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Ginga Goes Electronic For Coal Trading With Trayport(R)

Ginga Goes Electronic For Coal Trading With Trayport(R)

Aug 23 2010 | comment(s)

Comprehensive links to ancient and historical maps

Comprehensive links to ancient and historical maps

Aug 23 2010 | comment(s)

Randall Stephens of The Historical Society writes 



"As the semester revs up, quite a few history profs are looking on-line for primary source docs, web-based activities, digital images, and on-line map collections. I use a healthy does of maps and map progressions in the various courses I teach. "
Comprehensive links to ancient and historical maps

Comprehensive links to ancient and historical maps

Aug 23 2010 | comment(s)

Randall Stephens of The Historical Society writes 



"As the semester revs up, quite a few history profs are looking on-line for primary source docs, web-based activities, digital images, and on-line map collections. I use a healthy does of maps and map progressions in the various courses I teach. "
Philadelphia requiring bloggers to pay $300 for a business license

Philadelphia requiring bloggers to pay $300 for a business license

Aug 23 2010 | comment(s)

I know the bulk of the contributors, and maybe even the readers, are progressives, but big government progress has never accomplished much good over the long term - and going after bloggers making $50 a year and requiring them to pay $300 for their 'business' is the kind of thing a bigger government will get us.   Let's hope this doesn't become a bigger problem.
Environment protection laws and resposibilities

Environment protection laws and resposibilities

Aug 22 2010 | comment(s)

To protect human life there are laws in every corner of the world. Plant life is cheap. One should undersand if plants are gone entire human population will be gone. When plant life is to be protected the environmental laws are new to the law makers. When goat eats away your crop or a cow eats away or rojdas (Blue bulls) destroy your crop or insects eat away your crop as hoards of them swarm on it in minutes time, which law provides protection. about goats eating away your crop or for that matter holy cow or rojdas or stray sheeps and wild animals. If this could happen in farm raised and protected by individual farmers, what will happen to the forests which are protected by forest guards which are very few in numbers as compared to the area they have to protect.
Autism, Intellectual Disability And Research Criteria: Ecker Et Al., A Defense

Autism, Intellectual Disability And Research Criteria: Ecker Et Al., A Defense

Aug 22 2010 | comment(s)

An introduction: in the online autism community, there are a lot of heated debates. One of them is related to the nature of autism research. Some are insistent that more research focus on vaccines. Others push for more research on treatments. Still others insist that autism research is skewed because studies, especially brain imaging studies, have narrow parameters and exclude intellectual disability. The following post is a response to this last argument and an explanation as to why studies are conducted as they are.
And They Keep Running

And They Keep Running

Aug 22 2010 | comment(s)

On Friday evening I was in Tesero, where a crowd of 150 interested laypersons attended my talk on particle physics, organized by the very active Gruppo Astrofili Fiemme. There, among other things, I discussed the challenge that is on between the Fermilab experiments in the United States and the CERN experiments in Europe. I will discuss elsewhere the successful evening; here I just want to show the status of data collection by the two challengers.
Back in Business

Back in Business

Aug 22 2010 | comment(s)

The physics news in August have so far disappointed me, with the only remarkable one being the sad departure of Nicola Cabibbo. After ICHEP 2010, with the frenzy of paper production that has characterized the month of July in all major particle physics experiments, it was easy to predict a slower pace. So I did not lose too much, apparently, by spending four weeks in Greece and one week in the Italian Alps.

But effective today, I am back in business. This means no more four-day hiatuses in updates of my blog (due to the trouble with accessing the web from the remote locations I have confined myself in), and a more effective coverage of news from the world of High-Energy Physics.
TechDirt: Reports Of The Web's Death Are Greatly Exaggerated Through Lies, Damn Lies & Statistics

TechDirt: Reports Of The Web's Death Are Greatly Exaggerated Through Lies, Damn Lies & Statistics

Aug 22 2010 | comment(s)

Lots of folks seem to be talking about the latest linkbait Wired story claiming that the web is dead, based on this graphic (built off of Cisco data):


TechDirt has the real scoop
Climate change, tree in your garden and in your farm.

Climate change, tree in your garden and in your farm.

Aug 22 2010 | comment(s)

There are several levels of climate change. The tree standing on the hills near my house has suffered from a disease caused due to pollution. Termites are affecting yield . Grass in my garden has gone dry because there was not enough water in taps. The plants have died and attacked by termites and environment of my house has become warm as compared to the public garden 10km away. Hills have become barren. As they surround my city of Jaipur on all the sides they act like reflectors and heat up in summers to an extent that temperatures rise over 15 degrees. All the rainwater falling during rain just comes to he city of Jaipur and floods its roads and brings the traffic to standstill. Once plants are gone on the farm the soils have less and less humus
Climate change and floods.

Climate change and floods.

Aug 22 2010 | comment(s)

Earth is a finite structure. Human beings are part of flora and fauna on this earth. Earth was not created for one species only . It was not human species. Millions of plants, animals, insects, birds and billions of microbes make climate and microclimate. Man and life is facilitated on the earth by PLANTS as they takeup the carbondioxide and release oxygen. Earth is a living system in a sense that it has power to absorb and recycle carbon, nitrogen, and other mineral elements etc. Organic matter must be decomposed by microbes and and elements thus released must be refixed by plants to support life again. This helps in achieving sustainable life on the planet.
Nations rich in vegetaion are rich in health and wealth.

Nations rich in vegetaion are rich in health and wealth.

Aug 22 2010 | comment(s)

The basic difference which I have seen in rich nations and poor nations ( its obvious world wide) is the vegetation, health food habits and attitude. Health and wealth both are there . Its the rich vegetation which supports both. India was a rich country in vedic times. People were dependent on vegetables. Its happening in rich nations even today People are dependent on vegetables. Forests cover are thick and major. Forests are maintained and not destroyed . A rich body can harbour a rich mind and produce a disease free children. Most of the rich nations dont eat fried food like samosa and kachori, namkeen. In India richness is expressed in terms of amount of Ghee ( Butter cream) is used in the roti of the guest. If you dip the roti or bread in huge amouunt of ghee its sign of richness.
Baldos II - Support Swedish Students By Getting 357 MPG In Your Car

Baldos II - Support Swedish Students By Getting 357 MPG In Your Car

Aug 22 2010 | comment(s)

Should you happen to be in Washington, D.C. in October and at House of Sweden, the Swedish Embassy, you will get a chance to see a fireball red colored car that delighted Europeans who like tiny red cars earlier this year.

It's called the Baldos II and it is a hybrid auto built by engineering students at Luleå University of Technology in Sweden.    So what?

The fuel tests show it can run 152.2 kilometers on a liter of fuel, whatever that means - in Sweden, they use some primitive system invented during the French Revolution to stick it to the English, so I am not certain but that sounds like 357 MPG.   Or approximately 12X my tiny convertible's mileage!
M.A.D. 2.0

M.A.D. 2.0

Aug 22 2010 | comment(s)

M.A.D. 2.0

The greatest fear of mankind after World War 2 was the real possibility of a World War 3.

It was a rational fear of a very real threat: the global destruction of civilization.

Nations, most especially the USA and the former USSR, found themselves in a mad race to build more bombs, more powerful bombs, megadeath bombs.

The military theory behind this madness was that if a nation had weapons enough to utterly destroy any enemy then it would not be attacked.  But a first strike might reduce the ability to launch a counterstrike powerful enough to utterly destroy the enemy, so it was thought necessary to keep in constant readiness far more than enough weapons to destroy any enemy.
Day-Trip

Day-Trip

Aug 21 2010 | comment(s)

Day-Trip

Every once in a while I post a poem in my blog.

I hope that my readers may enjoy my poems and that educators may find them helpful as teaching aids.

For a very long time in the UK people would travel by train to the seaside during the summer.  The day-trip to the seaside was something of a national institution.  For small children, such a day-trip was a grand adventure.

DAY - TRIP  
                    
 Sitting on the sea - shore
        licking on an ice - cream
L.A.R.P. Live

L.A.R.P. Live "Avatar" Role Playing

Aug 21 2010 | comment(s)

Really, does anything more need to be said?   Patrick, where were you when this was filmed??

Evolutionary Imagery: Illustrating (And Distorting) The History Of Life

Evolutionary Imagery: Illustrating (And Distorting) The History Of Life

Aug 21 2010 | comment(s)

My talk on evolutionary imagery at the Centre For Inquiry.

Relative Risks And Why Anecdotes Can Be Lousy For Making Decisions

Relative Risks And Why Anecdotes Can Be Lousy For Making Decisions

Aug 21 2010 | comment(s)

Fear blinds us, immobilizes us, and makes fools of us. Scary stories abound on the internet, through emails, and in conversations, and dangers lurk in the dusty corners waiting to pounce on us and tear our loved ones from our grasps. We know this. We feel it viscerally. And sometimes we shake in our boots. 

We've got enough real dangers, and we do, without adding in made-up ones. We do a terrible job at assessing risk. Don't believe me? Which is safer? Driving or flying? If you said driving, you're so terribly wrong and have let both the illusion of control and the availability heuristic make you run with your gut. 
Plants need some botanists to care

Plants need some botanists to care

Aug 21 2010 | comment(s)

Sitting in a balcony facing a forest in the apartment of our daughter I wonder where the botanists have gone. In our times it was common site to see lots of botanists tracking the woods and documentating the plants. Our teachers like Professor P D Sharma Professor K K Sharma Professor Shiv Sharma and Professor Uma Kant had great fascination of taking students to forests for collection  They themselves have  studied botany with Professor Kashyap , Professor Mehra, Professor Maheshwari and Professor Johari. Royal Botanical Garden Kew England  had a list of distinguished botanists and as Bristish empire spread around the globe Britishers collected and deposited plants in Kew Herbarium.
Apical dominance in plants

Apical dominance in plants

Aug 21 2010 | comment(s)


If you look at the Pines sitting in your balcony you will wonder why they growth taller and taller and their apex moves towards the sky in straight line. You can see apical dominance. What provides apical dominance. Plants produce growth regulators on or near apical regions of roots as well as shoots and transfer it to the basipetal or acropetal pattern down from stem apex and up from root apex by certain mechanism which is highly croordinated using a set of genes which I have not been able to comprehend how do they work using different signal transduction systems.