Interesting read

Message For the Day…” Significance of Forbearance in our Life…”

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The attitude of forbearance (Titiksha) refuses to be affected or pained when afflicted with sorrow, loss, or ingratitude and wickedness of others. In fact, you must remain calm, and bear all blows patiently and gladly, without any form of retaliation, for these are results of your own past actions. The natural reactions of people, when someone injures them are to hurt them in return, that is, return harm and insult to those who harm them and insult them. These are characteristics of the worldly path(pravritti). Those who seek the inner path of sublimation and purification (nivritti) must desist from such reactions. For, if you choose to return injury for evil, you are only adding to your own karmic burden! Paying evil with evil may confer immediate relief and contentment, but will never lighten the weight of karma. Forbearance, therefore, requires people to do good even to those who injure them.

Sathya Sai Baba

History of ICC Cricket World Cup…

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The stage is set for the 11th ICC World Cup, which will be staged Down Under from February 14 to March 29.

India will be looking to add to their triumphs of 1983 and 2011, while Australia, co-hosts with New Zealand, are gunning for a fifth title in the 50-overs-a-side quadrennial tournament, having won it in 1987, 1999, 2003 and 2007.

For a recap of the previous World Cups click on the images below.


1975 World Cup  

 


1979 World Cup  

 


1983 World Cup  

 


1987 World Cup  

 


1992 World Cup  

 


1996 World Cup  

 


1999 World Cup  

 


2003 World Cup 

 


2007 World Cup    

 


2011 World Cup  

SOURCE:::: http://www.rediff.com

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All you need to know about World Cup 2015…

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Factbox on the 11th edition of the cricket World Cup, which will be co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand from Feb. 14-March 29.

KEY FACTS

The coveted trophy.The coveted trophy.* The first men’s cricket World Cup was held in England in 1975, four years after the first recognised one-day international had been played in 1971, on the fifth day of a washed out test between Australia and England in Melbourne.

* West Indies won the first two tournaments, beating Australia in 1975 and England in 1979 and then lost the 1983 final to India, but have not reached another final since.

* Allan Border’s Australia won the first of their four titles in 1987, sparking a period of dominance by the side in both one-day and test cricket for the next 20 years.

* India also won the 2011 tournament. Pakistan (1992) and Sri Lanka (1996) are the only other winners.

* New Zealand and Australia will host 21 pool matches each, amongst 14 venues, seven in each country. It is the second time the two countries have co-hosted the tournament, having previously done so in 1992.

* Afghanistan will make their World Cup debut, having played three World Twenty20 tournaments.

* There are two groups of seven teams playing a round robin format, with the top four in each pool making the quarter-finals, which will be straight knockouts.

* New Zealand will host one quarter-final in Wellington and one semi-final in Auckland.

* They can possibly reach the final in Melbourne without having played any of their games in Australia. The two co-hosts are in the same pool and play that match on Feb. 28 in Auckland.

* The final will be at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, only the second venue after Lord’s in London, to host more than one final.

RECORDS

* India’s Sachin Tendulkar is the leading run scorer with 2,278 runs in 45 matches and has scored the most centuries (six). He also holds the record for most runs in one tournament, 673 from 11 matches in 2003.

* Australia’s Glenn McGrath has the most wickets, 71 in 39 matches. McGrath also has the best bowling figures of 7-15 against Namibia in 2003.

* South Africa’s Gary Kirsten has the highest score in a World Cup match, making 188 not out against UAE in 1996.

* The highest score in a World Cup match is 413-5 by India against Bermuda in 2007, while the lowest is 36 by Canada against Sri Lanka in 2003.

* Australian wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist has the most dismissals, 52 from 31 matches (45 catches, seven stumpings), though he could be overtaken by Sri Lanka’s Kumar Sangakkara (46) in this tournament.

* Australia’s Ricky Ponting has taken 28 catches, the most by a non-wicketkeeper.

(Compiled by Greg Stutchbury; Editing by Sudipto Ganguly)

SOURCE:::: www. cricket.yahoo.com

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This Boy’s Space Idea Takes him to NASA…

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City boy’s space idea takes him to NASA
Sanjay Lakshminarayana
Sanjay will present a paper with a set of plans to explore the outer solar system and beyond

A 20-year-old Bengaluru boy is on his way to Texas to present a paper at the prestigious National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Sanjay Lakshminarayana, a mechanical engineering student, has been selected to present his ideas and attend conventions. These will study important observations made by recent planetary missions and emerging nuclear technologies for space exploration and travel.

The youngster, who has been interested in space since childhood, will present a set of plans to explore the outer solar system and beyond. The ideas will have a significant focus on nuclear systems as enabling technologies.

Sanjay said he would use this opportunity to discuss the knowledge gaps in exploration of extra-terrestrial environments and the most recent discoveries in this area.

The youngster, who also has an interest in car designing, told BM that his background in mechanical engineering provided a base for his interest in space exploration and his consistent research in the area.

Unexpected invite

The meetings on Sanjay’s agenda have been sponsored by NASA and the American Nuclear Society. Speaking on the unexpected invite, Sanjay said, “It was at a meeting in Russia, that a professor from NASA noticed my interest and sent me an invite for this year”.

Commenting on what this opportunity meant for him, he said, “I want to learn a lot about the latest developments and share my ideas with scientists from across the world. I am looking to gain immense knowledge, a sense of direction and meet people who will be able to help me in my research. ”

The meetings are scheduled between February 3 and March 16. These will be held at various locations including the Lunar Planetary Institute in Houston. Sanjay has also been invited to present his paper titled “The Magneto-Confined Fusion Ion Thruster” at the 2015 Nuclear and Emerging Technologies for Space (NETS-2015) conference to be held in Albuquerque.

Sanjay’s schedule

1. 2015 Nuclear and Emerging Technologies for Space (NETS-2015) conference, March 23rd-26th, Albuquerque

2.Workshop on Early Solar System Impact Bombardment III, February 4th-6th, Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.

SOURCE:::: Apurva Venkat, Bangalore Mirror Bureau  in http://www.bangaloremirror.com
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Dare Devil Duo is the First to Scale the Niagara Falls… !!!

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Last week, two daredevil Canadian climbers, Will Gadd and Sarah Hueniken, attempted the impossible: scaling Niagara’s 51m-high, frozen falls. And it only took them just under an hour to do it.

Niagara Falls, the collective term for the three waterfalls that dominate the border between New York state and Ontario, Canada, flows at a rate of up to two million litres per second. Because of that immense volume, the falls almost never stop moving. In fact, other than a 30-hour dry spell on 29 March 1848, when an ice jam in the upper river blocked the regular flow of water, it was nearly unheard of until early 2014, when the falls came to a near standstill twice during the extreme North American cold wave. (And while some would argue that the falls froze in the early 1900s, the credibility of that commonly shared photograph has beenproven questionable.)

It’s important to note that even in these three rare instances, the falls never completely froze over, making attempts to climb up the falls extremely dangerous. The water, albeit in smaller volumes, continues to flow, forming unstable layers of snow, slush and ice (see 2:08 when Gadd sinks his hooks into a piece of snow that simply crumbles away). It’s a feat we wouldn’t suggest trying at home. Still, for Gadd and Hueniken, being the first climbers to travel up Niagara Falls is a good way to go down in history. “There’s only one Mount Everest, there’s only one Niagara Falls and I feel really lucky because that ended a lot of hard work by a lot of people and I got to climb something to me that was really amazing and really beautiful and a whole lot of fun,” Gadd said in an interview with ABC.

In the winter, videos like the above are one of the only ways to get a sense of the falls’ majesty up close. Visitors have been banned from walking on the bridges formed by the ice since 1912; it’s illegal to climb the falls on either side of the border; and the boat tour on the New York side of the Falls, the Maid of the Mist, shuts down after October because of icy conditions, usually reopening in April or May.

SOURCE:::: http://www.bbc.com

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Picture of the Day… ” Cloud Streets in the Sea…” !!!

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Ice, wind, cold temperatures and ocean waters combined to created dramatic cloud formations over the Bering Sea in late January, 2015. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite passed over the region and captured this true-color image on Jan. 23.

The frozen tundra of Russia lies in the northwest of the image, and snow-covered Alaska lies in the northeast. Sea ice extends from the land well into the Bering Sea. Over the dark water bright white clouds line in up close, parallel rows. These formations are known as “cloud streets”.

Air blowing over the cold, snowy land and then over ice becomes both cold and dry. When the air then moves over relatively warmer and much moister water and lead to the development of parallel cylinders of spinning air. On the upper edge of these cylinders of air, where the air is rising, small clouds form. Where air is descending, the skies are clear. This clear/cloudy pattern, formed in parallel rows, gives the impression of streets.

The clouds begin over the sea ice, but they primarily hang over open ocean. The streets are neat and in tight rows closest to land, while further over the Bering Sea the pattern widens and begins to become more random. The rows of clouds are also not perfectly straight, but tend to curve. The strength and direction of the wind helps create these features: where the wind is strongest, nearest to shore, the clouds line up most neatly. The clouds align with the wind direction, so the direction of the streets gives strong clues to prevailing wind direction.

Image Credit: NASA/Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC 

SOURCE:::: http://www.nasa.gov

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Image of the Day… View From Space…India by Night and By Day …

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Acquired January 12, 2015. Image credit: NASA

Acquired September 14, 1966. Image credit: NASA

The night image of the Indian peninsula was taken from the International Space Station (ISS) on January 15, 2015. It shows with clarity and surprising detail the human geography of cities of different sizes, such as Kochi and Coimbatore, and the highways that connect cities. The almost unpopulated hilly escarpment, known as the southern Ghats, is a dark zone parallel to the coast. A patch of clouds are illuminated by a nearly-full moon.

The daylight photo was taken by the crew of the Gemini 11 spacecraft back in September 1966. You can see coastlines and land surface color, but no details of human geography. This classic view was taken on an early space flight at a similar altitude to that of the ISS. Patterns of bright white cloud cover much of the land surfaces of India and Sri Lanka.

Bottom line: Two astronaut photos, one from 2015 and one from 1966, show the southern peninsula of India by night and by day.

Via NASA Earth Observatory

SOURCE::::: http://www.earthskynews.org

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