Japan takes another step in replacing humans with robots

Its makers, Kawada Industries and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), hope the robot will be a step towards creating a model that can help ease greying Japan's looming labour shortage.

"We designed a working robot in the image of a lean but well-muscled track-and-field athlete," Noriyuki Kanehira, robotic systems manager at Kawada, told a news conference to unveil the blue-and-white "HRP-4."

Designed to help researchers develop models that could replace humans in repetitive manual labour, the latest "athlete" model in a near 10-year-old series updates the feminine, catwalk-strutting, karaoke-singing HRP-4C.

But the tone this time is altogether more serious, according to a joint statement from its developers.
"It is Japan's urgent task for the early 21st Century to develop robots that could carry out simple, repetitive works ... in a bid to complement the workforce in a country that is rapidly ageing with fewer and fewer children".

Standing at 151 centimetres (59 inches) tall, the robot in a demonstration Wednesday stood on one foot, twisted its waist, struck poses, walked in accordance to given voice commands and moved its head to track objects.

The HRP-4 boasts joints that move more freely than its predecessors and can run a range of separately-developed software applications, its makers said.

Kawada and AIST will start selling the robot to universities and research institutes in Japan and abroad from January 2011.

The price tag for what is described as a "low cost" model is 26 million yen (306,000 dollars) each. Its creators hope to sell three-to-five units a year.

Now, a smartphone app that can measure pollutants in air

University of Southern California computer scientists hope that as many users as possible download and try it in order to improve the software.

Currently, the download works for smartphones running the Android system and soon will be widely available on Android app sources. An iPhone app is in the works.

The basic principle of the Visibility app is simple, according to the paper documenting the work by USC computer science professor Gaurav Sukhatme.

The user takes a picture of the sky while the sun is shining, which can be compared to established models of sky luminance to estimate visibility.

Visibility is directly related to the concentration of harmful "haze aerosols," tiny particles from dust, engine exhaust, mining or other sources in the air. Such aerosols turn the blue of a sunlit clear sky gray.

There is one caveat ” It has to be the right picture. The visibility/pollution models are based on the viewing geometry of the image and the position of the sun.

The Visibility app works because modern smartphones contain a rich set of sensors that include cameras, GPS systems, compasses and accelerometers, in addition to the powerful communication capabilities that are inspiring a slew of intelligent phone applications ranging from personal health monitoring to gaming and social networking.

Sameera Poduri, a postdoctoral researcher in Sukhatme''s lab, explained that the accelerometer in the phone - the sensor that tells how the user is holding the phone, determining whether it displays information vertically or horizontally - can "guide the user to point the camera in exactly the right direction."

The picture must be all or mostly sky, which makes a contribution from human user judgment critical.

"Several computer vision problems that are extremely challenging to automate are trivially solved by a human. In our system, segmenting sky pixels in an arbitrary image is one such problem. When the user captures an image, we ask him [or her] to select a part of the image that is sky," noted the research paper.

The accelerometers and the compass on the phone capture its position in three dimensions while the GPS data and time are used to compute the exact position of the sun.

The application automatically computes the camera and solar orientation, uploading this data along with the image ” a small (100KB) black-and-white file ” to a central computer.

The central computer analyzes the image to estimate pollutant content and returns a message to the user, as well as registering the information. (User identities are anonymized)

The system potentially can help fill in the many blanks in the existing maps of air pollution.

So far the results are promising, but they indicate that several improvements are possible.

Sukhatme said: "We''re sure we can improve it if we get people trying it and testing it and sending data." 

Alert!!! Be Aware While Using Public WiFi

People use public Wifi hotspots in Airports, Shopping malls and other places to connect internet to their laptops. They use internet to do online shopping and for online transactions with banks, for sending mails etc..

It is danger to access such Wifi hotspots as there is chance of accessing our PC by hackers. They can access our banking information and other important details easily through Wifi.An hacker can get the number of persons using the Wifi connection and they can easily enter into our PC if it is weak. If we dont have strong security it may leads to problem. Hackers can create free hotspots and we enter into their hotspot for browsing so that they can easily get hold in our PC.

It is better to use VPN network connection and it is strongly reccomended to use sufficient securities, firewalls etc to protect our valuable informations.

Hackers will sit in the same place and search for unsecured users and enter into their PC. TGhey can see the websites browsed by the user, Passwords entered etc...

So try to avoid public Wifi hotspots. If it is urgent then try to protect your PC with sufficient security softwares and use secured Wifi hotspots etc.. There may be several connections and among them some are secured and some are unsecured. Paid Wifis are some what secured than free.

Things to remember

Do not use free hotspots if you are using check whether it is genuine.
Use security softwares and Firewalls
Use VPN connections.
Dont keep or use banking sites using Wifi.

Eye Flu : Cause, Symptoms, Prevention and cure

Rainy season brings a lot of infections with it, One of the common infections is viral infection of eye called the eyes flu. Though eye flu can effect people of all ages but it is more common among children. Eye flue is an eye diseases also known as viral conjunctivitis.

Symptoms of Eye Flu.

• Red, swollen eyes.
• Watery discharge from eyes.
• Severe etching in eyes and/or pain in eyes.
• Blurring of vision.
• Lid Swelling.
• Feeling of discomfort.

Some facts about eye flu.

• The disease is caused by virus infection like adenovirus, herpes, simples virus, myxovirus and pox virus.
• The disease is highly infectious, so if somebody around you is infected there is a high risk of you getting infected. So take proper care in order to avoid the infection.
• There is a myth that the disease spreads just by looking into the eyes of an infected person. But this is not true.
• If somebody touches the infected eyes the fingers get infected and if it comes in contact of another person's eye he may get infected.
• One may also get infected from the swimming pool also.

Prevention of eye flu.

• Avoid going to a swimming pool which has regular chlorination of water.
• Avoid shaking hands esp. with the infected person. Wash your hand with soap after handshake with infected person.
• Clean your eyes with clean water 2-3 times a day.
• Don't use a common towel or handkerchief.

Treatment of eye flu.

• Wear dark goggles.
• Use anti-allergic eye drops three to four times a day.
• Close your eyes and apply ice wrapped in a cloth over the eye lids.
• The diseases are usually self limiting and normally go away in around three days.

Egg Test!!!!!

You must be aware of a simple process of checking whether that egg you bought to have a delicious omelet is stale or fresh. For those who don’t know, well you just need to put it in a glass of water. Stale egg floats in water while the fresh one sinks. So far so good.

But have you ever thought why this happens? Ok let me give you a hint. One thing that should immediately come to your mind is density. Since stale egg floats while fresh one sinks, that means it must be lighter than the fresh egg.

Now that we know what track to follow, let’s go into more detail and see what makes stale egg lighter than fresh one. As with any other fruit or vegetable, eggs also undergo decomposition with time. (In simple words, egg rots just like any fruit or vegetable rots with time). During the decomposition process water vapor and some foul-smelling gases are released (now you know how the phrase “smells like a rotten egg” came), which comes out of the porous egg shell. Thus the size of the yolk and egg-white reduces, its place being taken by air, thus making it lighter. This makes stale egg float in water.

I found an interesting  image from one of the sites showing how old an egg is depending on how it’s floating.

So next time when you get eggs from market, try this test out

Obama Uses 22 Pens To Sign!!!! Wondering

You must be aware that US president Obama signed the healthcare bill a couple of days back. But what you might not be aware of is the fact that he used not one or two but 22 different pens to sign the bill! Now that’s strange isn’t it? Even if he writes his complete name Barack Hussein Obama that comes out to be 18 characters. So that means he used more number of pens than letters in his name to sign the bill.




Before you start blaming the White House stationery supplier, let me tell you the reason behind using so many pens


The use of so many pens to sign was a result of a White House tradition wherein Presidents sign historical bills with multiple pens. The logic is clear. The pen used to sign a historical bill itself becomes historical and then these pens are given as souvenirs to people who played a vital role in creating the history.
The tradition was started by President Franklin Roosevelt and has been followed by others, though some, like George W. Bush, preferred signing bills with only one pen and then offering several unused "gift" pens as souvenirs.
If you think that 22 pens are too many for a signature, consider this- President Lyndon Johnson used 72 pens to sign the Civil Rights Act!
I was wondering how a signature looked like when signed with so many pens. So I searched for some picture showing Obama’s signature on the bill and finally I succeeded in getting one.

Just look at the letter ‘O’- it has so many breaks in it, indicating that the letters were not written in one shot. And for the record, it took one minute and 35 seconds to sign the bill !.

Read It Get It.

Oh yes you can! Anyone can really..
The trouble is no one is willing to teach anybody else how.

It's like you have a secret formula to make millions but if you shared it with people you would'nt make as much more anymore. So clearly when someone finds the formula to make thousands online they are not just gonna give it away. I make about $100-200 a month using 2 sites.

The main way I make money without paying anything is by articles promoting affiliate products. You have to be a good writer. Anything is possible, but it will not happen overnight. Making money online takes lots of hard work and time.

It depends on what type of program you choose to become involved with, but generally speaking, it is very possible to make 6k per month on the Internet doing anything as long as you put in a lot of time and effort, and maybe even some money to get it off the ground. You could make much more than that if you got involved with a good program, but no matter what way you want to go about it you are in the right place to learn how to make money online.

It is more than possible but to build an stable monthly residual income it can take few years.

You will also need to read a lot and stick to one or two companies only.

You will need to learn advertising skills and work A lot.
I suggest, Affiliate Marketing or MLM both are very stable but MLM is better for monthly residual income, Affiliate Marketing is more for Retail Sales. BE CAREFUL with some MLM companies. Some of them give the legit ones a bad name.

Yes, it is possible. I know some guys who earned more than this. All it takes is some effort and commitment to the work.

Capital YES to your question. Before you begin to reap $$$ you must have done a lot of hard work. Making money online is not as easy as a lot of people paint it but there are big rewards for working hard and will generate a lot of $$$.

Getting Traffic To Your Blogs or Websites

There are tons of ways to get new site traffic. Forums, blogs, press releases & articles can be great places to tell people about your site, attract new visitors and focus on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) But which methods have been most effective? Where does the bulk of your site traffic come from?
Blogging
Active in forums
Tell friends
Learn about Back Links
Link Exchange
Traffic Exchange
Classified Ads
Google
These places will give you the bulk of your traffic.

Avoid spamming because it isn't sustainable. The other methods named above will work excellent!

Usually using a combination of items and factors can bring great results. For example the blogs have been great especially if you are running a blog and manage to find other sites having similar contents to yours and then exchanging links with them because people can easily find and visit the blogs and this means traffic.

For New Bees In Online Earning.

OK, some of you out there are quite new and feel a little overwhelmed with all of these different sites people talk about and programs, frankly you don't know where to start.

- How much money can you make online?

- How do I receive payment? Is it through Paypal or can I ask for it in the mail?

- Where is the easiest place for a beginner such as myself to start making money online?

- Also with GPT programs, I do not want to recieve a bunch of junk in the mail, can I avoid this?

- I am under 18 years old, will this be a problem on any sites?

The amount of money you can make online depends entirely on how much time you spend on it and what methods you use. You can usually get paid through either method.

I would say it is best to start with paid surveys, if you are under 18.
For GPTs, they don't usually send junk mail. Junk email and telemarketing calls on the other hand are very common.

- How much money can you make online each month if you don't mind me asking?
As much as you are willing to work for. There is no limit, but it isn't easy either just like offline if you work hard and smart you can make any amount of money.

- How do I recieve payment? Is it through Paypal or can I ask for it in the mail?
It varies from site to site and every so often there's a new bunch coming around, but at the moment the most popular are paypal, alertpay, strict pay and a few others I can't recall right now. They're free to open an account with so you can basically have all of them set up. Also, many REAL programs will be happy to send you a check too.

- Where is the easiest place for a beginner such as myself to start making money online?
Get paid to (GPT) sites are free to join and make a few bucks. It's rare to make a living off of those since most people never get enough referrals, but it's a great starting point while you learn about other things.

- Are there any helpful guides/websites/posts that you recommend I should take a look at that might help me out?
My advice would be to find a person that's making a living online (careful as many say they do...) and follow their path. I did it that way and people are more than happy to guide me since they earn a referral commission in most cases. Without a good mentor I doubt I could've gotten to where I'm at now since I've been scammed many times before, it just makes things easier.

- Also with GPT programs, I do not want to receive a bunch of junk in the mail, can I avoid this?
I've been with a few GPTs and am still active with them. I've never really received any real mail (you better have a separate email account though...), but I've gotten a couple of phone calls. Usually if you just tell them you want to be removed from their database they won't call any more though.

- I am under 18 years old, will this be a problem on any sites?
Your age usually doesn't matter when you're doing business online. Especially if you're joining programs instead of starting your own. There are often residence restrictions, but if you're in the U.S. it shouldn't be a problem...

There are some scams out there. You need to be really careful to avoid such companies.

You can also try for Affiliate Programs. You can register to different affiliate programs and chose the products that you want to market. You do not need a website, the affiliate program will provide you with a link and you will earn commission on any sales made through that link. You can advertise the link for free through articles and forums.

Your income will depend on the time you are ready to spend being on the net and the quality of work. So don't be upset when you get less then you wanted to be. I guess that all of us had some problems before. Go Luck!

Read Carefully And Make Your Life Comfortable

Read what Warren Buffet, the world's third richest man's got to say to young people and future investors:

1. Money doesn’t create man, but it is the man who created money.

2. Live your life as simple as you are.

3. Don’t do what others say. Just listen to them, but do what makes you feel good.

4. Don’t go on brand name. Wear those things in which you feel comfortable.

5. Don’t waste your money on unnecessary things. Spend on those who really are
in need.

7 Never invest in a business you cannot understand.

8 Always invest for the long term.

9 Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls-Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.

10 If you’re doing something you love, you’re more likely to put your all into it, and that generally equates to making money.

11 Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can’t buy what is popular and do well.

12 In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run it is a weighing machine