So the final semester exams are starting on 6th of Nov. The timetable is normal. Click here for the timetable of the B.E /B.Tech. ANNUAL PATTERN Nov/Dec. -2008 (R-2004). My exams are on 6thof nov . All the exams are in the morning from 10am to 1pm. Why can’t they have a much leave in between the exams. The first exam is Total quality management. I don’t know what we did to deserve this. It’s so stupid man and worst ! I don’t know how many of us are going to clear it without any problem. I need to start studying from oct end to clear all the papers with confidence. I hardly study these days. I lost touch with studies Hope to start it soon.

PRACTICAL EXAMS STARTS ON :

anna university announced the date for practical examinations starts on 13/10/2008 for affiliated colleges. The theory exams for affiliated colleges starts on 6/11/2008. so study well and all the best. May your dream come true

Bond actor Daniel Craig raised speculation he might be injured when he was spotted with a sling in London.

According to thesun.co.uk, Craig had suffered an arm injury and was seen wearing a cast with a sling. He was walking around London in a baseball cap.

Earlier Craig, 40, disappointed female fans by saying that he won’t be filmed wearing skimpy swimming trunks again.

Craig, who will return in the new movie Quantum Of Solace, said: “I’m not going to put those trunks on ever again!”

DANIEL CRAIG BIOGRAPHY :

Bond actor Daniel craig :

                                           Daniel Wroughton Craig (born 2 March 1968) is a BAFTA-nominated English actor best known as the sixth actor to portray secret agent James Bond in the official film series from EON Productions. He made his debut as the character on 14 November 2006, in the 21st official Bond film, Casino Royale, to much critical acclaim.

Craig was born in Chester, England, UK, the son of Timothy John Wroughton Craig, who served as a Midshipman in the Merchant Navy and worked in various occupations when he came ashore; and Olivia Williams Craig, an art teacher.

He trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, graduating in 1991, and appeared in some minor roles including Sharpe's Eagle and an episode of Drop The Dead Donkey in 1993, with his first major leading role on screen being as a co-star in the 1996 BBC Television serial Our Friends in the North. He continued his relationship with the BBC by starring in the 1997 Francis Bacon biopic Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon, portraying Bacon's jilted lover George Dyer. In the latter movie, Craig agreed to be shot in the nude, including full-frontals.

Following an introduction to international audiences as Angelina Jolie's rival and love interest in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), he continued his career in the United States in Sam Mendes's movie Road to Perdition (2002), with Tom Hanks and Paul Newman. Craig played Connor Rooney, the son of an Irish mob boss (played by Newman) and a conniving murderer who hides behind his mobster father's shadow. Other leading film roles include The Mother (2003) with Anne Reid, Layer Cake (2004) with Sienna Miller, Sword of Honour (2001), Sylvia (2003) with Gwyneth Paltrow, Enduring Love (2004) with Rhys Ifans, and Steven Spielberg's Munich (2005).

In 2006, after playing James Bond in Casino Royale (see below), Craig moved on to portraying the character of Lord Asriel in the forthcoming film adaptation of Philip Pullman's novel His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass. Eva Green, who played Bond girl Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale will also star in the film. In a stage version of the book Asriel had previously been played by Timothy Dalton, one of Craig's predecessors in the role of James Bond.

As early as February 2005, Craig had been named in the media as a possible James Bond. On 6 April 2005, Craig was reported to have been signed by EON Productions as part of a three-film contract worth £15 million ($29,696,972), however this news was later debunked by the BBC, who contacted EON for an official report. According to Craig, MGM offered him the role but the Broccoli family never got in touch with him..

Finally, on 23 October 2005, Craig signed a three-film contract, with the first, Casino Royale, released on 14 November 2006. Craig is the first actor to step into the role who was born after the first Bond film, Dr. No, was released. Craig is also the first Bond to be hired after the death of Bond producer Albert R. Broccoli in 1996.

Craig's hiring as James Bond was controversial among some fans and critics, with some vocal fans threatening a boycott of the film and going so far as to set up a website because, unlike all his predecessors, Craig is blond and of average height. Media coverage of the controversy resulted in numerous actors publicly voicing their support of Craig. Most notably, four of the five previous actors who portrayed Bond—Timothy Dalton, Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan—called his casting a good decision. Clive Owen, who had been linked to the role, also spoke in defense of Craig, as did co-star Judi Dench.

In an interview with The Globe and Mail, Brosnan was asked, "What do you think of the new James Bond, Daniel Craig, and will you be watching Casino Royale?" He replied, "I'm looking forward to it like we're all looking forward to it. Daniel Craig is a great actor, and he's going to do a fantastic job".

After the film was released, Craig's realistic and more humane portrayal of Bond, as well as his well-regarded acting abilities, received wide praise. Casino Royale received a "Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an average score of 7.8/10. Of 193 reviews, 94% were positive. Several critics have said that Craig is the most believable and charismatic Bond since Sean Connery. Craig was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Actor on January 2006, and won the Best Actor award at the Evening Standard British Film Awards on 2 February 2007, both firsts for an actor in the role of James Bond.

As production of Casino Royale reached its conclusion, producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli announced that pre-production work had already begun on the 22nd Bond film. After several months of speculation as to the release date, Wilson and Broccoli officially announced on 20 July 2006 that the currently un-named follow-up film, known only as Bond 22, will be released on 7 November 2008 and that Craig has been signed to play Bond, with an option for a third film. On October 25, 2007, MGM CEO Harry Sloan revealed at the Forbes Meet II Conference that Craig had signed on for four more Bond film

 Internet search engine giant Google today launched a mapping tool called Google Map Maker in India, which was conceived and developed by its Indian engineering team.

This tool allows users to add or edit geographical features such as roads, businesses, parks, schools, apartment buildings and localities among others in the existing maps of their city, a company release said.

Users can also add detailed information about these locations and this user-created content is updated and made visible immediately to all other users, the release added. “This launch is the reinforcement of our commitment to bring more useful information to people around the world and especially to a hyper-growth country like India where maps are changing on a daily basis given the rapid of infrastructure development,” said Google Head, R&D, Prasad Ram.

Other than India, this product is available in 57 countries in Asia, the Island Nations, and the Caribbean.

The LHC experiments

The six experiments at the LHC are all run by international collaborations, bringing together scientists from institutes all over the world. Each experiment is distinct, characterised by its unique particle detector.

The two large experiments, ATLAS and CMS, are based on general-purpose detectors to analyse the myriad of particles produced by the collisions in the accelerator. They are designed to investigate the largest range of physics possible. Having two independently designed detectors is vital for cross-confirmation of any new discoveries made.

Two medium-size experiments, ALICE and LHCb, have specialised detectors for analysing the LHC collisions in relation to specific phenomena.

Two experiments, TOTEM and LHCf, are much smaller in size. They are designed to focus on ‘forward particles’ (protons or heavy ions). These are particles that just brush past each other as the beams collide, rather than meeting head-on

The ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb detectors are installed in four huge underground caverns located around the ring of the LHC. The detectors used by the TOTEM experiment are positioned near the CMS detector, whereas those used by LHCf are near the ATLAS detector.

ALICE :[A Large Ion Collider Experiment]

A collaboration of more than 1000 scientists from 94 institutes in 28 countries works on the ALICE experiment (March 2006).

ALICE detector
Size: 26 m long, 16 m high, 16 m wide
Weight: 10 000 tonnes
Design: central barrel plus single arm forward muon spectrometer
Location: St Genis-Pouilly, France. See ALICE in Google Earth.

ATLAS :[A Toroidal LHC Apparatus]

More than 1700 scientists from 159 institutes in 37 countries work on the ATLAS experiment (March 2006).

ATLAS detector
Size: 46 m long, 25 m high and 25 m wide. The ATLAS detector is the largest volume particle detector ever constructed.
Weight: 7000 tonnes
Design: barrel plus end caps
Location: Meyrin, Switzerland.

CMS :[Compact Muon Solenoid]

More than 2000 scientists collaborate in CMS, coming from 155 institutes in 37 countries (October 2006).

CMS detector
Size: 21 m long, 15 m wide and 15 m high.
Weight: 12 500 tonnes
Design: barrel plus end caps
Location: Cessy, France. See CMS in Google Earth.

LHCB:[Large Hadron Collider beauty]

The LHCb collaboration has 650 scientists from 48 institutes in 13 countries (April 2006).

LHCb detector
Size: 21m long, 10m high and 13m wide
Weight: 5600 tonnes
Design: forward spectrometer with planar detectors
Location: Ferney-Voltaire, France.

TOTEM :[Total Elastic and diffractive cross section Measurement]

The TOTEM experiment involves 50 scientists from 10 institutes in 8 countries (2006).
TOTEM detector
Size: 440 m long, 5 m high and 5 m wide
Weight: 20 tonnes
Design: Roman pot and GEM detectors and cathode strip chambers
Location: Cessy, France (near CMS)

LHCF : [Large Hadron Collider forward]

The LHCf experiment involves 22 scientists from 10 institutes in 4 countries (September 2006).
LHCf detector
Size: two detectors, each measures 30 cm long, 80 cm high, 10 cm wide
Weight: 40 kg each
Design:
Location: Meyrin, Switzerland (near ATLAS).

Large Hadron Collider. Credit: NY Times

We don't mean to beat a dead horse – both Fraser and Ian have already covered this topic quite thoroughly — but just in case anyone still has any fears about the Large Hadron Collider meaning the end of the world, a new report published today provides the most comprehensive evidence available to confirm that the LHC's switch-on, due on Wednesday next week, poses no threat to mankind. A copy of the report is available HERE. In a nutshell, it says nature's own cosmic rays regularly produce more powerful particle collisions than those planned within the LHC, and nothing bad has happened to Earth from those quite natural and frequent events. The LHC will be studying nature's laws in controlled experiments. So just relax and watch the LHC rap video.

The LHC Safety Assessment Group have reviewed and updated a study first completed in 2003, which dispels fears of universe-gobbling black holes and of other possibly dangerous new forms of matter, and confirms that the switch-on will be completely safe.

The report, 'Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions', published in IOP Publishing's Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics, proves that if particle collisions at the LHC had the power to destroy the Earth, we would never have been given the chance to exist, because regular interactions with more energetic cosmic rays would already have destroyed the Earth or other astronomical bodies.

The Safety Assessment Group compares the rates of cosmic rays that bombard Earth, other planets in our solar system, the Sun and all the other stars in our universe itself to show that hypothetical black holes or strangelets, that have raised fears in some, will in fact pose no threat.

The report also concludes that, since cosmic-ray collisions are more energetic than those in the LHC, but are incapable of producing vacuum bubbles or dangerous magnetic monopoles, we should not fear their creation by the LHC.

LHC collisions will differ from cosmic-ray collisions in that any exotic particles created will have lower velocities, but the Safety Assessment Group shows that even fast-moving black holes produced by cosmic rays would have stopped inside the Earth or other astronomical bodies. Their existence proves that any such black holes could not gobble matter at a risky rate.

As the Safety Assessment Group writes, "Each collision of a pair of protons in the LHC will release an amount of energy comparable to that of two colliding mosquitoes, so any black hole produced would be much smaller than those known to astrophysicists." They conclude that such microscopic black holes could not grow dangerously.

As for the equally hypothetical strangelets, the review uses recent experimental measurements at the Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider, New York, to prove that they will not be produced during collisions in the LHC.