amudu

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Rome has always been violent, aggressive and intimidating

Noisy and eternal

Rome: A Cultural, Visual and Personal History. By Robert Hughes. Knopf; 534 pages; $35. Weidenfeld & Nicholson; £25. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

A monumental piece of history

NO CITY, writes Robert Hughes, “has ever been more steeped in ferocity from its beginnings than Rome”. This dauntingly aggressive city-state made itself the capital of Europe’s biggest empire, and then became the seat of western Christendom. Unsurprisingly, it has acted as a magnet for men (and the occasional woman) of intimidating ambition, untroubled by the use of violence for the attainment of their ends.

One of the city’s semi-legendary rulers was Tarquin the Arrogant who is credited with inspiring the “tall poppy” approach to governance: he reputedly believed the best way to start administering a vanquished city was to remove the heads of its leading citizens. Among Rome’s later emperors was Valens, whose purge of pagans was described by one fourth-century chronicler as “monstrous savagery”. As Mr Hughes writes, “men were maimed, hideously torn with hooks, and dragged off to the scaffold and the chopping-block.”

If Rome’s history is monumental, then so is the task of telling it. A story that lasts almost 3,000 years and is pivotal to so much of Western civilisation requires a chronicler of well-nigh unattainable erudition, who can write with the skill needed to prevent readers from succumbing to a literary version of Stendhal syndrome. Mr Hughes, the Australian-born art critic of Time magazine, comes as near as anyone to fulfilling that job description and for much of this wide-ranging volume he succeeds magnificently. He is at his most instructive and entertaining in the period that roughly coincides with the construction of Saint Peter’s basilica, which “took 120 years and lasted for the lifetime of 20 popes”. This was the age of Bramante, Michelangelo, Julius II the “terrifying Pope”, and that eccentric Baroque master, Guido Reni, who was so scared of women that only his mother was allowed to touch his laundry. This was also the period that encompassed the Roman sojourn of Caravaggio whose violence and genius were so much of a piece with the city’s history. “Saturnine, coarse and queer”, writes Mr Hughes, that “he thrashed about in the etiquette of early Seicento Rome like a shark in a net.”

More than a millennium later, the city was in thrall to “quarrelsome, tough, crazy” Pope Sixtus V, as a later poet called him. A 16th-century proponent of zero tolerance, Sixtus had those who failed to keep the Sabbath condemned to the galleys. Sixtus’s violent, if productive, five-year papacy exemplified a recurrent theme in Rome’s history: the entwining of brutality with lavish creativity. It was he who built many of the straight roads and broad squares on which his successors bestowed the Baroque churches and fountains that have been the city’s pride ever since.

Prose of that quality is of itself enough to commend this work. But there is no denying the book is uneven. There are disconcerting inaccuracies: Mr Hughes seems to think polenta is characteristically Roman when in fact it is quintessentially northern. And at times he fails to exert on his work the iron discipline that characterises the only comparable work in English, Christopher Hibbert’s “Rome: The Biography of a City”, published in 1985. Mr Hughes’s account of the Republic, for example, drifts away from the city itself to become the story of the making of the Roman empire. More jarringly, the chapters supposedly devoted to the city’s 20th-century history dwell at length on individuals and movements who had little to do with Rome or, like the Futurists, actively loathed it. The entire section could be retitled “A Brief History of Modern Italian Art”.

By then, you feel the author has been exhausted by the sheer richness of his material. Rome, he writes, “makes you feel small, and it is meant to.” But then he adds: “It also makes you feel big, because the nobler parts of it were raised by members of your own species. It shows you what you cannot imagine doing, which is one of the beginnings of wisdom.”

Metal traces help scientists “color in” fossilized animals

Courtesy of the University of Manchester
and World Science staff

Scientists say they have taken a big step in learning the colors of the first birds and some other ancient animals, using traces of copper found in the fossils.

A new analysis included the oldest beaked bird known, the 120 million year old Confuciusornis sanctus, and the 110 million year old Gansus yumenensis, which looks like the modern grebe and represents the oldest example of modern birds.

White shows the distribution of calcium in this bird's neck feathers, which in turn is controlled by metal traces of dark pigments, researchers say. This would mean the downy feathers were originally dark in this bird, Confuciusornis sanctus. (Image created by Gregory Stewart/SLAC)

“Copper can be mapped to reveal astonishing details about colour in animals that are over 100 million years old,” said University of Manchester, U.K. geochemist Roy Wogelius. He is the lead author of a paper on the findings published in the June 30 advance online edition of the journal Science.

“Even more amazing is to realize that such biological pigments,” or molecules responsible for much biological coloring, “can now be studied throughout the fossil record,” he added. That can work “probably back much further than the 120 million years we show in this publication.”

Wogelius and colleagues joined scientists at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in the U.S. and used a machine called the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource to bathe fossils in intense X-rays. The interaction of these X-rays with the chemistry of each fossil let the recognise the chemistry of eumelanin, an dark pigment, in feathers from dino-birds and the eye of a 50-million-year-old fish.

Eumelanin is probably the most important pigment in the animal kingdom and gives dark shading to human hair, reptile skin, and feathers, the researchers said.

The key was identifying and imaging trace metals incorporated by ancient and living organisms into their soft tissues, in the same way that all living species do today, including humans. Without essential trace metals, key biological processes in life would fail and animals either become sick or die. Using a new technique called rapid scan X-ray fluorescence imaging, the team tracked down these essential trace metals, which survive even after pigment-containing compartments of cells break down.

“The fossils we excavate have vast potential to unlock many secrets on the original organism’s life, death and subsequent events impacting its preservation before and after burial,” said Phil Manning, a senior author on the paper and University of Manchester palaeontologist. “To unpick the complicated chemical archive that fossils represent requires a multidisciplinary team that can bring into focus many areas of science... we now have a chemical roadmap to track similar pigments in all life.”

Could simple anger have taught people to cooperate?

Special to World Science

While researchers don’t agree on how humans first developed the exceptional level of cooperation they show in today’s societies, a few basic ideas are often bandied about the scientific literature.

A new study is challenging one of the leading theories, though, to replace it with a simpler notion: humans learned to cooperate because they didn’t want to make the neighbors angry.

The research forms a counterpoint to a growing stack of studies arguing that police-like behaviors play leading roles in the development of cooperation, by helping to enforce standards of conduct.

How cooperation became common in any social species has long been a major question mark. Evolutionary theory, the main tool biologists use to explain such things, fails to directly explain this one, and on the surface in fact seems to indicate it could not happen. Yet all sorts of creatures cooperate—and humans, scientists say, are the only ones who cooperate in large groups with non-kin and strangers.

Proposing that some members of a community tend to take on policing roles, self-appointed or otherwise, is a potential solution that has intrigued many researchers. It has a tantalizing basis in biology: creatures as simple as bacteria have been documented to adopt police-like behaviors to uproot freeloaders and cheaters from their midst. Researchers such as Ernst Fehr of the University of Zurich have enlisted people in game-experiments in which they can win money if they’re generous among each other—but may win more by freeloading on the larger group’s generosity, at some cost to the group. When players also have a chance to financially penalize these free-riders, they do so even if it hurts them—and cooperation goes up, Fehr and colleagues found. Mathematical models have also been drawn up showing how such “third-party punishment,” or punishment on behalf of a community, can make sense as part of an evolutionary picture.

But researchers including Frank J. Marlowe of the University of Durham, U.K., argue that there’s one problem here. In the simplest real human societies, people who punish others on behalf on the public good seem to be woefully few, yet sharing and cooperation are still common. In a new study, Marlowe, with a group of U.K. and U.S. colleagues, claim that the avengers of the wronged are unnecessary to explain human cooperation—except if we’re talking about people avenging themselves.

“Motivated by the basic emotion of anger,” people’s tendency to retaliate on their own behalf is “sufficient to explain the origins of human cooperation,” the researchers wrote in the July 22 issue of the research journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

This tendency is “more universal” than punishment of wrongdoers on behalf of third parties, they added, labeling this direct sort of retaliation “second party, ‘spiteful’ punishment.”

Marlowe and colleagues drew on published descriptions of small-scale foraging societies that plausibly could have been like early human communities. They also drew on the results of additional experimental games, these conducted with members of such small societies as well as larger ones. The games were aimed at gauging people’s willingness to be generous and, on the flip side, to retaliate for uncooperative behavior.

These experiments and descriptions, they said, show that small societies are less generous and less given to engage in “third-party punishment” than large societies. However, their members are every bit as willing to avenge themselves, even at a cost, they added.

Third-party, police-like punishment, termed “strong reciprocity,” is “more relevant for understanding the cultural evolution of large, complex, agricultural societies,” they added. The research group conducted the experimental games with a “wide range of societies, including hunter–gatherers, horticulturalists, pastoralists, farmers and city dwellers,” they noted.

Several games were played. In the simplest, designed to measure generosity, the researcher hands some money to a subject, who is asked to give some of it to another player if he or she wants. The experimenter records what this first player decides to do, and the “game” ends there. In another, the player is again asked to offer some of the money to another player, but that other player is advised that they can reject the money if, for example, the offer seems insultingly small. If they reject the offer, both players get nothing: it’s a game designed to gauge people’s willingness to dish out “spiteful” punishment.

“In real life,” such seemingly spiteful behavior probably pays off eventually, Marlowe and colleagues wrote, because others learn they can’t easily get away with handing the punisher a raw deal.

In a third game, a player gets to punish a second player who they feel gave a bad deal to a third player, by depriving them of all their allotted money. The catch is that the first player has to give up one-fifth of their own allotment to do this. This game is designed to mimic the role of the enforcer who punishes miscreants on behalf of society.

The findings do show that in large societies, “third-party punishment” is important and indeed more common than direct revenge, the researchers found. “Punishers may get a reputation as good citizens and might be rewarded for enforcing standards of fairness for the larger group,” explaining their prevalence in larger societies, Marlowe and colleagues wrote. But people in very small societies are “less willing” to do that, and instead more often punish those who have directly slighted them.

“What is special about humans is the willingness to be spiteful to force cooperation,” Marlowe and colleagues concluded.

Mostly-male book images may reduce girls’ science scores

Special to World Science

Part of the reason boys tend to outscore girls in science classes may be that most textbooks show predominantly male scientists’ images, a small exploratory study has found.

The study, on 81 young high-school students, saw the “gender gap” apparently reversed when youths were tested based on a text containing only female scientist images, investigators said. The gap returned in its usual form when male-only images were used—and vanished when the photos showed equal numbers of men and women scientists, researchers said.

Part of the reason boys tend to outscore girls in science classes may be that most textbooks show predominantly male scientists’ images, a small exploratory study has found. (Image courtesy Virginia Dept. of Ed.)

The investigators cautioned, based on the small sample size and other factors, that it’s unrealistic to expect it would be so easy to erase the gender gap in real life.

Nonetheless, the findings hint that “providing students with diverse role models within textbook images” may be an important step, the researchers wrote in reporting their results. The study, by Jessica J. Good of Rutgers University in New Jersey and colleagues, is published in the March-April issue of the Journal of Social Psychology.

Other researchers have proposed that society can wipe out the performance gap—which has already shrunken in recent years—by making stronger efforts to give both sexes similar resources and opportunities. A 2004 report by the U.S. Center for Education Statistics noted that the previous year, science scores for eighth-grade boys exceeded those for eighth-grade girls in 28 out of 34 countries surveyed.

In the study on textbook images, ninth- and tenth-grade students, 29 male and 52 female, were asked to read a three-page chemistry text with one photo per page. Students were randomly assigned one of three versions of the reading: one whose pictures showed all male scientists, another with only female scientists and one with equal numbers of scientists of both sexes. The text itself was the same in all cases.

The students, who had no prior formal chemistry training, were next directed to take a short test on the reading.

Girls did significantly better when using the text with women-only images, the investigators reported. Boys did better with the men-only images, though the difference here didn’t reach a statistically significant level. Overall, average scores were higher for girls than boys among all students who got the women-only version.

The common predominance of male-scientist images in textbooks is a case of what some readers would perceive as “stereotype threat,” a phenomenon first described by researchers at Stanford University in California in the mid-1990s, according to Good and colleagues.

Stereotype threat occurs when a test-taker is presented with, or freshly reminded of, a stereotype that reflects negatively on his or her abilities in the subject matter at hand. Studies have found that stereotype threats push down the test-taker’s score, in the same direction the stereotype would predict.

Thus a predominance of male-scientist images in the majority of science textbooks may reinforce popular notions that girls are worse at science, and then lead to results in line with those ideas, said Good and colleagues.

Stereotype threats have been found to affect minorities as well as females. And the new findings suggest stereotype threat might work both ways—hurting not only those disfavored by a common stereotype, but those favored as well. In particular, although the popular stereotype is that boys are the top performers in science, Good’s results hinted that boys’ scores, too, might suffer if they saw pictures that cut against the flattering stereotype.

A simple solution that presents itself, though it requires more research, would be “mixed-gender textbook images,” the researchers wrote. These “may represent a simple and cost-effective way to remedy the negative effects of stereotypic textbook images.”

They cautioned that notwithstanding the latest results, other studies have found that removing stereotype threats doesn’t completely eliminate performance gaps among different groups, though it helps.

How exactly stereotype-threat effects work is unknown, Good and colleagues said, although there is evidence that they operate largely subconsciously. Possible reasons may include anxiety or intrusive thoughts caused by the stereotype threat, they wrote. Another explanation may be that there is a subconscious tendency to conform to societal expectations.

“Research should investigate the influence of diverse role models presented in textbooks as a way of improving performance of multiple stereotyped groups, not just women,” the investigators concluded. “Although eliminating gender bias in textbooks will most likely not eradicate the gender gap in science interest and achievement, it will begin to chip away at an ever crumbling foundation.”

Super black hole a “headache” for astronomers

World Science staff

Astronomers have found a mammoth object that they say smashes records for distance and brightness and could shed light on a never-probed early stage of cosmic history.

The object is also, to some extent, unwanted.

Current physical theories don’t account for such huge objects appearing as early in the history of the universe as this one is. The time of its appearance can be estimated by its distance.

The object dubbed ULAS J1120+0641 is not the brightest spot in this image. It is the tiny red dot to the left of it, near the middle—its faintness due only to its incredible distance. (Credit: ESO/UKIDSS/SDSS)

“This gives astronomers a headache,” said Daniel Mortlock of Imperial College London, one of the discoverers and lead author of a paper reporting the find in the June 30 issue of the research journal Nature.

“It’s difficult to understand,” he explained, how something “a billion times more massive than the Sun can have grown so early in the history of the universe. It’s like rolling a snowball down the hill and suddenly you find that it’s 20 feet across.”

This isn’t the first time that problem has come up; astronomers have been working on theories to address it. But the new object, the brightest known by far so early in the history of the universe, is perhaps the most dramatic example of the problem.

The thing in question is believed to be the most distant known supermassive black hole, a type of object so compact and heavy that its gravity overwhelms and drags in anything that strays too close, even light rays. Black holes aren’t directly visible, but can be seen when infalling objects heat up and become bright. In this case, rivers of gas are plunging into the black hole, researchers say.

The discovery came to light thanks to an ongoing sky survey being conducted at the U.K. Infrared Telescope and follow-up observations with the Gemini North telescope, both on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The black hole is also referred to as a quasar, a type of black hole that sits and the center of a galaxy guzzling material, lighting up the whole region. To be precise, “quasar” actually refers to the entire galaxy, not just the black hole.

The light from this quasar started heading toward us when the universe was only 6 percent of its present age, 770 million years after the universe was born, scientists say. The next most-distant known quasar is seen as it was 870 million years after that event. Because of the distance of these objects, they appear to us somewhat as they would have back in their time.

“This quasar is a vital probe of the early universe. It is a very rare object that will help us to understand how supermassive black holes grew,” said Stephen Warren, the study’s team leader. Quasars are in effect very bright, distant galaxies thought to be powered by “supermassive” black holes. Their brilliance makes them powerful beacons that may help to probe the era when the first stars and galaxies were forming.

The newfound quasar, estimated to weigh the equivalent of two billion Suns, is so distant that its light is believed to probe the last part of an age called the reionization era.

Some 300,000 years after the Big Bang, an explosion-like event that scientists say created our universe, the universe had cooled down enough to allow charged particles called electrons and protons to combine into atoms of hydrogen, a gas with no electric charge. This cool dark gas would have permeated the universe until the first stars started forming about 100 to 150 million years later. Intense radiation from these stars slowly split the hydrogen atoms back into protons and electrons, a process called reionization, making the universe more transparent to ultraviolet light. It is believe that this process, a milestone in cosmic history, occurred between about 150 million to 800 million years after the Big Bang.

An artist’s impression shows how ULAS J1120+0641 may have looked from closer up. (ESO/M. Kornmesser).

Cosmologists are keen to measure the state of gas in the early universe, and to understand how stars and galaxies formed. Most of the gas in the universe is hydrogen, and most of it is ionized today, meaning the electrons and protons are separated.

The quasar is an opportunity as well as a headache, because it lets scientists measure the conditions in the gas that the quasar’s light passes through on its way to us, Mortlock said. “What is particularly important… is how bright it is,” he explained. “It’s hundreds of times brighter than anything else yet discovered at such a great distance. This means that we can use it to tell us for the first time what conditions were like in the early universe.”

“It took us five years to find this object,” added Bram Venemans of the European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany, one of the authors of the study.

As one looks further away and thus further back in time, scientists reason that we should eventually reach the time when the hydrogen was neutral, with the electrons and protons combined as atoms. The light from the new quasar displays the characteristic signature of neutral gas, the investigators said. This signature, showing the quasar precedes the epoch of reionization, was predicted in 1998 but has never been observed before.

“Being able to analyze matter at this critical juncture in the history of the universe is something we’ve been long striving for but never quite achieved. Now it looks like we have crossed the barrier,” said Steve Warren of Imperial College, leader of the quasar team. “It’s like discovering a new continent which we can now explore.” The quasar, named ULAS J1120+0641, was discovered in the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey, a new map of the sky as it appears in infrared light.

3D film captures line between consciousness and lights-out

Courtesy of the University of Manchester
and World Science staff

New 3D film clips show what happens as a brain goes unconscious-offering scientists what they call an unprecedented peek into the physical nature of that mysterious state, consciousness.

Reasoning that useful insights could come from anything that shows what separates consciousness from unconsciousness, researchers filmed brains with a new type of scanning device while an anesthetic took effect on volunteers.

An image from the fEITER brain scanning device. (Courtesy U. of Manchester)

Anesthesiologist Brian Pollard of the University of Manchester, U.K. said the real-time images seem to show that losing consciousness involves a change in electrical activity deep in the brain. The process alters the activity of certain groups of nerve cells and hinders communication between different parts of the brain, he explained.

He added that the findings seem to support a hypothesis put forward by Susan Greenfield of the University of Oxford about the nature of consciousness. Greenfield suggests consciousness arises from different groups of brain cells, called neural assemblies, that work efficiently together, or not, depending on the available stimulations. Consciousness is not an all-or-none state but more like a dimmer switch, she argues, changing according to growth, mood or drugs.

When someone is anesthetized, Pollard said, it seems small neural assemblies either work less well together or inhibit communication with other neural assemblies. "Our findings suggest that unconsciousness may be the increase of inhibitory assemblies across the brain's cortex," the outer and more advanced region of the brain, he said. "These findings lend support to Greenfield's hypothesis."

The team used a new imaging method, invented at the university, whose name is a mouthful even by the standards of the already long acronyms now used for some brain-scanning tehniques. It's called functional electrical impedance tomography by evoked response, or fEITER. It's designed to enable high-speed imaging and monitoring of electrical activity deep within the brain.

"We have looked at 20 healthy volunteers and are now looking at 20 anesthetized patients scheduled for surgery," said Pollard, who presented results at the European Anaesthesia Congress in Amsterdam June 11. "We are able to see 3-D images of the brain's conductivity change, and those where the patient is becoming anesthetized are most interesting."

"We have been able to see a real time loss of consciousness in anatomically distinct regions of the brain for the first time," he added. "We still do not know exactly what happens within the brain as unconsciousness occurs, but this is another step in the direction of understanding the brain and its functions."

The new imaging method could "make a huge impact on many areas of imaging in medicine. It should help us to better understand anesthesia, sedation and unconsciousness, although its place in medicine is more likely to be in diagnosing changes to the brain that occur as a result of, for example, head injury, stroke and dementia," he added. "The biggest hurdle is working out what we are seeing and exactly what it means."

Source: World Science
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/110610_consciousness

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek [Thanks Art Funkhouser

MAGNIFICENCE OF THE VEDA

BY ACHARYA SHRIKIRSHNA

Thousands years ago the truth about the Universe,it's law and it's creator were discovered by the "Rishi-s" of the India.The discoveries are called "Veda" or Revelations.They discovered that "Truth" is infinitely constant and unwavering.Truth is the essence of life and the only path to "Moksh".

Many a scholor without insight have misinterpreted the Veda partly because of ignorance and partly because of malice towards Hinduism.There were also those who in the attempt to show off their scholastic skills came up with quaint interpretation of the meanings of the Vedic verses.

The true meaning of the Vedic 'shlok'(verses) were put forth in the modern times by the great Swami Dayanand Saraswati who with his divine vision awakened the world from its slumber of ignorance.By perspicacious analysis The honorable Swami revealed the Eternal Knowledge of the Veda in his translations of the Vedic hymns in their true sense.Mankind will forever be indebted to him.Salutations to the great Swami Dayanand Saraswati.

According to Sanskrit grammar the root word of 'Ved' -is 'vid' - meaning Gyaan or knowledge in its four forms,encompassing the following aspects:-

1.Analytical knowledge 2.The knowledge of Acquisition of worldly wealth,3.The knowledge of the power to think logically,and 4.The acquisition of the perception of the Almighty's omnipresence or "Absolute knowledge".

FIRST-ANALYTICAL KNOWLEDGE

It encompasses the knowledge of all the analytical sciences which are found in this universe -- be it any science or any art.According to the Ved-"All the knowledge that mankind endeavors to acquire is limited within the confines of time".

SECOND-THE KNOWLEDGE OF ACQUISITION OF WEALTH

Teaches us the four acquisitions every person -- women or men endeavors to achieve in their lifetime.They are:-

1.'DHARM' -to perform one's duties by Satya(honesty),Daya(withcompas

sion), Shuddhata(with purity of Mind and Body) and Tapa(practice to control the Senses or Indriyas and the Mind).

2.'ARTH' - toil to acquire material wealth,the wealth of knowledge and wealth of character.

3.'KAAM' - desire the well being of others and one's self.

4.'MOKSH' - endeavor to attain Moksh-or Liberation.

THIRD-THE ACQUISITION OF THE POWER TO THINK LOGICALLY

To acquire the power to think on the analysis and the conjunctions of the elemental and the compound states of matter present in the universe based upon close and detailed study of their properties,propensities and their relationship with the 'Aatmaa' and the 'Parmaatmaa'.These are subjects for meditation wherein the secrets of the meditated subject are unveiled,which otherwise are not explained or perceived by the sciences.

FOURTH - THE OMNIPRESENCE OF THE ALMIGHTY

Describes the omnipresence of the almighty 'Parameshwar' shown to incorporate every thing present in the universe.It also demonstrates that the 'Aatmaa' and 'Parameshwar' to be one and the same in every being and everything.

The Ved say--"Just as all measurements merge in the infinity on the firmaments similarly all knowledge merges into the Infinite Knower".

. . . .. ..to be continued. . ..

உங்கள் வலைப்பூவை மேருகேற்ற சில உருப்படியான டிப்ஸ்

வலைப்பூ .. (ப்ளாக் ) எழுதுற எல்லோரும், ஒன்னு பணம் சம்பாதிக்க எழுதுறாங்க.. அல்லது புகழுக்காக ... நிறைய பேர் ப்ளாக் மூலம் கிடைச்ச நட்பு மூலம் எவ்வளவோ முன்னேறி இருக்கிறாங்க...

இன்றைய தேதிலே வலைப்பூ .... இணையம் இல்லைனா .. ஒரு பெரிய வெறிச் ஏற்பட்டு விடுகிறது... இன்டர்நெட் , TV யும் தாண்டி , ஒரு பெரிய உலகம் இருக்குது.. முக்கியமா இளைய தலைமுறைக்கு இதை கண்டிப்பா எடுத்து சொல்லணும்..

சரி, அனேகமா நம்ம இணையம் மூலம் பணம் சம்பாதிக்கிற கட்டுரைகளை தொடர்ந்து படிச்சுக்கிட்டு வர்ற வாசகர்களுக்காக , நமது நண்பர் ஒருவர் அனுப்பி இருந்த மெயில் இது. .

அகத்தின் அழகு முகத்தில் தெரியும்ங்கிற மாதிரி , உங்கள் வலைப்பூவுக்கு வர்ற வாசகர்கள் , மனதிலே பச்சக்குன்னு ஒட்டிக்கிற சமாச்சாரங்கள் சில. .. இது உங்கள் வலைப்பூவை மேருகேற்ற உதவும். Try and implement whatever you like ..

கம்ப்யூட்டரைப் பயன்படுத்த பழகிக் கொண்ட அனைவரும், இன்டர்நெட் வழியே தங்களுக்கென நண்பர்கள் வட்டத்தை அமைத்துக் கொள்கின்றனர். அடுத்ததாகத் தங்கள் கருத்துக்களை, எண்ணங்களை உலகிற்கு எடுத்துச் சொல்ல Blog எனப்படும் தனி வலைமனைகளை அமைத்துக் கொள்கின்றனர். இவர்களுக்கு உதவிடத் தற்போது இணையத்தில் பல தளங்கள் அமைக்கப் பட்டுள்ளன. இந்த வலைமனைகளை அமைப்பது மட்டுமின்றி, அவற்றைத் தொடர்ந்து பராமரிக்கவும் பல தளங்களில் தகவல்கள் கிடைக்கின்றன.
இந்த வலைமனைகளை உருவாக்குவதில், சில குழு நண்பர்களிடம் ஓர் ஆரோக்கியமான போட்டி நிலவி வருகிறது. எந்த விஷயங் களைச் சேர்த்து வடிவமைத்தால் நன்றாக இருக்கும் என்று எடுத்துச் சொல்லி வழிகாட்டவும் பல தளங்கள் கிடைக்கின்றன.

மேலே குறிப்பிடப்படும் அனைத்து உதவி களையும் தரும் ஓர் தளத்தினை அண்மையில் காண நேர்ந்தது. அதன் முகவரி http://www.allblogtools.com/. வலைமனை தயாரிப்பிற்கு இதில் கிடைக்கின்ற டூல்கள் நம்மை வியப்பில் ஆழ்த்துகின்றன.

டூல்ஸ், டிரிக்ஸ் மற்றும் தகவல்கள் என பலவகைகளில் ஒரு பிளாக் அமைக்கத் தேவையான அனைத்தும் கிடைக்கின்றன. இரண்டு வகைகளில் இவற்றைத் தேடிப் பெறலாம். பக்க வாட்டில் ஒரு மெனு தரப்பட்டுள்ளது. அத்துடன் புளு நேவி கேஷன் மெனு ஒன்றும் தரப்பட்டுள்ளது. புளு நேவிகேஷன் மெனுவில் கிடைக்கும் வகைகள் இங்கு பட்டியலிடப் படுகின்றன.

1. Blogger Templates: இங்கு தான் நம் பிளாக்குகளை அமைக்க அடிப்படை கட்டமைப்பு கிடைக்கிறது. எந்த வகை, என்ன அமைப்பு மற்றும் வண்ணங்களைத் தேர்ந்தெடுத்து அமைக்கலாம். கீழே இருக்கும் எண்கள் பக்கங்களைக் குறிக்கின்றன. இவற்றின் மூலம் பல பக்கங்களில் உள்ள டெம்ப்ளேட்டுகளைக் காணலாம்.ஏதேனும் ஒன்றைத் தேர்ந்தெடுத்தவுடன் அதனைக் கிளிக் செய்தால் அதனை முழுமையாகப் பெற லிங்க் ஒன்று கிடைக்கும். (கூகுள் விளம்பர பாப் அப்களும் கிடைக்கும்; அவற்றைத் தள்ளிவிடுங்கள்). இந்த லிங்க்கிள் கிளிக் செய்தால் மிக அழகான வடிவமைக்கப்பட்ட டெம்ப்ளேட்டுகள் இலவசமாக டவுண்லோட் செய்திடக் கிடைக்கின்றன. இவற்றைப் பயன்படுத்த எந்தவிதமான தடையும் இல்லை.

2. Blogger Tricks: இந்த பிரிவில் உங்கள் வலை மனையை வெற்றிகரமான ஒன்றாக அமைக்கத் தேவையான ட்ரிக்குகள் கிடைக்கின்றன. பலவகைகளில் இவை வகைப்படுத்தப்பட்டு கிடைப்பது நம் வேலையை எளிதாக்குகின்றன.

3. Blogger Tools: இதில் நான்கு வகையான டூல்ஸ் தரப்பட்டுள்ளன. அவை glitter generator, signature generator, static image generator, மற்றும் HTML color code generator ஆகும். இவை அனைத்தையும் நாம் கட்டாயம் பயன்படுத்த வேண்டும் என்பதில்லை. ஆனால் பிளாக்குகளை வண்ண மயமாக்க உதவும் HTML color code generator மிகவும் பயனுள்ள ஒரு சாதனம். பெரிய அளவில் இதனை நாம் பயன்படுத்தலாம்.

4. Blogger Falling Objects: உங்கள் பிளாக்கில் நட்சத்திரங்கள், காதல் அடையாளச் சின்னங்கள் பின்னணியில் விழுவது போல் அமைத்தால் எவ்வளவு நன்றாக இருக்கும் என்று எண்ணுகிறீர்களா! உங்கள் எண்ணத்திற்குத் தீனி போடும் வகையில் இந்த பிரிவு வடிவமைக்கப் பட்டுள்ளது. இதனைக் கட்டாயம் உங்கள் பிளாக்குகளில் அமைக்க வேண்டும் என்பதில்லை. ஆனால் இவற்றை எப்படி உருவாக்கலாம் என்பதை இந்த பிரிவில் இருந்து கற்றுக் கொள்ளலாம்.

5. Glitters: இந்த பிரிவில் ஏற்கனவே உருவாக்கப்பட்ட மின்னும் இமேஜஸ் கிடைக்கின்றன. தேவைப்பட்டால் எடுத்து பிளாக்கில் இணைத்துக் கொள்ளலாம்.

6. Animations: அனிமேஷன் எனப்படும் சிறிய அசையும் உருவங்கள் உங்கள் வலைமனையில் அமைக்க வேண்டும் என ஆசைப்பட்டால் இந்த பிரிவு உங்களுக்கு நிறைய அனிமேஷன் பைல்களைத் (.GIF) தருகிறது.
மேலே தரப்பட்டுள்ள குறிப்புகள் அதன் பிரிவுகளைச் சார்ந்தே தரப்பட்டுள்ளன. இந்த தளத்திற்குச் சென்றால் இன்னும் என்னவெல்லாம் கிடைக்கின்றன என்பதனைத் தெரிந்து கொள்வீர்கள்.

இங்கு சென்று வந்த பின் இதுவரை வலைமனை அமைக்காதவர்கள் இதன் எளிதான சாதனங்களைப் பெற்று அமைக்கத் தொடங்கிவிடுவார்கள். ஏற்கனவே அமைத்தவர்கள் தங்கள் பிளாக்குகளுக்கு மெருகூட்டுவார்கள் என்பது உறுதி.

Why Manufacturing Matters

Better battery: A123 Systems’ new factory in Livonia, Michigan will make advanced batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles.
Credit: Roy Ritchie

BUSINESS

Manufacturing is not merely about giving people jobs. The next generation of technological innovations is intimately tied to production processes.

BY SUZANNE BERGER

Audio »

Between 2000 and 2010, the number of manufacturing jobs in the United States declined by 34 percent—a loss of more than six million positions. For now America remains one of the world's greatest manufacturing powers—it makes 19.4 percent of the world's manufactured goods, a share that fell only slightly over the past 30 years and is right behind China's share of 19.8 percent. But hard questions remain about the future of production in an advanced industrial country like the U.S. The latest research suggests that the big recent decline in manufacturing jobs is due not only to increases in productivity, as we long thought, but also to large gains for Chinese imports.Do these global trends mean that manufacturing has a limited future in a high-wage country? Does the U.S. even need much domestic production when manufacturing has become a commodity that can easily and cheaply be purchased abroad? As the economy becomes more heavily dominated by services, why focus on manufacturing at all?

These questions have very old roots in American political economy. At the very beginning of the Republic, Alexander Hamilton was already arguing for industrial policies that would stimulate domestic production. More recently, in the 1980s, the rapid gains made by Japanese companies in industries like automobiles and consumer electronics stirred up huge political controversies over whether government should stave off this competition and try to sustain and revive U.S. manufacturing. The advocates for such policies argued that manufacturing plays a critical role in generating economic growth and employment opportunities and in assuring national security. The critics of industrial policies claimed that government was incapable of making good choices about industry—that it could not pick winners and losers. More fundamentally, the critics denied that there was anything special about manufacturing as distinct from other activities in the economy, or that any kind of manufacturing was more valuable than any other. As the director of the Office of Management and Budget in the first Bush administration put it: "Potato chips or silicon chips—who cares? They are both chips."

There is at least one great difference, however, between yesterday's concerns about manufacturing and today's. Over the past 25 years, a fundamental change in the structure of production has taken place, as digitization and modularity have made it possible to separate R&D and design from production in industries where these functions had previously been integrated within corporations. The experiences of successful firms over the past 30 years make it plausible to think that manufacturing can be outsourced and offshored without any damage to the engines of innovation. Once it was possible to codify the different stages of the journey from conception to final product and to break design apart from production, major new industries could arise around enterprises like Apple, Qualcomm, and Cisco. With the fragmentation of networked production, companies focused on specialized core competencies came to dominate the landscape, particularly in sectors linked to information technology. The great new U.S. companies of the past quarter-century have been ones with few if any manufacturing capabilities. Many of the vertically integrated giants, like Hewlett-Packard and Texas Instruments, also shed their manufacturing, outsourcing much of it to Asian contractors.

The IT industry came to provide the basic paradigm for thinking about industrial change. Given the spectacular success of companies like Apple and Dell, they were obvious models to emulate. Their example suggested that advanced industrial countries should focus on their comparative advantage in R&D, design, and distribution and leave manufacturing to less developed countries, with their large reserves of less educated, less demanding, low-wage labor. Research carried out by Dedrick, Kraemer, and Linden, with "tear-downs" on the composition of value in iconic products like the iPod and the iPhone, showed that the lion's share of the profits and high-paying jobs continued to accrue to companies and workers in the advanced industrial countries. In a $600 iPhone sold by Apple, assembly in China by subcontractors like Foxconn (Hon Hai) accounted for less than $7 of the cost, so why should Apple—or any other high-tech company—consider bringing production under its own roof? Collaboration between firms specializing in R&D and design in advanced industrial countries and those specializing in manufacturing in low-wage countries has greatly benefited both sides over the past quarter-century, but it seems clear which end of the bargain has been the better one. Indeed, as a matter of public policy it would be hard to see the rationale for bringing such jobs "back" to the United States.

The question for the future, however, is whether modularity and the separation of innovative activities from manufacturing will characterize the great new industries of the next decades, as they have characterized the IT industry of the recent past. Research being conducted by the MIT Production in the Innovation Economy Commission on companies in wind and solar, biotech, new materials, batteries, and other emerging technology sectors suggests a number of reasons to question whether the IT paradigm will be workable for them. It's yet too early to draw any firm conclusions from this research, but already it appears that the challenges in scaling up these activities from laboratories through startups into full production of new products and services are different from the issues that software or electronics companies face in their transition from product idea to market. One obvious difference is that scaling up requires much more capital in these new industries than it does in software. But equally critical, in today's emerging technology sectors R&D, design, and production appear to be harder to separate than they are in the IT industry. Indeed, much of the most promising R&D and innovation in solar power involves cheaper and more efficient ways of manufacturing photovoltaics, a relatively mature technology. Companies such as Suntech have become major players in solar power by leveraging advanced manufacturing technologies, while others, such as the startup 1366 Technologies, are developing new ways of making solar cells that could dramatically redefine the costs of the technology. In both cases, the innovation is in the manufacturing.

There is a close connection between R&D and manufacturing in many of the emerging sectors because modularization may just not work as well for these technologies as it has for IT. R&D engineers may have to stay close to manufacturing to develop new strategies for making processes more efficient. The tighter integration of innovation and production may also present opportunities to bring design closer to end users, as advanced manufacturing technologies make it possible to produce higher-value goods at lower volume.

If firms need to keep production closely connected to their front-end innovative activities in order to bring new products and processes to the market, it is that something we can do in the United States? The advances we see emerging in areas like energy, life sciences, transportation, environment, communication, construction, and security promise to transform our economy and society. But it may well be that only those countries that can build powerful links between laboratory research and new manufacturing will be able to derive full benefit from their innovative capabilities. New manufacturing may not mean a larger manufacturing sector with large numbers of added jobs, but it certainly would mean radical change in the technologies and business models we have now.

The case for optimism about a renewal of American production capabilities has two legs. First, the strong performance of manufacturing in some other advanced industrial countries suggests that manufacturing and blue-collar work are not doomed in high-wage environments. In Germany, where wages and social benefits for manufacturing jobs are higher than they are in the United States, the fraction of the workforce employed in manufacturing is about twice as high as it is here. Germany has a manufacturing trade surplus—even in its trade with China. New manufacturing is possible in countries with educated populations and high living standards. But realizing such possibilities in the United States will take a major transformation of aging industrial structures that are often less efficient than the large new plants and industrial complexes of Asia.

The second leg of the case for optimism is that radically new manufacturing technologies do appear to be within reach. The demand for new, cleaner energy sources, to name just one example, promises huge markets for technologies that can be manufactured cheaply enough to compete with fossil fuels. Some have called it a new industrial revolution that will have an impact comparable to that of the factory, new power sources, and new technologies in the 19th century. In addition to three-dimensional (additive) printing, there are strong new possibilities in biofabrication and nanomaterials. But for these ideas to be translated into advanced manufacturing and robust industries, we will require new policies—built on an understanding of why manufacturing really matters.