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Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets or bird songs), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.
Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Twitter has approximately 3,300,000 registered users.
Twitter is a privately funded startup with offices in the SoMA neighborhood of San Francisco, CA. Started as a side project in March of 2006, Twitter has grown into a real-time short messaging service that works over multiple networks and devices.
Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: “What are you doing?” Tell us what you're doing in 140 characters or less! Send your thoughts, observations, and goings-on in your day.
In order to use Twitter you will need one of these things: an internet connection or a mobile phone. You can send only text through Twitter. Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS, RSS, email or through an application such as Twitterrific or Facebook.
Twitter is useful for sending short messages to a select group via cell phone text messaging or via computer internet or by other means listed above. For example, students can send messages to the known group of friends instantly via Twitter that “chemistry class has been canceled today”. It can also be used to send message during emergency, natural disaster, etc. It is also a useful tool to inform friends for say, “last minute change of restaurant as meeting place.”
Micro-blogging
The micro-blogging is a recent concept to replace normal blogging. The blogging (weBLOGging) was started around 1998, shortly after internet became widespread. The blog and Wordpress gave new freedom to writers who need not depend upon the main stream media to express their views to public. This resulted in articles and news analysis of unusually large length, which were difficult to read and comprehend by readers in a short time. Hence the idea of Twitter and other micro-blogging site was born, which restricted the forwarding of text to a few sentences.
After the success of Twitter, many other copycat sites sprung up, offering more and improved features than Twitter. Popular websites such as MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. are also offering micro-blogging service with the facility to send photos, sound clips and video. Jaiku is another site, now owned by Google. It is main competitor of Twitter and provides Activity Stream for the user. Another site, tumblelog (also known as a tlog or tumblog) is a variation of a blog that favors short-form, mixed-media posts over the longer editorial posts frequently associated with blogging. Common post formats found on tumblelogs include links, photos, quotes, dialogues, and video. Unlike blogs, tumblelogs are frequently used to share the author's creations, discoveries, or experiences while providing little or no commentary. Other micro-blogging sites are Stumble Upon, Pownce, etc.
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Additional links:
1) Twitter website:
http://twitter.com/
http://help.twitter.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=26
2) Twitter on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro-blogging
3) What is Micro blogging or Tumble logging? Pros and Cons:
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http://livinginbelgium.blogspot.com/2008/08/flower-carpet-brussels-august-2008.html
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http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/11/06/hologram.yellin/index.html?iref=mpstoryview
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Distance ~ 70000 Km. from Earth
http://www.isro.org/pslv-c11/photos/moon_images.htm
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http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12698952
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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshowpics/3652786.cms?TOI_Home
World champion Viswanathan Anand (left) and Russia's Vladimir Kramnik during the 11th game of the World Chess Championship in Germany. (AP Photo)
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Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Mansfield Manufacturing plant in Dongguan, China. The global economic crisis is threatening the country’s factory jobs.
Published: October 31, 2008
As dozens of countries slip deeper into financial distress, a new threat may be gathering force within the American economy — the prospect that goods will pile up waiting for buyers and prices will fall, suffocating fresh investment and worsening joblessness for months or even years.
The word for this is deflation, or declining prices, a term that gives economists chills.
Deflation accompanied the Depression of the 1930s. Persistently falling prices also were at the heart of Japan’s so-called lost decade after the catastrophic collapse of its real estate bubble at the end of the 1980s — a period in which some experts now find parallels to the American predicament.
“That certainly is the snapshot of the risk I see,” said Robert J. Barbera, chief economist at the research and trading firm ITG. “It is the crisis we face.”
With economies around the globe weakening, demand for oil, copper, grains and other commodities has diminished, bringing down prices of these raw materials. But prices have yet to decline noticeably for most goods and services, with one conspicuous exception — houses. Still, reduced demand is beginning to soften prices for a few products, like furniture and bedding, which are down slightly since the beginning of 2007, according to government data. Prices are also falling for some appliances, tools and hardware.
Only a few months ago, American policy makers were worried about the reverse problem — rising prices, or inflation — as then-soaring costs for oil and food filtered through the economy. In July, average prices were 5.6 percent higher than a year earlier — the fastest pace of inflation since 1991. But by the end of September, annual inflation had dipped to 4.9 percent and was widely expected to go lower.
The new worry is that in the worst case, the end of inflation may be the beginning of something malevolent: a long, slow retrenchment in which consumers and businesses worldwide lose the wherewithal to buy, sending prices down for many goods. Though still considered unlikely, that would prompt businesses to slow production and accelerate layoffs, taking more paychecks out of the economy and further weakening demand.
The danger of this is the difficulty of a cure. Policy makers can generally choke off inflation by raising interest rates, dampening economic activity and reducing demand for goods. But as Japan discovered, an economy may remain ensnared by deflation for many years, even when interest rates are dropped to zero: falling prices make companies reluctant to invest even when credit is free.
Through much of the 1990s, prices for property and many goods kept falling in Japan. As layoffs increased and purchasing power declined, prices fell lower still, in a downward spiral of diminishing fortunes. Some fear the American economy could be sinking toward a similar fate, if a recession is deep and prolonged, as consumers lose spending power just as much of Europe, Asia and Latin America succumb to a slowdown.
“That’s a meaningful risk at this point,” said Nouriel Roubini, an economist at New York University’s Stern School of Business, who forecast the financial crisis well in advance and has been warning of deflation for months. “We could get into a vicious circle of deepening malaise.”
Most economists — Mr. Roubini and Mr. Barbera included — say American policy makers have tools to avert the sort of deflationary black hole that captured Japan. Deflation fears last broke out in the United States in 2003, but the Federal Reserve defeated the menace with low interest rates that kept the economy growing. This time, the Fed is again being aggressive, dropping its target rate to 1 percent this week. And the government’s various bailout plans have also pumped money into the economy.
“If you print enough money, you can create inflation,” said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and now a professor at Harvard.
But even as American authorities unleash credit, the threat has intensified. Not since the Depression have so many countries faced so much trouble at once. The financial crisis has gone global, like a virus mutating in the face of every experimental cure. From South Korea to Iceland to Brazil, the pandemic has spread, bringing with it a tightening of credit that has starved even healthy companies of finance.
“We’re entering a really fierce global recession,” Mr. Rogoff said. “A significant financial crisis has been allowed to morph into a full-fledged global panic. It’s a very dangerous situation. The danger is that instead of having a few bad years, we’ll have another lost decade.”
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Global economic growth has flourished in recent years, much of it fertilized with borrowed investment. This raised kingdoms of houses in Florida and California, steel mills in Ukraine, slaughterhouses in Brazil and shopping malls in Turkey.
That tide is now moving in reverse. Banks and other financial institutions are reckoning with hundreds of billions of dollars worth of disastrous investments. As they struggle to rebuild their capital, they are halting loans to many customers, demanding swift repayment from others and dumping assets — homes sold out of foreclosure, investments linked to mortgages and corporate loans. Selling is pushing prices down further, making the assets left on balance sheets worth less, in some cases prompting another round of sales.
“You get this adverse feedback loop where assets keep falling in value,” Mr. Barbera said. “You’re essentially putting big downward pressure on the global economy.”
In past crises, like those that devastated Mexico in 1994 and much of Asia in 1997 and 1998, weak economies managed to recover by exporting aggressively, not least to the United States. But American consumers are battered this time. After years of borrowing against homes and tapping credit cards, consumers are pulling back.
From Asia to Latin America, exports are slowing and should continue to do so as the global appetite shrinks. This is spawning fears that major producers like China and India — which vastly expanded production capacity in recent years — will have to dump products on world markets to keep factories running and stave off unemployment, pressing prices lower.
Earlier this year, some analysts suggested that American businesses might continue to prosper, even as consumers pulled back at home, by selling into foreign markets. Caterpillar, the construction equipment manufacturer, might suffer declining sales in the United States, the argument went, but huge projects from Russia to Dubai required front-end loaders. Australia and Brazil needed earth-movers to expand mining operations as they sent iron ore toward smelters in Northeast Asia.
But as much of the planet now struggles, Caterpillar is worried. “Next year, no doubt, will be a challenge,” Caterpillar’s chief executive, James W. Owens, recently warned.
China has long been at the center of claims that the world could keep growing regardless of American troubles. China has been importing cotton from India and the United States; electronics components from South Korea, Malaysia and Taiwan; timber from Russia and Africa; and oil from the Middle East.
But many of the finished goods China produces with these materials have ultimately landed in the United States, Europe and Japan. When consumers pull back in those countries, Chinese factories feel the impact, along with their suppliers around the globe.
Fewer laptop computers shipped from China spells less demand for chips. Last week, Toshiba — Japan’s largest chip maker — said it lost $275 million from July to September, blaming its troubles on a world glut.
Lower demand for flat-screen televisions means less need for flat-panel glass displays. This month, Samsung, the Korean electronics giant, said a global oversupply in that item caused its biggest dip in quarterly profits in three years.
Now, a glut of products may be building in the United States. Orders for trucks used by business have plummeted. Investments in industrial equipment are declining. Yet inventories have grown.
“I worry about an economy that looks like Japan,” said Barry P. Bosworth, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “We’re going to be struggling with how to put this back together again for several more years.”
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Related Links:
-Obama Is Seen Inheriting Worst U.S. Recession Since Reagan Era
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aTP1DuSuMY38&refer=home
-Germany, China, U.S. feel pain of global downturn
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE49N5VU20081113
-It's official: Recession since Dec. '07
http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/01/news/economy/recession/index.htm
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http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24625663-2703,00.html
Jonathan Leake, London | November 10, 2008
Article from: The Australian
SCIENTISTS have identified the single chance encounter about 1.9 billion years ago to which almost all life on Earth now owes its existence.
It came when an amoeba-like organism engulfed a bacterium that had developed the power to use sunlight to break down water and liberate oxygen.
The bacterium was probably intended as prey, but instead it became incorporated into its attacker's body - turning it into the ancestor of every tree, flowering plant and seaweed on Earth.
The encounter meant life on the planet could evolve from bacterial slime into the more complex forms of today.
"That single event transformed the evolution of life on Earth," said Paul Falkowski, professor of biogeochemistry and biophysics at Rutgers University in New Jersey. "The descendants of that tiny organism transformed our atmosphere, filling it with the oxygen needed for animals and eventually humans to evolve."
It had been thought such organisms emerged many times over on the early Earth, but the unique nature of the event has become clear from studies of chloroplasts, the bodies in plant cells that absorb sunlight and use its energy to generate nutrients and oxygen.
The research shows the genes within chloroplasts, and the proteins they produce, are so similar in all plants, ranging from tiny algae to giant oak trees, they must all be the direct descendants of a single cell.
"It is an astonishing thought that a single random encounter between two tiny cells so long ago could have had such huge consequences," said Professor Falkowski, who will describe the results of the latest research to next month's meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
Professor Falkowski's group at Rutgers is one of several around the world using powerful scientific tools such as DNA analysis to work out how life evolved after Earth was formed about 4.5billion years ago.
They have refined methods for dating ancient rocks using radioactive isotopes. This method can also show how much oxygen was in the atmosphere when the rocks were formed.
Such evidence suggests primitive life emerged up to 3.5 billion years ago - but only as bacterial-type organisms.
Then, more than 2.2 billion years ago, one group, the cyanobacteria, evolved the ability to use sunlight to break down water, making nutrients and liberating oxygen.
This event was a breakthrough, but cyanobacteria were inefficient, so oxygen levels in the air remained minimal.
It took several hundred million more years before the chance encounter that would lead to flowering plants took place - a hiatus showing how unlikely it was to happen at all.
Nick Lane, a researcher at University College London and author of Oxygen: The Molecule that Made the World, said a picture of life evolving through a series of unique chance events was emerging.
"Oxygen energises all life, and makes it big," he said. "Nothing else can provide the energy needed to fuel the demands of multicellular organisms. True photosynthesis evolved only once, and the chance encounter that gave rise to plants also happened just once.
"These were two freak accidents in the 3.5billion-year history of life on Earth."
Dr Lane explained: "As oxygen accumulated, plants could grow ever larger. And animals evolved as these new food sources became available."
One puzzle has been why oxygen accumulated in the air at all - because plants are consumed by organisms that use oxygen to break them down. This should mean oxygen is used up as fast as it is generated.
Professor Falkowski suggests that in reality many plants are never consumed by other organisms and are instead permanently incorporated into rocks through geological processes.
In the sea, dead marine phytoplankton sinks to the bottom and become incorporated into sediments that turn into rocks such as chalk. The white cliffs of Dover on the English south coast are made of the compressed remains of such organisms.
Professor Falkowski calculates that in the past two billion years, about 15 billion billion tonnes of carbon has been removed from the atmosphere and locked into the Earth's crust. "The burial of large amounts of organic carbon by plants, especially over the past 750 million years, caused a sharp rise in atmospheric oxygen, which almost certainly triggered the explosion of animal life seen since then."
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http://www.abcnews.go.com/Health/MedicineCuttingEdge/Story?id=6198155&page=1
By JOHN MCKENZIE Nov. 6, 2008
It is the great mystery of cancer: Why do healthy cells in the body start growing uncontrollably and cause disease? Researchers have taken an important step toward answering that question by looking at the genetics of cancer.
And for the first time in the lab, scientists have decoded an entire genome of someone who has the disease, according to a new study.
"This is the first time that we've been able to look at the entire set of genes from a cancer patient, and that is key because that's going to help us understand what goes wrong," said Dr. Richard Wilson of Washington University in St. Louis, the senior author on the study.
Using donated cells from a woman who died of leukemia, researchers compared the individual genes -- all 20,000 of them -- from her cancer cells, to those from her normal, healthy cells.
Using DNA sequencing, they were able to identify 10 genetic "mutations," or mistakes in the cancer cells that could have caused her cancer. Out of the 20,000 genes, 10 defective genes, which developed later in life, appeared to spiral out of control.
One of the newly discovered abnormal genes blocks chemotherapy drugs from ever getting inside the cancer cells to kill them.
Four others appear to turn off a cell's "early warning system" that would normally prevent a healthy cell from ever turning into a cancer cell.
"If those genes are mutated or de-activated, there's a very good chance the cancer can start to grow out of control," Wilson told ABC News.
The study, conducted at Washington University over many months, was published today in the medical journal Nature.
Advances Hold Promise for Cancer Treatment
Through DNA sequencing, cancer researchers were able to identify mutations that may have caused cancer. (Wong Maye-E/AP Photo)
Researchers are now trying to identify all the genetic mistakes that can cause lung, brain and ovarian cancers, with the hope of one day being able to identify each and every cancer patient's unique genetic make-up with a simple blood test.
These new genetic cancer "codes" will not only help develop more targeted drugs in the future, but they'll also improve how existing cancer medications are used today.
Doctors will likely be able to customize patients' care by consulting their genes and spot aggressive cases well in advance.
This research will help doctors when "... deciding which patients get which treatment, which patients need more treatment, which patients are more likely to have their cancer come back," said Dr. Ross Levine of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. "It's incredibly transformative in the clinical arena, right away."
While questions linger, like why these mutations occur in the first place, this research is unlocking long-held secrets, one cancer at a time.
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http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/11/13/new.planets/index.html
By Azadeh Ansari CNN
(CNN) -- The first-ever pictures of planets outside the solar system have been released in two studies.
This Gemini Observatory image shows the three planets (b, c and d) orbiting the star HR8799.
Using the latest techniques in space technology, astronomers at NASA and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory used direct-imaging techniques to capture pictures of four newly discovered planets orbiting stars outside our solar system.
"After all these years, it's amazing to have a picture showing not one but three planets," said physicist Bruce Macintosh of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California.
"The discovery of the HR8799 system is a crucial step on the road to the ultimate detection of another Earth," he said.
None of the planets is remotely habitable, scientists said.
Both sets of research findings were published Thursday in Science Express, a journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
A team of American, British and Canadian astronomers and physicists, using the Gemini North and Keck telescopes on the Mauna Kea mountaintop in Hawaii, observed host star HR8799 to find three of the new planets.
Scientists estimate that HR8799, roughly 1.5 times the size of the sun, is 130 light years from Earth in the constellation of Pegasus. The individual planets in this planetary family are estimated to be seven to 10 times the mass of Jupiter.
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Astronomers say the star is too faint to detect with the human eye, but observers could probably see it through binoculars or small telescopes.
"This discovery is the first time we have directly imaged a family of planets around a normal star outside of our solar system," said Christian Marois, the lead astronomer in the Lawrence Livermore lab study.
About the same time, NASA astronomers using the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope surprised the space community by locating a fourth planet.
NASA's newly discovered planet, Fomalhaut b, is estimated to be roughly three times Jupiter's mass and 10.7 billion miles from its host star, Fomalhaut. NASA's images show Fomalhaut b orbiting the bright southern star Fomalhaut, which is said to be 16 times brighter than our sun and 25 light years away in the constellation Piscis Australis (Southern Fish).
"Our Hubble observations were incredibly demanding. Fomalhaut b is 1 billion times fainter than the star," Hubble astronomer Paul Kalas said. "We began this program in 2001, and our persistence finally paid off."
Previous planet-hunting efforts have relied on the traditional Doppler, or "wobble," technique, which works by measuring the gravitational influence a planet exerts on its host, or parent, star. By studying these gravitational "tug-of-wars," astronomers have been able to study a star's velocity or brightness to infer the presence of a planet. To determine whether the faint objects orbiting HR8799 were indeed planets and not other stars, astronomers studying the three newly discovered planets (HR8799b, HR8799c and HR8799d) compared images from studies conducted in different years.
In all the documented pictures, the three objects were found to be orbiting in a counter-clockwise direction around HR8799, proving that they were planets and not just background objects coincidentally aligned in the image.
According to the the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia, there have been 322 planets found outside our solar system. The latest findings bring that total to 326.
The extrasolar planets found have mostly been gaseous in their composition. Both studies indicate that direct-imaging techniques can only aid our efforts in one day finding an Earth-like planet.
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http://www.topnews.in/indias-moon-mission-placed-lunar-orbit-286024
Submitted by Mohit Joshi on Sat, 11/08/2008 - 13:14.
New Delhi - India's moon mission Chandrayaan-1 was successfully placed in lunar orbit on Saturday, officials at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said.
"The lunar orbit insertion placed the Chandrayaan in an elliptical orbit with its nearest point 400 to 500 kilometres away from the moon and the farthest, 7,500 kilometres," ISRO director S Satish said from the southern city of Bangalore.
The complex positioning which depended on precision timing was carried out from the space control room in Bangalore.
"The most critical operation has been successful. All the equipment is working perfectly," ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair was quoted as saying by CNN-IBN television.
The 1,380-kilogram spacecraft, built by the ISRO, was carried into lunar orbit by a four-stage rocket with six strap-on propellants weighing 12 tons each.
The spacecraft is carrying 11 payloads, five designed by the Indian space agency; three devised and contributed by Germany, Britain and Sweden from the European Space Agency; two from the US space agency; and one from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
The spacecraft's positioning into lunar orbit came after an 18-day journey. The manoeuvre was described as crucial and critical by scientists, who pointed out that at least
30 per cent of similar moon missions had failed at this juncture, resulting in space crafts lost in outer space.
"Our heartbeats stood still in the last 20 minutes," Nair said.
The Chandrayaan-1, described as the cheapest moon mission ever, was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre near the southern Chennai city on October 22.
By November 15, the spacecraft is expected to be orbiting the moon at a distance of 100 kilometres and sending back data and images. The Chandrayaan is also scheduled to send a probe to the moon's surface.
The moon mission's tasks include high-resolution sensing of the moon, preparing a three-dimensional atlas of its near and far sides, chemical and mineralogical mapping as well as searching for the presence of water in its polar regions.
The project cost is estimated at 3.9 billion rupees (about 80 million dollars), about a fifth of similar missions by other countries.
The success of Chandrayaan-1 has catapulted India into the club of space-faring countries, which includes the United States, Russia, Europe, China and Japan.
There has been renewed interest in the moon recently with several of the space powers planning missions to study its resources and use it as a base for space exploration.
China and Japan launched moon missions in 2007 while NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is due for an April 2009 launch. (dpa)
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Related link:
-What will you eat on the moon, how will you travel?
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/008200811081080.htm
-Moon mission: All you wanted to know before the lift-off tomorrow
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081021/jsp/nation/story_9997499.jsp
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http://en.autos.sympatico.msn.ca/news/article.aspx?cp-documentID=10431391
By Canadian Auto Press
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang reinvented in Ferrari F99 duds
Sept. 18, 2008
Weird? Just a bit, but at least California-based Moller International is beginning its flying car prototype with good stock. The test mule is a Ferrari 599 GTB, or at least a scale model, and Moller insists that the end result is workable and has production potential.
Then again, this isn't the first of such projects undertaken by Paul Moller and the company bearing his name. He's been developing the flying car since the early '80s, and has yet to have his dream take flight. Two other creations include the Moller M200 flying saucer and the M400 Sky Car, both of which have received plenty of press on their way to obscurity.
But the question remains... will the Ferrari fly? (Photo: Moller)
Moller hopes to have a life-size prototype of the Autovolanter flying soon, thanks to a wealthy Russian businessman who apparently wants to commute to his Moscow office quicker than his competitors, in the style he's become accustomed to.
The car, says Moller, will be able to fly 120 km without refueling, and travel by ground for a total of 240 km, giving it the range necessary for short-distance commuting. With this in mind, it can't be a plane flown only by specially trained pilots, but rather needs to be easy enough to manage by an occasional weekend pilot.
The Autovolanter scale prototype shows helicopter-like blades enclosed within the car's "fuselage" for vertical lift, similar in principal to Britain's Harrier fighter jet or more recently, the Rolls-Royce LiftFan and 3 Bearing Swivel Module (3BSM) that provides the vertical lift capability for the EU's Joint Strike Fighter, otherwise known as Eurofighter.
While it looks as though the Autovolanter would get some vertical takeoff and landing capability it's more likely these fans are positioned to increase in-flight stability and allow greater computer control. The car-plane will also feature a large wing folded over its backside when not in use.
Surprisingly, only 800 hp is needed to achieve flight, says Moller, and while such power should be possible via a tightly sprung version of Ferrari's V12, the engine simply weighs too much to work. Rather, the Autovolanter incorporates a hybrid powertrain featuring a rotary gasoline engine making approximately 350 hp and an electric motor developing about 500 hp.
Just like one of Ferrari's Formula One cars the Autovolanter is limited by fuel restraints, only instead of going a few more laps on a fully filled tank the car-plane requires just the right balance of fuel on board, as the more it carries the heavier it becomes shortening its range. Increasing consumption further, the added weight of excess fuel means that it needs more to get airborne.
While the idea is wonderful in a George Jetson-meets-Enzo sort of way, news on the wire suggests Moller's dream may remain just that if considerable funding (approximately $5 million) doesn't intervene.
Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University
Varanasi 221005, UP