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Showing posts with label ARTICLE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ARTICLE. Show all posts

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Charles Darwin facing accusations of plagiarism




Experts have criticised Charles Darwin for plagiarism and unjustly claiming credit as the father of evolutionary theory.

As the scientific world prepares to mark bicentenary of the author of 'On the Origin of Species', a group of critics has commissioned computer experts with specialized anti-plagiarism software to scour Darwin's book, published in 1859, for similarities to a paper released the year before by Alfred Russel Wallace, a naturalist who worked for eight years in modern Indonesia.

Initial indications are that the analysis will reveal that some of the ideas in On the Origin of Species were taken from Wallace, particularly, the idea that species with variations helping them to survive would thrive and pass on these features to their offspring.

As far as the dispute over who deserves the credit is concerned, it is as old as evolutionary theory itself, with Darwin's defenders claiming the two came up with similar ideas independently at the same time, reports TimesOnline.

According to James Moore, a biographer and professor of the history of science at the Open University, the new plagiarism claim is "manufactured."

He added that those pursuing it were under qualified to do so.

"You wouldn't go to a plumber to do your tax return," he said.

The adulation has shocked critics, including lawyer David Hallmark, a trustee of the Wallace Foundation of Indonesia.

"The descent of Wallace from equality to relative invisibility is the direct result of the unlawful conduct of Charles Darwin by suppressing the true worth of Wallace as the author of the theory," Hallmark said.

The software used by Hallmark's copyright experts can detect where phrasing is identical and also signs of an author's style being copied.

Hallmark plans to submit his findings to the International Association of Forensic Linguists in Amsterdam in July.

Monday, August 25, 2008

How to boost your PC speed


Frustrated with slow computer speed? Hate it when your computer slows down while you access the Internet.

And you simply bang your head when your computer takes ages to search your files. You desperately wish that your PC could gain some speed.

Don't worry. You can easily overcome this.

Here are some easy-to-do tips which can boost up your PC speed.

Clean up disk errors

Whenever a programme crashes or you experience some power outage, your PC may create some errors on hard disk. This slows down computer speed.

For this, check and clean any errors on the computer hard disk.

To run Disk Check go to My Computer. Now, right-click on the drive you want to check for errors and click Properties.

In Properties dialogue box, click on the Tools tab. In the Error-Checking section, press the Check Now button. Access Check Disk to check for errors on your computer.

Depending on the errors, it may take up to an hour to check and clean. This must be followed at least once a week.

Remove temporary files

Your PC stores temporary files whenever you browse through the Web. Also, your PC stores temporary files when you work on programmes like Microsoft Word or Excel.

This ends up slowing down your PC speed. To overcome it you can use the Windows Disk Cleanup screen to rid your PC of these dead files.

To run Disk Cleanup go to My Computer. Right click on the drive you wish to check for errors and click Properties. In the Properties dialogue box, click Disk Cleanup. You can also use Disk Cleanup to clear unused files from your PC.

After scanning, the Disk Cleanup dialogue box lists the files you can remove from your computer.

Organise your data 

Often when you search files your PC takes a lot of time to track them. This is because computer breaks files into pieces to increase the speed of access and retrieval.

However, once updated, computer saves these files on the space available on the hard drive, which results in fragmented files. This makes your PC go slow because it then searches for all of the file's parts.

You need a Disk Defragmenter programme to needle all your files back together.

For this, go to My Computer and right click on the drive you want to check for error and click Properties.

In the Properties dialogue box, click the Tools tab, and then in the Defragmentation section, click Defragment. In the Disk Defragmenter dialog box, select the disk and then click Analyse.

After analysing your PC, the Disk Defragmenter pops up a message asking whether you need to defragment your computer or not. Once you defragement your PC, it will reorganise files by programme and size.

Install anti-virus 

Biggest culprits behind slow PC performance are viruses and spyware. Both end up reducing your PC speed. Not only this they can also destroy your data and tamper files.

Also, with the 24X7 online environment, it is important to have anti-virus and anti-spyware programmes installed for secure online experience.

These programmes need to be frequently updated to avoid any attack on your computer.

You can do a recee of the Net for popular anti-virus and anti-spyware solutions. There are also several paid options like McAfee, Norton Anti-virus and Trend Micro.

Reduce page history 

Is your PC giving you trouble while accessing the Internet? Don't worry. For Internet Explorer users, Microsoft has some rescue options for faster Web browsing.

To improve your PC speed, first reduce the size of your Web page history. For this go to Internet Explorer, and on the Tools menu click on Internet Options. Then go to the History section and type in the number of days you want to keep pages in history.

Preferably reduce the number of days as this will reduce the size of your Web page history.

Automate Microsoft updates 

For Windows users, Microsoft frequently release updates which may help boost up your PC speed. For this activate automate Microsoft Update so that your computer downloads and installs all the latest updates without giving you any trouble of finding any new releases.

Go to Start menu and click Control Panel. In the Automatic Updates dialog box, check the Automatic check box. If your PC finds any new updates, it will automatically download and install them. This will help you keep your computer up to date. 

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Microsoft, Google fight over Yahoo


WASHINGTON: Google and Microsoft will spar today at a congressional hearing called to examine whether Google's revenue-sharing deal with No 2 search rival Yahoo will harm competition. Google, with more than 60 per cent of the Web search market, and Yahoo, with 16.6 per cent, announced a deal on June 12 that would allow Yahoo to place Google advertisements on its site and collect the revenue.

The deal, which the firms have said would garner Yahoo at least $250 million in the first year, was widely seen as an effort by Yahoo to fend off Microsoft's on-again, off-again efforts to buy all or part of Yahoo.

Microsoft's most recent offer to acquire Yahoo's search business was rejected by Yahoo. Google chief legal officer David Drummond, defending his company's deal with Yahoo in written testimony for Tuesday's hearing, took a shot at Microsoft's 90 per cent share of the personal computer operating system market.

"Dominance of the desktop can let one company favor its own products and services and obstruct the interoperability of competing products or services, overriding the desires of consumers," said Drummond in testimony prepared for the Senate Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel.

Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith hit back, saying Google's deal would reduce Yahoo's incentive to compete against Google, would push Yahoo's search advertising platform into a downward spiral and establish an illegal price floor.

"When it comes to the issues before this subcommittee, Google should not be allowed to achieve an outcome through an agreement that it would not be permitted to achieve otherwise," said Smith in his written testimony.

The revenue-sharing deal has not been implemented by Google and Yahoo while they wait for an opinion from the Justice Department's Antitrust Division. Several state attorney generals have expressed concern about the arrangement.

"Microsoft believes the Google/Yahoo deal harms competition in several critical ways. Advertisers and online content providers would be harmed through price coordination that will establish higher prices and limit choice," said Smith. "Consumers would be put at risk as Google expands its ability to collect the personal information of users passing through its search gateway. On an even more fundamental level, Google's monopoly power would increase its ability to shape what people get to see and experience online."

The House Judiciary Committee's antitrust subcommittee will hold a similar hearing later on Tuesday.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

India to launch remote sensing satellite this month


BANGALORE, India (AFP) — India will later this month launch a remote sensing satellite equipped with high-resolution cameras and advanced scientific instruments, space agency officials said here.

Cartosat-2A, as the all-weather, reconnaissance satellite is called, will be used to plan urban and rural development projects. It can also be used for intelligence gathering, the officials said Friday.

"The tentative launch date is April 28," Indian Space Research Organisation chairman G. Madhavan Nair told reporters in Bangalore where the agency is based.

"The exact date and time will be finalised in a fortnight after factoring weather and other relevant data," he added.

Identical to the mapping satellite Cartosat-2, which was launched in January 2007, the 680-kilogram (1,500-pound) Cartosat-2A will be placed in a polar orbit at an altitude of 630 kilometres (391 miles).

The satellite will be launched by the Indian-developed rocket, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, from the Sriharikota space station in southern India.

India started its space programme in 1963, and has since developed and put several of its own satellites into space. It has also designed and built launch rockets to reduce its dependence on overseas space agencies.

Space agency chairman Nair said the body has finalised a project report concerning a manned mission by 2014-15.

"The report is being submitted to the government for approval and budgetary allocation," he said. "The Space Commission, headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, will meet next week or so to review the report and take a decision."

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Are we "Livin" or just "Survivin"?


Apoptosis is regulated by death domain (DD) and/or caspase recruitment domain (CARD) containing molecules and a caspase family of proteases. A novel CARD domain containing protein was recently identified and designated ARC for apoptosis repressor with CARD (1). For more details read out the article:The inhibitor of apoptosis (IAP) family protects cells from self-execution by blocking the relentless caspase death cascade. IAPs bind to and inhibit activated caspases through their BIR domains. Some IAPs such as Livin also contain a RING domain that has E3 ubiquitin ligase activity and promotes the degradation of Smac/DIABLO through ubiquitination. Since Smac/DIABLO promotes apoptosis by inhibiting IAP-caspase interactions, degradation of Smac/DIABLO allows IAPs to more effectively block caspase activity thereby promoting cell survival.In general, members of the IAP family are highly expressed in several types of cancer. However, Survivin, an IAP that lacks a RING domain, definitely stands out among the family for its clear association with cancer. Abundantly expressed during development but scarce in normal adult tissues, Survivin is upregulated during tumorigenesis and associated with chemotherapy resistance and poor patient survival.IAPs are fast emerging as targets for potential diagnostics and therapeutics. For example, patients suffering from diverse cancers develop antibodies against Livin suggesting that Livin may be a novel diagnostic or prognostic tumor marker. Additionally, preclinical studies indicate that down-regulation of Survivin can sensitize tumor cells to chemotherapy, thereby increasing apoptosis and overall treatment response.