When Albert Einstein constructed his general theory of relativity he decided to resort to some reverse engineering and introduced a 'pressure' term in his equations. The value of this pressure was chosen such that it kept the general relativistic description of the universe stable against the gravitational attraction of the matter filling the universe.

This Memorial Day weekend, it is tradition to visit the graves of our fallen military soldiers – to remember, appreciate, and honor the lives given in service to our nation’s security and freedom. It is humbling to visit a national cemetery and see the thousands of headstones – each representing a life, a story, and a service to our country.

DUBAI, UAE, May 25 /PRNewswire/ -- The Islamic finance industry gets its first dedicated training portal: IslamicAdvisory.com, Islamic Finance Training, Online. Certified by leading scholars, the portal is the first to provide streamable, interactive Islamic finance training modules ideal for training across large-scale institutions, as one prominent user, Yusuf Jha, Shariah Controller at Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank, describes it.

Commenting on the launch, IslamicAdvisory's MD Atif Khan said, So far the Islamic finance industry has relied on 2 day crash courses to get by. But bankers are frustrated with paying thousands of dollars for theory and coffee. What is needed is practical, bank-wide training throughout the year, with case studies, quizzes, and in-house testing.

NEW YORK, May 25 /PRNewswire/ --

- Fortent Connect is First Complete System for Anti-Money Laundering, Fraud, Customer Due Diligence, and Reporting

Fortent (http://www.fortent.com) today announced the introduction of Fortent Connect, a solution designed to help mid-sized financial institutions fight crime and manage regulatory compliance. Fortent Connect is easy to use and implement, and delivers high performance at a competitive price.

We developed Fortent Connect in response to a market need for an all-in-one financial crimes solution that can deliver great results within today's tight budgets, says Sandy Jaffee, Fortent's Chairman and CEO.

HSIN-CHU, Taiwan, May 25 /PRNewswire/ --

MediaTek, Inc., the leading fabless semiconductor company for wireless communications and digital multimedia solutions, today announced MT3329, its advanced single-chip all-in-one GPS solution. This product in mass production has also been integrated by a wide range of Garmin outdoor navigators, the Garmin GPSMAP 60 series. The adoption of MT3329 by Garmin, a world leader in portable navigation, shows MediaTek's ability to deliver superior tracking sensitivity with least power consumption which is vital for Portable Navigation Devices.

Professor Maria da Graça Bicalho, head of the Immunogenetics and Histocompatibility Laboratory at the University of Parana, Brazil, told the annual conference of the European Society of Human Genetics that people with diverse major histocompatibility complexes (MHCs) were more likely to choose each other as mates than those whose MHCs were similar, and that this was likely to be an evolutionary strategy to ensure healthy reproduction.

Yes, opposites attract.   Even genetically.  

The MHC is a large genetic region situated on chromosome 6, and found in most vertebrates. It plays an important role in the immune system and also in reproductive success. Apart from being a large region, it is also an extraordinarily diverse one. 

Money does not buy happiness, it is said, and apparently it does not factor much into optimism either.   20 percent of humanity hoards 83 percent of the world's wealth but the vast majority of people, including the 60 percent of the world possessing just 6 percent of world wealth, think the next 5 years will be better for them.

Yes, despite an economic recession, famine, thousands of years without a single day bereft of war somewhere in the world and media reports about a flu epidemic afflicting the Earth, a new study from the University of Kansas and Gallup indicates that humans are optimistic.  Apparently it is just our nature.

70% of you, man or woman, will have an HPV infection at some point in your life.   There is no cure for HPV, just as there is no cure for the common cold and in most people, an HPV infection will clear up on its own, like the common cold.  It can also be passed on to other people during the infection period, like the common cold. 

A new paper in the Arxiv attracted my attention this morning. It is titled "Perturbative QCD effects and the search for a signal at the Tevatron", and is authored by a set of quite distinguished theorists: C.Anastasiou, G.Dissertori, M.Grazzini, F.Stockli, and B.Webber.