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Monday 22 April 2013

How true...Something Has to be Done!


Well this picture says it all...but all the same,something can be done and as a matter of fact something IS being done to attempts to address this challenge by ensuring that kids grow up with that zeal and passion intact.
With the aim of establishing science labs in basic schools in a third world country where kids
find it difficult to understand the basic concepts of science largely due to the fact that
their schools lack the necessary logistics to do so, the dexter's lab project hopes that with the establishing of these lab's, the passion for science would find deeper roots in their hearts that cannot be uprooted hence raising a generation of scientist destined to change their nation and world at large. 

G+ this post to help raise awareness about this project.
Like and share on facebook to help raise awareness
Follow on twitter for updates on its progress



picture courtesy: "science is awesome" facebook page.





Saturday 20 April 2013

Boston Marathon bomber manhunt: Police nab suspect alive


BOSTON—Police have nabbed the 19-year-old suspected Boston Marathon bomber, after a day-long manhunt that completely shut down the city of Boston and several suburbs.

An ambulance arrived at the scene to take the suspect, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, to a hospital. A volley of gunfire had been heard in the Watertown area around 7:00 p.m., and police told residents to stay inside and shelter in place as SWAT teams rushed in.

Tsarnaev was found in a boat in the yard of a home on Franklin Street, close to where he and his older brother engaged in a shootout with police nearly 24 hours earlier. Police could be heard calling to him to come out with his hands up.

A neighbor told ABC News that the homeowner had discovered Tsarnaev when he saw blood on the outside of his boat and then lifted the cover to find a person inside.

Watertown residents--finally able to leave their homes around 8:45 p.m.--broke into cheers and applauded police officers after word spread that the suspect was in custody.

Just a few hours earlier, police announced that the 19-year-old suspected bomber had so far eluded capture after fleeing from police on foot early Friday morning.

Thousands of law enforcement officers conducted a nearly 24-hour door-to-door manhunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is believed to have helped his brother plant two bombs near the finish line at Monday's Boston Marathon that wounded more than 170 people and left three dead.

Officials announced at 6:00 p.m. news conference that they had been unable to apprehend the suspect, despite combing through a 20-block area of the Boston suburb of Watertown and shutting down the city's entire public transportation system in an effort to prevent him from fleeing. They said they did not know if he had a car, or if he was still on foot.

Gov. Deval Patrick lifted his previous "shelter in place," or lockdown, order for the city of Boston and many surrounding areas of the city at 6:00 p.m.. But Patrick urged Bostonians to continue to be "vigilant" as the "very dangerous" armed suspect has not been apprehended.

An overnight police chase and shootout left Dzhokhar's 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev dead and Dzhokhar on the lam.

Federal investigators had released photos and videos of the two men hours earlier, showing them in the vicinity of the marathon finish line before the twin explosions. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was seen placing a backpack on the ground minutes before the blast, investigators said.

One police officer was killed and another seriously wounded during the violent spree. The city of Boston and its surrounding areas ground to a standstill for hours as police went door to door searching for the suspect in the suburb of Watertown.

Police said they had uncovered several improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Watertown and in the brothers' home in Cambridge.

Tsarnaev is a student at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. The Tsarnaev family is originally from Chechnya, a volatile and once war-torn southern Russian republic. The family fled to Kyrgyzstan and eventually immigrated to the United States as refugees about 10 years ago.



Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the dead suspect, studied at a local community college and was a Golden Gloves boxer. He also reportedly had a wife and young child. The FBI questioned him two years ago for terrorist ties at the request of a foreign government, but cleared him, according to the AP.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was remembered by former classmates as bright and personable, posted links to pro-Chechnyan independence sites on his social media page, and listed his world view as "Islam." It's unknown if either the separatist politics of Chechnya or their religion had anything to do with the suspects' motivations.

Tsarnaev appeared to be posting to his Twitter account even after the marathon attacks, writing in his last post on Wednesday, "I'm a stress free kind of guy." His posts covered everything from cute photos of his cat to rap lyrics.

In an interview with The New York Times, the suspects' father said Tamerlan had been unable to become a U.S. citizen because he was arrested for hitting his girlfriend, and that he traveled to Russia last year to live for six months and renew his passport. Dzhokhar is a naturalized U.S. citizen.

The suspects' uncle, when told that one of his nephews was killed by the local CBS News station, replied that he deserved it.

“He deserved his. He absolutely deserved his,” Ruslan Tsarni said. “They do not deserve to live on this earth.”

Later, in an emotional press conference outside his home in Maryland, Tsarni said his nephews had brought shame upon his family, and called them "losers." He speculated that they were not "able to settle themselves" and were "angry at everyone who was able to." He said he did not believe they were motivated by radical politics in Chechnya or their Muslim religion.

"Dzhokhar, If you're alive, turn yourself in and ask for forgiveness from the victims [and] the injured," he said. "He put a shame on our family. He put a shame on the entire Chechnyan ethnicity. Turn yourself in."

He added that he hadn't been in touch with the family for several years but would not say why.

"I'm ready to kneel in front of them and ask their forgiveness," Tsarni said of the victims of his nephews' crime. "I respect this country; I love this country ... this country that gives everybody chance to be treated like human being." Other family members, including an aunt and the brothers' father, said they did not believe the brothers could have planted bombs.

The University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth announced shortly after 10:30 a.m. on Friday that they were evacuating the entire campus after learning Tsarnaev is a registered student there.

Earlier, at sunrise Friday, Gov. Patrick ordered a shutdown of all public transit and for residents in the city of Boston and on its edges to stay indoors. Amtrak also shut down all trains between Boston and New York.

"We cannot continue to lock down an entire city or an entire state," Massachusetts State Police Col. Timothy Alben told reporters. He added that he believes the suspect is still in the state, but would not elaborate.

Boston and the surrounding areas of Watertown, Waltham, Belmont, Cambridge, Newton, Allston and Brighton were placed on lockdown for most of Friday. A no-fly zone was declared over Watertown. The city of Boston was eerily quiet for much of the day, the city's busy intersections totally abandoned.

The mayhem began at approximately 10:20 p.m. Thursday in Cambridge when police said the bombing suspects shot and killed an MIT campus officer, Sean Collier, 26. The terror suspects then carjacked a Mercedes-Benz SUV with the driver inside and fled, eventually letting the driver go unharmed.

The suspects were then spotted in Watertown, where federal agents swarmed in. At approximately 3:30 a.m., Massachusetts State

Police issued a plea on Twitter for residents of Watertown to lock their doors and not open them for anyone, as dozens of police officers, many of them off duty, searched backyards and exteriors of houses there, and a police perimeter of several blocks was established.

Worried residents were also told to turn off their cell phones out of fear that they could trigger improvised explosive devices.

The suspects exchanged dozens of rounds of gunfire with patrol officers, and lobbed IEDs out of their vehicle, injuring several officers.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was shot by police and brought to Beth Israel Medical Center. He arrived at the hospital under cardiac arrest with multiple gunshot wounds and blast-like injuries to his chest. The second suspect fled on foot.

A transit police officer, Richard H. Donohue, was seriously wounded during the exchange of gunfire, officials said.

K9 units and SWAT teams searched homes on Spruce Street as officers with a police robot searched an SUV that the suspects had abandoned. Multiple devices were left in the road and two handguns were recovered, according to police scanners.

"We believe this to be a terrorist," said Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis, of Tsarnaev. "We believe this to be a man who has come here to kill people. We need to get him into custody."

[Related: FBI releases photos of suspects in Boston Marathon bombings]

Police in Watertown, Newton, Brighton and Cambridge were put on high alert. "Units use caution," an officer said. "He might have an explosive object on his person."



Police were able to track down images of the suspects after a victim of the attacks, Jeff Bauman, came to them with a description, Bloomberg reported Thursday. Bauman's legs were torn apart by the bomb.


Courtesy: yahoo news


Saturday 13 April 2013

Psy’s New Single Is Out! Hear ‘Gentleman’ Now

Of course, the question on everyone's mind is, does the new tune gallop like "Gangnam"? General
consensus around the Web is that Psy hasn't strayed far from what worked (very well) for him. "Gentleman" has a driving beat, a repeated catchphrase ("mother father gentleman"), and Korean words that will doubtlessly have nonspeakers scratching their heads.


Is this repetition of sorts a good thing? Critical reviews are mixed, with the expected cheerful-to-grumpy spectrum . The BBC calls the new tune "formulaic"; while Fuse counters that it's "oh-so-danceable" and MTV raves about its "floor-shattering" drive. The Associated Press optimistically observes that at least the song is "stealing attention from inter-Korean tensions."

Fan reviews were predictably mixed as well, ranging on Twitter from "It's great," "Catchy" and even "Brilliant" to "Ugggh," "Let-down," and "Not really unique."

Those who got their groove on learning Psy's horse dance last year will be happy to know that there's yet another signature dance for "Gentleman," although we'll have to wait one more day for the official video to come out to see that.

"The dance is one known to all Koreans but new to 
foreigners," Psy explained earlier this month. He'll reportedly unveil the moves during his sold-out concert in Seoul on Saturday.






Of course, the question on everyone's mind is, does the new tune gallop like "Gangnam"? General consensus around the Web is that Psy hasn't strayed far from what worked (very well) for him. "Gentleman" has a driving beat, a repeated catchphrase ("mother father gentleman"), and Korean words that will doubtlessly have nonspeakers scratching their heads.

Is this repetition of sorts a good thing? Critical reviews are mixed, with the expected cheerful-to-grumpy spectrum . The BBC calls the new tune "formulaic"; while Fuse counters that it's "oh-so-danceable" and MTV raves about its "floor-shattering" drive. The Associated Press optimistically observes that at least the song is "stealing attention from inter-Korean tensions."

Fan reviews were predictably mixed as well, ranging on Twitter from "It's great," "Catchy" and even "Brilliant" to "Ugggh," "Let-down," and "Not really unique."

Those who got their groove on learning Psy's horse dance last year will be happy to know that there's yet another signature dance for "Gentleman," although we'll have to wait one more day for the official video to come out to see that.

"The dance is one known to all Koreans but new to foreigners," Psy explained earlier this month. He'll reportedly unveil the moves during his sold-out concert in Seoul on Saturday.

Story by:
Wendy Geller, Yahoo News

Wednesday 10 April 2013

Margaret Thatcher getting a funeral fit for a queen

It’s an announcement that has upset some Brits who feel the former prime minister is undeserving of such an honor.



Luxembourg to ease the secrecy surrounding its banks



Luxembourg's old town skyline
Luxembourg has fought hard to maintain the secrecy of its banking system












Luxembourg has said it will ease the secrecy surrounding its banks.

It said it would implement rules on the automatic exchange of bank account information with its European Union partners from 2015. Calls for this have been increasing, as governments seek to raise more taxes to support their finances.

Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker said Luxembourg would introduce the reforms in two years. "We can introduce [the rules] without any danger from January 2015," he said.

Luxembourg is a country of only 500,000 people, but its banks and other financial institutions have assets worth more than 20 times the country's economic output. Luxembourg's foreign minister, Luc Frieden, said at the weekend that he wanted to "strengthen co-operation with foreign tax authorities".

Last week, Germany signed a tax evasion treaty with Switzerland - another European banking centre known for its secrecy. The treaty is designed to give the German tax authorities the ability to claw back taxes from their citizens who may be hiding money in Swiss banks.

Story by:
BBC | News Business

The Dexter's Lab Project on Indiegogo




BACKGROUND
I sure do remember how watching Dexter’s laboratory on cartoon network got me inspired and helped me to a very large extent develop a keen interest in science back in my primary and Junior High school days. Even though we lacked the necessary apparatus to bring certain basic concepts in science to our level of understanding at the time, I still remember how my curiosity and passion for science was ignited making me want to think like a scientist and be like one. Today, this ignited passion has been the reason why I chose to pursue science courses both at the second cycle and tertiary level.


An Open Letter to the President of Ghana, His Excellency President John Daramani Mahama

"Following his recent election into office, a concerned Ghanaian has something to say and did it this way... in an open letter."
Open letter to President John Dramani Mahama


Dear President Mahama,

I am writing to you as a proud National Democratic Congress (NDC) activist with high hope in my heart for our great party. I have listened to you keenly since you became the President of Ghana and your commitment to job creation and preserving the peace within the NDC family and the nation as a whole is quite critical

Monday 25 March 2013

Young driver in his 20s in 'critical condition' after crashing his Audi TT into side of house


Three people were asleep in the house at the time but were unharmed. Driver transferred to Addenbrooke's Hospital with serious head injuries.


A man is fighting for his life after crashing his Audi TT into a house in the early hours of this morning.

The male driver, believed to be in his twenties, embedded the red sports car into the side of the house in Lowestoft, Suffolk, at 1.45am after coming off the road and crashing through a fence. He was taken to the James Paget Hospital with serious head injuries but was transferred to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, where he was in a 'critical condition', said Suffolk Police today.

The driver of the red Audi TT was taken to hospital with life-threatening head injuries after the crash in the early hours of the morning
The driver of the red Audi TT was taken to hospital with life-threatening head injuries after the crash in the early hours of the morning

Sunday 17 March 2013

Ghana Fashion & Design Week Announces Plans for 2013 Event

gdfw

Ghana Fashion & Design Week® (GFDW) is pleased to announce the return of the event in the city of Accra, this October 2013, with the exact date and venue soon to be made public. With Accra ranked 4th must visit city  this 2013 by New York Times publication out of a list of 46 cities around the world, the second edition of Ghana Fashion & Design Week  event promises to elevate the fashion scene in Accra to the next level of experience and development.



Saturday 16 March 2013

The Phone We've All Been Waiting For!


Samsung Galaxy S 4 Beats The Best With 5-inch, 1080p Display, 1.9GHz Processor, Gesture Controls And A Q2 2013 Release. As if it could be any other way, the just-announced Samsung Galaxy S 4 is Samsung’s, and perhaps even Android’s, best phone yet. In fact, it very well may be the best smartphone on the market, period.

We’ve been through months of speculation, hype, rumors, and leaks, but the truth is out, and the Galaxy S 4 still has much more up its sleeve than the leaks suggested. More than any other Galaxy before it, the Galaxy S 4 is proof that the company can build a central brand the way Apple has with the iPhone. Both the Galaxy Note and Galaxy S series have been selling in the millions, and the Galaxy S 4 looks like it will hold up that trend.

Even with loads of new software, like an enhanced camera application, hover-style gesture features, and a slew of baked-in apps and services from Samsung, the Galaxy S 4 still brings the heat in the hardware/spec department. Here are the specifics:



The Galaxy S 4 clearly has a small ring of competition in the spec department. The only phones that are on this level are the Xperia Z (1080p 5-inch display, 13mp camera, quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU) and the HTC One (4.7-inch 1080p display, 1.7GHz Snapdragon 600 quad-core CPU, and an “Ultrapixel” camera) and LG’s Optimus G Pro (1080p 5.5-inch display, quad-core Snapdragon 600, 13-megapixel camera).

Of course, they each have their own pros and cons, but the Galaxy S 4 seems to be the most compact, lightest, and fastest among them. Samsung hasn’t been clear about the exact brand of the processor for the U.S. version, but it did say that it was a quad-core Snapdragon CPU clocked at 1.9GHz, which we believe may be the Snapdragon 600.

However, “processors vary by region,” says Samsung, and the Asian and European version will sport the long-awaited Samsung Exynos 5 Octa eight-core processor.
hardware-subhead

    

The Galaxy S 4 design manages to both fit in with the Galaxy S family and stand on its own as a unique breed. For one, Samsung packed a bigger display (5-inches diagonal) into a package that’s actually smaller than before. The GS4 is the same width, slightly shorter, and .7mm thinner than its predecessor.

As such, the bezels on the Galaxy S 4 are slightly thinner on all four sides, which means it’s all screen, all the time. And what a screen it is. The Galaxy S 4 display is 5 inches of unadulterated Super AMOLED 1080p brilliance. Surrounding it, the Galaxy S 4 takes a hybrid shape, something between the straight lines of the Galaxy Note and Galaxy S II with the curved tops, bottoms, and corners of the Galaxy S III. The elongated home button is unmistakably GSIII-style.

The Galaxy S 4 also sticks with familiar materials, and unfortunately that still means a whole lot of plastic. Both the front panel and back panel (which is removable) are made of brushed plastic, but with a textured pattern of tiny circles laid over it. It gives the phone an industrial, textured look, but in reality all you feel is smooth plastic.

Around the edge, you’ll notice a new embellishment to the S series: a metallic bar that runs along the edge of the device. Though it looks a lot like metal, it’s actually polycarbonate and meant to protect the sensitive corners of the device.

It would be nice to see some more premium materials in this generation of the Galaxy S, but the plastic and polycarbonate construction let Samsung fit many components into a very compact, light package, according to Director of Product Planning Drew Blackard.

camera-subhead

         

The Galaxy S 4 uses a new 13-megapixel rear-facing camera, bumped up from the 8-megapixel shooter on the Galaxy S III. It’s still centrally placed on the upper back half of the device, complete with LED flash, autofocus, and 1080p video recording. On the front, the Galaxy S 4 sports a 2-megapixel camera.

The higher megapixel sensor is nice, and will surely make a slight difference, but where the Galaxy S 4 camera really evolves from past generations is in the software.

For one thing, the camera app now uses the same UI as the Galaxy Camera, with a brushed silver finish to the buttons and much simpler navigation. Clicking the mode button along the bottom will bring up a simple scroll wheel full of various modes. When one is highlighted, the menu gives the name as well as a description. More sophisticated users can also see these mode options in a grid view for quick changes.

Along with some of the same modes we’ve seen on both the Galaxy Camera and newer Galaxy smartphones like Beauty Shot, Samsung has added way more modes into the mix. One is called Eraser, and it lets you remove unwanted people from a shot. Samsung says it comes in handy for shots that have been photo-bombed, or tourist shots at busy places. The camera senses any motion that goes through the frame and lets you choose to remove it, as if that person had never walked through your shot of the Eiffel Tower.

The Galaxy S 4 also has a dual-shot mode, which is just a button press away from the main camera interface. This lets you use both the front-facing camera and the rear-facing camera at the same time, for both recording and still captures. There are various filters, such as Oval Blur, Postage Stamp, Cubism, and Split, which give you different options for the theme of your dual-shot creation. You can resize the pop-up picture, and move it around the screen using simple drag and drop tools. It’s pretty amazing.

Some other modes include Drama Shot, which lets you take a succession of photos of some action (like someone skiing down a mountain) and turn them into a composite of the entire sequence, and Sound and Shot, which lets you record up to 9 seconds of audio to pair along with a picture.

Samsung even jumped on the GIF train with the likes of Cinemagraph and Vine to create a gif-making mode, called Cinema Shot. It lets you take a short recording, and then determine which parts of the shot stay still and which parts remain animated. In fact, it’s almost exactly like Cinemagraph.

But Samsung took one step past capture and even built an app called Story Album which lets you create photo albums of special events or trips through templates, and use TripAdvisor to add extra location data to your story. You can even print your album through a partnership with Blurb’s print distribution network.

software-subhead

There’s a lot going on here, so try to keep up. We had recently heard that the GS4′s “wow” factor would be all in the software, and that’s exactly right. Most of TouchWiz is the same, though it seems to get lighter and lighter as the phones get faster. The one very noticeable edition was a set of extra toggle buttons available in the pull-down notifications menu.

Other than those particulars, let’s start with the gesture-based head-tracking stuff.




The most useful new feature of the Galaxy S 4 is Air View. It lets you hover over something on the screen to get an extended pop-up view of what’s inside. For example, if you hover over an email in your inbox, Air View will bring up the first few sentences of that email’s contents. If you hover over an album within the photo gallery, you’ll see nine thumbnails of the contents of that gallery. In fact, if you hover over an image while inside the folder, that particular thumbnail will expand to give you a better view of the particular picture. It’s all very reminiscent of what can be done with recent entries in the Galaxy Note line, except without requiring users to keep track of an S-Pen.

Air View is embedded in the email client, photo gallery, calendar, and a Galaxy S 4-edition of Flipboard, which lets you view and select headlines by hovering over a single tile.

Samsung also added an Air Gesture feature, which lets you control the phone without having to hold it — I could see this being used while driving. You can swipe left and right to switch between web pages, songs, photos in the gallery, etc. and swipe up and down to scroll. You can even accept calls by waving at the phone.

Rumors suggested that Samsung had developed some sort of magic-scroll eye-tracking technology, when in reality the Galaxy S 4 can actually only track your head, very much like the Galaxy S III’s Smart stay feature. The front-facing camera can detect that your head is facing the phone directly, which stops the display from dimming.

In the Galaxy S 4, that technology evolves to automatically pause videos when you turn away from the phone with Smart Pause. As far as scrolling is concerned, if you’re on a page that requires reading or scrolling, the Galaxy S 4 will let you tip the phone forward or backward to scroll (as long as the ff-camera senses that you’re paying attention).

Samsung said that using tilt-gestures as well as “head-tracking” technology to streamline browsing a page was “the most intuitive and natural to the end-consumer.”

As far as NFC is concerned, the GS4 includes S Beam and TecTile integration, but Samsung also lets you pair with up to eight other NFC-devices to run a feature called GroupPlay, which lets you play the same song across eight different devices… to create a party on the go.

Samsung also included an IR blaster on the Galaxy S 4 so that you can use it as a remote for just about any modern television. Called WatchON, it also includes rich information proved by an electronic programming guide.

newapps-subhead


Along with an updated camera and Story Album, the Galaxy S 4 brings a handful of brand new applications to the Galaxy S family. The first, and possibly most important, is S Translator. S Translator is available in nine languages at launch, including Chinese, English U.S., English British, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Portuguese.
It is a standalone app that automatically translates information that is typed or copy/pasted into it. S Translator is also embedded in ChatOn, Messaging, and email.
The Galaxy S 4 also has an optical reader which turns analog information into digital, by reading business cards and turning them into address book contacts. S Translator is also embedded into the optical reader, which scans QR codes as well.
ChatOn, Samsung’s own-branded VoIP application, has been updated to include three-way video calls, screen share, and annotations. You can even use the new dual-camera mode to enjoy ChatOn calls.

Samsung has been making a big push in the health department with the new Galaxy S 4, and has thus preloaded the S Health app on the device. The app originally made its debut last July and seemed to focus mainly on linking up with existing health gadgets like fancy scales and blood glucose monitors. This time around, using the Galaxy S 4′s built-in pedometer, S Health tracks your activity throughout the day and knows when you’re running, walking or climbing stairs. The S Health app also lets you input your consumption activities to track caloric intake and get suggestions.

accessories-subhead

Speaking of S Health, Samsung is selling a few health-related accessories to tackle the ever-growing quantified self products like the Jawbone Up, Nike Fuelband, and FitBit. That said, Samsung has introduced the wrist-worn S Band that tracks activity, temperature and humidity.

Samsung is even going so far as to sell a heart-rate monitor which you can strap on for your daily workouts, and a body scale. All of the accessories come with Bluetooth so they can pair back to your device and be recorded by the S Health app.

And since Samsung loves making special cases for its big-name phones, the Galaxy S 4 had to go big even with its case. It’s called the S View cover, and it has a little screen on the front that reads information from the phone. That way, even though the phone is locked, you can still see the time, SMS notifications, battery status, and choose to accept or ignore incoming calls.

Samsung didn’t specify which technology they used for the cover’s display, or whether or not it needs a charge or takes battery from the S 4, but it wouldn’t surprise me to hear they took a page out of the YotaPhone playbook and are using low-power e-ink here.


pricing-subhead
Samsung didn’t clarify exact pricing, but said it would go for the same price as a “Samsung premium smartphone”. The Galaxy S III launched in the US at $199 with a 2 year contact.
In terms of availability, they didn’t give a specific release date but did say it would be on store shelves in 2013Q2, at AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, Cricket and U.S. Cellular.

Samsung is riding high on the success of the Galaxy S III and from what I’ve seen, the Galaxy S 4 is a worthy successor with innovative features packed into a familiar housing. It’s a bit of a shame that Samsung announced the phone without giving a price or release date, but at this point, with Samsung the global sales and innovation leader in smartphones, it can do pretty much whatever it wants.



courtesy: techcrunch.com,jordan crook