Ramanisblog

Tag: G Bookmarks Live

  • Why isn’t the world supporting the democratically elected government of Iran ?

    Reason is that excepting the US and UK, rest of the world feels Iran is being unfairly targeted by both US and UK for their own geo political interests..Another reason is that like Muammar Qaddafi and Hugo Chavaz ,President of Iran is seen as a man who challenges US openly which most of the world’s leaders would like to do but are not or can not.

    Anti-government protests in Tehran over the weekend have left at least eight people dead and over 300 people arrested.

    The bloody images splattered across the world’s media say it all. This is Iran’s next revolution in the making say Des Pardes .

    For other’s it’s the start of civil war.

    Broadly speaking, the tone of the editorials is one of supporting the plucky protesters over the “ruthless” Ahmedinejad regime.

    The President himself insists the country is “united”, but just because many outside Iran find his views and statements unpalatable, why is there such unflinching support for the demonstrations ?

    So should the world step in or stay out ?
    Roger Cohen believes it’s time to opt for inertia.

    ‘The west must not respond with the sledgehammer of sanctions whose message is “our way or the highway”. Rather, it must borrow an Iranian lesson: inertia. When the Berlin Wall came down, Francis Fukuyama famously predicted “the universalisation of western liberal democracy as the final form of human government”. In Iran now, many of the forces of 1989 are present, but the reformists’ quest is not for something “western”.’

    This piece in Forbes suggests the regime is in its final days anyway.

    The Tretnonian agrees adding that it’s only a matter of time before democracy comes to Iran

    And last week the Iranian opposition rival Mehdi Karroubi told the Times that “The challenges in this country should be solved by its own people.”

    So is the best thing that the West can do for Iran is learn from the revolutions of 1989 and do absolutely nothing?

    Why isn’t the world supporting the democratically elected government of Iran ?

  • A Headache That Didn’t Go Away

    I have relative of mine,about 50, who had difficulty in vision. Ophthalmologist advised him to wear glasses.By chance he happened to see a GP who informed him his case was not one of vision ,but of eye balls about to pop out and he immediately rushed to Specialty hospital where he was diagnosed with a disorder that has resulted in his eyeballs being held only by 40%.He was immediately operated upon and he is recovering.
    Moral-better seek second opinion .Sometimes, though cynical it may sound , it may again be not 100% correct.Sometimes there are as many opinions as there are doctors.What are we to do?
    Valerie Novak fervently wished doctors would stop telling her the intense headache she’d endured for several weeks was a migraine. For one thing, neither the Georgetown University senior nor her close relatives had headaches, and migraines are frequently familial. None of the increasingly potent drugs doctors prescribed was doing much good. And the 22-year-old had lost 15 pounds in three weeks from bouts of severe vomiting.

    “I was so frustrated and upset,” recalled Novak of her ordeal last summer, which involved consultations with half a dozen doctors, several trips to area emergency rooms and two hospitalizations. Novak, who had always been healthy, said she feared the unrelenting pain in her left temple and associated symptoms were something “I’d have to live with for the rest of my life.”

    Her mother, Kathy Novak, a nurse practitioner in Bowie, was similarly skeptical of the diagnosis but grateful that doctors had ruled out more ominous possibilities, such as a brain tumor. When her middle daughter began complaining about double vision, Kathy took her to an ophthalmologist. His judgment led to an accurate diagnosis that had nothing to do with migraines but was instead a rare complication of a common item listed on Novak’s medical records. Left untreated, it might have killed her……………….

    Back home with her parents, unable to go to class, Novak recalled that her “eyesight was getting wonky, with really, really weird double vision.” Alarmed, her mother made an appointment with an ophthalmologist, hoping he might have an explanation that didn’t involve migraines.

    After dilating Novak’s eyes, the eye specialist immediately spotted something alarming: Her optic nerves were dangerously swollen. “This is not a migraine,” he told Novak. “You have increased intracranial pressure.”

    The unrelenting headache as well as the numbness, tingling and vomiting were caused by a rise in pressure in the brain. The condition, which can result from a head injury or meningitis, is considered a medical emergency; increased pressure caused by a buildup of fluid can permanently damage the central nervous system by restricting blood flow to vessels that supply the brain. In Novak’s case, the double vision was caused by pressure on her cranial nerve.

    The ophthalmologist’s first thought, given Novak’s age and history, was pseudotumor cerebri, a rare condition sometimes called a false brain tumor, that affects women between ages 20 and 45. Valerie’s illness had nearly all the hallmarks but lacked one critical variable: She was not overweight or obese, as are most of those with the condition.

    The ophthalmologist immediately sent Novak to Greenbelt neurologist Roger Whicker. She immediately began taking a drug to reduce the pressure and underwent another MRI and other testing, which revealed the actual cause of the illness and changed the diagnosis to sagittal sinus thrombosis, or SST, caused by a blood clot in her brain.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/02/AR2009020202209_2.html

  • Acacia plant controls ants with chemical

    In Africa and in the tropics, armies of tiny creatures make the twisting stems of acacia plants their homes.
    Aggressive, stinging ants feed on the sugary nectar the plant provides and live in nests protected by its thick bark.
    This is the world of “ant guards”.
    The acacias might appear overrun by them, but the plants have the ants wrapped around their little stems.

    Acacias… have very open flowers, but still, the ants don’t seem to go on to them. We wanted to know why.
    These same plants that provide shelter and produce nourishing nectar to feed the insects also make chemicals that send them into a defensive frenzy, forcing them into retreat.
    Nigel Raine, a scientist working at Royal Holloway, University of London in the UK has studied this plant-ant relationship.
    Dr Raine and his colleagues from the universities of St Andrews, Edinburgh and Reading in the UK and Lund University in Sweden have been trying to work out some of the ways in which the insects and the acacias might have co-evolved.
    He explains how the ants provide a useful service for the acacias.
    “They guard the plants they live on,” said Dr Raine. “If other animals try to come and feed on the rich, sugary nectar, they will attack them.”
    In Africa, one type of ant-guard, known as Crematogaster , will even attack large herbivores that attempt to eat the plant.

    Ants will fiercely guard their acacia homes
    “If a giraffe starts to eat the leaves of an acacia that is inhabited by ants, the ants will come out and swarm on to its face, biting and stinging,” says Dr Raine.
    “Eventually, the giraffe will get fed up and move off.”
    In the New World tropics, the Pseudomyrmex genus of ants fulfil a very similar guarding role.
    For both species, the acacias provide little, reinforced structures that the ants hollow out and nest within, as well as sugar-rich nectar for them to eat.
    “In return, both groups of ants protect their host plants from herbivores – both hungry insects and larger [animals],” explains Dr Raine.
    Give and take
    That is the plus side for the plants. But being inhabited by aggressive insects could make one important aspect of a plant’s life difficult – flowering.
    Flowers need to be pollinated so the plant can reproduce. So what stops the ants from attacking the helpful little pollinators or stealing all the tasty nectar that attracts them?
    “Some plants do this structurally, with physical barriers to stop ants getting on to the flower, or sticky or slippery surfaces that the insects can’t walk on,” said Dr Raine.
    “Acacias don’t have these barriers. They have very open flowers, but still, the ants don’t seem to go on to them. We wanted to know why.”
    One clever approach by the plant is a food “bribe”. “Extrafloral nectaries” are small stores of nectar on stems, from which the inhabitants can feed without going on to the flowers.
    Acacias also produce structures called beltian bodies on the leaf tips.

    Ants protect the leaves from large herbivores
    These, Dr Raine explains, are nutritious structures produced by the plant to feed its resident colony of ant-guards.
    But when this isn’t enough, it is a case of chemical warfare.
    Flowers can produce a variety of chemicals. We can smell some of the volatile organic compounds they release when we sniff our favourite summer bloom.
    But there is a more manipulative side to these scents.
    Floral volatile compounds can act as signals – drawing in pollinators such as bees and hummingbirds in with their irresistible aromas.
    To the ants, however, they are far from irresistible.
    “The flowers seem to produce chemicals that are repellent to the ants,” said Dr Raine. “They release these particularly during the time when they’re producing lots of pollen, so the ants are kept off the flowers.”
    In recent studies, described in the journal Functional Ecology, Dr Raine and his colleagues found that the plants with the closest relationships with ants – those that provided homes for their miniature guard army – produced the chemicals that were most effective at keeping the ants at bay.
    “And that was associated with the flower being open,” he says. “So the chemicals are probably in the pollen.”

    A bribe: Plants provide “nectaries” on their stems

    When the pollen has all been taken away – by being brushed on to the bodies of hungry pollinators and helpfully delivered to other plants – the flowers become less repellent.
    “So at this point, the ants can come on to the flowers and can protect them from other insects that might eat them, so that the developing seeds aren’t lost,” he explains.
    Dr Raines’ team was able to test this using young flowers that had just opened and that contained lots of pollen.
    The scientists wiped them on older flowers and on the acacia’s stems.
    This showed them that the effect was “transferrable” – the stems and older flowers that had been wiped became more repellent.
    “It gives this really neat feedback system – the plant is protected when it needs to be protected, but not when it doesn’t.”
    Selective deterrents
    The repellent chemicals are specific to the ants. In fact, they attract and repel different groups of insects.
    “[The chemicals] don’t repel bees, even though they are quite closely related to ants. And in some cases, the chemicals actually seem to attract the bees,” says Dr Raine.
    The researchers think that some of the repellents that acacias produce are chemical “mimics” of signalling pheromones that the ants use to communicate.
    “We put flowers into syringes and puffed the scent over the ant to see how they would respond, and they became quite agitated and aggressive” he explained.
    “The ants use a pheromone to signal danger; if they’re being attacked by a bird they will release that chemical that will quickly tell the other ants to retreat.”
    Dr Raine says this clever evolutionary system shows how the ants and their plants have evolved to protect, control and manipulate each other.
    The ants may be quick to swarm, bite and sting, but the harmless-looking acacias have remained one step ahead.
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8383577.stm

  • The decade in news photographs.

    http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/12/the_decade_in_news_photographs.html

  • Technology changes ‘outstrip’ netbooks-BBC

    March of technology is truly astounding and at the same time bewildering.

    Rising prices and better alternatives may mean curtains for netbooks.
    The small portable computers were popular in 2009, but some industry watchers are convinced that their popularity is already waning.
    “The days of the netbook are over,” said Stuart Miles, founder and editor of technology blog Pocket Lint.
    As prices edge upwards, net-using habits change and other gadgets take on their functions, netbooks will become far less popular, he thinks.
    “Technology has advanced so much that it’s outmanoeuvred itself,” he said. “You wouldn’t go for something so basic anymore.”
    His prediction stems from his belief that the netbooks of 2009 are losing touch with what made them so appealing.
    Asus kicked off the netbook trend in 2007 when it launched the Eee PC 700 and 701. The 700 sported a 2GB solid state hard drive, 512MB of Ram, a 900 Hz Intel Celeron processor and a seven-inch screen.
    It was cheap, cheerful and a boon for those wanting to check e-mail and go online while out and about.
    But, said Mr Miles, the success of the small, portable notebook has been its undoing because it has spawned so many imitators.

    E-book readers are starting to do more than just handle text
    Many contemporary netbook models run Windows XP or Windows 7 which has forced the specifications, and price, upwards. Many, he said, now cost at least £350, a figure close to that for a more capable full-size laptop.
    What people are looking for now, he believes, is a machine that can keep up with the demands of contemporary web users – far more than the basic e-mail and web browsing that made the first models so appealing.
    “As soon as you want to do anything else you hit the same problem, it ceases to work,” he said. “It does not have the power.”
    Those changing habits of web users, he maintains, are too complex for those basic machines.
    “It’s the internet’s fault for making us much more multimedia savvy,” he said. Uploading and editing still or moving pictures and handling audio all require far more power than the basic netbook offers, he said.
    This could explain, he said, why many laptop makers are now turning out very thin and light machines that have power but not the shoulder-wrenching bulk.
    All change
    Ian Drew, spokesman for chip designer Arm, also believes netbooks are in for a shake-up. Consumers, he said, were chafing against the restrictions that using a netbook imposed on them.
    “We have failed the consumer because we have imposed constraints on them,” he said.
    Changing web habits and greater use of social media will mean consumers will be looking for gadgets that are tuned to specific purposes.

    The web is the king
    Christopher David, SonyEricsson
    “It will be a lot of different machines for a lot of different people,” he said. “This whole market will be exploding in the next couple of years.”
    Impetus for this change will come, he believes, from the phone world where many, many types of gadgets are already blooming.
    “It’s no surprise that your mobile has changed a lot in the last three years but your PC hasn’t,” he said.
    Arm hopes that many more netbook makers will be using one of its designs as a core processor and turn to Linux as the operating system.
    At the very least a crop of Arm-based netbooks might mean a big boost to battery life. Arm’s mobile pedigree means it is designed to be parsimonious with power.
    Dell already produces notebooks sporting Latitude ON technology that use both Arm and Intel chips so that they can boot into either Windows or Linux.
    Editing tools
    Battery life on Linux is in excess of 10 hours, for Windows rarely more than three.
    Machines sporting Arm chips are also likely to be thinner as they will not need the heat sinks demanded by processors used in desktops.
    Mr Drew said deals Arm has signed with Adobe will help ensure that future devices will be able to use the software maker’s familiar video, audio and image editing tools.
    What will also be worth watching, he said, is what happens when Google’s Chrome OS is launched.
    Many of the devices running that will be Arm-based as Chrome is broadly based on one of the Linux distributions. There are also unconfirmed rumours that either Windows 8 or 9 will run on Arm chips.

    People are becoming familiar with multi-touch thanks to touch screen phones
    Mr Drew also expects to see devices tailored to particular types of user.
    E-book readers were an example of this, he said, and were evolving into devices capable of doing more than just handle text. Many can play MP3s or let owners browse the web.
    Then there is the approaching wave of tablet computers.
    Apple is rumoured to be working on one. Dell and Microsoft have shown off their own ideas of what one will look like and there are bound to be many more from established tablet makers such as Archos.
    Mr Miles from Pocket Lint believes these are likely to take up the mantle from the netbook.
    “I don’t think people will expect it to do much more than you get from a netbook,” he said, adding that they were perfect for those who needed a device that let them get online quickly to satisfy their curiosity.
    They were more likely to succeed now more than ever, said Mr Miles, because of the greater experience people had with using such devices.
    “It’ll be helped by Apple which has educated people how to use multi-touch through the iPhone and iPod touch,” he said.
    Netbooks are also likely to come under pressure from smartphones as they get even smarter, said Christoper David, head of developers at SonyEricsson.
    Phone makers, he said, have to position themselves to be more open and able to support the web habits of users no matter what they were or what they wanted to do.
    “The web is the king,” he said. Handset makers must work with those open web standards to ensure that the software on the phones they make is flexible enough to cope.
    “Though,” he added, “that is only the starting point of the journey.”
    What will not change, he believes, is the importance of the phone as a vessel for data about its owner.
    “We’re going to see phones coming along where the form factor will be less and less relevant in terms of what we carry about with us,” he said.
    Future devices will grab the best resources nearby whether that is a flat screen, projector or thin film display.
    The ID credentials stored on what was our phone will handle all the logins and give access to all the sites and services we use.
    The netbook, and its limitations, will be well and truly left behind.
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8421491.stm