Finally, a new artillery gun for the Army

A few months after clearing critical trials, the Dhanush artillery guns — also called “Desi Bofors” — have entered the production phase to meet Army’s operational gap of field howitzers. The “Make in India” defence manufacturing project took off with the receipt of Bulk Production Clearance (BPC) from the Army for 144 Dhanush guns. Sources said the Ordnance Factories Board (OFB) has already started the production of indigenously manufactured 155 mm/45 calibre artillery gun.
OFB had been waiting for the BPC from the army to start production after Dhanush successfully passed evaluation by the Directorate General of Quality Assurance (DGQA) and the Maintainability Evaluation Trial.

Gun Carriage Factory, Jabalpur plans to supply 6 guns within 6 months, another 12 within 12 months and another 36 guns within 24 months.

This was decided at the OFB’s General Managers’ strategic conference held last month. The decision raises questions about the Army’s plans to get all 144 guns from the OFB within three years.

Dhanush will be the first artillery gun to be acquired by the Army since the purchase of Bofors guns from Sweden in 1980s.

The current order for 144 guns is estimated to be of Rs 1,260 crore, with the Army having an option to acquire up to 414 guns based on operational performance. As per its Field Artillery Rationalisation Plan, Army needs to buy 2,820 artillery guns of various types to replace obsolete guns and equip new units.

Dhanush gun is based on the design and manufacturing technology obtained from Bofors in the 1980s. Under the original Bofors contract, India had obtained Transfer of Technology to manufacture 155mm guns after inducting 410 guns.

The ensuing Bofors corruption scandal, however, hit all such plans till those old schematics were brought out by the OFB in early 2011. OFB claims that the indigenous howitzer is better than the original Swedish gun in range, accuracy, reliability and ‘shoot-and-scoot’ capabilities. Bofors is a 155 mm/39 calibre gun whereas Dhanush is a 155 mm/45 calibre. The enhanced calibre imparts a longer firing range.

OFB is upgrading its manufacturing line for bulk production at Jabalpur Gun Carriage Factory from 2016, wherein it will be able to produce 30-35 guns every year. There are no plans for exporting Dhanush, sources in the OFB said.

Entertainment Weekly

 When I was a young and odd child, one of the oddest things I did was collect Entertainment Weekly. Our family, like so many middle class families, had always had a subscription to Time, and one day Entertainment Weekly began arriving with it. In those early days, it was called entertainment weekly, and in many ways, it resembled many of the entertainment websites (The A.V. Club, Grantland, Vulture) that dominate the field today. There were long, industry-oriented cover stories, buttressed by surprisingly non-banal interviews with stars, producers, directors, musicians, and authors. The second half of the magazine was divided by medium: Movies, Television, Music, Books and Video, each with its own colored tab. Delightful.

I’d read each issue from cover-to-cover, deciding on its predominant “themes,” and record this data in an elaborate database program on my Apple IIe. As a finishing touch, I’d give each issue a “grade,” emulating EW‘s own, then-novel system of affixing a grade to the media products it reviewed.

In my North Idaho town of 30,000, we had three movie screens and I wasn’t allowed to watch cable. But EW‘s approach to media appealed to me in the way that all broad, detail-oriented taxonomies appeal to children: It provided me with a field to master and the tools to do so. Eleven-year-old me was an expert on the Weinsteins, Sundance, and the phenomena of sex, lies, and videotape and The Crying Game—without ever even seeing the movies, or really even knowing what they were about.

The early and mid-90s Entertainment Weekly was a trade magazine for the masses: A publication that promised to make consumers, whether 11 or 45, into near-experts. It took a while to figure out the format—at first, it was a little too snobby New Yorker and not enough Henry Luce-style middlebrow—but by the mid-90s, it had hit its stride.

But doing what its readers liked and doing what its parent company Time Warner needed did not always, or even often, coincide. Entertainment Weekly premiered just about a month after the completion of the merger of Time Inc. and Warner Communications in 1990, and they were entrusted to convey to stockholders, to industry observers and to the world that the union of two media empires, with two distinct styles of operation and implicit and explicit goals, was, in fact, an act of corporate genius.

Last year, Time Warner announced its intentions to spin off Time Inc.’s 95 “brands,” 23 of which are U.S. magazines, which include Time, People, Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Entertainment Weekly, but also there is NME, Wallpaper, ESSENCE and both Yachting World and Yachting Monthly. (There are also the 50+ international editions of the main properties.) That was the announcement of the end of 23 years of Time Warner’s flailing attempts to create synergy across its sprawling holdings.

Now Time Inc. is on its own. Last week, for the privilege of being dumped, Time Inc. paid Time Warner the amount of $589,858,212.54—leaving the new company with “cash and equivalents” of just $136 million.

EW‘s rise, scattered identity, brilliant heyday and slow, gradual decline mirrors the same journey of Time Warner’s conglomerate hopes and dreams. The leading magazine company weds a film and television giant? It all looked so great on paper. But here we are with the EW of today, and it’s clear: Just because it looks pretty in a business plan doesn’t mean it’s a good idea at all.

A gadget to change the way we sleep

Technologygeeks

British entrepreneur James Proud, presents a white sphere the size of a tennis ball covered in a criss-cross pattern. “It is beautiful, he says, when asked to describe it. “It doesn’t look like a piece of technology. We wanted to make something people actually want to put on their bedside table.” The device,  Sense called, and the first made by Proud’s San Francisco startup company, Hello, is the latest in the world of sleep tracking devices claimed to help improve the quality of an activity we spend about third of our lives engaged in. It will be available in the UK early in the new year.

Until now, such devices have only tracked movement during sleep – giving an insight into when you toss and turn – but Sense takes things further by connecting that to the environment. Inside are sensors that record sudden noise and measure light, temperature and humidity in the room as well as the levels of particulates like dust and pollen that can affect sleep. Just telling people how they slept doesn’t fix poor sleep, says Proud. “They need to understand why they slept that way.” Sense also records a sleeper’s movement, but not by requiring that they wear any device to bed, as most sleep trackers including Jawbone and Fitbit do. A small round plastic “sleep pill” clips onto the pillow. It contains an accelerometer and gyroscope and communicates with the system wirelessly.

The information that Sense gathers while you are asleep can be reviewed in an app. It includes a rating of sleep quality and a log of the disturbances experienced. If you slept poorly around 2am, Sense can tell you whether that was because of light, outside noise or snoring, for example. Sense allows you to play back the noise disturbances – you can hear whether it was a car alarm or a barking dog that woke you. It automatically identifies snoring. Proud’s team trained the system to recognise the periodic sound by playing YouTube videos of people snoring – though Sense can’t yet distinguish whether it is you or your partner. Over time the device also learns which conditions give you the best night’s rest. It might suggest that you lower the temperature by a few degrees, for example. Waving a hand over the device makes it glow a certain colour, indicating how conducive the room is to sleep.
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Sense also has a “smart alarm”. It tries to rouse sleepers at a point in their sleep cycle that makes waking easier. The sleep pill detects when they begin to naturally stir and assumes they are entering a light sleep stage where they can be woken without that groggy feeling. Sense doesn’t wake you more than about 30 minutes prior to the alarm, says Proud, and it won’t let you sleep past it. Proud, who began coding at nine years old, was born in south London but came to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2011 after receiving a fellowship from Silicon Valley billionaire and Facebook’s first investor, Peter Thiel. Each year Thiel pays a small group of teenagers to forgo or quit university and start their own business.

Hello, founded in 2012,is Prouds second company. The first – GigLocator, which he started at school to alert people to live music listings  was sold for an undisclosed sum the same year.

While Sense is not a device of medical , it can give access to information that can help to understand sleep in ways that we are not easily possible before, says Proud. “It’s up to people to use that information as they wish for medical reasons.”

Derk-Jan Dijk, a sleep expert at the University of Surrey, says he is not aware of any sleep trackers that have been scientifically tested against their claims but he believes they can be positive in that they help promote an awareness of the importance of sleep. Though he also warns they may lead some people to worry unnecessarily about their sleep patterns. “People may become too obsessed with the data,” he says.

Hello, which has raised $10.5m in investment, has more than 30,000 pre-orders for Sense from a Kickstarter campaign. The orders will ship in February. Sales, through the company’s website, will also begin in the US in February and in the UK early next year (pre-orders are currently being accepted from the US only). It is priced at $129.

‘FORGOTTEN’ Twitter founder Noah Glass scrubs graffiti off a wall outside his modest home in an area plagued with drug addicts and homeless people.

It’s a far cry from the $9.9 million mansion overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge seven miles across town owned by his former best friend and co-founder Jack Dorsey.

 A different life ... Noah removing graffiti outside of his compound of a home in San Francisco. Picture: Jeff Rayner / Coleman Rayner Source: Snapper Media

In an exclusive investigation into what became of the man who dreamt up the world-changing social network but got nothing, news.com.au can reveal:

● He has become a recluse who refuses to discuss Twitter

● He is ‘bitter’ about ‘being screwed’ by his friends

● He feels his co-founders “wrote him out of the story” and craves recognition for his role

● His obsessive work on Twitter destroyed his second marriage

● Mates say he’s a genius who deserves to be acknowledged properly by other founders

● He has been working on various projects since — including building a rocket

On November 6 last year Twitter became a public company, confirming its three founders — Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone — as billionaires and Silicon Valley’s biggest success story.

 Billionaire ... It’s claimed Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey “backstabbed” Noah Glass. Picture: Jeff Rayner / Coleman Rayner Source: Getty Images

The trio are now celebrities in their own right, have met President Barack Obama and all own multi-million dollar mansions in the San Francisco area.

However Noah Glass, dubbed the forgotten founder, made next to nothing from the website — even though it was originally his company, the first office was his apartment and he came up with its iconic name

MOST EXPENSIVE RESIDENCES of the World

One thing is clear about everyone whether he or she earns $100 per month or $1000 or $100,000 or Millions or Billions, everyone has desire and dream to live in the finest, well furnished, well maintained, facilitated home. Am I right in this context or not? Keep your answer with yourself because I know I am right in this context.  But everyone is not entitled to this kind of home or we can say palace like home. It is not impossible to have these kind of facilities in your home, it can happen to you also as this very article showcases the 10 most expensive residences of the world and these are not owned by aliens but people on the earth and most interesting thing is that maximum of them are self made. If they can do then can probably do but the very thing needed is the will to do so and to work accordingly. Before letting yourself into dreams, look at these residences and facilities that their owners enjoy.








Mountain Home Road, Woodside, California(USA)

 

Mountain Home Road is at number 10th spot in the most expensive residences of the world. It is owned by Masayoshi Son who is having a net worth of $8.6 Billion. This is a 9,000 square feet house with a 1,117 square feet pool house, a retreat building, a library, a swimming pool, tennis court and gardens. It has an estimated cost of $117.5 Million.

   Antilia, Mumbai(India)
 

Antilia is a 27 story skyscraper residence of the richest man of India that is Mukesh Ambani having a worth of $21.5 Billion. He is having his huge business in the field of petrochemicals and now he is going to start a project on 4G network with his brother who is the owner of the Reliance Communications.  The cost of this highly sophisticated residence is far more than $1 Billion. It is managed by a staff of 600, has 6 levels of underground parking and can hold 3 helicopters.

Villa Leopolda, Villefranche-Surmer(France)

 Villa Leopolda is one of the Residential Villa of the series of waterside villas made by King Leopold II for his mistresses. This 20 acre villa has a value of $750 Million and is currently owned by Lily Safra who is having a worth of $1.2 Billion.

                                                           ()   It is really fascinating to read about these exotic villas, estates and palaces in which these people live and enjoy the exotic and high tech facilities like underwater music system, three three helipads in a single house, having adjustable swimming pools, great locations and sights and more over their lavish prices that made them more attractive. These people has dreams and they have made them come true but behind this great achievements of having these beautiful and expensive residences there is a lot of hard work and sacrifices that these people has made for their dreams to come true. In the end I know you have really enjoyed while watching and reading about these incredible residences and I know one more thing that you are dreaming your dream house and making plans to get that.

The LADEE killers: NASA has crashed probe into moon

Farewell, LADEE. The NASA spacecraft has crashed into the lunar surface after months spent measuring moon dust and testing laser-based broadband. NASA says the probe made impact on 17 April sometime between 4.30 and 7.22 pm UTC.

LADEE launched from Wallops Island, Virginia, on 6 September 2013 and settled into lunar orbit about a month later. The mission's goals were few and specific: test a broadband communications system between Earth and the moonMovie Camera; analyse the moon's thin atmosphere; and investigate the cause of a strange pre-sunrise glow seen by some Apollo moonwalkers.

The spacecraft's main mission ended in early March, and shortly thereafter it ran out of the fuel needed to keep it in orbit. Since LADEE could not come home, NASA intentionally crashed the probe into the far side of the moon, away from historically important sites like the Apollo landing zones.

Mission managers sent the orbiter a signal to turn off all its science instruments on 11 April and set the craft on course for a crash landing. But the moon's gravity field is very uneven, and variations in the field affected LADEE's path as it descended. That meant no one could predict ahead of time exactly when or where on the far side it would crash, just that it should happen sometime before 21 April.
Netflix on the moon

About the size of a vending machine, the probe smashed into the moon while travelling at about 5800 kilometres per hour. Mission managers think it broke up during its descent, and the pieces should have left visible marks on the moon's surface. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will be searching for the resulting features in the coming months.

Although the mission was relatively brief, LADEE was highly productive. The laser-based communication system worked wonderfully, says team member Mihaly Horanyi at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

"We had a really high rate of data transmission. You could have watched Netflix on the moon if you wanted to," he says. Future versions of this technology could stream high-definition video from space probes or from human missions into deep space.

The LADEE team also found that the moon is engulfed in a cloud of dust that is being constantly refreshed by impacts from micrometeorites. "People expected this, but this is the first time we've actually made measurements," says Horanyi. Similar small impacts should churn up dust on other rocky bodies in the solar system, so studying the size distribution of the lunar particles could help in planning for future missions to an asteroid or Mars.
Astronaut moonbeams

However, the team is still not sure what caused the mysterious lunar rays seen by Apollo astronauts. The best theory is that solar radiation gives some particles of fine, glassy moon soil a positive charge, which repels the grains upwards. Gravity pulls those grains back down even as new particles float up, creating fountains of electrostatic dust that would reflect light. The effect should be stronger at twilight, which is when astronauts reported the lunar beams.

The dust particles involved would be too small for LADEE to have seen directly, but the craft was able to look for the electrical current that should be coursing through such dust fountains. However, the current it saw was two orders of magnitude too low to account for the Apollo astronaut's horizon glow.

LADEE may have seen evidence of the dust fountains in its last week of operation, as it spiralled closer to the lunar surface. But for now, mission managers have bid the spacecraft a bittersweet farewell.

"It delivered what it was supposed to," says Horanyi. "Unfortunately, all good things come to an end."

Facebook launches friend-tracking feature

 Your phone always knows where you are. And now, if you want, your Facebook friends will always know where you are, too.

Facebook is introducing a mobile feature called Nearby Friends that taps into that steady stream of location information so friends can track each other in real time.

The idea is to make it easy for people to meet up in real life, so they can have conversations in person instead of comment threads, temporarily replacing Likes and LOLs with eye contact and actual laughter. A live meet-up is also an excellent opportunity to grab a selfie with your pal and upload it to the Facebook owned Instagram.

In a refreshing change, the new Nearby Friends feature is not turned on by default.
New Facebook tool finds your friends

Friends will not be able to see where you are unless you decide live-tracking is something you want in your life and visit Facebook's settings to turn it on. Making a potentially invasive new feature opt-in suggests Facebook has perhaps learned from some of its past mistakes and privacy problems.

You can choose to share your general location with all your Facebook friends, close friends or a customized list of people you feel most comfortable with. Further minimizing the potential stalking factor, your location is only shared with other people who are also using the feature and who have chosen to share their location with you.

When turned on, Nearby Friends shows a list of approved Facebook friends who also use the feature and shows their approximate location. A push notification can tell you how many of your friends are nearby. Open the app to see a list of pals, the neighborhood or city where they are, how many miles away that is from your current location, and a time stamp of when they where there.

There is an option to share your exact location with specific friends, which can be handy for coordinating large groups at concerts or finding someone in a crowded area. Your friends will see a little image of your face on a map for a set period of time.

Nearby Friends will be available on Facebook's iOS and Android apps, but will only work for select locations at first.

Facebook, Instagram and many other apps already include features that let people "check-in" to locations, but those location features are different because you decide if and when to share each specific location. You might check into a Starbucks downtown, but never into your home or other spot you'd rather keep private. Nearby Friends is continuously gathering details about where you are in the background instead of waiting for a manual check-in.

This is not the first time an app has used location information to physically connect friends. Similar apps such as Highlight, which got a flurry of attention in 2012, mapped out the locations of nearby strangers. Facebook also purchased a startup in 2012 called Glancee that also connected strangers. That technology evolved into this new, more private feature.

If you turn on the Nearby Friends feature, Facebook starts collecting data on your exact location and keeps details on where you've been in the past, not just places where you've used its app to check in. It also collects location information even when the Facebook app is closed.

But you can turn off this location history in the Facebook app's settings. It's possible to delete individual locations from a history, or clear the whole thing and start from scratch.