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Quotes of the greatest

2009-04-12T06:56:00.000-07:00

Daniel Bernoulli (29 January 1700 – 27 July 1782)

“It would be better for the true physics if there were no mathematicians on earth.”

John Dalton (6 September 1766 – 27 July 1844)

“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”

Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955)

“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death”

Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790)

“I didn't fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong”

GEORGE SIMON OHM (16 March 1789 – 6 July 1854)

“Ohm's Law is the mathematical relationship among electric current, resistance, and voltage”.
The principle is named after Georg Simon Ohm.

stephen hawkins (born 8 January 1942)

“To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit".

INDIA's space exploration

2008-10-21T05:49:00.000-07:00

INDIA's moon mission may launch race for lunar landgrab
It will be a small step for mankind, but a giant leap forward for India. In a boost to national prestige, the country will launch its first unmanned moon mission tomorrow - blasting its Chandrayaan satellite into space from an island off the Bay of Bengal, using a domestically produced rocket system. In doing so, it will match China, which last year became the first Asian nation to send a satellite to orbit the moon, signalling the possibility of a race for mineral wealth on the lunar surface.
If all goes to plan, India's tricolour flag should be drifting down towards the freezing, airless lunar surface as dawn breaks over the subcontinent on November 11.
The 239,000-mile journey is not straightforward - it took the Americans and Russians almost two decades to master it, from the moment space exploration was born. Once above the Earth's atmosphere the launch vehicle's thrusters will have to manoeuvre and fire the Chandrayaan I rocket with precision.
If all goes to plan, the satellite, weighing half a tonne, will enter a lunar orbit some 62 miles above the moon's surface on November 8 and begin its two-year mission to map the moon in 3D, survey its surface for mineral wealth and start its 11 hi-tech probes, including five from the US, Sweden, Japan, Germany and Bulgaria.
One of India's aims in reaching the moon is the possibility of harvesting helium 3, a key fuel for nuclear fusion. Although fusion is not commercially viable today, scientists say it one day will be, and that once it is a fuel supply will become a problem, as the Earth is believed to have only 15 tonnes of helium 3. The moon is thought to contain up to 5m tonnes.
Officials at the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) remain tight-lipped about the possibility of a lunar land grab. UR Rao, a former director of Isro, was less circumspect, pointing out that the moon might have "enough [helium 3] to produce energy for 8,000 years". This view echoes that of the head of China's Chang'e project, who told the China Daily in 2006 that "each year three space shuttle missions could bring enough [helium 3] for all human beings across the world".
Last month, a Chinese astronaut completed a 15-minute space walk for the first time. However, India has big ambitions. There are proposals to put the first Indian into space by 2014 and to launch a manned lunar mission by 2020 - four years ahead of China's target date.
The Indian agency's next step is to launch a second unmanned lunar mission in 2011, comprising an orbiting spacecraft, a lander and a moon-rover built with Russian help.
The Chandrayaan mission, at a time of economic belt-tightening, has sparked a national debate about whether a country with hundreds of millions of poor people can afford to play catch-up in the skies.
S Satish, director of public relations at Isro, said that the Indian cabinet had given the go-ahead for the second mission in 2011, but other missions awaited approval.
"We have to consider the costs for a [manned] moon mission. Even with our low costs it will be billions of dollars. You need a good reason to send someone to the moon for that amount," Satish said.
Earlier this year India was ranked by analysts at Futron, a hi-tech consultancy, as only a fraction behind China in global space competitiveness rankings, and well ahead of Japan, Israel and Canada. It is also building a low-cost, hi-tech base. China's Chang'e I cost nearly double India's Chandrayaan I bill of $86m.
This thriftiness was born of necessity. With an annual budget of about $1bn - less than a tenth of Nasa's - Isro has to do a lot with little.
Until now India's space agency has concentrated on putting satellites in orbit. It has 11 communications satellites, using them to bring education and healthcare to remote villages via tele-links with schools and hospitals in cities.
"The whole thrust of [India's space programme] has been to get real benefits," said Gopal Raj, author of Reach For The Stars, a book about the country's rocket programme. Raj pointed out that the Madras Institute of Development Studies recently calculated that for every rupee spent on the space programme, two were generated in "indirect and direct returns".
Critics say that the space mission is a cover for an exercise in "national military-industrial ego".
Ominously, earlier this year India's chief of army staff spoke openly of his fears about China's military space programme, and stressed the need for India to accelerate its own.
"Let's face it we have an arms race here," said Praful Bidwai, a long-time critic of the space programme. "Rockets that can be used to fire satellites can be used for nuclear warheads, too. India could be spending the money on getting clean drinking water to the poor, get food in their belly. Instead it chooses to blast its way into a space race."
Reach for the stars
US Nasa put Neil Armstrong on the moon in 1969. Plans include a return manned trip to the moon by 2020.
China Completed its first manned space flight in 2003 and launched a lunar satellite in October last year. This year, Zhai Zhigang became the first Chinese to walk in space. Ambitious plans include its own space station.
Russia First to launch a satellite in 1957, and four years later launched the first human into space.
Europe European Space Agency's Ariane rocket programme became a world leader in commercial space launches in the 90s. Plans a mission to search for signs of life on Mars in 2016.
Japan First ever minister of space development appointed this year.

Tsuunami

2008-10-21T05:33:00.000-07:00

A tsunami (pronounced /(t)suːˈnɑːmi/) is a series of waves created when a body of water, such as an ocean, is rapidly displaced. Earthquakes, mass movements above or below water, some volcanic eruptions and other underwater explosions, landslides, underwater earthquakes, large asteroid impacts and testing with nuclear weapons at sea all have the potential to generate a tsunami. The effects of a tsunami can be devastating due to the immense volumes of water and energy involved. Since meteorites are small, they will not generate a tsunami.
The Greek historian Thucydides was the first to relate tsunamis to submarine quakes,but understanding of the nature of tsunamis remained slim until the 20th century and is the subject of ongoing research.
Many early geological, geographic, oceanographic etc., texts refer to "Seismic sea waves"—these are now referred to as "tsunami".
Some meteorological storm conditions—deep depressions causing cyclones, hurricanes—can generate a storm surge which can be several metres above normal tide levels. This is due to the low atmospheric pressure within the centre of the depression. As these storm surges come ashore the surge can resemble a tsunami, inundating vast areas of land. These are not tsunami. Such a storm surge inundated Burma (Myanmar) in May 2008
Causes
A tsunami can be generated when converging or destructive plate boundaries abruptly move and vertically displace the overlying water. It is very unlikely that they can form at divergent (constructive) or conservative plate boundaries. This is because constructive or conservative boundaries do not generally disturb the vertical displacement of the water column. Subduction zone related earthquakes generate the majority of all tsunamis.
A tsunami has a much smaller amplitude (wave height) offshore, and a very long wavelength (often hundreds of kilometers long), which is why they generally pass unnoticed at sea, forming only a slight swell usually about 300 mm above the normal sea surface. A tsunami can occur at any state of the tide and even at low tide will still inundate coastal areas if the incoming waves surge high enough.
On April 1, 1946 a Magnitude 7.8 (Richter Scale) earthquake occurred near the Aleutian Islands, Alaska. It generated a tsunami which inundated Hilo on the island of Hawai'i with a 14 m high surge. The area where the earthquake occurred is where the Pacific Ocean floor is subducting (or being pushed downwards) under Alaska.
Examples of tsunami being generated at locations away from convergent boundaries include Storegga during the Neolithic era, Grand Banks 1929, Papua New Guinea 1998 (Tappin, 2001). In the case of the Grand Banks and Papua New Guinea tsunamis an earthquake caused sediments to become unstable and subsequently fail. These slumped and as they flowed down slope a tsunami was generated. These tsunami did not travel transoceanic distances.
It is not known what caused the Storegga sediments to fail. It may have been due to overloading of the sediments causing them to become unstable and they then failed solely as a result of being overloaded. It is also possible that an earthquake caused the sediments to become unstable and then fail. Another theory is that a release of gas hydrates (methane etc.,) caused the slump.
The "Great Chilean earthquake" (19:11 hrs UTC) May 22, 1960 (9.5 Mw), the March 27, 1964 "Good Friday earthquake" Alaska 1964 (9.2 Mw), and the "Great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake" (00:58:53 UTC) December 26, 2004 (9.2 Mw), are recent examples of powerful megathrust earthquakes that generated a tsunami that was able to cross oceans. Smaller (4.2 Mw) earthquakes in Japan can trigger tsunami that can devastate nearby coasts within 15 minutes or less.
In the 1950s it was hypothesised that larger tsunamis than had previously been believed possible may be caused by landslides, explosive volcanic action e.g., Santorini, Krakatau, and impact events when they contact water. These phenomena rapidly displace large volumes of water, as energy from falling debris or expansion is transferred to the water into which the debris falls at a rate faster than the ocean water can absorb it. They have been named by the media as "mega-tsunami."
Tsunami caused by these mechanisms, unlike the trans-oceanic tsunami caused by some earthquakes, may dissipate quickly and rarely affect coastlines distant from the source due to the small area of sea affected. These events can give rise to much larger local shock waves (solitons), such as the landslide at the head of Lituya Bay 1958, which produced a wave with an initial surge estimated at 524 m. However, an extremely large gravitational landslide might generate a so called "mega-tsunami" that may have the ability to travel trans-oceanic distances. This though is strongly debated and there is no actual geological evidence to support this hypothesis.
Characteristics
While everyday wind waves have a wavelength (from crest to crest) of about 100 m (300 ft) and a height of roughly 2 m (7 ft), a tsunami in the deep ocean has a wavelength of about 200 km (120 miles). This wave travels at well over 800 km/h (500 mph), but due to the enormous wavelength the wave oscillation at any given point takes 20 or 30 minutes to complete a cycle and has an amplitude of only about 1 m (3 ft). This makes tsunamis difficult to detect over deep water. Their passage usually goes unnoticed by ships.
As the tsunami approaches the coast and the waters become shallow, the wave is compressed due to wave shoaling and its forward travel slows below 80 km/h (50 mph). Its wavelength diminishes to less than 20 km (12 miles) and its amplitude grows enormously, producing a distinctly visible wave. Since the wave still has a wavelength on the order of several km (a few miles), the tsunami may take minutes to ramp up to full height, with victims seeing a massive deluge of rising ocean rather than a cataclysmic wall of water. Open bays and coastlines adjacent to very deep water may shape the tsunami further into a step-like wave with a steep breaking front.

A little about MARS

2008-10-21T05:20:00.000-07:00

Mars (pronounced /ˈmɑrz/) is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after Mars, the Roman god of war. It is also referred to as the "Red Planet" because of its reddish appearance.
Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere, having surface features reminiscent both of the impact craters of the Moon and the volcanoes, valleys, deserts and polar ice caps of Earth. It is the site of Olympus Mons, the highest known mountain in the Solar System, and of Valles Marineris, the largest canyon. Furthermore, in June 2008 three articles published in Nature presented evidence of an enormous impact crater in Mars' northern hemisphere, 10 600 km long by 8 500 km wide, or roughly four times larger than the largest impact crater yet discovered, the South Pole-Aitken basin.In addition to its geographical features, Mars’ rotational period and seasonal cycles are likewise similar to those of Earth.
Until the first flyby of Mars by Mariner 4 in 1965, many speculated that there might be liquid water on the planet's surface. This was based on observations of periodic variations in light and dark patches, particularly in the polar latitudes, which looked like seas and continents, while long, dark striations were interpreted by some observers as irrigation channels for liquid water. These straight line features were later proven not to exist and were instead explained as optical illusions. Still, of all the planets in the Solar System other than Earth, Mars is the most likely to harbor liquid water, and perhaps life.Water, in the state of ice, was found by the Phoenix Mars Lander on July 31, 2008.Mars is currently host to three functional orbiting spacecraft: Mars Odyssey, Mars Express, and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This is more than any planet in the Solar System except Earth. The surface is also home to the two Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity), the lander Phoenix, and several inert landers and rovers that either failed or completed missions. Geological evidence gathered by these and preceding missions suggests that Mars previously had large-scale water coverage, while observations also indicate that small geyser-like water flows have occurred during the past decade.Observations by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor show evidence that parts of the southern polar ice cap have been receding.Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are small and irregularly shaped. These may be captured asteroids, similar to 5261 Eureka, a Martian Trojan asteroid. Mars can be seen from Earth with the naked eye. Its apparent magnitude reaches −2.9,a brightness surpassed only by Venus, the Moon, and the Sun, though most of the time Jupiter will appear brighter to the naked eye than Mars.

Bermuda Triangle

2008-10-19T05:51:00.001-07:00

Known Facts
One well known case in 1962 vividly brings home the need for careful behind-the-scenes probing. Once again, it involves an aircraft. The date was January 8, 1962. A huge 4 engine KB-50 aerial tanker was en route from the east coast to Lajes in the Azores. The captain, Major Bob Tawney, reported in at the expected time. All was normal, routine. But he, his 8 crew and big tanker, never made the Azores. Apparently, the last word from the flight had been that routine report, a report which had placed them a few hundred miles off the east coast. FLASH! the media broadcasted, fed by a sincere Coast Guard issued press statement, that a large oil slick was sighted 300 miles off Norfolk, Virginia, in the planes proposed route. The mystery could be breaking. . . . But that was the only clue ever found. Although never proved it was from the plane, publicly the suspicions were obvious: the tanker and its qualified crew met a horrid and sudden death by crashing headlong into the sea. However, the report-- finished months later-- confirmed no such thing. Tawney had been clearly overheard by a Navy transport hours after his last message. This placed him north of Bermuda, hundreds of miles past the spot of the oil slick. There is no evidence, therefore, that the plane and its crew ever met any known fate. The contradiction was hardly the presss fault. Nor was it totally the blame of the Coast Guard. As soon as scratchy information came in, it was directed to the by-standing media. But this had misleading effects, as the KB-50 case demonstrated.
With almost every case the same thing has happened. By the time concrete information is obtained, the story has lost its appeal, and no follow-ups ever find their way into the papers. I have tried to stay away, therefore, from relying on any newspaper accounts. These, unfortunately, have almost always been the exclusive source for any popular account of an incident, whether in a magazine or book, previous to this web site.
Approaching the subject from the back door, so to speak, free of the hype and public forum, has yielded more startling information. For instance, no more than a few disappearances of airplanes have been reported in the last 2 decades, yet mystery has struck with skillful hands. Searches of the database of National Transportation Safety Board reveal some 75 aircraft have gone missing. Projecting Coast Guard statistics on
Bermuda Triangle.Org tries to bring you much more than just the facts on incidents. Charts & Maps guide you to the geography of the Triangle, plus marking possible locations for the missing. Accurate diagrams of the types of vessels and planes allows you to visualize every type of ship and plane to disappear. Photographs bring the actual victims to life, and original artwork recreates the circumstances in which many of the victims vanished. In Search Of . . . takes you below the silent waters of the Triangle in an attempt to find the grave of the lost. Theories recalls all the conjecture on the Triangle, both old and new, some startling possibilities and some basic concepts, plus exposing some outright mistakes.
Featured Articles highlights some of the most famous cases and other news subjects relevant to the Bermuda Triangle. Go to the Archives now for a look at all of them.
At Site News Ill keep you posted on anything relevant to the site.
Permission was quickly granted. The turbo jet was then seen ascending from 25,300 feet to its cruising altitude of 29,000. All seemed normal. They were still ascending. Verdi had not yet rogered reaching his new altitude. Radar continued to track the Cougar until, for some unknown reason, it simply faded away. Verdi and Lukaris answered no more calls to respond. They had sent no MAYDAY to indicate a problem. Read-outs of the radar observations confirmed the unusual: The Cougar had not been captured at all descending or falling to the sea. Frankly, it had just vanished while climbing; it simply faded away. One sweep they were there . . . the next?
If you are interested in reading about all this, this web site provides dozens of pages to whet your appetite. Investigations gives you detailed investigations into some of the more interesting and provocative cases and, of course, profiles most any incident, old and new.
missing boats is truly mind boggling, perhaps reaching over 2,000. Often when faced with what these reports contain, I have come away badly jolted. It has caused me to revise several well-known cases, and has made it possible to present accurate accounts of what has transpired in the last 20 years. These last, I must presume, are here to the public presented for the first time since I know of no other research done in this period.
It was Halloween, 1991. Radar controllers checked and rechecked what they had just seen. The scope was blank in a spot now. Everywhere else all seemed normal. Routine traffic was proceeding undisturbed, in their vectors, tracked and uninterrupted. But just moments earlier they had been tracking a Grumman Cougar jet. The pilot was John Verdi. He and trained co-pilot, Paul Lukaris, were on a flight toward Tallahassee Moments before Verdis voice had crackled over the receiver at the flight center: Uh, this is November two four Whiskey Juliet (N24WJ). I am at, uh, two five three zero zero. Request ascent two niner zero. Over.

Our Universe

2008-10-19T05:33:00.000-07:00

The Universe is defined as everything that physically exists: the entirety of space and time, all forms of matter, energy and momentum, and the physical laws and constants that govern them. However, the term "universe" may be used in slightly different contextual senses, denoting such concepts as the cosmos, the world or Nature.
Astronomical observations indicate that the universe is 13.73 ± 0.12 billion years old[1] and at least 93 billion light years across. According to the prevailing scientific theory, the universe has expanded from a gravitational singularity known as the Big Bang, a point in space and time at which all the matter and energy of the observable universe were concentrated. Since the Big Bang, the universe has expanded to its present form, possibly with a brief period of cosmic inflation.[2] Several independent experimental measurements support this theoretical expansion and, more generally, the Big Bang theory. Recent observations indicate that this expansion is accelerating, and that most of the matter and energy in the universe is fundamentally different from that observed on Earth and not directly observable (cf. dark matter and dark energy). The imprecision of current observations has hindered predictions of the ultimate fate of the universe.
Experiments suggest that the universe has been governed by the same physical laws and constants throughout its extent and history. The dominant force at cosmological distances is gravity, and general relativity is currently the most accurate theory of gravitation. The remaining three fundamental forces and all the known particles on which they act are described by the Standard Model. The universe has at least three dimensions of space and one of time, although extremely small additional dimensions cannot be ruled out experimentally. Spacetime appears to be smoothly and simply connected, and space has very small mean curvature, so that Euclidean geometry is accurate on the average throughout the universe.
The word "universe" is usually defined as encompassing everything. However, using an alternate definition, some have speculated that this "universe" is one of many disconnected "universes", which are collectively denoted as the multiverse. For example, in bubble universe theory, there are an infinite variety of "universes", each with different physical constants. Similarly, in the many-worlds hypothesis, new "universes" are spawned with every quantum measurement. Since these universes are, by definition, disconnected from our own, these speculations cannot be tested experimentally.
Throughout recorded history, several cosmologies and cosmogonies have been proposed to account for observations of the universe. The earliest quantitative models were developed by the ancient Greeks, who proposed that the universe possesses infinite space and has existed eternally, but contains a single set of concentric spheres of finite size – corresponding to the fixed stars, the Sun and various planets – rotating about a spherical but unmoving Earth. Over the centuries, more precise observations and improved theories of gravity led to Copernicus' heliocentric model and the Newtonian model of the solar system, respectively. Further improvements in astronomy led to the characterization of the Milky Way, and the discovery of other galaxies and the microwave background radiation; careful studies of the distribution of these galaxies and their spectral lines have led to much of modern cosmology.

Walt Disney

2008-09-25T07:31:00.000-07:00

Walt Disney was born to Elias Disney an Irish-Canadian, and his mother, Flora Call Disney, who was of German-American descent.Walt Disney's ancestors had emigrated from Gowran, County Kilkenny in Ireland. Arundel Elias Disney, great-grandfather of Walt Disney was born in Kilkenny, Ireland in 1801 and was a descendant of Hughes and his son Robert d'Isigny (France) who settled in England with William the Conquereor in 1066.His father Elias Disney moved from Huron County, Ontario to the United States in 1878, seeking first for gold in California but finally farming with his parents near Ellis, Kansas until 1884. He worked for Union Pacific Railroad and married Flora Call on January 1, 1888 in Acron, Florida. The family moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1890,where his brother Robert lived.For most of his early life, Robert helped Elias financially.In 1906, when Walt was four, Elias and his family moved to a farm in Marceline, Missouri,where his brother Roy had recently purchased farmland.While in Marceline, Disney developed his love for drawing.One of their neighbours, a retired doctor named "Doc" Sherwood, paid him to draw pictures of Sherwood's horse, Rupert.He also developed his love for trains in Marceline, which owed its existence to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway which ran through town. Walt would put his ear to the tracks in anticipation of the coming train.Then he would look for his uncle, engineer Michael Martin, running the train.
The Disneys remained in Marceline for four years,before moving to Kansas City in 1911.There, Walt and his sister Ruth attended the Benton Grammar School where he met Walter Pfeiffer. The Pfeiffers were theatre aficionados, and introduced Walt to the world of vaudeville and motion pictures. Soon, Walt was spending more time at the Pfeiffers' than at home.Walter Elias Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was a multiple Academy Award-winning American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur and philanthropist. Disney is famous for his influence in the field of entertainment during the twentieth century. As the co-founder (with his brother Roy O. Disney) of Walt Disney Productions, Disney became one of the best-known motion picture producers in the world. The corporation he co-founded, now known as The Walt Disney Company, today has annual revenues of approximately U.S. $35 billion.
Disney is particularly noted for being a film producer and a popular showman, as well as an innovator in animation and theme park design. He and his staff created a number of the world's most famous fictional characters, including the one many consider Disney's alter ego, Mickey Mouse.[citation needed] He received fifty-nine Academy Award nominations and won twenty-six Oscars, including a record four in one year[2], and thus holds the record for the individual with the most awards and the most nominations. He also won seven Emmy Awards. He is the namesake for Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resort theme parks in the United States, Japan, France, and China.
Disney died of lung cancer on December 15, 1966, a few years prior to the opening of his Walt Disney World Resort dream project in Florida.

About BIG BANG theory

2008-09-25T07:27:00.000-07:00

The Big Bang is the cosmological model of the universe that is best supported by all lines of scientific evidence and observation. The essential idea is that the universe has expanded from a primordial hot and dense initial condition at some finite time in the past and continues to expand to this day. Georges Lemaître proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe, although he called it his 'hypothesis of the primeval atom'. The framework for the model relies on Albert Einstein's General Relativity as formulated by Alexander Friedmann. After Edwin Hubble discovered in 1929 that the distances to far away galaxies were generally proportional to their redshifts, this observation was taken to indicate that all very distant galaxies and clusters have an apparent velocity directly away from our vantage point. The farther away, the higher the apparent velocity.[1] If the distance between galaxy clusters is increasing today, everything must have been closer together in the past. This idea has been considered in detail back in time to extreme densities and temperatures, and large particle accelerators have been built to experiment on and test such conditions, resulting in significant confirmation of the theory. But these accelerators can only probe so far into such high energy regimes. Without any evidence associated with the earliest instant of the expansion, the Big Bang theory cannot and does not provide any explanation for such an initial condition, rather explaining the general evolution of the universe since that instant. The observed abundances of the light elements throughout the cosmos closely match the calculated predictions for the formation of these elements from nuclear processes in the rapidly expanding and cooling first minutes of the universe, as logically and quantitatively detailed according to Big Bang nucleosynthesis.
Fred Hoyle is credited with coining the phrase 'Big Bang' during a 1949 radio broadcast, as a derisive reference to a theory he did not subscribe to.[2] Hoyle later helped considerably in the effort to figure out the nuclear pathway for building certain heavier elements from lighter ones. After the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation in 1964, and especially when its collective frequencies sketched out a blackbody curve, most scientists were fairly convinced by the evidence that some Big Bang scenario must have occurred.

About SIR ISAAC NEWTON

2008-09-25T07:15:00.000-07:00

Isaac Newton's life can be divided into three quite distinct periods. The first is his boyhood days from 1643 up to his appointment to a chair in 1669. The second period from 1669 to 1687 was the highly productive period in which he was Lucasian professor at Cambridge. The third period (nearly as long as the other two combined) saw Newton as a highly paid government official in London with little further interest in mathematical research.
Isaac Newton was born in the manor house of Woolsthorpe, near Grantham in Lincolnshire. Although by the calendar in use at the time of his birth he was born on Christmas Day 1642, we give the date of 4 January 1643 in this biography which is the "corrected" Gregorian calendar date bringing it into line with our present calendar. (The Gregorian calendar was not adopted in England until 1752.) Isaac Newton came from a family of farmers but never knew his father, also named Isaac Newton, who died in October 1642, three months before his son was born. Although Isaac's father owned property and animals which made him quite a wealthy man, he was completely uneducated and could not sign his own name.You can see a picture of Woolsthorpe Manor as it is now.
Isaac's mother Hannah Ayscough remarried Barnabas Smith the minister of the church at North Witham, a nearby village, when Isaac was two years old. The young child was then left in the care of his grandmother Margery Ayscough at Woolsthorpe. Basically treated as an orphan, Isaac did not have a happy childhood. His grandfather James Ayscough was never mentioned by Isaac in later life and the fact that James left nothing to Isaac in his will, made when the boy was ten years old, suggests that there was no love lost between the two. There is no doubt that Isaac felt very bitter towards his mother and his step-father Barnabas Smith. When examining his sins at age nineteen, Isaac listed:-
Threatening my father and mother Smith to burn them and the house over them.
Upon the death of his stepfather in 1653, Newton lived in an extended family consisting of his mother, his grandmother, one half-brother, and two half-sisters. From shortly after this time Isaac began attending the Free Grammar School in Grantham. Although this was only five miles from his home, Isaac lodged with the Clark family at Grantham. However he seems to have shown little promise in academic work. His school reports described him as 'idle' and 'inattentive'. His mother, by now a lady of reasonable wealth and property, thought that her eldest son was the right person to manage her affairs and her estate. Isaac was taken away from school but soon showed that he had no talent, or interest, in managing an estate.
An uncle, William Ayscough, decided that Isaac should prepare for entering university and, having persuaded his mother that this was the right thing to do, Isaac was allowed to return to the Free Grammar School in Grantham in 1660 to complete his school education. This time he lodged with Stokes, who was the headmaster of the school, and it would appear that, despite suggestions that he had previously shown no academic promise, Isaac must have convinced some of those around him that he had academic promise. Some evidence points to Stokes also persuading Isaac's mother to let him enter university, so it is likely that Isaac had shown more promise in his first spell at the school than the school reports suggest. Another piece of evidence comes from Isaac's list of sins referred to above. He lists one of his sins as:-
... setting my heart on money, learning, and pleasure more than Thee ...
which tells us that Isaac must have had a passion for learning.
We know nothing about what Isaac learnt in preparation for university, but Stokes was an able man and almost certainly gave Isaac private coaching and a good grounding. There is no evidence that he learnt any mathematics, but we cannot rule out Stokes introducing him to Euclid's Elements which he was well capable of teaching (although there is evidence mentioned below that Newton did not read Euclid before 1663). Anecdotes abound about a mechanical ability which Isaac displayed at the school and stories are told of his skill in making models of machines, in particular of clocks and windmills. However, when biographers seek information about famous people there is always a tendency for people to report what they think is expected of them, and these anecdotes may simply be made up later by those who felt that the most famous scientist in the world ought to have had these skills at school.
Newton entered his uncle's old College, Trinity College Cambridge, on 5 June 1661. He was older than most of his fellow students but, despite the fact that his mother was financially well off, he entered as a sizar. A sizar at Cambridge was a student who received an allowance toward college expenses in exchange for acting as a servant to other students. There is certainly some ambiguity in his position as a sizar, for he seems to have associated with "better class" students rather than other sizars. Westfall has suggested that Newton may have had Humphrey Babington, a distant relative who was a Fellow of Trinity, as his patron. This reasonable explanation would fit well with what is known and mean that his mother did not subject him unnecessarily to hardship as some of his biographers claim.
Newton's aim at Cambridge was a law degree. Instruction at Cambridge was dominated by the philosophy of Aristotle but some freedom of study was allowed in the third year of the course. Newton studied the philosophy of Descartes, Gassendi, Hobbes, and in particular Boyle. The mechanics of the Copernican astronomy of Galileo attracted him and he also studied Kepler's Optics. He recorded his thoughts in a book which he entitled Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae (Certain Philosophical Questions). It is a fascinating account of how Newton's ideas were already forming around 1664. He headed the text with a Latin statement meaning "Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my best friend is truth" showing himself a free thinker from an early stage.
How Newton was introduced to the most advanced mathematical texts of his day is slightly less clear. According to de Moivre, Newton's interest in mathematics began in the autumn of 1663 when he bought an astrology book at a fair in Cambridge and found that he could not understand the mathematics in it. Attempting to read a trigonometry book, he found that he lacked knowledge of geometry and so decided to read Barrow's edition of Euclid's Elements. The first few results were so easy that he almost gave up but he:-
... changed his mind when he read that parallelograms upon the same base and between the same parallels are equal.
Returning to the beginning, Newton read the whole book with a new respect. He then turned to Oughtred's Clavis Mathematica and Descartes' La Géométrie. The new algebra and analytical geometry of Viète was read by Newton from Frans van Schooten's edition of Viète's collected works published in 1646. Other major works of mathematics which he studied around this time was the newly published major work by van Schooten Geometria a Renato Des Cartes which appeared in two volumes in 1659-1661. The book contained important appendices by three of van Schooten disciples, Jan de Witt, Johan Hudde, and Hendrick van Heuraet. Newton also studied Wallis's Algebra and it appears that his first original mathematical work came from his study of this text. He read Wallis's method for finding a square of equal area to a parabola and a hyperbola which used indivisibles. Newton made notes on Wallis's treatment of series but also devised his own proofs of the theorems writing:-
Thus Wallis doth it, but it may be done thus ...
It would be easy to think that Newton's talent began to emerge on the arrival of Barrow to the Lucasian chair at Cambridge in 1663 when he became a Fellow at Trinity College. Certainly the date matches the beginnings of Newton's deep mathematical studies. However, it would appear that the 1663 date is merely a coincidence and that it was only some years later that Barrow recognised the mathematical genius among his students.
Despite some evidence that his progress had not been particularly good, Newton was elected a scholar on 28 April 1664 and received his bachelor's degree in April 1665. It would appear that his scientific genius had still not emerged, but it did so suddenly when the plague closed the University in the summer of 1665 and he had to return to Lincolnshire. There, in a period of less than two years, while Newton was still under 25 years old, he began revolutionary advances in mathematics, optics, physics, and astronomy.
While Newton remained at home he laid the foundations for differential and integral calculus, several years before its independent discovery by Leibniz. The 'method of fluxions', as he termed it, was based on his crucial insight that the integration of a function is merely the inverse procedure to differentiating it. Taking differentiation as the basic operation, Newton produced simple analytical methods that unified many separate techniques previously developed to solve apparently unrelated problems such as finding areas, tangents, the lengths of curves and the maxima and minima of functions. Newton's De Methodis Serierum et Fluxionum was written in 1671 but Newton failed to get it published and it did not appear in print until John Colson produced an English translation in 1736.
When the University of Cambridge reopened after the plague in 1667, Newton put himself forward as a candidate for a fellowship. In October he was elected to a minor fellowship at Trinity College but, after being awarded his Master's Degree, he was elected to a major fellowship in July 1668 which allowed him to dine at the Fellows' Table. In July 1669 Barrow tried to ensure that Newton's mathematical achievements became known to the world. He sent Newton's text De Analysi to Collins in London writing:-
[Newton] brought me the other day some papers, wherein he set down methods of calculating the dimensions of magnitudes like that of Mr Mercator concerning the hyperbola, but very general; as also of resolving equations; which I suppose will please you; and I shall send you them by the next.
Collins corresponded with all the leading mathematicians of the day so Barrow's action should have led to quick recognition. Collins showed Brouncker, the President of the Royal Society, Newton's results (with the author's permission) but after this Newton requested that his manuscript be returned. Collins could not give a detailed account but de Sluze and Gregory learnt something of Newton's work through Collins. Barrow resigned the Lucasian chair in 1669 to devote himself to divinity, recommending that Newton (still only 27 years old) be appointed in his place. Shortly after this Newton visited London and twice met with Collins but, as he wrote to Gregory:-
... having no more acquaintance with him I did not think it becoming to urge him to communicate anything.
Newton's first work as Lucasian Professor was on optics and this was the topic of his first lecture course begun in January 1670. He had reached the conclusion during the two plague years that white light is not a simple entity. Every scientist since Aristotle had believed that white light was a basic single entity, but the chromatic aberration in a telescope lens convinced Newton otherwise. When he passed a thin beam of sunlight through a glass prism Newton noted the spectrum of colours that was formed.
He argued that white light is really a mixture of many different types of rays which are refracted at slightly different angles, and that each different type of ray produces a different spectral colour. Newton was led by this reasoning to the erroneous conclusion that telescopes using refracting lenses would always suffer chromatic aberration. He therefore proposed and constructed a reflecting telescope.
In 1672 Newton was elected a fellow of the Royal Society after donating a reflecting telescope. Also in 1672 Newton published his first scientific paper on light and colour in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The paper was generally well received but Hooke and Huygens objected to Newton's attempt to prove, by experiment alone, that light consists of the motion of small particles rather than waves. The reception that his publication received did nothing to improve Newton's attitude to making his results known to the world. He was always pulled in two directions, there was something in his nature which wanted fame and recognition yet another side of him feared criticism and the easiest way to avoid being criticised was to publish nothing. Certainly one could say that his reaction to criticism was irrational, and certainly his aim to humiliate Hooke in public because of his opinions was abnormal. However, perhaps because of Newton's already high reputation, his corpuscular theory reigned until the wave theory was revived in the 19th century.
Newton's relations with Hooke deteriorated further when, in 1675, Hooke claimed that Newton had stolen some of his optical results. Although the two men made their peace with an exchange of polite letters, Newton turned in on himself and away from the Royal Society which he associated with Hooke as one of its leaders. He delayed the publication of a full account of his optical researches until after the death of Hooke in 1703. Newton's Opticks appeared in 1704. It dealt with the theory of light and colour and with
investigations of the colours of thin sheets
'Newton's rings' and
diffraction of light.To explain some of his observations he had to use a wave theory of light in conjunction with his corpuscular theory.
Another argument, this time with the English Jesuits in Liège over his theory of colour, led to a violent exchange of letters, then in 1678 Newton appears to have suffered a nervous breakdown. His mother died in the following year and he withdrew further into his shell, mixing as little as possible with people for a number of years.
Newton's greatest achievement was his work in physics and celestial mechanics, which culminated in the theory of universal gravitation. By 1666 Newton had early versions of his three laws of motion. He had also discovered the law giving the centrifugal force on a body moving uniformly in a circular path. However he did not have a correct understanding of the mechanics of circular motion.
Newton's novel idea of 1666 was to imagine that the Earth's gravity influenced the Moon, counter- balancing its centrifugal force. From his law of centrifugal force and Kepler's third law of planetary motion, Newton deduced the inverse-square law.
In 1679 Newton corresponded with Hooke who had written to Newton claiming:-
... that the Attraction always is in a duplicate proportion to the Distance from the Center Reciprocall ...
M Nauenberg writes an account of the next events:-
After his 1679 correspondence with Hooke, Newton, by his own account, found a proof that Kepler's areal law was a consequence of centripetal forces, and he also showed that if the orbital curve is an ellipse under the action of central forces then the radial dependence of the force is inverse square with the distance from the centre.
This discovery showed the physical significance of Kepler's second law.
In 1684 Halley, tired of Hooke's boasting [M Nauenberg]:-
... asked Newton what orbit a body followed under an inverse square force, and Newton replied immediately that it would be an ellipse. However in De Motu.. he only gave a proof of the converse theorem that if the orbit is an ellipse the force is inverse square. The proof that inverse square forces imply conic section orbits is sketched in Cor. 1 to Prop. 13 in Book 1 of the second and third editions of the Principia, but not in the first edition.
Halley persuaded Newton to write a full treatment of his new physics and its application to astronomy. Over a year later (1687) Newton published the Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica or Principia as it is always known.
The Principia is recognised as the greatest scientific book ever written. Newton analysed the motion of bodies in resisting and non-resisting media under the action of centripetal forces. The results were applied to orbiting bodies, projectiles, pendulums, and free-fall near the Earth. He further demonstrated that the planets were attracted toward the Sun by a force varying as the inverse square of the distance and generalised that all heavenly bodies mutually attract one another.
Further generalisation led Newton to the law of universal gravitation:-
... all matter attracts all other matter with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
Newton explained a wide range of previously unrelated phenomena: the eccentric orbits of comets, the tides and their variations, the precession of the Earth's axis, and motion of the Moon as perturbed by the gravity of the Sun. This work made Newton an international leader in scientific research. The Continental scientists certainly did not accept the idea of action at a distance and continued to believe in Descartes' vortex theory where forces work through contact. However this did not stop the universal admiration for Newton's technical expertise.
James II became king of Great Britain on 6 February 1685. He had become a convert to the Roman Catholic church in 1669 but when he came to the throne he had strong support from Anglicans as well as Catholics. However rebellions arose, which James put down but he began to distrust Protestants and began to appoint Roman Catholic officers to the army. He then went further, appointing only Catholics as judges and officers of state. Whenever a position at Oxford or Cambridge became vacant, the king appointed a Roman Catholic to fill it. Newton was a staunch Protestant and strongly opposed to what he saw as an attack on the University of Cambridge.
When the King tried to insist that a Benedictine monk be given a degree without taking any examinations or swearing the required oaths, Newton wrote to the Vice-Chancellor:-
Be courageous and steady to the Laws and you cannot fail.
The Vice-Chancellor took Newton's advice and was dismissed from his post. However Newton continued to argue the case strongly preparing documents to be used by the University in its defence. However William of Orange had been invited by many leaders to bring an army to England to defeat James. William landed in November 1688 and James, finding that Protestants had left his army, fled to France. The University of Cambridge elected Newton, now famous for his strong defence of the university, as one of their two members to the Convention Parliament on 15 January 1689. This Parliament declared that James had abdicated and in February 1689 offered the crown to William and Mary. Newton was at the height of his standing - seen as a leader of the university and one of the most eminent mathematicians in the world. However, his election to Parliament may have been the event which let him see that there was a life in London which might appeal to him more than the academic world in Cambridge.
After suffering a second nervous breakdown in 1693, Newton retired from research. The reasons for this breakdown have been discussed by his biographers and many theories have been proposed: chemical poisoning as a result of his alchemy experiments; frustration with his researches; the ending of a personal friendship with Fatio de Duillier, a Swiss-born mathematician resident in London; and problems resulting from his religious beliefs. Newton himself blamed lack of sleep but this was almost certainly a symptom of the illness rather than the cause of it. There seems little reason to suppose that the illness was anything other than depression, a mental illness he must have suffered from throughout most of his life, perhaps made worse by some of the events we have just listed.
Newton decided to leave Cambridge to take up a government position in London becoming Warden of the Royal Mint in 1696 and Master in 1699. However, he did not resign his positions at Cambridge until 1701. As Master of the Mint, adding the income from his estates, we see that Newton became a very rich man. For many people a position such as Master of the Mint would have been treated as simply a reward for their scientific achievements. Newton did not treat it as such and he made a strong contribution to the work of the Mint. He led it through the difficult period of recoinage and he was particularly active in measures to prevent counterfeiting of the coinage.
In 1703 he was elected president of the Royal Society and was re-elected each year until his death. He was knighted in 1705 by Queen Anne, the first scientist to be so honoured for his work. However the last portion of his life was not an easy one, dominated in many ways with the controversy with Leibniz over which had invented the calculus.
Given the rage that Newton had shown throughout his life when criticised, it is not surprising that he flew into an irrational temper directed against Leibniz. We have given details of this controversy in Leibniz's biography and refer the reader to that article for details. Perhaps all that is worth relating here is how Newton used his position as President of the Royal Society. In this capacity he appointed an "impartial" committee to decide whether he or Leibniz was the inventor of the calculus. He wrote the official report of the committee (although of course it did not appear under his name) which was published by the Royal Society, and he then wrote a review (again anonymously) which appeared in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Newton's assistant Whiston had seen his rage at first hand. He wrote:-
Newton was of the most fearful, cautious and suspicious temper that I ever knew

Discription of Tidal Power Plants

2008-09-23T07:39:00.000-07:00

The power of the rise and fall of the sea level or tidal power, can be harnessed to generate electricity.
Tidal Power
Tidal power traditionally involves erecting a dam across the opening to a tidal basin. The dam includes a sluice that is opened to allow the tide to flow into the basin; the sluice is then closed, and as the sea level drops, traditional hydropower technologies can be used to generate electricity from the elevated water in the basin. Some researchers are also trying to extract energy directly from tidal flow streams.
The energy potential of tidal basins is large — the largest facility, the La Rance station in France, generates 240 megawatts of power. Currently, France is the only country that successfully uses this power source. French engineers have noted that if the use of tidal power on a global level was brought to high enough levels, the Earth would slow its rotation by 24 hours every 2,000 years.
Tidal energy systems can have environmental impacts on tidal basins because of reduced tidal flow and silt buildup.
3 Ways of Using the Tidal Power of the Ocean
There are three basic ways to tap the ocean for its energy. We can use the ocean's waves, we can use the ocean's high and low tides, or we can use temperature differences in the water.
1 Wave Energy
Kinetic energy (movement) exists in the moving waves of the ocean. That energy can be used to power a turbine. In this simple example, (illustrated to the right) the wave rises into a chamber. The rising water forces the air out of the chamber. The moving air spins a turbine which can turn a generator.
When the wave goes down, air flows through the turbine and back into the chamber through doors that are normally closed.
This is only one type of wave-energy system. Others actually use the up and down motion of the wave to power a piston that moves up and down inside a cylinder. That piston can also turn a generator.
Most wave-energy systems are very small. But, they can be used to power a warning buoy or a small light house.
2 Tidal Energy
Another form of ocean energy is called tidal energy. When tides comes into the shore, they can be trapped in reservoirs behind dams. Then when the tide drops, the water behind the dam can be let out just like in a regular hydroelectric power plant.
In order for this to work well, you need large increases in tides. An increase of at least 16 feet between low tide to high tide is needed. There are only a few places where this tide change occurs around the earth. Some power plants are already operating using this idea. One plant in France makes enough energy from tides to power 240,000 homes.
3 Ocean Thermal Energy
The final ocean energy idea uses temperature differences in the ocean. If you ever went swimming in the ocean and dove deep below the surface, you would have noticed that the water gets colder the deeper you go. It's warmer on the surface because sunlight warms the water. But below the surface, the ocean gets very cold. That's why scuba divers wear wet suits when they dive down deep. Their wet suits trapped their body heat to keep them warm.
Power plants can be built that use this difference in temperature to make energy. A difference of at least 38 degrees Fahrenheit is needed between the warmer surface water and the colder deep ocean water.
Using this type of energy source is called Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion or OTEC. It is being used in both Japan and in Hawaii in some demonstration projects.

Blue Ray Technology

2008-09-23T07:21:00.000-07:00

In 1998, commercial HDTV sets began to appear in the consumer market; however, there was no commonly accepted, inexpensive way to record or play HD content. In fact, there was no medium with the storage required to accommodate HD codecs, except JVC's Digital VHS and Sony's HDCAM.Nevertheless, it was well known that using lasers with shorter wavelengths would enable optical storage with higher density. When Shuji Nakamura invented practical blue laser diodes, it was a sensation, although a lengthy patent lawsuit delayed commercial introduction.

Origins
Philips and Sony started two projects applying the new diodes: UDO (Ultra Density Optical) and DVR Blue (together with Pioneer), a format of rewritable discs which would eventually become Blu-ray Disc (more specifically, BD-RE),The core technologies of the formats are essentially similar.
The first DVR Blue prototypes were unveiled at the CEATEC exhibition in October 2000.Because the Blu-ray Disc standard places the data recording layer close to the surface of the disc, early discs were susceptible to contamination and scratches and had to be enclosed in plastic cartridges for protection. In February 2002, the project was officially announced as Blu-ray,and the Blu-ray Disc Association was founded by the nine initial members.
The first consumer devices were in stores on April 10, 2003. This device was the Sony BDZ-S77; a BD-RE recorder that was made available only in Japan. The recommended price was US$3800;[11] however, there was no standard for pre-recorded video and no movies were released for this player. The Blu-ray Disc standard was still years away as a newer, more secure DRM system was needed before Hollywood studios would accept it, not wanting to repeat the failure of the Content Scramble System used on DVDs.

Blu-ray Disc format finalized
The Blu-ray Disc physical specifications were finished in 2004.In January 2005, TDK announced that they had developed a hard coating polymer for Blu-ray Discs.The cartridges, no longer necessary, were scrapped. The BD-ROM specifications were finalized in early 2006.AACS LA, a consortium founded in 2004,had been developing the DRM platform that could be used to securely distribute movies to consumers. However, the final AACS standard was delayed.and then delayed again when an important member of the Blu-ray Disc group voiced concerns.At the request of the initial hardware manufacturers, including Toshiba, Pioneer and Samsung, an interim standard was published which did not include some features, like managed copy.

Launch and sales developments
The first BD-ROM players were shipped in the middle of June 2006, though HD DVD players beat them in the race to the market by a few months.The first Blu-ray Disc titles were released on June 20, 2006. The earliest releases used MPEG-2 video compression, the same method used on DVDs. The first releases using the newer VC-1 and AVC codecs were introduced in September 2006.The first movies using dual layer discs (50 GB) were introduced in October 2006.The first audio-only release was made in March 2008.The first mass-market Blu-ray Disc rewritable drive for the PC was the BWU-100A, released by Sony on July 18, 2006. It recorded both single and dual layer BD-R as well as BD-RE discs and had a suggested retail price of US$699.

Competition from HD DVD
Main article: High definition optical disc format war
The DVD Forum (which was chaired by Toshiba) was deeply split over whether to develop the more expensive blue laser technology or not. In March 2002, the forum voted to approve a proposal endorsed by Warner Bros. and other motion picture studios that involved compressing HD content onto dual-layer DVD-9 discs.In spite of this decision, however, the DVD Forum's Steering Committee announced in April that it was pursuing its own blue-laser high-definition solution. In August, Toshiba and NEC announced their competing standard Advanced Optical Disc.It was finally adopted by the DVD Forum and renamed HD DVD the next year,after being voted down twice by Blu-ray Disc Association members, prompting the U.S. Department of Justice to make preliminary investigations into the situation.
HD DVD had a head start in the high definition video market and Blu-ray Disc sales were slow at first. The first Blu-ray Disc player was perceived as expensive and buggy, and there were few titles available.This changed when PlayStation 3 launched, since every PS3 unit also functioned as a Blu-ray Disc player. At CES 2007 Warner proposed Total Hi Def which was a hybrid disc containing Blu-ray on one side and HD DVD on the other but it was never released. By January 2007, Blu-ray discs had outsold HD DVDs,and during the first three quarters of 2007, BD outsold HD DVDs by about two to one. In February 2008, Toshiba withdrew its support for the HD DVD format, leaving Blu-ray as the victor.Some analysts believe that Sony's PlayStation 3 video game console played an important role in the format war, believing it acted as a catalyst for Blu-ray Disc, as the PlayStation 3 used a Blu-ray Disc drive as its primary information storage medium.They also credited Sony's more thorough and influential marketing campaign.More recently Twentieth Century Fox have cited Blu-ray Disc's adoption of the BD+ anti-copying system as the reason they supported Blu-ray Disc over HD DVD.
End of the format war
In January 2008, a day before CES 2008, Warner Brothers, the only major studio still releasing movies in both HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc format, announced it would release only in Blu-ray Disc after May 2008. This effectively included other studios which came under the Warner umbrella, such as New Line Cinema and HBO, though in Europe HBO distribution partner the BBC announced it would, while keeping an eye on market forces, continue to release product on both formats. This led to a chain reaction in the industry, including major U.S. retailers such as Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and Circuit City dropping HD DVD in their stores. A major European retailer, Woolworths, dropped HD DVD from its inventory. Netflix and Blockbuster – major DVD rental companies – said they would no longer carry HD DVDs. Following these new developments, on February 19, 2008, Toshiba announced it would be ending production of HD DVD devices,allowing Blu-ray Disc to become the industry standard for high-density optical disks. Universal Studios, the sole major movie studio to back HD DVD since inception, shortly after Toshiba's announcement, said "while Universal values the close partnership we have shared with Toshiba, it is time to turn our focus to releasing new and catalog titles on Blu-ray Disc.Paramount Studios, which started releasing movies only in HD DVD format during late 2007, also said it would start releasing in Blu-ray Disc. Both studios announced initial Blu-ray lineups in May 2008. With this, all major Hollywood studios now support Blu-ray.
Former HD DVD supporter Microsoft had stated that they were not pursuing a Blu-ray Disc drive for the Xbox 360, and would instead focus on their digital downloads from the Xbox Live Marketplace.Blu-ray Disc began making serious strides as soon as the format war ended. Nielsen VideoScan sales numbers showed that with some titles, such as 20th Century Fox's "Hitman," up to 14% of total disc sales were from Blu-ray, although the average for the first half of the year was around 5%. Shortly after the format war ended, a study by The NPD Group found that awareness of Blu-ray Disc had reached 60% of U.S. households, with most experts predicting the business will take off in a significant fashion in the fourth quarter of 2008, when BD Live software and players--which offer a variety of Web-enabled features, from downloadable trailers to chat and instant-messaging functions--start hitting the market.
According to Singulus Technologies AG, Blu-ray is being adopted faster than the DVD format was at the same period of its development. This conclusion was made due to the fact that Singulus Technologies has received orders for 21 Blu-ray dual-layer machines during the first quarter of 2008, while 17 DVD machines of this type were made in the same period in 1997.

Laser and optics
Blu-ray Disc uses a "blue" (technically violet) laser operating at a wavelength of 405 nm to read and write data. Conventional DVDs and CDs use red and near infrared lasers at 650 nm and 780 nm respectively.
The blue-violet laser's shorter wavelength makes it possible to store more information on a 12 cm CD/DVD sized disc. The minimum "spot size" on which a laser can be focused is limited by diffraction, and depends on the wavelength of the light and the numerical aperture of the lens used to focus it. By decreasing the wavelength, increasing the numerical aperture from 0.60 to 0.85 and making the cover layer thinner to avoid unwanted optical effects, the laser beam can be focused to a smaller spot. This allows more information to be stored in the same area. For Blu-ray Disc, the spot size is 580 nm.In addition to the optical improvements, Blu-ray Discs feature improvements in data encoding that further increase the capacity. (See Compact disc for information on optical discs' physical structure.)

Hard-coating technology
Because the Blu-ray Disc data layer is closer to the surface of the disc, compared to the DVD standard, it was at first more vulnerable to scratches. The first discs were housed in cartridges for protection.
TDK was the first company to develop a working scratch protection coating for Blu-ray Discs. It was named Durabis. In addition, both Sony and Panasonic's replication methods include proprietary hard-coat technologies. Sony's rewritable media are spin-coated with a scratch-resistant and antistatic coating. Verbatim's recordable and rewritable Blu-ray Disc discs use their own proprietary hard-coat technology called ScratchGuard.
[edit] Software standards
Codecs
Codecs are compression schemes that store audio and video more efficiently, optimizing for either low space usage or quality per megabyte. There are both lossy and lossless compression techniques.
The BD-ROM specification mandates certain codec compatibilities for both hardware decoders (players) and the movie-software (content). For video, all players are required to support MPEG-2, H.264/AVC, and SMPTE VC-1. MPEG-2 is the codec used on regular DVDs, which allows backwards compatibility. H.264/AVC was developed by MPEG and VCEG as a modern successor of H.263 . VC-1 is another MPEG-4 derivative codec mostly developed by Microsoft. BD-ROM titles with video must store video using one of the three mandatory codecs. Multiple codecs on a single title are allowed.
The choice of codecs affects the producer's licensing/royalty costs, as well as the title's maximum runtime, due to differences in compression efficiency. Discs encoded in MPEG-2 video typically limit content producers to around two hours of high-definition content on a single-layer (25 GB) BD-ROM. The more advanced video codecs (VC-1 and H.264) typically achieve a video runtime twice that of MPEG-2, with comparable quality.
MPEG-2 was used by many studios, including Paramount Pictures (which initially used the VC-1 codec for HD DVD releases) for the first series of Blu-ray discs that were launched throughout 2006. Modern releases are now often encoded in either H.264/AVC or VC-1, allowing film studios to place all content on one disc, reducing costs and improving ease of use. Using these codecs will also free many GB of space for storage of bonus content in HD (1080i/p) as opposed to the SD (480i/p) typically used for most titles. Some studios (such as Warner Bros.) have released bonus content on discs encoded in a different codec than the main feature title; for example the Blu-ray release of Superman Returns uses VC-1 for the feature film and MPEG-2 for bonus content (presumably because it is simply ported from the DVD release).
For audio, BD-ROM players are required to support Dolby Digital, DTS, and linear PCM. Players may optionally support Dolby Digital Plus and DTS-HD High Resolution Audio, as well as lossless formats Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. BD-ROM titles must use one of the mandatory schemes for the primary soundtrack. A secondary audiotrack, if present, may use any of the mandatory or optional codecs.
For users recording digital television programming, the recordable Blu-ray Disc standard's initial data rate of 36 Mbit/s is more than adequate to record high-definition broadcasts from any source (IPTV, cable/satellite, or terrestrial). BD-Video movies have a maximum data transfer rate of 54 Mbit/s, a maximum AV bitrate of 48 Mbit/s (for both audio and video data), and a maximum video bitrate of 40 Mbit/s. This compares to HD DVD movies which have a maximum data transfer rate of 36 Mbit/s, a maximum AV bitrate of 30.24 Mbit/s, and a maximum video bitrate of 29.4 Mbit/s

INTERNET(its a must)

2008-09-23T07:15:00.000-07:00

Studies Find Rise In Internet Use And Related Fears
Recent reports have found that computer and Internet use are up, but so are related concerns regarding identity theft and other potential dangers. A recent report released by the Census Bureau, which was based on data collected from a 2003 population survey, found that 55% of Americans have Internet access at home. This is more than triple the amount from 1997.
Though the report is based on dated data, it clearly shows that computer usage in the U.S. is evolving. Further, it’s likely that the amount of Americans with at-home Internet access is currently higher. Internet usage appears lowest among adults who have not graduated from high school, increasing with income, education, and the presence of school-age children. Home computer use among school-age children mostly involves playing games and doing homework. For adults, the home computer is mostly used for e-mail, researching information about services and products, and reading news, sports and weather information.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project also released a report this year which found that 68% of American adults use the Internet, representing a 63% increase from the previous year, and that 22% of American adults have never used the Internet. The study also fund that Internet usage was most common among young adults and least common among those aged 70 and older.
Along with the increase in Internet usage is the rising fear of identity theft and other online dangers. Consumer Reports Webwatch recently released the results of a survey which found that 86% of computer users have been concerned enough about identity theft to change their online behavior in some way. More than 50% of those polled have stopped providing personal information over the Internet and 25% have stopped making purchases online altogether.

GLOBAL WARMING

2008-09-23T06:56:00.000-07:00

A brief discription(every one must aware of)
This article is about the current period of increasing global temperature. For other periods of warming in Earth's history, see Paleoclimatology and Geologic temperature record.

Global mean surface temperature anomaly relative to 1961–1990

Mean surface temperature anomalies during the period 1995 to 2004 with respect to the average temperatures from 1940 to 1980
Global warming is the increase in the average measured temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century, and its projected continuation.
The average global air temperature near the Earth's surface increased 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) during the 100 years ending in 2005.[1] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes "most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (man-made) greenhouse gas concentrations"[1] via an enhanced greenhouse effect. Natural phenomena such as solar variation combined with volcanoes probably had a small warming effect from pre-industrial times to 1950 and a small cooling effect from 1950 onward.[2][3]
These basic conclusions have been endorsed by at least 30 scientific societies and academies of science,[4] including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries.[5][6][7] While individual scientists have voiced disagreement with some findings of the IPCC,[8] the overwhelming majority of scientists working on climate change agree with the IPCC's main conclusions.[9][10]
Climate model projections summarized by the IPCC indicate that average global surface temperature will likely rise a further 1.1 to 6.4 °C (2.0 to 11.5 °F) during the twenty-first century.[1] This range of values results from the use of differing scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions as well as models with differing climate sensitivity. Although most studies focus on the period up to 2100, warming and sea level rise are expected to continue for more than a thousand years even if greenhouse gas levels are stabilized. The delay in reaching equilibrium is a result of the large heat capacity of the oceans.[1]
Increasing global temperature is expected to cause sea levels to rise, an increase in the intensity of extreme weather events, and significant changes to the amount and pattern of precipitation, likely leading to an expanse of tropical areas and increased pace of desertification. Other expected effects of global warming include changes in agricultural yields, modifications of trade routes, glacier retreat, mass species extinctions and increases in the ranges of disease vectors.
Remaining scientific uncertainties include the amount of warming expected in the future, and how warming and related changes will vary from region to region around the globe. Most national governments have signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but there is ongoing political and public debate worldwide regarding what, if any, action should be taken to reduce or reverse future warming or to adapt to its expected consequences.

Future of Electrical Engineering

2008-09-23T06:39:00.000-07:00

Addressing the new ones

Indeed, a degree in electrical engineering can open many doors, in part because electrical engineering is so broad. Electrical engineers have taken on many tasks that you might expect people with other technical degrees to do. Semiconductor processing, for example, is highly populated by electrical engineers, but its basis is in physics and chemistry. Other areas include optics (as applied to communications), aerospace engineering, and even life sciences. “A lot of people don't realize that a lot of biomedical devices are actually electrical devices,” noted Georgia Tech's May.
Engineering jobs also cut across technical disciplines. More and more, mechanical, chemical, and biomedical engineers use electronics to measure a product's performance. “Who says you're not going to do test and measurement on a chemical process for drug manufacturing?” asked Looft. “That's a huge area. And you better know a little bit about chemical processing when you go into that job.”
Some people with engineering degrees move out of engineering jobs but stay in their respective industries by moving into sales, marketing, and management (a few even become editors covering the industries from which they came). Others move into fields such as law and medicine. Law firms, looking for patent lawyers with technical backgrounds, may hire engineers or engineering graduates and pay for law school.
Those who choose to enter the engineering work force may find that they need skills beyond math, science, engineering basics, and problem solving. We asked the participants what additional skills employers now look for in engineering graduates. While we received some differing answers, everyone agreed that communications skills sit atop the list.
No longer is it enough to design circuits and get test results. You must communicate those results through written reports and presentations. Georgia Tech's Williams noted that the university has integrated writing of technical documents into several courses, which UCSB's Long echoed. WPI has even created an interdisciplinary major or double major in technical writing.
While schools have responded to employers looking for better communications skills, some in academia remain skeptical. One such person is Professor John Orr of WPI. “The standard example is if you hear an after dinner speech from the VP of company xyz, [he or she] will describe that employers need graduates with good communications skills, good teamwork skills, and some global experience. But when hiring managers come to campus, they look for skills such as experience with the latest Cadence software release. They're looking for engineers who can be productive from day one.”
Regardless of whether communication courses are included, it's becoming virtually impossible for schools to provide all of the required engineering skills at the undergraduate level. In fact, some people have begun to question if you should be able to enter the engineering work force with just a bachelor's degree. Employers are looking more and more for graduates with master's degrees, and the number of master's degrees relative to bachelor's degrees has risen in the past 30 years (Figure 1). (continued)
At the same time, the number of PhDs has remained relatively flat. During the last business downturn, companies may have scaled back their research budgets, relying on universities to do the work. “There's a lot less research going on in industry than there used to be,” said UCSB's Long. “Most companies have decimated their research labs.” Long argued that companies are looking for fewer PhDs than they did 10 or 15 years ago because they don't have the facilities and don't want to pay the higher salaries.
In recent years, industry has become more involved with academia. That's good for the most part, as long as industry lets the teachers teach. Often, companies sponsor student projects or contribute to the funding of research labs. Students benefit from having worked on real-world projects and by making industry contacts, which can lead to employment upon graduation. Employers benefit because they can hire graduates with practical experience.
Overall, industry involvement in projects is welcome, because the companies provide equipment, materials, and sometimes funds for student projects. “If they're paying for a project, then they should have the say over the project,” said WPI's Looft. “But it can get too involved. I have companies that want to tell us what we're going to do, educationally.”
Drexel's Kam doesn't agree. “I'm sure that there are horror stories here and there of companies who donated the equipment and wanted to control the curriculum,” he said. “But I wouldn't call it a trend nor would I say this is widespread.” Georgia Tech's May agreed that a few companies want too much involvement, but he doesn't think it's excessive. Companies are, after all, stakeholders in the graduates that these universities produce.
Looft said that companies go over the line when they say “you didn't get it done” meaning that a student project didn't produce a marketable product. When that occurs, he reminds companies that a student project is an educational endeavor that may not produce a working product.
Kam takes a different approach. He argued that companies need to get more involved in the educational process. “Industry is absent from the accreditation process,” he said. He wants to see greater participation from industry so universities can produce the engineers best qualified to keep companies competitive.
Whether you think the world has too many or too few electrical engineers, you'll probably agree that engineers make an impact on people's lives every day. Engineering has proven to be a satisfying career for many. Your work makes a difference in the world. Now, go out and tell someone how engineers contribute to society.

Alternate Fuel

2008-08-28T11:15:00.000-07:00

Biofuel can be broadly defined as solid, liquid, or gas fuel derived from recently dead biological material.This distinguishes it from fossil fuels, which are derived from long dead biological material. Biofuel can be theoretically produced from any (biological) carbon source, though the most common by far is photosynthetic plants. Various plants and plant-derived materials are used for biofuel manufacturing. Biofuels are used globally, most commonly to power vehicles and cooking stoves. Biofuel industries are expanding in Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Biofuels offer the possibility of producing energy without a net increase of carbon into the atmosphere, because the plants used in to produce the fuel have removed CO2 from the atmosphere, unlike fossil fuels which return carbon which was stored beneath the surface for millions of years into the air. Therefore, biofuel is in theory more nearly carbon neutral and less likely to increase atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. (However, doubts have been raised as to whether this benefit can be achieved in practice, see below). The use of biofuels also reduces dependence on petroleum and enhances energy security.[1]
There are two common strategies of producing biofuels. One is to grow crops high in sugar (sugar cane, sugar beet, and sweet sorghum[2]) or starch (corn/maize), and then use yeast fermentation to produce ethyl alcohol (ethanol). The second is to grow plants that contain high amounts of vegetable oil, such as oil palm, soybean, algae, or jatropha. When these oils are heated, their viscosity is reduced, and they can be burned directly in a diesel engine, or they can be chemically processed to produce fuels such as biodiesel. Wood and its byproducts can also be converted into biofuels such as woodgas, methanol or ethanol fuel. It is also possible to make cellulosic ethanol from non-edible plant parts, but this can be difficult to accomplish economically.
Biofuels are discussed as having significant roles in a variety of international issues, including: mitigation of carbon emissions levels and oil prices, the "food vs fuel" debate, deforestation and soil erosion, impact on water resources, and energy balance and efficiency.

Biofuel Basics Starter Kit
Biofuel Basics has developed a revolutionary method for producing an inexpensive, high performance fuel that can power ANY DIESEL ENGINE and the cost to you is only 45 cents per gallon! Includes our manual (which shows you how to make our fuel and a low cost fueling station) and an 18oz. bottle of our Biofuel Additive which makes 131 gallons of fuel!
How it work's
Biofuel Basics designed a simple, easy to use formula, so you can start saving now. The basic cost to get started can be as low as $37.49 for the starter kit. First of all, you will need some used vegetable oil from local restaurants, which they are more than happy to get rid of, or you can purchase it at the store. We will show you how to get all your oil for free in our Biofuel Basics manual and help recycle used vegetable oil for a better environment. There are only four basic steps to make Bio-Fuel No. 2.
1) Get new or used vegetable oil ( new oil will cost more to make).
2) Filter used oil thru our fueling station (not necessary for new oil).
3) Use our recommended ingredients and our additive (MPX3 catalytic bonder) and mix for just minutes and your done!
4) Pump the biodiesel in your vehicle and drive away.
It's that simple and anybody can do it. And your cost is only 45 cents per gallon! You are not only saving money, but you are saving the environment. The earth needs your help. The choice is yours!

NANOTECH

2008-08-28T11:00:00.000-07:00

Energy applications of nanotechnology

The most advanced nanotechnology projects related to energy are: storage, conversion, manufacturing improvements by reducing materials and process rates, energy saving (by better thermal insulation for example), and enhanced renewable energy sources.

Reduction of energy consumption
A reduction of energy consumption can be reached by better insulation systems, by the use of more efficient lighting or combustion systems, and by use of lighter and stronger materials in the transportation sector. Currently used light bulbs only convert approximately 5% of the electrical energy into light. Nanotechnological approaches like light-emitting diodes (LEDs) or quantum caged atoms (QCAs) could lead to a strong reduction of energy consumption for illumination.

Increasing the efficiency of energy production
Today's best solar cells have layers of several different semiconductors stacked together to absorb light at different energies but they still only manage to use 40 percent of the Sun's energy. Commercially available solar cells have much lower efficiencies (15-20%). Nanotechnology could help increase the efficiency of light conversion by using nanostructures with a continuum of bandgaps. The degree of efficiency of the internal combustion engine is about 30-40% at the moment. Nanotechnology could improve combustion by designing specific catalysts with maximized surface area. In 2005, scientists at the University of Toronto developed a spray-on nanoparticle substance that, when applied to a surface, instantly transforms it into a solar collector.[1]

The use of more environmentally friendly energy systems
An example for an environmentally friendly form of energy is the use of fuel cells powered by hydrogen, which is ideally produced by renewable energies. Probably the most prominent nanostructured material in fuel cells is the catalyst consisting of carbon supported noble metal particles with diameters of 1-5 nm. Suitable materials for hydrogen storage contain a large number of small nanosized pores. Therefore many nanostructured materials like nanotubes, zeolites or alanates are under investigation. Nanotechnology can contribute to the further reduction of combustion engine pollutants by nanoporous filters, which can clean the exhaust mechanically, by catalytic converters based on nanoscale noble metal particles or by catalytic coatings on cylinder walls and catalytic nanoparticles as additive for fuels.

Recycling of batteries
Because of the relatively low energy density of batteries the operating time is limited and a replacement or recharging is needed. The huge number of spent batteries and accumulators represent a disposal problem. The use of batteries with higher energy content or the use of rechargeable batteries or supercapacitors with higher rate of recharging using nanomaterials could be helpful for the battery disposal problem