PS3 games

does cats have emotions and feelings

2008-09-13T09:41:00.000-07:00

Cats do not experience anything like people do. They do not have the brain capacity to do so. They are not cognitively self aware (sentient). Only humans and a handful other species have been demonstrated to be cognitively self aware. However, 'emotions' as we experience them, are the closest that humans may get to feeling like animals. This is because the brain areas that are most active during emotional situations are located in the basal ganglia, or lower brain. We have a vastly larger cortex (the grey matter) than most other animals, and this adds an entire new level of processing that is absent in non sentient organisms.The basic instinctive behaviors that interact with emotions are highly conserved between species, so for instance the joy of 'winning' at anything probably 'feels' similar to what a cat may 'feel' when it catches a bird, or a Gazelle. This also applies to love, fear, and anger. The difference lies in the fact that you are aware that you exist and that you are angry. The cat is not aware of itself, or its anger, it only responds to the anger and expresses it in its behavior. It cannot ponder upon its own existance, like you can. Cats do have emotion, but the experience of it from the perspective of the cat is nothing like it is from your perspective.What you are doing is called Anthropomorphism. You are interpreting the behavior of another organism in light of human traits. The behavior of a cat as it interacts with you is not sentient (self aware). They DO NOT have the brain capacity to interpret the world in the way that you do

While cats are different in physiology and feelings, they display enough of what we consider to be emotion. They wouldn't have made it into so many homes and hearts if they didn't. People may choose to read into the emotion displayed. Doesn't hurt anyone. Bob Blaylock Nov, 21 2006 at 03:05 AM
setTimeout('Comment.clearEdit(83044);', (120 - 56636173) * 1000);

Anyone who's ever really known any cat knows how wrong this answer is. science_geek Nov, 21 2006 at 05:09 PM
setTimeout('Comment.clearEdit(83761);', (120 - 56585577) * 1000);

Yes, Bob, don't you have anything better to do than run around and follow me? If you have ever studied neuronal function, had any basic idea of how the human body and mind function other than from your subjective experience, as well as having an understanding of human and animal physiology, you would realize how ridiculous your statement is. We have a cat. I know animal behavior quite well. I perform research on animals. Look at the question I answered. Cats do not experience anything like people do!

Mammals like cats and dogs are selm aware and do show emotion one standard used for there self awarness is the mirror test. Cats and Dogs know there own reflection and thus know who they are and what they look like. As for emotions cats show a wide number of emotions they are one of the most bonding mammals on the planet to humans even Charles Darwin said this in his accounts when he studied mammals such as cats, They are not just a Flesh,blood and bone with Electroic impulses like some of you are making them out to be !!! More scientist will agree that house hold animals started out with only limited emotions to survive but over thousands of years being domesticated there brains have picked up emotions and thus feelings for there human companion/owner !!!!

Why I don’t like chocolate....???

2008-09-13T09:32:00.000-07:00

the reasons given by some people during our survey.....

It gives me a headache. I got one today for the first time in a while. In preparation for my trip to the grocery store tomorrow, I decided to clean out the cupboards and had to finish off the last couple segments of a dark chocolate bar. But then I got a headache.
Chocolate started hurting me years ago. The last time I ate a piece of chocolate cake with chocolate frosting I got a bad headache. I think that was back in 1996. I stopped eating chocolate a lot because I was trying to have a healthier diet. And, after learning that there was a correlation between caffeine and miscarriage, I also avoided chocolate for years during pregnancies and infertility treatment. So I lost a lot of tolerance. Brownies, chocolate cake, anything with cocoa powder is bad news for this head. Chocolate candy is okay, as long as it is not too much, mostly milk chocolate. It was only recently that I dared to eat dark chocolate again. A friend of mine who was in medical school back then, when I last ate cake, tried to explain my headaches to me, but I’ve forgotten it - I think she said caffeine dilates the blood vessels (?). I think sometimes people have a hard time believing me but it’s true - I can’t eat chocolate cake!
Maybe though tonight it was the wine. By dinner I really had a headache. And I only took a small sip or two of wine from my glass. I bought the Jacob’s Creek Shiraz Cabernet because it was on sale at Safeway, and because it had some medal stickers on the bottle - great way to pick a wine, huh?! Also too, since I had not yet liked a shiraz, based on what we had at the winetasting party , I was afraid to choose a pure one - the combination cabernet sounded better to me. Ted and I both liked it a lot!
Maybe though too it was the Matrix movie…..a bit intense!Or the fact that I didn’t get much sleep last night, interrupted at least once by a child who couldn’t find her blankets…
Anyway I’m feeling a bit better now And off to bed….

Agriculture tips

2008-09-13T00:29:00.000-07:00

Agriculture has possibly the biggest environmental impact of any human activity. Key consequences include the pollution of water, soil and air; land and habitat conversion; soil degradation; and the huge demand for water.
For example, agriculture draws 70 per cent of the world's freshwater - more than 90 per cent in some countries - and this contributes to the massive degradation that has taken place in the world's freshwater ecosystems

Agriculture tips
Sustainable agriculture
Permaculture
Pest management
Hydroponics
Planting tips
Fertilizer Storage and Handling Practices on the Farm
Agricultural Pollution Prevention

Other agriculture tips
Reduce soil erosion by using conservation practices and other applicable best management practices.
Use planned grazing systems on pasture and rangeland.

What is Dark Matter?

2008-09-12T08:47:00.000-07:00

The story of dark matter is best divided into two parts. First we have the reasons that we know that it exists. Second is the collection of possible explanations as to what it is.

Why the Universe Needs Dark Matter

We believe that that the Universe is critically balanced between being open and closed. We derive this fact from the observation of the large scale structure of the Universe. It requires a certain amount of matter to accomplish this result. Call it M.
We can estimate the total baryonic matter of the universe by studying Big Bang nucleosynthesis. This is done by connecting the observed He/H ratio of the Universe today to the amount of baryonic matter present during the early hot phase when most of the helium was produced. Once the temperature of the Universe dropped below the neutron-proton mass difference, neutrons began decaying into protons. If the early baryon density was low, then it was hard for a proton to find a neutron with which to make helium before too many of the neutrons decayed away to account for the amount of helium we see today. So by measuring the He/H ratio today, we can estimate the necessary baryon density shortly after the Big Bang, and, consequently, the total number of baryons today. It turns out that you need about 0.05 M total baryonic matter to account for the known ratio of light isotopes. So only 1/20 of the total mass of the Universe is baryonic matter.
Unfortunately, the best estimates of the total mass of everything that we can see with our telescopes is roughly 0.01 M. Where is the other 99% of the stuff of the Universe? Dark Matter!
So there are two conclusions. We only see 0.01 M out of 0.05 M baryonic matter in the Universe. The rest must be in baryonic dark matter halos surrounding galaxies. And there must be some non-baryonic dark matter to account for the remaining 95% of the matter required to give Ω, the mass of the Universe, in units of critical mass, equal to unity.
For those who distrust the conventional Big Bang models, and don't want to rely upon fancy cosmology to derive the presence of dark matter, there are other more direct means. It has been observed in clusters of galaxies that the motion of galaxies within a cluster suggests that they are bound by a total gravitational force due to about 5-10 times as much matter as can be accounted for from luminous matter in said galaxies. And within an individual galaxy, you can measure the rate of rotation of the stars about the galactic center of rotation. The resultant "rotation curve" is simply related to the distribution of matter in the galaxy. The outer stars in galaxies seem to rotate too fast for the amount of matter that we see in the galaxy. Again, we need about 5 times more matter than we can see via electromagnetic radiation. These results can be explained by assuming that there is a "dark matter halo" surrounding every galaxy.

What is Dark Matter?

This is the open question. There are many possibilities, and nobody really knows much about this yet. Here are a few of the many published suggestions, which are being currently hunted for by experimentalists all over the world. Remember, you need at least one baryonic candidate and one non-baryonic candidate to make everything work out, so there there may be more than one correct choice among the possibilities given here.
Normal matter which has so far eluded our gaze, such as:
dark galaxies
brown dwarfs
planetary material (rock, dust, etc.)
Massive Standard Model neutrinos. If any of the neutrinos are massive, then this could be the missing mass. On the other hand, if they are too heavy, as the purported 17 keV neutrino would have been, massive neutrinos create almost as many problems as they solve in this regard.
Exotica (See the Particle Zoo FAQ entry for some details.)
Massive exotica would provide the missing mass. For our purposes, these fall into two classes: those which have been proposed for other reasons but happen to solve the dark matter problem, and those which have been proposed specifically to provide the missing dark matter.
Examples of objects in the first class are axions, additional neutrinos, supersymmetric particles, and a host of others. Their properties are constrained by the theory which predicts them, but by virtue of their mass, they solve the dark matter problem if they exist in the correct abundance.
Particles in the second class are generally classed in loose groups. Their properties are not specified, but they are merely required to be massive and have other properties such that they would so far have eluded discovery in the many experiments which have looked for new particles. These include WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles), CHAMPS, and a host of others.

References: Dark Matter in the Universe (Jerusalem Winter School for Theoretical Physics, 1986-7), J.N. Bahcall, T. Piran, & S. Weinberg editors.
Dark Matter (Proceedings of the XXIIIrd Recontre de Moriond), J. Audouze and J. Tran Thanh Van. editors.

hair growth

2008-09-11T23:03:00.000-07:00

Growth of healthy hair largely depends on its normal healthy functioning and structure. The hair structure is divided into two parts - the non living part that is projected out of the skin of the scalp and the other living part, that remains buried inside the scalp skin. Both hair parts have various functions to perform, besides being an integral component of the hair growth cycles.Alteration in the normal cyclical process of hair growth is one of the main causes of hair loss. The factors that affect the normal hair growth cycle are hormonal imbalance and genetics.Though it is hard to take care of the above two factors of hair loss, it is essential for you to keep your hair clean and healthy with the use of well-formulated cleansers and conditioners. To ensure faster hair growth proper intake of nutritional supplements and natural hair care is essential.Healthy and faster hair growth not only helps you to look beautiful, it helps you to tie them to good hair styling. Here is an interesting opportunity for trying the hair styling tips. You can also imitate the hair styles of some famous Hollywood celebrities.Apart from imitating the hair styles of celebrities follow the natural hair care tips and discover the secrets of faster hair growth for beautifully shining hair. The hair information presented in the web pages is sure to help you in taking proper care of your hair, promote faster hair growth and also give you the opportunity to the follow the trendy hair style.See what useful information the following sections have to offer you to help you in hair care and hair maintenance:Variations in hair-growth and typesKnow about the various hair types and the suitability of special hair care products for different ethnic hair types.Hair PhysiologyRead about structure and functions of the hair and how find how it helps you in taking better care of your hair.Hair Loss CausesSee whether you are able to find out the reason for your hair loss among the various causes discussed in this section.Hair NutritionBe informed about the importance of proper nutrition for enhancing your hair growthHair CareFind out exclusive information on natural hair care for colored and normal hair.Hair StylesHere is a chance for you to imitate the hair styles of famous Hollywood celebrities or choose the best hair style that brings out the best from you.

what is bermuda triangle

2008-09-11T22:59:00.000-07:00

The Bermuda Triangle has a reputation for being an area where ships and airplanes dissappear, often under mysterious circumstances. This reputation came to public awareness in the 1950s and became a household name in the 1970s, mostly due to "The Bermuda Triangle", a bestselling book written by Charles Berlitz.Various explanations for the apparent high number of dissapperances have been put forward, ranging from the mundane to the hyper-fantastic.Skeptics contend that this region has a comparable rate of maritime and aerial incidents as any other similar sized region of the ocean. They point out that Lloyd's of London, a world-reknowned insurer of maritime vessels, does not charge a higher insurance premium for ships that regularly traverse the triangle.Scientific considerations for an increased dissaperance rate take into acount that this region experiences severe tropical storms and is the source of many hurricanes. These storms create an increased danger to both ship and air traffic.Rougue waves have also been put forward as a possible cause. These rare waves can reach heights of as much as 100 feet (30 meters), easily swamping most ships. Rouge waves, however, would have no effect on air travel.A third scientific explanation is methane hydrates. Methane deposits on the ocean floor may release bursts of methane gas that reduces the density of the water it permeates. Since ships rely on displacement to stay afloat, a reduction of density in the water would cause a ship to immediately sink. As the methane leaves the water and rises into the air, it would reduce the density of the air as well, thus reducing lift on aircraft, causing them to descend rapidly. In addition, the methane would change the air mixture taken into the engines of the aircraft, causing the engine to stall. While these events have not been witnessed in nature, they have been proven in lab experiments.More exotic explanations for the Bermuda Triangle include it being an area of magnetic disturbance, temporal (or time) holes, the location of the lost city of Atlantis, or extra-terrestrial abduction.

Zenith EcoStyle: Low-Cost PC & Laptop

2008-09-10T08:03:00.000-07:00

Zenith has announced the launch of a new laptop and desktop series, EcoStyle, in the Indian market. The series is expected to be available across the country this festive season.
E-Mail Print
Zenith has announced the launch of a new laptop and desktop under brand name EcoStyle in the Indian market. With an aesthetic design, the EcoStyle laptop comes preloaded with the Microsoft productivity suite, which includes Windows XP Home Edition, Microsoft Office, and Microsoft Windows Live Suite.
Meanwhile, the EcoStyle PC offers customers an option to choose between Windows Vista Starter or Microsoft Windows XP Home. It weighs just 2.2 kg and has dimensions of 185mm x 250 mm x 70 mm. It will also come preloaded with the Microsoft productivity suite. The Zenith EcoStyle laptop is priced at Rs 14,999; while the desktop PC is priced at Rs 11,999. Both models will be available across the country this festive season.

Alien Abductions

2008-09-10T07:53:00.000-07:00

Alien abduction stories have spread widely over the last hundred years, though they did not truly hit their stride until the 1961 Barney and Betty Hill abduction. Some abductees report their abductions as warm, pleasant experiences with intense psychic contact. Other abductees have reported that aliens conducted scientific experiments or operations on their unwilling patients. How can these vastly different experiences be explained?
After the Hill abduction, investigators collected more and more accounts, usually, though not always, elicited through hypnosis. In most cases witnesses told of seeing a UFO or even humanoid beings, then suffering amnesia for a period of anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. Some witnesses claimed repeated experiences that started when they were children.
Mary Evans Picture LibraryOne morning in July 1965 Maurice Masse of Valensole, France, encountered figures and a UFO in a field.
The clear implication was that UFO beings (typically described in these instances as little gray humanoids with oversize heads, slanted eyes, two holes for a nose, and a slit for a mouth) had a long-term interest in certain human beings. Some abductees even reported that the abductors had put small implants -- usually said to be tiny balls inserted through the nose and (apparently) into the brain via a long needle-inside their bodies.
In time new and even more unsettling dimensions to the abduction experience came to light. Some female abductees reported sexual experiences followed by pregnancies that would be terminated in a follow-up abduction some months later. During later abductions the UFO entities would show the women strange-looking children, apparently human/alien hybrids, whom they would sense were their own.
Not surprisingly, such reports gave rise to furious controversy. Even many ufologists rejected them, preferring, in common with UFO skeptics, to believe "abductions" were fantasies generated by the process of hypnosis itself. Contrary to popular understanding, hypnosis is no royal road to the truth. Hypnotic subjects are in a highly suggestible state and may seek to please the hypnotist. Thus, if the hypnotist asks leading questions, the subject will be led to provide the desired answers. Moreover, purely imaginary events can seem real under hypnosis (confabulation), as testified to in the phenomenon of "past lives" recounted while in a hypnotic state.
To test the confabulation hypothesis, folklorist Thomas E. Bullard collected all available abduction accounts. He found that as many as one-third of the informants had full conscious recall of their experiences and had never resorted to hypnosis to elicit the details. These non-hypnotic reports proved identical in all significant particulars to those told under hypnosis. Bullard also learned that the identity of the individual hypnotist made no difference. The stories remained consistent down to details that even those most familiar with the phenomenon had failed to notice. In short, Bullard concluded, whatever its ultimate cause, the abduction phenomenon was not the product of hypnosis. "The skeptical argument needs rebuilding from the ground up," he wrote.
A growing number of mental-health professionals have conducted their own investigations of the abduction phenomenon. In the early 1980s psychological testing of a small group of abductees in New York indicated that they suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Dr. Elizabeth Slater, a psychologist with a private practice in New York City, remarked that these findings are "not inconsistent with the possibility that reported UFO abductions have, in fact, occurred." Other studies since then have come to similar conclusions, and the scientific investigation of the abduction phenomenon continues.

How Near-death Experiences Work

2008-09-10T07:46:00.000-07:00

Near-death experiences (NDEs) are common enough that they have entered our everyday language. Phrases like "my whole life flashed before my eyes" and "go to the light" come from decades of research into these strange, seemingly supernatural experiences that some people have when they're at the brink of death. But what exactly are NDEs? Are they hallucinations? Spiritual experiences? Proof of life after death? Or are they simply chemical changes in the brain and sensory organs in the moments prior to death?
In this article, we'll discuss what makes an experience an NDE and who typically has them. We'll also explore spiritual, philosophical and scientific theories for why they happen.

Dr. Raymond Moody coined the term "near-death experience" in his 1975 book, "Life After Life." Many credit Moody's work with bringing the concept of the near-death experience to the public's attention, but reports of such experiences have occurred throughout history. Plato's "Republic," written in 360 B.C.E., contains the tale of a soldier named Er who had an NDE after being killed in battle. Er described his soul leaving his body, being judged along with other souls and seeing heaven [ref].
For the purposes of this article, a near-death experience is any experience in which someone close to death or suffering from some trauma or disease that might lead to death perceives events that seem to be impossible, unusual or supernatural. While there are many questions about NDEs, one thing is certain -- they do exist. Thousands of people have actually perceived similar sensations while close to death. The debate is over whether or not they actually experienced what they perceived.
Most NDEs share certain common traits, but not all NDEs have every trait and some NDEs don't follow a pattern at all. Here are the traits that "typical" NDEs share:
Feelings of calmness - These feelings may include peacefulness, acceptance of death, emotional and physical comfort.
Intense, pure bright light - Sometimes this intense (but not painful) light fills the room. In other cases, the subject sees a light that they feel represents either Heaven or God.
Out-of-body experiences (OBE) - The subject feels that he has left his body. He can look down and see it, often describing the sight of doctors working on him. In some cases, the subject's "spirit" then flies out of the room, into the sky and sometimes into space.
Entering into another realm or dimension - Depending on the subject's religious beliefs and the nature of the experience, he may perceive this realm as Heaven or, in rare cases, as Hell.
Spirit beings - During the OBE, the subject encounters "beings of light," or other representations of spiritual entities. He may perceive these as deceased loved ones, angels, saints or God.The tunnel - Many NDE subjects find themselves in a tunnel with a light at its end. They may encounter spirit beings as they pass through the tunnel.
Communication with spirits - Before the NDE ends, many subjects report some form of communication with a spirit being. This is often expressed a "strong male voice" telling them that it is not their time and to go back to their body. Some subjects report being told to choose between going into the light or returning to their earthly body. Others feel they have been compelled to return to their body by a voiceless command, possibly coming from God.
Life review - This trait is also called "the panoramic life review." The subject sees his entire life in a flashback. These can be very detailed or very brief. The subject may also perceive some form of judgment by nearby spirit entities. Near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences are sometimes grouped together, but there are key differences. An OBE can be a component of an NDE, but some people experience OBEs in circumstances that have nothing to do with death or dying. They may still have spiritual elements or feelings of calm. OBEs can happen spontaneously, or drugs or meditation can induce them.
In the next section, we'll take a look at who typically has NDEs and how they're affected

Some NDEs have elements that bear little resemblance to the "typical" near-death experience. Anywhere from one percent (according to a 1982 Gallup poll) to 25 percent (according to some researchers) of subjects do not experience feelings of peace, nor do they visit Heaven or meet friendly spirits. Instead, they feel terrified and are accosted by demons or malicious imps. They may visit places that fit Biblical descriptions of Hell, including lakes of fire, tormented souls and a general feeling of oppressive heat.
There have been a few reports of shared NDEs, in which someone connected to the dying person accompanies them on their out-of-body journey. This might take the form of a dream that occurs at the same time that the subject was near death. Children have also been the subjects of NDEs. Very young children tend to report surreal experiences that have some common NDE elements. As children get older, their religious teachings often color their NDEs with more spiritual connotations, such as meeting God or Jesus.
A small percentage of NDE subjects report a prophetic vision that reveals to them the fate of earth and humanity. This is generally an apocalyptic vision showing the end times, but some report visions of humanity evolving into higher beings. One group of subjects, unknown to each other, reported that the world would end in 1988

WHAT IS HYPNOTISM........?

2008-09-10T07:33:00.000-07:00

When you hear the word hypnosis, you may picture the mysterious hypnotist figure popularized in movies, comic books and television. This ominous, goateed man waves a pocket watch back and forth, guiding his subject into a semi-sleep, zombie-like state. Once hypnotized, the subject is compelled to obey, no matter how strange or immoral the request. Muttering "Yes, master," the subject does the hypnotist's evil bidding.
This popular representation bears little resemblance to actual hypnotism, of course. In fact, modern understanding of hypnosis contradicts this conception on several key points. Subjects in a hypnotic trance are not slaves to their "masters" -- they have absolute free will. And they're not really in a semi-sleep state -- they're actually hyperattentive.
Our understanding of hypnosis has advanced a great deal in the past century, but the phenomenon is still a mystery of sorts. In this article, we'll look at some popular theories of hypnosis and explore the various ways hypnotists put their art to work.

What is Hypnosis?

People have been pondering and arguing over hypnosis for more than 200 years, but science has yet to fully explain how it actually happens. We see what a person does under hypnosis, but it isn't clear why he or she does it. This puzzle is really a small piece in a much bigger puzzle: how the human mind works. It's unlikely that scientists will arrive at a definitive explanation of the mind in the foreseeable future, so it's a good bet hypnosis will remain something of a mystery as well.
But psychiatrists do understand the general characteristics of hypnosis, and they have some model of how it works. It is a trance state characterized by extreme suggestibility, relaxation and heightened imagination. It's not really like sleep, because the subject is alert the whole time. It is most often compared to daydreaming, or the feeling of "losing yourself" in a book or movie. You are fully conscious, but you tune out most of the stimuli around you. You focus intently on the subject at hand, to the near exclusion of any other thought.
In the everyday trance of a daydream or movie, an imaginary world seems somewhat real to you, in the sense that it fully engages your emotions. Imaginary events can cause real fear, sadness or happiness, and you may even jolt in your seat if you are surprised by something (a monster leaping from the shadows, for example). Some researchers categorize all such trances as forms of self-hypnosis. Milton Erickson, the premier hypnotism expert of the 20th century, contended that people hypnotize themselves on a daily basis. But most psychiatrists focus on the trance state brought on by intentional relaxation and focusing exercises. This deep hypnosis is often compared to the relaxed mental state between wakefulness and sleep.

In conventional hypnosis, you approach the suggestions of the hypnotist, or your own ideas, as if they were reality. If the hypnotist suggests that your tongue has swollen up to twice its size, you'll feel a sensation in your mouth and you may have trouble talking. If the hypnotist suggests that you are drinking a chocolate milkshake, you'll taste the milkshake and feel it cooling your mouth and throat. If the hypnotist suggests that you are afraid, you may feel panicky or start to sweat. But the entire time, you are aware that it's all imaginary. Essentially, you're "playing pretend" on an intense level, as kids do.
In this special mental state, people feel uninhibited and relaxed. Presumably, this is because they tune out the worries and doubts that normally keep their actions in check. You might experience the same feeling while watching a movie: As you get engrossed in the plot, worries about your job, family, etc. fade away, until all you're thinking about is what's up on the screen.
In this state, you are also highly suggestible. That is, when the hypnotist tells you do something, you'll probably embrace the idea completely. This is what makes stage hypnotist shows so entertaining. Normally reserved, sensible adults are suddenly walking around the stage clucking like chickens or singing at the top of their lungs. Fear of embarrassment seems to fly out the window. The subject's sense of safety and morality remain entrenched throughout the experience, however. A hypnotist can't get you to do anything you don't want to do.
But what is it that makes this happen? In the next section, we'll look at the most widely accepted theory of what's going on when you become hypnotized.

Early Hypnohistory

People have been entering hypnotic-type trances for thousands and thousands of years; various forms of meditation play an important role in many cultures' religions. But the scientific conception of hypnotism wasn't born until the late 1700s.
The father of modern hypnotism is Franz Mesmer, an Austrian physician. Mesmer believed hypnosis to be a mystical force flowing from the hypnotist into the subject (he called it "animal magnetism"). Although critics quickly dismissed the magical element of his theory, Mesmer's assumption, that the power behind hypnosis came from the hypnotist and was in some way inflicted upon the subject, took hold for some time. Hypnosis was originally known as mesmerism, after Mesmer, and we still use its derivative, "mesmerize," today.

WHAT IS JOKES......???

2008-09-10T07:28:00.000-07:00

Jokes have a generic meaning of verbal humor, including one-liners, riddles, and other things that make us laugh; but the joke is also a form, a funny, made-up story with a punchline told by one person. A joke is distinguished from an anecdote, which may be a funny story and have a punchline, but is about a real or true incident. Because it is a form of story, the joke has some of the attributes of a story, such as a beginning, middle, and end. The beginning is the set-up for the joke. While the setting, mood, and tone of, say, a short story or novel are established over time, these elements are often compressed into as little as a single sentence in a joke.
There were two truck drivers at a rest stop.
A lawyer died and went to heaven.
Did you hear about the _____ who _____?
Some jokes, like the type invoked by the last set-up sentence above, are only two sentences – the first sets up the joke, and the second delivers the punch line. This is the most compact kind of joke. Notice that the question is only formal here – a real answer is not expected, and in most cases, cannot be given.
This distinguishes the joke from a riddle in two ways. First, the input of another person is crucial to the riddle form, while it is not in this kind of joke. Second, in a riddle, the question is specifically constructed to be answerable by a clever guesser, but in a joke of this sort, the question is functioning as the joke set-up and not intended to give too many clues to what is to come. Here’s an example:
What's the latest crime wave in New York City?
Drive-by viola recitals.
Notice that there is not sufficient information in the question for anybody to guess the response. Instead, the question sets the scene and mood: it creates tension by suggesting a dramatic and dangerous topic, and then undermines the tension with a ridiculous response. This helps us to understand this example as a joke, rather than as a riddle.
There are certain categories of jokes that have many, many examples. Violist jokes are among these. Other such categories include computer jokes, blonde jokes, lawyer jokes, army jokes, off-color jokes, and jokes about certain instrumentalists – notably violists, banjo players, and drummers.

2008-09-07T03:03:00.000-07:00

The mobile phone (also called a wireless phone or cellular phone)[1] is a short-range, portable electronic device used for mobile voice or data communication over a network of specialized base stations known as cell sites. In addition to the standard voice function of a telephone, current mobile phones may support many additional services, and accessories, such as SMS for text messaging, email, packet switching for access to the Internet, gaming, bluetooth, infrared, camera with video recorder and MMS for sending and receiving photos and video. Most current mobile phones connect to a cellular network of base stations (cell sites), which is in turn interconnected to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) (the exception is satellite phones).

Overview
According to internal memos, American Telephone & Telegraph discussed developing a wireless phone in 1915, but were afraid deployment of the technology could undermine its monopoly on wired service in the U.S.[2]
The first commercial mobile phone service was launched in Japan by NTT in 1978. By November 2007, the total number of mobile phone subscriptions in the world had reached 3.3 billion, or half of the human population (although some users have multiple subscriptions, or inactive subscriptions), which also makes the mobile phone the most widely spread technology and the most common electronic device in the world.[3]
The first mobile phone to enable internet connectivity and wireless email, the Nokia Communicator, was released in 1996, creating a new category of expensive phones called smartphones. In 1999 the first mobile internet service was launched by NTT DoCoMo in Japan under the i-Mode service. By 2007 over 798 million people around the world accessed the internet or equivalent mobile internet services such as WAP and i-Mode at least occasionally using a mobile phone rather than a personal computer.

Cellular systems
See also: Cellular frequencies

Mobile phone tower
Mobile phones send and receive radio signals with any number of cell site base stations fitted with microwave antennas. These sites are usually mounted on a tower, pole or building, located throughout populated areas, then connected to a cabled communication network and switching system. The phones have a low-power transceiver that transmits voice and data to the nearest cell sites, normally not more than 8 to 13 km (approximately 5 to 8 miles) away.
When the mobile phone or data device is turned on, it registers with the mobile telephone exchange, or switch, with its unique identifiers, and can then be alerted by the mobile switch when there is an incoming telephone call. The handset constantly listens for the strongest signal being received from the surrounding base stations, and is able to switch seamlessly between sites. As the user moves around the network, the "handoffs" are performed to allow the device to switch sites without interrupting the call.
Cell sites have relatively low-power (often only one or two watts) radio transmitters which broadcast their presence and relay communications between the mobile handsets and the switch. The switch in turn connects the call to another subscriber of the same wireless service provider or to the public telephone network, which includes the networks of other wireless carriers. Many of these sites are camouflaged to blend with existing environments, particularly in scenic areas.
The dialogue between the handset and the cell site is a stream of digital data that includes digitized audio (except for the first generation analog networks). The technology that achieves this depends on the system which the mobile phone operator has adopted. The technologies are grouped by generation. The first-generation systems started in 1979 with Japan, are all analog and include AMPS and NMT. Second-generation systems, started in 1991 in Finland, are all digital and include GSM, CDMA and TDMA.
The nature of cellular technology renders many phones vulnerable to 'cloning': anytime a cell phone moves out of coverage (for example, in a road tunnel), when the signal is re-established, the phone sends out a 're-connect' signal to the nearest cell-tower, identifying itself and signalling that it is again ready to transmit. With the proper equipment, it's possible to intercept the re-connect signal and encode the data it contains into a 'blank' phone -- in all respects, the 'blank' is then an exact duplicate of the real phone and any calls made on the 'clone' will be charged to the original account.
Third-generation (3G) networks, which are still being deployed, began in Japan in 2001. They are all digital, and offer high-speed data access in addition to voice services and include W-CDMA (known also as UMTS), and CDMA2000 EV-DO. China will launch a third generation technology on the TD-SCDMA standard. Operators use a mix of predesignated frequency bands determined by the network requirements and local regulations.
In an effort to limit the potential harm from having a transmitter close to the user's body, the first fixed/mobile cellular phones that had a separate transmitter, vehicle-mounted antenna, and handset (known as car phones and bag phones) were limited to a maximum 3 watts Effective Radiated Power. Modern handheld cellphones which must have the transmission antenna held inches from the user's skull are limited to a maximum transmission power of 0.6 watts ERP. Regardless of the potential biological effects, the reduced transmission range of modern handheld phones limits their usefulness in rural locations as compared to car/bag phones, and handhelds require that cell towers be spaced much closer together to compensate for their lack of transmission power.
Some handhelds include an optional auxiliary antenna port on the back of the phone, which allows it to be connected to a large external antenna and a 3 watt cellular booster. Alternately in fringe-reception areas, a cellular repeater may be used, which uses a long distance high-gain dish antenna or yagi antenna to communicate with a cell tower far outside of normal range, and a repeater to rebroadcast on a small short-range local antenna that allows any cellphone within a few meters to function properly.

Handsets
Nokia is currently the world's largest manufacturer of mobile phones, with a global device market share of approximately 40% in 2008. Other major mobile phone manufacturers (in order of market share) include Samsung (14%), Motorola (14%), Sony Ericsson (9%) and LG (7%).[4] These manufacturers account for over 80% of all mobile phones sold and produce phones for sale in most countries.
Other manufacturers include Apple Inc., Audiovox (now UTStarcom), Benefon, BenQ-Siemens, CECT, High Tech Computer Corporation (HTC), Fujitsu, Kyocera, Mitsubishi Electric, NEC, Neonode, Panasonic (Matsushita Electric), Pantech Curitel, Philips, Research In Motion, Sagem, Sanyo, Sharp, Siemens, Sendo, Sierra Wireless, SK Teletech, Sonim Technologies, T&A Alcatel, Huawei, Trium and Toshiba. There are also specialist communication systems related to (but distinct from) mobile phones.
There are several categories of mobile phones, from basic phones to feature phones such as musicphones and cameraphones, to smartphones. The first smartphone was the Nokia 9000 Communicator in 1996 which incorporated PDA functionality to the basic mobile phone at the time. As miniaturization and increased processing power of microchips has enabled ever more features to be added to phones, the concept of the smartphone has evolved, and what was a high-end smartphone five years ago, is a standard phone today. Several phone series have been introduced to address a given market segment, such as the RIM Blackberry focusing on enterprise/corporate customer email needs; the SonyEricsson Walkman series of musicphones and Cybershot series of cameraphones; the Nokia N-Series of multimedia phones; and the Apple iPhone which provides full-featured web access and multimedia capabilities.
Main article: Mobile phone features
Mobile phones often have features beyond sending text messages and making voice calls, including Internet browsing, music (MP3) playback, memo recording, personal organizer functions, e-mail, instant messaging, built-in cameras and camcorders, ringtones, games, radio, Push-to-Talk (PTT), infrared and Bluetooth connectivity, call registers, ability to watch streaming video or download video for later viewing, video calling and serve as a wireless modem for a PC, and soon will also serve as a console of sorts to online games and other high quality games. The total value of mobile data services exceeds the value of paid services on the Internet, and was worth 31 billion dollars in 2006 (source Informa).[citation needed] The largest categories of mobile services are music, picture downloads, videogaming, adult entertainment, gambling, video/TV.

Applications
The most commonly used data application on mobile phones is SMS text messaging, with 74% of all mobile phone users as active users (over 2.4 billion out of 3.3 billion total subscribers at the end of 2007). SMS text messaging was worth over 100 billion dollars in annual revenues in 2007 and the worldwide average of messaging use is 2.6 SMS sent per day per person across the whole mobile phone subscriber base. (source Informa 2007). The first SMS text message was sent from a computer to a mobile phone in 1992 in the UK, while the first person-to-person SMS from phone to phone was sent in Finland in 1993.
The other non-SMS data services used by mobile phones were worth 31 Billion dollars in 2007, and were led by mobile music, downloadable logos and pictures, gaming, gambling, adult entertainment and advertising (source: Informa 2007). The first downloadable mobile content was sold to a mobile phone in Finland in 1998, when Radiolinja (now Elisa) introduced the downloadable ringing tone service. In 1999 Japanese mobile operator NTT DoCoMo introduced its mobile internet service, i-Mode, which today is the world's largest mobile internet service and roughly the same size as Google in annual revenues.
The first mobile news service, delivered via SMS, was launched in Finland in 2000. Mobile news services are expanding with many organizations providing "on-demand" news services by SMS. Some also provide "instant" news pushed out by SMS. Mobile telephony also facilitates activism and public journalism being explored by Reuters and Yahoo![5] and small independent news companies such as Jasmine News in Sri Lanka.
Companies like Monster are starting to offer mobile services such as job search and career advice. Consumer applications are on the rise and include everything from information guides on local activities and events to mobile coupons and discount offers one can use to save money on purchases. Even tools for creating websites for mobile phones are increasingly becoming available, e.g. Mobilemo.
Mobile payments were first trialled in Finland in 1998 when two coca cola machines in Espoo were enabled to work with SMS payments. Eventually the idea spread and in 1999 the Philippines launched the first commercial mobile payments systems, on the mobile operators Globe and Smart. Today mobile payments ranging from mobile banking to mobile credit cards to mobile commerce are very widely used in Asia and Africa, and in selected European markets. For example in the Philippines it is not unusual to have your whole paycheck paid to the mobile account. In Kenya the limit of money transfers from one mobile banking account to another is one million US dollars. In India paying utility bills with mobile gains a 5% discount. In Estonia the government found criminals collecting cash parking fees, so the government declared that only mobile payments via SMS were valid for parking and today all parking fees in Estonia are handled via mobile and the crime involved in the activity has vanished.
Mobile Applications are developed using the Six M's (previously Five M's) service-development theory created by the author Tomi Ahonen with Joe Barrett of Nokia and Paul Golding of Motorola. The Six M's are Movement (location), Moment (time), Me (personalization), Multi-user (community), Money (payments) and Machines (automation). The Six M's / Five M's theory is widely referenced in the telecoms applications literature and used by most major industry players. The first book to discuss the theory was Services for UMTS by Ahonen & Barrett in 2002.
The availability of mobile phone backup applications is growing with the increasing amount of mobile phone data being stored on mobile phones today. With mobile phone manufacturers producing mobile handsets with more and more memory storage capabilities the awareness of the importance in backing up mobile phone data is increasing. Corporate mobile phone users today keep very important company information on their mobiles, information if lost then not easily replaced. Wireless backup applications like SC BackUp offer users the chance to backup mobile phone data using advanced wireless technology. Users can backup, restore or transfer mobile data anytime, anywhere all over the world, to a secured server.

Media
The mobile phone became a mass media channel in 1998 when the first ringing tones were sold to mobile phones by Radiolinja in Finland. Soon other media content appeared such as news, videogames, jokes, horoscopes, TV content and advertising. In 2006 the total value of mobile phone paid media content exceeded internet paid media content and was worth 31 Billion dollars (source Informa 2007). The value of music on phones was worth 9.3 Billion dollars in 2007 and gaming was worth over 5 billion dollars in 2007 (source Netsize Guide 2008 [1]).
The mobile phone is often called the Fourth Screen (if counting cinema, TV and PC screens as the first three) or Third Screen (counting only TV and PC screens). It is also called the Seventh of the Mass Media (with Print, Recordings, Cinema, Radio, TV and Internet the first six). Most early content for mobile tended to be copies of legacy media, such as the banner advertisement or the TV news highlight video clip. Recently unique content for mobile has been emerging, from the ringing tones and ringback tones in music to "mobisodes," video content that has been produced exclusively for mobile phones.
The advent of media on the mobile phone has also produced the opportunity to identify and track Alpha Users or Hubs, the most influential members of any social community. AMF Ventures measured in 2007 the relative accuracy of three mass media, and found that audience measures on mobile were nine times more accurate than on the internet and 90 times more accurate than on TV.

Power supply
Mobile phones generally obtain power from batteries, which can be recharged from a USB port, from portable batteries, from mains power or a cigarette lighter socket in a car using an adapter (often called battery charger or wall wart) or from a solar panel o a dynamo (that can also use a USB port to plug the phone).
Formerly, the most common form of mobile phone batteries were nickel metal-hydride, as they have a low size and weight. Lithium-Ion batteries are sometimes used, as they are lighter and do not have the voltage depression that nickel metal-hydride batteries do. Many mobile phone manufacturers have now switched to using lithium-Polymer batteries as opposed to the older Lithium-Ion, the main advantages of this being even lower weight and the possibility to make the battery a shape other than strict cuboid. Mobile phone manufacturers have been experimenting with alternate power sources, including solar cells.

SIM card
In addition to the battery, most cellphones require a small microchip, called a Subscriber Identity Module or SIM Card, to function. Approximately the size of a one-cent postage stamp, the SIM Card is usually placed underneath the battery in the rear of the unit, and (when properly activated) stores the phone's configuration data, and information about the phone itself, such as which calling plan the subscriber is using. When the subscriber removes the SIM Card, it can be re-inserted into another phone and used as normal.
Each SIM Card is activated by use of a unique numerical identifier; once activated, the identifier is locked down and the card is permanently locked in to the activating network. For this reason, most retailers refuse to accept the return of an activated SIM Card.
Those cell phones that do not use a SIM Card have the data programmed in to their memory. This data is accessed by using a special digit sequence to access the "NAM" as in "Name" or number programming menu. From here, one can add information such as a new number for your phone, new Service Provider numbers, new emergency numbers, change their Authentication Key or A-Key code, and update their Preferred Roaming List or PRL. However, to prevent the average Joe from totally disabling their phone or removing it from the network, the Service Provider puts a lock on this data called a Master Subsidiary Lock or MSL.
The MSL also ensures that the Service Provider gets payment for the phone that was purchased or "leased". For example, the Motorola Razr V9C costs upwards of CAD $500. You can get one from Bell Mobility for approximately $200. The difference is paid by the customer in the form of a monthly bill. If, in this case, Bell Mobility did not use a MSL, then they may lose the $300–$400 difference that is paid in the monthly bill, since some customers would cancel their service and take the phone to another carrier such as Telus, or Verizon. This would eventually put the carrier or in this case, Bell Mobility out of business.

Usage

By civilians

This Railfone found on some Amtrak trains in North America uses cellular technology.
See also: List of mobile network operators
An increasing number of countries, particularly in Europe, now have more mobile phones than people. According to the figures from Eurostat, the European Union's in-house statistical office, Luxembourg had the highest mobile phone penetration rate at 158 mobile subscriptions per 100 people (158%), closely followed by Lithuania and Italy.[6] In Hong Kong the penetration rate reached 139.8% of the population in July 2007.[7] Over 50 countries have mobile phone subscription penetration rates higher than that of the population and the Western European average penetration rate was 110% in 2007 (source Informa 2007). The U.S. currently has one of the lowest rates of mobile phone penetrations in the industrialized world at 85%.
There are over five hundred million active mobile phone accounts in China, as of 2007, but the total penetration rate there still stands below 50%.[8] The total number of mobile phone subscribers in the world was estimated at 2.14 billion in 2005.[9] The subscriber count reached 2.7 billion by end of 2006 according to Informa[citation needed], and 3.3 billion by November, 2007[3], thus reaching an equivalent of over half the planet's population. Around 80% of the world's population has access to mobile phone coverage, as of 2006. This figure is expected to increase to 90% by the year 2010.[10]
In some developing countries with little "landline" telephone infrastructure, mobile phone use has quadrupled in the last decade.[11] The rise of mobile phone technology in developing countries is often cited as an example of the leapfrog effect. In many remote regions in the third world went literally from having no telecommunications infrastructure to having satellite based communications systems. At present, Africa has the largest growth rate of cellular subscribers in the world,[12] its markets expanding nearly twice as fast as Asian markets.[13] The availability of prepaid or 'pay-as-you-go' services, where the subscriber is not committed to a long term contract, has helped fuel this growth in Africa as well as in other continents.
On a numerical basis, India is the largest growth market, adding about 6 million mobile phones every month.[14] With 256.55 million mobile phones, market penetration in the country is still low at 22.52%. India expects to reach 500 million subscribers by end of 2010.
There are three major technical standards for the current generation of mobile phones and networks, and two major standards for the next generation 3G phones and networks. All European, African and many Asian countries have adopted a single system, GSM, which is the only technology available on all continents and in most countries and covers over 74% of all subscribers on mobile networks. In many countries, such as the United States, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, India, and South Korea and Vietnam GSM co-exists with other internationally adopted standards such as CDMA and TDMA, as well as national standards such as iDEN in the USA and PDC in Japan. Over the past five years several dozen mobile operators (carriers) have abandoned networks on TDMA and CDMA technologies, switching over to GSM.
With third generation (3G) networks, which are also known as IMT-2000 networks, about three out of four networks are on the W-CDMA (also known as UMTS) standard, usually seen as the natural evolution path for GSM and TDMA networks. One in four 3G networks is on the CDMA2000 1x EV-DO technology. Some analysts count a previous stage in CDMA evolution, CDMA2000 1x RTT, as a 3G technology whereas most standardization experts count only CDMA2000 1x EV-DO as a true 3G technology. Because of this difference in interpreting what is 3G, there is a wide variety in subscriber counts. As of June 2007, on the narrow definition there are 200 million subscribers on 3G networks. By using the more broad definition, the total subscriber count of 3G phone users is 475 million.

Culture and customs
Between the 1980s and the 2000s, the mobile phone has gone from being an expensive item used by the business elite to a pervasive, personal communications tool for the general population to where specific styles of phones are often seen as a regular fashion statements (much to the lament of some). In most countries, mobile phones outnumber land-line phones, with fixed landlines numbering 1.3 Billion but mobile subscriptions 3.3 Billion at the end of 2007.
In many markets from Japan and South Korea, to Scandinavia, to Israel, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong, most children age 8-9 have mobile phones and the new accounts are now opened for customers aged 6 and 7. Where mostly parents tend to give hand-me-down used phones to their youngest children, in Japan already new cameraphones are on the market whose target age group is under 10 years of age, introduced by KDDI in February 2007. The USA also lags on this measure, as in the US so far, about half of all children have mobile phones.[15] In many young adults' households it has supplanted the land-line phone. Mobile phone usage is banned in some countries, such as North Korea and restricted in some other countries such as Burma.[16]
Given the high levels of societal mobile phone service penetration, it is a key means for people to communicate with each other. The SMS feature spawned the "texting" sub-culture amongst younger users. In December 1993, the first person-to-person SMS text message was transmitted in Finland. Currently, texting is the most widely-used data service; 1.8 billion users generated $80 billion of revenue in 2006 (source ITU). Many phones offer Instant Messenger services for simple, easy texting. Mobile phones have Internet service (e.g. NTT DoCoMo's i-mode), offering text messaging via e-mail in Japan, South Korea, China, and India. Most mobile internet access is much different from computer access, featuring alerts, weather data, e-mail, search engines, instant messages, and game and music downloading; most mobile internet access is hurried and short.
The mobile phone can be a fashion totem custom-decorated to reflect the owner's personality.[17] This aspect of the mobile telephony business is, in itself, an industry, e.g. ringtone sales amounted to $3.5 billion in 2005.[18]

The use of a mobile phone is prohibited in some train company carriages
Mobile phone use can be an important matter of social discourtesy: phones ringing during funerals or weddings; in toilets, cinemas and theatres. Some book shops, libraries, bathrooms, cinemas, doctors' offices and places of worship prohibit their use, so that other patrons will not be disturbed by conversations. Some facilities install signal-jamming equipment to prevent their use, although in many countries, including the US, such equipment is illegal. Some new auditoriums have installed wire mesh in the walls to make a Faraday cage, which prevents signal penetration without violating signal jamming laws.
Trains, particularly those involving long-distance services, often offer a "quiet carriage" where phone use is prohibited, much like the designated non-smoking carriage of the past. In the UK however many users tend to ignore this as it is rarely enforced, especially if the other carriages are crowded and they have no choice but to go in the "quiet carriage".[citation needed] In Japan, it is generally considered impolite to talk using a phone on any train -- texting is generally the mode of mobile communication. Mobile phone usage on local public transport is also increasingly seen as a nuisance; the city of Graz, for instance, has mandated a total ban of mobile phones on its tram and bus network in 2008 (though texting is still allowed).[19][20]
Mobile phone use on aircraft is also prohibited and many airlines claim in their in-plane announcements that this prohibition is due to possible interference with aircraft radio communications. Shut-off mobile phones do not interfere with aircraft avionics; the concern is partially based on the crash of Crossair Flight 498.

By government agencies

Law enforcement
Main article: Lawful interception
Law enforcement have used mobile phone evidence in a number of different ways. In the EU the "communications of every mobile telephone user are recorded".[21] In other countries, evidence about the physical location of an individual at a given time has been introduced by triangulating the individual's cellphone between several cellphone towers. This triangulation technique can be used to show that an individual's cellphone was at a certain location at a certain time. The concerns over terrorism and terrorist use of technology prompted an inquiry by the British House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee into the use of evidence from mobile phone devices, prompting leading mobile telephone forensic specialists to identify forensic techniques available in this area.[22] NIST have published guidelines and procedures for the preservation, acquisition, examination, analysis, and reporting of digital information present on mobile phones can be found under the NIST Publication SP800-101.[23]
In the UK in 2000 it was claimed that recordings of mobile phone conversations made on the day of the Omagh bombing were crucial to the police investigation. In particular, calls made on two mobile phones which were tracked from south of the Irish border to Omagh and back on the day of the bombing, were considered of vital importance.[24]
Further example of criminal investigations using mobile phones is the initial location and ultimate identification of the terrorists of the 2004 Madrid train bombings. In the attacks, mobile phones had been used to detonate the bombs. However, one of the bombs failed to detonate, and the SIM card in the corresponding mobile phone gave the first serious lead about the terrorists to investigators. By tracking the whereabouts of the SIM card and correlating other mobile phones that had been registered in those areas, police were able to locate the terrorists.[25]

Disaster response
The Finnish government decided in 2005 that the fastest way to warn citizens of disasters was the mobile phone network. In Japan, mobile phone companies provide immediate notification of earthquakes and other natural disasters to their customers free of charge [26]. In the event of an emergency, disaster response crews can locate trapped or injured people using the signals from their mobile phones. An interactive menu accessible through the phone's Internet browser notifies the company if the user is safe or in distress.[citation needed] In Finland rescue services suggest hikers carry mobile phones in case of emergency even when deep in the forests beyond cellular coverage, as the radio signal of a cellphone attempting to connect to a base station can be detected by overflying rescue aircraft with special detection gear. Also, users in the United States can sign up through their provider for free text messages when an AMBER Alert goes out for a missing person in their area.
However, most mobile phone networks operate close to capacity during normal times and spikes in call volumes caused by widespread emergencies often overload the system just when it is needed the most. Examples reported in the media where this have occurred include the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Hawaiian earthquake, the 2003 Northeast blackouts, the 2005 London Tube bombings, Hurricane Katrina, and the 2007 Minnesota bridge collapse. Thus mobile phones are better for isolated emergencies such as vehicle accidents.
Under FCC regulations, all mobile telephones must be capable of dialing emergency services, regardless of the presence of a SIM card or the payment status of the account.

Business models

Tariff models
See also: GSM services#Voice charges
When cellular telecoms services were launched, phones and calls were very expensive and early mobile operators (carriers) decided to charge for all air time consumed by the mobile phone user. This resulted in the concept of charging callers for outbound calls and also for receiving calls. As mobile phone call charges diminished and phone adoption rates skyrocketed, more modern operators decided not to charge for incoming calls. Thus some markets have "Receiving Party Pays" models (also known as "Mobile Party Pays"), in which both outbound and received calls are charged, and other markets have "Calling Party Pays" models, by which only making calls produces costs, and receiving calls is free. An exception to this is international roaming tariffs, by which receiving calls are normally also charged.[citation needed]
The European market adopted a "Calling Party Pays" model throughout the GSM environment and soon various other GSM markets also started to emulate this model. As Receiving Party Pays systems have the undesired effect of phone owners keeping their phones turned off to avoid receiving unwanted calls, the total voice usage rates (and profits) in Calling Party Pays countries outperform those in Receiving Party Pays countries. Consequently, most countries previously with Receiving Party Pays models have either abandoned them or employed alternative marketing methods, such as massive voice call buckets, to avoid the problem of phone users keeping phones turned off.[citation needed]
In most countries today, the person receiving a mobile phone call pays nothing. However, in Hong Kong, Canada, and the United States, one can be charged per minute, for incoming as well as outgoing calls. In the United States and Canada, a few carriers are beginning to offer unlimited received phone calls. For the Chinese mainland, it was reported that both of its two operators will adopt the caller-pays approach as early as January 2007.[27]
While some systems of payment are 'pay-as-you-go' where conversation time is purchased and added to a phone unit via an Internet account or in shops or ATMs, other systems are more traditional ones where bills are paid by regular intervals. Pay as you go (also known as "pre-pay") accounts were invented simultaneously in Portugal and Italy and today form more than half of all mobile phone subscriptions. USA, Canada, Costa Rica, Japan and Finland are among the rare countries left where most phones are still contract-based.
One possible alternative is a sim-lock free mobile phone. Sim-lock free mobile phones allow portability between networks so users can use sim cards from various networks and not need to have their phone unlocked.

Impacts

Human health and behaviour
Main article: Mobile phone radiation and health
Since the introduction of mobile phones, concerns (both scientific and public) have been raised about the potential health impacts from regular use.[28] Numerous studies have reported no significant relationship between mobile phone use and health, but the effect of mobile phone usage on health continues to be an area of public concern.

Safety concerns
As of 2007, several airlines are experimenting with base station and antenna systems installed to the aeroplane, allowing low power, short-range connection of any phones aboard to remain connected to the aircraft's base station.[29] Thus, they would not attempt connection to the ground base stations as during take off and landing.[citation needed] Simultaneously, airlines may offer phone services to their travelling passengers either as full voice and data services, or initially only as SMS text messaging and similar services. Qantas, the Australian airline, is the first airline to run a test aeroplane in this configuration in the autumn of 2007.[citation needed] Emirates has announced plans to allow limited mobile phone usage on some flights.[citation needed] However, in the past, commercial airlines have prevented the use of cell phones and laptops, due to the assertion that the frequencies emitted from these devices may disturb the radio waves contact of the airplane.
On 20 March 2008, an Emirates flight was the first time voice calls have been allowed in-flight on commercial airline flights. The breakthrough came after the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the United Arab Emirates-based General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) granted full approval for the AeroMobile system to be used on Emirates. Passengers were able to make and receive voice calls as well as use text messaging. The system automatically came into operation as the Airbus A340-300 reached cruise altitude. Passengers wanting to use the service received a text message welcoming them to the AeroMobile system when they first switched their phones on. The approval by EASA has established that GSM phones are safe to use on airplanes, as the AeroMobile system does not require the modification of aircraft components deemed "sensitive," nor does it require the use of modified phones.
In any case, there are inconsistencies between practices allowed by different airlines and even on the same airline in different countries. For example, Northwest Airlines may allow the use of mobile phones immediately after landing on a domestic flight within the US, whereas they may state "not until the doors are open" on an international flight arriving in the Netherlands. In April 2007 the US Federal Communications Commission officially prohibited passengers' use of cell phones during a flight.[30]
In a similar vein, signs are put up in many countries, such as Canada, the U.K. and the U.S., at petrol stations prohibiting the use of mobile phones, due to possible safety issues.[citation needed]

Etiquette
Most schools in the United States have prohibited mobile phones in the classroom, due to the large number of class disruptions that result from their use, and the potential for cheating via text messaging[citation needed]. In the UK, possession of a mobile phone in an examination can result in immediate disqualification from that subject or from all that student's subjects.[31]
A working group made up of Finnish telephone companies, public transport operators and communications authorities has launched a campaign to remind mobile phone users of courtesy, especially when using mass transit—what to talk about on the phone, and how to. In particular, the campaign wants to impact loud mobile phone usage as well as calls regarding sensitive matters.[32]
Many US cities with subway transit systems underground are studying or have implemented mobile phone reception in their underground tunnels for their riders. Boston, Massachusetts has investigated such usage in their tunnels, although there is a question of usage etiquette and also how to fairly award contracts to carriers.[33][34]
The issue of mobile communication and etiquette has also become an issue of academic interest. The rapid adoption of the device has resulted in the intrusion of telephony into situations where this was previously not known. This has exposed the implicit rules of courtesy and opened them to reevaluation.[35]

Use by drivers

This driver is using two phones at once
Main article: Mobile phones and driving safety
The use of mobile phones by people who are driving has become increasingly common, either as part of their job, as in the case of delivery drivers who are calling a client, or by commuters who are chatting with a friend. While many drivers have embraced the convenience of using their cellphone while driving, some jurisdictions have made the practice against the law, such as the Canadian provinces of Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador as well as the United Kingdom, consisting of a zero-tolerance system operated in Scotland and a warning system operated in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Officials from these jurisdictions argue that using a mobile phone while driving is an impediment to vehicle operation that can increase the risk of road traffic accidents.
Studies have found vastly different relative risks (RR). Two separate studies using case-crossover analysis each calculated RR at 4,[36][37] while an epidemiological cohort study found RR, when adjusted for crash-risk exposure, of 1.11 for men and 1.21 for women.[38]
A simulation study from the University of Utah Professor David Strayer compared drivers with a blood alcohol content of 0.08% to those conversing on a cell phone, and after controlling for driving difficulty and time on task, the study concluded that cell phone drivers exhibited greater impairment than intoxicated drivers. [39] Meta-analysis by The Canadian Automobile Association [40] and The University of Illinois [41] found that response time while using both hands-free and hand-held phones was approximately 0.5 standard deviations higher than normal driving (i.e., an average driver, while talking on a cell phone, has response times of a driver in roughly the 40th percentile).
Driving while using a hands-free device is not safer than driving while using a hand-held phone, as concluded by case-crossover studies.[36][37] epidemiological studies,[38] simulation studies,[39] and meta-analysis[40][41]. Even with this information, California recently passed a cell phone law that requires drivers who are 18 years of age or older to use a hands-free device while using the phone in the vehicle. Moreover, this law also restricts drivers under the age of 18 from using a mobile phone. This law goes into effect on July 1, 2008 with a $20 fine for the first offense and $50 fines for each subsequent conviction. The consistency of increased crash risk between hands-free and hand-held phone use is at odds with legislation in over 30 countries that prohibit hand-held phone use but allow hands-free. Scientific literature is mixed on the dangers of talking on a phone versus those of talking with a passenger, with the Accident Research Unit at the University of Nottingham finding that the number of utterances was usually higher for mobile calls when compared to blindfolded and non-blindfolded passengers,[42] but the University of Illinois meta-analysis concluding that passenger conversations were just as costly to driving performance as cell phone ones.[41]

Environmental impacts
Like all high structures, cellular antenna masts pose a hazard to low flying aircraft. Towers over a certain height or towers that are close to airports or heliports are normally required to have warning lights. There have been reports that warning lights on cellular masts, TV-towers and other high structures can attract and confuse birds. US authorities estimate that millions of birds are killed near communication towers in the country each year.[43]
An example of the way mobile phones and mobile networks have sometimes been perceived as a threat is the widely reported and later discredited claim that mobile phone masts are associated with the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) which has reduced bee hive numbers by up to 75% in many areas, especially near cities in the US. The Independent newspaper cited a scientific study claiming it provided evidence for the theory that mobile phone masts are a major cause in the collapse of bee populations, with controlled experiments demonstrating a rapid and catastrophic effect on individual hives near masts.[44] Mobile phones were in fact not covered in the study, and the original researchers have since emphatically disavowed any connection between their research, mobile phones, and CCD, specifically indicating that the Independent article had misinterpreted their results and created "a horror story".[45][46][47] While the initial claim of damage to bees was widely reported, the corrections to the story were almost non-existent in the media.
See also: Electronic waste
There are more than 500 million used mobile phones in the US sitting on shelves or in landfills [2], and it is estimated that over 125 million will be discarded this year alone. [3] The problem is growing at a rate of more than two million phones per week, putting tons of toxic waste into landfills daily. Several sites including PaceButler Corporation, TradeMyCell.com, ReCellular, and MyGreenElectronics offer to buy back and recycle mobile phones from users.

History
Main article: History of mobile phones
In 1908, U.S. Patent 887,357 for a wireless telephone was issued in to Nathan B. Stubblefield of Murray, Kentucky. He applied this patent to "cave radio" telephones and not directly to cellular telephony as the term is currently understood.[48] Cells for mobile phone base stations were invented in 1947 by Bell Labs engineers at AT&T and further developed by Bell Labs during the 1960s. Radiophones have a long and varied history going back to Reginald Fessenden's invention and shore-to-ship demonstration of radio telephony, through the Second World War with military use of radio telephony links and civil services in the 1950s, while hand-held cellular radio devices have been available since 1973. Due to their low establishment costs and rapid deployment, mobile phone networks have since spread rapidly throughout the world, outstripping the growth of fixed telephony.[citation needed]
In 1945, the zero generation (0G) of mobile telephones was introduced. 0G mobile phones, such as Mobile Telephone Service, were not cellular, and so did not feature "handover" from one base station to the next and reuse of radio frequency channels.[citation needed] Like other technologies of the time, it involved a single, powerful base station covering a wide area, and each telephone would effectively monopolize a channel over that whole area while in use. The concepts of frequency reuse and handoff as well as a number of other concepts that formed the basis of modern cell phone technology are first described in U.S. Patent 4,152,647 , issued May 1, 1979 to Charles A. Gladden and Martin H. Parelman, both of Las Vegas, Nevada and assigned by them to the United States Government.
This is the first embodiment of all the concepts that formed the basis of the next major step in mobile telephony, the Analog cellular telephone. Concepts covered in this patent (cited in at least 34 other patents) also were later extended to several satellite communication systems. Later updating of the cellular system to a digital system credits this patent.
Martin Cooper, a Motorola researcher and executive is widely considered to be the inventor of the first practical mobile phone for handheld use in a non-vehicle setting. Using a modern, if somewhat heavy portable handset, Cooper made the first call on a handheld mobile phone on April 3, 1973.[49]
The first commercial citywide cellular network was launched in Japan by NTT in 1979. Fully automatic cellular networks were first introduced in the early to mid 1980s (the 1G generation). The Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) system went online in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden in 1981.[50] NMT was the first mobile phone system that enabled international use of the phone, or "roaming" on other networks in other countries. This was followed by a boom in mobile phone usage, particularly in Northern Europe.[citation needed]
In 1983, Motorola DynaTAC was the first approved mobile phone by FCC in the United States. In 1984, Bell Labs developed modern commercial cellular technology (based, to a large extent, on the Gladden, Parelman Patent), which employed multiple, centrally-controlled base stations (cell sites), each providing service to a small area (a cell). The cell sites would be set up such that cells partially overlapped. In a cellular system, a signal between a base station (cell site) and a terminal (phone) only need be strong enough to reach between the two, so the same channel can be used simultaneously for separate conversations in different cells.
Cellular systems required several leaps of technology, including handover, which allowed a conversation to continue as a mobile phone traveled from cell to cell. This system included variable transmission power in both the base stations and the telephones (controlled by the base stations), which allowed range and cell size to vary. As the system expanded and neared capacity, the ability to reduce transmission power allowed new cells to be added, resulting in more, smaller cells and thus more capacity. The evidence of this growth can still be seen in the many older, tall cell site towers with no antennae on the upper parts of their towers. These sites originally created large cells, and so had their antennae mounted atop high towers; the towers were designed so that as the system expanded—and cell sizes shrank—the antennae could be lowered on their original masts to reduce range.
The first "modern" network technology on digital 2G (second generation) cellular technology was launched by Radiolinja (now part of Elisa Group) in 1991 in Finland on the GSM standard which also marked the introduction of competition in mobile telecoms when Radiolinja challenged incumbent Telecom Finland (now part of TeliaSonera) who ran a 1G NMT network.
The first data services appeared on mobile phones starting with person-to-person SMS text messaging in Finland in 1993. First trial payments using a mobile phone to pay for a Coca Cola vending machine were set in Finland in 1998. The first commercial payments were mobile parking trialled in Sweden but first commercially launched in Norway in 1999. The first commercial payment system to mimick banks and credit cards was launched in the Philippines in 1999 simultaneously by mobile operators Globe and Smart. The first content sold to mobile phones was the ringing tone, first launched in 1998 in Finland. The first full internet service on mobile phones was i-Mode introduced by NTT DoCoMo in Japan in 1999.
In 2001 the first commercial launch of 3G (Third Generation) was again in Japan by NTT DoCoMo on the WCDMA standard.[citation needed][51]
Until the early 1990s, most mobile phones were too large to be carried in a jacket pocket, so they were typically installed in vehicles as car phones. With the miniaturization of digital components and the development of more sophisticated batteries, mobile phones have become smaller and lighter.
In the 2000s, video and TV services are driving forward third generation (3G) deployment. In the future, low cost, high speed data may drive forward the fourth generation (4G) as short-range communication emerges. Service and application ubiquity, low cost data delivery, and a high degree of personalization and synchronization between various user appliances will be drivers. At the same time, the radio access network may evolve from a centralized architecture to a distributed one.[citation needed]

Terminology

Related non-mobile-phone systems
Car phone
A type of telephone permanently mounted in a vehicle, these often have more powerful transmitters, an external antenna and loudspeaker for handsfree use. They usually connect to the same networks as regular mobile phones.
Cordless telephone (portable phone)
Cordless phones are telephones which use one or more radio handsets in place of a wired handset. The handsets connect wirelessly to a base station, which in turn connects to a conventional land line for calling. Unlike mobile phones, cordless phones use private base stations (belonging to the land-line subscriber), and which are not shared.
Professional Mobile Radio
Advanced professional mobile radio systems can be very similar to mobile phone systems. Notably, the IDEN standard has been used as both a private trunked radio system as well as the technology for several large public providers. Similar attempts have even been made to use TETRA, the European digital PMR standard, to implement public mobile networks.
Radio phone
This is a term which covers radios which could connect into the telephone network. These phones may not be mobile; for example, they may require a mains power supply, they may require the assistance of a human operator to set up a PSTN phone call.
Satellite phone
This type of phone communicates directly with an artificial satellite, which in turn relays calls to a base station or another satellite phone. A single satellite can provide coverage to a much greater area than terrestrial base stations. Since satellite phones are costly, their use is typically limited to people in remote areas where no mobile phone coverage exists, such as mountain climbers and mariners in the open sea.

Cect HT-508 dual SIM mobile phone test

2008-09-07T02:57:00.000-07:00

I think in these days everybody who has an active life and lives in a city owns a mobile phone. There are a lot of brands like Nokia, Sony Ericsson , Samsung that create a lot of types of mobile phones, everyone better than the previous and with a lot of gadgets for them. Al most every non-low-cost phone has a camera build-in, a music player, a video player and stuff like this that are meant to make our life nicer and proud of ourselves , but in the same time they make us want every time a better gadget.
A big problem appeared along with the great offers of the telecommunication companies. Everyone has great offers but for using inside their network. Many people began to wear with them 2 mobile phones. I am one of those. So time asked a new invention: 2 mobile phones in a single one.
There are many companies that created Dual Sim phones, but mainly their origins are in China . One of the best company is CECT. They create a lot of dual sim phones, some of them unfortunately being copies of mobile phones from well known companies.

Special Case – CECT HT-508
As I heard a lot of talking about these phones and I was caring 2 mobile phones with me I decided to test one of these products. I bought a Cect HT-508:
First impression… very nice. I expected something maybe cheep looking, but I had a nice surprise. My first problem with it was …turning it on. I pun the battery in it but… no turning on. After a few “scientific researching” of pushing every button like crazy I made a long press on the top right button and the phone started.
When the phone started I instantly had a problem: CHINEESE language. So I searched the internet and I found the magic key sequence: *#0000# . This resets the language phone to english. The screen is looking great, has a very good resolution 240×320 and 265.000 colors. So personally no complaining about it . The touch screen works very good , nice response. I hate the pen for the touch screen. That looks cheap and it’s not extendable. It has a fixed length and …it’s kind of short.
The sound is ok…I really don’t know how to describe it. It has a very high volume, so until now I didn’t manage to set it to ring decently so I won’t have a heart attack sometime when it will ring. Beside this is a very nice mp3 player and if you use your earphones it’s really nice. The AudioPlayer can be played in the background so it can be used easily as an mp3 player. You can customize very well the ringtones for every sim separately, so that you’ll know from the ringtone on what phone are you called.
What I hate about it is the default sounds and that I can’t customize the message tone. I had to deal with what the phones has and they are not really nice.
The camera is …just an ordinary mobile phone camera. Definitely not a 3.0 MegaPixels camera. It’s very good for a quick photo so that you can remember something nice. The maximum resolution is 1280×960 and the clarity of the photos is ….let’s say almost ok. I kind of like how it records videos….continuous with no braking and you can easily see what it meant to record. So the video recording is very ok for a mobile phone … as much as I’ve tested. By the way it has 2 cameras one in the back and one in the front, but if you wonderer…..NO, it doesn’t support 3G.
The games are boring. Nothing special….you’ll get bored by them in the first day. So that’s it about the games.
For connectivity the phone has Bluetooth, GPRS and cable connection. They are ok. Nothing special about this section. Everything is exactly as you know from every phone. Special thing about it is that once you connect your phone to your PC with a data cable you get 3 options on the phone screen: Mass Storage ( option that shows your phone to the PC as a mass storage device), WebCam (with this you can use your phone as a personal webcam) and the last option is COM port.
Once you have connected your phone to your PC by a com port you’ll need some software to work with the phone. I tried a lot of them and only one worked : PhoneSuite v2.1.4.
The PhoneSuite
It’s very nice, very intuitive and good for basic modifications and operations.
Some hints :
For making your phone silent you have to make a long press on the # key.
For locking the keys…well here is a little problem. The only way is to set from the menu a timing in which you want the keys to get locked. For unlocking them you have to press # twice.
The annoying icons non removable from the screen (in the buttons) are real buttons. Every one has the function given by the icon.
When you installed your second sim don’t panic is nothing happens it will react but it will take some time.
The card used by this phone is microSD and it works very nicely

HTC Shift: Smart phone morphs into Vista UMPC

2008-09-07T02:52:00.000-07:00

Every now and then a mobile phone manufacturer makes you sit up in your seat and have a really good look at your computer screen. When we were sent this photo of HTC's Shift by its PR company, we stared at our screens for a very long time indeed.
The HTC Shift is similar in many ways to the HTC Advantage (aka the T-Mobile Ameo). It has a large 178mm colour touchscreen and a full Qwerty keypad, but unlike any device that HTC has made before this is much more than a smart phone -- it's a UMPC running Windows Vista Business edition.
There's not much information on specs yet, but we know it has a 30GB hard drive, tri-band HSDPA, quad-band EDGE, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. There's also a fingerprint reader and a small Synaptics touchpad for navigating the menu.
Other features we've deduced from the picture -- click on the image to enlarge it -- include a VGA camera on the front for video calling, a USB port and what looks like an SD card slot. Unfortunately, that's all we know -- we're not sure when it's coming out in the UK.
Interestingly, we had a chat a while ago with T-Mobile about whether or not they would go all the way and stock UMPC-type devices after we saw the Ameo, which is as close to a UMPC any smart phone has ever been. T-Mobile said no, but we think it'll change its mind after seeing this baby

www.wap33.net

2008-08-23T05:44:00.000-07:00

APPLE LAUNCHES iPhone 3G

iPhone 3G combines three products in one - a revolutionary phone, a widescreen iPod, and a breakthrough Internet device.

Product Summary

The good: The Apple iPhone 3G offers critical new features including support for high-speed 3G networks, third-party applications, and expanded e-mail. Its call quality is improved and it continues to deliver an excellent music and video experience.
The bad: The iPhone 3G continues to lack some basic features that are available on even the simplest cell phone. Also, we prefer the original iPhone's design.
The bottom line: The iPhone 3G delivers on its promises by adding critical features and sharper performance. The iTunes App Store is pretty amazing, and the 3G support is more than welcome. We still have a few gripes, but the iPhone 3G is a big improvement over the original model.

Specifications

Manufacturer: -- Apple Inc.
Part number: -- CNETiPhone3G16GBBlack

Data services --SMS, E-Mail, Voice mail
Service provider -- AT&T
Cellular enhancement protocol --EDGE

Built-in devices -- Camera
Cellular technology -- WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM
Dimensions (W x D x H) -- 2.4 in x 0.5 in x 4.6 in
Band / mode -- WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Weight -- 4.7 oz
Wireless Interface -- IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g, Bluetooth 2.0 EDR
Color --Black
Combined with -- With digital camera
OS provided -- Apple MacOS X
Software included -- iTunes 7.7 or later
Flash memory installed -- 16 GB

Speakerphone -- Yes
Polyphonic Ringer --- Yes
Additional Features --- AGPS
Input device type --- Touch-screen

Voice Mail Capability --- Yes
Short Messaging Service (SMS) --- Yes
Internet Browser --- Yes
GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) --- Yes
Mobile Email --- Yes
Supported Email Protocols --- POP3, IMAP4
Messaging / Data Features --- PDF support, Microsoft Word support, Microsoft Excel
Audio input type --- Microphone
Audio output type --- Speaker
Sdigital audio standards --- AAC, MP3, WAV, AIFF, Apple Lossless

Display type --- 3.5 in
Color support --- 32-bit (128K colors)
Max resolution --- 480 x 320
Battery installed ( max ) --- Lithium ion
Max supported batteries --- 1
Talk time --- Up to 600 min
Audible Battery Alert --- Yes

Wireless connectivity --- Bluetooth 2.0

Phone style --- Candy bar
Automatic Redial --- Yes
Call Divert --- Yes
Call Hold --- Yes
Call Timer --- Yes
Caller ID --- Yes
Call Waiting --- Yes
Volume Control --- Yes
Ringer Control --- Yes
Conference Call Capability --- Yes
Computer Link --- Yes
Call Transfer --- Yes

Width --- 2.4 in
Depth --- 0.5 in
Height --- 4.6 in
Antenna --- Integrated

Service / Support Details --- 1-year warranty

GPS System / GPS Navigation --- GPS receiver