31st December: 15 Memorable Events

December the 31st is the last day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. It is known as the "New Year's Eve" as the next day is 1st January which marks the beginning of a new calendar year. Various events have taken place on this day; some carry the sweet fragrance of memory with them; some the other way round. Here is a list of 15 memorable events that might be found in the books of history as the ones which are encrypted in golden letters:

1. Year: 406 AD. Vandals, Alans & Suebians cross the Rhine marking an attack on the region of Gaul. Gaul encompasses Switzerland, France, Belgium and other countries of the 21st century.

2. Year: 1600 AD. The British East Indian Company is chartered.

3. Year: 1857 AD. Queen Victoria selects Ottawa as the capital of Canada. Ottawa was an undeveloped logging town during those days.

4. Year: 1862 AD. Abraham Lincoln signs an act that divides Virginia into two states as the act adds West Virginia to the Union.

5. Year: 1879 AD. Famous scientist and inventor Thomas Edison demonstrates incandescent lighting to the public for the first time. The event took place in New Jersey.

6. Year: 1906 AD. Mozaffar Shah Qazar signs the Persian constitution of 1906.

7. Year: 1907 AD. The first ever publicly acknowledged New Year's Eve celebration is held at the Longacre Square, New York. Longacre Square later was renamed as the Times Square.

8. Year: 1923 AD. The chimes of Big Ben are broadcast on the radio for the first time by BBC.

9. Year: 1944 AD. Operation Norwind of the World War II begins.

10. Year: 1963 AD. The Central African Federation ceases to exist and splits into Rhodesia, Zambia and Malawi.

11. Year: 1983 AD. The AT&T Bell System is officially broken up by the U.S. Government.

12. Year: 1992 AD. Czechoslovakia is peacefully dissolved into Czech Republic and Slovakia.

13. Year: 1998 AD. The EER Mechanism freezes the values of the legacy currencies in the economic and monetary union of 17 European Union member states. It establishes the value of euro currency.

14. Year: 1999 AD. First president of Russia, Mr. Boris Yeltsin resigns.

15. Year: 2009 AD. Both a blue moon and a lunar eclipse occur.

Pakistani Taliban Leader Eliminated In Drone Strike

Hakimullah Meshud, the mastermind behind the terror attacks inside and outside Pakistan, is dead now. Both Pakistani and U.S. officials have confirmed this news on Friday. The strike was done in the region of North Waziristan and the Taliban leader was eliminated alongside four suspected militants. The Talibans confirmed that four missiles struck the compound just after Meshud's vehicle got in. However, the drone strikes have stirred up more controversies as many people view it as an infringement to the sovereignty and may kill civilians in the process and his death is a major setback in peace talks with the Pakistan Government. . The US National Counterterrorism Center describes Mehsud as "the self-proclaimed emir of the Pakistani Taliban." Mehsud is on the FBI's most-wanted terrorist list, with a $5 million dollar reward for information leading to his capture, and has been near the top of the CIA Counterterrorism Center's most wanted list for his role in the December 2009 suicide bombing that killed seven Americans — CIA officers and their security detail — at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan. The suicide bomber, a Jordanian double agent, was ushered into the military base to brief CIA officers on al-Qaida, and detonated his explosive vest once he'd reached the inside of the base. Pakistani Taliban leaders gathered on his funeral on Saturday. Residents of Miranshah, the capital of the North Waziristan region on the Afghan border, said Pakistani Taliban fighters were converging on the town for Mehsud's funeral and firing furiously at drones buzzing high in the sky.
 However, Shops and markets were open in the town. Residents said they were worried about a possible army offensive, but not Taliban reprisals. They expected the militants to launch attacks in Pakistani cities instead. The leader said two other militants had been discussed as possible leaders, one is  the ruthless commander for the Swat Valley, Maulana Fazlullah, whose men shot and wounded the famous schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai last year.

Recover Hidden Files From A Virus Infected Pen Drive: A Guide

These days people store all their movies, songs, games, photos, documents and other files in the USB flash drives or the pen drives. Gone are those days when a floppy disk's storage had meant a daylong work in an office. CD and DVD became the next media to store the information but due to their physical vulnerabilities and relatively lower storage. Now-a-days, USB flash drives have become the most reliable storage for all sorts of works. With the advent of the latest technologies, viruses also begin to infect the flash drives resulting in a los  of data or storing corrupted data.

If a person has a USB flash drive infected with worms/viruses which hides the files and folders and create .exe extension of the stored data, it can mean a lot of loss to him/her. Here is a solution to restore the data in its normal form:

Step-I: First of all, plug the USB device to the computer and run the anti-virus software on the computer and make the files infection free. The files still do not show up in the flash device window albeit the properties of the drive show a space used to store the data.

Step-II: Open the Command Prompt window and type F: or I: or which alphabet denotes the external drive.

Here the flash drive is denoted by F:.

Step-III: Then type attrib -s -h /s /d *.* and press the enter key. Wait for the changes to happen.

Step-IV: Check the recovered files in the drive and verify their locations.

All the files are restored properly.

Metonymy: The Concept & Uses

We use different expressions for making others aware of what we feel and what we would do. Younger people can talk with more simplicity, but adults, especially the teenaged ones prefer to draw their sentences with a twist. Bothering least about the most common expressions ( like: hey bro what's up? how are you doin'? you know that...whatever! etc.) we tend to increase our vocabulary and speak more intelligently and stylishly. With the advent of internet memes, sarcastic speeches (who can forget Heath Ledger's performance) and soliloquys, another figure of speech is as important as these, and this is "metonymy". A clear concept of metonymy is essential for mastering the English literature and presenting the humorous yet witty statements amidst a good conversation!

The words "metonymy" and "metonym" come from the Greek: μετωνυμία, metōnymía, "a change of name", from μετά, metá, "after, beyond" and -ωνυμία, -ōnymía, a suffix used to name figures of speech, from ὄνῠμα, ónyma or ὄνομα, ónoma, "name."

Metonymy is about the association between two concepts, without actually considering the similarity between those. According to Dirven, two examples using the term "fishing: clarify the distinction between a metaphor and a metonym. The phrase "to fish pearls" uses metonymy, drawing from "fishing" the idea of taking things from the ocean. What is carried across from "fishing fish" to "fishing pearls" is the domain of metonymy. In contrast, the metaphor "fishing for information" transfers the concept to a new domain.

Metonymy is slightly different from the concept of synecdoche, in fact the latter is a part of the previous. In synecdoche, a part of something is used to refer to the whole. Although, some people treat metonymy and synecdoche as two exclusive figures of speech which may or may not come to a sentence simultaneously. When the distinction is made, it is the following: when "A" is used to refer to "B", it is a synecdoche if A is a component of B or if B is a component of A, and a metonym if A is commonly associated with B but not part of its whole or a whole of its part.

As with other literary devices, one of the main purposes of using a metonymy is to add flavour to the speech and writing. Instead of just saying, "the staff at the post office" or naming all of the entities of a dinner each time you want to refer to the meal, one word plays the entire trick quite flawlessly!

Common examples of metonyms include:

"The pen is mightier than the sword."

"The White House will have an announcement on this Thursday."

"I went there at around six o' clock and drank a full glass!."

"Can you please lend me your hand to carry the luggage upstairs?"

"The library has fined the students who have made a delay in returning the books."

 

New Genus Discovered In The Halmahera Island Of Indonesia

A team of biologists has discovered a new genus of mammal in the Halmahera island, it is a type of rat! The endemic rodent is rather surprisingly close to the locality of Boki Mekot, a mountainous area under immense ecological threat due to mining and deforestation. The species was previously known to the people of that region only! It is a terrestrial spiny rat with brownish grey fur on its back and a greyish white belly, it also possesses a white tail tip. The leader of this successful project, Pierre Henry Fabre, affiliated to the "Centre for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate", states:
 “This new rodent highlights the large amount of unknown biodiversity in this Wallacean region and the importance of its conservation. It constitutes a valuable addition to our knowledge of the Wallacean biodiversity and much remains to be learned about mammalian biodiversity across this region. Zoologists must continue to explore this area in order to discover and describe new species in this highly diverse, but also threatened region.”

Apparently, this discovery massively supports Wallace's idea of faunal backup. Most of the species reflect their eastern originality, but this rat stands out for its western originality, as confirmed by the team of Pierre Henry Fabre.  This study also found that Wallace's zoogeographical boundaries are remarkably accurate! Pierre Henry Fabre expresses his thoughts:
 “Such a remarkable island setting inspired one of the greatest biologists of all time, and if Sir Alfred Russell Wallace were alive today he would surely be excited by the prospect of further conservation and biodiversity study within the Moluccas....”

This region had clearly inspired Sir Alfred Russell Wallace as he wrote his letter of evolution theory to Charles Darwin, back in 1858. The specifications of the fauna and flora and the biodiversity of this region made him to think deeper and he defined the zoogeographical boundaries using the concept of a "Wallace Line."

The Mpemba Efffect: Warmer Water Freezes Faster Than Colder Water

Tanzanian student Erasto Mpemba first encountered the situation while he was studying in Magamba Secondary School, in 1963. During a cookery class, he surprisingly found that a hot ice-cream mix freezes faster than a comparatively colder ice-cream mix! He and Dr. Denis Osborne investigated the matter and the phenomenon was confirmed by Dr. Osborne later. They produced a paper on the topic in 1969. Historically, it was first noted by Aristotle who explained it with a property called antiperistasis, modern science has dismissed this property of matter as an erroneous conception. Medieval scientist Francis Bacon wrote, "aqua parum tepida facilius conglacietur quam omnino frigida." It means that slightly tepid water freezes faster than very cold water. The pioneer of modern co-ordinate geometry Rene Descartes also noted this phenomenon and explained it with his theory of vortices. This theory expounds the nature of empty spaces and how it can be filled up with matter.

However, modern scientists have come up with a good number of explanations, which are dependant upon the experimental setup, dissolved air content in water, its purity, electrolytes dissolved in it and other relatable factors. Some of the most common explanations include:

1. Evaporation: Warmer water evaporates faster thus leaving a relatively smaller mass to be frozen. The endothermic nature of evaporation draws heat from the rest of the content. But this explanation is insufficient and unsatisfactory.

2. Supercooling: This hypothesis states that colder water in a low temperature environment supercools more than hot water and therefore it takes more time to solidify. But this theory does not explain the phenomenon wholly. Experiments that have utilized this theory have drawn significant differences in the conclusions. Scientist Auerbach noted supercooling near the wall in all cases during his experiment but Thomas reported no supercooling in the middle portion of the sample! The main problem is not exactly how supercooling can affect the freezing time but how supercooling is dependant upon the initial temperature. According to Dorsey's theory of phase transition, the temperature of supercooling can be affected by pre-heating. It may also vary by freezing and melting. This theory allows different portions of a bulk sample of liquid to vastly vary its supercooling properties. However, this theory allows no simple explanation to the understanding of the effect.

3. Effect of the Dissolved Solutes: This theory takes into account the effect of sodium, magnesium and other carbonate compounds and explains how these can affect the freezing properties of water.

4. Thermal Conductivity: The container of the hotter water may "melt" through a layer of frost which is an insulator. This allows the container to come in contact of a much colder layer. So, a faster process of cooling occurs. The lower temperature water will tend to freeze from the top but the hotter water will tend to freeze from the bottom.

5. Latent Heat of Condensation: The cooler container draws more condensation than the warmer container during the cooling cycle. This effectively reduces the rate of cooling. Mpemba effect is poorly understood from this theory!

According to J. D. Brownridge, "Hot water will freeze before cooler water only when the cooler water supercools, and then, only if the nucleation temperature of the cooler water is several degrees lower than that of the hot water. Heating water may lower, raise or not change the spontaneous freezing temperature." The fact that this phenomenon is not fully understood is an indication that fundamental problems lie beneath it. According to Monwhea Jeng, "Analysis of the situation is now quite complex, since we are no longer considering a single parameter, but a scalar function, and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is notoriously difficult."

So, there is always a scope to do this experiment and come up with a theory that would explain this phenomenon fully and be accepted universally. Research work on this field is going on and it is expected that new theories will arise from the current concepts and would possibly include a precise mathematical modelling to account for the discrepancies in the results that have come up over the decades. Will warmer water freeze faster than colder water in the near future? Surely yes!

 

Maintaining A Positive Water Balance: What It Means In A Broader Perspective

These phrases are now being heard in the media regularly: "global warming", "melting of polar ice", "unavailability of drinking water", "drought occurred at a large scale" etc. Worldwide, various organizations and Governments are addressing the intense situations. Droughts essentially weakens the production of various commodities, from vegetables to inks to soft drinks to papers and more. The farmers often suffer the worst alongside the economy and common people. Very recent events include:

1. Drought in the central United States expanded its range as a heatwave dried the last bit of moisture left in the soils and threatening the corn and soybean plants. Iowa of Minnesota, one of the largest grain production regions, is now experiencing a very hot summer, a record in the past 60 years! This drought is expanding towards Kansas & Texas.

2. Namibian drought has hit the country's livestock export badly and this year on two-thirds of the normal livestock export. The agricultural production to decline to by at least 6% as a result of this drought, which is the most intense one in the last 30 years. The authorities roughly predict that it will take around 5 years for the farmers to recoup their losses and this drought may worsen over the course of the next 5 years or so.

3. The increasing harsh climate combined with drought has worsened the scene in Iran. People in the northern provinces of the country are experiencing a hard time in coping up with this as the tea industry, the industry which offers them the most reliable income and job security, is badly suffering from it. Reports from the Iranian Association of Tea Farmers clearly state that the third harvest is stopped due to poverty and drought and the competitive international market is posing a big obstacle.

So, it is very necessary to maintain a positive water balance, both in homes and organizations, to mark a change which would be amplified in the near future as the world's freshwater resource is quickly depleting, global warming doing its part and polar ice melting to engulf the earth's rancour eyesores.

Therefore, a positive water balance should start from the grassroot level to expand into a broader perspective and millions of litres of freshwater can be saved and utilized worldwide over a due course of time. Rainwater harvesting, community water sheds alongside collection of surplus water from agricultural fields are the principal entities in having a positive water balance in a society/region. Also, minimizing the wastage of water in daily life is equally important in the context of this.
Rainwater harvesting can be broadly categorized into surface runoff water harvesting and roof water harvesting. In the roof water harvesting system, the "catchment" or the roof that is intended to receive the rainwater is selected and associated with the system, the other components of the system include a set of drainage pipes, a flushing device, filter, recharge unit and storage unit. Filtration is mainly done by sand-gravel filters, charcoal filters and sponge filters, the latter of which is very suitable for residential units. Percolation tanks are the most effective recharge units and are suitable for a large scale water harvesting system. In the surface runoff water harvesting system, similar procedures are followed but the filtration is more important as surface water is generally more contaminated than roof top water. This system is applicable to agricultural land surplus water, fresh water flooded forests and other places. Implementation of this system is very important as it would lower the risk of creating impervious surfaces, erosion and siltation. Increased runoff worsens groundwater recharge thus making droughts worse. Hortonian overland flow and Hewlettian runoff can also be minimized to a great extent and the collected water would be put into a number of industries, improving the efficiency of the production and promoting a steady water balance. Soil contaminants would not be able to get into various water bodies, thus minimizing the threat posed to aquatic organisms.

So, the initiation of the system is more important. Various NGOs and Governments are promoting rainwater harvesting and positive water balance. It would prevent floods, droughts, save aquatic organisms, help groundwater recharge and production of crops. It is the time for the common people to try this and make the world a better and healthier place in the future for the next generations of us.