Child prodigy: Aarifa Karim loses race for her life

Child prodigy: Aarifa Karim loses race for her life

LAHORE: Aarifa Karim Randhawa, the worlds youngest Microsoft certified professional lost the battle for her life after suffering from heart failure, her paternal uncle confirmed on Saturday.

On December 22, Aarifa was admitted to Lahore’s CMH hospital after suffering cardiac arrest. On December 29, doctors said there was no hope for her survival, and that her life support could be switched off ‘at any time’.

However, she had then miraculously responded to certain stimuli, as recently as January 13. Aarifa’s father, Amjad Karim Randhawa had said that she had shown the Plantar Reflex when her foot was stimulated. “Her toes curved slightly downward when her foot was tickled,” he said, adding that earlier she had exhibited the Corneal Reflex, whereby her eyes blinked a few times.

Doctors had said that her brain had shown activity over the past four days, making minor improvements.

When Aarifa, 16, was given the title of a Microsoft professional as a young child, she had visited the company’s headquarters in the US.  When she met Bill Gates himself, she had two questions: Why weren’t children allowed to work for Microsoft, and why such few women worked for the organisation.

Her love for technology, however, started long before she was recognised internationally. After discovering computers for the first time at the age of five, she pestered her father for a personal computer, and after that there was no looking back.

Aarifa’s father had earlier recalled the year in which his daughter passed the test which enabled her to be declared the youngest professional certified by Microsoft in the world. “When she passed the test at age nine, everyone thought the result was wrong,” he reminisced. She wanted to make software just like Bill Gates, he added. She would say that she wanted to work for children and poor people.

Proudly, he said she came from a ‘low-profile’ family, but she would always say she wanted to study all over the world and then come back to help the people in her village. Her dreams were never for herself alone.

Aarifa’s achievements go far beyond recognition from Microsoft alone. The 16-year-old, was a student of Lahore Grammar School’s Paragon campus, and had represented Pakistan in various international forums.  In 2005, the child prodigy received the Fatimah Jinnah Gold Medal from the government as well as the Salaam Pakistan Youth Award. In addition, she had received the president’s award for Pride of Performance, medals from IT professionals around the world, and also became a brand ambassador for PTCL in 2010.

Her talents were versatile. Besides excelling in the field of science and technology, Aarifa also flew a plane at the age of 10.

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Bill Gates contacts Arfa's father for treatment

Bill Gates contacts Arfa's father for treatment

LAHORE: Chairman of Microsoft, billionaire Bill Gates has made contact with the parents of the world's youngest Microsoft Certified Professional Arfa Karim for her treatment, Geo News reported.


According Arfa's father, Amjab Karim Randhawa, Bill Gates telephoned him and expressed his wish about Arfa's treatment in the US.


Gates has also directed his doctors to adopt every kind of measure for the treatment of the young genius Microsoft professional.


Gates' doctors contacted Arfa's Pakistani doctors and received details about the illness through the internet.


Meanwhile, Pakistani doctors are of the view that Arfa is on ventilator, therefore, it will be hard to shift her to any other hospital.

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Mars rover Opportunity finds 'most powerful' water clue

Nasa's Mars rover Opportunity has found slivers of a bright material that looks very much like it is gypsum (calcium sulphate).

If confirmed, it would be the most unambiguous signal of water activity yet found on Mars by this mission, which manages to keep on rolling.

Creaking and arthritic it may be, but after nearly eight years, the rover is still delivering remarkable science.

Lead scientist Steve Squyres said the find was "so cool".

"To me, this is the single most powerful piece of evidence for liquid water at Mars that has been discovered by the Opportunity rover," the Cornell University researcher told journalists.

"We have found sulphates before. Those sulphates were formed somewhere - we don't know where.

"They've been moved around by the wind, they've been mixed in with other materials - it's a big, jumbled-up, fascinating mess.

"This stuff formed right here. There was a fracture in the rock, water flowed through it, gypsum was precipitated from the water. End of story. There's no ambiguity."

 

Prof Squyres was giving an update on the rover mission here at the 2011 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, the largest annual gathering of Earth and planetary scientists.

Opportunity was put on the Red Planet back on 25 January, 2004, with the expectation that it would complete at least three months of operations.

But the robot has exceeded everyone's expectations and continues to operate despite some worn mechanisms and instrument glitches.

Since its landing on the Meridiani plain just south of Mars' equator, the robot has trundled more than 30km to the rim of a huge crater known as Endeavour.

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Microsoft Launches Customer Immersion Experience In Pakistan

KARACHI: With a continuous investment strategy for Pakistan, Microsoft launched its Customer Immersion Experience (CIE) facility on Wednesday, a platform that exclusively targets corporate customers and offers free demonstration of technologies.

“Seeing is believing. Lots of our customers are excited about our products but they want to experience it first, and that is what we are here to do today,” Sayed Hashish, General Manager, North Africa; East Mediterranean and Pakistan said at the launch ceremony.

The new CIE facility in Karachi which cost more than a million dollars, is a huge investment by Microsoft in Pakistan, Hashish said. CIE will have a great impact on customers in Pakistan, which remains the highest potential country in the region, he added.

Microsoft, currently partners with more than 7,000 clients in the country, believes there is great potential for growth in Pakistan, which is more stable than many other countries in the region, according to Hashish. Pakistan’s strategic location and its huge population makes it a high growth market for Microsoft, he added.

The purpose of the facility is to let users – IT managers of corporate firms in particular – experience a set of Microsoft technologies hands on, said country general manager Kamal Ahmed. Seeing how these products can help them communicate and manage information more efficiently within, he said, users can choose the ones that best fit their business needs.

Giving demos of two CIE products MS Outlook and MS Lync, he said the two together can help increase productivity a great deal.

A person can listen to voicemails – recorded on his office phone while away – through his inbox anywhere if he is logged in, he said. Additionally, if a customer or a colleague calls a manager at his office extension, he will receive the same call at his cell phone device in real time, he added.

Land of software developers

Pakistani software developers account for 40% of total software development in North Africa, East Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Africa, said Hashish.

“They developed many applications for Windows Phone even before its launch,” he added while talking to The Express Tribune on the backdrop of the launch.

Asked why Microsoft is investing in the country, he said there are two things that push them, sheer fact of talent capacity that exists in the country and the potential to grow.

Take the example of Windows Phone – that’s already launched in Pakistan it requires a lot of applications to build this product; a lot of these applications came from Pakistani IT students even before the launch of the product” he said, adding that talented pool of IT people helped us address both local and international markets.”   “We are in Pakistan for ten years now,” Hashish said, “we are here to stay for good and continue to invest in the country,” he added.

Source:Published in The Express Tribune, December 22^nd, 2011.

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Youtube With All new looks

Youtube With All new looks

One day ago You Tube has given a new and refresh look to the interface of the Social Video Sharing Site. The new interface is very attractive and has allot more new features added by the You Tube team.

These are the words from YouTube Officially about the new look “We’ve given YouTube a refresh. When you login, you’ll be greeted with recent activity from your subscriptions. You can also browse and add new Channels to your homepage. Connect with Google+ and Facebook to share your favorites with friends. There’s plenty to discover, so login and give it a spin.”
 

About your personal You Tube Home Page they wrote “Getting to the videos you want to watch is easier than ever. Sign in to subscribe to a Channel and add it to your homepage.”

About the redesign look of your favorite channel You Tube adds “Channels on YouTube were redesigned with you in mind, whether you watch videos, make them, or both. Everyone with a YouTube account has their very own Channel — sign in now to start personalizing your presence on YouTube.”

*Information from net (krazyme.co.cc is not resposible for any problem)

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K-COMPUTER; WORLD'S FASTEST MACHINE PERFORMING 10 QUADRILLION CALCULATIONS PER SECOND

K-COMPUTER; WORLD'S FASTEST MACHINE PERFORMING 10 QUADRILLION CALCULATIONS PER SECOND

TOKYO: A Japanese supercomputer has broken its own record as the world’s fastest machine by performing 10 quadrillion calculations per second, its developers announced.

The “K Computer”, which has more than 88,000 central processing units —the computer’s “brain” —compared with the fewer than four in the average desktop, smashed its own record of just over 8 quadrillion calculations during an experiment in October. A quadrillion is a thousand trillion.

Supercomputers operate roughly 10,000 times faster than ordinary personal computers.

Among other things, supercomputers are used by scientists investigating the effects of seismic waves and tsunamis to predict what effect they may have on buildings.

Ryoji Noyori, president of Riken, the company that jointly developed the machine alongside Fujitsu, said it was a landmark achievement in computing.“The K Computer is a key national technology that will help lay the foundation for Japan’s further progress,” he said on Wednesday.
"I am delighted that it has achieved its major objective, demonstrating our strong technical power.”

Source: Dawn news 2011/11/04

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Albanian makes world's largest coffee bean mosaic 

TIRANA: A mosaic made with a million coffee beans by Albanian artist Saimir Strati, depicting five musicians, entered the Guinness World Records Monday as the world's largest coffee bean mosaic. 
Strati used 140 kg (309 pounds) of coffee beans, some roasted black, some averagely and some not roasted at all, to portray a Brazilian dancer, a Japanese drummer, a U.S. country music singer, a European accordionist and an African drummer. 

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18 new planets discovered

HAWAII: Using twin telescopes at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, astronomers have discovered 18 new Jupiter-like planets orbiting massive stars. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), surveyed about 300 stars, and focussed on those dubbed “retired” A-type stars that are more than one and a half times more massive than the sun. These stars are just past the main stage of their life hence, “retired”, and are now puffing up into what’s called a subgiant star. “It’s the largest single announcement of planets in orbit around stars more massive than the sun, aside from the discoveries made by the Kepler mission,” John Johnson, first author on the paper, said. The Kepler mission is a space telescope that has so far identified more than 1,200 possible planets, though the majority of those have not yet been confirmed. To look for planets, the astronomers searched for stars of this type that wobble, which could be caused by the gravitational tug of an orbiting planet. By searching the wobbly stars’ spectra for Doppler shifts, the lengthening and contracting of wavelengths due to motion away from and toward the observer, the team found 18 planets with masses similar to Jupiter’s. According to Johnson, this new bounty marks a 50 percent increase in the number of known planets orbiting massive stars and, provides an invaluable population of planetary systems for understanding how planets, and our own solar system, might form. The researchers say that the findings also lend further support to the theory that planets grow from seed particles that accumulate gas and dust in a disk surrounding a newborn star. According to this theory, tiny particles start to clump together, eventually snowballing into a planet. If this is the true sequence of events, the characteristics of the resulting planetary system like the number and size of the planets, or their orbital shapes will depend on the mass of the star. In another theory, planets form when large amounts of gas and dust in the disk spontaneously collapse into big, dense clumps that then become planets. But in this picture, it turns out that the mass of the star doesn’t affect the kinds of planets that are produced. So far, as the number of discovered planets has grown, astronomers are finding that stellar mass does seem to be important in determining the prevalence of giant planets. The newly discovered planets further support this pattern, and are therefore consistent with the first theory, the one stating that planets are born from seed particles. “It’s nice to see all these converging lines of evidence pointing toward one class of formation mechanisms,” Johnson added. The study has been recently published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.

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NASA Develops Super-Black Material That Absorbs Light

 NASA Develops Super-Black Material That Absorbs Light

The team of engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., reported their findings recently at the SPIE Optics and Photonics conference, the largest interdisciplinary technical meeting in this discipline. The team has since reconfirmed the material's absorption capabilities in additional testing, said John Hagopian, who is leading the effort involving 10 Goddard technologists.

"The reflectance tests showed that our team had extended by 50 times the range of the material’s absorption capabilities. Though other researchers are reporting near-perfect absorption levels mainly in the ultraviolet and visible, our material is darn near perfect across multiple wavelength bands, from the ultraviolet to the far infrared," Hagopian said. "No one else has achieved this milestone yet."

The nanotech-based coating is a thin layer of multi-walled carbon nanotubes, tiny hollow tubes made of pure carbon about 10,000 times thinner than a strand of human hair. They are positioned vertically on various substrate materials much like a shag rug. The team has grown the nanotubes on silicon, silicon nitride, titanium, and stainless steel, materials commonly used in space-based scientific instruments. (To grow carbon nanotubes, Goddard technologist Stephanie Getty applies a catalyst layer of iron to an underlayer on silicon, titanium, and other materials. She then heats the material in an oven to about 1,382 degrees Fahrenheit. While heating, the material is bathed in carbon-containing feedstock gas.)
The tests indicate that the nanotube material is especially useful for a variety of spaceflight applications where observing in multiple wavelength bands is important to scientific discovery. One such application is stray-light suppression. The tiny gaps between the tubes collect and trap background light to prevent it from reflecting off surfaces and interfering with the light that scientists actually want to measure. Because only a small fraction of light reflects off the coating, the human eye and sensitive detectors see the material as black.
In particular, the team found that the material absorbs 99.5 percent of the light in the ultraviolet and visible, dipping to 98 percent in the longer or far-infrared bands. "The advantage over other materials is that our material is from 10 to 100 times more absorbent, depending on the specific wavelength band," Hagopian said.
"We were a little surprised by the results," said Goddard engineer Manuel Quijada, who co-authored the SPIE paper and carried out the reflectance tests. "We knew it was absorbent. We just didn't think it would be this absorbent from the ultraviolet to the far infrared."
If used in detectors and other instrument components, the technology would allow scientists to gather hard-to-obtain measurements of objects so distant in the universe that astronomers no longer can see them in visible light or those in high-contrast areas, including planets in orbit around other stars, Hagopian said. Earth scientists studying the oceans and atmosphere also would benefit. More than 90 percent of the light Earth-monitoring instruments gather comes from the atmosphere, overwhelming the faint signal they are trying to retrieve.

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