The Art of Cropping

Best ways to remember more

What's the best way to hang on to what you learn? New memory research has answers.

Cramming for exams in a haze of No-Doz is the kind of activity one can only hope to outgrow. But demands for retaining new information hardly ended with graduation -- there are speeches to be delivered, professional certifications, boards, and bars to pass. Should you pull all-nighters? Study till you drop?

Now, four ways to remember more.

Space out

If possible, always try to break up learning into separate sessions, rather than studying in a nose-to-the-grindstone marathon, according to Doug Rohrer, Ph.D, associate professor of psychology at the University of South Florida, who has conducted several experiments in this area.

"Say you take French eight hours a day for two weeks -- language immersion courses yield excellent performance right after the class. However, if you want to know French in the long run, you're much better off spending that same amount of time distributed across a semester or a year."

When you space out learning like this, he says, "you can have up to 100 percent more retention."

Sleep on it

Hit the books; then hit the pillow. That will help the brain lock in what you learned. Even naps are beneficial, according to a Harvard study in which subjects who took a 90-minute snooze after learning a task performed 50 percent better over a 24-hour period than the napless group.

"Sleep after learning helps solidify memory," says Susumu Tonegawa, Ph.D, a Nobel Prize-winning professor of biology and neuroscience at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT.

According to animal studies, when you perform a task, the brain cells fire in a certain sequence. If you then fall asleep, the same cells automatically fire in an identical sequence without being distracted or disrupted by incoming visual stimuli. That, Tonegawa says, "solidifies the synapses, which in turn helps to strengthen the information as a memory."

Don't overlearn

Once you've remembered the Spanish word for house or done a math problem correctly, continuing to practice does very little for long-term retention, says Rohrer.

"Study a lot of material for a little bit of time in one session, rather than a little bit of material for a lot of time."

Keep your brain fit

The long-held assumption that we lose about 10 percent of our neurons per decade is not true.

"Remarkably, there are as many neurons in a healthy 80-year-old brain as there are in a young adult's," says Michela Gallagher, Ph.D, professor of psychological and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins University.

"When you're 50 or 60 and forget something, you think, 'Oh my God, my brain's falling apart.' But if you've still got all your neurons, the likelihood that you can prevent memory loss is much greater than if your brain had substantially deteriorated."

The magic memory pill has yet to be found, but science does know that regular exercise, social engagement, and education all help keep the brain sharp as you age --"not just in terms of current memory," says Gallagher, "but also in reducing the risk of Alzheimer's disease."

By Tim Jarvis from "O, The Oprah Magazine," March 2008

Ronaldo in transvestite scandal

Brazilian football star Ronaldo has been caught up in a sex scandal with three cross-dressing prostitutes.

Having dropped off his girlfriend at her house in Rio de Janeiro on Monday night, the 2002 World Cup winner picked up three prostitutes.

When they all booked into a motel, the AC Milan striker discovered that the prostitutes were in fact men.

According to Rio police, he alleges that the transvestites then tried to extort money from him.

Local press reports quoted one of the prostitutes, Andreia Albertine - otherwise known as Andre Luiz Ribeiro Albertino - as saying that Ronaldo had threatened to hit him, on discovering that he was a transvestite.

Full Story on BBC

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Upload your Picture to create lake wave effect. Outputs GIF
animated image with wave effect.

Police: Captive had at least 6 children by her father

Another dreadful story in this obscene world.
Sometimes I think we have not to read any newspaper and not to listen to any kind of news...
So, I put only the head of news, if you want to read it you can click on it and go ahead.


Continue....

She is Youngest University Professor

Alia Sabur (USA, b. 22 February 1989); She was appointed as a full-time faculty Professor at Konkuk University, Seoul, South Korea as Research Liaison with Stony Brook University (New York, USA) with effect from 19 February 2008, aged 18 years 362 days.
Her Homepage

Cartoon!

Mehran Modiri.,Reply

8-year-old girl asks for divorce in court

SANA’A, April 9 - An eight-year-old girl decided last week to go the Sana’a West Court to prosecute her father, who forced her to marry a 30-year-old man.

Nojoud Muhammed Nasser arrived at court by herself on Wednesday, April 2, looking for a judge to handle her case against her father, Muhammed Nasser, who forced her two months ago to marry Faez Ali Thamer, a man 22 years her senior. The child also asked for a divorce, accusing her husband of sexual and domestic abuse.

According to Yemeni law, Nojoud cannot prosecute, as she is underage. However, court judge Muhammed Al-Qathi heard her complaint and subsequently ordered the arrests of both her father and husband.

Read more about her sorrowful story....

Sony EL display is paper thin

here's thin. Then there's paper thin. Sony showed an electroluminescent (EL) display that's print-paper thin at the Display2008 conference in Tokyo.

The Sony EL display is based on organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology that uses electroluminescent organic materials. OLED panels are extremely thin because they don't need backlights. The electroluminescent layer contains a polymer substance that directly converts electricity to light.

The panel shown this week at Diplay2008 is about 0.3mm thick, besting Sony's current 1.4mm-thick EL TV (photo). Epson lists its Premium Glossy Photo Paper as 0.3mm thick. So by this standard the panel is literally paper thin.

Sony also exhibited an 11-inch panel.

The most cutting of cutting-edge technology is always a sticker shocker. Sony currently sells an 11-inch EL TV (960×540) for a staggering 190,000 yen, or just under $2,000. That's right, an 11-inch display. Even smaller than the displays on subnotebooks, which typically come with 12-inch LCDs.

The image quality is stunning, however, producing the best--or close to the best--of all of the following: color, contrast, viewing angles, and refresh rates.

"It has a superhigh contrast ratio (allegedly, 1 million to one), it boasts faster response times than LCD or plasma, it looks incredibly sharp with colors that really pop--and because OLED screens don't require a backlight, they're more energy efficient than plasma or LCD," according to this CNET review.

Another thing: the organic matter used can by ruined by the elements, so special sealing technology is necessary for the displays.

Sony has been making smaller, 3.8-inch OLED displays for gadgets since 2004.

Cnet.com

Ronaldinho: A Dog Helped Me Learn To Play

Ronaldinho has revealed that a dog helped him to learn to play football and to develop the silky skills and tricks that made him into one of the best players ever.

The Brazilian explained that a pooch in his neighbourhood in Porto Alegre, Brazil would keep him company after the other boys int he area had gone home and would chase the ball around with him.

With Ronaldinho's future up in the air at Barcelona and his fitness and form being questioned, it is no surprise that he became nostalgic when interviewed by British magazine My Free Sport.

When asked about the dog in question, the former PSG star said: “Sure, Bon Bon. I learned to play football on the street back in Porto Alegre. We had no pitches, just a street, but I’d play for so long that the other boys would go home, leaving just me and Bon Bon. So I’d play with him.”

“For a dog, he was good. He could keep hold of the ball, but he didn’t know the rules because he was a dog. He was the best dog in the area, though – he had a very good right foot!”

Growing up playing football, Ronaldinho never dreamt about anything else, but now he combines his love of the beautiful game with his enjoyment of music.

“When I was a little boy, I didn’t imagine that I would do anything different. My brother Roberto was a footballer, and he was my idol. He played in Brazil, for Gremio, and then in Switzerland with Sion. I wanted to follow him and stayed with him each summer in Europe," he explained.

"My father worked as a security guard at the stadium of Gremio, and my family still supports them. It was always football, football, football, although music is my other love, so maybe I would have liked to have been involved in that. I love samba and Pagode, which comes from samba and is popular in the south of Brazil.

"I have played in bands, and sometimes I practise with friends in a group in Barcelona. I wear a mask, though, to make sure people don’t recognise me!”

Lucas Brown, Goal.com

PHOTOEND

This is really fascinating and gorgeous website for photo's lover.
I strongly recommend you to visit it.

All Done With a Single Stroke of The Pen

The film"21" and Monty Hall problem

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?
The Monty Hall problem (though it was called "the game show host problem" in the film) appears in the film 21, in which the main character, Ben, correctly answers the question in his MIT college math course. Economist M. Keith Chen identified a potential flaw in hundreds of experiments related to cognitive dissonance that use an analysis with issues similar to those involved in the Monty Hall problem (Tierney 2008).
Read full Story

* * probably The most expensive car with the most expensive number plate in the UAE!!! * *

Bugatti Veyron in Dubai…
This is
an awesome machine…
V16 engine… 1000bhp… with 9 radiators…
Top speed
405km/hr…
No one can beat this car in a drag race…

Probably
…. the most expensive car with the most expensive number plate in

the UAE!!!

Brilliant Idea! A Cell Phone Defibrillator

Sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) is responsible for more deaths every year than AIDS, breast cancer, lung cancer and stroke combined. Sudden cardiac arrest means that, without warning, the heart stops beating. If the heart is not defibrillated (therapeutically shocked) within a few minutes, the victim dies. Imagine how difficult it is to reach the victims of SCA in time to save their lives. In fact, 95 percent of victims die as a direct result of SCA.

But suppose we all carried our own personal defibrillators? What if defibrillators became a feature of our cell phones?

Just that brilliant idea is addressed in Benjamin Sacketkhou's international patent application entitled "Wireless Communication Device With Integrated Defibrillator," published in December 2007.

Sudden cardiac arrest is caused by an interruption in the heart's electrical system, causing the heart to stop beating, or pumping blood. If the heart is not "jump started" within a few minutes after SCA, the victim will die. Automatic external defibrillators (AEDs) can be used with minimal training by most adults to restart the victim's heart, and many public buildings and transportation systems have them, but access to them may be too late.

Although many persons, including professional athletes in their seeming "physical primes," have no advance warning before an sudden cardiac arrest, almost half of SCA victims have had episodes of cardiac arrhythmia or heat attacks. Cardiac arrhythmias can be curtailed by defibrillator implants (formerly "pacemakers"), but they are not advised for all cardiac patients.

What Mr. Sacketkhou describes in his patent application is a GPS device, such as a cell phone, with a component part of an automatic external defibrillator, that a user could

1) attach, by electrical pads, to his or her chest to detect any occuring arrhythmia.

2) Such device would automatically check for the necessity of a therapeutic shock,

3) automatically deliver the therapeutic shock to the heart,

4) and automatically notify the nearest emergency professionals as to the victim's whereabouts though the cell phone (GPS system).

If the defibrillator wires are not attached to the victim, a passerby could observe the cell phone, quickly employ the defibrillator, and set the same system into motion.

When you consider that just a few minutes is all you have to revive an SCA victim, a portable personal cell phone/defibrillator is just what the doctor ordered... and fast!

Sharp unwraps 'world first' Intel Atom phone

Chip giant Intel doesn't reckon its Atom chip family will be ready for mobile phones until 2009-2010, but that hasn't stopped Japanese carrier Willcom punting an Atom-based handset - the first if its kind, the company claimed.
The Sharp-made D4 uses Intel's Centrino Atom platform to run Windows Vista Home Premium SP1. It has a 1.33GHz Atom Z520 on board, along with 1GB of 533MHz DDR 2 memory and a 40GB 1.8in hard drive.

The 188 x 84 x 25.9mm, 470g device sports a full Qwerty keyboard and a 5in, 1024 x 600 display. It has 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and PHS network compatibility. PHS (Personal Handy-phone System) is the cellular technology Willcom's network uses.

There's a two-megapixel camera on the back, a Micro SD card slot of storage expansion, a USB port for PC connectivity and an integrated TV tuner.

The D4 is set to retail for ¥128,600 ($1275/£647/€811) to which you can add ¥1600 a month for two years, which is the minimum contract. The handset is due to go on sale in Japan in June - the month Intel ships Atom.
Via Register Hardware

Bond car plunges into Lake Garda

A stunt driver has crashed the car used by movie secret agent James Bond into Italy's Lake Garda during filming of 007's latest movie, Quantum of Solace.

The driver was delivering the iconic Aston Martin DBS to the film scene in heavy rain when he lost control around one of the lake's narrow curves.

The driver was quickly rescued and taken to hospital with minor injuries.

Italian TV showed the car, reportedly the only one available for use in the film, being winched out of the lake.

Filming for the movie - starring Daniel Craig as the latest Bond - has already taken the crew to England, Panama, Chile and Mexico.

The newest film in the long-running 007 franchise is to be released later this year.
Watch the Video
Via BBC

Could you tell me who does appear in this picture?

Amazing Hand Shadow Show by Raymond Crowe

I Love the World

Pregnant Man

It's the story that has the media buzzing and people talking. Thomas and his wife, Nancy, are a happily married couple who run a small business, live in a normal neighborhood and are expecting their first child.

So why are they making headlines around the world? The husband, Thomas, is the one who's pregnant.
Thomas was born female and lived for 24 years as a woman named Tracy.

Growing up in Hawaii, Tracy and her two brothers experienced loss at an early age. When she was just 12 years old, her mother committed suicide. "My father had to learn to be a father because he wasn't around a whole lot," Thomas says. "He worked a lot. He let my mother raise us, and she was an excellent mother."

Though Thomas says he doesn't feel he was born in the wrong body, he does remember being a tomboy. "I liked to play with LEGOs and go fishing," he says.

A few years later, Tracy hit puberty and began to realize something was different. "I started to grow breasts, and it was kind of a shock to me because I didn't have my mother around," Thomas says. "I was just used to catching footballs and balls, and so it hurt. I just kind of thought, 'What's my body going through? Is it betraying me?'"
The Full Story on Oprah

Discover Foam City

Inside the house of the future

Take a look at a vision of how we might live in years to come.

The 'Living Tomorrow' project in Brussels has just opened its revamped concept house of the future.

Watch The Video

The Dangers Of Being A TV News Reporter

IBM Hydro-Cluster Supercomputer

You may not be in the market for a supercomputer any time soon, but IBM's Power 575 is still impressive for both its computing speed and also its use of basically a system of water-filled copper pipes to cool down those hot processors. IBM says that means 80 percent less air conditioning and 40 percent less power required than older generations of comparable computing might.

Developed at IBM's Zurich lab, the system actually starts with fairly hot 45C water, running it past the blazingly hot microprocessors to bring them down to a (still toasty) 85C operating temperature, which then heats the incoming water beyond 50C, making it hot enough to be used as waste heat for building warming or municipal use. While water cooling in computing isn't a revolutionary concept, its now considered more cost effective and is being revived by IBM as energy costs for data centers spiral upwards. Via ::IBM Zurich Research

World's Hardest Game

This is The World's Hardest Game! Work your way through 30 incredibly hard levels, and if you can finish all of them you can compete for a spot on the world leader board!
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How do you know that you are in the year 2008?

1) You find out that your family that is not more than 3 people have 4 or 5 mobile telephone numbers.

2) You send an Email to a work colleague even though he/she is sitting at a desk right next to yours.

3) Your relationship with family members and friends that have no Email gets worse and you hardly contact them.

4) You park your car outside your house then use your mobile to phone the house to ask for assisstance with carrying the shopping in.

5) Every TV advert has an internet address at the bottom of the screen.

6) Leaveing the house without taking your mobile phone with you makes you really stress and rush back to pick it up even though you managed to live without one for 20 or 30 years of your life.

8) As soon as you wake up in the morning you check the internet even before you have your coffee.

9) You are now reading this, smiling and shaking your head.

10) You are so busy reading this that you didnt even notice that this list has no number 7.

11) You went back up to check that there is no number 7.

12) I am sure if you scrolled up that you will find number 7, its just that you didnt notice it.

13) You scorlled up again but you did not find number 7. I am making fun of you of course, this goes to show that you have no trust in yourself and that you believe anything said to you.

Did You Know 2.0

Via Mohammad Behdad

Holy Islamic key sets sale record

A 12th Century key to Islam's holiest shrine has sold at auction in London for $18.1m (£9.2m).

The key to the Kaaba - the ancient cube-shaped shrine in Mecca - went to an anonymous bidder at Sotheby's.

The auction house said the price set a record for the sale of an Islamic work of art.

Made of iron and measuring 37cm in length, the key is engraved with the words "This was made for the Holy House of God".

The key was the centrepiece of Sotheby's Islamic art sale, which realised more than $40m (£21.5m) in total.

BBC News

Health Issue

Health - Important Tips

Answer the phone by LEFT ear
Do not drink coffee TWICE a day
Do not take pills with COOL water
Do not have HUGE meals after 5pm
Reduce the amount of OILY food you consume
Drink more WATER in the morning, less at night
Keep your distance from hand phone CHARGERS
Do not use headphones/earphone for LONG period of time
Best sleeping time is from 10pm at night to 6am in the morning
Do not lie down immediately after taking medicine before sleeping
When battery is down to the LAST grid/bar, do not answer the phone as the radiation is 1000 times

Hollywood legend Charlton Heston dies at 84

Charlton Heston, who won the 1959 best actor Oscar as the chariot-racing "Ben-Hur" and portrayed Moses, Michelangelo, El Cid and other figures in movie epics of the '50s and '60s, has died. He was 84.

The actor died Saturday night at his home in Beverly Hills with his wife Lydia at his side, family spokesman Bill Powers said.

Powers declined to comment on the cause of death or provide further details.

"Charlton Heston was seen by the world as larger than life. He was known for his chiseled jaw, broad shoulders and resonating voice, and, of course, for the roles he played," Heston's family said in a statement. "No one could ask for a fuller life than his. No man could have given more to his family, to his profession, and to his country."
Source:CNN

Influence of glasses in people’s character

Singular Bird in the World

Cut out your UPC label and... frame it

Cut out your UPC label and... frame it

Barcodes, or UPC symbols, these ubiquitous emblems of our consumer civilisation, have received a radical makeover by a Japanese firm D-Barcode - and this time their ideas ended up on grocery products all over Japan.


Russian Barcode Posters

Art Lebedev design studio has been issuing wildly creative posters (featuring barcode symbolics) for years. View the whole creative gallery of them here and download some for your desktops. Some examples:

See more
Source: Dark Roasted Blend