Monday, November 28, 2011

Casualty of Birds by Human beings

  According to Golden Gate Audubon Society, "Approximately 100 million to 1 billion birds die in North America as a result of collisions each year. (American Bird Conservancy, 2010) Primary sources of collision-related mortality for birds are building windows, communication towers, vehicles, transmission lines, and wind turbines.". Sadly enough, all man made objects.
  Among the sources above, "glass" is the main culprit. Glass as the windows or the walls of buildings, especially high rise ones.
  The reason? Birds often take the reflections in the glass of the surroundings as a real one, and simply fly towards the mirrored objects without any doubts.
  Just as many people aiming the deceiving goal of getting rich, and lost everything in all kinds of gambling games (don't think about any types of "investment" any differently from gamble!).

Saturday, November 26, 2011

General Web Pages with Kindle Touch 3G?

According to Amazon,
Experimental Features
WebKit-Based Browser
Kindle Touch 3G's experimental web browser is based on WebKit. It's easy to find the information you're looking for right from your Kindle Touch 3G. Kindle Touch 3G enables you to connect to the Kindle Store and access Wikipedia - all over 3G or Wi-Fi. Experimental web browsing on other websites is only available over Wi-Fi. 

The older version allows "other websites", although with very limited amount of traffics. This time, Kindle decided to disable it at all.

arstechnica also confirmed this sad fact.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

The Chinese Character with the Most Strokes 画数のもっとも多い漢字

  画数の一番多い漢字はなんでしょうか。

  日本語にはなくて、しかも通常のフォントデータにもないので、画像でしか紹介できないが、一番有名なのは、龍が四つ(2X2)並べる漢字です。龍は四つもあるので、意味は「危惧、恐怖」です。

  他には最多ではないが、男三つ(品と同じ構造)という字もあります。意味不詳だそうですが、ゲイ系の意味があるでしょうか。

  There are said to be more than 80,000 Chinese characters ever created, or recorded in all the dictionaries. One interesting question is: what is the Chinese character with the most number of strokes?
  The answer is: "Zhe" (Chinese pronunciation) which is consisted of 4 "dragon", two on the top and two at the bottom. It basically means threat or fear.
  Below are some funny Chinese characters as shown in Baidu. The one on the top right is the champion. "Biang" is used to be considered the champion. Although it is not any more, it is no doubt the most complex one.
  Below is a larger version of "Biang", copied from here.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Battery Saving update for Sony NEX-5

  For Firmware version 1 to 3, NEX-5's power consumption is high even when the switch is off. The result, the camera will be out of battery in a few days even if the power switch has been turned off.
  Sony has release an update for this purpose. The update has to be done through a computer. This Japanese site has the executable file and instructions for update.
  To confirm the version of NEX-5, go to [Menu] - [Setup] - [Version]. If it is Ver 3 or older, one needs this update.
  First install the application, a Windows application, start it. Then change the camera to USB storage mode, leaving the rest for the application to process.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Nuts, Serotonin Metabolites and Metabolic Syndrome

  Nuts are shown to be able to increase the level of serotonin metabolites in patients with metabolic syndromes, who are at high risk of cardiovascular disease. The nuts used in the related research are walnuts, almonds and hazelnuts. The research showed that "Patients given the nut-rich diet produced a higher level of metabolites derived from the metabolism of tryptophan and serotonin, fatty acids and polyphenols". It is interesting in the sense that "In food and dietary studies, the focus is always prevention. If we look specifically at this new research, we are not talking about a particular drug or introducing dietary supplements but simply replacing once source of fats with another, in this case nuts".
  Here is a backup of the news.
walnutsalmondhazel nuts

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Paolina Borghese, The Fairest One Of All Beauty

  Paolina Borghese by Antonio Canova, has be chosen as the “Miss Italian Art”. In a survey for favorite beauty among the art works, by a sample of 1032 people, aged between 25 and 64. According to arcadja. The second is Callipige Aphrodite ("Venus (or Aphrodite) of the beautiful buttocks), and the 3rd is Grande Odalisque by Francesco Hayez (an unrecognised painting!).
  Mona Lisa ranked 62.
Note: below is Odalisque by Ingres (1814)