The Space Boom

There are now more types of rockets and space crafts flying and soon to be flying than at any other time since the early days of the space race. The first American spacecraft designed for private spaceflight was SpacShipOne, which won the Ansari X prize in 2004 by making two suborbital flights above Earth's atmosphere. Two new rockets that can launch spacecraft & satellites into orbit are being developed by Orbital Sciences (second from left) & space X (far left). They represent competing engineering approaches. Orbital has tried to use as much off-the-shelf technology as possible to reduce risk, while space X has tried to build as many systems in house as possible including a mew Merlin rocket engine--to reduce costs.

AMAZING WEATHER PHENOMENA

On rare occasions nature exudes flashes of unusual and quirky phenomena, but brilliant nonetheless. Here are some of those once-in-lifetime moments caught on camera around the world.

1. Ball Lightning

This is a very rare phenomenon that involves ball-shaped lightning that moves much slower than normal lightning. It has been reported to be as large as eight feet in diameter and can cause great damage. There are reports of ball lightning destroying whole buildings.

2.Green Ray

Also known as the Green Flash. This occurs very briefly before total sunset and after sunrise. It appears as a green flash above the sun that lasts very briefly, generally only a few moments. It is caused by refraction of light in the atmosphere.

The new business order

How Web 2.0 has changed the face of business

From circumnavigating the world in eighty days, to being able to communicate across the globe in milliseconds, mankind has witnessed some extraordinary innovations. Today, information and communication technologies may have paved the way for paperless offices, replaced typewriters with computers, and to an extent, replaced traditional fact-to-face interaction. However, nowhere is their impact more profound than in the realm of business. IT has merged national and international commerce, with business targeting customers worldwide instead of being limited to a local consumer base. Data and financial transactions are now completed with the click of a button, whereas e-mails, tweets, and cellular text messages have enabled customers to communicate quickly and efficiently with businesses.

Accident on Holidays

BBC News reports that a family has been awarded compensation after becoming seriously ill whilst on holiday.  It is said that the Palin family, who hail from the West Midlands, were hit by outbreaks of salmonella and cryptosporidium – in other words sickness and diarrhoea – at their hotel in Majorca in 2003.  As a result, the Palin’s dream holiday was ruined.  They could not leave their hotel room and this meant they could not do those usual holiday activities like going to the beach or going on one of the many excursions on offer.  As Mrs Palin said herself, ‘We have no happy memories of what was supposed to be, at the time, a dream holiday.’

It would seem that the Palin’s were not the only ones to have their holiday ruined either.  BBC News states that there were another 10 victims from the West Midlands, and that in the end 49 people that caught the bug whilst at their hotel in Majorca were also able to obtain compensation.  At the Birmingham County Court it was held that Thomson, the tour operator for the holiday, was liable for their customers becoming sick.  It was said that Thomson had breached the duty of care they owed their customers by failing to warn them of the bout of sickness that was going through the hotel.  It would also appear that this is the first time that a tour operator has been found liable for the illnesses of its customers.

BACK INJURIES- COMPENSATION

Our backs are probably the most important part of our body. Without them, we couldn’t do anything. The strain your back goes through on a day to day basis can be immense – so injuring this vital part of the human body can leave you in agony – and there are several ways you can injure your back at work, going about your daily business, or from having a fall.
 
Back Injury Symptoms

Well, it’s quite easy to diagnose back pain! Not so easy to find out the root cause; but if your back hurts, aches, feels tight, inflamed, has reduced movement, or you are suffering from chronic bouts of back problems, we suggest you see your GP immediately.

Back Injuries from Falls

* A fall from a trip or slip can leave you with severe back pain. If you land on your back, then you’ll know about it! But even twisting as you fall can stretch the muscles and leave you in pain.
* If you fall fast, you can even end up with whiplash. Whiplash is normally caused by the sudden jolting your neck – whiplash pain can easily radiate down in to your shoulders and your back.

Mobile broadband users to surpass one billion in 2011

Mobile broadband users superpass

Mobile broadband subscriptions are on track to surpass one billion in 2011, only months after reaching half a billion, highlighting a key growth driver for the telecom sector, according to a report published by Business Recorder.

Internet use on-the-go has soared in recent years, driven by cheap laptop computers, tablet computers such as Apple Inc's iPad, and smartphones such as the iPhone.

Growing data traffic has driven revenue for telecom operators and leading to increased investment in networks, and boosting revenues for gear suppliers like Ericsson.

Asia Pacific is expected to account for the greatest number of subscriptions, around 400 million, followed by North America and western Europe with more than 200 million each, Ericsson said.

The group said that in 2008, mobile internet subscribers totalled around 200 million. By 2015, Ericson believes mobile broadband subscriptions will top 3.8 billion, indicating the pace of growth is picking up. 

The trend has already started boosting operators' revenues, Nordic telecom firms TeliaSonera, Telenor and Tele2 all pointed to rising smartphone and mobile internet use as the reason for the growth in earnings last year.

Network providers like Ericsson, Nokia, Siemens Networks and China's Huawei hope that the demand for online gaming, video dtreaming and watching TV will push operators to upgrade networks to boost capacity and speed.

107 trillion e-mails sent last year:

Pingdom

According to AFP, a Web monitoring service, Pingdom, published a study last month that stated that internet users sent a total of 107 trillion e-mails last year - most of them spam.

The company added that on an average, 294 billion e-mails messages were sent per day, and about 89 per cent were spam. Furthermore, it said there are 2.9 billion e-mail accounts worldwide and 263 million blogs. The total number of websites is 255 million, Pingdom said, up 21.4 million over the previous year. The Web service also published figures on the growth of Twitter and Facebook.

According to Pingdom, Twitter added 100 million new accounts last year and had a total of 175 million as of September. It said that 25 billion messages, or "tweets", were sent in 2010. Facebook, on the other hand, had nearly 600 million users at the end of the year with 250 million joining in 2010.