DEEPAVALI

DEEPAVALI
SRI SWAMI SIVANANDA

DEEPAVALI or Diwali means "a row of lights". It falls on the last two days of the dark half of Kartik
(October-November). For some it is a three-day festival. It commences with the Dhan-Teras, on the 13th day of the dark half of Kartik, followed the next day by the Narak Chaudas, the 14th day, and by Deepavali proper on the 15th day.

There are various alleged origins attributed to this festival. Some hold that they celebrate the marriage of Lakshmi with Lord Vishnu. In Bengal the festival is dedicated to the worship of Kali. It also commemorates that blessed day on which the triumphant Lord Rama returned to Ayodhya after defeating Ravana. On this day also Sri Krishna killed the demon Narakasura.

In South India people take an oil bath in the morning and wear new clothes. They partake of sweetmeats. They light fireworks which are regarded as the effigies of Narakasura who was killed on this day. They greet one another, asking, "Have you had your Ganges bath?" which actually refers to the oil bath that morning as it is regarded as purifying as a bath in the holy Ganges.

Everyone forgets and forgives the wrongs done by others. There is an air of freedom, festivity and friendliness everywhere. This festival brings about unity. It instils charity in the hearts of people. Everyone buys new clothes for the family. Employers, too, purchase new clothes for their employees.
Waking up during the Brahmamuhurta (at 4a.m.) is a great blessing from the standpoint of health, ethical discipline, efficiency in work and spiritual advancement. It is on Deepavali that everyone wakes up early in the morning. The sages who instituted this custom must have cherished the hope that their descendents would realise its benefits and make it a regular habit in their lives.

In a happy mood of great rejoicing village folk move about freely, mixing with one another without any reserve, all enmity being forgotten. People embrace one another with love. Deepavali is a great unifying force. Those with keen inner spiritual ears will clearly hear the voice of the sages, "O Children of God! unite, and love all". The vibrations produced by the greetings of love which fill the atmosphere are powerful enough to bring about a change of heart in every man and woman in the world. Alas! That heart has considerably hardened, and only a continuous celebration of Deepavali in our homes can rekindle in us the urgent need of turning away from the ruinous path of hatred.

On this day Hindu merchants in North India open their new account books and pray for success and prosperity during the coming year. The homes are cleaned and decorated by day and illuminated by night with earthern oil-lamps. The best and finest illuminations are to be seen in Bombay and Amritsar. The famous Golden Temple at Amritsar is lit in the evening with thousands of lamps placed all over the steps of the big tank. Vaishnavites celebrate the Govardhan Puja and feed the poor on a large scale.

O Ram! The light of lights, the self-luminous inner light of the Self is ever shining steadily in the chamber of your heart. Sit quietly. Close your eyes. Withdraw the senses. Fix the mind on this supreme light and enjoy the real Deepavali, by attaining illumination of the soul.
He who Himself sees all but whom no one beholds, who illumines the intellect, the sun, the moon and the stars and the whole universe but whom they cannot illumine, He indeed is Brahman, He is the inner Self. Celebrate the real Deepavali by living in Brahman, and enjoy the eternal bliss of the soul.
The sun does not shine there, nor do the moon and the stars, nor do lightnings shine and much less fire. All the lights of the world cannot be compared even to a ray of the inner light of the Self. Merge yourself in this light of lights and enjoy the supreme Deepavali.

Many Deepavali festivals have come and gone. Yet the hearts of the vast majority are as dark as the night of the new moon. The house is lit with lamps, but the heart is full of the darkness of ignorance. O man! wake up from the slumber of ignorance. Realise the constant and eternal light of the Soul which neither rises nor sets, through meditation and deep enquiry.
May you all attain full inner illumination! May the supreme light of lights enlighten your understanding! May you all attain the inexhaustible spiritual wealth of the Self! May you all prosper gloriously on the material as well as spiritual planes!

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My Pictures 3D 0.9

My Pictures 3D 0.9

Author: VicMan Software
License type: Freeware
Categories: Graphics Catalogers and Albums

My Pictures 3D is a 2-in-1 product. It is a program letting you walk through a beautiful virtual gallery exhibiting favorite shots from your photo album. Besides, it can function as an animated 3D photo gallery screensaver - surely the most fun alternative to dull standard screensavers. Several galleries made in different styles, from a contemporary showroom to a medieval castle, are available.

A pleasing lifelike atmosphere is created thanks to amazingly natural-looking graphics. The selected pictures are displayed on the walls as the walker wanders through the specified gallery. Pictures can be displayed at the desired quality. Apart from viewing pictures from a distance, the program allows coming up to a picture and watching it in the full screen mode to enjoy the smallest details. The walker height can be adjusted, so that different viewing angles are available.

The walk speed can also be specified to make your walk through the photo gallery as much comfortable as possible. In the freemove mode the program lets you wander freely inside the virtual space enjoying your photographic masterpieces in the tasteful surroundings of picturesque galleries. In the automatic mode the computer will guide you through the gallery. Every time you decide to visit the 3D gallery or when the computer is not in active use, My Pictures 3D brings back fond memories. It will never make you feel bored because photos can always be updated and galleries switched.

Operating Systems
Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP
Supported languages

English
System requirements
Pentium PC

Power Up with PowerToys

A bunch of free tools for Windows XP, courtesy of Microsoft.
Some of the most helpful Windows XP features don't actually come with the operating system. Instead they come with a collection of handy software tools called PowerToys. PowerToys are utilities Microsoft programmers created while working on Windows or other products, and they add a lot of practical capabilities to Windows. They're free and they should work without problems, but you should know that you're on your own with them. They're not officially a part of Windows, and they're not supported by Microsoft.
PowerToys are available for all users of Windows XP, from www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx . Each toy comes in a separate installation; just click the download links on the right side of the page, and then open the installers when the respective transfers are complete. Sometimes there is a free lunch.

Image Resizer.

This PowerToy delivers what it promises: Just highlight one or more image files (JPG, BMP, etc.) in Windows Explorer, right-click, and select Resize Pictures. Specify a target size and click OK, and the tool resizes all selected photos in one step.

Despite its usefulness, Image Resizer's interface needs a little tweaking of its own. There are only four default size options, the first three of which make sense only for landscape-oriented photos. The last, "Handheld PC," is really suitable only for portrait photos on a PocketPC handheld; photos for PalmOS screens, for instance, can be twice as big.
For best results, avoid the default sizes, and instead click Advanced and choose the Custom option. To accommodate both portrait and landscape photos, choose a maximum size (in pixels) and type that number into both boxes. Don't worry, this won't make all your photos square; the numbers you specify indicate only the maximum size of the larger dimension of each photo. A size between 600 and 800 pixels is a good choice for photos that are to be e-mailed or posted to a Web site; use 1,000 if you want each photo to almost fill your screen. (Never shrink photos to be printed.)

To preserve your original, high-resolution photos, Image Resizer creates new filenames for the files it resizes, such as dsc02025 (Custom).jpg. To batch-rename the resulting files subsequently, so they're, say, suitable for posting to a Web site (for example, dsc02025thumb.jpg), you'll need a tool like Power Rename (www.creativelement.com/powertools).

RAW Image Viewer.

If you shoot RAW images with a high-end Nikon or Canon digital camera, you can view them with Microsoft's RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer, available free at www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/raw.mspx. It bears a striking resemblance to the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, but provides one additional service: It generates RAW thumbnails for use with Windows Explorer's Thumbnails view, which Explorer can't do by itself.

Professional Business Card Design

Having a professional business card design created for your business is as important as any advertising that your business may do. The difference between a professional looking business card design can mean the difference between getting the most desirable business or always ending up with the lowest rung of clientele. Generally, the first impression a business has to reflect its image is through a great business card design.

Our business card design portfolio is not limited just to creating unique business card design. We offer many graphic design services, as well as, complete corporate identity packages that include letterhead, envelope and business card design. And, as part of design services we can fulfill all your printing requirements. Whether or not you decide to call us (845-247-0909) or "just look for now", take advantage of 24 years of creative business card design experience by reading the business card design tips and tricks below. Remember, great business card design starts with a Big Idea: Call WhatsTheBigIdea.com, Inc. at (845) 247-0909 for business card design and prices.

Business Card Design Tips:
1. Bright white paper stock is the only color you should use if your design is strong. Keep away from fluorescent colors as they are an uncreative way to catch someone's attention, which make your business card unbearable to read.

2. Stick to one typeface (font) besides your logo font. Keep the rest of the text easy-to-read using ONLY one typeface. There's no need to emphasize text by changing typefaces. Instead think of using a BOLD version of the font that you're a;lready using.

3. 4 color printing is inexpensive so don't think you'll save money if you scrimp on printing with two-color printing. You have the entire color spectrum to choose from to get your message across.

4. "I know what I want, I just don't know how to do it" - is a quote I hear often. Well? That's how it should be. Choose a brochure company who asks a lot of questions and wants to find out about the way you do business. A "creative" business card designer should interpret what you couldn't visualize.

Thankx: thebigidea

Review | Apple iPod 30GB

Company:Apple Computer Inc.
Web: http://www.apple.com
Player Type: Hard Disk
Radio: No
Recording, Voice: No
Recording, FM: No
Recording, Line In: Optional
Battery Life: 900 min
Battery Type: Rechargeable
Screen Size: 320 x 240 pixels
Capacity: 30000 MB
Dimensions: 4.1 x 2.4 x 0.43 inches
Weight: 4.8 oz
Video Recording: No
Built-in speakers: No
Music Playback Formats: AAC, AIFF, Apple Lossless, Audible, MP3, WAV
Photo formats: BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, PSD, TIFF
Video Formats: MP4, QuickTime

By Michael Kobrin
Don't call it the Video iPod, the vPod, or anything that indicates that this is a video player. It's the new iPod, period. Though it does have video-playback capabilities, Apple has chosen to keep the iPod's focus on audio (for now). That said, video looks excellent on the new model's 2.5-inch screen, and the thinner profile—not to mention new audio capabilities such as high-quality stereo recording—makes it more versatile than previous generations. Consider that you can now get the 30GB model for the same price as the previous-generation 20GB model, and you have a pretty impressive product.

The new 30GB iPod is 30 percent thinner than the previous 20GB color model, but the height and width are the same. (The current 60GB model is roughly 10 percent slimmer than the older 20GB model.) This may not seem like a big difference on paper, but we were impressed with the new model's slimmed-down figure when we held the two side by side. The 2.5-inch backlit LCD, at 320 by 240 pixels, is noticeably bigger than the previous 2-inch 220-by-176 screen.
Apple also eliminated the 9-pin remote-control connector in this version, which means third parties such as Griffin and Belkin will have to update their accessory lines. Apple's reasoning was that accessories should go through the already-present dock connector rather than through a second proprietary port.

The iPod's interface is mostly the same, though Podcasts and Audiobooks are now located in the Music menu. A new Videos menu offers access to video playlists, Movies, Music Videos, and Video Podcasts. The Video Settings menu (also accessible in the Videos menu) lets you enable or disable TV output, toggle between NTSC and PAL format, and turn the widescreen on and off. The stopwatch and screen lock that were introduced with the iPod nano are also present, although you can now have up to three lap timers on the screen at once, thanks to the larger LCD. On our battery rundown test, we measured 16.5 hours of battery life for the 30GB model, using a real-world mix of MP3 files encoded at from 128 to 320 Kbps. The device is rated at two hours of video playback. The 60GB version offers 20 hours of audio or three hours of video per charge.

Despite Apple's focus on audio, the first thing everyone wants to know is how video looks on the new iPod. We downloaded an episode of Lost and a few video podcasts from the iTunes Music Store, and, to our surprise, the viewing experience was remarkably comfortable. Brighter shots look very clear and crisp, though, as with most devices that play back compressed video, you can often see compression artifacts like blockiness and banding in dark areas. We wouldn't want to watch subtitled content or sports (the wide camera angles would probably make players a bit too small, not to mention a hockey puck), but everything we watched looked sharp and smooth. One thing we really like is that the iPod remembers where you stop watching a video, so any time you go back to it, you can simply resume from where you left off. You can also scrub through video, though not in real time; you scroll through a progress bar, and the video jumps to the point where you stop scrolling.

The specs on the video are as follows: File format support includes MOV, MP4, and M4V (Apple's DRM-protected video content). The iPod plays H.264 (Baseline Profile) video at up to 768 Kbps, 320 by 240 pixels, and 30 frames per second, as well as MPEG-4 (Simple Profile) at up to 2.5 Mbps, 480 by 480 pixels, and 30 fps. The stereo audio portions of videos are in 48-kHz AAC-LC format at up to 160 Kbps. According to Apple, you can fit roughly 75 hours of video on the 30GB model and twice that on the 60GB version.

Basically, you can put your own videos and existing content on the new iPod, but you may need to use QuickTime Pro ($29.99 Direct) to convert the files first via the new Export to iPod function, depending on what codec was used to encode the files. Of course, movies created in iMovie are supported as well, which should dovetail nicely with Apple's new iMac line with built-in iSight cameras. There are also several tips that have appeared online for how to get TiVo and DVD content onto your iPod. Of course, Apple provides some content at the iTunes Music Store, including 2,000 music videos, multiple episodes of five TV shows, six Pixar animated shorts, and plenty of free video podcasts.
The iPod's photo capabilities remain largely unchanged, though there are now some new 3D transitions for your slide shows. The bigger screen, however, does let you see more of your photos than before. We'd like to see Apple add support for panning and zooming in images. Photo format support is still one of the broadest in the biz, with JPEG, TIFF, GIF, PSD (Mac-only), PNG, and BMP.

All About the Music
The iPod's main focus is still music, and Apple (once again) quietly enhanced the headphone output quality. Most users won't hear the difference in Apple's stock earbuds, but if you use better headphones, you'll hear slightly more robust bass and less distortion. We like that during audio playback, album artwork and lyrics now stay on the screen, rather than the device returning to the Now Playing screen.

One impressive new feature (which won't be new to those users who installed a Linux-based OS on their iPod) is the ability to record in stereo at 44.1 kHz in WAV format via the dock connector. Of course, this will require a third-party adapter or microphone with a dock connector, but the feature has been in demand for quite some time and vastly improves upon the previous version's weak 8-kHz sample rate. Recordings you make are accessible two ways: An auto-sync feature in iTunes grabs them from your iPod and puts them right into your iTunes library, restriction-free; the files are also stored in an unhidden folder on the iPod, so you can access them in disk mode as well—which could be very handy for offloading onto a device that has a USB host port or a PC that doesn't have iTunes on it.

Unlike the last two generations of the iPod (and perhaps more notably the iPod nano), the new iPod ships with a slipcover to protect your precious player from scratches, which show up easily on the black model. Of course, we're sure third-party cases will be available soon as well. Apple also released another accessory: The new Apple Universal Dock (optional) supports an IR remote and A/V-mini-jack-to-RCA or S-video output for watching your video content on a big screen. The catch is you have to use a $20 Apple AV cable; other AV cables, though they fit in the appropriate jacks, will not work. The iPod ships with a dock adapter so the iPod fits securely in the Apple Universal Dock.

Overall, we're very happy with this new release, though we'd still like to see a few things like photo pan and zoom, a custom graphic equalizer, on-the-fly calendar editing, and the ability to delete files directly on the device. Combined with Apple's video offerings (which include plenty of free video podcasts as well as for-pay content), we think video support is a very good addition to an already excellent music player.
Thankx:pcmag

Your DNA Is a Song: Scientists Use Music to Code Proteins

John Roach

What are proteins? How are they structured? What's the difference between a protein in a human and the same protein in a lizard? Ask Mary Anne Clark these questions and she is likely to respond with an earful of music.
Clark is a biologist at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth, and she's part of a growing field of science educators who use so-called protein music to help illustrate the basic structure of the building blocks of life.

All living things are made up of proteins. Each protein is a string of amino acids. There are 20 different amino acids, and each protein can consist of dozens to thousands of them.
Scientists write down these amino acid sequences as series of text letters. Clark and her colleagues assign musical notes to the different values of the amino acids in each sequence. The result is music in the form of "protein songs."

By listening to the songs, scientists and students alike can hear the structure of a protein. And when the songs of the same protein from different species are played together, their similarities and differences are apparent to the ear.

"It's an illustration transferred into a medium people will find more accessible than just [text] sequences," Clark said. "If you look at protein sequences, if you just read those as they are written down, recorded in a database, it's hard to get a sense for the pattern."
When people look at a page full of text corresponding to protein sequences, Clark explained, they tend spot clusters of letters but fail to see the larger pattern.

"If you play [the protein song for that sequence] you get that sense of the pattern much more strongly," she said. "That's my feeling at least. You hear stuff you can't see."

Different Songs
One song for a protein may sound different than another for the same protein, depending on how notes are assigned to amino acids' various properties. For example, Clark tends to arrange her compositions based on the protein's solubility.
"Where it's soluble and insoluble is one of the big factors in determining how [the protein] folds up," she said. Solubility influences how proteins fold, and those folds determine what category a certain protein belongs to.
In 1996 Ross King, a computer scientist at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, wrote a program called Protein Music. It assigns a note to each of the three compounds that make up amino acids and a note to various amino acid properties—charge, solubility, and soon.

"This produces a chord for each amino acid," King wrote in an e-mail interview. "Because proteins are an interesting mixture of novel and repetitive elements, like music, the translation to music sounds interesting."
By changing the rules of how notes are assigned to amino acids, composers can create variations in their songs. However, since all proteins have a basic structure, all the protein songs have a basic structure as well, Clark said.

Teaching Tool
According to King, while some scientists have used protein music to help them analyze data, it is most useful as a teaching tool.
If people can understand how the music is produced, he said, they can understand how DNA codes proteins.
Clark said one of the more interesting things demonstrated by the music is the differences and similarities between the same protein of different species.
While some proteins change very little between species, others, such as beta globin, are quite variable.
Therefore, Clark said, by playing the beta globin song for a human and tuatara, an ancient three-eyed lizard, people can hear the process of evolution—a variation on a theme that was present before mammals split from reptiles some 200 million years ago.
"You can hear the parts that remain constant and the parts that change," she said.

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How do the free web site counters help you in creating an effective web presence?

In addition to counting the number of visitors, the free web site counters provide visitor profiles - the browsers used, screen resolution, operating system, presence of Javascript etc. You should regularly check this data to understand if your web site would be an effective tool for the visitors. For example, if a large proportion of your visitors use Unix (or its variants) and your site is not generating sales, you should test your web site under that platform to see if the site is being displayed properly.

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Short Film | எச்சில் போர்வை

எச்சில் போர்வை

ஆக்கியவர்:- அஜீவன்

நாடு:- சுவிஸ்

நேரம்:- 10:37 நிமிடங்கள்

Download here

ஈழத்தில் வாழும் தன் உறவுகளுக்காய் தன் தோளில் ஆயிரம் சுமைகளைத் தாங்கி வேற்று மண்ணில் தவிக்கும் ஒர் புலம்பெயர் ஈழத்தமிழ் இளைஞனின் கதை.

Short Film | ஒளித்துப் பிடித்து

ஒளித்துப் பிடித்து

ஆக்கியவர்:- வீரசிங்க
நாடு:- இலங்கை
ஆண்டு:- 2004

Downlaod here

127 இளைஞர்களின் கொலைக்கு வழி வகுத்த, பிந்துனுவௌ தடுப்பு முகாம் கொலைப் பின்னணி.

Short film | போருக்குப் பின்

போருக்குப் பின்

ஆக்கியவர்:- யமுனாராணி செல்லத்துரை

இயக்கம்: ஜெயரஞ்சினி ஞானதாஸ்

நாடு:- இலங்கைஆண்டு:- 2004

Downlaod here

இராணுவத்தால் கைது செய்யப்பட்டு தடுப்பு முகாமலிருக்கும் தந்தையைப் பற்றி அறியத் துடிக்கும் , ஒரு சிறுவனின் ஆக்ரோசம்.

விலாசம் - குறும்படம் (Short Film)

விலாசம் - குறும்படம்

புலம்பெயர்ந்து பிரான்சில் வாழும் அடுத்த தலைமுறையினர் எதிர் கொள்கின்ற பிரச்சனையை மையக் கருவாகக் கொண்டு 17 நிமிடங்களில் இக்குறும்படம் தயாரிக்கப்பட்டுள்ளது.
>> Downlaod here

Source:appaal-tamil

NASA plans for future moon missions

NASA plans for future moon missions
From Wikinews, the free news source you can write!

NASA has announced plans for sending humans back to the Moon, as a first step to Mars.
Two new launch vehicles, using Shuttle rocket technologies. (NASA)
A 2018 lunar mission is proposed, where a crew of four would remain on the Moon for as long as a week. A minimum of two lunar missions a year is planned, with astronauts remaining as long as six months.
Some of the technology had previously been proposed for replacement of the Space Shuttle.
Astronauts will be launched in a capsule, similar in concept to that used for the Project Apollo but three times larger. The top part of an Exploration Transportation System (ETS), the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) will be a capsule attached to a service module which contains supplies, power, and propulsion units. The CEV is designed for use in Earth orbit.
On lunar missions, crew or cargo versions of a Lunar Surface Access Module (LSAM) would be used with a CEV. The LSAM will have design concepts related to the Apollo Lunar Module, with a four-legged landing unit carrying an ascent stage.
An Earth Departure Stage (EDS), a powerful propulsion unit, will be used to move CEV and LSAM units out of Earth orbit, such as on lunar missions.
Heavy Launcher unmanned cargo rockets will be used for heavy loads of equipment.
The launch rockets, Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicles, will use engines developed for the Shuttle program.
CEV will be launched atop a Crew Launch Vehicle (CLV), a single solid fuel booster with a second stage using a shuttle main engine. The CLV can carry a payload of 25 metric tons into low Earth orbit.
The heavy-lift system uses a pair of longer solid rocket boosters and five shuttle main engines to put up to 125 metric tons in orbit -- about one and a half times the weight of a shuttle orbiter.
The use of a Launch Escape System (LES) will improve safety. A LES is a top-mounted rocket that can quickly remove the crew capsule away from an exploding or otherwise dangerous rocket.
For a lunar mission, the LSAM and EDS would be placed in orbit by a cargo launcher, then a CEV would dock with the assembly before leaving Earth orbit.

Size of Saturn V, Space Shuttle, and new CEV, heavy lift vehicle. (NASA)
The goal is to begin production of the new spacecraft by 2011.
Robotic missions will be sent, probably the first one in 2008.
Past experience with lunar dust is being used in designing equipment and spacesuits which may encounter it.
Surface mobility with open and pressurized rovers for use in such missions is also being developed.
The CEV can be reused up to ten times.
Crew capsule, upon return to Earth, will set down on dry land. It can also land on water.
The CEV and lunar lander ascent stage use methane as fuel, as methane may be available on Mars.
Eventually the designs could be expanded to support six astronauts for a trip to Mars.

Apollo landing sites.
The plans are a means to implement President Bush's "Vision for Space Exploration" program. Goals include:
Implement a sustained and affordable human and robotic program to explore the solar system and beyond;
Extend human presence across the solar system, starting with a human return to the Moon by the year 2020, in preparation for human exploration of Mars and other destinations;
Develop the innovative technologies, knowledge, and infrastructures both to explore and to support decisions about the destinations for human exploration; and
Promote international and commercial participation in exploration to further U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests.

Publishers seek injunction against Google Print

Publishers seek injunction against Google Print
From Wikinews, the free news source you can write!

A number of publishers represented by the trade union group Association of American Publishers (AAP) filed an injuction in U.S. District Court in New York on Wednesday to stop Google from moving forward with plans for its Print Library Project.
The current situation between the publishing industry and Google requires that copyright holders notify the search engine if they do not want works to appear on the internet in full by November 1. Where requests by copyright holders exist, the search result will display only a snippet of the text and a link to where users can buy a hard copy. Google denies it is violating U.S. copyright law.

Negotiations broke down when Google rejected a proposal by AAP to use

ISBN.
Parties to the injunction want to implement a system where a listing of permissible works and books is populated by the discretion of the publisher or author. By default, all other copyrighted content would be excluded.

Google offers this explanation of how Google Print works:
Just do a search on the Google Print homepage. When we find a book whose content contains a match for your search terms, we'll link to it in your search results. Click a book title and you'll see the page of the book that has your search terms, along with other information about the book and "Buy this Book" links to online bookstores (you can view the entirety of public domain books or, for books under copyright, just a few pages or in some cases, only the title’s bibliographic data and brief snippets). You can also search for more information within that specific book and find nearby libraries that have it.

Plaintiffs involved in the case are

McGraw-Hill, Pearson PLC, Penguin Group, Simon & Schuster, Inc. and John Wiley & Sons. Recovery of court costs are being sought, but no punitive damages.

What is Google Print?

Google's mission is to organize the world's information, but much of that information isn't yet online. Google Print aims to get it there by putting book content where you can find it most easily – right in your Google search results.

More :Click here

Browser compatible fonts - which fonts to use on web pages?

Browser compatible fonts - which fonts to use on web pages?

One of the variables in web site design is the availability of fonts on visitor's computer. For example, you would have instructed the text on your web pages to be displayed in MS comic sans, but if your visitor does not have this font, the browser uses the default font. This messes the overall design of the web page, which you so meticulously created.

To overcome such system inconsistencies, it's advisable to use a set of fonts that will determine, on a priority basis, which font to use for display.

Fonts can be specified using the tag or Style sheets.Specifying font families with tag is achieved with the FACE attribute as:



And with Style sheets we use the font-family selector..imp {font-family: Arial, Verdana, Sans-serif;
color: #000000:
Any case, here are font-families that should provide adequate cross-browser compatibility.

The Sans-serif family
Arial, Verdana, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif

The Serif family
Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif

The Monospace family
Courier New, Courier, monospace


For maximum font compatibility or if you are too particular of the fonts to be used on your web site, I recommend using the embedded font technologies or using Bitstream Font Player, which allows you to use a select set of fonts available from them. however, the question that you should ask yourself - Would I download and install a font just to view a web site the way the designer wanted me to?

First Impressions Last

By Jennifer Johnson
"You never get a second chance to make a first impression."

Sure, it's a hackneyed phrase. It's also true.
Have you looked at your site lately? No, I mean really looked at your site - in particular your home page - and tried to envision it the way it appears to a first time visitor?
Stealing a phrase from "Men in Black", your front page is sometimes your "first, last, and ONLY" chance to make a good impression.
Remember the blind dates you've had? Your first impression probably played a large part in how well you and that person got along later and it more than likely was a major factor in the decision whether or not to see the person again.
It's a stretch; it's corny, but I'm going to use the first date analogy to help you determine what kind of impression you may be making on your new visitors.
So, grab a pack of Dentyne, practice your "winning smile" in the mirror a few times, and let's get started.

Looks aren't Everything...
Sorry to burst your bubble Skippy. Online, looks may not be everything, but your site's appearance plays a HUGE factor in your visitor's overall perception of your company.
You open the door to find some mammal that has almost mastered walking erect and has multiple body piercings. In a language strikingly similar to your own, he manages to communicate that he is your date for the evening.

You tell me - do you overlook his appearance? After all, when you asked if he was cute, your best friend did say he had a *great* personality. (Of course that was right after she said "define 'cute.'") Or do you feign an epiphany that the cause of your hamster's recurrent hairballs is the fact that you've neglected brushing his coat and must get on that right away?
Your site's appearance, especially the front page, can have the same effect on your visitors.
You may have the best content on the planet, but if something causes your visitors to mouse away before the front page finishes loading, it means nothing.

What are some things you can do to make a good first impression appearance-wise?
Professional appearance is a *must* for business sites. Choose your background and text colors wisely! I've said it before, but it bears repeating: I think, as a general rule, patterned background tiles belong on personal pages, not business sites.
Never sacrifice readability for a "look". Make sure your text, LINKs, and VLINKs are visible against your background color or image. This seems self-explanatory, but it is an all too common problem.

Try to keep image and file size to a minimum in order to speed download time. For every tick of the clock over a certain point, you're losing a segment of your potential visitors. You might know it's "worth it" to wait, your visitors don't - and they usually don't care. I shoot for 10-15 second download times on a 28.8. If you can do better and still have an aesthetically pleasing page, you've done a great job!

Avoid "splash" pages if at all possible. Don't make your visitors jump through lots of hoops to get to your information. For those of you who don't know what splash pages are, I'm referring to front pages that usually have some large graphic and one of the most annoying sentences in the online world: Click Here to Enter!!!!! If you are using one of these, I would strongly suggest dropping it if it has no value other than being a "gateway" to the main part of your site.
Spell check your pages before uploading them. Proofread them and try to catch any grammatical or HTML errors *before* the public does. (Trust me, they will.)

"You can put you're confidence in us!" I don't think so, Chester. Imagine your online credibility as a drop of water. Goofs like the one above are a red hot skillet for your poor little water drop; poof! your credibility is gone in an instant.

OK, OK, it may not be that bad, but you've chosen to enter an arena where you've got to prove you're not going to show up on the CrimeBusters Most Wanted list next week before most people are willing to do business with you. Why not do everything in your power to show your visitors that you are a legitimate company and you're serious about doing business online?
In a way, you've got a strike or two against you from the start; don't GIVE anyone a reason to distrust you.

Can I See You Again?
You've reached the end of the blind date. Do you bide your time waiting for just the right moment to bolt for the door; when he's putting the car in PARK? Hopefully, our visitors won't have the overwhelming urge to vacate our sites cursing us and vowing never to return.
Let's think positively; I'm confident that all of you have developed great sites. A better analogy in that case would be that you've reached the end of the date, can't believe you were lucky enough to have met this person, and can't wait to see them again.
How do you get that second (and third, and fourth, etc.) "date" set up with your visitors?
Simple, give them a *reason* to come back to your site.
One way you can do this is by developing interactive areas such as chat rooms, message boards, etc.

People, for the most part, won't come back week after week just to read and view the same ol' information. A second, and probably THE most effective, way to encourage return visits is to keep your content fresh.

Add new articles or areas frequently and when you do, let your visitors know about it.
I've had an experience with this myself recently. I update my site every Monday or Tuesday, but many people weren't aware of this because, at first glance, it basically looks the same. Josh Reimer of Promotion World, suggested I add a "What's New" section to keep visitors abreast of the new content and areas. This is a simple and effective way to allow return visitors to quickly and easily access new information.

Another way to encourage return visits is to start your own newsletter or mailing list. As great as your site is, maybe your visitors forgot to bookmark it or they just haven't thought about visiting you lately. If you offer a free newsletter, you can keep yourself "on their mind" without sending them unsolicited email.

With a little thought, I'm sure you can devise a few other ways to encourage return visits.
Our story ends here; I can't think of an analogy to make if you and your blind date hit it off so well that you decided to get married. Maybe a merger or something...

Color and Web Pages

Color and Web Pages

By Jennifer Johnson

Color. It's all around us. Everywhere we look our world is filled with color. Color can capture our attention, can make us feel certain emotions at times, attract us, repel us, annoy us, entice us. It's much the same when it comes to web pages.

Graphics, colored text and backgrounds, pictures, etc. are some of the things that make the Internet so wonderful, but these same things are also some of the worst aspects of the Internet in given situations. How can you use color effectively on your site?
You can use colored backgrounds or patterned tiles or borders to add a little spice to your page. After all, who wants to look at plain ol' black and white all day long? It's pretty boring, right? This is an area, however, where what is good in theory doesn't always translate to being good in practice.

Always, always, always remember: your background tiles or your cool graphics or color combinations shouldn't be the focus of your site. (It should go without saying that this is especially true for Internet businesses.) Rather, these page elements should enhance the information and/or product or service description/presentation. In other words, you want your visitor to leave thinking, "Wow! That person really knows their stuff! I know where I'm buying my next [blank]." You DON'T want the visitor to leave thinking, "Wow! What cool graphics!

Hey...what the heck was that site about anyway?"

The most common mistake in terms of use of color, in my opinion, is poor choice of background/text colors. If you use poor color combinations and render your text unreadable, you might as well have taken the money you spent on developing your site and started a nice bonfire with it in the middle of the street. It would seem self-explanatory that text should, by its very nature, be readable, right? For many of us, it's not difficult to grasp that very basic concept...that is until we discover the neat FONT COLOR tag or delve into CSS - then we can become tempted to get a little too cute.

Myriad pages exist that prove readability isn't high on many designers' list of priorities. It sounds boring, but black text on a white background is by far the easiest to read. You can add color with a conservative border background or through the use of TABLEs and the BGCOLOR attribute of the TD tag. Just don't go overboard.
I would especially caution against use of colored text on a colored background; I've rarely seen designers pull this one off. Unfortunately, too many designers think bright blue and bright red make a great color combo - WRONG!! Choose your text/background colors wisely; if you don't, all your effort has been wasted.

I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with judicious use of colored text or white text on a colored background; using this set up in a navigation bar, for example, is fairly common. What I'm cautioning against is using colored text on a colored background on the majority of your site. Don't discount the negative effect this can have in terms of your visitors' perceptions of your site.

In closing, I think it's always a good idea to play it somewhat conservative on business sites as a general rule. If you're designing a personal homepage, knock yourself out with the neon green/hot pink color scheme. Don't risk losing business for the sake of having a wild or "cool" color combo, though. Would you spend hours crafting a great message for your brochures then tell the person behind the counter at the printer, "Just pick any colors"? No, of course not; you realize that the medium is at least as important (if not more so in many cases) as the message. Try to think in these terms when designing your site as well and I'm sure you'll stand a much better chance of succeeding!

Hanuman - Bollywood animation comes of age

Hanuman - Bollywood animation comes of age

In Hindu mythology, Ramayan is the most popular story ever told. And when it comes to Ramayan, then its not just Ram, Laxman, Sita and Ravan. There is also one more important character in the story - HANUMAN.Hanuman - who leaped for the sun thinking it to be a was a sweet fruit Hanuman - who was blessed by the GODS with supernatural strengthHanuman - who flew across mountains and leapt across the oceansHanuman - who is the mighty warrior, the destroyer of the wickedSince the silent movies era, there have been number of flicks made on the Ramayan and its characters but never before has there been a full fledged animation movie around the story. A Percept Pictures Company in association with Silvertoons, 'Hanuman' is a Sahara One Motion Pictures presentation, which is a 100% animation movie, and is about to release this festive season.The highlight of the movie is that it is India's first ever animated movie based on Hanuman's life and takes the viewer through Hanuman's birth till the great victory over Lanka. The movie talks about number of extraordinary feats that he displayed since his childhood through 100 minutes of world class animation. The movie boasts of 40 characters and 200,000 individual images that resulted in the movie Hanuman, which is directed by V.G.Samant and has Mukesh Khanna providing the voiceover for Hanuman.The movie revolves around five principal characters of Ramayana - Ram, Sita, Laxman, Ravan and of course Hanuman. The movie traces Hanuman's life from his childhood when he was born to Anjani, a female Apsara and the Moneky King Kesari. When Anjani was expecting a child, Pavan Dev placed Lord Shiva's 'ansh' in her womb and hence he is also called 'Pavanputra'. He was blessed with supreme intelligence, strength and devine powers and was quite naughty as a baby [one look at the animated picture of a cute looking young Hanuman and you know for sure that this is a naughty kid!]His pranks were not only reserved for the youngsters of his group but also the saints who lived in nearby forests. He in fact didn't even spare the sun and aimed to eat it as well thinking of it to be a fruit! No one really minded the fun games he played and he was blessed by the GODS with immortal life and divine powers due to which he became all powerful and mighty. But he never used these powers for anything bad and didn't harm anyone. Due to the powers bestowed upon him, he was safe from any weapons, fire and water. He became immortal and the best power he got was an ability to change his body size to the biggest and the smallest ever possible!The biggest episode in his life began when he came in contact with Ram and Laxman who were searching for Sita. He was a great worshipper of Lord Ram and helped him find Sita, destroy Lanka and kill Ravana. He used his super powers to a great extent in this battle and won the friendship of Ram!A spectacular affair, 'Hanuman' promises to be a coming of age animated movie in Bollywood with great fun, drama, action, vibrant colors, fast moving frames, great sound effects, songs, dances and everything else that should go along to make an animated movie a great experience for kids and adults alike.A movie that should make for a good family outing, 'Hanuman' releases this Friday i.e. October 21st.

wallpapers: check here

"Aliens of the Deep" | Director James Cameron

"Titanic" Director Uncovers "Aliens of the Deep"

Stefan Lovgren, National Geographic

Since making Titanic, director James Cameron has hardly left the ocean floor. For his latest underwater adventure, Aliens of the Deep, a large-format 3-D film, Cameron and his team went deeper than they've ever ventured before—to the ocean's volcanic hot springs, or hydrothermal vents.
In this extreme environment several miles below the ocean surface, an amazing array of animals live in a world of scorching heat, intense pressure, and absolute darkness. Some scientists believe this is where life on Earth began.
Cameron suggests that hydrothermal vents could provide clues for where to look for life in space. If life can survive in such an extreme environment on Earth, maybe the conditions to sustain life exist elsewhere in the universe.
National Geographic News spoke with Cameron in Los Angeles.

How do you see yourself—as a filmmaker or a scientist?

I'm not a scientist. I jokingly call myself a science groupie. But really, I'm a filmmaker. When you choose a subject, you become immersed in it. [This film] was about deep-ocean science, geology, and biology. And as expedition leader, I had to be conversant on those subjects.

So this was not just a film, but a real scientific research project. What did you set out to do?

The overarching mission was to tell the story of these deep environments in a new and exciting way, and interrelate that with the ideas about astrobiology [science of possible extraterrestrial life-forms] and the types of extremophile life [organisms that live under extreme environmental conditions] that we might find on other planets. We were not just taking ocean scientists on an ocean expedition, but space scientists on an ocean expedition. It seemed almost criminal to me to be going out with all these diving assets, with this big research vessel, and not doing research.

What were some of the logistical challenges?

Not only did I have my specific goals as a filmmaker on the dives, but I had to juggle a number of scientists who were competing with each other for real estate on the submersibles, in terms of the equipment they needed to take, time on the dives as observers, lab space on board the ship, and so on.
I felt like the ringmaster of a three-ring circus every single day. It was the biggest logistical job I've ever been involved with.

Ninety percent of the seafloor is unknown. The oceans really are uncharted territory, aren't they?

Absolutely. We were diving at sites that had already been discovered. But the possibility for discovering new species exists on almost any dive you make. These mid-ocean ridge systems run all over the planet. There are going to be a lot of interesting ecosystems that we haven't even dreamed of yet.
The problem is we have five vehicles in the world that can go to the depths that allow you to analyze these deep-ocean sites. The area down there that hasn't been explored is probably equivalent to all of the lands of the continents put together. That's like exploring all of the continents with five jeeps—and jeeps go faster. You can see further from a jeep than you can from a submersible.

Describe these hydrothermal vents. Why are they so fascinating?

You can vastly generalize and say they're underwater volcanoes. Every time two continents move apart … liquid rock, magma, comes up to the surface and forms new crust. When it hits the seawater, it freezes and becomes rock, and then that splits apart and more comes up. That goes on millennium after millennium, and that's how the continents move around.
So you have all these chemicals raining down on the bottom, and it's stuff that will kill you and me. But nature, in its ingenuity, has figured out a way to use this chemistry to sustain a completely different type of life than we experience here at the surface. That's what's fascinating to the astrobiology community.
They're saying, Wait a minute, if you've got chemically supported life down there, as opposed to life that relies on photosynthesis, then that's something that might theoretically be able to exist in an aquifer on the surface of Mars.

You show some amazing creatures in this film.

We saw a lot of invertebrates. An octopus with settling fins. Blind albino crabs, blind vent shrimp in their legion, these two-meter-long [six-feet-long] tube worms. What we said in the film is that if these things didn't exist, we couldn't imagine them. Scientists didn't imagine the existence of these kinds of animals until they were confronted with them.
And that's really, to me, the most exciting takeaway from this: Science is great at analyzing but not great at predicting. The only way to really know what's out there is to go and take a look.

The movie suggests that these hydrothermal vents could be where life on Earth began. Most scientists agree that they are central to the function of the Earth's system. But of course not everyone agrees that that's where life began.

No, there are a number of competing theories. But there are some things in favor of this theory. If life emerged in shallow, brackish seas—the warm-puddle theory—it would have been quickly destroyed during the heavy bombardment the early Earth suffered [from comets and asteroids]. Whereas, at the bottom of the ocean, several miles down, you'd be sheltered from these events.
Presumably the hydrothermal activity was there from the beginning of the oceans themselves. You've got basically a stable environment, you've got chemical energy available, and you've got all the building blocks necessary. So it seems inconceivable to me that it would not have been a viable place for life to emerge. But [the origin of life] is a great mystery. It's the greatest detective story out there.

And you're saying there's a correlation between the life we find deep in our oceans and the life that we might find in space.

If life exists elsewhere in our solar system, it's going to be something that we would classify as extremophile, something that's going to live at the very edge of conditions that are habitable.
By studying extremophile organisms here on Earth in the toughest environments we can identify, we can learn something about the limitations of genetics and biology in these environments. We're seeing an almost ubiquitous adaptation of life to the extreme environments.
Life needs to have energy. But it doesn't necessarily need to get it from oxygen, and it doesn't need to get it from the sun.

Do you think we're imaginative enough in our search for alien life? There seems to be a "follow the water" mantra. But what about the likelihood of, say, an ammonia-based life-form in space?

Just because we've never seen cryogenic [very cold temperature] life on this planet doesn't mean it can't exist. Look for life on Titan. Look for life in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter, in the upper atmosphere of Venus. We shouldn't rule out any environment.
If life is as tenacious and adaptable as it seems to be here on Earth, there's no reason why it couldn't exist in some of these other places.

How would you characterize the scientific era we're in right now?

Generally our society is turning its back on science and going to a more dogmatic view of the world, because people feel that science has not answered their fundamental questions.
We love all the benefits from basic research, which has yielded [things like] the semiconductor that have transformed the way we live our lives. Yet the funding for basic research is getting harder to get. We are putting less and less emphasis on understanding our environment at the same time that we are having a greater and greater impact on it.
Look at the response to rapid global climate change. You have an administration [in Washington] that says it's not happening—in absolute defiance of the science community.
I see this strange turn away from science at a critical moment in our history when we need it more than ever.

No Winter by 2105? New Study Offers Grim Forecast for U.S.

Willie Drye National Geographic

A study conducted by scientists in the U.S. and Italy warns that summers could be a lot hotter in a hundred years because of global warming caused by greenhouse gases.
"Summer is likely to be more severely hot everywhere in the U.S.," said Noah Diffenbaugh, an atmospheric scientist at Purdue University who co-authored study.
"In the Southwest, if you imagine the hottest two and a half weeks of the year, you're looking at that becoming three months long. Phoenix [Arizona] will get three months of what is now the hottest two weeks of the year."

Winter weather could be affected as well, Diffenbaugh said. "You're looking at the coldest couple of weeks of the year not existing anymore in lot of places," he said.
"Certainly winter as we know it likely will disappear in the Northeast."
Although there are several types of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere, an abundance of carbon dioxide is thought to be the prime cause of the greenhouse effect that prevents heat from escaping the Earth.

Many scientists think the effects of human activity—such as automobile emissions—have increased carbon dioxide levels and are causing global warming.
The results of the study are detailed in an article co-authored by researchers at Purdue and the Abdus Salarn International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy.
The study was conducted with computer simulations using climate data and projections of greenhouse gas levels.
The results appear in today's online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Warming Has Started
The study notes that during the late 20th century the U.S. experienced "more hot events, more heavy precipitation events, and fewer cold events."

Statistics released last week by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that September 2005 was the warmest September since 1880, when record-keeping began.
In the U.S. average temperatures for July through September were the fourth warmest on record. All 48 contiguous states had above-average temperatures during this period.
Temperatures in Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont set new records during these months. In the Northeast the period was the warmest in at least 111 years, NOAA reported.

The weather changes predicted by Diffenbaugh and his colleagues could do more than make summers more uncomfortable.
There may be more floods a century from now, and summer heat waves may be much hotter and last much longer.
The scientists warn of "catastrophic losses of property and human life," as well as "exotic diseases," "species extinction," and "dramatic ecological, economic, and sociological impacts."

Differing Opinions
Some meteorologists, however, aren't ready to conclude that the world's weather is changing.
Joe Bastardi, a meteorologist with the commercial weather service AccuWeather, said recent unusually warm summers don't necessarily indicate permanent changes.

Bastardi questioned whether studies blaming global warming for unusual events—like an increase in the frequency of hurricanes—have fully considered data from earlier periods.
For example, he said, a severe drought created the so-called Dust Bowl conditions in the U.S. Midwest during the 1930s, long before global warming was being blamed for extreme weather events.

"There are always droughts and floods," Bastardi said. "Someone's always wet, and someone's always dry."
Bastardi said he doesn't dismiss theories about global warming, but he wants to see more evidence.

"It may be happening, but there's always been climate change," he said.
Diffenbaugh acknowledged that more studies are needed before firm conclusions can be drawn.
"The climate system varies," he said. "We have periods when the entire Earth was covered in ice, and times when there was no ice at all. What we're finding, however, is that greenhouse gases enhance that variability."

Ancient Chocolate Found in Maya "Teapot"

Bijal P. Trivedi National Geographic

Analysis of residue from a ceramic "teapot" suggests that the Maya, and their ancestors, may have been gobbling chocolate as far back as 2,600 years ago, pushing back the earliest evidence of cacao use more than 1,000 years.

"This reopens the whole debate about who first invented chocolate," said Jonathan Haas, curator of the mouthwatering "Chocolate" exhibition at the Field Museum in Chicago.
The first chemical evidence of cacao use came about 15 years ago after the analysis of residue from a vessel found at the Mayan site of Rio Azul in northeastern Guatemala and belonging to the Early Classic period of Maya culture—approximately A.D. 460. But Michael Coe, co-author of The True History of Chocolate, believes based on a slew of evidence, some linguistic, that the roots of chocolate go much further back to the great Olmec civilization, which preceded the Maya.

"The Maya derived a lot of their high culture from the Olmec," said Coe, also professor emeritus of anthropology at Yale. "Even the word 'cacao' is not a native Maya word—it's Olmec." The Olmec lived in the southern Gulf of Mexico between 1500 and 500 B.C., and their influence extended to Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, Costa Rica, and El Salvador.

"The new find is hard chemical evidence that the Mayans were drinking chocolate in 500 B.C.," said Coe, suggesting that people were cultivating the cacao tree long before the Maya civilization, which flourished in southern Mexico, the Yucatán, and the highlands of Belize between 500 B.C. and A.D. 1500.

Chocolate is made from the seeds of the cacao tree, which are swaddled in gooey white flesh inside green-yellow pods. The seeds and the pulp are scooped out of the pod and allowed to ferment until the seeds are a rich dark brown. The seeds are then dried, and then roasted before being ground to produce a thick chocolate paste.

Chocolate for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner
The Maya had a lifestyle many kids would envy—chocolate at every meal. "It was the beverage of everyday people and also the food of the rulers and gods," said Haas. In fact, the scientific name for the cacao tree is Theobroma cacao—"food of the gods." Hieroglyphs that depict chocolate being poured for rulers and gods are present on Maya murals and ceramics.
Now the newly-analyzed spouted ceramic pot reveals the deeper darker history of this almost drug-like substance.

Mayan teapots have always fascinated Terry Powis, an archaeologist at the University of Texas at Austin, which is how his investigation began. "Spouted vessels are very distinct from other Mayan ceramics and quite rare, typically associated with elite burials," he explained.
Fortunately for Powis, fourteen such vessels were excavated in 1981 from a site at Colha, which lies close to the Caribbean coast in northern Belize, and have since been housed at the University of Texas, Austin. The Maya occupied Colha, which is known for its production of stone tools and its Preclassic spouted vessels, continuously from about 900 B.C. to A.D. 1300

The Essence of Chocolate
Powis's goal was to determine whether the vessels were indeed used to pour some type of chocolate libation.
He scraped residue from the vessels and sent the samples to W. Jeffrey Hurst, who has a delicious job as an analytical biochemist at the Hershey Foods Technical Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Using "high performance liquid chromatography coupled to atmospheric-pressure chemical ionization mass spectrometry," Hurst analyzed all the samples. The first instrument separates all the components of the mixture and the other measures the molecular weight of each. Cacao is a blend of more than 500 chemical compounds. Of this tasty compendium the signature chemical is a compound called theobromine—the chemical marker of cacao.
Of the 14 samples analyzed, 3 were positive for theobromine, "chocolate, that is," said Powis. The study is published in the July 18 issue of the journal Nature.

These spouted vessels were first dubbed chocolate pots about 100 years ago. Archaeologists knew from Spanish accounts that the Maya drank liquid chocolate and just assumed that the teapots were used to pour the beverage. "Now we have proof," said Powis.

Chilli, Honey and Maize With Your Chocolate?
By the time the Spanish reached the Maya, around the 1500s, everyone was drinking chocolate—rich and poor alike. Traces of chocolate have been found in ordinary Maya houses.
The Maya drink was very different from America's thin, watery hot chocolate, said Powis. According to Spanish accounts—many of which come from Bishop Diego de Landa, whose descriptions of Maya culture and language are the primary tools used today to translate Maya glyphs—the Maya enjoyed their hot chocolate thick and foamy.

While standing, Maya poured the chocolate drink from one vessel to another on the ground. The drop, together with the fatty cacao butter, produced a thick head of rich, dark, chocolate foam—the most coveted part of the drink.

Chemical analysis of these vessels is now becoming a standard tool in archaeology. As long as they're not washed, they can be analyzed for ancient residues. Powis hopes to use the same type of studies to reveal the other ingredients used in the chocolate drinks. From Spanish records, Mayanists already know that the chocolate was mixed with maize, water, honey, or chilli. But what other secret ingredients are discovered will be a sweet surprise.

4,000-Year-Old Noodles Found in China

4,000-Year-Old Noodles Found in China

John Roach National Geographic

A 4,000-year-old bowl of noodles unearthed in China is the earliest example ever found of one of the world's most popular foods, scientists reported today. It also suggests an Asian—not Italian—origin for the staple dish.
The beautifully preserved, long, thin yellow noodles were found inside an overturned sealed bowl at the Lajia archaeological site in northwestern China. The bowl was buried under ten feet (three meters) of sediment.
"This is the earliest empirical evidence of noodles ever found," Houyuan Lu of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics at Beijing's Chinese Academy of Sciences said in an e-mail interview.
Lu and colleagues report the find tomorrow in the science journal Nature.
The scientists determined the noodles were made from two kinds of millet, a grain indigenous to China and widely cultivated there 7,000 years ago. Modern North American and European noodles are usually made with wheat.
Archaeochemist Patrick McGovern at the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia said that if the date for the noodles is correct, the find is "quite amazing."
Even today, he said, deft skills are required to make long, thin noodles like those found at Lajia.

"This shows a fairly high level of food processing and culinary sophistication," he said.

Noodle History
Noodles have been a staple food in many parts of the world for at least 2,000 years, though whether the modern version of the stringy pasta was first invented by the Chinese, Italians, or Arabs is debatable.
Prior to the discovery of noodles at the Lajia archaeological site, the earliest record of noodles appears in a book written during China's East Han Dynasty sometime between A.D. 25 and 220, Lu said.
Other theories suggest noodles were first made in the Middle East and introduced to Italy by the Arabs. Italians are widely credited for popularizing the food in Europe and spreading it around the world.

Additional evidence is needed to prove that the noodles found at Lajia are the ancestor of either Asian noodles or Italian pasta. "But in any case, the latter is only documented two millennia later," Lu said.
Gary Crawford, an archaeologist at the University of Toronto at Mississauga in Canada, said finding 4,000-year-old noodles in China is not a surprise.
"It fits with what we've generally known—that noodles have a long and important history in China," he said.

Ingredient Sleuthing
To determine what the noodles were made from, Lu and colleagues compared the shape and patterning of the starch grains and seed husks in the noodle bowl with modern crops.
The team concluded the noodles were made from two kinds of millet—broomcorn millet and foxtail millet. The grain was ground into flour to make dough, which was then likely pulled and stretched into shape.

Foxtail millet alone, the researchers say, lacks the stickiness required to allow the dough to be pulled and stretched into strings.
While archaeological evidence suggests wheat was present in China 4,000 years ago, it was not widely cultivated until the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618 to 907), Lu said.

According to Crawford, the fact that the noodles were made of millet is not surprising. His own research at a similarly dated site in northern China shows ample millet and rice but very little wheat.
However, he added, the discovery of well-preserved millet noodles helps explain the lack of grain seeds found at some archaeological sites.
"One suspicion is grain seeds were made into a type of food through boiling and flour production. That would not necessarily leave much in the way of grains to be … recovered," he said. " … and if they were making noodles, that would explain it."

According to Lu, in poor, rural areas of northwestern China, millet is still used to make noodles.
"These modern millet noodles have a harder texture than the wheat noodles, so they are commonly called iron-wire noodles," he said.

Chimps, Humans 96 Percent the Same, Gene Study Finds

Chimps, Humans 96 Percent the Same, Gene Study Finds
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Stefan Lovgren National Geographic

Scientists have sequenced the genome of the chimpanzee and found that humans are 96 percent similar to the great ape species.

"Darwin wasn't just provocative in saying that we descend from the apes—he didn't go far enough," said Frans de Waal, a primate scientist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. "We are apes in every way, from our long arms and tailless bodies to our habits and temperament."
Because chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, the chimp genome is the most useful key to understanding human biology and evolution, next to the human genome itself.
The breakthrough will aid scientists in their mission to learn what sets us apart from other animals. By comparing human and chimpanzee genomes, the researchers have identified several sequences of genetic code that differ between human and chimp. These sequences may hold the most promise for determining what creates human-specific traits such as speech.
"If people are asking what makes us human, they're not going to find a smoking gun [in this study]," said Evan Eichler, a genome scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle who was part of the research team. "But they're going to find suggestions for where to look."
The project was conducted by an international group of scientists called the Chimp Sequencing and Analysis Consortium. Sixty-seven researchers co-authored the study, which is detailed tomorrow in the journal Nature.

Genetic Blueprints
To map the chimp genome, researchers used DNA from the blood of a male common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) named Clint, who lived at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta. Clint died last year from heart failure at the relatively young age of 24.
A comparison of Clint's genetic blueprints with that of the human genome shows that our closest living relatives share 96 percent of our DNA. The number of genetic differences between humans and chimps is ten times smaller than that between mice and rats.
Scientists also discovered that some classes of genes are changing unusually quickly in both humans and chimpanzees, as compared with other mammals. These classes include genes involved in the perception of sound, transmission of nerve signals, and the production of sperm.
Despite the similarities in human and chimp genomes, the scientists identified some 40 million differences among the three billion DNA molecules, or nucleotides, in each genome.
The vast majority of those differences are not biologically significant, but researchers were able to identify a couple thousand differences that are potentially important to the evolution of the human lineage.

"The goal is to answer the basic question: What makes us humans?" said Eichler.
Eichler and his colleagues found that the human and chimp sequences differ by only 1.2 percent in terms of single-nucleotide changes to the genetic code.
But 2.7 percent of the genetic difference between humans and chimps are duplications, in which segments of genetic code are copied many times in the genome.

"If genetic code is a book, what we found is that entire pages of the book duplicated in one species but not the other," said Eichler. "This gives us some insight into the genetic diversity that's going on between chimp and human and identifies regions that contain genes that have undergone very rapid genomic changes."

Mutations
Humans and chimps originate from a common ancestor, and scientists believe they diverged some six million years ago.
Given this relatively short time since the split, it's likely that a few important mutations are responsible for the differences between the two species, according to Wen-Hsiung Li, a molecular evolutionist at the University of Chicago in Illinois.

"If you look at two species of frogs over 10 million years, you probably won't see a lot of the morphological or behavioral differences that you see between humans and chimps," said Li, who wrote an accompanying commentary on the chimp genome sequencing for Nature.
There are several hypotheses that account for the evolution of human traits. Li believes these traits come from changes in the parts of the genome that regulate other gene activity.
Scientists agree that many questions remain unanswered but the chimp genome provides important clues to understanding what makes us human.

"We're in a very nice intermediate stage of understanding human-chimp differences," said Eichler. "We can't say, This is the difference that makes us human, but we can say, These are the regions of the genome that show a lot of potential and are excellent candidates to do further work on."