Iron Lady wanted to be part of Indian Civil Service
April 30, 2008
Behold, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher considered joining erstwhile Indian Civil Service and serve the country.
Margaret Thatcher Foundation, quoted Margaret Thatcher, popularly known as ‘The Iron Lady’, told an interviewer on Yorkshire Television in 1985, “I had an ambition as a child. I told you all the missionaries used to come and people used to come from India. I had an ambition. I wanted to be part of the Indian Civil Service, because our Civil Service was best in the world. Now, we were brought up that Britain was the best in the world because she had standards of honesty and integrity and law. The best in the world and in the Indian Civil Service was part of our Civil Service and it was to do things for the Indians and it was to help them.
As fate would have it, Thatcher did not join the ICS. However she became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
No more on combat duty, Prince Harry to battle Aids
April 30, 2008
Prince Harry will have a break from combat duty. Recently he was on combat duty in Helmand province of Afghanistan. Unfortunately he will not be able to return to the frontline in near future. According to a report in the Sun, British Army Chief General Sir Richard Dannat has again said “Prince Harry would not see active service soon. There may well be some point in the near future where it will be appropriate to deploy him somewhere- but that is not going to happen any time soon.”
Supporting the decision to send Prince Harry to Afghanistan, he said: “It was absolutely the right decision to send him. It reflected very well on the relationship between the royal family, the armed forces and the nation.”
Harry had been on a 48 hour flying visit to Lesotho. The Sun quoted an unnamed source as saying:” It had been unclear what he planned to do next. Harry decided to do something different and came up with the idea of heading a three- month mercy mission to the troubled kingdom in Africa
Prince Harry will not be on a combat duty but will be battling Aids in Africa
Online identification reveals the character of the person
April 30, 2008
Researchers at the University of Leipzig in Germany carried out a study and found that in one liner email address may unfold your character of the creator of the unique online identification.
In their study, the researchers asked a panel of 100 students to guess the personalities of 600 adults simply by looking at their email addresses. The panel’s guesses were more or less exact with respect to qualities like openness, conscientiousness and narcissism.
According to lead researcher Mitja Back even the thinnest slice of communication via the worldwide web-the mere email address- contains valid information about the personality of its owner. The researcher’s findings showed that addresses that gave away personality were often comprised of full stops, numbers or a name that was obviously not genuine. Level of accuracy was measured using lens model analysis.
So do think twice before you pick an email address as it speaks volumes about your character.
Keyboard users should be beware of bugs
April 30, 2008
‘Which’ computer magazine reported results of a research by a microbiologist that bugs including E coil and S aurous are found on your keyboards. Samples from 33 keyboards were examined by James Francis.
In a comparison made between a swabbed toilet seat and door handle from a London office and one of the keyboards, it was detected that the keyboard was five times dirtier than the toilet seat.
Francis said: “I haven’t seen a reading like that in a very long time- it was of the scale. It was interesting the risk of its user becoming ill.” Finally the keyboard, harboring of bacteria, almost 150 times the acceptable limit, was removed as a precautionary measure”
Do avoid eating at the desks as this is the main culprit for contamination, as the dropped crumbs lodge between keys resulting in fertile breeding ground for millions of bacteria. Another factor which contributes towards the bacterial growth is non washing of hands after using toilet.
Sarah Kidner, the editor of Which Computing said” Most people don’t give much thought to the grime that builds up on their PC, but if you don’t clean your computer, you might as well eat your lunch off the toilet.’
A survey revealed that merely 22 percent of the users clean their keyboards, while 27 percent their monitor on a monthly basis. While 20 percent said they never cleaned the mouse, one in 10 said they never cleaned the keyboard.
You can be a victim of head lice as headphones could ferry germs between people.
Heed to the maxim that prevention is better than cure and shut the computer down unplug it before gently dusting it with a soft lint-free cloth and wipe with an approved computer cleaning fluid.
UK House landmark judgment brings cheers to Indian doctors
April 30, 2008
Britain’s Labour government had directly moved the House of Lords against the High Court ruling favouring an appeal by Association of Physicians of Indian Origin against the Labour government.
A new immigration law abolishing permit free training for overseas doctors was introduced in 2006. The Court of Appeal ruled that international medical should be allowed to compete for training as per the norms applied to local and EU graduates.
The aim of the government to impose the new law retrospect was to maintain the new migrant application below the 5000 mark. However Law Lords dismissed the government’s appeal.
After the judgment, on Wednesday, Dr Ramesh Mehta , president of Bapio, said:” The House of Lords has vindicated our position that the government had acted in haste and prematurely without thinking through the damaging consequences for thousands of international medical graduates that its retrospectively applied unfair regulations were likely to impose.”
Dr Satish Mathew, Bapio vice-chair for operations said; “This will provide much needed relief to thousands of doctors who have been through unimaginable stress. Many careers have already been destroyed. However, this ruling will give hope of fair treatment to the doctors who are still in the UK.”
You can be a owner of a transistor measuring little bigger than a molecule.
April 30, 2008
A Manchester University team led by Prof Andre Geim has developed a transistor of the size of ten atoms, possibly the first true electronic Nan component. The transistor created by the researchers can be con the world’s smallest one invented.
Graphene, word’s thinnest material, consisting of carbon atoms single layer thick, is used by the team of scientists in the making of the transistor. Graphene which has unique electrical properties behaves as if the electric current is not carried by normal electrons but by charged mass less particles
Ballistic transistors, which are ultimately faster than any current technology, may soon be created by the scientists. They will be fastest because electrons shoot through them without colliding with component atoms.
“It is too early to promise grapheme super computers. In our work, we relied on chance when making such small transistors. Unfortunately, no existing technology allows the cutting of materials with true nanomentre precision. But this is an exactly the same challenge that all post-silicon electronics has to face,” the Daily Telegraph quoted him as saying.
Professor Geim expects the graphene -based circuits to come of age by 2025.
Believe it or not UK may be Europe’s top terror centre
April 30, 2008
European Union report, prepared by European Law Enforcement Organisation, has revealed that the UK reported a 30 per cent increase in arrested terrorism suspects. Unconfirmed report say UK authorities estimate that out of the 203 persons arrested in 2007 the vast majority were in relation to Islamist terrorism.
Europol, brings out an annual report on the terrorism situation aiming to improve the effectiveness and cooperation of the competent authorities. The report is meant to help the member states in preventing and combating terrorism, unlawful drug trafficking and other such serious international organized crime.
According to the report, there was 35 % decrease in the number of arrested suspects in 2007 compared to 2006 arrests. This is mainly due to the numbers of arrested suspects reported by France.
Even though a small number of failed and attempted terrorist attacks reported for 2007 in
Britain, 25 percent arrested suspects are for offences relating to Islamist terrorism. The number of member states which reported arrests increased from nine to fourteen percent.
Five million pre-1919 UK buildings at risk owing to the lack of repair specialists
April 30, 2008
Millions of old buildings in the UK may be at risk owing to a critical shortage of specialist workers, a report states. The National Heritage Training Group mentioned more thatchers, stonemasons and dry stone-wallers were required for dealing with pre-1919 construction. It stated the shortage of craft workers had eased a bit in recent years, but the work was still suffering from a skills and knowledge gap. Peter Lobban, of industry group ConstructionSkills, explained ‘giant steps’ were being taken to train more workers.
People were generally finding it tough to find joiners, carpenters and roofers, the report pointed out. It indicated levels of satisfaction with repair work have gone down quite considerably. It also revealed there were just 507 fully accredited conservation professionals in the country from a base of around half a million architects, surveyors, conservation officers and engineers. The study concluded this was equivalent to just one engineer to every 276,000 old buildings and one accredited surveyor to every 85,000. According to the report, the future of nearly five million pre-1919 buildings could be at risk owing to the lack of specialists.
Mr Lobban stated: “We have taken some giant steps for ensuring that more people take up these traditional building crafts important to preserving the country’s heritage buildings.”
London mayor Ken Livingstone pitted against Boris Johnson
April 29, 2008
London mayor Ken Livingstone, who is facing a tough challenge from Tory candidate, Boris Johnson, offered a job to him besides training (and grooming) him as a future mayoral candidate, according to a report. The attempted bid, by Ken Livingstone to get re-elected, was made just a few days before the election as the elections for the mayor’s post are scheduled to be held on May 1. Observer reports that mayor said “he wished he had brought his defeated rivals into the fold after the 2004 elections.”
“Certainly if I get elected this time, I will phone people up and say, I wish you to come in and do this (job) for the benefit of London` If Boris doesn’t win, I am not certain (Tory leader David) Cameron is ever going to put him in one of the great offices of state, so I suspect he will be back for another go. He would be a better mayor (for working in the administration).”
Livingstone considers him as a person of enormous potential, but lacking in experience as he has never been involved in detailed administration, and as a result the offer of a job. The move is also aimed to target 100,000 London Tories who previously backed him instead of their own party. The Tory votes will definitely swing the fortune in his favour as their choice holds the key to victory.
UK psychologist explains the varying risk-proneness of male and female drivers
April 27, 2008
A study has unveiled the mystery for the differing behaviours of male and female drivers. Professor Geoffrey Beattie of Manchester University in a study has concluded that the way in which men and women drive is actually ‘a legacy of their primitive past’.
According to Professor Beattie, our 21st-century skulls contain essentially ‘stone age’ brains, and this can help to explain the differences between the sexes in terms of their risk-proneness while driving.
Professor Beattie is the Head of Psychological Sciences of Manchester University. He concluded young men in particular still show the risk-taking instincts of cavemen when driving. He stated, “The human brain evolved to meet the needs of the hunter-gatherer, which existed for 99 per cent of our evolution as a species. This has a very major impact on driving by encouraging more competitive and hostile behaviour – with consequently higher probabilities of having an accident.”
The report titled ‘Sex Differences in Driving and Insurance Risk’ was commissioned as part of a study to initiate steps for reducing road deaths beyond 2010. It is the Government’s deadline to cut casualties by 50 per cent.
