WHY ARE OSCAR AWARDS GIVEN?

The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers. The formal ceremony at which the awards are presented is one of the most prominent film award ceremonies in the world. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences itself was conceived by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio boss Louis B. Mayer.

The 1st Academy Awards ceremony was held on Thursday, May 16, 1929, at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood to honor outstanding film achievements of 1927 and 1928. It was hosted by actor Douglas Fairbanks and director William C. DeMille.

Aqua Vista500 Computerised Fish Tank

Ever wanted a tropical fish tank, but didn't have time for all of the maintenance that goes into keeping one? The AquaVista 500 has an embedded LCD panel that allows you to control and monitor filtration, temperature, oxygen, and lighting. All of the aquarium technology is built right into the system, so you don't need to worry about hassling with a complex setup or buying extra parts. Measuring 26 by 26 by 4 inches, the AquaVista 500 hangs on your wall like a painting or a flat-screen TV. The time you need to spend on regular maintenance for freshwater tropical fish is as low as 15minutes a month; saltwater fish require about 10 minutes of attention per week.

OBAMA

Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is the President-elect of the United States and the first African American to be elected President of the United States. Obama was the junior United States Senator from Illinois from 2005 until he resigned on November 16, 2008, following his election to the Presidency.

He is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Harvard Law Review. Obama worked as a community organizer and practiced as a civil rights attorney before serving three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. He also taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, he announced his campaign for the U.S. Senate in January 2003, won a primary victory in March 2004, and was elected to the Senate in November 2004. Obama delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004.

As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress, he helped create legislation to control conventional weapons and to promote greater public accountability in the use of federal funds. He also made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. During the 110th Congress, he helped create legislation regarding lobbying and electoral fraud, climate change, nuclear terrorism, and care for U.S. military personnel returning from combat assignments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

BIRLA!!!

Shri Ghanshyam Das "G.D." Birla (April 10, 1894 - June 11, 1983) was an Indian businessman and member of the influential Birla Family.

Birla's grandfather Shiv Narayana Birla wanted to diversify from the traditional marwari business of lending money against pawned items. He left Pilani, his hometown in Rajasthan with a modest capital to Bombay to establish a business in cotton dealership. The venture was successful and he came back to Pilani to build a huge mansion (or Haveli), which still stands by the name Birla Haveli.

Birla inherited the family business and moved to further diversify them into other areas. Of these, at least three contemporary family business groups existing in India today can trace their ancestry to Ghanshyam. Of these businesses, he wanted to turn the pawned items business into manufacturing. So he left for Calcutta in Bengal, the world's largest jute producing region. There he established a jute firm, much to the consternation of established European merchants, whom the biased policies of the British government favoured. He had to scale a number of obstacles as the British and Scottish merchants tried to shut his business by unethical and monopolistic methods.But,he was able to persevere. When World War I resulted in supply problems throughout the British Empire, Birla's business sky-rocketed.

Envisioning infrastructural development in his hometown, Birla founded the Birla Engineering College in Pilani among other educational institutions. The college has evolved over the years to develop into one of India's best engineering schools, BITS Pilani. Today, Pilani also houses a wing of Central Electronics Engineering Research Institute (CEERI), a famous residential, public school christened after Birla's family and a number of polytechnic colleges. The town of Pilani and the local population enjoy a highly symbiotic relationship with these institutions, thereby stepping towards realizing G.D.'s dream.

In 1957, he was awarded India's second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan by the Government of India.

Birla was known to be a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi.

There is a memorial to Ghanshyam Birla in Golders Green Crematorium, Hoop Lane, London. It comprises a large statue overlooking the gardens with an inscription.

Phelps’s Mother Recalls Helping Her Son Find Gold-Medal Focus

DEBORAH PHELPS’S third baby and only son was larger than life from Day 1 — 9 pounds, 6 ounces and 23 inches long. As a little boy, said the mother, he asked 25 zillion questions, always wanting to be the center of attention. If he wasn’t zooming by on his big-wheel tricycle, he was swinging past on the monkey bars.Starting with preschool, teachers complained: Michael couldn’t stay quiet at quiet time, Michael wouldn’t sit at circle time, Michael didn’t keep his hands to himself, Michael was giggling and laughing and nudging kids for attention.
As he entered public school, he displayed what his teachers called “immature” behavior. “In kindergarten I was told by his teacher, ‘Michael can’t sit still, Michael can’t be quiet, Michael can’t focus,’ ” recalled Ms. Phelps, who was herself a teacher for 22 years. The family had recently moved, and she felt Michael might be frustrated because the kindergarten curriculum he was getting in the new district was similar to the pre-K curriculum in their old district.
“I said, maybe he’s bored,” Ms. Phelps recalled saying to his teacher. “Her comment to me — ‘Oh, he’s not gifted.’ I told her I didn’t say that, and she didn’t like that much. I was a teacher myself so I didn’t challenge her, I just said, ‘What are you going to do to help him?’ ”
In the elementary grades at their suburban Baltimore school, Ms. Phelps said, Michael excelled in things he loved — gym and hands-on lessons, like science experiments. “He read on time, but didn’t like to read,” she said. “So I gave him the Baltimore Sun sports pages, even if he just read the pictures and captions.”
She will never forget one teacher’s comment: “This woman says to me, ‘Your son will never be able to focus on anything.’ ”
His grades were B’s and C’s and a few D’s.It was a tough period. Ms. Phelps and her husband, a state trooper, were divorcing. She had just gone back to school to get a master’s degree to become an administrator, she said, and at the same time she had to be the 24/7 parent.
Michael grew like crazy, but not evenly — his ears looked huge, and when he ran, his arms swung below his knees. (He was on his way to being 6 feet 4 inches tall with an arm span of 6 feet 7 inches.) Kids bullied him, and when he whacked one on the school bus, he was suspended from the bus for several days.When he was in fifth grade, during his annual check-up, Ms. Phelps and the family physician, Dr. Charles Wax, discussed whether Michael might have A.D.H.D. — attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. By then, the Phelpses were a swimming family. (Michael’s older sister Whitney at 15 was ranked first in the country in the 200-meter butterfly, though her career would be cut short by a back injury.) Dr. Wax’s children also swam, and he’d noticed Michael at the Phelps sisters’ swim meets. “Michael used to run around like a little crazy person mooching food off people,” said Ms. Phelps.The doctor suggested sending assessment forms to his teachers. Their consensus: Can’t sit still, can’t keep quiet, can’t focus.At age 9, Michael was put on Ritalin, a stimulant used to treat hyperactivity.His mother thinks it helped a little. “He seemed to be able to focus longer,” she said. “He could get through homework without moving around so much.” She said he was still a middling student. “It might have raised some C’s to B’s,” she said. But if a homework assignment had to be at least four sentences, she said, “he’d just do four sentences.”After two years, Michael asked to get off the meds. He had to go to the school nurse’s office to take a pill at lunch, she said, and felt stigmatized. “Out of the blue, he said to me: ‘I don’t want to do this anymore, Mom. My buddies don’t do it. I can do this on my own.’

iPHONE!

The iPhone is an Internet-enabled multimedia smartphone designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It has a multi-touch screen with virtual keyboard and buttons, but a minimal amount of hardware input. The iPhone's functions include those of a camera phone and portable media player (equivalent to the iPod) in addition to text messaging and visual voicemail. It also offers Internet services including e-mail, web browsing, and local Wi-Fi connectivity. The first generation phone hardware was quad-band GSM with EDGE; the second generation also adds UMTS with HSDPA.Apple announced the iPhone on 9 January 2007.The announcement was preceded by rumors and speculation that circulated for several months.The iPhone was initially introduced in the United States on 29 June 2007 and is in the process of being introduced worldwide. It was named Time magazine's Invention of the Year in 2007.On 11 July 2008, the iPhone 3G was released and supported faster 3G data speeds and Assisted GPS.

WHY DO BODY JOINTS MAKE POPPING SOUNDS???

Do a deep knee bend, and it's very likely you'll hear popping sounds coming from your knee joints. There are also popping sounds when you "crack your knuckles."
What causes the popping sounds? Actually, two separate and distinct sources are responsible for the familiar popping sounds our joints emit.
The sound heard when our knuckles crack, results when a finger joint is extended almost to the end of its range. The joint, surrounded by a lubricating fluid, is encased in a capsule. At times, we intentionally, or unintentionally, extend the joint so far that the gas dissolved in the fluid spontaneously separates from the solution, forming a small bubble, and making a cracking sound. Not until the fluid reabsorbs the gas can the sound be reproduced. Whether or not there is truth to the old wives tale, that cracking ones knuckles enlarges them, remains open to debate.
On the other hand, the sound produced when we do deep-knee bends, is a snapping sound, produced when our tendons, which are merely the fibers that connect muscles and bones, elastically snap into new positions as our joints move under stress. Because the tendons shift back and forth with the movement of the joint, there is no waiting time before this snapping sound can be reproduced....