Good Sleep may well enhance Undergrads' Learning ability

A new study finding reports that the sufficient sleep improves college students' ability to learn.

The study included 102 university undergraduate students who had never taken an economics course and were given an introductory lecture on supply and demand microeconomics. Those tested on the material after they got adequate sleep over a 12-hour period had better scores than those who took the test after being awake for 12 hours.

The findings show that sleep can help college students retain and integrate new information needed to solve problems on an exam.

"Our findings demonstrate the importance of sleep to the ability to flexibly combine distinct concepts to solve novel problems. This ability is critical to classroom learning," lead author Michael Scullin, a doctoral candidate in the Behavior, Brain and Cognition program at Washington University in St. Louis, said in an American Academy of Sleep Medicine news release.

Change in diet can slow cancer growth | A Study

A study has suggested that eating a low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet may reduce the risk of cancer and slow the growth of tumors already present. The study has been published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research

The study was conducted in mice, but it will be effective on humans says the scientists involved in the study.

"This shows that something as simple as a change in diet can have an impact on cancer risk," said lead researcher Gerald Krystal, a distinguished scientist at the British Columbia Cancer Research Centre.

Krystal and his colleagues implanted various strains of mice with human tumor cells or with mouse tumor cells and assigned them to one of two diets. The first diet, a typical Western diet, contained about 55 per cent carbohydrate, 23 per cent protein and 22 per cent fat.

The second, which was somewhat like a South Beach diet but higher in protein, contained 15 per cent carbohydrate, 58 per cent protein and 26 per cent fat. They found that the tumor cells grew consistently slower on the second diet.

As well, mice genetically predisposed to breast cancer were put on these two diets and almost half of them on the Western diet developed breast cancer within their first year of life while none on the low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet did.

Access Facebook Offline Using mobile

Singapore-based software applications developer U2opia Mobile has developed a new application for mobile phones that will allow mobile users to access Facebook on all kind of handsets without Internet connection.

"We are using Unstructured Supplementary Data (USSD) technology, which enable users to access Facebook without having a GPRS connection on their mobile phones," said the co-founder and CEO of U2Opia Mobile, Mr. Sumesh Menon.

USSD is the technology used by telecom companies to send alerts to the mobile users to inform about balance at the end of call or for sending miss call alerts.

"It is like SMS and hence, the load on the network is negligible. We have built some commands through which a user can receive alerts on activity happening on his wall as well post an update," said Menon.

U2opia launched this application today with Indian telecom major Bharti Airtel.

"In the Indian market scenario, where the penetration of smart phones is relatively low and the use of internet on mobiles is primarily limited to key cities, many users are excluded from accessing their Facebook accounts via mobile phones," said Shireesh Joshi, Bharti Airtel Director - Marketing, in a statement.

Airtel users can dial *325# and *fbk# for non-qwerty mobile handsets to access Facebook without subscribing to data plans, the statement said.

"We look forward to bringing millions of Facebook users in India closer to their love for social networking by allowing them to access it anytime, anywhere on their Airtel-powered mobile phones," Joshi added.

Beware of Facebook Spam

Facebook, despite being one of the biggest social networking site, has failed to squeeze out the spam spreading in its Social Network. These click-jack schemes have gone so viral that its becoming more unstoppable even by Facebook. Some of the latest messages that are spreading on Facebook as Wall Posts are:

1. OMG name you should untag yourself in this vid

2. OMG name why are you in this vid

3. hey name you look so stupid in this vid

4. hey name why are you in this vid

5. hey name i can’t believe youre tagged this vid

6. ROTFL name what are you doing in this vid

It comes at a time, just when most of the spam links like Who Viewed Your Profile and Photos of Dead Osama Bin Laden just came to a standstill. All these links when clicked leads to malevolent sites which steals data from your PC. It spreads like wildfire, as you click the link the Facebook’s API allows the application to post on all your friend’s wall.

To prevent this spam don’t click on links in Facebook whatever attractive it may be! Hackers are just using the curiosity of a user to good use to complete their mission. Facebook has to plug this loophole. It has to either stop allowing access for such API system or needs to find a new mechanism to stop spam.

RESOURCESAT-2 High Quality Imageries Presented to Prime Minister by ISRO

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Chairman and other top officials presented High quality images of the Indian landmass and other countries beamed by India’s remote-sensing satellite, Resourcesat-2.

The images contained parts of New Delhi, Surat, Bareilly and Dubai. The three cameras aboard Resourcesat-2 were being operated from April 28 and several hundreds of images covering India and many parts of the globe have been acquired from the satellite.

The ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV- C16), which lifted off from the launch pad at Sriharikota on April 20, put three satellites in orbit. They were India’s Resourcesat-2, a joint Indo-Russian satellite called Youthsat and another satellite named X-Sat from the Nangyang Technological University of Singalore.

The Prime Minister appreciated of the success of the PSLV-C16 mission, which placed RESOURCESAT-2 satellite, Indo-Russian satellite YOUTHSAT and X-SAT satellite from Singapore into orbit. He congratulated the entire team for the magnificent performance. The Prime Minister was also briefed about ISROs forthcoming missions. The Prime Minister wished ISRO team success in all its future missions for the coming months.

The Prime Minister was also presented with models of PSLV-C16, RESOURCESAT-2 and YOUTHSAT.

The Animated Photography

Have you ever seen an animated photo? Jamie Beck and her fellow artist Kevin Burg developed amazing cinemagraphs that take 'stills' to the next level

It is, in their own words, ‘something more than a photo but less than a video’.

Two artists have created a new way to record your special moments - pictures with movement.

The ‘cinemagraphs’ look like still photos but actually feature a subtle area of movement designed to grab your eye and keep you looking.

Identify counterfeit currency using iPhone

The developer of Noteworthy software Mr. Ranjit Dahiya said that when he saw the news of counterfeit currency is being pushed in forcibly. He thought to do something to tackle the hitch, the thought has forced him to develop the software.

Mr. Ranjit Dahiya is a graduate from National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. The software needs to be downloaded on mobile to check whether the currency is counterfeit or not? It will be possible to use the software on any mobile in near future. At present it is possible to use the software in iPhonw only. You can correctly identify Indian currency notes from the denomination of Rs. 10 to Rs. 1000.

News and media reports estimate that, in India, the total amount of fake currency notes in circulation is upto Rs. 1,69,000 Crores!! (Rs. 17 trillion) Smuggled into the country a large number of fake notes are in use today. 

Some of us may be aware a few features of the Rs.500 or Rs. 1000 banknote, but the makers of counterfeit money now have access to far better technology, making the notes harder to identify with just a glance.

Banknotes with lower denominations and that are comparatively easier to produce for example Rs.50, Rs.20 and Rs.10 is also being pumped into circulation by the millions.

It is our duty as responsible citizens to be aware of this problem and be able to correctly identify Currency notes.

With a little bit of awareness, we will be able to stop accepting and using fake currency and remove it from the system, and stop this sort of economic terrorism.