Today marks the symbolic date for when Earths population will hit 7-billion. Demographers at the United Nations Population Division set Oct. 31, 2011 this milestone, acknowledging also, that it's impossible to know the specific time or day.
The last of America's most powerful Cold War-era nuclear bombs has been dismantled in Texas. This monster is 600 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Put into service in 1962, when Cold War tensions peaked during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the B53 weighed 4,500 kg and the size of a minivan.
The B53's disassembly ends the era of big megaton bombs, with the biggest nuclear bomb in the United States’ arsenal now is the 1.2-megaton B83 compared to the B53 which was 9 megatons.
The B53 was designed to hit targets deep underground, such as bunkers in which military and civilian leaders might be sheltering and required five parachutes to land it softly on their targets before detonating an explosion, in effect simulating an earthquake. These have been superseded, now, by bombs that burrow into the ground and then explode.
According to figures released by the US state department in May 2011, the US has 5,113 nuclear warheads in its current stockpile, down from 31,255 in 1967.
According to a new study from Kimberly-Clark Professional, the Dallas Health-care products maker, much of the everyday germs we pick up may be less to do with sharing our workplace our sniffily colleagues and more to do with objects we come in contact with on our commute.
The study was designed with help from Environmental Microbiologist Charles Gerba, a professor at the University of Arizona. Measurements of contamination levels were taken with repeated swabs of the everyday items using the same methods as in the food and other industries to monitor sanitary conditions.
These included high-traffic locations petrol pumps, mail box handles, parking meters, traffic light buttons, escalator handles and vending machine buttons in six cities; Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami and Philadelphia.
Swabs were taken and measured for levels of Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP). ATP is the universal energy molecule found in animal, plant, bacterial, yeast and mould cells. Residues, particularly food or organic residue, contain large amounts of ATP. Microbial contamination contains ATP, but in smaller amounts. So ATP measurements represents dirt that otherwise may be invisible to the human eye. So the amount of ATP serves as a good indicator health risk. The greater the levels of ATP, the greater the health risk.
ATP is easily and accurately measured by treating an ATP-containing sample with a reagent that reacts with ATP and produces light that can be measured in a luminometer. The amount of light produced (relative light units) is proportional to the amount of ATP in the sample. As an aside, this reaction occurs naturally in fireflies to produce their characteristic light. ATP readings of 300 or higher indicated a higher risk for illness transmissions when the items are touched.
The results:
Television is often referred to as the Idiot box - and I suppose a lot of television, particularly reality television, caters for and attempts to attracting as many people as possible with the sole purpose of selling ads. Movies on the other hand attract those prepared to pay to see them. You could argue that movies are a form of art, similar to a painting, a play or a concert.
There may be, however, another emerging trend involving television shows. This is the opposite scenario to the idiot box. That is, television becoming more cognitively demanding. Episodes of well-known series such as Dexter, The Sopranos, and The West Wing, for example, require us to integrate far more information than we would have a few decades ago in order to make sense of the plot. As in reading, we invest in attention, patience, retention, the parsing of narrative threads.
It seems that in order to follow the story line of these shows we need to do more than just pay attention – we have to also make inferences, track shifting social relationships and debate even when a character behaves in a way inconsistent with the developing personality.
The episode often connects the lives of many distinct characters, each with a defined personality with motivations and obstacles and specific relationships with other characters. Growing complexity involves more than just multi-threading. Often flashing arrows and social networks are incorporated. Let’s look at multithreading.
Earlier television shows typically followed one or two lead characters, adhere to a single dominant plot and reach a decisive conclusion at the end of the episode. This is compared with say The Sopranos where the narrative weaves together numerous distinct strands -- sometimes as many as 12, though some of the threads involve only a few quick scenes scattered through the episode.
The number of primary characters, more than 20 recurring characters -- swells significantly. And the episodes have ambiguous borders: picking up one or two threads from previous episodes at the outset and leaving one or two threads open at the end. Not only that, often a scene in 'The Sopranos will connect to two or three different threads at the same time, layering one plot atop another.
Google Plus provides the ability to see updates from certain groups like "Work," "Friends" and/or "Family" (Circles) as well as the ability for one main stream. Here are some of the Plus features
Social news and media has been one of my long-term interests. How proactive and progressive companies used early net-centric technologies as an enabler for product delivery, support and customer service and the manner by which the Internet has changed the way we work, live and play.
I’ve been following a number of social news websites. These typically feature reader-submitted stories that are ranked based on popularity.
There has much said about how social media will continue be a large part of organizations’’ strategies. We should expect to see a continuation of - Social media as a customer service tool and the use of customer based reviews and ratings of products and services that feature on their websites. The following website “1st web designer” provides a list of the best 45 social news sites.
http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/freebies/get-more-traffic-social-news-websites/
According to Wikipedia, the term "cyber racism" was coined by Les Back in 2002 to capture the phenomenon of racism online, particularly white supremacist web sites. The term encompasses racist rhetoric that is distributed through computer-mediated means.
There is currently little research on the extent and impact on cyber racism in Australia. However, current Australian research in the area of cyber bullying, the number of complaints of internet-based racism made nationally, and studies conducted overseas provide a strong indication of the nature and extent of cyber racism in Australia.
The Australian Covert Bullying Prevalence Study CHPRC, conducted by Edith Cowan University May 2009 found that:
Source: Australian Covert Bullying Prevalence Study CHPRC, Edith Cowan University May 2009
