Are you waiting to paint your masterpiece? More than the imagination and the interest that the artist finds deep down in him, there are other attributes that contribute to his picture’s quality. He needs to be careful and diligent with a hawk’s eye to choose the best of the art supplies that are available in the market. These will include easels, paint brushes and good quality paint. These art supplies might be the simple requirements but since these are what define the quality of the final picture that the artist paints, it is imperative that he chooses the best of the lot. Like they say, what you sow, so shall you reap, if the artist takes good effort to use the best easels, and other necessary hardware, it goes without saying that he will be able to get the best result out of this and he will be the proud owner of a beautiful art form. The best of the art supplies available in the market and the imagination of the painter can indeed form a beautiful end result – a beauty to the beholder’s view point, a blessing to every knowing eye, a real tribute to the creator of the art itself!
Archive for November, 2008
Paint your world
Thursday, November 27th, 2008E-Learning the Easy Way
Thursday, November 27th, 2008K Alliance is one of the lead organizations that have brought entirely new and evolving concept of e-learning. The innovative e learning course modules form the part of K Alliance training curriculum. This qualitatively helps the learner to achieve its goals in a more direct manner. Being interactive in nature, the powerful elearning strategies defined by the K Alliance also helps the learner to grasp the concepts of a particular domain or subject are right from the scratch. Different course curriculums are designed for explaining different concepts. Moreover, each of the course curricula is also designed keeping in mind the age as well as the scope of learning. The more the scope, greater will be the depth of e learning module.
K Alliance also makes use of advanced computer based training methodologies into practice. These methodologies take into account the learning environment; and also the target audience into purview. For K-12 learning, more emphasis is given on the graphical methodologies of teaching and explaining the things. For graduate, postgraduate and higher studies, altogether different learning approach is applied. K Alliance training is totally customized and optimized program that ensures that at the end what a learner gets is perfect and updated knowledge. And knowledge is the power of doing the things in a better way.
Just Sit Back and Relax
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008If you think that undergoing training is all-hassle and you will just end up getting a minimal amount of knowledge and skill, think again. Today, if you are familiar with the computer training videos, you can grab one of those if you want to learn and you want to be trained within the convenience of your own home. You will be the sole factor with the time, manner and the frequency on how bad you want it to have. The computer training CD enables you to be at par with all the necessary needs that you have on line so you will no longer be getting the old fashioned way. For this, it will really have you the peace of mind that you have been yearning for and you will really be getting the facts through respectable and reviewed materials that they have to offer to you. It will also be a great opportunity for you to hold a good cause so it will be easier for you to go through the learning process in a good and inevitable way that you possibly can so you have to be sure with what you are doing and what your abilities are.
Army Ponies Up $50M to Fund Combat Video Games
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008Games are increasingly serious business, apparently serious enough to convince the U.S. Army to green light a dedicated video games unit and earmark $50 million over five years for game-related projects to enhance soldier combat-readiness. Funding for this new “games for training” program begins in 2010.
“The Army takes this seriously,” said Lt. Col. Gary Stephens, product manager for air and ground tactical trainers at Project Executive Office — Simulation Training and Instrumentation (PEO-STRI), reports Stars and Stripes. “We own gaming for the Army — from requirements through procurement.”
Acknowledging the games industry’s multibillion clout, Stephens says the Army wants “to take advantage of that,” but doesn’t intend to compete in that capacity. “We don’t have the intent or capability to be a commercial game house,” he said, adding that the Army’s gaming unit will instead monitor industry trends and identify technology appropriate for military training.
It’s not clear from the Stripes piece how or even if the program relates to America’s Army, the self-billed “official game of the U.S. Army.” America’s Army, a tactical first-person shooter based on variable flavors of Unreal engine technology, launched in July 2002 as a public relations and recruiting tool for the U.S. Army. It’s been the subject of numerous popular and academic articles, many questioning whether the game improperly blurs the line between entertainment and war.
The Army already uses an alternative commercial first-person shooter based on Codemasters‘ Operation Flashpoint technology to train soldiers. The Army says it’s shipped over 3,000 copies of the game — called DARWARS Ambush! and designed to quickly allow soldier-authored training scenarios — since the project launched in 2003.
What’s next? Something called “Game After Ambush,” a move to update DARWARS Ambush! with a low-cost, visually modern, more flexible training tool based on an off-the-shelf product. “We have an impending award announcement for the contract that we will make in the next couple of weeks,” said Stephens.
The new game, which can play out in virtual battle spaces up to 100 x 100 kilometers, will attempt to simulate everything from urban area and convoy ops to contact reaction and ambush tactics. It’s also designed to interface with the Army’s real world battle command system (ABCS), which it uses to track actual equipment, enemies, and friendly forces. Imagine soldiers at desks training soldiers in the field, all linked through systems capable of simulating battlefield scenarios, and you’ve got the basic idea.
By September 2009, the Army expects to have 70 gaming systems distributed across 53 locations in the United States, Germany, Italy and South Korea, according to Leslie Duvow, project director for gaming at PEO-STRI. “Each system will consist of 52 computers with ancillary equipment including steering wheels, headsets and mice,” she said.
My take: Given the U.S. government’s deranged money-management mentality, some of you might feel less than enthused about all this based on that $50M price tag. Understandable, but consider that the Army’s DARWARS project reportedly saved the military money measured against the costs of traditional simulation trainers. It also saves in operational expenditures, say the tens of thousands of dollars in ammunition soldiers can blow through in a single day. Sounds like an attempt to be more efficient with asymmetric technology to me.
Some breast cancers may naturally regress: study
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008Researchers who tracked breast cancer rates in Norwegian women proposed the controversial notion on Monday that some tumors found with mammograms might otherwise naturally disappear on their own if left undetected.
But leading cancer experts expressed doubt about the findings and urged women to continue to get regular mammograms, saying this screening technique unquestionably saves lives by finding breast cancer early on when it is most treatable.
Dr. Per-Henrik Zahl of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo and Norwegian and U.S. colleagues examined invasive breast cancer rates among nearly 120,000 women age 50 to 64 who had a mammogram — an X-ray of the breast used to find evidence of cancer — every two years over a six-year period.
They compared the number of breast cancers detected with another group of about 110,000 Norwegian women of the same age and similar backgrounds who were screened just once at the end of the six-year period.
The researchers said they expected to find no differences in breast cancer rates but instead found 22 percent more invasive breast tumors in the group who had mammograms every two years.
This raises the possibility that some cancers somehow disappear naturally, although there is no biological reason to explain how this might be, according to Zahl, whose findings were published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
“We are the first ones to publish such a theory,” Zahl said in a telephone interview. “What we say is many cancers must spontaneously disappear or regress because we cannot find them at later screenings. I have no biological explanation for this.”
Mammography and breast self-examination for tumors are standard methods used for early detection of breast cancer, the leading cause of cancer deaths among women worldwide.
The American Cancer Society estimated that about 465,000 women die of breast cancer globally each year, and 1.3 million new cases are diagnosed.
“I think generally when we look at studies like this it is important to keep in mind there are some studies that change practice and others that make us think a little bit more, said Dr. Eric Winer, director of the Breast Oncology Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
“The idea that somehow these cancers go away entirely is, I would say, an intriguing hypothesis, but one we don’t have a lot of evidence to support,” said Winer, who was speaking on behalf of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
In much of Europe women undergo mammograms every two years after age 50 except for in Britain where it is every three years, Zahl said. The American Cancer Society recommends that women get an annual mammogram beginning at age 40.
Bob Smith, director of cancer screening for the American Cancer Society, said Zahl’s team misinterpreted the data, and expressed doubt about the idea that a significant number of breast tumors “spontaneously regress.”
“I imagine there are still some people who believe the Earth is flat, but there are not very many of them,” Smith said in a telephone interview. “It’s not usual — it happens every day that research is published that gets it wrong.”
The researchers acknowledged many doctors might be skeptical of the idea but they cited 32 reported cases of a breast cancer regressing, a small number for such a common disease.The researchers said their findings provide new insight on what is “arguably the major harm associated with mammographic screening, namely, the detection and treatment of cancers that would otherwise regress.”
Electrical pulses can safely ‘zap’ cancerous tumours
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008Scientists from Alfred Hospital are pioneering a new technique that ‘zaps” away tumours using electrical pulses.The novel technique involves inserting two thin needles into the body to surrounding the tumour, followed by 90 pulses of high-voltage electricity passed through the tumour over 45 seconds.
The technique could successfully destroy tumours within a fortnight with little or no damage in animal models.
The research team is currently testing the new approach in patients with liver and kidney cancer. The Alfred’s professor of radiology, Ken Thomson, said that he was extremely excited about the potential for removing tumours that would previously have needed risky surgery and left the patient weak and in pain.”It has enormous potential,” the Age quoted him as saying.
While using the new technique, Thomson revealed that that the patients needed to be sedated at the time because otherwise the shock would “jump them off the table”.
All three cases encountered no safety issues and scans of the first liver patient have shown the tumour rapidly shrinking as the body carries away the dead tissue and replaces it with healthy, non-cancerous tissue.
Professor Thomson said the hospital wanted to rigorously test the technique for safety, before moving on to trials that proved its effectiveness.
He admitted that it was too early to announce a cure, but insisted that the results so far were very promising.
Jordan’s Queen Rania receives YouTube Award
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008Jordan’s Queen Rania has received YouTube’s first Visionary Award for a daily video Web cast and blog in which she sought to challenge stereotypes of the Arab and Muslim world and encourage dialogue across cultures.
Accepting the award in a YouTube clip posted Saturday, Rania listed 10 reasons for her five-month YouTube series in a spoof of the top 10 list segment on CBS’s “Late Show with David Letterman.”
Among her reasons were: “Because anything Queen Elizabeth can do, I can do better” and “I was tired of people thinking Jordan was just a basketball player.”
More seriously, Rania has said she wants people to “know the real Arab world … unedited, unscripted and unfiltered.”
YouTube created the Visionary Award to recognize people who use the video sharing Web site as a platform for positive social change.
In the series, which ran from March to August, the media savvy queen and rights advocate invited viewers to share their opinions of the Middle East and talk about stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims.
The series began at a time when Muslim sentiment was stirred by an Internet film criticizing the Quran produced by an anti-immigrant politician in the Netherlands. It also followed the outrage over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published in newspapers in Europe.
Among her advocacy work, the wife of Jordan’s King Abdullah has promoted education, micro-credit financing and anti-poverty campaigns.
IFFI 2008: Screening of Hussain’s documentary deferred
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008Bowing to the pressure by Hindu right wing organisations, the Films Division today decided to defer the screening of renowned painter M F Husain’s documentary at the ongoing International Film Festival of India (IFFI) here. “The screening has been deferred for the time being as there were some objections to it,” Director of Film F estival, S M Khan told PTI. The 40-year-old documentary, ‘Through the Eyes of a Painter’, about Hussain’s experience in Rajasthan, was a part of Information and Broadcasting Ministry’s Films Division’s ‘Framing Time section’, scheduled to be screened today.
Hindu organisations ‘Sanatan Sanstha’ and ‘Hindu Janajagruti Samiti’ (HJS) had objected to the screening of the documentary, citing that there were several cases pending against Hussain in India. “There are 1,250 cases pending against him for insulting Hindu religion.
How can he be a part of any festival sponsored by the government?” said Sushant Dalvi from HJS. The right wing organisations had written to Goa Chief Minister Digamber Kamat and the DFF on the first day of the festival to withdraw the documentary. The members had also met Kamat with a memorandum.
The state authorities “had requested the organisers to defer the screening as it might create law and order problem in the state.” The decision to defer the documentary film, which won the prestigious Golden Bear award at the Berlin film festival, was arrived at after much deliberation, as Films Division officials till yesterday had maintained that there was no change in the schedule.
South Korea builds city from sea at wetland’s expense
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008South Korea is betting a multi-billion dollar land reclamation project about seven times the size of Manhattan will lift the economy but environmentalists say it could be one of the country’s biggest ecological blunders.
The Saemangeum land reclamation project uses a 33-km (20.5 mile) sea dyke to reclaim an area of 400 square kms (155 sq miles), turning coastal tidelands that are key feeding areas for globally threatened birds into land for factories, golf courses and water treatment plants.
“This project is not about protecting the environment. It is about economic development. And we will do that in an environmentally sound way,” said Park Hyoungbae, an official with the Saemangeum development authority.
The authority said the project, built at a cost of nearly $3 billion, will bring industry to North Jeolla, a province that has traditionally been the agricultural breadbasket of the country but lacks modern industry.
Developers will start construction of an industrial zone next year, offering sweeteners like free land leases for 100 years for selected industries and a free economic zone that offers tax breaks to attract foreign investors, who can stay in a village planned just for them.
They will replace natural wetlands with artificial ones and turn riverbeds into man-made lakes. They will build a park along the road on the sea dyke and try to attract tourists with a theme park, convention center and even perhaps a casino.
“Saemangeum will turn Korea into a much happier place,” said an announcer on a promotional video for potential investors.
The province, which runs from the middle of South Korea to the west coast, is dotted with small farms that grow grain and raise pigs, boasts a mid-sized port that serves China across the Yellow Sea and is home the historic city of Jeonju, once the capital an ancient Korean kingdom.
Saemangeum has drawn the attention of developers in other parts of Asia, which conservationists said could lead them to try to duplicate the engineering feat in South Korea for their own massive land reclamation projects.
BUREAUCRATIC INERTIA
South Korea originally launched the project for the estuary, about 200 kms south of Seoul, decades ago when its economy was struggling, food was short and reclamation seemed like a good way to increase farm land in the mountainous and cramped country .
After years of legal wrangling and changes in how to use the land, construction started on the project in 1999 with hundreds of thousands of boulders the size of compact cars dumped into the Yellow Sea estuary to form the dyke that was completed in 2006.
Area farmers have questioned the need for the project, saying there is no one left to work the land due to a population drop while major domestic industry has often stayed away due to a lack of infrastructure.
Critics said the project stayed alive due to bureaucratic inertia and because it created construction jobs in the area that has provided the strongest political support for left-leaning presidents who ruled from 1998 to 2008.
The current conservative president, Lee Myung-bak, who used to run Hyundai’s construction arm, has also thrown his support to the project, saying it will help regional development and stimulate his country’s export-driven economy that is on the ropes due to the global slowdown.
“Saemangeum’s ecological importance seems to be more valued abroad,” said Yoon Sang-hoon of the conservation group Green Korea.
“The government is calling this environmentally friendly, but just planting a few trees that have since died does not make it a green project,” Yoon said.
ENDANGERED SPECIES
Wetlands such as Saemangeum help in flood control, prevent soil erosion and can remove, as well as store, greenhouse gases from the Earth’s atmosphere, according the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
One of North Asia’s biggest recent projects to reclaim land from tidal wetlands was in Japan’s Isahaya Bay, in the southwest of the country. It has proven to be a disaster, leading to drops in sea water quality and poor soil on land, according to research reports from Japanese academics.
In June, a Japanese court ordered the government to open the sluice gates at Isahaya, shut in 1997, saying the project has caused harm to fisheries and damaged the region’s environment.
Even though there is still water flowing occasionally through sluice gates at Saemangeum, the project has already taken its toll on the environment by destroying wetlands and pushing endangered species toward extinction, conservation groups said.
Migratory birds traveling between Russia and Alaska in the north to New Zealand and Australia in the south congregate for often their only refueling stop at Yellow Sea tidal flats to feast on shellfish and other food.
A study released last month by conservation groups Birds Korea and Australasian Wader Studies Group recorded a decline of 137,000 shorebirds, and declines in 19 of the most numerous species, from 2006 to 2008 at Saemangeum.
The study indicated that the critically endangered Spoon-billed Sandpiper and the endangered Spotted Greenshank were being pushed to extinction by the loss of wetlands.
“We anticipate the declines will not only continue but become more obvious in other species,” said Nial Moores, a British-born conservationist and director of Birds Korea.
Electrical pulses that zaps cancerous tumours
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008Scientists from Alfred Hospital are pioneering a new technique that ‘zaps’ away tumours using electrical pulses.
The novel technique involves inserting two thin needles into the body to surrounding the tumour, followed by 90 pulses of high-voltage electricity passed through the tumour over 45 seconds.
The novel technique involves inserting two thin needles into the body to surrounding the tumour, followed by 90 pulses of high-voltage electricity passed through the tumour over 45 seconds.The technique could successfully destroy tumours within a fortnight with little or no damage in animal models.
The research team is currently testing the new approach in patients with liver and kidney cancer.
The Alfred’s professor of radiology, Ken Thomson, said that he was extremely excited about the potential for removing tumours that would previously have needed risky surgery and left the patient weak and in pain.
“It has enormous potential,” the Age quoted him as saying.
While using the new technique, Thomson revealed that that the patients needed to be sedated at the time because otherwise the shock would “jump them off the table”.
All three cases encountered no safety issues and scans of the first liver patient have shown the tumour rapidly shrinking as the body carries away the dead tissue and replaces it with healthy, non-cancerous tissue.
Professor Thomson said the hospital wanted to rigorously test the technique for safety, before moving on to trials that proved its effectiveness.
He admitted that it was too early to announce a cure, but insisted that the results so far were very promising.