Gangnam Style becomes YouTube's most-viewed video

Gangnam Style, the dance track by South Korean pop phenomenon Psy, has become YouTube's most-watched video of all time.

It has notched up more than 808m views since it was posted in July.
The video pokes fun at the consumerism of Gangnam, an affluent suburb of the South Korean capital Seoul.
In it, the portly Psy dances as though he is trotting on a horse, holding the reins and spinning a lasso in a manner that has sparked a global dance craze.
The video also features the 34-year-old singer reclining on a sun lounger in tight pink shorts, gazing longingly at a girl dancing on an underground train in tight shorts and gesticulating at a woman working out on a beach - in tight shorts.
The dance has sparked numerous copycat versions, being performed by a diverse fan-base including Filipino prison inmates, prominent Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and a Chinese robot.
Popular parodies include one performed by Eton College schoolboys and another in the Star Trek language Klingon.
Gangnam Style, which won best video at this year's MTV Europe Music Awards, has also been number one in 28 countries.
It holds the Guinness World Record for the most "liked" song ever - currently with a little under 5.4m likes on YouTube.
Previously, Justin Bieber's 2010 teenybopper hit Baby held the record for the most YouTube views.
Bieber's manager Scooter Braun was the first person in the US to tweet a link to the Gangnam Style video.
FROM: BBC NEWS

US school tag tracker project prompts court row

A court challenge has delayed plans to expel a Texan student for refusing to wear a radio tag that tracked her movements.

Religious reasons led Andrea Hernandez to stop wearing the tag that revealed where she was on her school campus.
The tags were introduced to track students and help tighten control of school funding.
A Texan court has granted a restraining order filed by a civil rights group pending a hearing on use of the tags.
ID badges containing radio tags started to be introduced at the start of the 2012 school year to schools run by San Antonio's Northside Independent School District (NISD). The tracking tags gave NISD a better idea of the numbers of students attending classes each day - the daily average of which dictates how much cash it gets from state coffers.
'Mark of the beast' Introducing the tags led to protests by some school students at John Jay High School - one of two schools out of 112 in the NISD catchment area piloting the tags.
Ms Hernandez refused to wear the tag because it conflicted with her religious beliefs, according to court papers. Wearing such a barcoded tag can be seen as a mark of the beast as described in Revelation 13 in the Bible, Ms Hernandez's father told Wired magazine in an interview.
NISD suspended Ms Hernandez and said she would no longer be able to attend the John Jay High School unless she wore the ID badge bearing the radio tag. Alternatively it said Ms Hernandez could attend other schools in the district that had not yet joined the radio tagging project.
The Rutherford Institute, a liberties campaign group, joined the protests and went to court to get a restraining order to stop NISD suspending Ms Hernandez.

Ms Hernandez refused to wear a name tag containing an RFID (radio-frequency identification) chip

A district court judge has granted the restraining order so Ms Hernandez can go back to school and ordered a hearing next week on the NISD radio tag project.
The Rutherford Institute said the NISD's suspension violated Texan laws on religious freedom as well as free speech amendments to the US constitution.
"The court's willingness to grant a temporary restraining order is a good first step, but there is still a long way to go - not just in this case, but dealing with the mindset, in general, that everyone needs to be monitored and controlled," said John Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute in a statement.
Mr Whitehead said student tagging and locating projects were the first step in producing a "compliant citizenry".
"These 'student locator' programmes are ultimately aimed at getting students used to living in a total surveillance state where there will be no privacy, and wherever you go and whatever you text or email will be watched by the government," he said.
From: BBC NEWS

Autorhythmic Deep into spinal nerve

Scientists from the University of Leicester have hit upon unique forms of spinal nerve activity that shape output of nerve cell networks controlling motor behaviours.
The breakthrough in the Department of Biology at the University of Leicester was announced Nov 8 in the journal Current Biology.
Although the neural basis of motor control has been studied for over a century, the processes controlling maturation of locomotor behaviours -- like walking and swimming -- are not fully understood.
The University of Leicester research into nerve cells responsible for motor behaviours was carried out on fish. The team aimed to understand how spinal networks produce rhythmic activity from a very immature stage -- and how such activity changes during maturation.
The team used zebrafish, a freshwater fish native to northern India and Bangladesh, because their motor networks are similar to humans. However, as they are fertilized outside the mother and their embryos are transparent, scientists can readily monitor motor network development from its onset -- something that is very difficult to do in mammals.
Lecturer in Neurobiology, Dr Jonathan McDearmid, who led the research, said: "What's unique about our work is the observation that a group of spinal nerve cells generate unusual forms of electrical activity that adapt to meet the changing requirements of the developing motor network.

Source: Science Daily

Entangled, Twisted Entanglement gets extra twist

Quantum physics is the science of the very small. But physicists are making it bigger, setting records for the size and energies of objects they can get to exhibit quantum effects.
Now physicists at the University of Vienna in Austria have "virtually intertwined" or entangled two particles spinning faster than ever in opposite directions. Entanglement occurs when two particles remain connected so that actions performed on one affect the other, despite the distance between them. (Einstein referred to this eerie connection as "spooky action at a distance.")
In the new study, Anton Fickler and his colleagues entangled two photons that had a high orbital angular momentum, a property that measures the twisting of a wave of light. In quantum physics, particles such as photons can behave as particles and waves.
"It's a stepping stone on the development of new technologies," said Anton Zeilinger, director of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information and a co-author of the study, which is detailed in the Nov. 5 issue of the journal Science.
Such entanglement experiments have been carried out for decades. In this case, though, the researchers did something a bit different. They created entangled photons and gave them lots of angular momentum, more than in any experiment before.
Usually the energy contained in a photon is very small: its quantum number is low. At higher energies, this changes. Quantum physics and "normal" or classical physics start to look similar when quantum numbers get high; this is called the correspondence principle, and it applies to many areas of physics.
To create entangled photons, Fickler and his team sent a laser through a beam splitter, dividing the laser beam into two. Two photons were sent down separate optical fibers and their waves were twisted, and twisted, and twisted some more, ramping up their angular momentum imagine a wave shaped like a spiral, spinning faster and faster. [Twisted Physics: 7 Mind-Blowing Findings]
Eventually, there was enough angular momentum in the photons that their quantum numbers the units their momentum is measured in differed by a factor of 600, a higher value than any seen previously. The photons spinning rapidly in opposite directions, meanwhile, were still entangled.
They knew this because when particles are entangled, measuring the quantum state (in this case the angular momentum and orientation) of one particle immediately tells you the quantum state of the other, no matter where it is. Since they had the ability to measure both the researchers could confirm entanglement.
(Though this transfer of information between the particles is instantaneous, entanglement can't be used for faster-than-light communication because it is impossible to set the quantum state beforehand, as you would in a message).
This shows that entanglement effects can be seen at high energies, meaning closer to the macroscopic world we all know and interact with. "It means we have to take the correspondence principle with a large grain of salt," Zeilinger said.
Just as importantly, the experiment shows that the only barrier to applying certain kinds of quantum effects ins technical there is no physical reason that one shouldn't be able to see quantum phenomena at high enough energies that they would bleed into the visible world, though that will take some time to do.

Entangled, Twisted Entanglement gets extra twist

Quantum physics is the science of the very small. But physicists are making it bigger, setting records for the size and energies of objects they can get to exhibit quantum effects.
Now physicists at the University of Vienna in Austria have "virtually intertwined" or entangled two particles spinning faster than ever in opposite directions. Entanglement occurs when two particles remain connected so that actions performed on one affect the other, despite the distance between them. (Einstein referred to this eerie connection as "spooky action at a distance.")
In the new study, Anton Fickler and his colleagues entangled two photons that had a high orbital angular momentum, a property that measures the twisting of a wave of light. In quantum physics, particles such as photons can behave as particles and waves.
"It's a stepping stone on the development of new technologies," said Anton Zeilinger, director of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information and a co-author of the study, which is detailed in the Nov. 5 issue of the journal Science.
Such entanglement experiments have been carried out for decades. In this case, though, the researchers did something a bit different. They created entangled photons and gave them lots of angular momentum, more than in any experiment before.
Usually the energy contained in a photon is very small: its quantum number is low. At higher energies, this changes. Quantum physics and "normal" or classical physics start to look similar when quantum numbers get high; this is called the correspondence principle, and it applies to many areas of physics.
To create entangled photons, Fickler and his team sent a laser through a beam splitter, dividing the laser beam into two. Two photons were sent down separate optical fibers and their waves were twisted, and twisted, and twisted some more, ramping up their angular momentum imagine a wave shaped like a spiral, spinning faster and faster. [Twisted Physics: 7 Mind-Blowing Findings]
Eventually, there was enough angular momentum in the photons that their quantum numbers the units their momentum is measured in differed by a factor of 600, a higher value than any seen previously. The photons spinning rapidly in opposite directions, meanwhile, were still entangled.
They knew this because when particles are entangled, measuring the quantum state (in this case the angular momentum and orientation) of one particle immediately tells you the quantum state of the other, no matter where it is. Since they had the ability to measure both the researchers could confirm entanglement.
(Though this transfer of information between the particles is instantaneous, entanglement can't be used for faster-than-light communication because it is impossible to set the quantum state beforehand, as you would in a message).
This shows that entanglement effects can be seen at high energies, meaning closer to the macroscopic world we all know and interact with. "It means we have to take the correspondence principle with a large grain of salt," Zeilinger said.
Just as importantly, the experiment shows that the only barrier to applying certain kinds of quantum effects ins technical there is no physical reason that one shouldn't be able to see quantum phenomena at high enough energies that they would bleed into the visible world, though that will take some time to do.

Split Empire New emperor penguin colonies

Researchers have finally found a long-sought colony of emperor penguins in eastern Antarctica, but they say it's been split in two due to a glacier break. Moreover, a tally of the 6,000 chicks among these two populations suggests there are more emperor penguin parents in this part of the frozen continent than previously thought.
French scientists spied the waddling, flightless birds on winter sea ice near the Mertz Glacier while on their way to Dumont d'Urville Station. (The documentary "March of the Penguins" was filmed near this research base.)

Now Na Lada El Niño may say adios

Adios, El Niño. Forecasters have called off predictions for a wet winter in the West, finally acceding that ocean temperatures in the Pacific show no signs of the infamous El Niño phenomenon.
Weather experts at the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) first warned of developing El Niño conditions in June. An El Niño is the warming of the equatorial Pacific Ocean, which results in major droughts in Southeast Asia and wet winters for the southwestern United States. In a boon for the battered Northeast, an El Niño would have meant less wintry weather there.
But in the following months, sea-surface temperatures failed to warm enough to shift global weather patterns. In early October, the CPC dropped the odds of an El Niño from 70 percent to 55 percent.
Finally, the CPC, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), called off the El Niño forecast Thursday (Nov. 9). "The previous El Niño watch has been discontinued as the chance of El Niño has decreased," the CPC said yesterday in its monthly report.
While the chances of El Niño seem nil, the CPC said tropical ocean temperatures may still remain above average.
Instead of El Niño, NOAA predicts that the neutral phase of the El Niño/ La Niña Southern Oscillation (ENSO) index will prevail. Jokingly called "La Nada," it is the neutral middle ground between El Niño and La Niña (associated with cool water in the equatorial Pacific).
El Niño expert Bill Patzert first pegged the La Nada back in June. "The equatorial Pacific is neutral, with no El Niño developing... not even a hint," said Patzert, of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., in June. Even as ocean temperatures warmed slightly, Patzert said he maintained the call.

Source: Live Science

Death Spiral Corals send chemical SOS

When a killer seaweed touches a kind of spiky coral, the coral pushes a chemical panic button that brings small resident fish to the rescue.
Unchecked, seaweed algae can overrun a coral reef, as the community dwindles in “a descent into slime,” says marine ecologist Mark Hay of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. But within 15 minutes of contact with a toxin-making seaweed, an Acropora nasuta coral releases compounds that prompt goby fish to seek out and trim back the seaweed, Hay and colleague Danielle Dixson report in the Nov. 9 Science.
“We've lost about 80 percent of the living coral in the Caribbean and 50 percent in the western Pacific,” says coral biologist Nancy Knowlton of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. “So a better understanding of what keeps corals healthy is essential.”
In reefs, corals and the seaweed algae that form lawns or shrubby thickets compete for light and space. As coral reefs decline from pollution, overfishing, climate change and other insults, biologists have seen swaths of seaweed take over. Lush seaweed intrusions repel or smother larval corals, accelerating what Hay calls the reef “death spiral.”

Source: Science News

Green agriculture with plastic

Plastic is usually considered to be a big threat to the environment as it is not usually degradable. But a lot of improvement has been made in recent years in the plastic sector and its use in agriculture is increasing very rapidly throughout the world. Bangladesh is no exception in this regard. Its use in agriculture, called plasticulture, in the form of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipes for deep tubewell (DTW) and shallow tubewell (STW), buried pipe for underground water distribution system for irrigation, flexible PVC pipes for conveyance of water of STWs and DTWs, and polybags for raising seedlings became very common in Bangladesh. In protected agriculture, vegetables and small fruit are grown giving some kind of protection from adverse weather like rainfall, temperature, wind, diseases, insects, water logging, etc. all of which seriously affect crop yield. In this system, crops are shaded by plastic sheets put on top of structure made of bamboo or galvanized iron pipes. Summer tomato is grown commercially in this system. All these uses have made agricultural operations easier and cost effective.
The first use of plastics in agriculture was in 1948 to make cheaper version of glasshouse. By 1999 almost 12 million hectares worldwide were covered in plastic mulch. The majority of the growth of plasticulture has happened in China, Japan and Korea. In Middle East and Africa, areas are increasing at 15-20 per cent per year compared to 30 per cent in China. In southern Spain around Almeria, the driest area of Europe, plasticulture is growing very rapidly to grow different crops. The area, previously non-cultivable due to shortage of water, became green due to plasticulture.
Technologies developed for other uses of plastics are:
Drip irrigation: In research fields, drip irrigation method has been used in Bangladesh for increasing the water and fertilizer use efficiencies of high value crops like aubergine, papaya, banana, guava, lemon, orange, etc., for more than a decade. It is a technically suitable and economically viable technology. It saves 60 per cent urea and 46 per cent water. Tubes, drippers and water tanks for drip irrigation are made of plastics.
Row covers: For vegetable production, row covers are used as a protective covering to shield plants primarily from the undesirable effects of cold and wind, and also from insect damage. Polyethylene and polypropylene are commonly used, which are very lightweight, often placed on wire loops to form low tunnels. It is left in place for several weeks until crops are well established. Sunlight, rain and air can penetrate through the shading material.
High tunnels: It is a tunnel made of polyethylene and iron or bamboo structure, usually semicircular, square or elongated in shape. Its height is lower than greenhouse and higher than row covers. The interior heats up because incoming solar radiation from the sun warms plants, soil and others inside the tunnel faster than heat can escape. This heating aspect made high tunnels popular in temperate region. In Bangladesh, India and many Asian countries, it is used to grow tomato during rainy season.
Plastic mulches: It is used in similar fashion to other mulches, to reduce evaporation from soil surface and to suppress weeds and insects. Besides, use of drip irrigation in conjunction with plastic mulch allows one to reduce leaching of fertilizers. It keeps ripening fruit and vegetables out of soil that ultimately decreases rotting and keeps them clean. Also it reduces soil compaction and root damage, increases crop yield, and ensures early harvest.
More uses of plasticulture are waiting for Bangladesh. Research and pilot-scale study have recently been started on new types of use.

The writer is former DG, BARI

Nokia continues its downward slide, now at No 7

According to the Gartner's report, "Nokia, which is still the No 1 mobile phone manufacturer in India, is struggling in the worldwide Smartphone market. The Finnish handset company has now slipped to No 7 position from its earlier No 3 ranking in last quarter itself, i.e. in just three months".
This is regardless of a better than expected sales of Asha series of phones which in fact helped the company lessen the market share loss which otherwise would have pushed Nokia out of number 10 rankings.
As per the report, "Globally sales of mobile phones declined 3 per cent in third quarter of 2012. At the same time, Smartphone sales increased 47 per cent compared to last year. Smartphone sales accounted for 39.6 per cent of total mobile phone sales; however the growth could be hampered by the rise of tablets in the subsequent quarters ".
For Nokia, this change in choice of phones means that the segment in which it is best-selling - i.e. feature phones with its Asha series of full touch phone, is actually fast decreasing. Smartphone’s segment, where Nokia holds very small market share is actually increasing very fast. Presently Nokia has 19.2 per cent market share as compared to 23.9 per cent last year.
On the other hand, Samsung has increased its lead further in Smartphone’s and has overtaken Nokia in overall sales in last couple of quarters. Overall it has 22.9 per cent market share while in Smartphone space Apple contributes 46.5 per cent sales.
As stated by the analyst in Gartner, "Smartphone’s continued to fuel sales of mobile phones worldwide with sales rising to 169.2 million units in the third quarter of 2012. The Smartphone market was dominated by Apple and Samsung. "Both vendors together controlled 46.5 per cent of Smartphone market leaving a handful of vendors fighting over a distant third spot".
He further added, "RIM moved to the No 3 spot with HTC not far behind, at No 4. "Both HTC and RIM have seen their sales declining in past few quarters, and the challenges might prevent them from holding on to their current rankings in coming quarters.”
As per the Gartner analysts, “There will be a lower-than-usual boost from the holiday season. Consumers are either cautious with their spending or finding new gadgets like tablets, as more attractive presents.”
Samsung's mobile phones sales continued to pick up the pace, adding up almost 98 million units in the third quarter of 2012, up 18.6 per cent year-on-year. Samsung saw strong demand for Galaxy Smartphone’s across different price points, and it further widened the gap with Apple in the Smartphone market, which sold 55 million Smartphone’s in the third quarter of 2012. Samsung commanded 32.5 per cent of the global Smartphone market in the third quarter of 2012.
In the third quarter of 2012, Nokia's mobile phone sales declined 21.9 per cent, but overall sales at 82.3 million were far better than Gartner's early estimate, largely driven by increased sales of the Asha full touch range.
This as bad quarter for the Nokia with Smartphone sales as they went on the No 7 position worldwide with 7.2 million Smartphone’s sold in the third quarter. The arrival of the new Lumia devices on Windows 8 should help to stop the decline in share in the fourth quarter of 2012, although it won't be until 2013 to see a noteworthy improvement in Nokia's position.
Apple's sales to end users added to 23.6 million units in the third quarter of 2012, up 36.2 per cent year-on-year. As per the Gartner analysts, “With iPhone 5 launching in more territories in the fourth quarter of 2012, including China, and the upcoming holiday season, it is expected that Apple will have its traditionally strongest quarter.” Gartner report also mentioned that Android continued to increase its market share, up 19.9 per cent points in the third quarter of 2012. Although RIM lost market share, it climbed to the No 3 position as Symbian is nearing the end of its lifecycle.
Gartner analysts expect that with the launch of iPhone 5 iOS’s share will grow strongly in the fourth quarter of 2012 because users held on to their replacements in many markets ahead of the iPhone 5 wider roll out. Windows Phone's share weakened quarter-on-quarter as the Windows Phone 8 launch dampened demand of Windows Phone 7 devices.