10 Reasons Why Cats Are Better Than Dogs

If you happen to tell a cat lover that a dog makes a better pet, then be prepared for a heated debate. While it’s true that most pet lovers think that this is still an open question, there are several indisputable scientific facts that clearly show that cats have the edge. For instance, according to a recent research, the number of people who own pet cats in the United States is somewhat higher compared to the number of those with dogs as pets. Also, cats are currently the most popular pet in the entire world. In fact, it’s pretty fascinating to point out that good number of die-hard dog lovers have inched towards the light of the feline side. Basically, this means that you will stand a better chance of winning the argument that cats are indeed the most preferred furred companion, but if you base it on the following 10 reasons why cats are better than dogs. 

                              

1. Cats treat your guests politely: They won’t maul your guests

It is quite evident that the moment your guest steps through the door, a dog will start barking and pawing at him/her. As a matter of fact, your visitor’s clothes might become covered with dog hair and muddy paw prints that might make him/her feel offended. Fortunately, having a cat as your pet helps ensure that your guests will be treated more politely considering the fact cats often take time to observe new arrivals from afar before acknowledging them with a tail twitch and a cautious once-over.

2. Cats have immaculate hygiene: They are not filthy and smelly like dogs

There is nothing that can scare away your guests as well as your friends than a filthy and smelly dog. Unlike dogs that have a behavior of rolling around in piles of dirt and garbage, cats spend most of their time self-grooming. Ideally, they are fastidious self-groomers, and take care to be clean and odor-free at all times. Additionally, with daily shampooing and brushing, your pet cat can shed somewhat little fur. Essentially, this is one of the key reasons why most women believe that cats are better than dogs.

3. Silence is golden

A cat can save its precious meows to situations when it requires your attention. For instance, if a cat is feeling hungry or rather uncomfortable, it will tend to meow, but not loudly as a dog’s bark. However, this is not the case with a dog since it can bark hysterically at nearly everything or anyone causing distress to both your family and neighbors. With a pet cat, your neighbor will never call you in the middle of the night to complain that your cat is meowing loudly.

4. Cats do not need to be walked or exercised

A dog will tend to be more aggressive if it doesn’t get enough exercise, and to make it worse, it will try to resist any form of exercise like walking, especially if it’s not well trained. Nonetheless, cats can walk themselves, and hence you don’t have to drag your pet around the park when you have better things to do. Dogs must be walked or exercised several times in a day, no matter if it’s blazing hot, snowing, raining or sleeting.

5. A cats is a natural insect repellent

Cats are masters of extermination, particular when it comes to repelling insect or any other winged living things, and will tend to climb walls to dislodge them from their hiding places. It is quite fascinating to note that even lazy fly sneaking in via a screen door has limited chance of survival when you have a cat around your home. Dogs hardly earn their keep because they fail in keeping pests like insects and mice at bay.

6. Food costs: It costs less to feed a cat than a dog

Actually, the cost of pet food is one of the most important considerations that homeowners make nowadays when selecting a pet, especially if it entails a choice between a cat and a dog. Dogs must be fed on high-quality dog food and healthy dog treats, but cats only require a few cans of premium cat food that can last for several days. Basically, the cost of feeding a dog is usually very high depending on the size and energy level of your dog.

7. Cats are more independent than dogs

It is usually quite difficult for most homeowners to leave a dog alone at home without someone to keep an eye on it. This can be attributed to the fact that the dog’s aggressiveness might make it feel restless, and can even cause unnecessary damage to you property as a consequence of separation anxiety. Cats need less care, and thus you can leave them at home for long periods of time without having to worry about any damage to your property.

8. Cats make the best pets if you live in an apartment

Whether you live in a small or big apartment, cats need less space for their supplies, and it is intriguing to mention that you can even get along quite well with up to 3 cats in a small apartment. In fact, many landlords prefer tenants with cats than those with dogs. This can be attributed to the fact that less damage repair will be needed if you move out because of scratched walls and doors, stained carpet, and the need for a completes painting.

9. Cats enjoy bringing gifts to their loved ones

Cats are hunters at heart, and they are simply miniature versions of lions, cheetahs and tigers. As much as it’s true that a cat cant down a wildebeest, it can settle to smaller prey like mole, bird or unidentified critter part. The most interesting thing with a cat’s hunting is that it can bring their hunt to you as proof of its devotion to you. A dog can hunt a whole day, but it will present you with a loud bark.

10. Kittens are cuter than pups

It is pretty remarkable that both puppies and kittens are adorable, but the introduction of the “cute factor” puts more weight onto the latter. Actually, this explains why women most women prefer buying puppies for their children as gifts.

I personally love equally dogs and cats, as well as other pets! But I understand that sometimes cats are better than dogs. What do you think? Are there any other reasons cats are better than dogs? Please share your thoughts in the comments section!

Source: http://pets.amerikanki.com

A New Solution That Stops Snoring and Lets You Sleep

                                  

If you’re like most Americans you probably don’t get eight hours sleep each night.

But, if you also constantly feel exhausted, experience headaches for no obvious reason or have high blood pressure, you could have a more serious problem.

That’s because these can all be the result of snoring—which is, in turn, the most common symptom of a potentially serious health problem—obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).

While most people think of snoring as a minor annoyance, research shows it can be hazardous to your health.  That’s because for over 18 million Americans it’s related to obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). People who suffer from OSA repeatedly and unknowingly stop breathing during the night due to a complete or partial obstruction of their airway.  It occurs when the jaw, throat, and tongue muscles relax, blocking the airway used to breathe.  The resulting lack of oxygen can last for a minute or longer, and occur hundreds of times each night.  

Thankfully, most people wake when a complete or partial obstruction occurs, but it can leave you feeling completely exhausted.  OSA has also been linked to a host of health problems including:

• Acid reflux
• Frequent nighttime urination
• Memory loss
• Stroke
• Depression
• Diabetes
• Heart attack

People over 35 are at higher risk.

OSA can be expensive to diagnosis and treat, and is not always covered by insurance.  A sleep clinic will require an overnight visit (up to $5,000).  Doctors then analyze the data and prescribe one of several treatments.  These may require you to wear uncomfortable CPAP devices that force air through your nose and mouth while you sleep to keep your airways open, and may even include painful surgery.

Fortunately, there is now a comfortable, far less costly and invasive treatment option available.  A recent case study published by Eastern Virginia Medical School's Division of Sleep Medicine in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine concludes that wearing a simple chinstrap while you sleep can be an effective treatment for OSA.

The chin strap, which is now available from a company called MySnoringSolution, works by supporting the lower jaw and tongue, preventing obstruction of the airway.  It’s made from a high-tech, lightweight, and super-comfortable material.  Thousands of people have used the MySnoringSolution chinstrap to help relieve their snoring symptoms, and they report better sleeping, and better health overall because of it.

Source: http://knoworthy.com

Self-healing plastics that will repair your car

New York: A scratch on your car need no longer cause you distress - it will soon “heal” itself. 

Researchers have developed a plastic that “heals” on its own by restoring the initial molecular structure after any damage. 

The novel polymer network self-heals within a few minutes at relatively low temperatures, the researchers have contended. 

“Our method does not need any catalyst, no additive is required,” said professor Christopher Barner-Kowollik of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in the US. 

Barner-Kowollik’s researchers used the possibility of cross-linking functionalised fibres or small molecules by a reversible chemical reaction for the production of self-healing materials. The team took about four years to develop the novel polymer network. 

These so-called switchable networks can be decomposed into their initial constituents and re-assembled again after the damage, the researchers say in an article on their findings published in the journal Advanced Materials.

At comparably low temperatures from 50°C to 120°C, the network exhibits excellent healing properties within a few minutes, according to the study. 

Using the healing cycle developed by them, the KIT researchers have found a large number of intermolecular compounds that close again within a very short term during cooling. 

Mechanical tests, such as tensile and viscosity tests, confirmed that the original properties of the material can be restored completely.

“We succeeded in demonstrating that test specimens after first healing were bound even more strongly than before,” Barner-Kowollik was quoted as saying in the article.

Source: http://goo.gl/UDuUAV

Global warming is not due to natural factors

Expert Says ..



Washington: An analysis of temperature data since 1500 rules out the possibility that global warming in the industrial era is just a natural fluctuation in the earth's climate. 

The study, by McGill University physics professor Shaun Lovejoy, represents a new approach to the question of whether global warming in the industrial era has been caused largely by man-made emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

Rather than using complex computer models to estimate the effects of greenhouse-gas emissions, Lovejoy examines historical data to assess the competing hypothesis: that warming over the past century is due to natural long-term variations in temperature. 

"This study will be a blow to any remaining climate-change deniers," Lovejoy said. 

"Their two most convincing arguments - that the warming is natural in origin, and that the computer models are wrong - are either directly contradicted by this analysis, or simply do not apply to it," he said.

Lovejoy's study applies statistical methodology to determine the probability that global warming since 1880 is due to natural variability. 

His conclusion: the natural-warming hypothesis may be ruled out "with confidence levels great than 99 percent, and most likely greater than 99.9 percent." 

To assess the natural variability before much human interference, the new study uses "multi-proxy climate reconstructions" developed by scientists in recent years to estimate historical temperatures, as well as fluctuation-analysis techniques from nonlinear geophysics. 

The climate reconstructions take into account a variety of gauges found in nature, such as tree rings, ice cores, and lake sediments. And the fluctuation-analysis techniques make it possible to understand the temperature variations over wide ranges of time scales. 

For the industrial era, Lovejoy's analysis uses carbon-dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels as a proxy for all man-made climate influences - a simplification justified by the tight relationship between global economic activity and the emission of greenhouse gases and particulate pollution, he said. 

"This allows the new approach to implicitly include the cooling effects of particulate pollution that are still poorly quantified in computer models," he added.



Source: http://goo.gl/GOzDaF

NASA 'flying saucer' for Mars to land in Hawaii

In June, while beachgoers in Hawaii sit blissfully unaware, a flying saucer will descend over the island of Kauai. This is not a trailer for an alien invasion movie – NASA is gearing up to conduct the first test flight of a disc-shaped spacecraft designed to safely land heavy loads and one day people on the surface of Mars.

The Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) will be lofted into the stratosphere from the US Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai. The inflatable technology is intended to help slow down vehicles after they enter the thin Martian atmosphere at supersonic speeds.

"It may seem obvious, but the difference between landing and crashing is stopping," says Allen Chen at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who oversaw the successful landing of the one-tonne Curiosity rover in 2012. "We really only have two options for stopping at Mars: rockets and aerodynamic drag."

Inflatable spacecraft

Until recently, NASA had used parachutes and airbags for most robotic landings on Mars, starting with the Viking mission in 1976. But the heavier the load, the harder it is to come in softly. For the car-sized Curiosity, NASA invented an ambitious system called the sky crane, which combined parachutes with landing gear powered by retro-rockets that could lower the rover to the surface on tethers.

However, Curiosity pushed the weight limits of that technology, and future human missions could require 40 to 100 metric tonnes per mission. Such weight can't be adequately slowed by parachutes in the Martian air, which is just 1 per cent as dense as Earth's. Unfortunately, rocket-powered landings are out of the question, too, as the atmosphere is still just thick enough to buffet incoming spacecraft with more turbulence than thrusters can accommodate.

The LDSD design solves this quandary using a balloon-like decelerator and a giant parachute twice the size of Curiosity's. The decelerator would attach to the outer rim of a capsule-like entry vehicle. When the capsule is travelling at about Mach 3.5, the device would rapidly inflate like a Hawaiian pufferfish to increase surface area. The added air resistance would slow the capsule down to Mach 2, at which point the 33.5-metre parachute could safely deploy.

Bridge to Mars

To simulate Mars's thin atmosphere on Earth, the team in Hawaii will first lift a test vehicle fitted with the LDSD system to about 37 kilometres above the Pacific Ocean using a high-altitude balloon. The craft will detach and fire a small rocket to reach a height of 55 kilometres, about halfway to the edge of space. As it falls back to Earth, the system will inflate and moments later the parachute will fire. The saucer should gently splash down in open water.

NASA has three more test flights in Hawaii planned for the LDSD, and mission managers will review the results before deciding on next steps. In addition to landing human missions on Mars, the system could help robotic craft safely land in Martian mountains or highlands. These areas have even less air available for slowing down a spacecraft via drag and so have been inaccessible with current technology.

"Personally, I think it's a game-changer. You could take a mass to the surface equal to something like 1 to 10 Curiosities," says Robert Braun at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. "Think about it like a bridge for humans to Mars. This is the next step in a sequence of technologies that would need to be developed."

Source: http://goo.gl/r1YR90

Digitising cave art will prevent it being lost forever

Virtual records of fragile archaeological sites will preserve them for future generations when it's not possible to defend them from the elements

A RESCUE mission is underway on the Scottish coast north of Edinburgh. Jonathan's Cave, with its rare trove of 1500-year-old rock art, risks being flooded by the sea or buried in a landslide. But rather than fight the elements researchers have opted to save the cave by putting the whole thing on the internet.

A team led by Joanna Hambly, an archaeologist at the University of St Andrews, UK, is using a series of laser and visual scanning techniques to recreate a virtual cave in minute detail.

Starting last year, the team brought in a low-flying drone to shoot aerial footage of the outside of the cave and the surrounding land. Lasers then scanned the cave, both inside and out, to build a 3D model of the site on a millimetre-scale.

The team also scanned the carvings several times using a variety of techniques. In one, a camera snapped images of the walls as they were lit from many different angles. And another approach, called structured light scanning, projected different patterns onto the walls and then read distortions in the patterns caused by the rock surface. This method provides detail down to the level of 100 micrometres – fine enough resolution to examine each individual hammer blow that made up the carvings.

"We're throwing everything at it. There is a danger that we may lose these caves," says team member Tom Dawson of the non-profit trust Scottish Coastal Archaeology and the Problem of Erosion.

An online walk-through of Jonathan's Cave will go live later this month. As well as clicking to move through the cave, you will be able to use the mouse cursor like a torch to illuminate more than 30 different carvings left by the Picts, who lived in Scotland during the Iron Age. These include images of men and animals, Christian symbols and the earliest known depiction of a Scottish boat. If all goes well, the team hopes to recreate the process for other nearby caves that are also in danger of disappearing.

"One of the objectives is to see which technique is most effective at recording heritage like this," says Hambly.

The project is not the first to create a virtual record of fragile archaeological sites.

"This scarce resource is being lost forever," says Frank Weaver, a documentary filmmaker who has been using Microsoft's Kinect depth-sensing cameras to record rock art in Paraguay. "What better way to save it for future studies and appreciation than online?"

Katherine Tsiang, an art historian at the University of Chicago, has used similar methods to digitally record historic caves in China. But she cautions that even high-tech archives are vulnerable to becoming outdated, or simply forgotten about. "All of this digital stuff isn't permanent unless it's carefully maintained," she says.

Source: http://goo.gl/Zky8g1

Meet your unborn child

A service that creates digital embryos by virtually mixing two people's DNA will allow parents to screen out genetic disorders – and perhaps much more

WILL my baby be healthy? It's a question that concerns every prospective parent. Now a service that creates digital embryos by virtually mixing two people's DNA will give a clearer glimpse of their possible child's health, and perhaps much more – before it has been conceived.

The Matchright technology will be available in two US fertility clinics later this month, allowing people to screen out sperm donors who, when their genes are combined with those of the intended mother, could increase the risk of a child inheriting genetic diseases. The company that markets the technology, GenePeeks, hopes to expand worldwide.

But the technology's patent also includes a list of traits that aren't necessarily related to health – such as eye and skin pigmentation, height and waist size – raising concerns that it could be used to select embryos on the basis of more superficial characteristics. "It covers any disease or any trait that has a genetic influence," says Lee Silver at Princeton University, who co-foundedGenePeeks – even those where the genetic basis has yet to be discovered.

To find out how the technology may affect parents' future choices, New Scientist sent the patent to people working in reproductive health.

The priority should be medical problems, says Martina Cornel of the European Society of Human Genetics. This is what GenePeeks plans to do. It intends to use the system to identify rare conditions such as cystic fibrosis and Tay-Sachs disease, which are passed on to a child when both parents carry a mutation in a single gene.

Screening for genetic disorders usually involves sequencing the DNA of the prospective parents. GenePeeks takes this a step further: algorithms are fed this information and use it to digitally recreate the process of genetic recombination – the mixing of genetic information between a sperm and an egg. This allows them to look at the genetic make-up of the possible embryos.

Before a woman selects a donor from a participating fertility clinic, the Matchright algorithms, which Silver developed, are run thousands of times for each donor. This produces up to 10,000 simulated embryos per pairing. These are sequenced to look for mutations in single genes that can cause some 500 rare diseases, and then used to work out the disease risk in the hypothetical child that would develop from that particular partnership. The woman, who pays $1995 for the service, then gets a list of "safer" donors from which to choose.

To know which mutations to look for, the software searches databases of genes linked to different conditions. To validate the method, the company used the software to digitally pair anonymous men and women whose genomes were sequenced as part of the 1000 Genomes Project. GenePeeks then screened their virtual embryos and compared the incidence of predicated disease to that in the general population.

"These studies confirmed the system's ability to accurately predict a future child's risk profile," says co-founder Anne Morriss. However, only when a critical mass of children are born using the system will its true power become apparent. And even then it's still a game of probabilities – you might shift the likelihood of passing on traits by screening out certain donors, but it doesn't rule out the effect of spontaneous mutations that might arise during development.

Complex disorders

Most IVF clinics already test donors for about a dozen genetic disorders arising from single gene mutations, says Geeta Nargund, a fertility consultant at the Create Fertility clinic in London. They also take a family history and carry out general health checks.

The new technique will screen for more diseases, which everyone New Scientist spoke to agreed could be a lifesaver. "[These disorders] can be catastrophic not only for the child but also for the family," says Dagan Wellsat the University of Oxford.

But diseases caused by mutations to a single gene only affect 4 per cent of the population. Next, GenePeeks says it would like to use the software to screen for complex disorders that are affected by clusters of genes, such as schizophrenia, or complex diseases with a genetic basis, such as breast cancer.

Such conditions will be harder to predict, says Wells. "We don't always have a good understanding of how all these genes interact. And some are modified significantly by the environment."

Eventually the company would also like to offer the technology to couples hoping to conceive naturally, says Morriss. This means they could analyse their disease risk and make more informed decisions about their future, she says. The patent also includes the possibility it could be used by those sizing up potential partners on dating sites.

These intentions, coupled with the long list of traits on the patent rung alarm bells with some of the scientists we spoke to.

Whether or not the technology works for the more complex conditions and traits, the concern is that practices like this will change people's expectations about being able to select traits in their future children, says Marcy Darnovskyof the non-profit Center for Genetics and Society in Berkley, California. "It has the potential to change people's experience of what it means to be a parent."

But Hank Greely, a biomedical ethics specialist at Stanford Law School points out that just because certain traits are in the patent doesn't mean they will be used. Indeed, Morriss is adamant that the firm doesn't intend to use the system for non-medical purposes.

Last year, a similar patent was granted to personal genetics company 23andMe for their "inheritance calculator" – software that allows couples to see the traits they might pass on to their children. The patent specifically mentioned it could be used in fertility clinics to allow clients to select for certain non-medical traits in their donors. After a strong backlash, 23andMe stated it wouldn't be used in such circumstances.

However, there are situations where it might be helpful for parents to select certain physical traits. "It may be in the interest of the future child to resemble its social parents," Cornel says. For example, one part of the patent describes how the technology might be used by infertile or gay couples to get an idea of the traits their genetic children would have, allowing them to select a donor that produced the closest match.

"Where it is more ethically challenging is when you expand beyond couples in desperate need for a donor, to couples that are just interested in more trivial things," says Wells.

Silver says that what the patent is used for in future will be a business decision. He also says that owning the patent means the firm can prevent others from using the technology in unintended ways.

"This is such a sensitive issue because we are on the cusp of being able to do very extreme things with the biological knowledge that is being developed," says Darnovsky. "It is important that people understand what the technical possibilities are."

Because the simulated embryos are a new concept, it's not yet clear who will regulate the technology. "There need to be processes and specialists who can deal with it," says Nargund. Whatever happens, Darnovsky believes that the future of the technology should be open for discussion: "It depends a lot on how we approach it from a social perspective. If we want to go down that road we could find ourselves with new inequalities that are written into the genome."

Source: http://goo.gl/WmYbfV

Robots may replace human brains by 2045

Robots will start replacing human brains by 2045 and artificially intelligent machines may be capable of doing anything that humans can, including masturbating. And standing in line for new Apple products.
 
Moshe Vardi, a computer science professor at Rice University, traces the evolution of the idea that artificial intelligence may one day surpass human intelligence, from Turing to Kurzweil, and looks at the current rate of progress.

Early predictions were rubbish and it has taken 15 years to go from Deep Blue beating Kasparov at chess to self-driving cars and Watson beating Jeopardy champs Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.According to The Atlantic,  Vardi thinks it's reasonable to believe intelligent machines may one day replace human workers almost entirely and put millions out of work permanently, just as the world's food runs out.

What he is suggesting is an economic singularity, after which the labour market as we know it will cease to exist. Historically the labour market has evolved and adapted. Accelerating technology over the last few centuries has consistently erased some jobs only to replace them with others but the question is if the machines have replaced our brains what is there for us to do?

Vardi thinks that the world in 50 years either will be a utopia or a dystopia. Either we will solve the problem before it happens or things will get very very nasty.

He is not optimistic. If machines can do almost all of our work, then it is not clear that even 15 weekly hours of work will be required. He does not find the prospect of leisure-filled life appealing.
"I believe that work is essential to human well-being and our economic system would have to undergo a radical restructuring to enable billions of people to live lives of leisure," he said.
The unemployment rate in the US is currently under nine percent and is considered to be a huge problem.

Read more:   http://news.techeye.net/science/robots-might-replace-human-brains-by-2045#ixzz2VQiYRQYH

Oldest Civilization in the World

The World's Oldest Civilization

The cradle of civilization is one of the five possible locations where civilization first emerged. According to many experts, civilization began in what is called the Fertile Crescent (Mesopotamia), and then spread to other areas due to a nomadic lifestyle. But this traditionally held view is disputed by several scholars and archaeologists who support the view point that there is no single cradle of civilization, but independent development of civilization occurred in several areas, which were Mesopotamia, Egypt, Indus Valley, Shang (Yellow River Valley), and Mesoamerica and Andean South America. The reason for this belief in multiple cradles of civilization has resulted from observation, and study of relics of the period that point out how different features developed irregularly and independently in these different civilizations. The interaction between different communities due to nomadic lifestyles led to the development of common systems and techniques in agriculture, pottery, metal work, etc. It is therefore difficult to specifically state which is the oldest civilization in the world, as there is no definite answer to the question. 

Mesopotamia

Many experts, as mentioned above, believe that Mesopotamia, being located in the Fertile Crescent, is the oldest civilization in the world. The reason for this is that Mesopotamia is where the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers converge, making the area extremely suitable for agriculture. Many agrarian societies are therefore believed to have been established here. Also since the Ubaid, Sumerian, Akkad, Babylon, and Assyrian civilizations are all located in this area, Mesopotamia is widely considered to be the oldest civilization in the world. Settlements can be traced in Mesopotamia to the start of the Early Bronze age, which is much before 7000 BC. The earliest sites were in Jarmo, and the earliest cities were established in Sumer under the Uruk period. Mesopotamia, over the years, has been ruled by the Hellenists, Persians, Mongols and Turks. Mesopotamia is the area that we now identify as Iraq.

Egypt

One of the oldest civilizations in the world, there is archaeological and anthropological evidence that point towards the existence of a settlement in the area as early as 10000 BC, but there is no definite evidence to determine the time period. The settlement then took to farming as their main source of sustenance, but remains of another settlement found in the area, that can be dated back to the same period, shows practice of hunting and fishing. It is indicated by studies that the land around Sahara was not as arid as it is today and was perfect for grazing ground. It was around 2500 BC that the settlements moved towards the Nile due to change in climate and inhospitable conditions, where the civilization was established as a more complex society. The civilization of Ancient Egypt has been responsible for several lasting legacies for humankind as a whole, including pyramids, mathematical systems, practice of medicine, glass making techniques, and also paper, in its earliest form.

Ancient India

Settlements have known to exist in the area since before 6000 BC, as there is evidence that has been found that dates back to this period. These settlements were very self sufficient with remains of granaries, burial tombs, drills for stones and copper, etc., found in the area near present day Balochistan in Pakistan. The Indus Valley Civilization, which saw complex societal structures, have known to exist since 4000 BC, with the major cities being Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. Both these cities have been discovered to be large cities with many structures of great magnitude inside city limits. The decimal fraction system is one of the gifts of the Indus Valley Civilization to the modern day world. Excavation of the sites that are believed to be a part of the civilization have been on since 1920 and the most recent discovery was in 1999.

China

Along with being a contender for the title of the oldest civilization in the world, China is already heralded as the world's oldest continuous civilization. Pre-civilized settlement relics dating back to 7000 BC have been found in China. In fact, in some cases, the date variance ranges between 9000 BC and 5500 B. There is evidence of agricultural practice, pottery, craft work and even animal husbandry. The civilization can be traced back to the establishment of city states in the Yellow River Valley around 2200 BC. But this claim is disputed with the first dynasty that is archaeologically definable being traced to the Shang Dynasty of Ancient China which started its reign somewhere around 1750 BC. There is very little verifiable data about earlier settlements in the area due to the lack of written records or any such documents.

Andean South America and Mesoamerica

In the Americas, the oldest civilizations were located in South America and Mesoamerica. The oldest Mesoamerican civilization was the Olmec Civilization which was established sometime around 1200 BC, but settlements have been traced back to 5100 BC, due to records of maize cultivation from then. Some of the main cities that were established under the Olmec rule were San Lorenzo and La Venta, which like other cities, are said to have had giant statues of the then Emperor. In South America, the oldest civilization was the Norte Chico that was a group of connected settlements, with huge cities at Aspero and Caral.

It is difficult to answer a question like what is the oldest civilization and how old is it because there are no definite records or dating methods that can give us an exact time period for when these civilizations existed. But these five civilizations were the predecessors to our modern day countries and geographical demarcations. Regardless of which of these is the oldest civilization in the world, some of the most important inventions and discoveries, like farming or pottery can be credited to these civilizations.

By Tulika Nair SOURCE:

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/oldest-civilization-in-the-world.html

Future of Broadband: Where Data Is Broadcast Using Desk Lamps

             In the future, getting a broadband connection might be as simple as flipping on a light switch. In fact, according to a group of researchers from Germany, the light coming from the lamps in your home could one day encode a wireless broadband signal.

         "The advantage is that you'd be using light that is already there," says Jelena Vučić of the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich-Hertz-Institute in Germany. Vučić and her colleagues have found a way to get the most from this synergy of illumination and information and will be presenting their findings during the Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition/National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (OFC/NFOEC), which will take place March 21-25 in San Diego.

          As of now, the majority of wireless in homes and businesses is achieved through a radio-frequency WiFi connection. But WiFi has limited bandwidth, and it's unclear where to find more in the already-crowded radio spectrum. By contrast, visible-frequency wireless has all the bandwidth one could want. The signal would be generated in a room by slightly flickering all the lights in unison. No one would be bothered by this because the rate of modulation would be millions of times faster than a human eye can see. Since visible light can't go through walls like radio, there would be no unwanted interference from stray signals and less worry of outside hackers.

          Incandescent and fluorescent bulbs can't flicker fast enough, so all the lights would have to be LEDs. Although commercial LEDs have a limited bandwidth of only a few MHz, Vučić and her colleagues were able to increase this bandwidth ten-fold by filtering out all but the blue part of the LED spectrum. With the visible wireless system built in their lab, they downloaded data at a rate of 100 Mbit/s. They have now upgraded the system's receivers and are getting 230 Mbit/s, which is a record for visible wireless using commercial LEDs. Although state-of-the-art radio wireless can achieve comparable speeds, Vučić says they should be able to double their data rate again by employing a more sophisticated modulation signal.



Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100309151503.htm 

Writing Without Keyboard: Handwriting Recognition On the Wrist

            Typing text messages on the mobile phone via the tiny soft keyboard is very cumbersome. How about simply writing it into the air! This idea drove the development of "airwriting" made by computer scientists of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Sensors attached to a glove record hand movements, a computer system captures relevant signals and translates them into text.



         For the further development of mobile interfaces based on these ideas Professor Tanja Schultz and Dipl.-Inform. Christoph Amma received the "Google Faculty Research Award," worth $ 81.000.

         The system offers a new interface for wearable computing applications. These are computer systems worn like clothes, which can be integrated seamlessly into the everyday life of the user. "Information technology is used any time and anywhere, but smart phones are still working on the basis of virtual keyboards and small screens. However, gestures allow for new types of input -- in particular for mobile devices or devices integrated in clothing. The interaction is embedded seamlessly in everyday life," says doctoral student Christoph Amma, who has developed the system at the Cognitive Systems Lab (CSL) of KIT. "The airwriting glove is used to write letters into air, as if using an invisible board or pad."

         For this purpose, acceleration sensors and gyroscopes are attached to the thin glove. Contrary to systems based on cameras, these sensors are very small, mobile, and robust. They record the movements of the hand and transmit them to a computer system via a wireless connection. The computer system first checks whether the user is indeed writing. "All movements that are not similar to writing, such as cooking, doing laundry, waving to someone, are ignored. The system runs in the background without interpreting every movement as computer input," says Amma. The computer scientist thinks that the device is perfectly suited for future mixed-reality applications.

         For instance, in glasses with integrated miniaturized screens, news may be displayed to the user in the field of vision. "When such a system is combined with the possibility to input commands and texts by gestures, you do not even need a hand-held device," emphasizes Amma.

         During writing, the airwriting system decodes the letters by a pattern recognition method. Previous approaches mainly focused on the recognition of single gestures assigned to certain commands. Amma's approach goes far beyond: For every letter of the alphabet, a statistical model of the characteristic signal pattern is stored. It also takes into account individual differences in the writing style.

         The system can recognize complete sentences written in capital letters and presently has a vocabulary of 8000 words. "The system has an error rate of 11%. When it is adapted to the individual writing style of the user, the error rate drops to 3%," Christoph Amma says. Scientists are now working on further refining the method to filter out writing. Moreover, they want to make the system smaller in order to increase wearing comfort and user acceptance.

                              "This can be achieved with commercial components. An unobtrusive wrist band might be feasible, for example," says Christoph Amma. It is also planned to integrate the system in smart phones. In this case, neither the wrist band nor the tiny soft keyboard would be required to writea text message.



Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130221091856.htm

Robotic Fish Gain New Sense

Robotic Fish Gain New Sense: Navigate Water Currents and Turbulenc

            Scientists have developed robots with a new sense -lateral line sensing. All fish have this sensing organ but so far it had no technological counterpart on human-made underwater vehicles.

 

            In an article published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A, researchers describe a robotic fish that is controlled with the help of lateral line sensors.

            During the last 4 years, the EU funded European research project FILOSE has investigated fish lateral line sensing and locomotion with the aims of understanding how fish detect and exploit flow features, and of developing efficient underwater robots based on biological principles.

            Though flow is a highly volatile and unsteady state of matter, it can nonetheless be measured and characterized based on many salient features that do not change much in space and time (such as flow direction or turbulence intensity, for example). These salient features can then be described as a "flowscape" -- a flow landscape that helps fish and robots to orient themselves, navigate and control their movements.

            "So far flow in robotics is treated as a disturbance that drives the robots away from their planned course," says Prof. Maarja Kruusmaa, the Scientific Coordinator of the FILOSE project. "We have shown that flow is also a source of information that can be exploited to better control the vehicle. Also, flow can be a source of energy if we can understand the flow dynamics and interact with eddies and currents in a clever way."

             Experiments with flow sensing and actuation in FILOSE have demonstrated that a fish robot can save energy by finding energetically favorable regions in the flow where the currents are weaker or by interacting with eddies so that they help to push the robot forward. The robots are also able to detect flow direction and swim upstream or hold station in the flow while compensating for the downstream drift by measuring the flow speed. FILOSE robot hovering in the wake of an object in the flow is demonstrated to reduce its energy consumption. "It is similar to reducing your effort in the tailwind of another cyclist or reducing the fuel consumption of your car by driving behind a truck," Prof. Kruusmaa says.

            Several prototype artificial lateral lines and robot actuators were developed in FILOSE to experimentally investigate different aspects of sensing and locomotion in fluids, such as how to use compliant materials to efficiently swim in turbulence, how to build robots that are mechanically simple but still behave like fish, how to interpret flow features and use them for controlling the vehicles, and how to measure robot's own motion from the flow signals.

            The FILOSE project has contributed to our understanding of the "fish-centric" viewpoint of the aquatic environment. "Robotic experiments have also helped us to understand fish behaviour," says FILOSE collaborator Prof. William Megill, who led the University of Bath's contribution to the project. "By recording flow sensor data from a robotic fish head which we've programmed to move like a real fish in similar flow conditions, we are able to understand what fish are able to perceive."

             The lateral line sensing fish robots have been a joint effort of experts in fish biology (University of Bath, UK), underwater robotics (Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia), mechanical engineering (Riga Technical University, Latvia), signal analysis and flow perception (Verona University, Italy) and of sensor technology (Italian Institute of Technology).


Source: 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130306084201.htm

 

Green Tea

Green Tea Extract Interferes With the Formation of Amyloid Plaques in Alzheimer's Disease

            Researchers at the University of Michigan have found a new potential benefit of a molecule in green tea: preventing the misfolding of specific proteins in the brain.

 

                   The aggregation of these proteins, called metal-associated amyloids, is associated with Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative conditions.

      A paper published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences explained how U-M Life Sciences Institute faculty member Mi Hee Lim and an interdisciplinary team of researchers used green tea extract to control the generation of metal-associated amyloid-β aggregates associated with Alzheimer's disease in the lab.

       The specific molecule in green tea, epigallocatechin-3-gallate, also known as EGCG, prevented aggregate formation and broke down existing aggregate structures in the proteins that contained metals -- specifically copper, iron and zinc.

       "A lot of people are very excited about this molecule," said Lim, noting that the EGCG and other flavonoids in natural products have long been established as powerful antioxidants. "We used a multidisciplinary approach. This is the first example of structure-centric, multidisciplinary investigations by three principal investigators with three different areas of expertise."The research team included chemists, biochemists and biophysicists.

        While many researchers are investigating small molecules and metal-associated amyloids, most are looking from a limited perspective, said Lim, assistant professor of chemistry and research assistant professor at the Life Sciences Institute, where her lab is located and her research is conducted."But we believe you have to have a lot of approaches working together, because the brain is very complex," she said.

        The PNAS paper was a starting point, Lim said, and her team's next step is to "tweak" the molecule and then test its ability to interfere with plaque formation in fruit flies."We want to modify them for the brain, specifically to interfere with the plaques associated with Alzheimer's," she said.

        Lim plans to collaborate with Bing Ye, a neurobiologist in the LSI. Together, the researchers will test the new molecule's power to inhibit potential toxicity of aggregates containing proteins and metals in fruit flies.

        Other authors of the paper, all from U-M, are: Sanghyun Lee and Jung-Suk Choi of the Life Sciences Institute; Alaina DeToma, Suk-Joon Hyung, Akiko Kochi and Brandon Ruotoloa of the Department of Chemistry; and Jeffrey Brender, Ayyalusamy Ramamoorthy and Subramanian Vivekanandan of the Department of Chemistry and Biophysics.

        The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative, American Heart Association, and a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation Study.


Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130305145137.htm

 

Wireless Power Transfer

       The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and the Korea Railroad Research Institute have developed a wireless power transfer technology that can be applied to high capacity transportation systems such as railways,harbor freight, and airport transportation and logistics. The technology supplies 60kHz and 180kW of power remotely to transport vehicles at a stable, constant rate.


        KAIST and KRRI have just successfully showcased the wireless power transfer technology to the public by testing it on the railroad tracks at Osong Station in Korea. Originally, this technology was developed as part of an electric vehicle system introduced by KAIST in 2011 known as the On-line Electric Vehicle.

        OLEV does not need to be parked at a charging station to have a fully powered battery. It gets charged while running, idling, and parking, enabling a reduction in size of the reserve battery down to one-fifth of the battery on board a regular electric car. The initial models of OLEV, a bus and a tram, receive 20 kHz and 100 kW power at an 85% transmission efficiency rate while maintaining a 20cm air gap between the underbody of vehicle and the road surface. OLEV complies with the national and international standards of 62.5 mG, a safety net for electromagnetic fields. In July 2013, for the first time since its development, OLEV will run on a regular road, an inner city route in the city of Gumi, requiring 40 minutes of driving each way.
         
         This technology demonstration offers further support that OLEV can be utilized for large-scale systems. Professor Dong-Ho Cho, Director of Center for Wireless Power Transfer Technology Business Development at KAIST, explained the recent improvements to OLEV:
"We have greatly improved the OLEV technology from the early development stage by increasing its power transmission density by more than three times. The size and weight of the power pickup modules have been reduced as well. We were able to cut down the production costs for major OLEV components, the power supply, and the pickup system, and in turn, OLEV is one step closer to being commercialized."
If trains receive power wirelessly, the costs of railway wear and tear will be dramatically reduced. There will be no power rails, including electrical poles, required for the establishment of a railway system, and accordingly, lesser space will be needed. Tunnels will be built on a smaller scale, lowering construction costs. In addition, it will be helpful to overcome major obstacles that discourage the construction of high speed railway systems such as noise levels and problems in connecting pantograph and power rails.
      
       KAIST and KRRI plan to apply the wireless power transfer technology to trams in May and high speed trains in September.


Related Articles:

Getting in Tune: Researchers Solve Tuning Problem for Wireless Power Transfer Systems:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120515104634.htm 

Artificially Structured Metamaterials May Boost Wireless Power Transfer

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120312192758.htm 

Novel Artificial Material Could Facilitate Wireless Power

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110523124218.htm 

Wireless Power

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_power 

 http://www.mit.edu/~soljacic/wireless_power.html

 

Videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSz4NNhJdJo 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvZoP7T0vC4 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1UT4NuygmQ