Sunday, July 29, 2012

Get More Out of Google

During my school days whenever i used to read something new in my books , i always felt like going beyond my bookish terms and definitions and even today also i practice the same and certainly internet is the best means for that. For a naive researcher Google has become the preliminary source of information but yet surveys says that about 60-70 % of the people have to google more than once while searching. We will not count this as one of the cons of google as we still need know more about how to enhance our searching habits over web.


So here are few crucial tips for refining our Googling: 


1) Precise Your Query String :  Since Olympic games at London have bursted so i need to have a cover story particularly  from 2008 to 2012 by hindustantimes.com over this


site:hindustantimes.com ~event: "Olympics" +years 2000..2012


a) "site:" -> only searches the pages of that site.

b) "~" -> will search related words such as meet etc.

c) ' " " ' -> searches for the exact phrase not each of the words separately if given in pairs.


d) " + " or " - " -> used for including or excluding a particular word in search result.


e) ".." -> shows result within the result in designated year range.


Now lets say i need to find a pdf document over living habits of tortoises :


filetype:pdf living intitle:habits of *tortoises

a) "filetype" -> searches only for the type of file given e.g doc , txt , exe etc.

b) "intitle" -> only shows results with that word in the title(in our case its 'Habit') .

c) "*word"  -> replaces itself with the common word in your search.

Prefer not to ask questions from Google. Try to phrase what could be the answer of your query and use that as your search string.

2) Go for Google Scholar: For specific articles one could directly go for Google Scholar which not only leads you to the articles also the search results may show links to Google Books which you were planning to buy for your research.

author:leon data mining "alexis"


above query would result in articles over data mining written by alexis leon.

a) "author" -> name of the author.

b) "initials of author's name" -> for specific results you may put author's full name or initials in quotes.


3) Finding Out Definition : to find out the definition quickly simply use 'define:' before your word.

define:computer

4) Quick Calculations : you don't need to open calculator for minor calculations directly type your expression in the search bar.

(4/2)/5*6-1


5) Beyond Google : Google is not only the source of information. e.g JSTOR which publish content which you can't access for free elsewhere.

6) Mine Bibliographies : We all use Wikipedia when condcuting research . Its a great resource to familiarize one's self with a topic but a good researches should definitely check out the reference links at bottom for more credible sources.    





Monday, July 23, 2012

The God Particle

On fourth of this month CERN(European Center for Nuclear Research ) announced the discovery of a new sub-atomic particle which is been named as Higgs boson popularly known as The God Particle.
 Large Hadron Collider (LHC) (Courtesy : Google Image) 
Discovery of this particle has revealed the reason behind what gives mass to all the matter in the universe. The great discovery is been done with the help of Large Hadron Collider , which is the world's biggest particle accelerator. Its a 27 kilometers looped pipe fitted 100 meters underground built over Swiss-French Border.


CERN at press release declared India as the historic father of this project. The given name to the particle is been partly shared by an indian scientist , Satyendra Nath Bose , who worked with Albert Einstein in 1920.


The researchers reported this as a 5 sigma result which implies that they are 99.9999 percent that they have discovered a new particle. One sigma implies that the test results could have random fluctuations while 3 sigma count as an observation whereas 5 sigma says that the test results are trustworthy.
With this we have now completed standard model of physics. A premise which says matter obtains mass by interacting with Higgs Field has turned into a fact . This concept can be easily understood by Cocktail Party Analogy:
Cocktail party analogy (Courtesy : Google Image) 


Imagine a party where guests are evenly spaced in a room representing Higgs field , which is everywhere in the universe. Suddenly a celebrity enters. As celebrity passes through room, clump of guests surrounds the celebrity. Clump is harder to stop than one guest alone. So we can say that clump has acquired the mass.


            

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Glims of Future

                                       

Last month Corning , one of the leading manufacturer of glass and ceramics released glims of future named A Day Made of Glass , which has already gained                                                                                          
popularity among people & similar computing firms with its arrival.
Its a premise which states that soon we are going to
meet ubiquitous touchscreen world which would be operated by Smart Windows . Now before try to co-relate these windows with microsoft 's products 
then please hang on a minute. Its a combination of imprecise concepts.

Smart Glass came into existence as a research which could save power, to be precise electricity as its consumption is increasing continuously with the evolution of electronic age. According to Department of Energy(DOE , United States) says that the energy supplies will be unable to meet the demands for next two decades.  Smart Glass has the capability of controlling the light , when comes into action it changes from transparent to translucent partially blocking light while maintaining clear view through the glass and subsequently that energy could be utilized in different ways. But the technology has derived a different perception naming Smart Windows making use of Smart Glass , a living gadget which is something a lot more than a ipad. 

You could just imagine everything working over your touch. Certainly , a world made of glass would help in easy information access but to achieve such goals , still a lot more is to be done because for developing countries its like a blurred picture from where they are standing , since Information SuperHighway  is biggest task to be achieved for them before they could adapt technologies like Smart Windows because for such kind of rapid technologies you need flow of information at light's speed which is not possible without Information SuperHighway as it forms the backbone for faster data transferring.