Author: admin

I like chocolate, gadgets, open source software, photography, traveling and all shades of green colors. I love spending time with fun loving friends and family members. This is my own online journal.

Evolution of Intelligence More Complex Than You Might Have Thought

Intelligence comes from the Latin verb “intellegere”, which means “to understand”. By this rationale, intelligence is arguably different from being “smart”. The nature of and evolutionary development of animal intelligence is significantly more complicated than many have assumed.

Intelligence comes from the Latin verb “intellegere”, which means “to understand”. By this rationale, intelligence is arguably different from being “smart”. It is a property of the mind that encompasses many related abilities, such as the capacities to reason, to plan, to solve problems, to think abstractly, to comprehend ideas, to use language, and to learn. We are used to thinking of humans as occupying the sole pinnacle of evolutionary intelligence. That’s where we’re wrong.

New research suggest that evolution of Intelligence is more complex than once thought:

Despite cartoons you may have seen showing a straight line of fish emerging on land to become primates and then humans, evolution is not so linear. The brains of other animals are not merely previous stages that led directly to human intelligence.

Instead — as is the case with many traits—complex brains and sophisticated cognition have arisen multiple times in independent lineages of animals during the earth’s evolutionary history.

With this new understanding comes a new appreciation for intelligence in its many forms. So-called lower animals, such as fish, reptiles and birds, display a startling array of cognitive capabilities. Goldfish, for instance, have shown they can negotiate watery mazes similar to the way rats do in intelligence tests in the lab.

One World, Many Minds: Intelligence in the Animal Kingdom

WordPress Disable RSS Feed

Explains how to disable Wordpress RSS / Atom / RSS2 feed url in 2 simple steps.

Some webmasters and small business owners use WordPress as CMS. They may not need any sort of RSS feed. This is also good for security and private space blogs. You can easily disable all RSS feed by editing functions.php file. This file used to change the default behaviors of WordPress. It goes in your Theme’s folder. A Child Theme can have its own functions.php.

The functions file behaves like a WordPress Plugin, adding features and functionality to a WordPress site. You can use it to call functions, both PHP and built-in WordPress, and to define your own functions. You can produce the same results by adding code to a WordPress Plugin or through the WordPress Theme functions file.

How do I edit functions.php?

Click on Appearance > Themes > Theme Editor > Locate and edit your functions.php. Beware: if you do not edit file properly the results can be unexpected — even site-disabling. Make a backup of your exisiting file using ftp / sftp.

Fig.01: WordPress Themes Editor
Fig.01: WordPress Themes Editor

Make sure you add the following code between <?php ?> tags.

/**
 * Disable Our Feed Urls
 */
function disable_our_feeds() {
	wp_die( __('<strong>Error:</strong> No RSS Feed Available, Please visit our <a href="'. get_bloginfo('url') .'">homepage</a>.') );
}
 
add_action('do_feed', 'disable_our_feeds', 1);
add_action('do_feed_rdf', 'disable_our_feeds', 1);
add_action('do_feed_rss', 'disable_our_feeds', 1);
add_action('do_feed_rss2', 'disable_our_feeds', 1);
add_action('do_feed_atom', 'disable_our_feeds', 1);

Save and close the file.

Parvathy Omanakuttan – First Runnerup at Miss World Contest 2008

India’s Parvathy Omanakuttan was adjudged the first runner-up at the Miss World 2008 pageant here Saturday evening.

Parvathy Omanakuttan, Miss India 2008, is the First Runner Up of Miss World 2008. She was crowned at the Miss World Grand Finale at Johannesburg, South Africa on 13 December 2008. She was also the second runner up of Miss World Top Model contest held on 3 December 2008.

Parvathy Omanakuttan
Parvathy Omanakuttan

She represented India in the 58th Miss World Final which was held at Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa on December 13, 2008 and finished First Runner Up. Kseniya Sukhinovia from Russia won the crown.

India’s Parvathy is first runner-up at Miss World contest

Oldest Human Brain Found

Archaeologists have found the remains of what could be Britain’s oldest surviving human brain.

Archaeologists have found the remains of what could be Britain’s oldest surviving human brain.

Human brain evolution, from the earliest shrewlike mammals through primates to hominids, is marked by a steady increase in encephalization, or the ratio of brain to body size. The human brain has been estimated to contain 50–100 billion neurons, of which about 10 billion are cortical pyramidal cells. These cells pass signals to each other via around 100 trillion synaptic connections.

According to BBC article:

Brains consist of fatty tissue which microbes in the soil would absorb, so neurologists believe the find could be some kind of fossilised brain.

The skull was found in an area first farmed more than 2,000 years ago.

More tests will now be done to establish what it is actually made of.

Synchronize and Export Browser Bookmarks Between All Of the Major Formats

Free amazing utility will help you to try out different web browsers, synchronize bookmarks between systems, organize bookmarks, convert bookmarks.


This utility will help you to try out different web browsers, synchronize bookmarks between systems, organize bookmarks, convert bookmarks for use in bookmark managers, share bookmarks with others and more.

Transmute is the first and only bookmark converter to export bookmarks between all of the major formats such as Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Apple Safari, Google Chrome etc.

Chandrayaan-I Launched successfully

India has successfully launched its first mission to the Moon.

The unmanned Chandrayaan 1 spacecraft blasted off smoothly from a launch pad in southern Andhra Pradesh to embark on a two-year mission of exploration.

The physical exploration of the Moon began when Luna 2, a space probe launched by the Soviet Union, impacted the surface of the Moon on September 14, 1959. In 1969, Project Apollo first successfully landed people (Neil Armstrong commander of the Apollo 11) on the Moon. They placed scientific experiments there and returned rocks and data that suggested the Moon is of a similar composition to the Earth.

Chandrayan launch

Today, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) launched Chandrayaan-1, an unmanned lunar orbiter. The lunar probe will revolve around the Moon for 2 years taking high resolution images of the lunar surface and also mapping its chemical and mineralogical content. One of the primary objectives of the mission is to map the lunar surface for helium-3. It is believed that the Moon has vast quantities of the mineral which could be used to fuel future nuclear fusion reactors.

Fig.01: Chandrayaan-I: an unmanned lunar exploration mission by the Indian Space Research Organisation
Fig.01: Chandrayaan-I: an unmanned lunar exploration mission by the Indian Space Research Organisation

The primary objectives of Chandrayaan-1 / India moon mission are:

  1. To place an unmanned spacecraft in an orbit around the moon
  2. To conduct mineralogical and chemical mapping of the lunar surface
  3. To upgrade the technological base in the country

More About Chandrayaan Mission and history

  • Chandrayaan means moon vehicle in sanskrit. However, it was earlier named Somayaana.
  • Chandrayaan-I is India’s first unmanned mission to moon.
  • It was first proposed by ISRO in 1999.
  • Government of India nod in 2003.
  • The 3,86,000 KM journey is expected to completed in 5 1/2 days.
  • Chandrayaan-I will spend two years circling moon and it will remain 100KM away from the moon surface.
  • It is launched using Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle ( PSLV). PSLV-C11 launched a 1304 kg remote sensing satellite (five satellite from ISRO and six from other space agencies [three from European Space Agency, one from Bulgaria and two from NASA]) as part of the Chandrayaan lunar exploration mission. The launch was successful and the satellite was placed in the earth’s orbit and will reach the Moon in 5.5 days after reaching its lunar transfer orbit.
  • Over a 1000 space scientists and engineers working on the project.
  • Chandrayaan-1 was built at ISRO’s Satellite Centre, Bangalore, with contribution from various wings of the space agency, including the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram.
  • Total cost of the project: Rs 386 CR:
    • RS 53 CR for payload
    • RS 83 CR for spacecraft bus
    • Rs 100 CR for PSLV-C11
    • Rs 50 Cr for Scientific data center

Specific areas of study

  • High resolution mineralogical and chemical imaging of permanently shadowed north and south polar regions.
  • Search for surface or sub-surface water-ice on the moon, specially at lunar pole
    Identification of chemical end members of lunar high land rocks
  • Chemical stratigraphy of lunar crust by remote sensing of central upland of large lunar craters, South Pole Aitken Region (SPAR) etc., where interior material may be expected
  • To map the height variation of the lunar surface features along the satellite track
  • Observation of X-ray spectrum greater than 10 keV and stereographic coverage of most of the moon’s surface with 5 m resolution, to provide new insights in understanding the moon’s origin and evolution.

Number of Alien Civilizations ( Extraterrestrial Life ) In Our Galaxy

Based on Earth’s experience, some scientists view intelligent life on other planets as possible and the replication of this event elsewhere is at least plausible. The drake equation calculates the number of advanced civilizations in our galaxy.

Extraterrestrial life is life originating outside of the Earth. It is the subject of astrobiology and its existence remains hypothetical, because there is no credible evidence of extraterrestrial life which has been generally accepted by the scientific community.

The Drake equation is a famous result in the speculative fields of exobiology and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It can be used to predicate (read as calculate) the number of advanced civilizations in our galaxy right now. But the result are not accurate and lots of criticism involved.

Disagreement (ie general ignorance) over these numbers leads to estimates of the number intelligent civilisations in our galaxy that range from 10^-5 to 10^6.
i. panspermia predicts 37964.97 advanced civilisations in our galaxy with a standard deviation of 20.

ii. the rare life hypothesis predicts 361.2 advanced civilisations with an SD of 2

iii. the tortoise and hare hypothesis predicts 31573.52 with an SD of 20.

And the number of intelligent civilisations in our galaxy is…