The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman

Alice Hoffman’s previous novel, The Third Angel, was hailed as "an unforgettable portrait of the depth of true love" (USA Today). Her new novel is a dark, sad story filled with magical realism. Sisters who create their own fairy tale world as children, but still suffer through abuse, disease and other tragedies that threaten to tear the family apart.

The Story Sisters is about three sisters: Elv, Claire, and Meg. Each has a fate she must meet alone: one on a country road, one in the streets of Paris, and one in the corridors of her own imagination. Inhabiting their world are a charismatic man who cannot tell the truth, a neighbor who is not who he appears to be, a clumsy boy in Paris who falls in love and stays there, a detective who finds his heart’s desire, and a demon who will not let go.

What does a mother do when one of her children goes astray? How does she save one daughter without sacrificing the others? How deep can love go, and how far can it take you? These are the questions this luminous novel asks.

Brazil Tourists on Spending Spree

Taking advantage of their country's booming economy and strong currency, Brazilian tourists went on a shopping spree abroad last year, spending more than $20 billion, notably in the United States and France.

Brazil's central bank said the record foreign spending on jewelry, cosmetics, iPads, clothes, baby carriages and even homes, was up 22% over the figure for 2010. Increased social mobility -- an estimated 30 million people have moved into the middle class over the past decade -- higher incomes, access to cheaper credit and low employment (5.2% in November), mean a growing number of Brazilians now travel and splurge abroad.

Their favorite destinations are Miami, New York, Buenos Aires and Paris, according to Jose Francisco Salles Lopes, a senior official at the tourism ministry.

In 2010, 1.1 million Brazilians traveled to the United States, 870,000 to Argentina and 384,000 to France, with other big contingents heading to Portugal, Italy and Spain.

In the United States, they were the foreign group that spent the most per capita in 2010, $5.9 billion or nearly $5,000 per person.

"Brazilians spend all they have. If they have $5,000, they spend $5,000," said Salles.

The Lucky One (2012)

The Lucky One is the film adaption of Nicholas Sparks novel of the same name. The story revolves around a US Marine named Logan Thibault who finds a photograph of a smiling young woman half-buried in the sands of Iraq during his third tour of duty. It becomes a lucky charm for Thibault, who then finds the woman in the photo.

U.S. Marine Sergeant Logan Thibault returns to North Carolina from his third tour of duty in Iraq, with the one thing he credits with keeping him alive-a photograph he found of a woman he doesn't even know. Learning her name is Beth and where she lives, he shows up at her door, and ends up taking a job at her family-run local kennel. Despite her initial mistrust and the complications in her life, a romance develops between them, giving Logan hope that Beth could be much more than his good luck charm.

The film is directed by Scott Hicks starring Zac Efron as Logan Thibault, Taylor Schilling as Beth Clayton, Blythe Danner as Nana, Jay R. Ferguson as Keith Clayton, Riley Thomas Stewart as Ben Clayton, Joe Chrest as Deputy Moore, Jillian Batherson as Amanda and Russell Durham Comegys as Roger Lyle. Scheduled to be released on April 20, 2012 by Warner Bros. Pictures.

Louis Vuitton Teaming with 'polka dot artist' Yayoi Kusama

Louis Vuitton has collaborated with Yayoi Kusama on a series of products including leather goods, ready-to-wear, accessories, shoes, watches and jewelry.

WWD reports the French fashion house's artistic director Marc Jacobs worked with the Japanese artist on the range, which hits Louis Vuitton boutiques early July.

Special window installations based on Kusama's unique aesthetic are also scheduled. The artist is best known for her interest in polka dots, which she has famously applied to tree trunks, entire rooms and even people.

The collaboration ties in with a major retrospective of Kusama's work which hits London's Tate Modern February 9, following spells in Rome, Madrid and Paris.

French Actress Denise Darcel Dies at 87

Denise Darcel, the French-born actress known for vampy roles in such films as "Vera Cruz" and
"Thunder in the Pines," has died. She was 87.

Her son Craig said she died on 23 December in a Los Angeles hospital following complications from emergency surgery to repair a ruptured aneurysm.


Darcel moved to the US in 1947 and made her film debut in 1948 as a bar singer in To The Victor. She was born in Paris and went on to star in 1950s films such as Young Man With Ideas with Glenn Ford and Thunder in the Pines. She also appeared in Battleground with Van Johnson, Tarzan and the Slave Girl with Lex Barker and Westward the Women with Robert Taylor. Her last credited appearance was in 1963 television series Combat!

She is also survived by another son, Chris.

Acer Proudly Announced World's Thinnest Ultrabook

At the CES 2012 conference, Acer proudly announced world's thinnest ultrabook "The Aspire S5".

It is just 15mm (0.59 inches),weighs less than 3 pounds, the 13.3 inches ultrabook have a magnesium alloy cover with all of the same requirements were seeing out of ultrabooks like InstantOn technology.

Now forget for some time its anorexic looks and talk about its specs. It will feature Intel Core Processor, SSD storage Dolby Home Theater v4 technology, and a PowerSmart battery pack. There's also a "magical I/O port panel" which is concealed just below the device's hinge — a touch of a button opens this panel and reveals HDMI, USB 3.0, and Thunderbolt ports.

It will also offer The Acer Green Instant On, allowing it to turn on within 1.5 seconds.


Shipping might start in 2nd quater 0f this year.

Burglars Drop Rare Coin Collection Into Counting Machine

Dan Johnson Sr. seen sifting through coins to find the rare money that three burglars stole from him.

An Oregon man is counting his lucky pennies after police recovered most of a rare coin collection that was stolen and deposited into a supermarket money counting machine on Christmas Day.
Dan Johnson Sr., of Corbett, says that the 100-year-old collection and approximately 60 pounds worth of silver and jewelery-- which police believe were lifted by three men including Johnson's son -- is worth several thousand dollars.
The alleged thieves, however, deposited the money in a Coinstar counting machine, retrieving a mere $450, according to KGW.
"The obvious answer that the crooks were idiots, just simply an idiot," Dan Johnson, Sr., 54, told KPTV, referring to a trio that includes his own offspring. "To not know the value of what they had taken, just to get pocket change for it. Just really a stupid person. Makes me feel good he was a stupid person and didn't realize what he had."

Source:Huffington Post

Millionaire All Around

According to Global Wealth Report, the number of millionaires worldwide rose by about 12% last year, to 12.5 million.
Prominent countries with increading numvers are China with over one million millionaires,U.S. with 5.2 million millionaire and Germany is fifth on the list of countries with the most super-rich, totaling an estimated 400,000 millionaires

Users Trust On Internet Authenticity

Internet users in America do not always assume that online S&T information is accurate. About four out of five have checked on the reliability of information at least once.

Stolen lectern spotted in Romania

Parishioners were convinced that the weighty 4ft reading desk, which is topped with an eagle and worth around £2,000, had been melted down by rogue scrap metal merchants.

But church-goers were stunned when a man in Romania contacted Wiltshire Police to report the center-piece lectern had been spotted at an antiques fair in the eastern European country.


The remarkable discovery will fuel suspicions that foreign gangs are behind many of the recent spate of metal thefts that have blighted communities across Britain.

Watch Out Microsoft: Businesses Warm to Apple Hardware

The "Bring Your Own Device" philosophy spreading through enterprise is proving a real boon to Apple.

The company is expected to sell $10 billion worth of iPads and $9 billion of Macs to business customers in 2012, according to Forrester's latest Global Tech Market Outlook. Those are 68 percent and 45 percent increases, respectively, over 2011.

And in 2013, spending on iPads and Macs could hit $16 billion and $12 billion respectively. Slowly but surely Apple is making inroads into enterprise, a sector traditionally dominated by Microsoft. And as Forrester notes, that is somewhat unexpected.

"The biggest disruptive force in the computer equipment market thus is ... Apple," the research outfit said in its report. "This is a surprise, because Apple has not and does not directly address the corporate market, while turning a wide variety of consumer technology markets upside-down. But its rapid growth in the corporate market has been the big surprise of 2011, and it will be even more of a factor in 2012."

How can that be when we so rarely hear stories about big enterprise deployments of Apple hardware? As Forrester explains, "The Apple assault on the corporate market has so far taken place without much formal Apple support, and probably without Apple itself understanding its full extent. That's because corporate adoption of Apple products has been largely clandestine."

In other words, employees are buying iPhones and iPads and sometimes even MacBooks as well, while enterprise is increasingly supporting them on the back end. Sometimes, it is even subsidizing them, or their use.

Source

Lenovo Announces First Android 4.0 SmartTV

Lenovo's coming out with a 55-inch smart TV that has three firsts to its name: It's the first TV from Lenovo, the first TV running Qualcomm's 1.5-GHz 8060 Snapdragon CPU, and it's also the only set so far to run Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich).

The 55-inch set full HD 3D backlit panel has a 240GHz refresh rate, and audio is compliments of SRS TrusurroundHD. The hard drive gives you 8GB of media storage space, with a removable SD card adding an extra 2GB.

Lenovo hasn't provided any pricing or release info for the Lenovo K91--in fact, there's no guarantee it will make it stateside. In any case, we'll have a hands-on up shortly.

In addition to voice-control tech, the SmartTV's remote control features a touchpad and motion sensor. For video conferencing and screen-sharing, you have a 5-megapixel integrated webcam.

Source

IEEE To Develop A New Paradigm For Power

Standards are important to the tech world. Without them, we’d all be running around to the nearest AT&T, Sprint, or Verizon store to buy replacement chargers instead of borrowing our buddies’ microUSB chargers.

IEEE which is now forming another standards association called the Power Matters Alliance.

“The wireless revolution of recent years has highlighted the need for a new approachto power,” said Ran Poliakine, CEO Powermat Technologies. “The only thing preventing us from enjoying the freedom of a truly wireless world is the power cord. Powermat Technologies is pleased to be collaborating with the IEEE to develop a new paradigm for power.”

Duracell president Stassi Anastassov chimed in mentioning that our smartphones are more power-hungry than ever, and that a charge that used to last us a whole week now only covers us for less than a day.

The newly formed group will focus on standards for the electronics industry as a whole to help make things as wireless and efficient as possible.

Read original at techcrunch.com 

First female professor’s archive goes online

Laura Bassi (1711-1778) was the first woman to be offered an official teaching position at a European university. Bassi had a significant influence on the scientific culture of the Enlightenment in Italy. She was the most prominent female member of Italy's leading scientific society, the Bologna Academy of Sciences, and helped create a network of experimenters and teachers connecting Italy with France and England.

She left behind 6,000 pages of intriguing documents that describe her life and work. They now rest in the archives of the principal municipal library in Bologna, Italy.

Stanford University has teamed up with the Bologna library and the Istituto per i beni culturali della Regione Emilia-Romagna to scan Bassi’s archives and make them easily accessible online later this year.

Bassi was widely admired as an excellent experimenter and one of the best teachers of her generation.

Stanford history professor and an expert on Bassi Paula Findlen says:
“Bassi was widely admired as an excellent experimenter and one of the best teachers of Newtonian physics of her generation,” “She inspired some of the most important male scientists of the next generation while also serving as a public example of a woman shaping the nature of knowledge in an era in which few women could imagine playing such a role.”

Stanford will lend its technical expertise to create an easily searchable website. The digitized documents, many of them handwritten, will be translated and explained.

Headline Jan 10, 2012 / Students Discover Students

Students Discover Students

And The Dreams Ahead

Who owns SAM Daily Times?
Answer: Students of the world!

Who is behind SAM Daily Times?
Answer: Students of the world!

Who funds SAM Daily Times?
Answer: Nobody and Greatness!

What is hidden agenda behind SAM Daily Times?
Answer: A better world for everybody!

Does SAM Daily Times receive revenue from advertising?
Answer: We have not accepted one single penny so far.

And don't forget we have said NO to every single invitation to Talk Shows and Tooting horns. And to support the above contentions, we 'The Samurai' are willing and ready to hand it over to other International Students. And be assured that sooner rather than later, we will!!

All those who honour us with these questions, overlook one stark pathology : People tend to win over ideas rather than the reverse.

And one small true parable. When we started we made an email request to the CEO IBM in US and the regional head of IBM in Pakistan to donate an IDE. We waited and we simmered!! No one smacked us with the vowel!  Well, Sires, if you get to read this post, we have news for you. We have invented one! And you will soon get to hear more. There is much to learn.

And when Students from China, Senegal and Indonesia, India, Bhutan and and and.... the World over contact us in barely decipherable words we get emotional and weep in unison. Tears of great accomplishments.
The Students now have a profile.

We are now coming together to solve our problems and to recognize 'how blind we are about our own blindness'. We pretend overconfidence in our opinions and in our impressions and our judgements. We think we know how knowable the world is. And then we meet our fellow students from same mother earth!!

Keep your handouts with you! With our intellectual capital we can solve anything.
Believe us we mean it. We now know how to use whole new set tools.

SAM Daily Times - The Voice Of The Voiceless

Brain Of Humans And Dinosaur

The brain of a Stegosaurus(a type of dinosaur) probably weighed about 2½ ounces, which would have represented 0.004% of its body weight. In comparison, the brain of a human represents about 1.88% of its body weight

Stats: Europeans Views On Nuclear Power Stations

Europeans are divided on nuclear energy issue, but support is on the rise. The proportion of Europeans who said they favored energy production by nuclear power stations increased from 37% in 2005 to 44% in 2008, while the proportion opposing it decreased from 54% in 2005 to 45% in 2008.

Guinea-Bissau President Sanha dies

Guinea-Bissau's President Malam Bacai Sanhai dies in Paris after serious illness.


The 64-year old leader was taken to France for treatment after falling terminally ill. 


He was thought to be suffering from diabetes but the exact nature of the illness is yet to be disclosed.


"Mr Sanha was a veteran of Guinea-Bissau's independence war and had long-standing ties to the ruling party, the left-wing African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC).

He had previously served as interim president and had made two unsuccessful bids for the presidency, in 2000 and in 2005, before winning elections in July 2009.

He was married, with one child." (BBC News)

Chairman Swiss National Bank resigns

Chairman Swiss National Bank, Philipp Hildebrand, has resigned following revelations about a $504,000 worth transaction made by his wife Kashya.


Mrs. Hildebrand made a currency trade in August because she wanted to have half of the family's assets in US dollars, an investigation has revealed. The chief said he had no knowledge of the transaction which his wife later earned profit on.


Less than a month later, the SNB intervened to try to weaken the Swiss franc. This meant that when the family converted the money back into the franc, they earned a profit on the transaction.

 "I have come to the conclusion it is not possible to provide conclusive and final evidence that my wife did initiate the transaction without my knowledge," said Mr. Hildebrand while speaking at a press conference.

"I would like to think I have been a damn good central banker.

"I personally advocated strongly and early for stricter capital requirements for the big banks. The policy of the central bank was a success in recent years."

The ex-chief has been cleared of any wrongdoing by the SNB.

Source: BBC News

Christian billionaire faces blasphemy charges

Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris is to face charges for alleged blasphemy after posting images of Mickey and Minnie Mouse in conservative Islamic dresses.


The Christian billionaire tweeted cartoons of the Disney characters last June, apologizing later, saying no offence was intended. 


"I apologise for those who don't take this as a joke, I just thought it was a funny picture; no disrespect meant. I am sorry," Sawiris tweeted.

The images showed Mickey wearing the traditional Muslim garb and adorned with a beard, while Minnie was veiled in a Niqab.

The action sparked a series of condemnations from thousands of people on Facebook and other social networking sites, with conservative Muslim groups calling for boycotts of companies owned by Sawaris.

The lucky few!

By Sarah Mahmood


If I can moan over my food, get irritated by the heat in winters at night, burn my tongue with over-microwaved food, get a headache due to extensive night-reading, exhaust all my energies in studying all day long and get tired due to excessive shopping, what am I?


I am one of the lucky few, those blessed with privileges that a good majority of the population inhabiting the Mother Earth can only dream of. My grumblings and complaints are but representative of the blessings that have been bestowed upon me by the Almighty. 


A moment of grateful consciousness is all that 'Pensive' today asks for!

The Fall by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan

The Fall by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan is the second book in their dark vampire trilogy that started with The Strain. The Strain was considered one of the Top books of the year and so was The Fall.

The tension -- filled sequel to The Strain, from the world-famous director whose films include Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy. Humans have been displaced at the top of the food chain, and now understand -- to their outright horror -- what it is to be not the consumer, but the consumed. Ephraim Goodweather, director of the New York office of the Centers for Disease control, is one of the few humans who understands what is really happening. Vampires have arrived in New York City, and their condition is contagious. If they cannot be contained, the entire world is at risk of infection. As Eph becomes consumed with the battle against the total corruption of humanity, his ex-wife, Kelly, now a vampire herself, is ever-more determined to claim their son, Zack. As the Biblical origins of the Ancient ones are gradually revealed, Eph learns that there is a greater, more terrible plan in store for the human race -- worse even than annihilation!