Mathematicians take aim at ‘phantom’ traffic jams

Countless hours are lost in traffic jams every year. Most frustrating of all are those jams with no apparent cause — no accident, no stalled vehicle, no lanes closed for construction. Such phantom jams can form when there is a heavy volume of cars on the road. In that high density of traffic, small disturbances (a driver hitting the brake too hard, or getting too close to another car) can quickly become amplified into a full-blown, self-sustaining traffic jam. A team of MIT mathematicians has developed a model that describes how and under what conditions such jams form, which could help road designers minimize the odds of their formation. Full Story : MIT.edu….

Sri Lanka : In Video

Bruce Fein speaking on International Tamil Center seminar. June 2009

What Now for Tamils after LTTE. May 2009.

US president Obama speaks about Sri Lankan issue.A collection of videos about one of the worst killing fields in the world, Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka’s government has admitted to Al Jazeera that its military bombed an area held by separatist fighters and now crowded with trapped civilians. May 2009

Inside Story interviews with Tamil and Sinhala representatives April09

The protests against the carnage of innocent Tamil civilians in Vanni held in order to draw the attention of the International Community (IC) by French diaspora Tamils

A document by Human Rights Watch about forced disappearances.

Speech at Geneva on Genocide in Sri lanka against Tamils

Sky News reporter talking about the ground situation on February 2009.

Displacing Tamil civilians February 2009.

Aljazeera reporter on the front line February 2009.

A Sinhalese Human Right activist speaks out about the human rights violations in Sri Lanka. February 2009.

Shelling inside the government declared safe zone. 2008

CNN Reporter Battles Tea Partiers Calling Obama Fascist

A video showing a CNN reporter in Chicago, interacting with the throng of Teabaggers who’ve shown up to stammer incoherently and wave provocative signs.

Video: radicals beat girl, 17, in Islamic stronghold of Swat, Pakistan

This grainy footage appears to show a 17-year-old girl being beaten by Islamic radicals in Pakistan’s northwestern region of Swat, where Sharia law was introduced after the government reached a truce with the Taleban in February. Full Story : Timesonline..

Shoes Thrown at Bush

George Bush, the US president, has had a pair of shoes thrown at him at a press conference in Iraq. Muntadar al-Zeidi, an Iraqi reporter,called Bush “a dog” and shouted out “this is the end” before throwing his shoes. Bush shrugged off the incident and quipped: “All I can report is that it’s a size 10.” Soles of shoes are considered the ultimate insult in Arab culture.

Vitamins and Cardiovascular Disease

A recent study on has cast doubt on the effectiveness of high doses of vitamins to help prevent heart disease in men. The study was conducted on 14 000 doctors. The physicians participated in the study for almost a decade and took high doses of C and E. The study concluded there was no proof that either C or E made a difference in the prevention of cardiovascular disease.

American Stories, American Solutions: Obama’s new Video

Inspiring……

Montreal comedians Prank-call Sarah Palin:Video

Marc-Antoine Audette and Sebastien Trudel, two comedians from Quebec who are known as the “Masked Avengers” managed to get in a phone call Sarah Palin, claiming to be French president Nicolas Sarkozy. She told them she may make a good president in eight years.

What is RSS?

If you are a regular user to Snugd,you may have noticed the small orange color icon on the top right hand corner of the blog.
This is called RSS icon. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a format used to deliver information from websites and pages that get updated regularly. An RSS feed contains either a summary or the full content from a website. The main benefit of RSS is that it enables people to stay connected with their favorite websites without having to visit them. Subscribing to a news site or blog is same like subscribing to a newspaper in the real world,instead of going out and buy the news paper everyday it comes to your home. By subscribing to a blog, you get the same benefit; you can get the updates without visiting the blog. I found this wonderful video tutorial on YouTube. I don’t think I can explain better than this. After watching the video,please subscribe to snugd to get more informative posts like this without visiting this blog.

Google Teams with Celebrities to Register Voters

Celebrities Forest Whitaker, Leonardo DiCaprio and Dustin Hoffman have joined hands with Google in a campaign to get US citizens to vote in the coming presidential election. Google says despite all the buzz about turnout this year, 1 in 4 Americans still aren’t registered to vote. Google put a Voter info map which contains registration, absentee, and early voting information in one place. The celebrities in the “5 Friends” video urge people to send “5 Friends” so the message spreads.

California to Remove the singing Road.

As part of an ad campaign,Honda turned Lancaster’s Avenue in California into a musical road. Notches are dug and spaced at specific intervals and sizes that produce different notes as the tires hit them, and the result is musical. Cars driving over them at specific speed (55mph) produce part of Rossini’s William Tell Overture. Those grooves were tuned specifically for a Honda Civic. The city is decided to pave over the road after receiving complains about the noise. You can watch the video of the road singing.

Google Calls for Ideas to Change the World

Project 10^100 (pronounced Project 10 to the 100th) is a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible. Google is announcing this project as part of its tenth birthday celebration. To participate users can send exciting ideas for ways to improve people’s lives and Google will give $10 million to turn up to five of the best ideas into reality. Submission dead line is on October 20th, 2008. Watch the video Google created and let the neurons fire up for the humanity.

Letterman : McCain’s Last Minute Cancellation

John McCain canceled his scheduled appearance on the “The Late Show with David Letterman” since he need to get back to Washington to focus on fixing the economy. But instead of leaving to Washington he was at the CBS News headquarters for an interview with Katie Couric, while Letterman was interviewing Keith Olbermann who had filled in as a substitute guest for McCain. Letterman have always had a friendly rapport with McCain, evn calling him “an honest-to-God hero.”

Human Virus : Cool Cartoon

In each and every way we act like parasites. Who knows the truth?

Google invests in Geothermal Energy

Geothermal energy is the heat of the Earth, which can be tapped into to produce electricity. Even though it has great potential as a renewable energy source it doesn’t get much attention it deserves. 2% of the heat below the United States at depths of 3-10 kilometers would be supply 2500 times the nation’s current energy needs. Through its philanthropic division Google.org, Google will be investing nearly $10.5 million into three projects researching advanced geothermal power. The technology Google focuses on is called EGS. EGS produces heat and electricity by harnessing the energy from hot rock deep below the earth’s surface, expanding the potential of traditional geothermal energy by orders of magnitude.

Windspire : Backyard Wind Turbine

Windspire is a vertical axis wind turbine which can generate 25 - 30% of the power needed in a home. The design was inspired by a 3 000 years old wind mill used by Egyptians to grind wheat. The 9 meter tall devices can be plugged into household power. Customers can also view in their home computer how much power is generated by the Windspire.

Ancient Cemetry found in Sahara Desert

Archaeologists from University of Chicago stumbled upon what appeared to be an ancient grave yard when they were searching for the remains of dinosaurs. The graveyard, uncovered by hot desert winds, is near what would have been a lake at the time people lived there. The discovered skeletons were of a woman, possibly a mother, and two children laid to rest holding hands, arms outstretched toward each other, on a bed of flowers. This area is first colonized by a people called Kiffian around 10 000 to 8 000 years ago when Sahara was its wettest.

One-third of online Videos Viewed on YouTube

According to market research firm comScore YouTube accounted for over three billion of the over nine billion videos viewed in January 2008. More than 139 million U.S. Internet users spent an average of 206 minutes per person viewing online video in January.

Riot in Tibet : Which is true?

This YouTube video slams the main stream media to distort the facts about riots in Tibet.

What Barack Obama’s pastor Wright said?

It was portrayed that Obama’s pastor Wright was being anti-American but this video reveal the truth.