Saturday, January 21, 2012

20th jan 2012 newsupdates

    • world's timescale, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), is based on the time measured by atomic clocks, which use the incredibly regular vibrations in atoms to count the seconds.
    • As a result, leap seconds were established in 1972 to keep the time told by atomic clocks and the Earth's time in phase
    • They are added once the International Earth Rotation Service, which monitors the Earth's activity, has found that the two have drifted out of time by 0.9 seconds.
    • those seeking to abolish the leap second say these one-second jumps are becoming increasingly problematic for navigation and telecommunication systems that require a continuous time reference.
    • include satellite navigation, financial services, the internet, flight control and power systems, among others.
    • decision to stop using leap seconds to keep UTC aligned with mean solar time would be perhaps the most fundamental change to timekeeping for hundreds of years.
    • civil time worldwide would be based purely on man-made clocks and no longer tied closely to the Earth's rotation
    • Over decades, the difference between Earth-based time and atomic clock time would amount to a few minutes, but over 500 years, they would be out by an hour. Over millennia, the discrepancy would grow even more.
    • Without leap seconds we will eventually lose the link between time and people's everyday experience of day and night
    • IMT-Advanced system uses radio-frequency spectrum much more efficiently, and devices built with it will need less bandwidth to access the Internet
    • fourth generation of mobile wireless standards, were approved by the ITU Radiocommunication Assembly at its meeting this week in Geneva
    • ITU said some current technologies such as LTE and WiMax could be billed as forerunners to 4G, even though they don't meet the requirements of the IMT-Advanced system.
    • 2G, 3G and 4G families of standards have been set by the International Telecommunication Union to define the services and download speed provided by networks.
    • current 3G mobile technology, known as International Mobile Telecommunications, has been widely used since 2000
    • new IMT-Advanced systems will deliver "a much higher quality and a much higher bit rate, typically of the order of 100 megabits per second."
    • ew technology would allow devices to obtain data fast enough that most TV shows could be downloaded within about 20 seconds, and CDs within about a minute.
    • compulsive social networking has led to insomnia, depression, poor inter-personal relationships, lack of concentration, high level of anxiety, ignorance and rudeness in their general behaviour as they tend to replace real-life social interactions with online social media.
    • privacy is being breached
    • young Indian women seem to flock social networks more frequently as compared to their male counterparts.
    • youngsters have started finding social media boring, confusing, frustrating and time-consuming as they surf these websites less frequently and are tend to surf other informative websites, send e-mails, search the internet and play games instead of accessing their accounts, hardly respond to comments and other material posted on their walls
    • succeeded in getting mental disorders included in the global list of non-communicable diseases (NCDs)
    • India, along with the U.S. and Switzerland, will move a resolution
    • “to develop comprehensive policies and strategies to develop mental health promotion, prevention of disorders, in particular among children and adolescents, support and treatment of persons with mental disorders by promoting human rights, tackling stigma
    • calls for collaboration with WHO in the development of an action plan to enable persons with mental disorders live a full and productive life
    • proposed action plan should address protection, promotion and respect for the rights of persons with mental disorders
    • access to quality comprehensive health services that include mental health at all levels of healthcare system
    • availability of adequate human resources to provide such services equitably
    • calls for providing services to promote mental health and prevent mental disorders
    • support to and protection of children in catastrophic situations and in families with severe difficulties,
    • India had been instrumental in getting mental disorders included in the NCDs list at the first ministerial conference on Healthy Lifestyles and Non-communicable Disease Control in Moscow last year.
    • “like all non-communicable diseases, mental disorders required long-term treatment and affected the quality of life
    • principal non-communicable diseases are cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancers and chronic respiratory diseases
    • accounting for over 60 per cent of global deaths, 80 per cent of which occur in developing countries.
    • India is working towards framing a mental health policy
    • draft Mental Health Care Bill, 2010.
    • 12-member policy group entrusted to frame the National Mental Health Care Policy
    • prepare a situational analysis of the need for mental health care in the country, taking into account the issues of human resources, essential drug procurement and distribution, advocacy, prevention, and rehabilitation of mental health patients.
    • advocates of a free Internet have mounted a determined bid to stall new legislation that can chill free speech
    • What makes the two laws obviously detrimental for free speech worldwide is their focus on poorly defined “rogue” websites that are not based in the United States.
    • definitions in the draft legislation are vagu
    • legal tools to punish “infringing” websites as originally drafted in SOPA included a provision for Domain Name System blocking
    • attempt to introduce strong-arm measures
    • persistent effort in the U.S. to use judicial processes to access personal data about individuals abroad using services such as Twitter
    • new Bills aim to create a procedure to blacklist inconvenient websites and censor them.
    • include ordering search engines to remove them from results, prohibiting distribution of advertising
    • stopping companies such as PayPal or Visa from processing their financial transactions.
    • observed its power to bring communities together in the Middle East, North Africa and the Occupy movement cities
    • legitimate fear that if the new legal provisions go into force, technology companies coming under U.S. legal jurisdiction could be compelled, or perhaps even be willing, to disclose information on them.
    • purge foreign websites with an inconvenient point of view
    • dread a new, high-cost technology landscape emerging in America, driving innovation, online traffic, and thus jobs and commerce to other countries that guarantee freedom
    • McKinsey study that shows 3.4 per cent of GDP in 13 countries is accounted for by the Internet
    • Internet has increased the productivity of small and medium-sized businesses
    • at the behest of traditional media companies including those trying to save old models of distribution and profits (for which they massively funded a lobbying campaign during 2011), can crimp growth and the new ventures.
    • reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet
    • Censoring of Internet content is not new. All search engines remove content and filter search results based on directions and orders issued in different countries to meet the requirements of domestic laws.
    • marked preference among some leading politicians, such as Communications and Information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal, for a purge of websites and social media platforms such as Facebook, of content that is deemed “offensive”
    • Google has been asked to remove several items on the ground that they criticise the government or individual politicians.

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