I think that the recent case of swine flu is very distressing.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon told his people to stay home from Friday for a five-day partial shutdown of the economy, after the World Health Organisation said a swine flu pandemic was imminent.
Calderon ordered government offices and private businesses not crucial to the economy to stop work to avoid further infections from the new virus, which has killed up to 176 people in Mexico and is now spreading around the world.
Eleven countries have reported cases of the H1N1 strain, and Texas officials said a 22-month-old Mexican boy had died in Texas while on a family visit, the first confirmed swine flu death outside Mexico.
Switzerland confirmed on Thursday its first case, saying a man returning from Mexico had tested positive for the flu.
The WHO raised the official alert level to phase 5, the last step before a pandemic.
"Influenza pandemics must be taken seriously precisely because of their capacity to spread rapidly to every country in the world," WHO Director General Margaret Chan told a news conference in Geneva on Wednesday.
"The biggest question is this: how severe will the pandemic be, especially now at the start," Chan said. But she added that the world "is better prepared for an influenza pandemic than at any time in history".
Having read this post, I now urge all of you to practice good hygiene.
Mexico orders economic shutdown; flu pandemic imminent
on Thursday, April 30, 2009Italian cruise ship fires at pirates, repels them
on Sunday, April 26, 2009An Italian cruise ship repulsed pirates in an attack off the east African coast by returning fire, a Kenyan maritime official said on Sunday.
"We hear it's a cruise ship," said Andrew Mwangura of the Mombasa-based East African Sea Farers Assistance Programme. "If that is the case, then they are putting the lives of their passengers in danger by having weapons onboard."
Mwangura did not have more details on the ship.
Sea gangs have increased raids on ships passing through the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean since February when better weather allowed them to hijack more vessels and take more hostages despite foreign navies patrolling off Somalia.
The London-based IMB watchdog said piracy incidents nearly doubled in the first quarter of 2009 almost entirely due to Somalia. There were 18 attacks off the Somali coast in March alone.
I think that the increasing flu epidemic is extremel worrying.
Governments around the world rushed on Sunday to check the spread of a new type of swine flu that has killed up to 81 people in Mexico and infected around a dozen in the United States.
A man has his temperature checked by medical personnel before entering a bar in Mexico City April 25, 2009. Governments around the world rushed on Sunday to check the spread of a new type of swine flu that has killed up to 81 people in Mexico and infected around a dozen in the United States.
Mexicans huddled inside their homes while U.S. hospitals tracked patients with flu symptoms and other countries imposed health checks at airports as the World Health Organization warned the virus had the potential to become a pandemic.
Mexico's tourism and retail sectors could be badly hit by the crisis and a new pandemic would deal a major blow to a world economy already knocked into its worst recession in decades by the crisis in financial markets.
The new flu strain, a mixture of various swine, bird and human viruses, poses the biggest risk of a large-scale pandemic since avian flu surfaced in 1997, killing several hundred people. A 1968 "Hong Kong" flu pandemic killed about 1 million people globally.
Argentina declared a health alert, requiring anyone arriving on flights from Mexico to advise if they had flu-like symptoms. As far away as Hong Kong and Japan health officials stepped up checks of sickly travelers.
New flu strains can spread quickly because no one has natural immunity and a vaccine takes months to develop. A British Airways cabin crew member was hospitalized in London after developing flu-like symptoms on a flight from Mexico.
The government earmarked $450,000 to cover fighting the flu, and Calderon issued the government special powers to run tests on sick people and order them isolated.
The ELEPHANT Trick
on Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Think of a number between 1 and 9
Add 1
Multiply by 9
Add 1
Add the two digits of your answer
Divide by 2
Turn the number you have left into a letter:
1=a 2=b 3=c 4=d 5=e 6=f 7=g 8=h 9=i
Shout the name of an animal beginning with your letter!
What is a perfect number?
A perfect number is a whole number, an integer greater than zero; and
when you add up all of the factors less than that number, you get that number.
Examples:
The factors of 6 are 1, 2, 3 and 6.1 + 2 + 3 = 6
The factors of 28 are 1, 2, 4, 7, 14 and 28.1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14 = 28
The factors of 496 are 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 31, 62, 124, 248 and 496.1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 16 + 31 + 62 + 124 + 248 = 496
The factors of 8128 are 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 127, 254, 508, 1016, 2032, 4064 and 8128. I'll let you add them up.
This are a few sites for you to try out.
Genius Test Genius Test 2 -
kid version Genius Test 2 -
I've tried to arrange them in order... The easy ones math puzzles are first and, then, they get harder! See if you can make it through all the puzzles!
Alphabet Soup
Penny Triangle
Toothpick Squares
Number Fun #1
Number Fun #2
Connect the Dots
Nines
Plus Sign Puzzle
How Many Triangles (geometry)
How Many Squares
The Handshake Puzzle
Family Photo
What's Next #1
Pascal's Triangle
Planting Trees
What's Next #2 The Painted Cube Sticky Shapes
Find the Numbers 4
Number Bubbles 1
Number Bubbles 2
Number Bubbles 3
Number Bubbles 4
Number Bubbles 5
Amoebas in a Box
Arranging Books Karen's Age (prime numbers)
Nothing But Zeros!
Algebra Mess
Dark Bridge
The Fox, the Chicken and the Corn
The Climbing Cat Bears & Fish (this one might be easy for you... and it might not!)
Find the Numbers 1
Find the Numbers 2
Find the Numbers 3
Color Squares
Triangles (geometry)
Three Light Bulbs
The Two Doors
While surfing the net I came across this interesting article.
Physicist Stephen Hawking, the author of "A Brief History of Time" who is almost completely paralysed by motor neurone disease, has been urgently admitted to hospital.
Hawking, 67, was taken by ambulance to a local hospital in Cambridge, where he is a professor of applied mathematics and theoretical physics.
Hawking, who is only able to speak through a computer-generated voice synthesiser, had been ill for a couple of weeks, with his condition deteriorating since he returned from a trip to the United States at the weekend, a source said.
He cancelled an appearance at Arizona State University on April 6 due to a chest infection. A pre-recorded lecture was played to a science conference instead.
Hawking is renowned for his work on black holes, cosmology and quantum gravity. He achieved global recognition with the publication in 1988 of "A Brief History of Time", an account of the origins of the universe.
Hawking began suffering from motor neurone disease in his early 20s but went on to establish himself as one of the world's leading scientific authorities, and is constantly called upon to comment on new discoveries in astronomy and physics.
Since 1974, the Oxford-educated scientist has worked on marrying the two cornerstones of modern physics -- Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which concerns gravity and large-scale phenomena, and quantum theory, which covers subatomic particles.
As a result of his research, Hawking proposed a model of the universe based on two concepts of time: "real time", or time as human beings experience it, and "imaginary time", the time on which the world may really run.
Motor neurone disease is a catch-all name for a family of muscle wasting diseases that includes amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease in the United States.
Although Hawking is virtually paralysed, he has a slow-progressive form of the disease.
Hawking, who is due to step down as Cambridge's Lucasian professor of Mathematics when he turns 70, has been married twice. He has three children by his first wife.
A bear hunter sets out from camp and walks one mile south.
He sees a bear and is about to shoot it.
The bear grabs his gun and eats it.
The hunter runs away one mile east.
He then walks one mile north and gets back to his camp and changes his underwear.
What colour was the bear?
This is a classic puzzle, because it looks like the hunter has moved like this:
...and it doesn't tell you what colour the bear is!
However there IS somewhere on Earth where it is possible for him to move south, east then north and get back again!
Poker is a very popular game in the world. Therefore, I am writing this post for die-hard poker fans.
1 in 650,000 :ROYAL FLUSH (A,K,Q,J,10 all the same suit)
1 in 72,000 : STRAIGHT FLUSH (a run of five cards all in the same suit e.g. 7,8,9,10,J all hearts)
1 in 4,000 : FOUR OF A KIND
1 in 700 : FULL HOUSE (three of a kind AND a pair)
1 in 500 : FLUSH (all five cards the same suit)
1 in 256 : STRAIGHT (e.g. a run such as 2,3,4,5,6)
2% : THREE OF A KIND (e.g. three aces )
5% : TWO PAIRS (e.g. two eights and two threes)
42% : ONE PAIR (e.g. two queens )
If you are dealt 13 cards, your chances of getting the following hands are:
13 spades (in any order): 1 in 635,013,559,600
13 cards in the same suit (in any order): 1 in 158,753,389,900
13 spades in the CORRECT order (i.e. Ace,2,3,....queen,king): 1 in 3,954,242,643,910,000,000,000
If you have four players receiving 13 cards each, these are the chances involved:
All four players getting one complete suit each: 1 in 2,235,197,406,900,000,000,000,000,000
All four players getting all 13 cards of their favourite suit in the correct order :1 in 80,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
This are t6he chances of winning the UK's National Lottery.
Here are the approximate chances of all the different prizes:
JACKPOT (matching all six numbers): 1 in 14 million
FIVE PLUS THE BONUS: 1 in 2.3 million
FIVE: 1 in 55,000
FOUR: 1 in 1,000
THREE: 1 in 57
And just for interest, here are some other chances:
The chance of winning ANY prize: 1 in 54 (about 2%)
The chance of only matching 2 numbers: 1 in 7.5 (about 13%)
The chance of only matching 1 number: 1 in 2.4 (about 41%)
The chance of not matching ANY numbers: 1 in 2.3 (about 44%)
This post ought to discurage you from purchasing any lottery tickets.
Most people are wondering what does 0/0 equals. Therefore, I am publishing this post toexplain this.
Because anything x 0 = 0 therefore 0/0 can = anything.
There, its as simple as that.
Many of us are confused why 0! =1. This is the best explanation that I have came across.
If you have 3 playing cards in your hand, you can arrange them in 3! different ways. In other words you can put them in 3 x 2 x 1 = 6 different orders.
If you have 2 cards, you can put them in 2! different ways which is 2.
If you just have 1 card you can only arrange it 1! ways which is 1.
But if you have ZERO cards then there's also one way of doing that!
This is an interesting article regarding Queen Elizabeth.
Queen Elizabeth II will mark her 83rd birthday on Tuesday with a low-key day at Windsor Castle, but she won't have the day off work.
The queen's London office said the monarch has nothing special planned or any public engagements scheduled, but she will probably go through the stack of official papers she receives as head of state. She has long done that every day of the year, except Christmas.
A royal salute will be fired at noon in Hyde Park in central London to mark the occasion by the King's Troop of the Royal Horse Artillery.
The queen's birthday is celebrated twice a year - once privately, on her actual birthday, and again with an official national celebration in June.
Since the 18th century, British monarchs have been publicly celebrating their birthdays in June, no matter when they were actually born, in hope of good weather for public events.
As consort, Prince Philip does not have a constitutional role, but he supports his wife and accompanies the queen to public engagements and on foreign tours. They have been married for more than 60 years.
This is a little insight on the prime numbers that mathematicians found.
On August 23rd, a UCLA computer in the GIMPS PrimeNet network discovered the 45th known Mersenne prime, 243,112,609-1, a mammoth 12,978,189 digit number! The prime number qualifies for the Electronic Frontier Foundation's $100,000 award for discovery of the first 10 million digit prime number.
On September 6th, the 46th known Mersenne prime, 237,156,667-1, a 11,185,272 digit number was found by Hans-Michael Elvenich in Langenfeld near Cologne, Germany! This was the first Mersenne prime to be discovered out of order since Colquitt and Welsh discovered 2110,503-1 in 1988.
The nearly decade long quest for the EFF award came down to a close race to the finish - with just two weeks separating the discovery of the two primes.
In recognition of the individual discoverers, the GIMPS project leaders, and every GIMPS participant's contributions, credit for the two primes goes to "Edson Smith, George Woltman, Scott Kurowski, et al.", and "Hans-Michael Elvenich, George Woltman, Scott Kurowski, et al.".
Edson Smith has worked in the IT industry for 27 years and the last 10 years as the Computing Manager for the UCLA Mathematics Department. Last Fall he replaced the Lab's screen savers with prime95 - a perfect fit for the Mathematics Department. UCLA has a rich history in the discovery of Mersenne primes. Dr. Raphael Robinson found five Mersenne primes at UCLA in 1952 and Alex Hurwitz found two more in 1961.
Hans-Michael Elvenich is a 44 year old Electrical Engineer working for Lanxess, a chemical company. He is a prime number enthusiast and is the owner and operator of www.primzahlen.de. In German, prime numbers are called "Primzahlen".
Both primes were first verified by Tom Duell (Burlington, MA, USA) and Rob Giltrap (Wellington, New ZealandThe first prime verification took 13 days, the second prime took 5 days.
Perfectly Scientific, Dr. Crandall's company which developed the FFT algorithm used by GIMPS, will make posters you can order containing all 12.9 and 11.1 million digits. You'll need a good magnifying glass to read the tiny, tiny print!
I recently came across this formula in the web and would like to share it with all of you.
An anulus is like a disc with a round hole in it. Although most people will think that you need loads of measurements but in actual fact you can get the area with just one measurement.
All you do is draw a straight line across the ring that just touches the little circle in the middle. If the length of this line is L then:
The area of the anulus is pi x (L/2)x (L/2)
But why?
The answer is rather satisfying.
Obviously the area is the same as the little circle taken away from the big circle, so let's see what happens when we try it.
Remember the area of a circle = PI x r2 where r is the radius of the circle (a radius is the distance from the middle to the edge).
Here we've called the radius of the big circle R and the little one is r.
The area of the big circle is PI x R2
The area of the little circle is PI x r2
So the area of the anulus is PI x R2 - PI x r 2 = PI x (R2 - r2)
Now we've got a right angled triangle.
Using pythagoras theorem, and you'll see that R2 = (L/2)x (L/2) + r2.
Therefore R2 - r2 = (L/2)x (L/2)
Swap this into our answer above and we get area of anulus= PI x (L/2)x (L/2)
I have came across this depressing article and would like to share it with all of you.
Today in Baghdada, a suicide bomber dressed in police uniform killed four policemen near a local government headquarters in northeastern Iraq.
Lieutenant Colonel Hameed al-Shimari, who heads an emergency police unit in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, said that seven civilians were also wounded in the attack in the restive city of Baquba.
The U.S. military said that eight U.S. soldiers were wounded in the bombing near the Baquba mayor's office but none were killed, as Iraqi police had reported.
The military put the death toll at three civilians killed and 19 people, including the U.S. soldiers, reconstruction officials and Iraqi police, wounded.
Suicide bombings have occurred frequently in Baquba, considered one of the few remaining havens in Iraq for Sunni Islamist al Qaeda fighters.
Nowadays, this sort of terrorists attacks have become more rampant. Therefore, in this dangerous times, it is wise to always be cautious and report any suspicious happenings to the police immediately.
