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  • 2009 Cricket Awards.Guardian,UK.


    Batsman of the year: In 40 international matches this year, he scored
    2,539 runs, over 150 more than anyone else. In 12 months he has
    scored four centuries against India, two against Bangladesh, two more
    against Pakistan, and one apiece off New Zealand and South Africa. He
    also had a 96* against West Indies. He has been prolific in Twenty20,
    Test matches and fifty over cricket, and even coined his own shot.
    Tillakaratne Dilshan has been all but unstoppable, and as well as
    being the year’s best batsman, must also be the game’s most improved
    player.

    Bowler of the year: Was there one? Top of the Test match tables is
    Mitchell Johnson, who has taken 57 wickets at 28.8 each so far.
    Worryingly, only one of the top twenty wicket-takers in Test matches
    managed to taken them at average of under 25 each, and that was Nuwan
    Kulasekara, who took exactly 20, enough only to place him 20th on the
    list. The biggest single problem facing cricket is the imbalance
    between bat and ball, a bias brought about through bigger bats,
    flatter pitches and the seeming impossibility of staying fit as a
    fast bowler in the modern game. Looking back on the year, I just
    don’t feel that I have seen enough great quick bowling, and with
    Muttiah Muralitharan on the wane, there is no shoo-in contender for
    this prize any more. In the absence of any outstanding candidate, I’d
    plump for Swann, who bowled more deliveries in Test cricket than
    anyone except Johnson, and took 64 wickets at 29 each in all forms of
    the game. Not bad for a man who, two years ago, was seen by many, The
    Spin included, as just another county journeyman.

    XI of the year, picked for performances in all
    formats of the game and with a strong degree of personal prejudice:
    TM Dilshan, V Sehwag, MJ Clarke, AB de Villiers, AJ Strauss, MS
    Dhoni, SR Watson, DL Vettori, GP Swann, MJ Johnson, DW Steyn.

    Match of the year: Ideally, the game should be watched from a seat at
    the ground. Failing that, a sofa in front of the television will do.
    But my favourite day’s play of this year though was followed over the
    radio. There is something especially magical about Test Match
    Special. It seems to make a tense game seem tighter still. On the
    fifth day at Cardiff, as Jimmy Anderson and Monty Panesar were
    playing out those fraught final 40 minutes, I was in the pub, sat
    around a small personal radio plugged into a tinny pair of portable
    speakers, listening, along with a group of complete strangers, to Jon
    Agnew’s crackling description of the denouement. It was one of those
    moments when the country seems to stop. Walking the dog, washing the
    car, cooking the roast, all that could wait. The only thing anyone
    was interested in, whether they loved cricket or not, was whether
    England could bat out the match.

    Shot of the year: Something about playing Australia seems to bring out
    the best in Chris Gayle. Maligned and mocked through early part of
    the English season after his offhand comments about the future of
    Test cricket, Gayle set the World Twenty20 alight with his innings of
    88 from 50 balls against Australia at the Oval. All Englishmen love
    seeing Australia lose, especially in an Ashes summer, and to see them
    humiliated is a greater pleasure still. Brett Lee followed a bouncer,
    which Gayle had hit out of the ground for six, with a cunning slower
    ball. Gayle moved his front foot aside and hit through the line over
    long-on, sending the ball high into the air. If this shot was heard
    around the world, it was only because of the almighty clatter it made
    when it landed. Sky measured it at 105m. “It’s the first time I’ve
    hit it so far,” Gayle reckoned afterwards.

    Blunder of the year: On the morning of 20 August, Australia decided to
    leave Nathan Hauritz out of their team for the fifth Test, on a pitch
    which, as every fool knew, was always going to spin. Graeme Swann
    took eight wickets in the match, Australia had to cobble together 52
    overs from their three part-timers. “In hindsight, a specialist
    spinner would have been pretty handy out there,” reflected Ricky
    Ponting afterwards. Well duh. This is an especially strong field and
    special mention should also go to John Dyson, for his unique
    interpretation of the Duckworth-Lewis method, and Kevin Pietersen,
    for the premeditated sweep against Hauritz that got him out in the
    first innings of the Ashes.

    QUOTE OF THE WEEK

    “I’d love to, but I can’t” – Chris Gayle responds to a request from a
    comely young female photographer that he sit with his knees together
    while she took the team’s picture. As Peter Lalor joked in The
    Australian, she’s still blushing now.

    -guardian.uk.

  • Most Affordable 2010 Cars

    Pay attention to more than price when looking for a wallet-friendly vehicle.
    In 2010, three tailor-made Bugattis–the Veyron Sang d’Argent, the Grand Sport Soleil de Nuit and the Veyron Nocturne–will hit the road. The supercars, which get to 60 mph in under 2.5 seconds, will be available next spring. Price? More than $2 million apiece.

    For the driver looking for speed at a less-racy price, a 2010 Chevrolet Camaro or Jaguar XF will still roar (the Camaro’s V8 SS gets to 60 mph in 4.6 seconds, the Jaguar’s supercharged V8 in 4.7) but won’t break the bank in the process.

    Those performance cars join the Toyota ( TM – news – people )Avalon, Lincoln MKS and Nissan Maxima on our list of the most affordable vehicles in their segment. They may not have the lowest manufacturer suggested retail prices on the lot, but over years of ownership, their value becomes readily apparent.

    Behind the Numbers
    To identify 2010’s most affordable vehicles for their segment, we used Vincentric data to determine the total cost of ownership for a vehicle, including five-year totals for fuel costs, maintenance, repairs, average national insurance rates, depreciation, interest, opportunity costs and taxes. (Vincentric is an auto consulting firm based in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.)

    The data assumes an annual rate of 15,000 miles driven per vehicle and a price of $2.60 for regular fuel, $2.86 for premium, and $2.75 for diesel. It also applies an inflation rate for fuel prices, since the calculations predict costs over five years. We evaluated affordability based on the percentage of each vehicle’s total five-year costs compared with its total costs, including base price and one-time fees. MSRPs are adjusted for fees and destination charges, in accordance with Vincentric data.

    Toyota and Chevrolet each did well on our list, with entries like the $27,670 Toyota Prius, $27,075 Toyota Tacoma, $65,588 Chevy Silverado, and $68,280 Chevrolet Corvette all leading their segments.

    Sales last month for each of those automakers reflect their appeal: Toyota posted gains of 1% over November 2008; Chevrolet gained 4.8% year-over-year. Overall, the industry broke even in sales year-over-year. Asian brands gained 6.8% total; domestics lost 6.8%.

    From our list of affordable cars, the Prius sold 9,617 units last month, up 11.1% over November 2008. While Prius owners can expect to pay $4,296 on fuel for five years, and $915 on repairs, owners of vehicles in the same segment can pay as much as $12,300 and $1,240, respectively.

    Education Pays
    Experts say cars like the Prius and BMW’s X6 (up a respectable 7.8% last month) appeal to consumers because they offer a whole package of value, not just a cheap sticker price. Prospective buyers are smarter than ever about determining which vehicles are affordable.

    Two things automakers are doing to improve the affordability of their cars–besides lowering the price, of course–are improve reliability and efficiency. (The combustion engine alone could improve its efficiency by as much as 20%, according to engineers at Bentley). Maintenance, repairs and fuel comprise a large chunk of expenses over five-years’ time. The less often a car has to be at the gas station or in the shop, the more money it saves.

    Consumers are catching on. Auto sales are projected to hit 11 million by year end (down from 13.2 million in 2008)–but Internet traffic related to buying is way up, says Chip Perry, CEO of Autotrader.com. The Atlanta-based automotive marketing company lists local dealer inventories, buying and selling tips, comparison tools, reviews and pricing and incentive information for prospective buyers. It has gained a 35% year-over-year increase in on-site traffic for the past 10 years. Perry doesn’t expect it to let up anytime soon.

    “Our average monthly total audience was 15.3 million [unique visitors] through September,” he says. “You would expect that our numbers are going down, but we’re up 8% over 2008. We expect to grow next year.”

    Seventy-five percent of car-buyers shop online, according to AutoTrader data, with the average buyer spending 55 minutes a month researching vehicles on the site. Chevrolet is the No. 1 shopped-for car brand on AutoTrader.com. Toyota is No. 3. (Ford is No. 2).

    David Wurster, who leads product development and industry analysis for Vincentric, says the exponential growth in online research is no surprise. Self-education is the key to finding something affordable.

    “Just intuitively, you know that in a down economy that is what consumers need to be doing,” he says. “This is how you really determine how much it costs to operate the car, as opposed to just the payment.”

    That’s small consolation to would-be Bugatti owners. No amount of research will make those cars affordable.

  • The brain may feel other people’s pain

    We are all parts of the Universal conciousness, which is an attribute of Reality( Brahman)
    This was called(consciousness) was named as elan vital by Henri Bergson.
    We feel, rather we think, we are different from others due to Space and Time.Please read my blogs on Philosophy and Astrophysics.
    NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – If you’ve ever thought that you literally feel other people’s pain, you may be right. A brain-imaging study suggests that some people have true physical reactions to others’ injuries.

    Using an imaging technique called functional MRI, UK researchers found evidence that people who say they feel vicarious pain do, in fact, have heightened activity in pain-sensing brain regions upon witnessing another person being hurt.

    The findings, published in the journal Pain, could have implications for understanding, and possibly treating, cases of unexplained “functional” pain.

    “Patients with functional pain experience pain in the absence of an obvious disease or injury to explain their pain,” explained Dr. Stuart W. G. Derbyshire of the University of Birmingham, one of the researchers on the new study.

    “Consequently,” he told Reuters Health in an email, “there is considerable effort to uncover other ways in which the pain might be generated.”

    Derbyshire said he now wants to study whether the brains of patients with functional pain respond to images of injury in the same way that the current study participants’ did.

    For the study, Derbyshire and colleague Jody Osborn first had 108 college students view several images of painful situations — including athletes suffering sports injuries and patients receiving an injection. Close to one-third of the students said that, for at least one image, they not only had an emotional reaction, but also fleetingly felt pain in the same site as the injury in the image.

    Derbyshire and Osborn then took functional MRI scans of 10 of these “responders,” along with 10 “non-responders” who reported no pain while viewing the images.

    Functional MRI charts changes in brain blood flow, allowing researchers to see which brain areas become more active in response to a particular stimulus. Here, the researchers scanned participants’ brains as they viewed either images of people in pain, images that were emotional but not painful, or neutral images.

    The investigators found that while viewing the painful images, both responders and non-responders showed activity in the emotional centers of the brain. But responders showed greater activity in pain-related brain regions compared with non-responders, and as compared with their own brain responses to the emotional images.

    “We think this confirms that at least some people have an actual physical reaction when observing others being injured or expressing pain,” Derbyshire said.

    He noted that the responders also tended to say that they avoided horror movies and disturbing images on the news “so as to avoid being in pain” — which, the researcher said, is more than just an empathetic response.

    As far as the potential practical implications of the findings, Derbyshire said it would be a “reach” to think that such brain mechanisms might be behind all functional pain. But, he added, “they might explain some of it.”
    http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BK35F20091221?feedType=nl&feedName=ushealth1100

  • US ‘Forged’ Nuclear Documents, Says Iran

    Charges and counter charges-who is telling the Truth?
    Iran’s president has said documents appearing to show his country is working on a nuclear bomb trigger were “forged” by the US.

    Iranian president Ahmadinejad visits the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility
    The papers, revealed last week by The Times newspaper, describe a four-year plan to test the neutron initiator.
    Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the reports about a nuclear trigger were “fundamentally not true”.
    Speaking to US TV network ABC News, he said of the documents: “They are all a fabricated bunch of papers continuously being forged and disseminated by the American government.”
    Foreign intelligence agencies have dated the documents to early 2007, four years after Tehran was thought to have suspended its weapons programme, the newspaper claimed.
    The world powers know the documents are damning but they are choosing to wait until they use them to try and damn Iran.
    Sky’s foreign affairs editor Tim Marshall
    He said accusations that Iran was continuing work on a nuclear arms plan were “a repetitive and tasteless joke”.
    US President Barack Obama’s senior advisor David Axelrod has said any accusation that Washington had fabricated documents was “nonsense”.
    He added: “Nobody has any illusions about what the intent of the Iranian government is.”
    Tehran has insisted its nuclear programme is solely for civilian purposes and rejects Western suspicions that it is covertly trying to develop a bomb.
    Mr Ahmadinejad also said Iran was ready to strike a uranium enrichment deal if the US and the West respect the Islamic Republic and stop making threats.
    Iran is under three sets of UN sanctions for refusing to suspend enrichment and it risks more after rejecting a UN-brokered deal to send its low-enriched uranium abroad to be further refined into fuel for a reactor.
    http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Iran-President-Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad-Says-US-Forged-Documents-About-Nuclear-Bomb-Trigger-Claims/Article/200912415506440?DCMP=EMC-news_OBU

  • Seven of the greatest scientific hoaxes

    For this week’s issue of New Scientist I edited a review of The Sun and the Moon by Matthew Goodman, which tells the story of the great moon hoax of 1835. Read the review here.

    This got me thinking about other great scientific hoaxes in the past. After doing a bit of digging, I was amazed by how many there were – and at the variety and creativity of the hoaxes. Here are a few of the best.

    Of course, there are serious cases of scientific fraud, such as the stem cell researchers recently found guilty of falsifying data and the South Korean cloning fraud. The following stories, however, are not so serious.

    Piltdown Man

    In 1912, solicitor and amateur palaeontologist Charles Dawson “found” the Piltdown fossils, a skull and jawbone that appeared to be half-man half-ape, in Sussex. They were hailed as the evolutionary “missing link” between apes and humans.

    It was over 40 years later, in 1953, that the fossil was exposed as a fake. In fact, the skull was constructed from a medieval human cranium attached to the jaw of an orang-utan.

    The Cardiff Giant

    A ten-foot “petrified man” was dug up on a small farm in Cardiff, New York, in October 1869. The “Cardiff Giant” became a huge news story and many Americans travelled to see it.

    Early in 1870, it was revealed as a fake, the creation of New Yorker George Hull, who had paid for it to be carved out of stone.

    Beringer’s fraudulent fossils

    Physician Johann Beringer was amazed when he was presented with fossils “found” in Wurzburg, Germany, in 1725, which depicted incredible scenes: the forms of birds, bees, snails, lizards, plants with flowers, frogs mating and insects feeding, not to mention comets, moons and suns.

    It turned out that he was the victim of an elaborate plot: envious colleagues of Beringer had planted the fossils.

    Unfortunately, Beringer fell for it hook, line and sinker, and even published a book to tell the world about the fossils. Rumour has it that once Beringer realised the hoax, he tried to buy up any unsold copies of his book. (See Johann Beringer and the fraudulent fossils)

    There are many more examples of fossil fraud, such as the fake “entombed toad” and the fake fossil fly in amber.

    The Sokal hoax

    In 1996, American physicist Alan Sokal submitted a paper loaded with nonsensical jargon to the journal Social Text, in which he argued that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. (Read Sokal’s paper)

    When the journal published it, Sokal revealed that the paper was in fact a spoof. The incident triggered a storm of debate about the ethics of Sokal’s prank.

    The spaghetti tree

    In 1957, the BBC show Panorama broadcast a programme about the spaghetti tree in Switzerland. It showed a family harvesting pasta that hung from the branches of the tree.

    After watching the programme, hundreds of people phoned in asking how they could grow their own tree. Alas, it was an April Fools’ Day joke.

    Watch the BBC’s spaghetti tree footage

    The Upas tree

    An account was published in the London Magazine in 1783 by a Dutch surgeon named Foersch (his initials were variously given as NP and JN). It claimed the existence of a tree on the island of Java so poisonous that it killed everything within a 15-mile radius.

    Read the original account (scroll down to find it)

    This was the start of a legend. Even Erasmus Darwin wrote about it in a poem in 1791. A note to the poem read, “There is a poison-tree in the island of Java, which is said by its effluvia to have depopulated the country… in a district of 12 or 14 miles round it, the face of the earth is quite barren and rocky, intermixed only with the skeletons of men and animals; affording a scene of melancholy beyond what poets have described or painters delineated.”

    You really can find the Upas tree in Indonesia. Though not as potent as legend would have it, the latex of the tree does contain a powerful toxin, which was traditionally used on arrow points.

    Read more about the Upas tree (PDF: go to page 8)

    The secret of immortality

    Johann Heinrich Cohausen, an 18th-century physician, wrote a treatise on the prolongation of life, entitled Hermippus redivivus. Amongst other secrets of longevity, it claimed that life could be prolonged by taking an elixir produced by collecting the breath of young women in bottles.

    Actually, Cohausen admitted in the last few pages of the work that it was a satire, so any gullible readers wouldn’t have been duped for too long
    http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn15012-seven-of-the-greatest-scientific-hoaxes.html