Herr warum

Off the record

2008-08-21T11:11:00.000-07:00

September 24th was almost turning out to be yet another uneventful day, when all of a sudden a voice from inside the house announced "Dei...race start aaga pogudhu" (the race is going to start). Three kids immediately stopped their hide-and-seek, ran into their neighbour's house and joined their friend sitting in front of the TV to witness the race. The men had taken positions and were ready to go. When the race started, one man picked up amazing speed and left the entire pack running behind him, leaving no chance for the kids to start their guessing game of who would finish first.

The year was 1988, the race was Men's 100m sprint at the Seoul Olympics, the TV was a Solidaire black & white, the channel was Doordarshan (Ok, I know this info is redundant), the man was Ben Johnson, and needless to say I happened to be one of the three kids. Someone's big brother who was also watching the race told us that the race has been run in a world record time of 9.79s - meaning Ben Johnson was now the fastest man on earth. There was also another record that went un-noticed. DD had relayed 10 seconds non-stop, without a 'Sorry for the interruption' notice.

It turned out Ben Johnson was charged with doping and agreed to taking drugs and was subsequently stripped of the gold medal. But since then I have never missed watching an olympic 100m final live. Everytime waiting to see if anyone can pull off a similar feat. (Minus the doping, of course)

It took another 11 years for another athlete to equal 9.79s without drugs, but then this was not in an Olympiad (obviously since 1988+11 is not a multiple of 4 :-) ) and Maurice Greene's margin/lead over the rest wasn't as good as Ben Johnson's either. Atlanta in 1996 offered some consolation when Michael Johnson scorched through the field in the 200m and 400m to lead the race by yards and set a world record in the 200m.

Another 11 years from 1996 saw a slow progression in the 100m from 9.79->9.78->9.77 when all of a sudden a tall Jamaican, little known in the 100m circuit, lowered the time to 9.72 and raised hopes. 2008 olympics proved to be the ultimate in 100 meters, not just for Usain Bolt's shattering world record but for the casual manner in which he ran the last 20 meters, way ahead of others (atleast 2 meters according to official sources), in the process making this far more superior than Ben Johnson's 1988 attempt. I couldn't have asked for a better 100m race, neither do I expect one as spectacular in 2012 or 2016.

-------------
Some PJs:
-------------
A concerned patient walks into a doctor's office.

Patient: Doctor, people are ignoring me.

Doctor: Next...

---------------
A doctor has come to see one of his patients in a hospital. The patient has had major surgery to both of his hands.

"Doctor," says the man excitedly and dramatically holds up his heavily bandaged hands. "Will I be able to play the piano when these bandages come off?"

"I don't see why not," replies the doctor.

"That's funny," says the man. "I wasn't able to play it before."
----------------

Sure thing

2006-03-04T06:18:00.000-08:00

(An Isaac Asimov short story)

As is well known, in this thirtieth century of ours, space travel is fearfully dull and time-consuming. In search of diversion, many crew Members defy the quarantine restrictions and pick up pets from the various habitable worlds they explore.

Jim Sloane had a rockette, which he called Teddy. It just sat there, looking like a rock, but sometimes it lifted a lower edge and sucked in powdered sugar. That was all it ate. No one ever saw it move, but every once in a while, it wasn't quite where people thought it was. There was a theory that it moved when no one was looking.

Bob Laverty had a heli-worm he called Dolly. It was green and carried on photosynthesis. Sometimes it moved to get into better light and when it did so it coiled its wormlike body and inched along very slowly like a turning helix.

One day, Jim Sloane challenged Bob Laverty to a race. " My Teddy," he said, "can beat your Dolly."

"Your Teddy," scoffed Laverty, "doesn't move."

"Bet!" said Sloane.

The whole crew got into the act. Even the captain risked half a credit. Everyone bet on Dolly. At least she moved.

Jim Sloane covered it all. He had been saving his salary through three trips and he put every millicredit of it on Teddy.

The race started at one end of the grand salon. At the other end, a heap of sugar had been placed for Teddy and a spotlight for Dolly. Dolly formed a coil at once and began to spiral its way very slowly toward the light. The watching crew cheered it on.

Teddy just sat there without budging.

"Sugar, Teddy, Sugar," said Sloane, pointing. Teddy did not move. It looked more like a rock than ever, but Sloane did not seem concerned.

Finally, when Dolly had spiraled halfway across the salon, Jim Sloane said casually to his rockette, "if you don't get out there, Teddy, I'm going to get a hammer and chip you into pebbles."

That was when people first discovered that rockettes could read minds. That was also when people first discovered that rockettes could teleport.

Sloane had no sooner made his threat when Teddy simply disappeared from his place and reappeared on top of the sugar.

Sloane won, of course, and he counted his winnings slowly and luxuriously.

Laverty said bitterly, "You knew the damn thing could teleport."

"No, I didn't," said Sloane, "but I knew he would win. It was a sure thing."

"How come?"

"It's an old saying everyone knows. ... Sloane's Teddy wins the race."

"Back of the envelope" calculation

2005-01-04T04:13:00.000-08:00

At twenty-nine minutes past five, on a Monday morning in July of 1945, the world's first atom bomb exploded in the desert sixty miles northwest of Alamogordo, New Mexico. Forty seconds later, the blast's shock wave reached the base camp, where scientists stood in stunned contemplation of the historic spectacle. The first person to stir was the Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi, who was on hand to witness the culmination of a project he had helped begin.

Before the bomb detonated, Fermi had torn a sheet of notebook paper into small bits. Then, as he felt the first quiver of the shock wave spreading outward through the still air, he released the shreds above his head. They fluttered down and away from the mushroom cloud growing on the horizon, landing about two and a half yards behind him. After a brief mental calculation, Fermi announced that the bomb's energy had been equivalent to that produced by ten thousand tons of TNT. Sophisticated instruments also were at the site, and analyses of their readings of the shock wave's velocity and pressure, an exercise that took several weeks to complete, confirmed Fermi's instant estimate.

The bomb-test team was impressed, but not surprised, by this brilliant bit of scientific improvisation. Enrico Fermi's genius was known throughout the world of physics. In 1938, he had won a Nobel Prize for his work in elementary particle physics, and, four years later, in Chicago, had produced the first sustained nuclear chain reaction, thereby ushering in the age of atomic weapons and commercial nuclear power. No other physicist of his generation, and no one since, has been at once a masterful experimentalist and a leading theoretician. In miniature, the bits of paper and the analysis of their motion exemplified this unique combination of gifts.

Like all virtuosos, Fermi had a distinctive style. His approach to physics brooked no opposition; it simply never occurred to him that he might fail to find the solution to a problem. His scientific papers and books reveal a disdain for embellishments in preference for the most direct, rather than the most intellectually elegant, route to an answer. When he reached the limits of his cleverness, Fermi completed a task by brute force.

Million dollars

2004-09-07T05:37:00.000-07:00

Two of the seven million dollar challenges that have baffled Mathematicians for more than a century *may be* close to being solved.

First. The hypothesis formulated by Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann in 1859 is one of them. Marcus du Sautoy of Oxford University, said "Most mathematicians would trade their soul with Mephistopheles for a proof". The Riemann hypothesis would explain the apparently random pattern of prime numbers. He observed that the frequency of prime numbers is very closely related to the behavior of an elaborate function “z(s)” called the Riemann Zeta function. The Riemann hypothesis asserts that all interesting solutions of the equation

z(s) = 0

lie on a straight line. This has been checked for the first 1,500,000,000 solutions.

This year Louis de Branges, a French-born mathematician now at Purdue University in the US, claimed a proof of the Riemann hypothesis. So far, his colleagues are not convinced. They were not convinced, years ago, when de Branges produced an answer to another famous mathematical challenge, but in time they accepted his reasoning. This time, the mathematical community remains even more sceptical.

"The proof he has announced is rather incomprehensible. Now mathematicians are less sure that the million has been won," Prof du Sautoy said.

Second. Poincare conjecture. If we stretch a rubber band around the surface of an apple, then we can shrink it down to a point by moving it slowly, without tearing it and without allowing it to leave the surface. On the other hand, if we imagine that the same rubber band has somehow been stretched in the appropriate direction around a doughnut, then there is no way of shrinking it to a point without breaking either the rubber band or the doughnut. We say the surface of the apple is "simply connected," but that the surface of the doughnut is not. Poincaré, almost a hundred years ago, knew that a two dimensional sphere is essentially characterized by this property of simple connectivity, and asked the corresponding question for the three dimensional sphere (the set of points in four dimensional space at unit distance from the origin). This question turned out to be extraordinarily difficult, and mathematicians have been struggling with it ever since.

In 2002 a Russian mathematician called Grigori Perelman posted the first of a series of internet papers. He had worked in the US, and was known to American mathematicians before he returned to St Petersburg. His proof - he called it only a sketch of a proof - was very similar in some ways to that of Fermat's last theorem, cracked by the Briton Andrew Wiles in the last decade.

Like Wiles, Perelman is claiming to have proved a much more complicated general problem and in the course of it may have solved a special one that has tantalised mathematicians for a century. But his papers made not a single reference to Poincaré or his conjecture. Even so, mathematicians the world over understood that he tackled the essential challenge. Once again the jury is still out: this time, however, his fellow mathematicians believe he may be onto something big.

If you want 7 million dollars :
Visit : http://www.claymath.org/millennium
and of course forward this to 10 more of your friends to show how much you care for them.

Sardarji's are smarter nowadays. Atleast in jokes.

"Help.... the Titanic is sinking ...."

Everybody in the ship is shouting, crying, running or praying to God... Just then an Italian asks a Sardarji in the ship

Italian : How far is land, from here?

Sardarji : Two miles .

Italian : Only two miles, Then why are these fools making so much noise ?
Anyways, i am a professional swimmer..

The Italian jumps off the ship into the sea and comes up to the surface
to ask something again.

Italian : Just tell me which side, is land two miles from here ?

Sardarji : Downwards ...

--------------------------------

A Sardar died and went to heaven. When he got to the pearly gate Saint
Peter told him that new rules were in effect due to the advances in
education on earth. In order to gain admittance a prospective heavenly
soul must answer two questions:

1. Name two days of the week that begin with "T".
2. How many seconds are there in a year?

The Sardar thought for a few minutes and answered...

1. The two days of the week that begin with "T" are Today and
Tomorrow.

2. There are 12 seconds in a year.

Saint Peter said, "OK, I'll buy the Today and Tomorrow,
even though it's not the answer I expected.
But how did you get only 12 seconds in a year?"

The Sardar replied, "Well, January 2nd, February 2nd, March 2nd,
etc...." Saint Peter lets him in without another word

No games just sports ... and sewing machine

2004-08-31T21:39:00.000-07:00

*** Sarangaa.. belated b'day wishes !! ****

Some interesting statistics about india at the olympics:

- We have never won more than 1 medal at any olympics from 1952 till date
- 65 officials and 75 participants were among the indian contingent this year
- India were invited to participate in the very first World Cup played in Uruguay.
We were not allowed to participate because the Indian squad wanted to play
the game like they did in India - with bare feet!!
- During the years 1928-1956, india played 24 hockey matches, won all 24
and scored 178 goals (7.5 per match on an average) and conceeded just 7 goals !!

R. D. Jones And His Sewing Machine

The following is an ad from a real-life newspaper
which appeared four days in a row - the last three hopelessly trying to
correct the first day's mistake.

MONDAY:

For sale: R. D. Jones has one sewing machine for
sale. Phone 948-0707 after 7 P.M.. and ask for Mrs. Kelly who lives with
him cheap.

TUESDAY:

Notice: We regret having erred In R. D. Jones' ad
yesterday. It should have read "One sewing machine for sale cheap. Phone
948-0707 and ask for Mrs. Kelly, who lives with him after 7 P.M."

WEDNESDAY:

Notice: R. D. Jones has informed us that he has
received several annoying telephone calls because of the error we made
in the classified ad yesterday. The ad stands correct as
follows: "For sale -- R. D. Jones has one sewing machine for sale.
Cheap. Phone 948-0707 after 7 P.M. and ask for Mrs. Kelly who loves with
him."

THURSDAY:

Notice: I, R. D. Jones, have no sewing machine for
sale. I intentionally broke it. Don't call 948-0707 as I have had the
phone disconnected. I have not been carrying on with Mrs. Kelly. Until
yesterday she was my housekeeper, but she has now quit.

Human Hibernation

2004-08-04T21:48:00.002-07:00

I was working all the time for the past 2 to 3 weeks, for a release.Average work timings : 9am to 2am.
Relatively free now, and going home tomorrow after the inauguration of our new building.
Two things that would interest you, especially if you are working too much.

1) Pick on bush
http://homepage.mac.com/krousen/Bush%20site/index.html

2) Hibernation :

Scientists have discovered genes for hibernation in humans.
The discovery could pave the way for human hibernation of the kind foreshadowed for astronauts in the 30-year-old film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Human hibernation would make ultralong-haul space travel feasible, with crews effectively put to sleep for months, or even years, by triggering the hibernation genes that man's distant ancestors used millions of years ago to sleep through hostile winters.
The American army, which has been funding the research, is interested in the concept of inducing protective hibernation in battlefield casualties to keep them alive when medical help is not at hand.
Researchers in Britain are also investigating the role of genes in the mini-hibernation of Siberian hamsters, with the aim of triggering similar genes in humans to help people lose weight.
But the first use of hibernation technology is likely to be in transplant surgery, where donor organs would be preserved on shelves for weeks or months by putting them into a state of deep sleep.
After a five-year project, Matthew Andrews, associate professor of genetics at North Carolina State University has identified two genes - PL and PDK-4 - which appear to mastermind hibernation.

One stops carbohydrate me-tabolism, which ensures that the glucose that animals have stored in their body from their last meal is preserved for use by the brain and central nervous system. The second gene controls the production of an en-zyme that breaks up stored fatty acids, and converts them into usable fats for fuel. As a result, the animal can tick over on its stored fat.

Hibernation in animals is characterised by huge drops in heart rate, body temperature and metabolism, resulting in long-term dormancy. In this state, body temperature is only a few degrees above freezing, oxygen consumption is down to 2% of normal, and the heart rate drops from up to 300 beats a minute to just three or four.

Researchers found the genes can be made to work in similar ways in humans. The PDK-4 gene, for example, is switched on by starvation, when its job is to conserve glucose.
The next target is to track down the triggers which start the genetic process that leads to the seasonal shutdown. One theory is that melatonin, the hormone whose production responds to light, may be involved.

At the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen, director Dr Peter Morgan and his team have been working on the role of melatonin in the mini-hibernation of the Siberian hamster.
"We think that the central mechanisms which regulate body weight are finely tuned by melatonin, that they respond to the changes in the length of day, the photo period, and make the changes that control food intake, body weight, and energy expenditure," he says.

The research aims to identify what genes are involved in triggering the loss of body fat, and to find a way of kick-starting the same genes in humans as a way of losing weight.

Enigma

2004-06-30T01:33:00.000-07:00

Enigma was a secret coding machine used by the Germans to encrypt messages during World War II.
In appearance the Enigma machine was no more than wooden box that contained a typewriter but it proved to be much more, as the Allies found out. It was made from numerous components including a light board, a plugboard, a keyboard, a reflector and finally a set of rotors.
The Germans had an operating manual that told the operators how to configure the Enigma machine every day. This was to reduce the risk of the encrypted messages being deciphered. They would daily change the plugboard connection, the starting positions of the rotors and the order they were in. The Germans under Hitler were extremely confident that nobody can break the code.

For the message to be deciphered the set up of the Enigma machine for the day is to be known. Otherwise one had to try million, million possible combinations.

The settings of the Enigma machine would be according to those printed in the manual for that particular day. The message would then be typed out in its existing form onto the keyboard. As the operator typed the message alternative letters would light up on the light board, the message was now in code. This would be written down to make the encrypted message. Finally by wireless the coded version of the message could now be sent in the form of Morse code. Thus preventing the Enemy from being able to understand what was being sent.

Fortunately for the British, Polish scientists had been quietly working behind the scenes and learned much about the Enigma in late 1930s. They pooled their information with the British when Poland was invaded by the Nazis. Two gentlemen, Alan Turing and Alfred Knox, were instrumental in the final breakdown of the Enigma. They created a gigantic machine called Colossus, which helped decipher complex intercepted Enigma messages. Colossus performed thousands of mathematical calculations at unheard-of-speed, at least for that time. The "computer" could read and check about 5,000 characters per second !

The British Army, Navy, Mathematicians and Scientists were all involved in this Code breaking process. British Commanders devised wild tricks : they would crash land a captured German plane into the English channel and then wait for the German Patrol boats to come for rescuing any survivors, whereupon they would capture the patrol boat and with it the code-book. This helped them know the enigma settings for that month and sometimes for the next month as well. The messages decrypted from the enigma were called Ultra and were kept a top secret, even if the information was not a valuble one (ex: weather forecase related) for fear of Germans coming to know that the Enigma code has been broken. It is said that even when they knew of possible attacks, the British soldiers weren't on alert fearing that this would lead to Germans getting suspicious.

This technique payed off for a while until the Germans came to know about it and in 1942, they promptly added a fifth rotor to the enigma machines. But it was too late for them. Though this increased the number of combinations and pushed the allies back to square one, the British had by now become experienced and they could still decipher many important information by using a combination of human guess work and the computers. Finally the allies were able to gain an upperhand in the battle of atlantic against the Germans. Though it would be an exaggeration to say that the Germans would have won the battle if the enigma codes had not been deciphered, it is believed that it could have easily taken another 4 to 5 years for the war to end.

Richie rich

2004-06-22T07:15:00.000-07:00

His name is Hassanal and he has 10 children.
He plays professional polo.
He owns a big Automotive Empire.
He is the Ruler, Prime Minister, Defence Minister, Finance Minister and Religious head of his country.
He remained the richest man on the planet for longer than any of us can remember.

Yes. The Sultan of Brunei. Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu'izzaddin Waddaulah.
Not a big name in comparison to the neighbouring Malaysia's rulers.

A small flash back :
Long long ago, in 2002, when compsci Bals and I saw a news clipping regarding the death of the Malaysian King, we were so impressed by his name that we decided to "memorise" it. We also had a competition on who would recite the name first. He won. I doubt if he still remembers the name, but let me recollect : Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah Al Haj Ibni Al'Marhoum Sultan Hisamuddin Alam Shah Al Haj.

So how did the Sultan get so much money?
From his father, he inherited a personal fortune estimated at $40 billion! Thats too much money. If he wanted to spend the whole thing in 100 years, imagine how much he would have to spend per day.
Vinayaga.. we are depending on you for exact numbers. For those who didn't know, our Vinayagamoorthy (eee : novell) is an expert in such calculations.

Well recent reports however suggest that his treasure has dwindled to a mere $10 billion - relatively peanuts.
It's not so easy to blow $30 billion, which is roughly equivalent to the entire annual income of all 125 million people living in Bangladesh
A sizeable chunk of it went on the Sultan's palace, a monstority that boasts 1,788 rooms and is larger than the Vatican. When the sultan's daughter turned 18 he bought her an Airbus. For himself he prefers his own Jumbo jet, originally designed to carry over 400 people.
Great skill in extravagance has also been acquired by his brother Jefri. He buys and plays super-cars like toys, gets bored very soon, buys new ones and store the old ones in any of the 4 huge garages forever along with tens of thousands of other cars.

So many cars that they are the top customers for Rolls-Royce and the likes.

Why did they buy so many McLaren and Dauer? Perhaps they like to share with their relatives. Perhaps their wives like to drive them for shopping. Perhaps they want to have a few spare cars when the normally used one is under servicing. Most likely, perhaps because money is nothing to his majesty (or should i say money was).

Diophantus

2004-06-21T02:18:00.000-07:00

Something is always better than nothing.
Well, i tried to solve Koushik's Quest..., concluded pretty soon that it was not going to be that easy and then decided to "ask-my-friend".(i.e. google search)
My search was not up to the mark this time, but i ended up going through a lot of material on Diophantine equations.

Here is koushik's question :

Can you solve this problem ?
For given prime number p, solve the equation in set of integers Z:
xyz=p(x+y+z)

Koushik, did you manage to solve this ?

Back to Diophantus.
Greek Mathematician. Lived from about 200 - 284 A.D in Alexandria, Egypt. Historians could find his age only from one of his puzzles. (a classic - if my father's age is twice that of blah..blah..).
He wrote Arithmetica a collection of over 130 problems and their solutions. The class of equations that he dealt with most came to be known as Diophantine equations. A Diophantine equation is a polynomial equation with integral coefficients to which only integral solutions are sought. The study of Diophantine equations is one of the central areas of number theory. Fermat's Last Theorem is one such equation.

That's the front page of his book. (ofcourse printed, republished,

Diophantus may not be, as he is often called, the father of Algebra. Nevertheless, his remarkable, if unsystematic, collection of indeterminate problems is a singular achievement that was not fully appreciated and further developed until much later.
This considering the fact that symbolism (usage of short notations) was not prevalent those days.

Instead of "x+y" he would say "the first unknown added to the second unknown".
For "(12+6n)/(n^2-3)" he says "a sixfold number increased by twelve, which is divided by the difference by which the square of the number exceeds three".
SK's chemistry book was far better.

We should be able to appreciate the advantage of symbolism, and also take pride in the fact that Indians were the first to employ a lot of such techniques. ( ahh.. think short-cuts think Indian ! )
The Arithmetica remained the authority in Algebra for many more years to come. It is on one of the margins of the pages on one of these that Fermat made the famous (some call it sadistical) remark : " I have a truly marvelous proof of this (his last theorem) which this margin is too small to contain".

One Joke for today :

A physicist, an Astronomer and a Mathematician are travelling on a train in Scotland.
Suddenly the Astronomer peeps out of the window and exclaims
"Look at the sheep out there ! Looks like sheep in Scotland are black !"
The Physicist says "Correction.. Some sheep in Scotland are black"
The Mathematician finally says "This only means.."
"..that in scotland there exists atleast one field with atleast one sheep, atleast one side of which is black".

The Manhattan project

2004-06-19T04:45:00.000-07:00

In 1938 many people feared that Hitler would build an atomic bomb after word spread that German scientist Otto Hahn and others had split the uranium atom (fission). However, one of Hitlers mistakes was his persecution of Jewish scientists. This persecution resulted in numerous scientists seeking asylum in the United States. One such scientist was Albert Einstein. Einstein and a few others, abandoning their belief in pacifism, urged the then president Franklin Roosevelt to develop an atomic bomb before Hitler did. Eventually Roosevelt agreed and the United States attempt at building the atomic bomb was codenamed The Manhattan Project.

The Manhattan Project was carried out in extreme secrecy. By 1945, the project had nearly 40 labratories and factories which empolyed approximately 200,000 people. Among these employees were some of the greatest scientists that have ever lived. Included in this lot were Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman, J. Robert Openheimer, Harold Urey, Niels Bohr and james chadwick among others.

In 1945 the United States covert operation known as The Manhattan Project achieved its goal - to create the first atomic bomb. Since its inception in 1939, scientist had struggled to find a way to harness the power of fission. Through the combined efforts of many, a test bomb known as "Fat Boy" was finally created. On July 16, 1945 in a desert in New In 1945 the United States covert operation known as The Manhattan Project achieved its goal - to create the first atomic bomb. Since its inception in 1939, scientist had struggled to find a way to harness the power of fission. Through the combined efforts of many, a test bomb known as "Fat Boy" was finally created. On July 16, 1945 in a desert in New Mexico the worlds first nuclear test, codenamed Trinity, was conducted and ushered in the Atomic Age. The Trinity test success led to the creation of two more atomic bombs that would be used in WWII.

Trinity Test :

On August 6, 1945 an American B-29 bomber released the first atomic bomb to be used in warfare. The 9,000 pound bomb nicknamed "Little Boy" detonated in Hiroshima, Japan. "Little Boy's" explosion was catastrophic and resulted in 66 thousand instantanous deaths. Total vaporization from the blast measured one half a mile in diameter. Total destruction ranged one mile in diameter and serious blazes extended as far as three miles in diameter.

Little Boy & Hiroshima blast :

Three days after the release of "Little Boy" a second bomb named "Fat Man" was released on the town of Nagasaki. "Fat Man" weighed 10,000 pounds and annihilated nearly half of the city. In one split-second, the population of Nagasaki dropped from 422,000 to 383,000. As astonishing as this seems, scientist estimate that both "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" only utilized 1/10th of 1 percent of their explosive capabilities.Mexico the worlds first nuclear test, codenamed Trinity, was conducted and ushered in the Atomic Age. The Trinity test success led to the creation of two more atomic bombs that would be used in WWII.

Fat Man & Nagasaki blast :

The initial explosion of an atomic bomb is devastating but its destructive capabilities do not end there. Rain that follows an atomic bomb is heavily contaminated with radioactive particles. Many survivors of the initial blast eventually died due to radiation poison. Those survivors that did not die suffured severe burns, nausea, vomitting, fatigue, diarrhea, and hair loss. Other effects are still being discovered to date. One such discovery is the passing on of Leukemia to offspring.

Not all by-products of the atomic bomb have been negative. Through the atom bomb, scientist have discovered how to harness the power of nuclear energy. Nuclear power plants are far more efficient than traditional power plants. The medical field has also taken advantage of the atomic bomb. Technology used in the atomic bomb is also used for CAT scans and chemotherapy.

The Asian Brains - part II

2004-06-18T06:03:00.000-07:00

Some more skills of asians :

--

The Asian Brains - part I

2004-06-16T03:12:00.000-07:00

1) Yes sir, yes sir 9 bags full

2) We salute you !!

3) Ring-a-Ring-a-Broomsticks !

pic humour

2004-06-14T21:48:00.000-07:00

No.1

No.2

King of kings

2004-06-12T22:22:00.000-07:00

A poem for today:

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away
- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Well, Ozymandias was actually Ramesses II, a pharaoh who ruled for 67 years from 1279 to 1212 B.C. He built more temples, monuments, obelisks than any other pharoah in history. And he presided over an empire that stretched from present day Libya to Iraq in the east and as far north as Turkey and southward into Sudan.
This Shelley's poem "Ozymandias", inspired by the fallen statues at his mortuary temple at Thebes, takes its title from the Greek version of one of the ruler's alternate names : User-maat-re.

An inscription on one of the statues reads :
I am Ozymandias, King of kings.
If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie,
let him surpass any of my works.

Though Ramses II thought of himself to be immortally great, the poem goes to show how we think of things that are seemingly a pinnacle of greatness today, not realizing that for all our boasts and thoughts of self importance soon will only be a faded memory, if that. Greatness today, sad broken down statuary 2000 years down the road.
Nothing would stay on forever.

The Bernoulli family

2004-06-11T02:12:00.000-07:00

One of the most distinguished families in the history of mathematics and science is the Bernoulli family of Switzerland, which from the late seventeenth century on, produced an unusual number of capable mathematicians and scientists. The family record starts with the two brothers, Jakob Bernoulli and Johann Bernoulli.
They were among the first mathematicians to realize the surprising power of calculus and to apply the tool to a great diversity of problems.

Several things in mathematics now bear Jakob Bernoulli's name. Among these are the Bernoulli distribution and Bernoulli theorem of statistics and probability theory; the Bernoulli equation , met by every student of a first course in differential equations;the Bernoulli numbers, and Bernoulli polynomials first course in the calculus. In jakob Bernoulli's soulution to the problem of the isochrone curve, which was published in the Acta eruditorum, in 1690, we meet for the first time the word integral in a caculus sense. Leibniz had called the integral calculus calculus summatorius; in 1696, Leibniz and Johann Bernoulli agreed to call it calculus calculus integralis.

Johann Bernoulli was an even more prolific contributor to mathematics than was his brother Jakob, Though he was a jealous and cantankerous man, he was one of the most successful teachers of his time (Leonhard Euler was his pupil). He greatly enriched the calculus and was very influential in making the power of the new subject appreciated in continental Europe. It was his material that the Marquis de L'Hospital (1661-1704), under a curious financial agreement with Johann, assembled in 1696 into the first calculus textbook. In this way, the familiar method of evaluating the indeterminate form 0/0 became incorrectly known in later calculus texts as L'Hospital's rule.

The Bernoulli family tree :
Jakob BernoulliJohann Bernoulli
Jacob HermannNicolaus II
Daniel BernoulliJohann II
Johann Bernoulli IIIJacob II

Johann Bernoulli had three sons, Nicolaus (1695-1726), Daniel(1700- 1782), and Johann II (1710-1790), all of whom won renown as eighteenthcentury mathematicians and scientists. Nicolaus, who showed great promise in the field of mathematics, was called to the St.Petersburg Academy, where he unfortunately died by drowining, only eight months later. He wrote on curves, differential equations, and probability. A problem in probability, which he proposed from St. Peresburg, later became known as the Petersburg paradox. The problem is:If A receives a penny when a head appears on the first toss of a coin, two pennies if a head does not appear until second toss, four pennies if a head does not appear until the third toss, and so on, what is A's expectation? Mathematical theory shows that A's expectation is infinite, which seems a paradoxical result. The problem was investigated by Nicolaus' brother Daniel, who succeeded Nicolaus at St. Petersburg. Daniel returned to Basel seven years later. He was the most famous of Johann's three sons, and devoted most of his energies to probability, astronmy, physics and hydrodynamics. In probability he devised the concept of moral expectation, and in his Hydrodynamica, of 1738, appears the principle of hydrodynamics that bears his name ( Bernoulli's principle) in all present-day elementary physics texts.

Johann II, the youngest of the three sons, studied law but spent his later years as a professor of mathematics at the University of Basel. He was particularly interested in the mathematical theory of heat and light.
There was another eighteenth-century Nicolaus Bernoulli (1687-1759), a nephew of Jakob and Johann, who achieved some fame in mathematics. This Nicoiaus held, for a time, the chair of mathematics at Padua once filled by Galileo. He wrote extensively on geometry and differential equations. Later in life, he taught logic and law.
Johann Bernoulli II had a son Johann III (1744-1807) who, like his father, studied law but then turned to mathematics. When barely nineteen years old, he was called as a professor of mathematics to the Berlin Academy. He wrote on astonomy, the doctrine of chance, recurring decimals, and indeterminate equations.

Vinland map

2004-06-09T05:43:00.000-07:00

In the early 1960s, something called the "Vinland map" was uncovered. It became famous because it proved that Vikings came to America before Columbus. It seemed to be a map of the North Atlantic as drawn from Scandinavian discoveries between 800 and 1100 CE, well before western Europe's great Age of Exploration that began in 1400. It was announced by Yale University in the early 1960s, receiving much fanfare, and much skepticism.

Ever since it surfaced in 1957, the Vinland Map has been controversial. Some experts purport that it was drawn in the 15th century and that it chronicles the Vikings' travels to the New World, prior to Christopher Columbus's 1492 journey. Others argue that it is instead the work of a 20th-century counterfeiter. Now the results of two new studies are adding further fuel to the debate. A report published recently in the journal Analytical Chemistry concludes that the map's ink has modern roots; researchers writing in the August issue of the journal Radiocarbon, on the other hand, say that the parchment dates back to 1434.

Katherine L. Brown and Robin J. H. Clark of University College London used a technique known as Raman microphone spectroscopy to examine the ink on the map. The drawing contains both yellowish lines that adhere strongly to the parchment and overlaid black lines that have begun to flake off. The researchers detected anatase, a rare form of titanium dioxide, solely in the yellow lines. Because anatase could not be synthesized until the 1920s, detection of the compound has sparked forgery accusations in the past. Brown and Clark also found that the black ink contains carbon, which would not produce the telltale yellow lines that mark medieval inks made of iron gallotannate. As a result, the scientists suggest that a forger actually applied the two components separately on the parchment to give the appearance of antiquity. According to Clark, "the Raman results provide the first definitive proof that the map itself was drawn after 1923."

If the map is indeed genuine, its value is estimated to be almost $20 million. Whatever its origin, it is an impressive piece of handiwork. "If it is, in fact, a forgery," Harbottle says, "then the forger was surely one of the most skillful criminals ever to pursue that line of work."

Reality TV

2004-06-06T21:25:00.000-07:00

A prototype digital video system producing images of such high quality that the human eye struggles to distinguish them from reality has been developed by Japanese engineers.
The system, called ultra high definition video (UHDV), achieves image resolution 16 times greater than even the most advanced video broadcasting technologies now available.
Its developers at the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) said the system could be used to provide an ultra realistic 'immersive' viewing experience when, for example, showing sporting events.

UHDV displays images with 4,000 horizontal scanning lines, compared to the 1,000 offered by the current state-of-the-art high definition television (HDTV) technology and just 625 for standard TV broadcasts. When horizontal and vertical scanning are both taken into account a UHDV picture contains 16 times the number of pixels of HDTV.
NHK, which unveiled details of UHDV for the first time at broadcast technology conference IBC in Amsterdam, said its engineers had to custom-design a video camera, data-storage device and projection system, as no standard broadcasting equipment could cope with their extreme demands.

NHK researcher Dr. Kohji Mitani said the project team had shot a three-minute demonstration video by attaching the camera to the front of a vehicle and driving it around the streets.
The footage was then shown to members of the public on a 4x7m wide-angle screen provoking, according to Mitani, gasps of astonishment. Some viewers even experienced nausea because of the ultra realistic visual effect of speed without the usual physical sensation of movement.
Mitani said the system was still at a basic stage of development, but he claimed it had proved that image qualities so realistic that they approximated to actually being at the recorded event were possible.

The untold sardarji joke :

A man enters a Bar in Jalandhar, INDIA. He finds his way to a bar stool and orders a drink.
After sitting there for a while, he yells to the gathering, " Hey, you want to hear a Sardarji joke?"
The whole bar immediately falls absolutely silent.

In a very deep, husky voice, the man next to him says, "Before you tell that joke,you should know five things.....
1 -- The bartender is a Sardarji.
2 -- The Security man outside is a Sardarji.
3 -- I'm a 6 feet tall, 200-pound Sardarji with a black belt in karate.
4 -- The man sitting next to me is Sardarji and is a professional weight lifter.
5 -- The man to your right is a Sardarji and is a professional wrestler.

Now think about it seriously, Mister. Do you still want to tell that joke?"

The man thinks for a second, shakes his head, and declares, "Nah...Not if I am having to explain it five times..."

Erdos number

2004-06-05T03:34:00.000-07:00

Paul Erdos (1913-1996) was a prolific hungarian mathematician of the highest calibre. He wrote more than 1500 papers, more than any mathematician who has ever lived !! He had collaborated with over 500 mathematicians in the process. This gave rise to a concept called Erdos number.

Paul Erdos has an Erdos number of 0. Anyone who has co-authored a paper with Erdos has an Erdos number of 1. If you have co-authored a paper with a person whose Erdos number is 1, then your Erdos number is 2, and so on. If you are never in the link, then your Erdos number is infinity.
More : http://www.loni.ucla.edu/~thompson/ERDOS/erdo.htm

Joke :

A mathematician, a biologist and a physicist are sitting in a street cafe watching people going in and coming out of the house on the other side of the street.
First they see two people going into the house. Time passes. After a while they notice three people coming out of the house.

The physicist: "The measurement wasn't accurate."
The biologist: "They have reproduced".
The mathematician: "If now exactly one person enters the house then it will be empty again."

Welcome to my blogspot.

2004-05-30T14:44:00.000-07:00

All,

Have started a blog spot for myself. Lets see how it goes.
I sincerely hope that you get to benefit something out of the posts here.