Nitrox

Nitrox is a generic term that can be used to describe any gaseous mixture of nitrogen and oxygen. In the context of technical diving, nitox is a mixture containing more oxygen than air. The two most commonly used nitrogen-oxygen mixtures contain 32% and 36% oxygen by volume. This differs significantly from compressed air, which contains approximately 21% oxygen by volume. While an increase of 12 to 16% oxygen by volume may not seem drastic, it allows divers to significantly extend their bottom time, and decreases their risk of developing DCS.

While diving with nitrox has definite benefits, it also has clearly associated risks. The major hazard is oxygen toxicity. This comes about when oxygen is inhaled in high concentrations for an extended period of time; this occurs primarily when a diver exceeds the recreational limits for depth. Under these circumstances, a diver can experience an epileptic-like seizure, which may lead to drowning. Due to this potentially fatal hazard, divers using nitrox must adhere to special dive tables. These tables list the maximum safe amount of time that a diver can stay underwater at a certain depth.

Sun Temple

Konark Sun Temple, situated in the eastern State of Orissa close to the holy city of Puri, is devoted to the sun God or Surya. It is an epic depiction of the sun God Surya's chariot; it has 24 wheels and it is decorated with emblematic designs and it is led by a side of six horses. It is a work of art of Orissa's medieval structural design and one of India's most famous Brahman sanctuaries.

The Konark temple is broadly known not only for its architectural greatness but also for the complexity and wealth of sculptural work. It marks the highest point of achievement of Kalinga architecture depicting the grace, the joy and the rhythm of life all its wondrous variety.

The temple declared a world heritage by UNESCO was built in A.D. 1250, during the reign of the Eastern Ganga King Narasimhadeva-I (A.D. 1238-64). There are two rows of 12 wheels on each side of the Konark sun temple. Some say the wheels represent the 24 hours in a day and others say the 12 months. The seven horses are said to symbolize the seven days of the week. Sailors once called this Sun Temple of Konarak, the Black Pagoda because it was supposed to draw ships into the shore and cause shipwrecks.

India's nocturnal bird

JERDON'S Courser is a nocturnal bird, inhabitant of Andhra Pradesh. The bird is critically endangered. It is the only prevalent bird to Andhra Pradesh. It has a big eye for night vision, a black crown, a yellow beak and orange throat patch and is found only in thin, scrubby areas with bushes between two and three meters in height. The call of the bird is – kwikkoooo.. kwikoooo..kwikkooooo...




At first Thomas C. Jerdon spotted this bird in 1848 but not seen again until 1986 when Bharat Bhushan, an ornithologist at the Bombay Natural History Society rediscovered the species that had been feared extinct. This courser is a restricted-range endemic found in India in the Eastern Ghats of Andhra Pradesh.

The construction of the Telugu-Ganga canal, around the border of the wildlife sanctuary was proposed. The proposed path of the canal threatened the sanctuary, conservationists including Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS, BirdLife in India) and RSPB (BirdLife in the UK) .They urged the Supreme Court of India to get involved. The Supreme Court stopped the construction work, and now, three years later on, a new route has been approved which avoids most of the protected sites.

Activities taken to protect the endangered species
To take on conservation research on the Jerdon's courser to find out inhabitants size and distribution and to spot out the current intimidation to the birds; to produce a management plan based on the study and monitoring; to offer training for BNHS and Forestry Department staff; to lift the profile of the Jerdon's course both at national and local levels.

Ekistics

The term Ekistics (coined by Konstantinos Apostolos Doxiadis in 1942) applies to the science of human settlements. It includes regional, city, community planning and dwelling design. It involves the study of all kinds of human settlements, with a view to geography and ecology - the physical environment- , and human psychology and anthropology, and cultural, political, and occasionally aesthetics.

As a scientific mode of study is currently found to rely on statistics and description, organized in five Ekistic Elements: Nature, Anthropos, Society, Shells, and Networks. It is generally a more academic field than "urban planning", and has considerable overlap with some of the less restrained fields of architectural theory.

Information Gathering Satellite

program. It was started as a response to the 1998 North Korean missile test over Japan. The satellite program's main mission is to provide early warning of impending hostile launches in the neighborhood. This programme is under direct control of the cabinet. However it should be noted, that Earth observation is a rather new field for Japan. The first Japanese mission in this field MOS-1 was launched only in 1987. For this reason Japan still lacks some technology in this field with a resolution of one meter.

Linear control

Linear control systems use linear negative feedback to produce a control signal mathematically based on other variables, with a view to maintaining the controlled process within an acceptable operating range.

The output from a linear control system into the controlled process may be in the form of a directly variable signal, such as a valve that may be 0 or 100% open or anywhere in between. Sometimes this is not feasible and so, after calculating the current required corrective signal, a linear control system may repeatedly switch an actuator, such as a pump, motor or heater, fully on and then fully off again, regulating the duty cycle using pulse-width modulation.

Complex adaptive systems

Complex adaptive systems are special cases of complex systems. They are complex in that they are diverse and made up of multiple interconnected elements and adaptive in that they have the capacity to change and learn from experience. The term complex adaptive systems was coined at the interdisciplinary Santa Fe Institute (SFI), by John H. Holland, Murray Gell-Mann and others.

CAS ideas and models are essentially evolutionary, and they take ground in the modern biological views on adaptation and evolution. Accordingly, the theory of complex adaptive systems bridges developments of the system theory with the ideas of 'generalized Darwinism', which suggests that Darwinian principles of evolution are capable to explain a range of complex material phenomena, from cosmic to social objects.

Marxism

Marxism is both the theory and the political practice (that is, the praxis) derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Any political practice or theory that is based on an interpretation of the works of Marx and Engels may be called Marxism; this includes different forms of politics and thought such as those of Communist Parties and Communist states, as well as academic research across many fields. And while there are many theoretical and practical differences among the various forms of Marxism, most forms of Marxism share:

• an attention to the material conditions of people's lives, and social relations among people
• a belief that people's consciousness of the conditions of their lives reflects these material conditions and relations
• an understanding of class in terms of differing relations of production, and as a particular position within such relations
• an understanding of material conditions and social relations as historically malleable
• a view of history according to which class struggle, the evolving conflict between classes with opposing interests, structures each historical period and drives historical change
• a sympathy for the working class or proletariat
• and a belief that the ultimate interests of workers best match those of humanity in general.

Gene expression

Gene expression first involves transcription, in which DNA is used as a template to produce RNA. In the case of genes encoding proteins, that RNA produced from this process is messenger RNA (mRNA), which then needs to be translated by ribosomes to form a protein. As ribosomes are located outside the nucleus, mRNA produced needs to be exported.

Since the nucleus is the site of transcription, it also contains a variety of proteins which either directly mediate transcription or are involved in regulating the process. These proteins include helicases that unwind the double-stranded DNA molecule to facilitate access to it, RNA polymerases that synthesize the growing RNA molecule, topoisomerases that change the amount of supercoiling in DNA, helping it wind and unwind, as well as a large variety of transcription factors that regulate expression.

Cognitive psychology

The nature of thought is another core interest in psychology. Cognitive psychology studies cognition, the mental processes underlying behavior. It uses information processing as a framework for understanding the mind. Perception, learning, problem solving, memory, attention, language and emotion are all well researched areas. Cognitive psychology is associated with a school of thought known as cognitivism, whose adherents argue for an information processing model of mental function, informed by positivism and experimental psychology.

Cognitive science is a conjoined enterprise of cognitive psychologists, neurobiologists, workers in artificial intelligence, logicians, linguists, and social scientists, and places a slightly greater emphasis on computational theory and formalization.

Metaphysics

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science, traditionally, cosmology and ontology. It is also concerned with explaining the ultimate nature of being and the world.[1] Its name derives from the Greek words μετά (metá) (meaning "after") and φυσικά (physiká) (meaning "physics"), "physics" referring to those works on matter by Aristotle in antiquity. The prefix meta- ("after") simply meant the chapters in Aristotle's work that physically followed after the chapter "physics". Aristotle called them "first philosophy". Over time, the meaning of "meta" has shifted to mean "beyond; above; transcending" in English. Therefore, metaphysics is also the study of that which transcends physics.

Software prototyping

The prototyping model is a software development process that begins with requirements collection, followed by prototyping and user evaluation. Often the end users may not be able to provide a complete set of application objectives, detailed input, processing, or output requirements in the initial stage. After the user evaluation, another prototype will be built based on feedback from users, and again the cycle returns to customer evaluation. The cycle starts by listening to the user, followed by building or revising a mock-up, and letting the user test the mock-up, then back.

In the mid-1980s, prototyping was seen as the solution to the problem of requirements analysis within software engineering. Prototypes are any form of deliverables that model an application allowing users to visualize the application that is not yet constructed. Prototypes help users get an idea of what the system will look like, and make it easier for users to make design decisions without waiting for the system to be built.

PCR optimization

PCR(polymerase chain reaction) can fail for various reasons, in part due to its sensitivity to contamination causing amplification of spurious DNA products. Because of this, a number of techniques and procedures have been developed for optimizing PCR conditions. Contamination with extraneous DNA is addressed with lab protocols and procedures that separate pre-PCR reactions from potential DNA contaminants. This usually involves spatial separation of PCR-setup areas from areas for analysis or purification of PCR products, and thoroughly cleaning the work surface between reaction setups. Primer-design techniques are important in improving PCR product yield and in avoiding the formation of spurious products, and the usage of alternate buffer components or polymerase enzymes can help with amplification of long or otherwise problematic regions of DNA.

PCR optimization

PCR(polymerase chain reaction) can fail for various reasons, in part due to its sensitivity to contamination causing amplification of spurious DNA products. Because of this, a number of techniques and procedures have been developed for optimizing PCR conditions.[10][11] Contamination with extraneous DNA is addressed with lab protocols and procedures that separate pre-PCR reactions from potential DNA contaminants.[4] This usually involves spatial separation of PCR-setup areas from areas for analysis or purification of PCR products, and thoroughly cleaning the work surface between reaction setups. Primer-design techniques are important in improving PCR product yield and in avoiding the formation of spurious products, and the usage of alternate buffer components or polymerase enzymes can help with amplification of long or otherwise problematic regions of DNA.

Television

Television (often abbreviated to TV, T.V., or more recently, tv) is a widely used telecommunication system for broadcasting and receiving moving pictures and sound over a distance from all around the world. The term may also be used to refer specifically to a television set, programming or television transmission. The word is derived from mixed Latin and Greek roots, meaning "far sight": far, and Latin vision, sight.

Since it first became commercially available from the late 1930s, the television set has become a common household communications device in homes and institutions, particularly in the First World, as a source of entertainment and news. Since the 1970s, video recordings on VCR tapes and later, digital playback systems such as DVDs, have enabled the television to be used to view recorded movies and other programs.

Natural nuclear reactors

The natural nuclear reactors formed when a uranium-rich mineral deposit became inundated with groundwater that acted as a neutron moderator, and a strong chain reaction took place. The water moderator would boil away as the reaction increased, slowing it back down again and preventing a meltdown. The fission reaction was sustained for hundreds of thousands of years.

These natural reactors are extensively studied by scientists interested in geologic radioactive waste disposal. They offer a case study of how radioactive isotopes migrate through the earth's crust. This is a significant area of controversy as opponents of geologic waste disposal fear that isotopes from stored waste could end up in water supplies or be carried into the environment.

Multithreading in Java

Java provides built-in support for multithreaded programming. A multithreaded program will have 2 or more parts that can run concurrently. Each part of such a program in java is called a thread, and each thread defines a separate path of execution. It is a specialized form of multitasking. There are two distinct types of multitasking namely Process-based and Thread-based.

A short note on typically groundwater

Typically groundwater is consider of as liquid water flowing through shallow aquifers, however technically it can as well include soil moisture, permafrost (frozen soil), motionless water in extremely low permeability bedrock, and deep geothermal or oil formation water. Groundwater is assumed to give lubrication and buoyancy which let thrust faults to move. Almost any point in the Earth's subsurface has water in it; to some degree (it can be very dry or mixed with other fluids). Groundwater is not restricted or confined only to the Earth, either; subsurface water on Mars is considered to have given rise to some of the landforms.

What do you mean by Collective and non-human intelligence?

Some thinkers have discovered the idea of collective intelligence, arising from the bringing together of many people. A battleship, for example, cannot be operated by a single person's knowledge, actions and intelligence; it takes an organized and interacting crew. In the same way, the interesting behaviors of a bee colony are not displayed in the intelligence and the actions of any single bee, but somewhat understandable in the behavior of the hive. These ideas are travel around as a basis for human thought, with applications for the artificial intelligence (AI), by the MIT AI pioneers Norbert Wiener and the Marvin Minsky. The Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged from the Computer science as a specialty which looks for to make computers act in ever more intelligent ways, and gives insights into human thought processes.

When allowing for animal intelligence, a more common definition of intelligence might be applied: the "ability to get used to efficiently to the environment, both by making a change in oneself or by changing the environment or by finding a new one”. Numerous people have as well speculated about the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence.

A short note on Snake River

The Snake River is the river, in the western part of the United States. The Snake River is 1,038 miles (1,670 km) in total length, and is the Columbia River's most important tributary. The Lewis and Clark expedition (1803-6) was the first main U.S. exploration of the river, and the Snake was one time known as the Lewis River.

The Snake River's many hydroelectric power plants are a most important starting place of electricity in the region. Its watershed offers irrigation for various projects, as well as the Minidoka, Boise, Palisades, and the Owyhee projects by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, with a variety of private projects for example, at Twin Falls. On the other hand, these dams have as well had an adverse environmental effect on wildlife, most remarkably on wild salmon migrations.

The Snake runs through numerous gorges, with one of the deepest in the world, Hells Canyon, with a maximum depth of 7,900 feet (2,410 m). The name "Snake" probably derived from an S-shaped (snake) sign which the Shoshone Indians complete with their hands to mimic swimming salmon.