Low-tech fixes for high-tech problems

Card-reading problem

Behind the cash register at smoke shop no.2 in downtown San Francisco, Sam Azar swipes a customer’s credit card to ring up Turkish cigarettes. The store’s card reader fails to scan the card’s magnetic strip. Azar swipes again, and again. No luck.



As the customers begin to queue, he reaches beneath the counter for a black plastic bag. He wraps one layer of the plastic around the card and swipes it again. Success. The sale is rung up. “I don’t know how it works, it just does”, says Azar, who learned the trick years ago from another clerk.



It is one of many low-tech fixes for high tech failures that people without engineering degrees have discovered, often out of desperation, and shared.

Mobile losing charge

If your cell phone loses its battery charge too quickly while idle in your pocket, part of the problem may be that your pocket is too warm. Cell phone batteries do indeed last a bit longer if kept cool. The 98.6 degree body heat of the human, transmitted through a cloth pocket to a cell phone inside, I enough to speed up the chemical processes inside the phone’s battery. To keep the phone cooler, carry it in your purse or on your belt. You can even turn off the phone and put it in the hotel refrigerator overnight to slow down the battery’s tendency to lose charge.

Salvaging a wet mobile

If the mobile had a bath(!) for brief while, wipe the phone gently with a towel, and shove it into a jar full of uncooked rice, as rice has a high chemical affinity for water.

SRINI

Eight Steps To A Winners Brain

We exercise for a good bod, we take treatments to enhance beauty but what do we do for our brain? Cracking a puzzle or a game of Whac-a-Mole can actually help enhance your brain but this is not enough. There is some extra effort which one needs to put in, to get the winners brain.


Buzz up!

According to the authors of a new book, ‘The Winner’s Brain’, the brain of successful people function differently from those of the average.





Assistant neuroscience professor Mark Fenske, claim that one can actually rewire his/her brain and even physically change it.



They sought input from other brain experts and of individuals whom they categorized as, “winners” and have put down eight “win factors.”



They claim that these eight points can graduate ones brain from average to winning brain.



Eight tips for winning brains:



Observation: Observation is one of the key identification of one's brain ability. To check yours, try and interpret people’s facial expressions and body language by watching scenes from a movie on mute. Then turn on the volume and match your interpretation with the movie.With this practice you can actually enhance your observation skills.



Motivation: A huge task is capable enough of demotivating you. At this time even if you finish the job, it surely will be of worst quality. The same work if broken up in parts, will look easy. If a work seems tiring to you, break it up and finish it. Extend the division of work over time. This heightens your brains capacity.



Focus: Never force your brain. Concentration is important but sometimes excess of concentration makes your brain stop working. At such a time, take a break and give your brain time to rejuvenate and you will notice that solution to problems coming automatically.



Emotional balance: At the time of a crisis, emotions take over your thinking capabilities. You should practice managing your emotions by changing your perspective of the situation. If you take the crisis as a challenge, things will look easy.



Memory: Like you edit mistakes while writing, edit your brain memory. An unpleasant event, a unfavorable situation or a dark past, just shed them and say 'I will never think of you again.' This will give space to your brain to do more important tasks.



Resilience: When you’re in a tough situation, think of a “resilience role model,” like a parent, teacher or mentor. Try imagining what they would have done in a similar situation. You will be surprised to see, how solutions pour in.



Adaptability: To adapt to a new surrounding, one needs peace of mind. This peace can only be received by regular Yoga and meditation. Try a few minutes of meditation in a day to calm your brain. Studies prove that regular practice increase cortical thickness in as little as eight weeks.



Brain care: 30 minutes of moderate physical activity, three times a week, will also workout your brain. Exercise regulated the blood circulation in the brain thus making your nerves active.



Take these eight steps, to win over over brain and life.

Thanks to Yahoo news page!
 
srini

Age old Indian wisdom rediscovered!

Older men-younger women mating boosts longevity of later generations!

Older men who shack up with much younger women keep the grim reaper at bay for the human population and extend our species' lifespan, new research claims.

Even beyond movie stars and Playboy's Hugh Hefner, there is a tendency for older men to partner with younger women, according to the study, published in the Aug. 29 edition of PLoS ONE. In less developed, traditional societies, males are about 5 to 15 years older than their female partners. In the United States and Europe, guys are an average of two years senior to their partners.

More interesting, when old men father children, their genes seem to increase the lifespan of both sexes over evolutionary time.

How it works

Women often lose their reproductive capacity around age 50, but if men can still reproduce into their 70s, Darwin would say it's advantageous for males to live longer lives providing they can hook up with a woman capable of reproducing. Natural selection should favor longevity-boosting genes, which would get passed down from fathers to both sons and daughters. So women would benefit as well in future generations, the scientists say.

Result: Over time, the older-guy-with-younger-gal lifestyle would lift the lifespan ceiling for both men and women in the next generations and so on.

"By increasing the survival of men you have a spillover effect on women because men pass their genes to children of both sexes," said study team member Cedric Puleston, a doctoral candidate at Stanford University. Anthropologist Cheryl Jamison of Indiana University, who was not involved in the research, called the results "fascinating."

Wall of death

From an evolutionary perspective, women who can no longer reproduce are non-players, and since "it takes two," men partnered with menopausal women are also irrelevant.
Following that idea, natural selection should select for harmful mutations that impact women after menopause. Over time, the discriminating genes would accumulate in the population causing what evolutionary biologist William Hamilton called the "wall of death," in which mortality of women spikes at the onset of menopause.
Population records and everyday observations indicate that's not the case. Life expectancy for men and women in today's industrialized countries is 75 to 85 years, with mortality increasing gradually, not abruptly, following female menopause.

Men matter

To figure out whether male fertility could help explain human longevity, Shripad Tuljapurkar of Stanford University and his colleagues examined lifespan and fertility data from both men and women.
They studied four societies thought to closely mimic lifestyles of our ancestors, including two hunter-gather groups, the Dobe !Kung of the Kalahari and the Ache of Paraguay (one of the most isolated populations in the world), as well as the Yanomamo forager-farmers and an indigenous group in Bolivia called the Tsimane. The research team also looked at farming villages in Gambia and a group of modern Canadians.
In all six groups, women stopped having children on average by their 50s, while some men continued to reproduce. The age after which men showed no reproduction varied among the groups and included:
Canada—Men showed fertility until 55 years old.
!Kung—55 years old
Gambia—75 years old
Yanomamo—70 years old
Ache—65 years old
Tsimane—60 years old

Mate choices

Until now, the most popular explanation for the bounty of over-55s, called the "grandmother hypothesis," suggested women get a life extension in order to care for their children and grandchildren.
The new findings don't contradict that hypothesis, but help explain how men give women another boost over the "wall of death."
"I don’t think the finding conflicts with the grandmother hypothesis but rather that it can be considered along with it as explanations for human longevity—there doesn’t have to be a single gene or single selective factor," Jamison told LiveScience.
But why do men choose younger mates and females prefer older men?
"There is a lot of evidence from evolutionary psychology that men are seeking younger women and women are seeking older men," said anthropologist Martin Fieder of the University of Vienna, who was not involved in the current study.
Cases in point: At the age of 26, Anna Nicole Smith married 89-year-old Jeremiah Howard Marshall II. And in 1995, actor Tony Randall, then 75, married and had two kids with Heather Harlan, who was 24 at the time. Last month, 90-year-old Nanu Ram Jogi from India reportedly became the world's oldest father when he announced his 21st child.
Evolutionary psychologists argue that older men have more resources to protect and care for the family, while younger, more fertile women give their male partners better means of passing along genes.
In a study of about 10,000 Swedish men and women, Fieder and his colleagues have found that men had the most children if they were partnered with women about six years younger than themselves.
So the benefits of "age-defying" couples go both ways. Plus, the human species gets a boost.

source: livescience.com via yahoonews

srini

Scientists reveal secret of levitation

LONDON (AFP) - Scientists have discovered a ground-breaking way of levitating ultra small objects, which may revolutionise the design of micro-machines, a new report says. Physicists said they can create "incredible levitation effects" by manipulating so-called Casimir force, which normally causes objects to stick together by quantum force.
The phenomenon could be used to improve the performances of everyday devices ranging from car airbags to computer chips, say Professor Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin from Saint Andrews University.
Casimir force -- discovered in 1948 and first measured in 1997 -- can be seen in a gecko's ability to stick to a surface with just one toe.
Now the British scientists say they can reverse the Casimir force to cause an object to repel rather than attract another in a vacuum.
"The Casimir force is the ultimate cause of friction in the nano world, in particular in some micro-electromechanical systems," said Leonhardt, writing in the August issue of New Journal of Physics.
"Micro or nano machines could run smoother and with less or no friction at all if one can manipulate the force," he added.
And he added: "In order to reduce friction in the nanoworld, turning nature's stickiness into repulsion could be the ultimate remedy. Instead of sticking together, parts of micromachinery would levitate."
Leonhardt stressed that the practise is possible only for micro-objects.
But he underlined that, although in principle it may one day be possible to levitate humans, that day is a long way off.
"At the moment, in practice it is only going to be possible for micro-objects with the current technology, since this quantum force is small and acts only at short ranges," he said.
"For now, human levitation remains the subject of cartoons, fairytales and tales of the paranormal."
Their research was to be published in the New Journal of Physics.

source: AFP and yahoo news

srini

Life is more important

Survivor’s Jenna Morasca

Stars in New Ad for

Dissection Alternatives

Jenna Morasca, winner of CBS’s hit show Survivor: the Amazon, is using her celebrity to deliver an important message to high school and college students. As Jenna returns to television to compete in Survivor: All-Stars, she also stars in a new public service announcement about dissection created by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM).
In PCRM’s new ad, Jenna explains her view: “With all the great new alternatives to dissection, there’s no need to harm animals now or ever.”

As a University of Pittsburgh zoology major, Jenna refused to participate in animal dissection for a biology class and her grade suffered. “Morally, it was worth it to me,” she says. “Life is more important.”

In more and more classrooms, however, students are winning the right to opt out of dissection exercises—with no penalty. The determination of teachers and students like Jenna has paved the way for these important changes. Dog labs, once common in U.S. medical schools, have been banned on the majority of campuses. Sophisticated computer models have made humane education the wave of the future.

That pleases many medical professionals. “As a doctor who performs autopsies, I can assure students that computer images of well-preserved tissues look more like the ‘real thing’ than the squishy gray organs of a formalin-fixed specimen,” explains Nancy L. Harrison, M.D., of the Scripps Memorial Hospital Chula Vista Department of Pathology.

Jenna’s ad is being sent to high school and college newspapers around the country. The ad is available to media outlets or high school and college students.

Source: www.dissectionalternatives.org

srini

First American Spacewalker - Ed White

Ed White

First American Spacewalker

Courtesy: iMAGINE aRT and NASA

srini

Scary number eleven!

The Secret behind the number 11

Pretty Chilling - read to the bottom. Try it out. If you are a sceptical person - still read on as it's actually very interesting!! This is actually really freaky!! (Mainly the end part, but read it all first)

1) New York City has 11 letters

2) Afghanistan has 11 letters.

3) Ramsin Yuseb has 11 letters . (The terrorist who threatened to destroy the Twin Towers in 1993) 4) George W Bush has 11 letters.

This could be a mere coincidence, but this gets interesting: 1) New York is the 11th state.

2) The first plane crashing against the Twin Towers was flight number 11.

3) Flight 11 was carrying 92 passengers. 9 + 2 = 114) Flight 77 which also hit Twin Towers, was carrying 65 passengers. 6 + 5 = 115) The tragedy was on September 11, or 9/11 as it is now known. 9 + 1+ 1 =116) The date is equal to the US emergency services telephone number 911. Sheer coincidence..? Read on and make up your own mind:1) The total number of victims inside all the hi-jacked planes was 254. 2 + 5 + 4 = 11 2) September 11 is day number 254 of the calendar year.

3) The Madrid bombing took place on 3/11/2004. 3 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 4 = 11. 4) The tragedy of Madrid happened 911 days after the Twin Towers incident. Now this is where things get totally eerie: The most recognized symbol for the US, after the Stars & Stripes, is the Eagle. The following verse is taken from the Koran, the Islamic holy book: "For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle. The wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the lands of Allah while some of the people trembled in despair still more rejoiced: for the wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah and there was peace." That verse is number 9.11 of the Koran.

Unconvinced about all of this still ..? Try this and see how you feel afterwards.

Open Microsoft Word and do the following: 1. Type in upper case Q33 NY. This is the flight number of the first plane to hit one of the Twin Towers.2. Highlight the Q33 NY.3. Change the font size to 48.4. Change the actual font to the WINGDINGS........................ What are you thinking now???? .... So weird...

from forwarded mail

srini