Wonder World

I am seeing God's beauty here..This is my wonder world friends..All your tension will vanish seeing this beauty...

Scientists find new killer virus in Africa

Atlanta (AP): Scientists have identified a lethal new virus in Africa that causes bleeding like the dreaded Ebola virus.

The so-called "Lujo" virus infected five people in Zambia and South Africa last fall. Four of them died, but a fifth survived, perhaps helped by a medicine recommended by the scientists.

It's not clear how the first person became infected, but the bug comes from a family of viruses found in rodents, said Dr. Ian Lipkin, a Columbia University epidemiologist involved in the discovery.

"This one is really, really aggressive" he said of the virus.

A paper on the virus by Lipkin and his collaborators was published online yesterday on in PLoS Pathogens.

The outbreak started in September, when a female travel agent who lives on the outskirts of Lusaka, Zambia, became ill with a fever-like illness that quickly grew much worse.

She was airlifted to Johannesburg, South Africa, where she died.

A paramedic in Lusaka who treated her also became sick, was transported to Johannesburg and died. The three others infected were health care workers in Johannesburg.

Eat oily fish to keep brain healthy

Eating oily fish, rich in vitamin D, may be vital in keeping your brain healthy as you age, according to a new study.

University of Manchester scientists and other researchers have found that higher levels of vitamin D, synthesised in the skin following sun exposure, is also found in oily fish.

The study assessed the cognitive performance of more than 3,000 men aged 40 to 79 years at eight test centres in Europe.

It was found that men with higher levels of vitamin D performed consistently better in a simple and sensitive neuro-psychological test that assesses an individual's attention and speed of information processing.

"Previous studies exploring the relationship between vitamin D and cognitive performance in adults have produced inconsistent findings. But we observed a significant, independent association between a slower information processing speed and lower levels of vitamin D," said study author David Lee of Manchester's School of Translational Medicine.

"The main strengths of our study are that it is based on a large population sample and took into account potential interfering factors, such as depression, season and levels of physical activity," Lee said.

"Interestingly, the association between increased vitamin D and faster information processing was more significant in men aged over 60 years, although the biological reasons for this remain unclear," he added.

Obama's 100 days in Office !

US President Barack Obama completes 100 eventful days in the oval office and while many say they are happy with his performance, some critics say his ways are arrogant and dangerous.

Between the slip-ups of January 20 and now, Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States of America has come a long way or so say the experts.

Allan Lichtman, Presidential Historian said, "It's been one of the most active and productive first hundred days in the history of the country. It is an extraordinary record of getting things done. You can judge his policies according to your values, but I don't think you can really make the argument any longer that he's not prepared for the job."

Well, with an economic crisis that is considered even bigger than the great depression of the 30's and political and human conflicts, Obama's tasks on hand were nothing short of a challenge. In the 100 days in office the President has announced a $787 billion stimulus package to rescue banks and automakers and $275 billion plan to halt home foreclosures. Also, he ordered closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison and revised US interrogation policies for terror suspects. Not only this, he also announced plans to end the combat mission in Iraq by 2010.

"Now is the time to act boldly and wisely, to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity," he said.

However, it's this same confidence that is considered arrogant and dangerous by some critics.

Gene Healy, Vice-President of CATO Institute, said, "I think it's dangerous when Barack Obama claims and embraces the idea that the president gets to act like a Roman dictator for economic affairs, restructuring the commanding heights of the economy."

Meanwhile, Obama is still a favourite amongst his fans and the US citizens, but whether he will continue to stay high on the popularity charts will depend on his actions and every step that this first-term Senator from Illinois takes will be seen with a critical eye.

Next Generation INTERNET

By now, anyone who reads the morning paper has probably heard that the Internet will be an even bigger deal in the future than it is today. School children will access all the great works of literature ever written with the click of a mouse, surgery will be performed via cyberspace, all transactions with the government will be conducted via your personal computer, making bureaucratic line ups a thing of the past.
Sound too good to be true? Much of what has been written about two buzzword initiatives, Internet2 (I2) and the Next Generation Internet (NGI), would lead one to believe that these scenarios are just around the corner.
And some may be. Already in the works are projects to split the spectrum of light traveling the Internet's optical networks, allowing high priority traffic to pass at the highest and least interrupted frequency, while passing low priority traffic (i.e. your e-mail) along at a lower frequency. Teleinstrumentation the remote operation of such rare resources as satellites and electron microscopes has been demonstrated. Digital libraries containing environmental data have been used to simulate natural and man made disasters for emergency response teams. Classrooms and entire universities have gone online, making remote education an option for students.
But misconceptions about I2 and NGI abound, first and foremost that they are interchangeable terms for the same project, closely followed by the perception that the government is hard at work right now digging trenches and laying cable for what is to be a brand new Internet.
I2 and NGI are separate and distinctly different initiatives. It's easiest to think of them as two different answers to the same plaguing problem. The problem is congestion on the commercially available Internet.

The need for a new Internet

Prior to 1995, the National Science Foundation's (NSF) NSFnet served the research and academic community and allowed for cross country communications on relatively unclogged T3 (45 megabit per second) lines that were unavailable for commercial use. However, NSFnet went public in 1995, setting the stage for today's Internet. As the Internet has become irrevocably a part of life, the increase in e-mail traffic and the proliferation of graphically dense pages have eaten up valuable bandwidth.
With all of this data congealing in cyberspace, for the Internet currently knows no differentiation between a Web site belonging to Arthur Andersen or Pamela Anderson there has arisen a critical need for a new Internet. The answers to the questions for what purpose and for who's use vary depending upon the proposed solution.

Internet2: The bottom-up initiative

Internet2 is the university community's response to the need for a return to dedicated bandwidth for academic and research use exclusively. Currently, about 120 universities and 25 corporate sponsors are members of Internet2, which in October 1997 incorporated itself forming the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID).
UCAID now serves as the support and administrative organisation for the project known as Internet2. Members pay an annual fee of between $10,000 and $25,000 and must demonstrate that they are making a definitive, substantial, and continuing commitment to the development, evolution, and use of networking facilities and applications in the conduct of research and education before they are approved for membership.
Internet2 represents the interests of the academic community through its concentration on applications that require more bandwidth and end to end quality of service than is available relying upon the commercial Internet. I2 is focused upon the needs of academia first, but is expected to develop technologies and applications that will eventually make their way into the rest of society.

The vBNS: A prototype for both Internets

The vBNS (very-high-performance Backbone Network Service), a project of the National Science Foundation and MCI Telecommunications, is a nationwide network that supports high performance, high bandwidth research applications. Like the old NSFnet, vBNS is a closed network, available only to the academic and research community. Currently it connects 46 academic institutions across the country, though a total of 92 have been approved for connectivity. A component of the vBNS project is research into high speed networking and communications and transfer of this data to the broader networking community. In many ways, the vBNS is the prototype for both I2 and NGI. The kinds of applications that both I2 and NGI would like to foster are currently deployed on this network.
Since its formation in 1996, I2 has concentrated on defining the environment where I2-type applications will run, holding member meetings and demonstrations where developers express programming needs and innovations that will be incorporated into a set of network tools that do not currently exist. One such meeting is scheduled to be held later this month at the Highway 1 technology forum in Washington, D.C.
I2 member meetings also provide a forum for researchers to investigate trends that will contribute to the applications environment, including object oriented programming, software componentisation, object request brokering, dynamic run time binding, multitiered applications delivery with separation of data, and presentation functions.
Internet2 also continues to define its relationship with the other Internet initiative, Next Generation Internet, at the same time as NGI explores how best to apply the experience and expertise of the I2 community to its task. While acknowledging their differences, in statements each initiative positions its relationship to the other, determining where the line between the two could or should be drawn and what benefit each brings to the other's agenda.

The NGI roadmap

The NGI initiative is divided into three progressive stages, called goals in NGI parlance. Goal 1 is underway now, Goal 3 is targeted for the end of next year.
Goal 1 calls for NGI to research, develop, and experiment with advanced network technologies that will provide dependability, diversity in classes of service, security, and realtime capability for such applications as wide area distributed computing, teleoperation, and remote control of experimental facilities. In this first phase, the project, led by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) - will set the stage for the technologies, applications, and test beds envisioned for Goals 2 and 3.
Goal 2 led by the NSF constructs the actual NGI networks and also depends heavily upon the vBNS. NGI expects that Goal 1 development will, by this point, have overcome the speed bumps of incompatible performance capabilities and service models in switches, routers, local area networks, and workstations. In Goal 2, 100 sites (universities, federal research institutions, and other research partners) will be connected at speeds in excess of 100 times that of today's Internet.
As with I2, the vBNS would serve as a backbone for the network connecting NGI participants. To bring in other research partners and provide additional connectivity, the vBNS would interconnect to other federal research networks, including DREN (Defense), NREN (NASA), ESnet (DoE), and eventually SuperNet (DARPA's terabyte research network). The vBNS would also serve as a base for interconnecting to foreign high-performance networks, including the Canadian CA*net II, and others routed through the Science, Technology, and Research Transit Access Point (STAR-TAP) in Chicago.
Goal 2 of the NGI project also has the most planned collaboration with Internet2. NGI officials foresee the NSF supporting the GigaPoPs that would interconnect the I2 institutions and coordinating I2 and NGI interconnectivity to support interoperability and shared experimentation with NGI technologies and applications.
The Internet speed comes in the second, high-risk, high-security, test bed planned for the second phase of Goal 2. In this phase, 10 sites will be connected on a network employing ultra high speed switching and transmission technologies and end to end network connectivity at more than 1 gigabit per second, approximately 1000 times faster than today's Internet. This 1 gigabit per second network is intended to provide the research base for an eventual Terabyte per second network that would employ NGI conceived and developed technologies for harnessing such speed. A 1 Terabyte per second network additionally takes advantage of optical technology pioneered by DARPA.

The impossible becomes commonplace

The current Internet exploded once it was opened up for commercial use and privatisation. Both I2 and NGI include industry as part of their advisory and actual or envisioned working teams, a nod to the future when the technologies or applications developed within either initiative, be they Terabyte per second networks, quality of service tools, digital libraries, or remote collaboration environments, are ready for and applicable to the market place.
On today's Internet it sometimes takes many seconds to get one picture, while on tomorrow's Internet, you're going to get many pictures in one second. This means high definition video, such as that being used now for scientific visualisation. It's only a matter of time until industry seizes upon and spins this technology off into other worlds of interest to folks outside the sciences, like the entertainment industry.
Both initiatives have obstacles before them, I2 depends upon academic resources and investment, and NGI relies on Congressional budgets and endorsement.
Still, there is cautious hope within their respective communities that I2 and NGI can create not a new Internet, but a new Internet environment.

NADAR community

Nadar (Tamil: நாடார்) "Nadar" (also referred as Kshatriya Nadar, Nadan, Nataar, Gramani and Shanar) is one of the prominent castes of Tamil Nadu, South India. The term, Nadar, in Tamil literally means "one who rules the land". The Nadars are also quite commonly called as Annachi (roughly meaning elder brother) in Tamil Nadu. Nowadays, Nadars occupy various positions, including education, politics and mostly retail business.
History
The Nadars are the heirs of the fallen ancient pandyas. Considered to be a proud, ancient warrior caste and the initial rulers of the ancient Pandiya Nadu (Pandyan Kingdom), the Nadars are well known for their bravery throughout the southern part of Tamil Nadu. The ancient capital city of Pandiya Nadu, Korkai, is predominantly occupied by the Nadars. After successive invasions from the north by the Kalabhras and other Vadugas(Nayaks) on the Pandiyan kingdom, the Nadars were forced out of power and almost became extinct in the 18th century. The community which was known as 'Shanans' till the 19th century came to be known as Nadars. The title Nadar is believed to be derived from the Nadans, the aristocrats and the highest of the old Shanan community. The aristocrats among the Nadars in those days were known as Nadans and the poor among the caste, who did toddy tapping for a living, were known as Shanans. The poor among the Nadars(Shanans) during early times possessed no agricultural lands due to the Nayak invasion. Nadars are believed to be closely related to the Villavars, an ancient Dravidian warrior community which founded many Dravidian kingdoms as Cheran and Pandyan in the prehistory.
Rise of the Nadars after the Nayak invasion
After the Nayak invasion, the Nadars were almost wiped out and most of the Nadars lost their wealth due to the invasion. It is believed that the then Nayak rulers of Tamil Nadu imposed Deshaprashtam (ostracism) on the ancient Nadars (Pandyas), to ensure that their rise wouldn't ever happen. But due to their perserverence, they fought a fine battle with poverty and casteism and regained their social and economic power within a span of two centuries.
The rise of the Nadars began in the early 19th century. Mercantilism played crucial roles in facilitating their upward mobility. The British rule then in the southern districts intoduced new frontiers of trade and commerce.The Nadars took this opportunity and made it their greatest advantage. They began to excel rapidly in trade and commerce. The Nadar traders were frequently bothered by the bandits sent by their rival castes. They established sophisticated pettais (fortified compounds) to ensure safety for their goods. Some times they even used their skills in fighting to chase away these bandits. To enhance their cohesiveness and consistent progress in business, the Nadars established sanghams (oraganisation) such as the Nadar Mahajana Sangham and Dakshinamara Nadar Sangham in the early 20th century. After upgrading their economic status, the Nadars continued with their advancement and erected a network of educational institutions. Most of these institutions were contrived to educate the poor and offer free education. The community realised the powerful future education can offer and utilised this foresight. They were even able to successively establish a bank (Tamilnadu Mercantile Bank) in that period.
Eventually the rise of the Nadars was an unstoppable movement. As described by the renowned historian Hugald Grafe, the Nadars rose from nothing and occupied places formerly reserved for Brahmins.
Christian Nadars
In 1680, the first congregation of Nadars was started at Vaddakankulam with the conversion of a Nadar woman and church was built in 1685. A permanent mission was established in 1701. 40% of the Nadars in TamilNadu are Christians. Some Nadars accepted Christianity out of will and some accepted it due to their aversion to Brahminism.
Kalaripayattu/Varma Kalai
Till the 19th century the martial art, Kalaripayattu, was meant to be practised only by the warrior castes of South India. Marma Ati was a great warfare practised by the Royal Thiruppad Nadans to defeat/kill the enemy without any external injuries. The art was practiced exclusively by Nadars, Kallars and Maravars of Tamil Nadu and by the Nairs and Ezhavas of Kerala.
In the field of economics
The Nadars of Tamil Nadu are predominant in the southern most part of Tamil-Nadu. Ever since the 19th century, they have developed a keen interest in trade and commerce. The Nadars are hard working people. In the early stages, most of the Nadars mainly focussed in trading farm products. They sold all their products at best prices. By storing the agricultural products in a warehouse, they distributed them for both wholesale and retail all over Tamil Nadu. The major products they dispensed were rice,pulses,edible oils,sugar and other important,primary farm products. Gradually, they formed a strong link between the farmers and consumers.
As technology and economy advanced, the Nadars changed their business pattern accordingly. In the next stage, they concentrated in trading products ,relevant to building industries, such as cement,iron hard ware, roofing materials etc. They also gradually started their advancement in education. Their progress in business is just one of their achievements. Nowadays, the Nadars are almost prominent in every known field; especially politics and business.
Genetic study
Recent genetic studies on the antigenic variations among south Indian populations suggest Nadars share several genotypic characters with East Asian populations, consistent with the demographic history of South India, and also revealed that there are several genetic markers unique to the group. The study suggested a distinct evolutionary lineage with lesser admixture in the gene pool among groups of Tamil Nadu. The gene pool of nadars show more similarity to the East Asian populations (Tissue Antigens. 2003 Dec; 62(6): 542-7) (Human Biology 1996, 68(4), 523-37).
Further reading
M. Immanuel (2002) The Dravidian Lineages: The Nadars Through the Ages. A Socio-Historical Study. From Indus Valley Civilization to present time. Published by: Historical Research & Publications Trust, 137/H-4 Bethel Nagar, Nagercoil-629004, Tamil Nadu, India.
Robert L. Hardgrave, Jr.(1969) The Nadars of Tamilnad; the political culture of a community in change. From year 1800 British records to 1968.