Friday, December 28, 2007

KHR-1

The KHR-1 is a programmable, bipedal humanoid robot introduced in June 2004 by a Japanese company Kondo Kagaku. At the time of its introduction it was one of the least expensive programmable bipedal robots (prices averaging around $1,600 in the United States and ¥128,000 in Japan). The robot is 34cm high and has 17 degrees of freedom (each joint is powered by individual servomotor). It is capable of a wide range of motions, including quick kung-fu-style fighting moves.

The KHR-1 can be controlled via RF remote control and modified receiver; however, these units do not come with the robot and must be purchased separately. Other accessories/modifications include additional degrees of freedom (waist and leg motion), a high performance motion processor microcontroller capable of real-time master/slave operation, gyros and multi-axis accelerometers, larger foot/sole plates.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Wireless networks

A wireless network is basically the same as a LAN or a WAN but there are no wires between hosts and servers. The data is transferred over sets of radio transceivers. These types of networks are beneficial when it is too costly or inconvenient to run the necessary cables. For more information, see Wireless LAN and Wireless wide area network. The media access protocols for LANs come from the IEEE.

The most common IEEE 802.11 WLANs cover, depending on antennas, ranges from hundreds of meters to low kilometers. For larger areas, either communications satellites of various types, cellular radio, or wireless local loop (IEEE 802.16) all have advantages and disadvantages. Depending on the type of mobility needed, the relevant standards may come from the IETF or the ITU.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

List of nanotechnology applications

Although there has been much hype about the potential applications of nanotechnology, most current commercialized applications are limited to the use of "first generation" passive nanomaterials. These include titanium dioxide nanoparticles in sunscreen, cosmetics and some food products; silver nanoparticles in food packaging, clothing, disinfectants and household appliances; zinc oxide nanoparticles in sunscreens and cosmetics, surface coatings, paints and outdoor furniture varnishes; and cerium oxide nanoparticles as a fuel catalyst. The Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars' Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies hosts an inventory of consumer products which now contain nanomaterials.

However further applications which require actual manipulation or arrangement of nanoscale components await further research. Though technologies currently branded with the term 'nano' are sometimes little related to and fall far short of the most ambitious and transformative technological goals of the sort in molecular manufacturing proposals, the term still connotes such ideas. Thus there may be a danger that a "nano bubble" will form, or is forming already, from the use of the term by scientists and entrepreneurs to garner funding, regardless of interest in the transformative possibilities of more ambitious and far-sighted work.

Thursday, December 06, 2007

wireless LAN

A wireless LAN or WLAN is a wireless local area network, which is the linking of two or more computers without using wires. WLAN utilizes spread-spectrum or OFDM modulation technology based on radio waves to enable communication between devices in a limited area, also known as the basic service set. This gives users the mobility to move around within a broad coverage area and still be connected to the network.

For the home user, wireless has become popular due to ease of installation, and location freedom with the gaining popularity of laptops. Public businesses such as coffee shops or malls have begun to offer wireless access to their customers; some are even provided as a free service. Large wireless network projects are being put up in many major cities. Google is even providing a free service to Mountain View, California and has entered a bid to do the same for San Francisco. New York City has also begun a pilot program to cover all five boroughs of the city with wireless Internet access.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

What is Dynamic compilation in Java?

Dynamic compilation is a method used by some programming language implementations to increase performance during program execution. The best-known language that makes use of this technique is Java. The dynamic compiling is originated in self. It permits optimizations to be made that can only be well-known at runtime. The Runtime environments by dynamic compilation characteristically have programs run slowly for the first few minutes, and then after that, nearly all of the compilation and recompilation is done and it runs fast. Because of this initial performance lag, dynamic compilation is undesirable in some cases. In most implementations of the dynamic compilation, few optimizations that could be done at the initial compile time are delayed until further compilation at runtime, causing additional unnecessary slowdowns. Just-in-time compilation is a type of dynamic compilation in java.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Destructor in C++

A destructor is a class associate function that has the same name as the constructor (and the class) but with a ~ (tilde) in front. It is declared as like this in a program
~Circle() ;
When an object goes out of extent or more rarely is explicitly destroyed, its destructor is called. For example if the object has dynamic variables, like pointers then that require to be freed and the destructor is the proper place. Unlike constructors, the destructors can and should be made virtual if you have derived classes.

The use of the destructor is to release or relinquish all resources for example memory, close any open files etc when an object of this class is destroyed. Normally such resources will have been acquired by the class constructor.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Supercar-Development of the regulations

The V8 Supercar is the most important motor racing series in Australia. A V8 Supercar is a five-liter V8 powered sedan, and the races are held in all states of Australia and New Zealand and also China.

To the disappointment of a greater part of fans who had watched a long history of Ford-Holden battles in Australian touring the car categories since 1960s, international touring car regulations seemed destined to stop the Australian-built Holden Commodore and Ford Falcon in the early 90s. But, this was avoided with V8 only regulations being drafted, in partnership the Ford and Holden, to showcase their big Australian made cars.

Thursday, November 01, 2007

What do you mean by Training Effect?

The Training Effect is a physical phenomenon identified to athletes. When a person exercises at an assured level for certain duration more than a certain number of weeks, their body will lift up its metabolism to an upper level - it will maintain at this level as long as a certain amount of exercise is performed all couple of days. This outcome was discovered by Dr. Kenneth H. Cooper of United States Air Force in the late 1960s. Dr. Cooper coined the term "Training Effect".

The considered effects were that muscles of respiration were strengthened, the heart was strengthened, the blood pressure was sometimes lowered and the whole amount of blood and number of red blood cells rises, making the blood a more competent carrier of oxygen. The VO2 Max was raises.

The exercise essential can be accomplished by any aerobic exercise in an extensive variety of schedules - Dr. Cooper found it is the finest to award "points" for all amount of exercise and necessitate 30 points a week to keep the Training Effect.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Freeway and its Design features

A freeway (is also superhighway, expressway or motorway as further explained below) is a multi-lane public road or highway planned for high-speed travel by great numbers of vehicles, and having no traffic lights, stop signs, or other regulations requiring vehicles to stop for cross-traffic.

Freeways have high speed limits and multiple lanes for travel in every direction. The number of lanes may differ from four or six in rural areas to as high as sixteen or eighteen in definite global cities. Freeway entrances and exits are restricted in number, and are intended with special onramps and off ramps, so as to make sure that vehicles do not disrupt the most important flow of traffic as they enter or leave the freeway. In few countries, the exits are numbered. Exit numbering may perhaps be by mile or kilometer, or in a simple sequential fashion. Where freeways cross, engineers give interchanges with elaborate ramp systems that permit for smooth, uninterrupted transitions connecting all through routes (as funds permit).

For the reason that the high speeds lessen decision time, freeways generally have more traffic signs than the equivalent signs on most highways and roads; the signs are time and again also larger. In most important cities, mainly on freeways six lanes in width or wider, guide signs are mounted on overpasses or overhead gantries so that drivers can see where each lane goes. Another ordinary problem with freeways is that it is almost impossible to keep away from wrong-way drivers, and the subsequent head-on collisions are often fatal. For that reason, special signage and lane markings are used to discourage drivers from going the wrong way. Freeways do not generally have traffic lights, but expressways may, in places where this distinction is made.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

A general view on Glasses

The Glasses, spectacles, or eyeglasses are frames manner lenses worn in front of the human eyes, sometimes for just aesthetic reasons but in general for vision correction or eye protection. The Special glasses are used for viewing the three-dimensional images or experiencing virtual reality.

The Modern glasses are typically supported by pads on the bridge of the nose and by temples placed over the ears. The Historical types consist of the pince nez, monocle, and lorgnette. The Glasses are more often called eyeglasses in North American English, rarely spectacles in British English, and (rarely) frames or lenses. The Spectacles are often shortened to specs. In hipster jargon they are cheaters.

The Glasses were initially made from glass, but many are now made from plastic (often polycarbonate) because of the danger of breakage and the greater weight of glass lenses. Some plastics also have more beneficial optical properties than glass, like better transmission of visible light and better absorption of ultraviolet light. Some plastics have a greater index of refraction than the majority types of glass, allowing thinner lenses for a given prescription. Scratch-resistant coatings can be applied to most plastic lenses charitable them similar scratch resistance to glass. Hydrophobic coatings intended to ease cleaning are also obtainable, as are anti-reflective coatings designed to improve night vision and make the wearer's eyes more visible.

The Corrective spectacles have lenses created to correct vision abnormalities, like myopia. The Safety glasses are a type of eye protection against flying debris or noticeable and near visible light or radiation. The Sunglasses care for against high levels of visible and ultraviolet light.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

The real facts about Jupiter

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and by distant the largest. Jupiter is above twice as huge as all the additional planets combined. Jupiter is about 90% hydrogen and 10% helium (by numbers of atoms, 75/25% by mass) with traces of methane, water, ammonia and "rock". This is very near to the composition of the primordial Solar Nebula from which the full solar system was formed. Saturn has a related composition, but Uranus and Neptune have much fewer hydrogen and helium.

Jupiter is the fourth shinning object in the sky (after the Sun, the Moon and Venus). It has been recognized since prehistoric times as a bright "wandering star". However in 1610 when Galileo first pointed a telescope at the sky he revealed Jupiter’s four large moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto (currently known as the Galilean moons) and recorded their motions back and forth just about Jupiter. This was the first finding of a center of motion not it seems that centered on the Earth. It was a most important point in favor of Copernicus's heliocentric theory of the motions of the planets (along with other new facts from his telescope: the phases of Venus and the mountains on the Moon). Galileo's outspoken support of the Copernican theory got him in mess with the Inquisition. Today anyone can replicate Galileo's observations (without fear of retribution :-) using binoculars or a cheap telescope.

Jupiter and the added gas planets have high velocity winds which are confined in broad bands of latitude. The winds blow in reverse directions in adjacent bands. Slight chemical and temperature differences between these bands are in charge for the colored bands that govern the planet's appearance. The brightness colored bands are called zones; the dark ones belts. The bands have been identified for some time on Jupiter, but the complex vortices in the boundary regions between the bands were first seen by Voyager. The data from the Galileo probe specify that the winds are even faster than expected (more than 400 mph) and make bigger down into as far as the probe was able to view; they may extend down thousands of kilometers into the center. Jupiter's atmosphere was also found to be pretty turbulent. This indicates that Jupiter's winds are determined in large part by its internal heat fairly than from solar input as on Earth.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Are Human Rights Asian

As Kevin Tan, senior professor at the National University of Singapore remarks understatedly, the debate on Asian values and human rights has become something of a cottage industry since its setting up at the UN world Conference on Human Rights in 1994. Both regional papers from the Middle East and Asia challenge the universality of human rights, e Bangkok announcement has since become a manifesto, a kind of declaration of independence from what has been considered the forward moralism of the West.

A brief summary of the positions spoken at the UN conference and afterwards indicate the divide. Asian government represented by statesmen Mahathir and Lee Kwan Yew claim that human rights may have a universal dimension but this is restricted by its Western genesis. The Bangkok declaration itself best speaks here while human rights are common in nature, they must be considered in the context of a dynamic and evolving process of global norm-setting, bearing in mind the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds.

Monday, September 10, 2007

Adam Smith

He was born in 1723 in Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland, fatherless. The accurate date of his birth is unidentified. He was baptized June 5, 1723. At the age of fifteen, he begins his school at Glasgow and Oxford. In 1751, after he finished school, he was obtained a job at Glasgow University where he became the new Professor of judgment. There he lectured on beliefs, expression, jurisprudence and the political economy.

Just eight years after his training career began; he published his work. The Theory of ethical Sentiments. This show that he could write and he recognized himself in the world. In 1776, a query into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was published. Immediately the book was a success. It had a remarkable effect on how people attention. Although it took him ten years to write, he became a very rich man from it.

Monday, September 03, 2007

Blazer

A blazer or boating jacket is a type of jacket, generally double-breasted even though single-breasted blazers have become more general in current times. A blazer looks like a suit jacket except for that it generally has patch pockets with no flaps, and metal shank buttons. A blazer's cloth is usually of a resilient nature as it is used in schools and was used for sport. They frequently form part of the uniform dress of bodies, such as airlines, schools, yacht or rowing clubs, and private security organizations. As sporting dress has become more modified to the activity, the blazer has become limited to clubs' social meetings. Generally, blazers are navy blue, but nearly every color and mixture of colors has been used, particularly by schools and sporting organizations.

Monday, August 27, 2007

Internet marketing

Internet marketing is the use of the Internet to advertise and sell goods and services. Internet Marketing includes pay per click advertising, banner ads, e-mail marketing, affiliate marketing, blog marketing, article marketing, etc. Some of the benefits associated with Internet marketing include the availability of information. Consumers can log onto the Internet and learn about products, as well as purchase them, at any hour.

Monday, August 20, 2007

Water abstraction

Water abstraction, or water extraction, is the process of taking water from any source, either temporarily or everlastingly. Most water is used for irrigation or treatment to produce drinking water. Depending on the environmental legislation in the relevant country, controls may be located on abstraction to limit the amount of water that can be removed. Over abstraction can lead to rivers drying up or the level of groundwater aquifers reducing unacceptably. The science of hydrogeology is used to assess safe abstraction levels.

Monday, August 13, 2007

Jerkin


A jerkin is a man's short close-fitting jacket, prepared typically of light-colored leather, and without sleeves, worn over the doublet in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Leather jerkins of the sixteenth century were repeatedly slashed and punched, both for adornment and to improve the fit.
Jerkins were worn bunged at the neck and hanging open over the peascod-bellied fashion of doublet (as worn by Martin Frobisher). During the Normandy disgusting, American troops had little reasons to feel under provisioned compared to the Brits and Canadians, but the lack of leather jerkins was one major deficit.
During the post war period, a much less idiosyncratic PVC version was introduced to the armed forces. WD excess leather jerkins swamped the UK during the 1950s and 1960s and were a common sight on manual workmen across the country.

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Chess strategy


Chess strategy is concerned with the evaluation of chess positions and with setting up goals and long-term tactics for upcoming play. During the evaluation, a player must take into account the value of pieces on the board, pawn structure, king safety, positioning, and control of key squares and groups of squares.

The most basic is to count the total value of pieces on both sides. The point values used for this purpose are based on familiarity. Usually pawns are considered worth one point, knights and bishops three points each, rooks five points, and queens nine points. The fighting value of the king in the endgame is equivalent to four points. These basic values are modified by other factors such as position of the piece, coordination between pieces or type of position.

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Pocket timepieces


The earliest need for portability in timekeeping was navigation and mapping in the 15th century. The autonomy could be measured by looking at the stars, but the only way a ship could measure its longitude was by comparing the midday time of the local longitude to that of a European meridian—a time kept on a shipboard clock. However, the process was dishonestly unreliable until the introduction of John Harrison's marine chronometer. For that reason, most maps from the 15th century through the 19th century have precise latitudes but indistinct longitudes.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Abstract art

Abstract art is now usually understood to mean art that does not depict objects in the natural world, but instead uses color and form in a non-representational way. In the very early 20th century, the term was more often used to describe art, such as Cubist and Futurist art, which depicts real forms in a simplified or rather reduced way—keeping only an allusion of the original natural subject. Such paintings were often claimed to capture amazing of the depicted objects' immutable intrinsic qualities rather than its external appearance. The more precise terms, "non-figurative art," "non-objective art," and "non-representational art" avoid any possible ambiguity.

Friday, July 13, 2007

Vegetable

Vegetable is a culinary term which usually refers to an edible part of a plant. The definition is traditional rather than scientific and is somewhat capricious and subjective. All parts of herbaceous plants eaten as food by humans, entire or in part, are normally considered vegetables. Mushrooms, though belonging to the biological realm fungi, are also commonly considered vegetables. In general, vegetables are thought of as being savory, and not sweet, even though there are many exceptions. Nuts, grains, herbs, spices and culinary fruits (see below) are usually not considered vegetables.

Sunday, July 08, 2007

Management information system

Management Information Systems (MIS) is a general name for the educational discipline casing the application of people, technologies, and procedures —together called information systems — to solve business problems. MIS are distinctive from normal information systems in that they are used to evaluate other information systems applied in operational activities in the organization. Rationally, the term is commonly used to refer to the group of information management methods attached to the automation or support of human decision making, e.g. Decision Support Systems, Expert systems, and Executive information system.

Sunday, July 01, 2007

Pollarding


Pollarding is a woodland management method of hopeful lateral branches by cutting off a tree stem or minor branches two metres or so above ground level. The tree is given a year to regrow, after the first cutting, but once begun, pollarding requires annual maintenance by pruning. This will ultimately result in somewhat expanded (or swollen) nodes topping the tree trunk with multiple new side and top shoots growing from it.A tree that has been pollarded is known as a pollard. A tree which has not been pollarded is called a maiden or maiden tree; which also refers to the fact that pollarding is usually first undertaken when the tree is quite young. Pollarding older trees typically result in the death of the tree. Pollarding is sometimes abused in attempts to curb the growth of older or taller trees. However, when performed properly it is useful in the practice of arboriculture for tree management.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Business

In economic business is the social science of managing people to systematize and maintain collective productivity toward accomplishing particular imaginative and productive goals, usually to make profit.The etymology of "business" refers to the state of being busy, in the circumstance of the individual as well as the community or society. In other words, to be busy is to be doing commercially viable and profitable work.

The term "business" has at least three usages, depending on the scope — the general usage (above), the particular usage to refer to a particular company or corporation, and the comprehensive usage to refer to a particular market sector, such as "the record business," "the computer business," or "the business community" -- the community of suppliers of goods and services.

The singular "business" can be a legally-recognized entity within an economically free society, wherein individuals systematize based on expertise and skill bring about social and technological expansion.

However, the exact definition of business is disputable as is business philosophy; for example, most Marxist use "means of production" as a rough synonym for "business." Socialist advocate either government, public, or worker ownership of most sizable businesses.

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Whale

The term whale is ambiguous: it can refer to all cetaceans, to just the larger ones, or only to members of particular families within the order Cetacea. The last definition is the one followed here. Whales are those cetaceans which are neither dolphins nor porpoises. This can lead to some confusion because Orcas ("Killer Whales") and Pilot whales have "whale" in their name, but they are dolphins for the purpose of classification.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Exploration

Exploration is the act of searching or traveling for the purpose of discovery, e.g. of unknown regions, including space, for oil, gas, coal, ores, caves, water (Mineral exploration or prospecting), or information.The term can also be used to describe the first incursions of peoples from one culture into the geographical and cultural environment of others. Although exploration has existed as long as human beings, its peak is seen as being during the Age of Discovery when European navigators travelled around the world discovering new worlds and cultures. In scientific research, exploration is one of three purposes of research.Exploration is the attempt to develop an initial, rough understanding of some phenomenon.

Monday, June 11, 2007

USB Drives


USB drives mean Universal Serial Bus. USB flash drives also known as USB drives, key drives, pen drives or thumb drives. USB drives are NAND-type flash memory data storage devices incorporated with a USB interface. They are typically small, lightweight, detachable and rewritable. As of April 2007, memory capacities for USB Flash Drives currently are sold from 32 megabytes up to 64 gigabytes .Capacity is limited only by current flash memory densities, although cost per megabyte may increase quickly at higher capacities due to the expensive components.

USB flash drives offer possible advantages over other portable storage devices, particularly the floppy disk. They are more compact, generally faster, hold more data, and are more consistent than floppy disks. These types of drives use the USB mass storage standard, supported natively by recent operating systems such as Linux, Mac OS X, UNIX, and Windows.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Prawn


Prawns are shrimp-like crustaceans, belonging to the sub-order Dendrobranchiata .Prawns are illustrious from the superficially similar shrimp by the gill structure which is branching in prawns, but is lamellar in shrimp. The sister taxon to Dendrobranchiata is Pleocyemata, which contains all the true shrimp, crabs, lobsters, etc.
In various forms of English, the name "prawn" is often applied to shrimp as well, generally the larger species, such as Leander serratus. In the United States, according to the 1911 Encyclopedia, the word "prawn" usually indicates a freshwater shrimp or prawn. In Middle English, the word "prawn" is recorded as prayne or prane; no cognate form can be found in any other language. It has often been connected to the Latin perna, a ham-shaped shellfish, but this is due to an old scholarly error that linked perna and parnocchie with prawne-fishes or shrimps. In fact, the Old Italian perna and pernocchia meant a shellfish that yielded nacre, or mother-of-pearl.

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Motorola

Most of Motorola's products have been radio-related, starting with a battery eliminator for radios, through the first walkie-talkie in the world, defense electronics, cellular infrastructure apparatus, and mobile phone manufacturing. The company was also strong in semiconductor technology, including integrated circuits used in computers. Motorola has been the main supplier for the microprocessors used in Commodore Amiga, Apple Macintosh and Power Macintosh personal computers. The chip used in the latter computers, the PowerPC family, was developed with IBM and in a partnership with Apple. Motorola also has a diverse line of communication products, including satellite systems, digital cable boxes and modems.

Friday, May 18, 2007

Battery isolator

A battery isolator is a one-way electrical valve, allowing DC current to flow in one direction, but not flow in reverse. They are commonly used on vehicles where multiple batteries or battery banks are used, including recreational vehicles, boats, utility vehicles, airplanes, and large trucks. The primary purpose for their use is to insure that a failure of a single battery or battery bank, will not wipe out an entire battery network.

Several technologies have been used to achieve control of DC current in this manner: silicon rectifier packages, Schotkey rectifier packages, MOSFET rectifier packages, and conventional mechanical relays.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Purposes of worms

Many early communicable programs, including the Internet Worm and a number of MS-DOS viruses, were written as experiments or mischief generally intended to be harmless or merely annoying rather than to cause serious damage. Young programmers learning about viruses and the techniques used to write them might write one to prove that they can do it, or to see how far it could spread. As late as 1999, extensive viruses such as the Melissa virus appear to have been written chiefly as pranks.

A slightly more antagonistic intent can be found in programs designed to vandalize or cause data loss. Many DOS viruses, and the Windows Explore Zip worm, were designed to destroy files on a hard disk, or to corrupt the file system by writing junk data. Network-borne worms such as the 2001 Code Red worm or the Ramen worm fall into the same group. Designed to vandalize web pages, these worms may seem like the online equivalent to graffiti tagging, with the author's alias or similarity group appearing everywhere the worm goes.

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Mod chip

Xenium Mod Chip attached to an Xbox. The 2x6 header interfaces the chip with the LPC bus, while the red soldered wire overrides the original BIOS's D0 line. A Mod chip, a portmanteau of 'Modification microchip', is a device used to get around the digital rights management of many popular game consoles, including those made by Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo for the purposes of playing backup, imported, pirated, or homebrew games and/or applications. They are used mostly on systems that are CD/DVD-based due to the availability and low cost of blank media such as CD-R s and DVD+/-R s.

Almost all modern console gaming systems have hardware-based schemes which ensure that only officially authorized games may be used with the system and implement regional lockout similar to the scheme used in DVD movies. The specific technical nature of these DRM systems varies by system, and may include cryptographic signing, intentionally unreadable sectors, custom optical media, or some combination thereof. Mod chips are available also for some DVD players, to defeat region code enforcement and user.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Robotics

Robotics is the science and technology of robots, their design, manufacture, and application.Robotics requires a functioning knowledge of electronics, mechanics, and software. A person working in the field is a roboticist. The word robotics was first used in publish by Isaac Asimov, in his science fiction short story "Runaround" (1941).

Although the exterior and capabilities of robots fluctuate enormously, all robots share the features of a mechanical, movable structure under some form of control. The chain is warped of links ,actuators and joints which can allow one or more degrees of freedom. Most contemporary robots use open serial chains in which each link connects the one before to the one after it. These robots are called serial robots and often resemble the human arm. A few robots, such as the Stewart platform, exploit closed parallel kinematic chains. Other structures, such as those that mimic the mechanical structure of humans, different animals and insects, are comparatively rare. However, the development and use of such structures in robots is an dynamic area of research. Robots used as manipulators have an end effector mounted on the last link. This end effector can be anything from a welding mechanism to a mechanical hand used to manipulate the environment.

Friday, April 27, 2007

Biography



Biography (from the Greek words bios meaning "life", and graph in meaning "write") is a type of literature and further forms of media such as film, based on the written accounts of individual lives. While a biography may focus on a subject of fiction or non-fiction, the term is frequently in reference to non-fiction. Pat Shipman however, says "I think a good biographer has to write fiction some of the time to make apparent a significant event in someone's life." This is sometimes debated. As opposed to a profile or curriculum vitae, a biography develops a complex analysis of personality, highlighting different aspects of it and including intimate details of experiences. A biography is more than a list of distant facts like birth, education, work, relationships and death. It also delves into the emotions of experiencing such events.

Ancient Greeks developed the biographical tradition which we have inherited, although until the 5th century AD, when the word 'biographic' first appears, in Damascus' Life of Isodorus, biographical pieces were called simply "lives" ("bioi"). It is quite likely that the Greeks were drawing on a pre-existing eastern tradition; certainly Herodotus' Histories contains more exhaustive biographical information on Persian kings and subjects than on anyone else, implying he had a Persian source for it.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Groundwater


100 Groundwater is water flowing within aquifers below the water table. Within aquifers, the water flows through the pore spaces in unconsolidated sediments and the fractures of rocks. Groundwater is recharged from, and ultimately flows to, the surface naturally; natural discharge often occurs at springs and seeps and can form oases or swamps. Groundwater is also often withdrawn for agricultural, municipal and industrial use through man-made wells. The study of the giving out and movement of groundwater is hydrogeology.


Relative groundwater travel times, click to view full size Groundwater can be a long-term 'reservoir' of the natural water cycle, as opposed to short-term water reservoirs like the atmosphere and fresh surface water. The figure shows how deep groundwater can take a very long time to complete its natural cycle. Groundwater is naturally replenished by surface water from precipitation, streams, and rivers when this recharge reaches the water table. It is estimated that the volume of groundwater is fifty times that of surface freshwater; the icecaps and glaciers are the only larger reservoir of fresh water on earth.

Usable groundwater is contained in aquifers, which are subterranean areas of permeable material that channel the groundwater's flow. Aquifers can be confined or unconfined. If a confined aquifer follows a downward grade from a recharge zone, groundwater can become pressurized as it flows. This can create artesian wells that flow freely without the need of a pump. The top of the upper unconfined aquifer is called the water table or paretic surface, where water pressure is equal to atmospheric pressure.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Mobile phone


A mobile phone or cell phone is an electronic telecommunications device. Most current mobile phones connect in its place to the network using a wireless radio wave transmission technology. These mobile phones communicate via a cellular network of base stations, which is in turn connected to the conventional telephone network. In the late 1970s and early 1980s the car phone was the only mobile phone available.In addition to the standard voice function of a telephone, a mobile phone can support many additional services such as SMS for text messaging, packet switching for access to the Internet, and MMS for sending and receiving photos and video.Some of the world's largest mobile phone manufacturers include Alcatel, Audiovox, Fujitsu, Kyocera, LG, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Panasonic, Philips, Sagem, Samsung, Sanyo, Sharp, Siemens, SK Teletech, Sony Ericsson, and Toshiba.There are also specialist communication systems linked to, but distinct from mobile phones, such as satellite phones and Professional Mobile Radio. Mobile phones are also separate from cordless telephones, which generally operate only within a limited range of a specific base station.

Monday, April 09, 2007

Freeway

A freeway is a multi-lane highway designed for high-speed travel by large numbers of vehicles, and having no traffic lights, stop signs, nor other regulations requiring vehicles to stop for cross-traffic.
In general Design features
Freeways have high speed limits and multiple lanes for travel in each direction. The number of lanes may vary from four or six in rural areas to as high as sixteen or eighteen in certain global cities.
A median or central reservation separates the lanes traveling in opposite directions. Partition may be achieved through distance or through the use of high crash barriers like cable barriers and Jersey barriers.
Crossroads are bypassed by grade division using underpasses and overpasses. In addition to the sidewalks attached to roads that go over or under a freeway, nearly all countries also supply specialized pedestrian bridges and underground tunnels. Such structures enable pedestrians and cyclists to cross the freeway without having to make a long detour to the nearest road for which a grade separation has been provided.
Freeway entrances and exits are limited in number, and are designed with special onramps and off ramps, so as to ensure that vehicles do not disrupt the main flow of traffic as they enter or leave the freeway. In some countries, the exits are numbered. Exit numbering may be by mile or kilometer, or in a simple chronological fashion.

Monday, April 02, 2007

Lighting rod


A lightning rod is a metal narrow piece or rod, typically of copper or similar conductive material, used as part of lightning security to guard tall or isolated structures from lightning damage. Its formal name is lightning finial. Sometimes, the system is informally referred to as:

A lightning conductor,
A lightning arrester, or
A lightning discharger.
However, these terms really refer to lightning guard systems in general or specific mechanism within them.

Lightning rod dissipaters make a structure less nice-looking by which charges can flow to the air around it. This then reduces the voltage between the point and the storm cloud, making a strike less likely. The most common charge dissipaters appear as slightly-blunted metal spikes sticking out in all information from a metal ball. These are mounted on short metal arms at the very top of a radio antenna or tower, the area by far most likely to be struck. These devices diminish, but do not eradicate, the risk of lightning strikes.

Arrestors
A lightning arrestor is a mechanism that shunts or diverts the huge voltage and electrical current of a lightning hit to an earthed ground. Electrical equipment can be protected from lightning by an arrester, a device that contains one or more gas-filled spark gaps between the equipment's cables and earth. An arrester is designed to handle much higher jolts of electricity than a surge protector, which cannot handle a direct strike at all.
When lightning exceeds the arrestor's breakdown voltage, the currents arcs to the ground and prevents arcing around inside sensitive electronic equipment joined further down line. The glimmer gap may be filled with a noble gas, or with air. Other types may work by overcrowding normal irregular current, but allowing the direct current from a lightning discharge.
Lightning arrestors are normally installed on electric power broadcast lines, and on radio tower feed lines between the radio antenna and spreader. Smaller ones can also be installed on the mains electricity service coming into a building, just before the circuit breaker panel. Telephone wires also have fusible links sometimes where they enter a building, joined by carbon which will vaporize with very high current.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Sun

100 The Sun is the VIP at the centre of our Solar system. It is infrequently referred to as Sol to distinguish it from other "suns". Planet Earth orbits the Sun, as do a lot of other bodies, including other planets, asteroids, meteoroids, comets and dust. Its heat and light support almost all life on Earth.

The Sun has a mass of about 2×1030kg, which is not at all higher than that of an average star. About 74% of its mass is hydrogen, with 25% helium and the respite made up of trace quantities of heavier rudiments. It is thought that the Sun is about 5 billion years old, and is about half way through its key sequence evolution, during which nuclear fusion reactions in its core fuse hydrogen into helium. In about 5 billion years time the Sun will turn into a planetary nebula.

Although it is the bordering star to Earth and has been intensively studied by scientists, many questions about the Sun remain unanswered, such as why its outer atmosphere has a temperature of over 106 K when its able to be seen surface has a temperature of just 6,000 K.

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Cellular

A cellular network is a radio network made up of a number of radio cells (or just cells) each served by a fixed transmitter, normally known as a (base station). These cells are used to cover dissimilar areas in order to provide radio coverage over a wider area than the area of one cell. Cellular networks are naturally asymmetric with a set of fixed main transceivers each serving a cell and a set of distributed transceivers which provide services to the network's users.
Cellular networks offer a number of advantages over alternative solutions,
increased capacity
reduced power usage
better coverage
A good (and simple) example of a cellular system is an old taxi driver's radio system where a city will have some transmitters based around a city. We'll use that as an example and assume that each transmitter is handled independently by a different operator.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

View camera

The view camera is a type of camera with a very long history, but they are still used today by professional and amateur photographers who want full control of their images. The view camera is essentially a light-tight assembly comprised of a flexible mid-section, or bellows, attached to a device that holds a film sheet, photo plate or digital imager at one end (the rear standard) and a similar one that holds the lens at the other end (the front standard). The front and rear standards are not fixed relative to each other (unlike most cameras). Movement of the front and rear standards allows the photographer to move the lens and film plane separately for precise control of the image's focus, depth of field and perspective.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Eye color

Eye color is a polygenic trait and is determined mainly by the amount and type of pigments present in the eye's iris. Humans and animals have many phenotypic variations in eye color. In humans, these variations in color are credited to varying ratios of eumelanin produced by melanocytes in the iris.The brightly colored eyes of many bird species are mostly determined by other pigments, such as pteridines, purines, and carotenoids.
Three main elements within the iris add to its color: the melanin content of the iris pigment epithelium, the melanin content within the iris stroma, and the cellular density of the iris stroma.In eyes of all colors, the iris pigment epithelium contains the black pigment, eumelanin.Color variations among different irises are normally attributed to the melanin content within the iris stroma.The density of cells within the stroma affects how much light is absorbed by the underlying pigment epithelium.

Friday, March 09, 2007

Tourism in Kerala

Kerala is a state on the tropical Malabar Coast of southwestern India. Nicknamed as one of the "10 paradises of the world" by the National Geographic traveller Kerala is famous particularly for its ecotourism initiatives. Its unique culture and traditions, joined with its varied demography, has made it one of the the majority popular tourist destinations in India. Growing at a rate of 13.31%, the tourism industry considerably contributes to the state's economy. The Kerala Tourism Development Corporation, the government agency that oversees the tourism prospects of the state, has adopted the brand God's Own Country for its campaigns. The slogan holds global Superbrand status.Popularly visited attractions in the state include the beaches at Kovalam, Cherai and Varkala, the hill stations of Munnar, Nelliampathi, and Ponmudi, and national parks and wildlife sanctuaries such as Periyar and Eravikulam National Park. The "backwaters" region — an extensive network of interlocking rivers, lakes, and canals that center on Alleppey, Kumarakom, and Punnamada — also see heavy tourist traffic. Examples of Keralite architecture, such as the Padmanabhapuram Palace, Padmanabhapuram, are also visited. Kochi, the commercial capital of the state, is known as the "Queen of the Arabian Sea". Alappuzha, the first planned town in Kerala, is called the "Venice of the East".

Monday, March 05, 2007

Deafness

The word deaf is used in a different way in different contexts, and there is some controversy over its meaning and implications. In scientific and medical terms, deafness normally refers to a physical condition characterized by lack of sensitivity to sound. Notated as deaf with a lowercase d, this refers to the audiological experience of someone who is partly or wholly lacking hearing In legal terms, deafness is defined by degree of hearing loss. These degrees include profound or total deafness (90 dB - 120 dB or more of hearing loss), severe (60 dB - 90 dB), moderate (30 dB - 60 dB), and mild deafness(10 dB - 30 dB of hearing loss). Both severe and moderate deafness can be referred to as partial deafness or as hard of hearing, while mild deafness is usually called hard of hearing.
Within the Deaf community, the term "Deaf" is often capitalized when written, and it refers to a tight-knit cultural group of people whose primary language is signed, and who practice social & cultural norms which are different from those of the surrounding hearing community. This community does not mechanically include all those who are clinically or legally deaf, nor does it exclude every hearing person. According to Baker & Padden, it includes any person or persons who "identifies him/herself as a member of the Deaf community, and other members accept that person as a part of the community"

Thursday, March 01, 2007

spear

A spear is an ancient weapon used for hunting and war, consisting of a shaft, generally of wood, with a sharpened head. The head may be just the sharpened end of the shaft itself, as is the case with bamboo spears, or it may be of one more material fastened to the shaft. The most common design is of a metal spearhead, shaped somewhat like a dagger.
Spears were arguably one of the most general personal weapons from the late Bronze Age until the advent of firearms. They may be seen as the ancestor of such weapons as the lance, the halberd, the naginata and the pike. One of the initial weapons fashioned by human beings and their ancestors, it is still used for hunting and fishing, and its influences can still be seen in contemporary military arsenals as the rifle mounted bayonet.
Spears can be used as both melee and ballistic weapons. Spears used mainly for thrusting tend to have heavier and sturdier designs than those intended exclusively for throwing. Two of the most well-known throwing spears are the javelin thrown by the ancient Greeks and the pilum used by the Romans.

Friday, January 26, 2007

Journalism is a concrete, professionally oriented major that involves gathering, interpreting, distilling, and other reporting information to the general audiences through a variety of media means. Journalism majors learn about every possible kind of Journalism (including magazine, newspaper, online journalism, photojournalism, broadcast journalism, and public relations).
That's not all, though. In addition to dedicated training in writing, editing, and reporting, Journalism wants a working knowledge of history, culture, and current events. You'll more than likely be required to take up a broad range of courses that runs the range from statistics to the hard sciences to economics to history. There would also be a lot of haughty talk about professional ethics and civic responsibility too - and you'll be tested on it. To top it all off, you'll perhaps work on the university newspaper or radio station, or possibly complete an internship with a magazine or a mass media conglomerate.