A Big Test for New Internet Addresses...

Why Google, Facebook, and others are taking part in World IPv6 Day this week.

What is World IPv6 Day?

At 8 p.m. EST on Tuesday, more than 300 organizations, including Google, Facebook, and Yahoo, will test a new way of routing information around the Internet: Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). Though the test run will only last 24 hours, participants may learn valuable lessons about how transitioning to IPv6 could affect their sites and their users. Spearheaded by the Internet society (ISOC), World IPv6 Day is an international, coordinated effort to test this transition. ISOC hopes the effort will also encourage other organizations to adopt IPv6.

What is IPv6?

Each URL has its own Internet Protocol (IP) address. When you type a URL into a browser, a domain name server provides the corresponding IP address. (The IP address for www.mailkavali.com.co.in is 209.85.227.132.) IP addresses are assigned to devices such as Web servers, PCs, cell phones, and printers so that these devices can be located and contacted. IPv6 enables many more devices to connect over the Internet.Safari, Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox browsers support IPv6 and have done so for several years, but some devices, including many popular home routers, aren't yet IPv6-enabled. Devices released as recently as February lack IPv6 support, and some devices need firmware updates to access IPv6-enabled sites.

Why is IPv6 needed?

The Internet has simply outgrown IPv4—the last few addresses were allotted this past February. IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses, which allow about 4.3 billion unique addresses. IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses, which make possible around 340 trillion trillion trillion unique addresses.

Some unused IPv4 addresses still exist, but they have been claimed by large companies and organizations. Other IPv4 addresses have been pooled by five regional Internet registries (RIRs) worldwide. While these can be reassigned, the process is expensive and akin to treading water as the IPv6 transition approaches.

How will participants enable IPv6?

Participants will run IPv4 and IPv6 simultaneously, by "stacking" two types of address records—"A" records and "AAAA" (or Quad-A) records. The A records pair an IPv4 address with a domain name so that, for instance, a user who types Facebook.com into a browser is taken to the correct IP address. Quad-A records do the same, but with IPv6 addresses.

Google has been running IPv6 for several years, but on different URLs (http://ipv6.google.com/ and http://google.com). By stacking A and Quad-A records, the URL http://google.com will access both IPv6 and IPv4 versions of the home page. Users who can't connect to the IPv6 site will be redirected to the IPv4 site.

One potential technical challenge is "IPv6 brokenness": problems in IPv6 connectivity that prevent users from accessing websites using the newer protocol. When a website such as Google runs two versions of its site for IPv4 and IPv6, it can't properly monitor for brokenness, because users must specifically type in the IPv6 URL to access it. On World IPv6 Day, traffic will be automatically directed to the IPv6 version, which will highlight brokenness and help organizations fix problems.

Global network: A map of the 2005 Internet shows IPv4 addresses connected by colored lines. The different colors represent domain types such as .com, .net, .gov, and .jp.
Credit: The Opte Project

How will this affect you?

You probably won't notice any difference. ISOC estimates that only 0.05 percent of users will have difficulty accessing websites such as Facebook, Google, or Yahoo on World IPv6 Day. For those unlucky few, the problem may lie with incompatible browsers, routers, or operating systems. Home networks, says ISOC, are likely to cause most connectivity problems. Internet service providers (ISPs) generally have not provided IPv6-capable routers, partly because demand simply hasn't surfaced.

ISOC recommends that users prepare for World IPv6 Day by testing their connectivity via this link.The test tells users whether their browsers are capable of accessing the IPv6 Internet and whether they should anticipate trouble during World IPv6 Day. To further minimize problems, ISOC also urges users to keep current with browser, operating system, and firmware updates, especially for routers and other network equipment

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GE Combines Natural Gas, Wind, and Solar

The hybrid plant could be the cheapest and easiest way to add renewable energy to the grid.

Nimble power: GE’s new gas turbine, shown here in a cutaway rendering, is both highly efficient and able to change power output quickly to compensate for the variable output of solar plants and wind farms.
Credit: GE

GE has announced the first power plant to integrate wind and solar power with natural gas—a 530-megawatt plant that will start operating in Turkey in 2015. The power plant is made practical by a flexible, high-efficiency natural-gas system the company announced two weeks ago and a solar thermal power system created by esolar, a Burbank, California-based startup that GE recently invested in.

Such hybrid plants may become the dominant type of new power plant in some parts of the world, GE says. The new technology is aimed at countries that use 50 hertz electricity (the United States uses 60 hertz). In particular, it could make it easier for China and the European Union to meet their renewable energy targets.

Adding solar power to natural gas plants isn't a new idea, but it hasn't been economical without government subsidies. GE says that because of its new turbines and related equipment, these hybrid plants can, for utilities with the right combination of sunlight and natural gas prices, be competitive even without government support.

While combining solar thermal power and natural-gas turbines is not new, adding wind power to such a system is, GE says. Pairing wind with the natural gas plant helps shave some of the cost of the wind power—the wind farm can share some of the natural gas plant's control systems and its connection to the grid. The natural gas plant also smooths out variations from the wind turbines.

Solar thermal power involves the use of an array of mirrors to concentrate sunlight and the resulting heat to produce steam. That steam can be fed into the steam turbine at a natural gas combined cycle plant to boost its power output.

The solar concentrator array from eSolar helps lower costs in two ways—its modular concentrator system is easy to install and easy to modify for the needs of specific plants. It also produces higher temperature steam than some previous solar thermal systems, increasing power output. GE has also developed a natural gas power plant that is highly efficient, and whose power output can easily be adjusted to make up for variations in power output from solar power.

Connecting a solar thermal system to a natural gas power plant, and thus eliminating the need to buy a separate steam turbine and related equipment, can cut the cost of a solar thermal system by up to 50 percent, says Jon Van Scoter, CEO and president of eSolar. Paul Browning, vice president of thermal products at GE, calls it "the most cost-effective form of solar energy available today."

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May 13, 2011 in Andhra Pradesh

YSR Congress Party emerged victorious in the Kadapa and Pulivendula byelections begins. YSR Congress party President Jagan Mohan Reddy defeated rival D L Ravindranath reddy with a record margin for Kadapa parliamentary seat. Vijayamma also defeated her nearest rival and brother-in-law Vivekananda Reddy for Pulivendula assembly seat.

Bypoll result a fitting lesson to Congress party saYS Jagan Mohan Reddy

Ambati Rambabu credits victory to the people of Kadapa. He expresses confidence that people will continue to show the same spirit in the upcoming local body elections.

CPM State Secretary BV Raghavulu admitted defeat of their party in the West Bengal assembly election. Speaking to media in Hyderabad, Raghavulu said that CPM is defeated in West Bengal because of the mistakes committed by their party and the Government. He expressed confidence that they will regain the faith of the people soon by rectifying their mistakes. Speaking about the trend in the counting of Kerala assembly election, Raghavulu said that their party did well despite not being able to form the Government.

AICC Secretary Ponguleti Sudhakar Reddy said that assembly election results in the five states is positive for the Congress party and its allies. He credited the leadership of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi for the same. Speaking to media in Hyderabad, Sudhakar expressed happiness at the victory of Congress in Kerala, Assam and Puducherry and Trinamool Congress in Bengal. He blamed the DMK party for losing in Tamil Nadu. Commenting on the Pulivendula and Kadapa byelection, he said that it has no effect on the Congress party and is not a threat to the government.

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Scientists Identify Possible Human Lung Stem Cell

Scientists believe they've discovered stem cells in the lung that can make a wide variety of the organ's tissues, a finding that might open new doors for treating emphysema and other diseases.

When these human cells were injected into mice, they showed their versatility by rebuilding airways, air sacs and blood vessels within two weeks. One expert called that "amazing."

While stem cells have been found in bone marrow and some other parts of the body, it hasn't been clear whether such a versatile cell existed in the lung.

Experts not involved in the study stressed that the work must be confirmed by further research and that it's too soon to make any promises about therapies. But they said it could be a significant advance in a difficult field of research.

"These are remarkable findings and they have extraordinary implications," said Dr. Alan Fine of Boston University, who called the mouse results amazing. "But it has to be replicated."

Stem cells can produce a wide variety of specialized kinds of cells. Scientists are working to harness them as repair kits for fixing damage from diseases like Parkinson's and diabetes. Most people have heard about embryonic stem cells, which have caused controversy because embryos must be destroyed to recover them.

In contrast, the new lung cell would be an "adult" stem cell, like others found in the body. Adult stem cells maintain and repair the tissues where they're found. The bone marrow cells, for example, give rise to various kinds of blood cells, and they've been used for years in transplants to treat leukemia and other blood diseases.

The lung work is reported in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine by Drs. Piero Anversa and Joseph Loscalzo and colleagues at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. In a telephone interview, Anversa said it's not clear what the lung stem cell normally does but that he thinks it's involved in replacing other lung cells lost throughout life.

Loscalzo said it's too early to tell what lung diseases might be treated someday by using the cells. He said researchers are initially looking at emphysema and high blood pressure in the arteries of the lungs, called pulmonary hypertension. Emphysema is a progressive disease that destroys key parts of the lung, leaving large cavities that interfere with the lung's function.

Anversa said the cells may also prove useful to build up lungs after lung cancer surgery. It's not clear whether they could be used in treating asthma, he said.

While a lung stem cell theoretically could be used to grow a lung in a lab for transplant, Loscalzo said that would be very difficult because the lung is so complex. Instead, he said, scientists will first look at isolating the cells from a patient, multiplying them in the laboratory, and then injecting them back into the patient's lung.

The mouse experiments showed "the cells are smarter than we are," able to build normal lung structures in an injured lung, he said.

The researchers found the cells in donated surgical samples of adult tissue. The same cells appeared in tissue donated from nine fetuses that had died, giving evidence that the cells are present before birth and perhaps participate in lung development. To study the cells' behavior, researchers injured lungs of mice and then injected six doses of about 20,000 cells apiece.

Within 10 to 14 days, the injected cells had formed airways, blood vessels and air sacs. "We had a very large amount of regeneration" involving millions of new cells, Anversa said.

The new tissue showed "seamless" connection to the rest of the lung, and researchers believe it would work, although that wasn't tested, Loscalzo said. The results appeared in all 29 mice tested.

Dr. Brigitte Gomperts at the Broad Stem Cell Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, said scientists have been hotly debating whether a single stem cell type could give rise to the more than 40 cell types in the lung __ cells that do such different jobs as protecting the body from inhaled germs and exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide. It's a technically difficult question to study, said Gomperts, who was not involved in the new work.

If the new results can be confirmed, "it's a significant advance" that will help in understanding normal lung repair and abnormal repair found in disease, she said.

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Power-Electronics- basic reviews and entire descrption of PE

Power electronic converters can be found wherever there is a need to modify a form of electrical energy (i.e. change its voltage, current or frequency). The power range of these converters is from some milliwatts (as in a mobile phone) to hundreds of megawatts.With "classical" electronics, electrical currents and voltage are used to carry information, whereas with power electronics, they carry power. Thus, the main metric of power electronics becomes the efficiency.click here to more........download

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Find and Solve Common Network DNS Problem in Your PC

Sometimes there is an issue with your DNS resolvers caching the domain name to IP mapping. When you’re trying to go to the domain, it’s actually pulling up an old IP address instead of looking for a new one and finding the correct record. So, to expedite this very common problem of cached DNS, please do the following steps

Microsoft Windows XP (Close your application (e.g. browser or email) )

Go to the Start menu, choose Run, type cmd and hit OK. When the black screen appears, type the following command and hit enter.

ipconfig /flushdns

Restart your application (e.g. browser or email).

Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows 7 ( Close your application (e.g. browser or email). )

Click the Start orb and follow All Programs > Accessories, look for Command Prompt. Be sure to right click on Command Prompt and choose “Run as Administrator”. When the black screen appears, type the following command and hit enter.

ipconfig /flushdns

Restart your application (e.g. browser or email).

Mac OSX

Navigate to your Applications folder, open Utilities, and double click on Terminal. Type the following command and hit enter.

dscacheutil -flushcache

Then type this command and hit enter.

lookupd -flushcache

Don’t worry if either command says something like “Not found”.

Restart your application (e.g. browser or email).

Linux
Open up a root terminal window (ctrl T in gnome). Type the following command and hit enter.

/etc/init.d/nscd restart

Restart your application (e.g. browser or email).

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Turn Wi-Fi Thieves' Worlds Upside Down

When Wi-Fi freeloaders browse the Net, the images they see--like those on this eBay page--get turned upside down, thanks to Upside-Down-Ternet.The problem: You took the time and expense to set up a wireless Internet connection at your place. But you're pretty sure that the cheap bastard next door is stealing it--that is, connecting to the Internet on your dime. Sure, you could take the easy step of password-protecting your network, but what fun is settling for a little common-sense measure like that?

The trick: With the help of a lovely little service called Upside-Down-Ternet, you can turn that Wi-Fi thief's free Internet scheme upside down--literally. With a little clever scripting, every image the thief views via your connection is flipped upside down on his monitor and mirrored, making Web browsing difficult to say the least. You can also redirect every Web request the thief makes to a particular site--the author of the hack suggests Kittenwar. Pretty good, but I would go with an old standby.

The effect: The trick takes a little work to set up right, but if you can pull it off, it works perfectly. And doing right by one's neighbor just makes you feel good inside.

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