Indian Health & Family Welfare

India is rapidly gaining ground in the international scenario as a popular destination for foreign travelers, international students, and even for some others who opt to migrate to this mystical land for health and medical tourism. The country, which had been reeling under the onslaught of British colonial rule, managed to fight all odds and has successfully created a niche for itself. It has metamorphosed into one of the most sought after destinations for travel, much due to the presence of several renowned world heritage sites, and an inherent spiritualistic force, which pulls enthusiastic travelers towards it.

McCain Uses Biden's 'Crisis' Prediction To Question Obama

Republican running mates John McCain and Sarah Palin raised new questions about Barack Obama's readiness to lead Tuesday, taking advantage of Joe Biden's claims that Obama would face a "generated crisis."Biden's comments seemed to hand the McCain campaign yet another last-minute line of attack as the Arizona senator tries to close the gap between him and his Democratic rival in the final two weeks of the presidential campaign."We don't want a president who invites testing from the world at a time when our economy is in crisis and Americans are already fighting in two wars," McCain said Tuesday in Harrisburg, Pa. "Thanks for the warning, Joe," Palin said to cheers from about 2,500 supporters at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center in Nevada. Biden made the comments over the weekend to two fundraising audiences in Seattle, saying he expected world figures to test Obama early if he wins the election in two weeks.

"Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking," Biden said. "Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."The McCain campaign jumped on the remarks, with McCain and Palin bringing them up on the stump Monday evening and Tuesday. McCain on Tuesday, in response to Biden's reference to President Kennedy, recalled being ready to launch a bombing run during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis."I was on board the USS Enterprise," McCain, a former naval aviator, said. "I sat in the cockpit, on the flight deck of the USS Enterprise, off of Cuba. I had a target. My friends, you know how close we came to a nuclear war." As the crowd of several thousand began to swell with cheers and applause, he added: "America will not have a president who needs to be tested. I've been tested, my friends."

Democratic aides said that Biden was merely reciting history and assuring supporters that Obama is the man for the job. But Palin on Tuesday linked Biden's comments to Obama's foreign policy positions. She said the "crisis" scenarios Biden referenced could be triggered by Obama's willingness to sit down with "the world's worst dictators," his willingness to send U.S. military into Pakistan without the approval of their government, or other positions. "But I guess the looming crisis that most worries the Obama campaign right now is Joe Biden's next speaking engagement. Let's call that crisis scenario number five," she said. The McCain campaign is trying to build steam off Biden's remark as it incorporates several other lines of attack into its day-to-day message. McCain already has gotten significant political mileage out of the man known as Joe the Plumber, who was filmed asking Obama about his tax policies two weekends ago and became the rhetorical centerpiece of the final presidential debate last week. Republicans seized on Obama's response that he would "spread the wealth around" if elected.

The McCain campaign has gone so far as to liken Obama's philosophy to "socialism." Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. John Murtha also seemed to do Republicans a favor after he called his own constituents "racist" in a newspaper interview. He later apologized and then clarified, saying some of his constituents are just "rednecks." As McCain struggles against the odds to lock down support in Obama-leaning Pennsylvania, he cited Murtha's remarks Tuesday."You may have noticed that Senator Obama's supporters have been saying some pretty nasty things about western Pennsylvania lately," he said. McCain fumbled his next line: "And you know I couldn't agree with them more." But he continued: "I could not disagree with those critics more. This is a great part of America. This is where people love their country and they serve it."

Wayne Rooney Scores Twice As England Win

Wayne Rooney scored twice as England took a giant stride towards World Cup qualification by beating Belarus to make it maximum points from four games.

Steven Gerrard gave England the lead from 30 yards after 11 minutes, but Pavel Sitko headed a deserved leveller for Belarus before the break.Rooney turned in a cross from Emile Heskey five minutes after the break.And he lifted home a superb third from Gerrard's pass 16 minutes from time to give coach Fabio Capello another win.It gives England a perfect record of 12 points so far, with Capello's huge reputation bolstered further by two convincing away wins against dangerous opposition in Croatia and Belarus.

And for Gerrard, a spectacular strike will increase his fragile self-confidence in an England shirt and silence any lingering doubts about his worth at international level.Rooney's double also demonstrated his growing maturity as he provided a deadly spearhead to the attack, ably assisted by the powerful Heskey, who was winning his 50th England cap.The Manchester United striker has now scored five goals in England's last three qualifiers as he plays a leading role in the new Capello era.Gerrard had pleaded with coach Capello to keep faith with him after a low-key display in the win against Kazakhstan - and he repaid his confidence with a stunning opener. He picked up the ball from Rooney before placing a perfect slide-rule finish into the bottom corner beyond Belarus keeper Yury Zhevnov from fully 30 yards.Instead of settling England, the goal was the signal for a period of Belarus dominance, with keeper David James having to save from Dmitry Molosh and Vitaly Kutuzov.

Heskey was working tirelessly up front to keep the Belarus defence occupied, and his fine cross set up Rooney for a far post header, but he could not find the target.Belarus were in the ascendancy, however, and it was no surprise when they drew level after 28 minutes at the end of a glorious 23-pass move.Igor Stasevich was the creator, popping up an inviting cross to the far post for Sitko to arrived unmarked and head beyond the exposed James.England needed to apply more pressure to the gifted Belarus attacking players after the break, and Rooney almost provided the perfect start with a great run that was only marred by a tame finish.He made no mistake as England regained the lead after 50 minutes, but credit must go to Heskey again with a powerful run and perfect cross for Rooney to slide home from close range.

As Belarus attempted to force their way back into contention, Capello made two changes to his attacking personnel, sending on Shaun Wright-Phillips for Theo Walcott and Peter Crouch for the excellent Heskey, who was struggling with an injury.It did not stop Rooney taking the game by the scruff of the neck and he scored his second, and England's third, with a goal of the highest class 16 minutes from time.Gerrard slid a superb instant pass into his path, and Rooney dummied a defender before lifting a composed finish over Zhevnov.The Liverpool captain should have added a fourth five minutes from time when he rounded Zhevnov, but carelessly shot again the outside of the post with the goal at his mercy.It was not a costly miss as England entered new territory by winning their opening four World Cup qualifiers for the first time.

Software engineering in China

Software is ubiquitous. It runs our businesses and controls our phones, entertainment devices, appliances, automobiles, and countless other things that humans manufacture. Even sneakers! Adidas recently announced that its latest running shoe has an embedded computer chip to adjust the shoe's performance for each individual step during a run. Although the United States now has the greatest number of companies that depend on automation, the rest of the industrial world isn't far behind. Just observe how many people in cities around the globe are walking down the street -- or worse, driving a car -- with cell phones glued to their ears.

Years ago, the term software crisis entered our everyday vocabulary because it was clear that we needed more software than we could produce. How can we keep up with the demand without sacrificing software quality?

Many companies have turned to international outsourcing, where India and Eastern Europe lead the market for software services. Both offer an educated workforce available at low cost for high-quality work. But today, another important contender is entering that marketplace: The People's Republic of China. For years, the Chinese educational system has been gearing up to meet the demand for software engineers who can compete in the global marketplace. Below, we will look at China's emergence first from the perspective of Professor Haiqing Liu of Wuhan University, a visiting scholar at Worcester Polytechnic Institute during the 2004-2005 academic year. Then, I will report what I learned from my own informal, Web-based research on the state of the Chinese software industry.

Japanese Snapping Up Wall Street Banks

Amid the U.S. financial turmoil, Japanese financial firms have been aggressive in buying assets or taking over business networks of U.S. financial institutions. Mitsubishi UFJ (MUFJ) Financial Group, Japan's second largest financial institution in terms of assets, abruptly announced it would acquire up to 20 percent in Morgan Stanley, the world's second largest investment bank.

The announcement came only a few hours after Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the last two remaining out of the five largest American investment banks, said they would turn into bank holding companies.

The takeover price will be between 400 billion yen (about W4,280 billion) and 900 billion yen (about W9,640 billion), Japanese media outlets said. MUFJ is a supersize financial group with assets of 194 trillion yen, the result of a merger of the Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group, Japan's second largest financial group, and UFJ Holdings, Japan's fourth largest financial firm, in 2005.

Nomura Holdings, Japan's largest securities firm, beat Barclays Group of Britain in the takeover bid for Lehman Brothers, the U.S.’ fourth largest investment bank, which has filed for bankruptcy.

This was not the first time Japanese firms have been aggressive in their bid to buy American firms. During the "bubble economy" in the late 1980s, Japanese conglomerates or large investors were busy property shopping in the U.S. and Europe. Mitsubishi Estate's purchase of the Rockefeller Center building in New York in 1989 was a symbolic incident. In a poll in the U.S. at the time, Americans said Japanese economic power was more fearsome than Soviet military power. But Japanese property shopping spree in the U.S. ended up in failure when the economic bubble burst.

Japan experienced a "lost decade" while the American economy boomed in the 1990s. But in 2007, Japanese economic growth (2.1 percent) overtook that of the U.S. (2 percent) for the first time in 15 years. Based on their restored economic power, the Japanese are back.

Cell biology

Cell biology (also called cellular biology or formerly cytology, from the Greek kytos, "container") is an academic discipline that studies cells – their physiological properties, their structure, the organelles they contain, interactions with their environment, their life cycle, division and death. This is done both on a microscopic and molecular level. Cell biology research extends to both the great diversity of single-celled organisms like bacteria and the many specialized cells in multicellular organisms like humans.

Knowing the composition of cells and how cells work is fundamental to all of the biological sciences. Appreciating the similarities and also differences between cell types is particularly important to the fields of cell and molecular biology. These fundamental similarities and differences provide a unifying theme, allowing the principles learned from studying one cell type to be extrapolated and generalized to other cell types. Research in cell biology is closely related to genetics, biochemistry, molecular biology and developmental biology.

Biotechnology

Biotechnology is technology based on biology, especially when used in agriculture, food science, and medicine. The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity defines biotechnology as:

Any technological application that uses biological systems, living organisms, or derivatives thereof, to make or modify products or processes for specific use.

Biotechnology is often used to refer to genetic engineering technology of the 21st century, however the term encompasses a wider range and history of procedures for modifying biological organisms according to the needs of humanity, going back to the initial modifications of native plants into improved food crops through artificial selection and hybridization. Bioengineering is the science upon which all biotechnological applications are based. With the development of new approaches and modern techniques, traditional biotechnology industries are also acquiring new horizons enabling them to improve the quality of their products and increase the productivity of their systems.

Microbiology

Microbiology is the study of microorganisms, which are unicellular or cell-cluster microscopic organisms. This includes eukaryotes such as fungi and protists, and prokaryotes, which are bacteria and archaea. Viruses, though not strictly classed as living organisms, are also studied. In short; microbiology refers to the study of life and organisms that are too small to be seen with the naked eye.

Microbiology is a broad term which includes virology, mycology, parasitology and other branches. A microbiologist is a specialist in microbiology.

Microbiology is researched actively, and the field is advancing continually. We have probably only studied about one percent of all of the microbe species on Earth. Although microbes were first observed over three hundred years ago, the field of microbiology can be said to be in its infancy relative to older biological disciplines such as zoology and botany.

.NET Framework

The .NET Framework provides a run-time that is used to interpret intermediate code, code that is compiled from a development environment such as Microsoft’s Visual Studio when the language is C# or Visual Basic.NET. The code requires the run-time in order to execute. The code is referred to as "intermediate" because the result of the compilation is not a result that could be run at the machine level, or in other words to run without the aid of the run-time. The run-time is a service process that provides the framework for the execution of the intermediate code. The run-time acts as an interpreter of the intermediate code and then provides the structure for it to run on the operating system. Lower level capabilities it provides includes memory management, process management, and I/O management. In many cases the run-time is simply providing an abstraction level to the Windows API opening up nearly all of its capabilities to the programmer

The purpose of a run-time is to support the use rapid application development languages, such as C# and Visual Basic.NET. Highly capable run-times, such as the .NET Framework offer significant capabilities and access to the operating system and I/O. This allows a developer to create a powerful application very quickly.

Run-times are not necessarily striving for cross platform compatibility, while run-times such as Sun’s Java might.

Scripting (meta) language interpreters act similar to a run-time, although the code for many scripting languages is not pre-compiled as they are in .NET languages. Pre-compiling speeds up the act of loading the application into memory and also ensures a more compact executable file.

Google Earth Plus

Google Earth can be upgraded to a Plus edition for a $20 annual subscription fee. Google Earth Plus is an individual-oriented paid subscription upgrade to Google Earth and adds the following features:

* GPS integration: read tracks and waypoints from a GPS device. A variety of third party applications have been created which provide this functionality using the basic version of Google Earth by generating KML or KMZ files based on user-specified or user-recorded waypoints. However, Google Earth Plus provides direct support for the Magellan and Garmin product lines, which together hold a large share of the GPS market. The Linux version of the Google Earth Plus application does not include any GPS functionality.
* Higher resolution printing.
* Customer support via email.
* Data importer: read address points from CSV files; limited to 100 points/addresses. A feature allowing path and polygon annotations, which can be exported to KML, was formerly only available to Plus users, but was made free in version 4.0.2416.

Network telescope

A network telescope (also known as a darknet, internet motion sensor or black hole) is an internet system that allows one to observe different large-scale events taking place on the Internet. The basic idea is to observe traffic targeting the dark (unused) address-space of the network. Since all traffic to these addresses is suspicious, one can gain information about possible network attacks (random scanning worms, and DDoS backscatter) as well as other misconfigurations by observing it.

The resolution of the Internet telescope is dependent on the number of dark addresses it monitors. For example, a large Internet telescope that monitors traffic to 16,777,216 addresses (a /8 Internet telescope in IPv4), has a higher probability of observing a relatively small event than a smaller telescope that monitors 65,536 addresses (a /16 Internet telescope).

A variant of a network telescope is a sparse darknet, or greynet, consisting of a region of IP address space that is sparsely populated with 'darknet' addresses interspersed with active (or 'lit') IP addresses.

Wide Area Augmentation System

The Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) is an air navigation aid developed by the Federal Aviation Administration to augment the Global Positioning System (GPS), with the goal of improving its accuracy, integrity, and availability. Essentially, WAAS is intended to enable aircraft to rely on GPS for all phases of flight, including precision approaches to any airport within its coverage area.

WAAS uses a network of ground-based reference stations (Benchmark DGPSRs transmitting differential corrections (DCs, located within spaces protected from the public inside airportsin North America and Hawaii, to measure small variations in the GPS satellites' signals in the western hemisphere. Measurements from the reference stations are routed to master stations, which queue the received DCs and send the correction messages to geostationary WAAS satellites in a timely manner (at least every 5 seconds or better). Those satellites broadcast the correction messages back to Earth, where WAAS-enabled GPS receiver uses the corrections while computing its position to improve accuracy. The longer any given DC has been delayed, the less benefit it will produce.

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) calls this type of system a Satellite Based Augmentation System (SBAS). Europe and Asia are developing their own SBASs, the Indian Gagan, the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) and the Japanese Multi-functional Satellite Augmentation System (MSAS), respectively. Commercial systems include StarFire and OmniSTAR.

Database transaction

A database transaction is a unit of work performed against a database management system or similar system that is treated in a coherent and reliable way independent of other transactions. A database transaction, by definition, must be atomic, consistent, isolated and durable. These properties of database transactions are often referred to by the acronym ACID.

Transactions provide an "all-or-nothing" proposition stating that work units performed in a database must be completed in their entirety or take no effect whatsoever. Further, transactions must be isolated from other transactions, results must conform to existing constraints in the database and transactions that complete successfully must be committed to durable storage.

Transaction processing system

A 'Transaction Processing SystemTo be considered a transaction processing system the computer must pass the ACID test.

From a technical perspective, a Transaction Processing System (or Transaction Processing Monitor) monitors transaction programs, a special kind of programs. The essence of a transaction program is that it manages data that must be left in a consistent state. E.g. if an electronic payment is made, the amount must be either both withdrawn from one account and added to the other, or none at all. In case of a failure preventing transaction completion, the partially executed transaction must be 'rolled back' by the TPS. While this type of integrity must be provided also for batch transaction processing, it is particularly important for online processing: if e.g. an airline seat reservation system is accessed by multiple operators, after an empty seat inquiry, the seat reservation data must be locked until the reservation is made, otherwise another user may get the impression a seat is still free while it is actually being booked at the time. Without proper transaction monitoring, double bookings may occur. Other transaction monitor functions include deadlock detection and resolution (deadlocks may be inevitable in certain cases of cross-dependence on data), and transaction logging (in 'journals') for 'forward recovery' in case of massive failures.

Transaction Processing is not limited to application programs. The 'journaled file system' provided with IBMs AIX Unix operating system employs similar techniques to maintain file system integrity, including a journal.

Hierarchical model

In a hierarchical data model, data is organized into a tree-like structure. The structure allows repeating information using parent/child relationships: each parent can have many children but each child only has one parent. All attributes of a specific record are listed under an entity type. In a database, an entity type is the equivalent of a table; each individual record is represented as a row and an attribute as a column. Entity types are related to each other using 1: N mapping, also known as one-to-many relationships. The most recognized example of hierarchical model database is an IMS designed by IBM.

Encryption of mail sessions

All relevant email protocols have an option to encrypt the whole session. Remarkably, those options prevent a user's name and password from being sniffed, therefore they are recommended for nomadic users and whenever the internet access provider is not trusted. On sending mail, users can only control encryption at the hop from a client to its configured outgoing mail server. At any further hop, messages may be transmitted with or without encryption, depending solely on the general configuration of the transmitting server and the capabilities of the receiving one.

Encrypted mail sessions deliver messages in their original format, i.e. plain text or encrypted body, on a user's local mailbox and on the destination server's. The latter server is operated by an email hosting service provider, possibly a different entity than the internet access provider currently at hand.

AntiVirus Gold

AntiVirus Gold is a piece of rogue software that poses as a legitimate antivirus program. It is typified by a small icon in the system tray, with a link directing to download the offending software. It could also possibly do a homepage hijack. There have also been many variants of this malware, such as Antivirus Golden, Antispyware Gold and the like. They seem to be related to both WinAntiVirus and Winfixer. Typically, said infections are installed by the Vundo, SysProtect or SmitFraud trojans.

Gathering of addresses

In order to send spam, spammers need to obtain the e-mail addresses of the intended recipients. To this end, both spammers themselves and list merchants gather huge lists of potential e-mail addresses. Since spam is, by definition, unsolicited, this address harvesting is done without the consent (and sometimes against the expressed will) of the address owners. As a consequence, spammers' address lists are inaccurate. A single spam run may target tens of millions of possible addresses — many of which are invalid, malformed, or undeliverable.

Sometimes, if the sent spam is "bounced" or sent back to the sender by various programs that eliminate spam, or if the recipient clicks on an unsubscribe link, that may cause that email address to be marked as "valid", which is interpreted by the spammer as "send me more".

Adaptive system

An adaptive system is a system that is able to adapt its behavior according to changes in its environment or in parts of the system itself. A human being, for instance, is certainly an adaptive system; so are organizations and families. Some man-made systems can be made adaptive as well; for instance, control systems utilize feedback loops in order to sense conditions in their environment and adapt accordingly. Robots incorporate many of these control systems. Neural Networks are a common type of algorithmic implementation of adaptive systems.

Diffusion of innovations theory can help to explain the uptake of new ideas, practices and products by individuals and social groups -- human adaptive systems.

Systems engineering

Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering, that focuses on the development and organization of complex artificial systems. Systems engineering is defined by INCOSE as "a branch of engineering whose responsibility is creating and executing an interdisciplinary process to ensure that customer and stakeholder's needs are satisfied in a high quality, trustworthy, cost efficient and schedule compliant manner throughout a system's entire life cycle, from development to operation to disposal. This process is usually comprised of the following seven tasks: State the problem, Investigate alternatives, Model the system, Integrate, Launch the system, Assess performance, and Re-evaluate. The systems engineering process is not sequential: the tasks are performed in a parallel and iterative manner."