by Wela on 16 July 2010 01:43
I’m (was?) not a big football fan but watched many world cup matches during the last 4 weeks. Head is still on echo mode after hearing that Vuvuzela for so long. At time it sounded very annoying but then again the tune in the entire FIFA 2010 was that. Wonder how a normal football match will look and sound like without the Vuvuzela. It became so popular … even YouTube added a special button to play the sound on the video player.
Anyways … couple of us got together to watch the finals and during that I was thinking. A FIFA comes once every 4 years. Same goes for Olympics, Cricket world cup and I don’t know what else is out there. If a human lives an average 60 years and if we consider only 40 years of that … the fella gets to see only 10 of these world events. In my memory … in the parts that I can recall … I have watched/seen three cricket world cups, three FIFA’s and three Olympics … anything before that I barely remember. Dang! only 7 left for me … I’m not going to miss any of those in the future.
by Wela on 15 July 2010 02:10
Source: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/07/14/chicken-egg-mystery-finally-cracked/?test=faces
British scientists believe they have found the answer to an ages-old question: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Scientists cracked the puzzle after discovering that the formation of eggs is possible only thanks to a protein found in chicken's ovaries. That means eggs have to be formed in chickens first.
The protein -- called ovocledidin-17 (OC-17) -- speeds up the development of the shell. Researchers from Sheffield and Warwick universities in England laid out their findings in the paper "Structural Control of Crystal Nuclei by an Eggshell Protein."
They used a supercomputer to zoom in on the formation of an egg and realized the protein is vital in kick-starting the crystallization process. It works by converting calcium carbonate into the calcite crystals that make up the egg shell.
Dr Colin Freeman, from Sheffield University's Department of Engineering Materials, said "it had long been suspected that the egg came first -- but now we have the scientific proof that shows that in fact the chicken came first."
"The protein had been identified before and it was linked to egg formation, but by examining it closely we have been able to see how it controls the process," Freeman said.
"It's very interesting to find that different types of avian species seem to have a variation of the protein that does the same job."
It is hoped the discovery leads to the invention of new materials.
by Wela on 5 July 2010 21:20
Not sure where many of you know about this. 2nd-4th July an exhibition was hosted by the Rotary Club of Colombo at the Exhibition and Convention center which was called the Hobby Fair 2010.
Organizers invited Microsoft to put up a stall and demo some products. So our Student Champs gang took the challenge and did a fantastic job manning the stall for 3 full days and kept the tempo going. This was the first time Sri Lanka hosted an event on this nature. I mean not the exhibition … but an exhibition of hobbies. There were 70+ stalls and some pretty awesome stuff. I loved the coin collections and stamp collections.
At our stall Champs demonstrated products like Windows Security Essentials, Songsmith, Worldwide Telescope, AutoCollage etc. Couple of presentations were also delivered for large audiences.
It was a bit disappointing to see a low crowd. I mean hobbies are something which people are drawn into. I mean who doesn’t have a So theoretically unlike any other exhibition this should have more attendance. It was pretty obvious that something had gone wrong in the awareness creating. Anyways … it’s the first time something of this nature was organized, so there is enough room to improve next year.