Inside Online Gambling
Saturday, November 15, 2008
A study by the Australian government in 2001 estimated the number of online gamblers worldwide at just fewer than five million, with more than $11 billion played out in online casinos.In this article, we'll see what it's like to gamble online, find out how you pay to play, and discuss the lawfulness of online gambling.
Online gambling differs from in-person casino gambling in a few evident ways. There is little to no interaction betwixt the players and the dealer. In fact, there is no dealer -- all the games are controlled by computer programs.
Online casinos can offer dozens of different online gambling games.
There are also websites that offer online sports betting, which is another form of gambling. These websites allow users to place bets on athletic competitions of every kind, as well as other events like political races or the outcomes of reality TV shows.
Gambling online falls into a legal grey domain. While it is technically illegitimate in most of the United States, the prosecution and conviction of individual players is very difficult because they're gambling from home. It is also illegal for a gambling sites to operate within the United States, which is why the offices and servers of most online casinos are situated in other countries.
When you register for an online casino, you are asked to agree to the site's terms and conditions. Finding out whether or not gambling is legal where you live is your duty. You must also abide by any age limits set on gambling in your vicinity. If online gambling is illegal in your area, and authorities detect that you've won money, your winnings could be forfeit.
Issues of legal power and sovereignty make gambling laws even murkier.
Some of the countries that allow online casinos to function have strict guidelines and regulations that make sure the casinos operate legitimately. They make sure the casino pays out when participants win, and they ensure that published odds match the actual odds programmed into each game. Australian and Finnish online casinos are known for holding fast to national standards. Some countries are not so strict about regulating and may be more interested in taxing the casinos than making sure that they play fair. There are many online casinos to choose from, and it pays to do some search into the regulations they must follow when you select one.
The questionable lawfulness of online gambling makes things tricky for players in the United States and other locations that don't allow gambling. You can use a credit card to fill your account at an online casino, but most American credit card companies will not allow the dealing if they recognize that it is intended for a gambling site.
It is possible to open a bank account at an off-shore bank, which can then be furnished with funds for the gambling site.
Some Internet transaction services can be used to channelize funds into an online casino account. These services act like Paypal, but unlike Paypal, they can be used for gambling dealings. The easiest method is to send an international money order to the casino site, but this is a slow action and not all online casinos offer this option. Click here to read more...
Posted byParvez Ahmed at 2:47 AM 28 comments
Turning Urine Into Water - NASA's New Water Recovery System
Transporting a pint of water aboard the space shuttle cost about $15,000. Therefore, astronauts on the International Space Station have to retake every possible drop. That includes water vaporized from showers, shaving, tooth brushing and hand washing, plus perspiration and water vapor that collects within the astronauts' space suits. They even transfer water from the fuel cells that furnish electric power to the space shuttle.Until now, however, NASA has not tried to tap one major potential source of water: urine. That will soon alter with the deployment of the new Water Recovery System. It sets forth Friday, Nov. 14, from the Kennedy Space Center on the Space Shuttle Endeavor.
The Water Recovery System, made possible in part by researchers at Michigan Technological University, can transmute ordinary pee into water so pure it rivals the cleanest on Earth.
Under the new system, urine goes through an initial distillation process and then joins the rest of the recovered fluids in the water processor. The processor separates out solids such as hair and lint and then sends the waste water through a series of multi-filtration beds, in which contaminations are removed through adsorption and ion exchange.
Using mathematical models, the Tech researchers helped better the overall design of the multi-filtration beds. The redesigned beds have 30 percent more capacity, which means that NASA doesn't have to send about 60 pounds of extra supplies up to the space station annually. That will save NASA $600,000 every year. Click here to read more...
Posted byParvez Ahmed at 1:59 AM 7 comments
Labels: astronomy, offbeat, science
Sloss Furnace
Sloss Furnace is a National Historic Landmark in Birmingham, Alabama, U.S.A. It functioned as a pig iron-producing blast furnace from 1882 to 1971.The Sloss Furnace site presently serves as an interpretive museum of industry and hosts a nationally- acknowledged metal arts program. It also serves as a performance and festival venue.
In 1880, Colonel James Withers Sloss constituted the Sloss Furnace Company and began building of Birmingham's first blast furnace on 50 acres of land donated by the Elyton Land Company for industrial development.
In 1886, Sloss retired and traded the Sloss Furnace Company to a group of investors who organized it in 1899 as the Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Company.
In 1952, the Sloss Furnaces were acquired by the U.S. Pipe and Foundary Company, and sold almost two decades later in 1969 to the Jim Walter Corp.
The Jim Walter Company shut down the Sloss Furnaces two years later, and then donated the property to the Alabama State Fair Authority for possible development as a museum of industry.
In 1976, the Sloss Furnace site was credentialed for the Historic American Engineering Record and its historic significance was detailed in a study commissioned by the city. Birmingham voters approved a $3.3 million bond issue in 1977 to preserve the site.
Preservation and renovation work continues at Sloss Furnaces and funds are being raised for a major expansion of the interpretive facilities in a new visitor's center. The site is nominated to become part of a linear park running east west through downtown Birmingham along the route of the "Railroad Reservation", which was a strip of land partitioned for industrial development in Birmingham's 1871 city plan. Click here to read more...
Posted byParvez Ahmed at 1:08 AM 0 comments
How Palm Island - The World’s Largest Artificial Island Was Built
Friday, November 14, 2008
Construction on the palm islands started in 2001. Divers surveyed the ocean floor and workers constructed a crescent-shaped breakwater from blasted mountain rock. The Crescent of Palm Jumeirah stands a little more than 13 feet above low tide ocean level and sits in 34 feet of water at its deepest point.Sand, covered by an erosion- forestalling water-permeable geo-textile, makes up the breakwater's lowest layer. One-ton rocks blanket the sand, and two layers of large rocks weighing up to six tons each cap the structure. A "toe" placed by a floating crane sits within the Crescent. The bulwark also has two 328-foot openings on each side to eliminate stagnation in the 16 narrow, deep channels. These gaps allow water to altogether circulate every 13 days.
Although five workers were swept off by a wave and one drowned, the designers at Nakheel believe the breakwater will protect the palm island from average gulf weather and even an enormous storm. They even indicate that villas barely 10 feet above sea level will be safe from the rising seas of global warming.
The palm islands themselves are made from sand dredged from the sea floor. Palm Jumeirah is built from 3,257,212,970.389 cubic feet of ocean sand vibro-compacted into place .Vibro-compaction increases the denseness of loose sand by saturating it with jets of water and vibrating it with probes.
To get the complex shape just right, designers and contractors use Differential Global Positioning Systems (DGPS) to plot the palm and ascertain the sand placement within 0.39 of an inch.
Palm Jumeirah is already jammed with villas and hotels, with some early buyers complaining that the plots are more closely spaced than they were led to believe. Buyers are a mixture of long-term residents, vacationists and speculators hoping to cash in on skyrocketing prices. When the island is complete, Nakheel expects 120,000 occupants and workers plus as many as 20,000 tourists a day. Construction workers lived on the fronds and in grounded cruise ships while building the island.
To facilitate touristry and make life easier for residents, the six-lane Sub-Sea Tunnel connects Palm Jumeirah to the mainland. Workers used a dam to drain the area and dig up the seabed before rereleasing the water. Developers have plans for a four-stop railroad that will race the length of the palm. Click here to read more...
Posted byParvez Ahmed at 4:12 AM 31 comments
Labels: How Is It Made
First Direct Images of a New Solar System Like Ours
Gemini Observatory discovery image using the Altair adaptive optics system on the Gemini North telescope with the Near-Infrared Imager (NIRI). Image shows two of the three confirmed planets indicated as "b" and "c" on the image. "b" is the ~7 Jupiter-mass planet orbiting at about 70 AU, "c" is the ~10 Jupiter-mass planet orbiting the star at about 40 AU. Due to the brightness of the central star, it has been blocked and appears blank in this image to increase visibility of the planets. (Credit: Gemini Observatory)
Astronomers using the Gemini North telescope and W.M. Keck Observatory on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea have received the first-ever direct images identifying a multi-planet system around a normal star.
The Gemini pictures allowed the international team to make the initial discovery of two of the planets in the confirmed planetary system with data obtained on October 17, 2007. Then, on October 25, 2007, and in the summer of 2008, the squad, led by Christian Marois of the National Research Council of Canada’s Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics (Victoria B.C., Canada) and members from the U.S. and U.K., confirmed this discovery and found a third planet orbiting even closer to the star with images received at the Keck II telescope. In both cases, adaptive optics technology was used to correct in real-time for atmospheric turbulence to obtain these historical infrared pictures of an extra-solar multiple-planet system.
According Dr. Marois, this find is the first time we have directly imaged a family of planets around a normal star outside of our solar system. Team member Bruce Macintosh of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories says, “Until now, when astronomers discover new planets around a star, all we see are sinuous lines on a graph of the star's velocity or brightness. Now we have an real picture showing the planets themselves, and that makes things very interesting.” The discovery article is printed in the November 13, 2008, issue of Science Express, an international weekly science journal. Click here to read more...
Posted byParvez Ahmed at 3:40 AM 0 comments
Jonestown Cult - 912 Suicides
Almost three decennia ago an unusual series of events led to the deaths of more than 900 people in the middle of a South American jungle. Though nicknamed a "massacre," what transpired at Jonestown on November 18, 1978, was to some extent done willingly, making the mass suicide all the more troubling.The Jonestown Cult (officially named the "People's Temple") was founded in 1955 by Indianapolis sermonizer James Warren Jones. Jones, who had no formal theological training, based his liberal ministry on a combination of religious and socialistic doctrines.
After moving to California in 1965, the Jonestown cult continued to grow in membership and began advocating their left-wing political ideals more actively. With an I.R.S. probe and a great deal of negative press mounting against the radical church, Jones urged his faithful to join him in a new, isolated community where they could escape American capitalism—and criticism—and practice a more communal way of life.
In 1977, Jones and many of his followers resettled to Jonestown, located on a tract of land the Jonestown cult had purchased and begun to develop in Guyana three years earlier.
Relatives of Jonestown cult members soon grew worried and requested that the U.S. government rescue what they believed to be brainwashed victims living in concentration camp-like conditions under Jones's authority.
In November 1978, California Congressman Leo Ryan arrived in Guyana to inspect Jonestown and interview its inhabitants. After reportedly having his life threatened by a Temple member during the first day of his sojourn, Ryan decided to cut his trip short and return to the U.S. with some Jonestown residents who wished to exit. As they boarded their plane, a group of Jones's guards opened fire on them, shooting down Ryan and four others.
Some members of Ryan's group escaped, however. Upon discovering this, Jones told his followers that Ryan's murder would make it impossible for their commune to continue functioning. Rather than go back to the United States, the Jonestown cult would conserve their church by making the ultimate sacrifice: their own lives. Jones's 912 followers were given a deadly mixture of a purple drink mixed with cyanide, sedatives, and tranquilizers. Jones seemingly shot himself in the head. Click here to read more...
Posted byParvez Ahmed at 2:53 AM 1 comments
Labels: crime and criminals, People
An Artificial Kidney That You Can Wear
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
For years, dialysis has been the standard treatment for azotemia. However, regular, long-lasting therapy sessions attached to an essentially unmovable machine are not ideal for patients. After continuous ambulant peritoneal dialysis was introduced in the early 1980s, interest has centered on developing a truly wearable or portable dialysis system. Early examples of wearable hemodialysis devices described in the literature were excessively large and heavy, performed inefficiently and, most problematic of all, lacked effective safety controls. Only recently have some interesting papers reporting innovative and truly wearable devices deservedly spurred interest in the field. Although the idea of a wearable artificial kidney (WAK) is not new, it is only the coming of nanotechnology and miniaturization that has made the vital qualities of efficiency and safety achievable on a small scale.The reasons for producing a WAK can be categorized as clinical, technical and/or socioeconomic. The outcomes of patients on chronic renal replacement therapy remain dispiriting with respect to quality of life, morbidity and mortality. However, a growing body of literature suggests that both prolonged and more-frequent dialysis sessions are associated with strikingly improved outcomes. Switching patients from the typical thrice-weekly regimen to one of daily dialysis leads to considerable improvements in the quality of life (e.g. liberalization of diet and fluid restrictions) and to significant reductions in complications (such as anemia and hypertension), psychological symptoms, hospitalizations and need for medications (e.g. phosphate binders and antihypertensives). Daily dialysis is also reported to increase appetence (leading to improved nutrition and increased serum albumin levels), enhance volume control, eliminate metabolic acidosis and electrolyte abnormalities (e.g. sodium retention, hyperkalemia, hyperphosphatemia), and also potentially decrease the risk of morbidity and mortality from cardiovascular disease and stroke by bettering blood pressure control and preventing repeated cardiac stunning due to intradialytic hypotension. Extending this approach to a therapy that, like the human kidney, works not just daily, but continuously, seems consistent. Although uninterrupted ambulatory peritoneal dialysis does achieve this goal, no more than 10% of patients on dialysis use this modality worldwide. Furthermore, despite advances in connectology, peritonitis remains the most common problem encountered by these patients, who are carefully selected for this treatment. Once residual renal function is lost, patients on peritoneal dialysis often rely on an changing number of hypertonic glucose exchanges, whose implementation is associated with the risk of developing life-threatening encapsulating peritoneal sclerosis. Therefore, alternate solutions, such as WAKs, should be pursued.
Technologies that are available today were not even conceivable a few years ago, and we should take advantage of recent advances to make a quantum leap in the treatment of uremia. The miniaturization and weight reduction of WAKs has been made imaginable by the development of new materials and production processes. Such technological advances are also likely to drive advancement in conventional dialysis.
Following these technological discoveries, the major question that will determine the success of this process is whether society cares to invest in radically new approaches to uremia treatment or to maintain the status quo and continue to bear the morbidity, mortality and cost of treating patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). In the US alone, the number of patients with CKD is growing steadily and presently approaches 400,000. The total cost of caring for these patients exceeds US$30 billion a year. The cost of CKD to society during the current decade is approximated to be $1 trillion worldwide. Furthermore, the mortality rate of patients with CKD currently remains intolerably high, reaching that of metastatic carcinoma of the breast, colon or prostate. WAKs would enable patients with end-stage renal disease to receive considerably higher doses of dialysis, while lowering the overall cost and manpower burden associated with conventional renal replacement therapy by reducing the need to build and staff hemodialysis centers.
The causes for developing a WAK are clearly compelling and several systems are currently under development. Some use extracorporeal blood cleansing to accomplish blood purification, others are based on peritoneal dialysis. To enable patient mobility, these devices rely on the re-formation of effluent ultrafiltrate and/or dialysate, typically by use of charcoal and other sorbents. In the early pioneering days, patients were cared for for 3–4 months with these devices, but the cartridges had to be changed three to four times daily. Improvement in sorbent technology has enabled patients to be cared for for longer intervals, as shown in animal and human pilot studies. However, we are actively looking into novel sorbent compounds that would enable patients to use a WAK for 7 days without changing sorbent cartridges. The most recent human clinical trials of WAKs focused on patient safety and device performance and reliability. These trials were victorious in terms of delivering accurate controlled ultrafiltration and predicted solute clearances. Most significantly, the devices proved to be safe.
Several challenges must be overcome to enable the speedy development and widespread application of WAKs. In order to be truly wearable, the device must be small-scale, light and capable of operating independently of an electrical outlet; it must also be affordable. Minimal quantities of dialysate should be used and regenerated by an effective, cheap and safe sorbent-based process. The design must be ergonomic and blend a user-friendly interface with a small, easy-to-wear device. Improving vascular access is likely the most important challenge in the development of WAKs, because the catheters and percutaneous types of vascular access used for conventional hemodialysis are associated with high morbidity, including infection and central venous stenosis. In order to reduce the risk of infection, a new way of drawing blood from the circulation and returning it to the patient must be originated. Use of grafts based on new, nonthrombogenic biomaterials, or biomaterials coated with decoagulants, or implanted with DNA or RNA constructs designed to minimize thrombosis, might help to maintain patency of the dialysis circuit for several hours or days with little or no need for anticoagulation. Alternatively, the recent development of newer oral decoagulants, based on direct inhibition of factor Xa or thrombin, could enable WAKs to operate effectively without recourse to additional anticoagulation.
Recent experiments have established the feasibility of the WAK concept and the potential for innovations in the near future. Many betterments and refinements to the current devices are still needed, but, unless this challenge is confronted directly, most patients on dialysis will continue to experience the poor outcomes associated with thrice-weekly treatment. A paradigm shift is expected in renal replacement therapy, and the artificial kidney could, like other once-unthinkable devices such as computers, pacemakers and telephones, bring about a revolution. Whether this aspiration comes true now, next year or never is up to society at large. Click here to read more...
Posted byParvez Ahmed at 10:18 PM 0 comments
America’s First Murderer
On a day late in September 1630, John Billington -- an original Plymouth colonist, a landholder, a father to two sons, a signatory of the Mayflower Compact -- stood with a noose around his neck. He was condemned to hang. When he died that day, John Billington left behind a bequest of grim historic firsts for the New World.John Billington was the first person to perpetrate a crime in the colony. He had the dubitable honor of being the first European to be convicted of murder in this new place. And he was the first to be put to death by the state in the New World.
Earlier that same year, John Billington shot a young man named John Newcomen, who had newly migrated to Plymouth. Billington “waylaid” the man and shot him in the woods. Governor William Bradford, in his historic writing “Of Plymouth Colony 1620 - 1647,” doesn't mention the reason for the shooting.
T¬he hanging death of Billington was a consequence of a long, tense history between his family and the Puritan leaders. The Billingtons (John, his wife Eleanor and sons, John and Francis) were part of the Strangers -- a group of people who came to America on the Mayflower with the stiffly pious Separatist Puritans. Billington is considered to have been a Catholic, the branch of Christianity that the Puritans disliked the most.
On the voyage to North America, John Billington was involved in an attempted mutiny aboard the Mayflower. With tensions already high, one of John Billington’s sons almost blew up the ship. In a cabin full of people, the unknown son fired his father’s gun beside an open barrel half-filled with gunpowder. Despite the risk of the muzzle flash of the shot lighting the gunpowder, no one was hurt.
Once in the new world, Billington’s bad repute continued to develop, after he scoffed at being pressed into military service by Captain Miles Standish. He was threatened with being hogtied, but is said to have prayed for forgiveness. The records show that the leaders chose not to carry out the sentence since it was, after all, Billington’s first infringement. It would barely be his last.
Billington evidently disliked how the Puritan leaders governed the colony, for he is said to have spent a lot of his time involved in what would be considered anti-government subversion. He was implicated in a plot to bring down the Plymouth Colony's religious governance. When pressed, however, he refused having been a participant and wasn't charged.
Over the course of the 10 years that the family cultivated its plot of land at Plymouth, accorded to them by the British crown as members of the first settler party, the Billingtons appear to have continued to make trouble for their fellow colonists.
John Billington Jr. ended up lost in the woods and roamed 20 miles before happening upon a Native American village. From there, he was taken to another village further away. A group of 10 men set sail to find the boy and discovered him at what is now Cape Cod after a couple of days. When he came back to the colony, he was “behung with beads”.
William Bradford particularly disliked the family. The long-time governor of Plymouth said the Billingtons were “one of the profanest families” to come to the colony.
From these chronicles, it may seem that John Billington and his family were the scourge of the early Plymouth Colony. But not so fast. John Billington may serve as a exemplary marker to remind us that history is never so clear-cut. Click here to read more...
Posted byParvez Ahmed at 9:50 PM 0 comments
Mandy Sellars - The Woman With Giant Legs
Monday, November 10, 2008
Mandy Sellars has been tagged The Woman With The Giant Legs.Doctors can’t tell why Mandy Sellars' legs keep enlarging – all they say is that her only choice is a drastic amputation.
It’s not easy being Mandy Sellars. She has enormously oversized legs that make having a normal life nearly impossible.
People gaze whenever she leaves the house, she needs a especial car to get around and can’t work full time.
But the optimistic 33-year-old from Accrington, Lancs, just won’t be told. She’s challenged medics’ verdict and has just got back from America where she went to find a new treatment.
Mandy Sellars' left leg is five inches longer than her right and has a talipes, which has turned 180 degrees rearwards. She says: “I weigh about 20 stone – 15 of which are my legs.”
Mandy Sellars now has a UK doctor who is wishing to search for the evasive diagnosis.
Geneticist Dr Susan Huson, from St Mary’s Hospital, Manchester, is fixed to identify Mandy’s condition.
While amputation is inevitable and Mandy Sellars still faces the biggest dilemma of her life, she’s pleased that some day there may well be a condition in the medical books named after her. Click here to read more...
Posted byParvez Ahmed at 3:13 AM 4 comments
How is Chewing Gum Made
Sunday, November 9, 2008
All formulas for chewing gum manufactured today share the same main ingredients: a gum base, sweeteners, chiefly sugar and corn syrup, and seasonings. Some also contain softeners, such as glycerine and vegetable oil. The quantity of each added to the mix varies as to which type of gum is being constructed. For example, bubble gum contains more of the gum base, so that your bubbles don't burst…particularly during class!Though gum producers cautiously guard their formulas, they all share the same basic process to reach the completed product. Preparation of the gum base at the factory, by far the most extended step, necessitates that the raw gum stuffs be melted down and sterilized in a steam cooker, and then pumped to a high-powered centrifuge to rid the gum base of unsuitable dirt and bark.
Once the factory workers cleanse the melted gum base, they blend approximately 20% of the base with 63% sugar, 16% corn syrup, and 1% flavoring oils, such as spearmint, peppermint, and cinnamon. While still hot, they run the mixture between pairs of rollers, which are coated on both sides with fine-grained sugar, to prevent the resulting ribbon of gum from sticking. The final pair of rollers comes fully outfitted with knives, which snip the ribbon into sticks, which yet another machine singly wraps.
The gum base used in these recipes is, for the most part, constructed, due to economic constraints. In the good old days, the entire gum base came straight from the milky white sap, or chicle, of the sapodilla tree found in Mexico and in Guatemala. There, indigenes collect the chicle by the bucket, boil it down, mold it into 25-pound blocks, and ship it straightaway to chewing gum factories. Those with little or no self-restraint, chew their chicle directly from the tree, as did New England colonists, after watching Indians do the same.
The concept of chewing gum stuck, and continues to play a vital role in our economy, mostly due to the many benefits associated with its use. Sales of chewing gum first began in the early 1800s. Later, in the 1860s, chicle was imported as a replacement for rubber, and finally, in approximately the 1890s, for use in chewing gum.
The pure delight derived from angering a schoolteacher by blowing bubbles in class, or from bothering a co-worker by snapping it, is only one of the attractiveness of chewing gum. Chewing gum really helps to clean the teeth, and to humidify the mouth, by stimulating saliva production, which helps to neutralize tooth-decay-forming acids left behind after eating hard food.
The muscular action of chewing gum also helps to check a person's appetite for a snack or for a cigarette, to focus, to stay awake, to ease stress, and to relax one's nerves and muscles. For these very reasons, the armed forces furnished soldiers with chewing gum in World War I, World War II, in Korea, and in Vietnam. Today, chewing gum is still included in field and battle rations. In fact, the Wrigley Company, following the Department of Defense specifications supplied to government contractors, issued chewing gum for the distribution to troops stationed in Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War. Click here to read more...
Posted byParvez Ahmed at 2:03 AM 3 comments
Labels: How Is It Made
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