Saturday, May 22, 2010

Google Buzz ના બાજોઠ પરથી ...

આવી રહી છે નવી સીરીયલ સબ ટીવી પર : शाहबुद्दीन राठोड की रंगीन दुनिया ! 05/19/10
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While moving to a message from Spam to Inbox in Hotmail I got this strange message or one more reason why not to use hotmail:
We've moved the message to your inbox. To make sure the sender's messages never go to Junk, add them to your safe senders list. Unfortunately, since you already have 500 safe senders, you will need to remove some safe senders first. 05/18/10
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Students get free Google Voice account at http://www.google.com/googlevoice/students.html 05/15/10
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No one wins awards for coming in on time, under budget and exceeding expectations. They get awards for working 100hours a week 'fixing' something that should never have been done in the first place. 05/13/10
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This is what Adobe has to say to Apple ! New commercial appeared on many websites. 05/13/10
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માણિકચંદ જૂથ કેન્સરના ઈલાજ માટે વલસાડમાં આયુર્વેદ કોલેજ ખોલશે !
- લાંબુ જીવો, પછી ભલે હોસ્પીટલમાં જીવો, પણ માણિકચંદ ખાતાં રહો ! 05/11/10
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Where there is money involved, especially large sums, corruption is not far behind.

Front Page story of NYT about IPL by JIM YARDLEY
Edit
The allegations of graft in the India Premier League of cricket highlights how much the often corrupt elite still dominates the country. 05/11/10
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Magic of American employment numbers. 2,90,000 jobs created in April 2010. Unemployment rate up by 0.11% !! 05/07/2010 
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An American replied the other, 'I trust you but somehow I trust these machines more'.
- Heard at Wallmart 04/30/2010

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McKinsey says GDP of Ahmedabad is at $59B. We are just $160B and 7ranks behind Mumbai! 04/23/10
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Akila declared Reliance Industries quarterly result one day in advance!
http://www.akilaindia.com/2204/news_html/main27.html
  04/22/10

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IPL: a game of Spat-men-ship! You thought Cricket is a game of sports-man-ship ? 04/22/10
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C.K.Prahalad asked for way to save water while cooking rice and here is the answer. My way to remember CK!
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/innovation-at-the-bottom-of-pyramid/#more-23837
http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/10jan2010/15.pdf
04/22/10

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Sheela Bhatt's investigative report on IPL Kand.
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Bank Of Baroda is among world's Forbes Top 2000 at rank# 892 ! Jai Gujarat :) :)  04/22/10
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લાંબા પ્રવચનો કરનાર નિત્યાનંદ અત્યારે એક જ વાકયમાં ઉપદેશ આપે છે કે ઈશ્વરને શોધવો સહેલો છે, પણ છુપાયેલા કેમેરાને શોધવો અઘરો છે. - Jagdish Trivedi  04/21/10
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વાંચે ગુજરાત !   04/16/10


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Google as a calculator! Try searching this: 5*9+(sqrt 10)^3.  04/15/10
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Live-in relationship: બીના ફેરે, સાથે ફરે!
- બાએ મારી બાઉન્ડ્રી નાટકનો ડાયલોગ  04/14/10
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAl28d6tbko

Time to market & innovation!
  04/11/10
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Thursday, May 20, 2010

Synthetic Cells Created

Heralding a new era in biology, scientists for the first time have created a synthetic cell, completely controlled by man-made genetic instructions, which can survive and reproduce itself, researchers at the private J. Craig Venter Institute announced Thursday.

0520live2

"We call it the first synthetic cell," said genomics pioneer Craig Venter, who oversaw the project. "These are very much real cells."

Created at a cost of $30 million, this experimental one-cell organism opens the way to the manipulation of life on a previously unattainable scale, several researchers and ethics experts said. Scientists have been altering DNA piecemeal for a generation, producing a menagerie of genetically engineered plants and animals, but the ability to craft an entire organism offers a new power over life, they said.

The accomplishment, documented in the peer-reviewed journal Science, may stir anew nagging questions of ethics, law and public safety about artificial life that biomedical experts have been publicly debating for more than a decade.

"This is literally a turning point in the relationship between man and nature," said molecular biologist Richard Ebright at Rutgers University, who wasn't involved in the project. "For the first time, someone has generated an entire artificial cell with pre-determined properties."

David Magnus, director of the Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics, said, "It has the potential to transform genetic engineering. The research is going to explode once you can create designer genomes."
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Electron micrograph of dividing synthetic Mycoplasma mycoides bacterial cells

Leery of previous moral and ethical questions about whether it is right to manipulate life forms—raised with the advent of cloning, stem-cell technology and genetic engineering—other researchers groped for neutral terms to describe the experimental cell. "I don't think it represents the creation of an artificial life form," said biomedical engineer James Collins at Boston University. "I view this as an organism with a synthetic genome, not as a synthetic organism. It is tough to draw where the line is."

Although the new cell, a form of bacteria, was conceived solely as a demonstration project, several biologists were certain that the laboratory technique used to birth it would soon be applied to other strains of bacteria with commercial potential. "I think this quickly will be applied to all the most important industrial bacteria," said biologist Christopher Voigt at the University of California, San Francisco, who is developing microbes that help make gasoline.

Already several companies are seeking to take advantage of the new field, called synthetic biology, which combines chemistry, computer science, molecular biology, genetics and cell biology to breed industrial life forms that can secrete fuels, vaccines or other saleable products.

Indeed, Synthetic Genomics Inc., a company founded by Dr. Venter, funded the experiments and owns the intellectual property rights to the cell-creation techniques. The company has a $600 million contract with Exxon Mobil Corp. to design algae that can capture carbon dioxide and make fuel.

Although patents on single genes now face legal challenges, Dr. Venter said he intended to patent his experimental cells. "They are pretty clearly human inventions," he said.
0520olive3
J. Craig Venter Institute
The announcement Thursday was the culmination of a project Dr. Venter and his colleagues have pursued since 1995. In a series of peer-reviewed papers, the group has openly published the interim technical steps. So far, that research has withstood scrutiny. The latest research was reviewed by a panel of independent scientists and the research materials are made public as a condition of publication in the journal.

To make the synthetic cell, a team of 25 researchers at labs in Rockville, Md., and San Diego, Calif., led by bioengineer Daniel Gibson and Dr. Venter essentially turned computer code into a new life form. They started with a species of bacteria called Mycoplasma capricolum and, by replacing its genome with one they wrote themselves, turned it into a customized variant of a second species called Mycoplasma mycoides, they reported.
0520life4
Bloomberg News
To begin, they wrote out the creature's entire genetic code as a digital computer file documenting more than one million base pairs of DNA in a biochemical alphabet of adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine. They edited that file, adding new code, and then sent that electronic data to a DNA sequencing company called Blue Heron Bio in Bothell, Wash., where it was transformed into hundreds of small pieces of chemical DNA, they reported.

To assemble the strips of DNA, the researchers said they took advantage of the natural capacities of several types of existing cells to meld genes and chromosomes: They used yeast and e. coli bacteria to stitch those short sequences into ever-longer fragments until they had assembled the complete genome, as the entire set of an organism's genetic instructions is called.

They transplanted that master set of genes into an emptied cell, where it converted the cell into a different species.
What makes a big part of this possible is the enormous increase in computing power over the last few years, and it's what will continue to make advances like this appear at a faster clip. The singularity approaches.


"We make a genome from four bottles of chemicals; we put that synthetic genome into a cell; that synthetic genome takes over the cell," said Dr. Gibson. "The cell is entirely controlled by that new genome."

The cells reveal nothing of their novelty to the naked eye. They are so primitive they even lack a cell membrane.

The scientists didn't give the new organism its own species name, but they did give its synthetic genome an official version number, like the prototype of a computer software operating system. The genome is called Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0.

To set this novel bacterium—and all its descendants—apart from any natural creation, Dr. Venter and his colleagues wrote their names into the creature's chemical DNA code, along with three apt quotations. "They put some poetry into the genome," said Dr. Voigt.

The scientists also encoded an email address and the name of a website, so that anyone who successfully deciphered the quotations hidden in the genome could notify the scientists.

More importantly, these genetic watermarks allow the researchers to pick out their cells from among more natural varieties and, eventually, to assert ownership. "You have to have a way of tracking it," said Stanford ethicist Mildred Cho, who has studied the issues posed by the creation of such organisms.
  
( From www.wsj.com )

Finally, TV meets Web


Google announced Google TV this morning. They got help from Sony, Intel, BestBuy and Logitech. Since the starting of internet era, people been talking about merging TV and internet. Finally, we reached there!

As CEO Google Eric mentioned in his presentation, its a marriage  between 50 years old technology with the very young technology.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

ભગવાનને પત્ર

પ્રિય મિત્ર ભગવાન,


જયભારત સાથ જણાવવાનું કે હું તારા ભવ્ય મંદિરથી થોડે દૂર આવેલી એક સરકારી શાળાના ૭માં ધોરણમાં ભણુ છું. મારા પિતાજી દાણાપીઠમાં મજૂરી કરે છે અને મારી માં રોજ બીજાનાં ઘરકામ કરવા જાય છે.


’હું શું કામ ભણું છું’ એની મારા માં-બાપને ખબરનથી. કદાચ શિષ્યવૃતિના પૈસા અને મફત જમવાનું નિશાળમાંથી મળે છે એટલે મારા માં-બાપ મને રોજ નિશાળે મોકલે છે. ભગવાન, બે-ચાર સવાલો પૂછવા માટે મેં તને પત્ર લખ્યો છે. મારા સાહેબે કિધુ’તુ કે તુ સાચી વાત જરૂર સાંભળે છે…!

પ્રશ્ન-૧. હું રોજ સાંજે તારા મંદિરે આવું છું અને નિયમિત સવારે નિશાળે જાવ છું પણ હે ભગવાન તારી ઉપર આરસપહાણનું મંદિરને એ.સી. છે અને મારી નિશાળમાં ઉપર છાપરુ’ય કેમ નથી…દર ચોમાસે પાણી ટપકે છે, આ મને સમજાતુ નથી…!


પ્રશ્ન-૨. તને રોજ ૩૨ ભાતનાં પકવાન પીરસાય છે ને તુંતો ખાતો’ય નથી…અને હું દરરોજ બપોરે મધ્યાહ્મ ભોજનના એક મુઠ્ઠી ભાતથી ભૂખ્યો ઘરે જાઉં છું…! આવું કેમ…?


પ્રશ્ન-૩. મારી નાની બેનનાં ફાટેલા ફ્રોક ઉપર કોઈ થીગડુ’ય મારતું નથી અને તારા પચરંગી નવાનવાં વાઘા…! સાચું કહું ભગવાન હું રોજ તને નહી, તારા કપડા જોવા આવું છું…!

પ્રશ્ન-૪.તારા પ્રસંગે લાખો માણસો મંદિરે સમાતા નથી અને ૨૬મી જાન્યુઆરી અને ૧૫મી ઓગસ્ટે જ્યારે હું બે મહિનાથી મહેનત કરેલું દેશ ભક્તિગીત રજું કરુ છું ત્યારે, સામે હોય છે માત્ર મારા શિક્ષકો…ને બાળકો…હે ઈશ્વર તારા મંદિરે જે સમાતા નથી ઈ બધાય “મારા મંદિરે” કેમ આવતા નથી…!


છેલ્લો પ્રશ્ન

પ્રશ્ન-૫. તને ખોટુ લાગે તો ભલે લાગે પણ મારા ગામમાં એક ફાઇવસ્ટાર હોટલ જેવું મંદિર છે’ને એક મંદિર જેવી પ્રાથમિક શાળા છે. પ્રભુ! મેં સાભળ્યું છે કે તું તો અમારી બનાવેલી મૂર્તિ છો, તો’ય આવી જલજલાટ છો અને અમે તો તારી બનાવેલી મૂર્તિ છીએ, તો’ય અમારા ચહેરા ઉપર નૂર કેમ નથી…?


શક્ય હોય તો પાંચેયના જવાબ આપજે…મને વાર્ષિક પરીક્ષામાં કામ લાગે…! ભગવાન મારે ખૂબ આગળ ભણવું છે ડોક્ટર થવું છે પણ મારા માં-બાપ પાસે ફિના કે ટ્યૂશનના પૈસા નથી…તું જો તારી એક દિવસની તારી દાનપેટી મને મોકલેને તો હું આખી જિંદગી ભણી શકું…વિચારીને કે’જે…! હું જાણું છું તારે’ય ઘણાયને પૂછવું પડે એમ છે.

પરંતુ ૭માં ધોરણની વાર્ષિક પરીક્ષા જો તું મારામાં ધ્યાન નહી આપે તો મારા બાપુ મને સામે ચાવાળાની હોટલે રોજના રૂ.પાંચના ભવ્ય પગારથી નોકરીએ રાખી દેશે…! ને પછી આખી જિંદગી હું તારા શ્રીમંત ભક્તોને ચા પાઈશ…પણ તારી હારે કીટ્ટા કરી નાખીશ…! જલ્દી કરજે ભગવાન…સમય બહું ઓછો છે તારી પાસે…અને મારી પાસે પણ…!


લી.

એક સરકારી શાળાનો ગરીબ વિદ્યાર્થી

અથવા

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