In reality, of course, our Sun is stupidly small. It’s an average main sequence star that pales in comparison to UY Scuti. This beast's mass is probably slightly more than 30 times the mass of our sun, which places it nowhere near the top of the most massive stars list. That honour is held by a star with the charming name of R136a1, which clocks in at 265 times as massive as the sun, but only 30 times the radius of the sun. Mass and physical size don’t always correlate for stars, particularly the case for giant stars.
So while UY Scuti is only around 30 times more massive than the sun, it has a radius somewhere in the region of 1,700 times larger than the radius of the sun. This star is one of a class of stars that varies in brightness because it varies in size, so this number is also likely to change over time. The margin of error on this measurement is about 192 solar radii. This uncertainty is why I used “possibly one of the largest stars” in my description of UY Scuti. If it is smaller by 192 solar radii, there are a few other candidates that would beat UY Scuti.
UY Scuti is a bright red supergiant and pulsating variable star in the constellation Scutum. It is a current and leading candidate for being the largest known star by radius and is also one of the most luminous of its kind. It has an estimated radius of 1,708 solar radii (1.188×109 kilometres; 7.94 astronomical units); thus a volume nearly 5 billion times that of the Sun. It is approximately 2.9 kiloparsecs (9,500 light-years) from Earth. If placed at the center of the Solar System, its photosphere would at least engulf the orbit of Jupiter.

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Archaeologists excavating the City of David in Jerusalem have discovered evidence that a passage of the Bible is historically accurate.
Researchers at the site in the Jerusalem Walls National Park found many burnt artifacts dating from 2,600 years ago, confirming a reference in the Bible that describes the burning of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. Jerusalem is thought to have fallen around 587 BCE.
Here are the verses,
2 Kings 21:12
therefore thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, 'Behold, I am bringing such calamity on Jerusalem and Judah, that whoever hears of it, both his ears will tingle.
Jeremiah 44:11
"Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, 'Behold, I am going to set My face against you for woe, even to cut off all Judah.
2 Samuel 24:16
When the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the LORD relented from the calamity and said to the angel who destroyed the people, "It is enough! Now relax your hand!" And the angel of the LORD was by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.
1 Chronicles 21:15
And God sent an angel to Jerusalem to destroy it; but as he was about to destroy it, the LORD saw and was sorry over the calamity, and said to the destroying angel, "It is enough; now relax your hand." And the angel of the LORD was standing by the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
The findings, including burnt pottery, wood, grape seeds, and bones all covered in layers of ash, provide further evidence that the Babylonians "burned all the houses of Jerusalem", as described in the Book of Jeremiah.
The archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority discovered the artifacts beneath layers of rock in the eastern part of the City of David. Amongst them were also charcoal and dozens of jars used to store grain and fluids. Many of these items bore stamped handles and rosette seals, enabling the researchers to date the artifacts to 2,600 years ago.
"These seals are characteristic of the end of the First Temple Period," Dr Joe Uziel, who led the excavation, explains in the video above from the Israel Antiquities Authority. "[They] were used for the administrative system that developed towards the end of the Judean dynasty."
The fact that the fire damage to the artifacts can now be dated to 2,600 years ago corroborates accounts in the Bible of the Babylonians burning the city.
The dig does indeed display signs that large parts of the city was destroyed quickly by an intense blaze, the Times of Israel reports. However, it also showed signs that other areas were abandoned after the first blaze, rather than being destroyed by it, suggesting the burning wasn't as widespread as the passage from the Bible implied.
“It seems like not all of the buildings were destroyed in a single event," Dr Uziel explains. "It seems that some were destroyed and others were abandoned and left.”
However, overall the discoveries at the dig add to existing evidence, which includes the discovery of Babylonian arrowheads dating from around the same time, that the burning of Jerusalem was a historical event as well as a biblical one.

Sources: iflscience and bible.knowing-jesus

China famously censors the internet within the country, preventing its citizens from accessing websites and apps such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter or Google, and has pushed companies to register their App stores with government regulators or remove content that it deems illegal. Now, it appears that Apple has purged its Chinese App store of major VPN apps, according to The New York Times.

As a result of the country’s online censorship, many citizens and visitors have turned to Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) as an illegal means to access the sites and content that have been banned. Couple days ago, several companies have reported receiving notifications from Apple stating that their Apps have been pulled from the Chinese store.




ExpressVPN wrote in a blog post that Apple explained that its products violated Chinese law, and said that they found that “all major VPN apps for iOS ave been removed” from the store. Another company, Star VPN, also reported receiving the notice.

In a statement to TechCrunch, Apple cited new regulations from Chinese regulators concerning the approval of VPNs.
Earlier this year China’s MIIT announced that all developers offering VPNs must obtain a license from the government. We have been required to remove some VPN apps in China that do not meet the new regulations. These apps remain available in all other markets where they do business.
ExpressVPN said that it was disappointed to see Apple “aiding China’s censorship agents,” and condemned the removals. The country appears to be pushing back against the usage of VPNs, launching a campaign to block companies from setting up or renting out such networks without official approval earlier this year. Some users — those who have a billing address outside of China — can still download the apps from the App stores from other territories.

China has been on the Internet intermittently since May 1989 and on a permanent basis since 20 April 1994. In 2008 China became the largest population on the Internet. As of 2016, approximately 50 percent of China's population had internet connectivity



Xi Jinping Said, "the development of the Internet has posed new challenges to national sovereignty, security and development interests."

Facebook and google are foreign companies. China prefers local companies over foreign firms and often puts restrictions on foreign firms to protect the homegrown talent.  China wants its domestic firms to develop and not get shouted out by multi-billion dollar Giants from abroad.

China likes to control the message and censor the media, some foreign companies play ball (Yahoo! and Microsoft) while others refuse (Google, Twitter, Wikipedia[1]). Google used to comply with Chinese censorship, 

In 2004, Google began to consider entering the Chinese market. At that time, China's search engine only had Baidu and YAHOO. At that time, China's Internet has its own problems, Google wants to give Chinese users a better experience, so decided to set up Google China.
From 2006 to 2009, Google China's traffic and revenue are growing steadily. But they also have to block some of the content should not be shielded, the content is legal.

In December 2009, Google was attacked, these attacks from china. The purpose is to steal Google's source code and some Gmail data, including human rights activists and political dissidents.

In January 10, 2010, Google held an emergency meeting, the meeting finally allowed to gradually reduce the keyword shielding in China. This behavior will make Google China achievement cast to waste.

Google had to communicate with the Chinese government, but the two sides did not reach a consensus.

In October 2013, Google gradually shut down the server on the mainland, turned to Hongkong.

Google still does business in China. They have offices in Beijing and they sell advertising to Chinese firms. Likewise Facebook's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg is no stranger to China, he has even learned the Chinese language to an acceptably high level. He has discussed/made major deals with Chinese internet firms.

There are two ways to enter a foreign market. You can take your own brand into the country and try to eek out a bit of the market share over many years, or you can just buy into one of the existing players in that country and get instant market share. Even when Google was in China, it didn't have the real success that has had elsewhere. Yahoo has been in China for a very long time but has always struggled to capture the market even back when Yahoo was bigger than Google (remember then). Facebook also was never really popular in China. Facebook may have more success in the Chinese market by taking a stake in Chinese social media firms in just the same way that Yahoo has a huge stake in Alibaba.



Wikipedia? but that isn't blocked is it. Well, it is partly blocked. The Chinese version of Wikipedia is blocked and sensitive pages on the English site are blocked. Before 2008, Wikipedia was completely blocked.




If Google is banned inside China, which OS are the Chinese using for their phones?
They use a streamlined version of Android with Google services(like Google Play Store) not installed.


How did China manage without Facebook, Google and other banned companies?
China has its indigenous version of google- called the Baidu . Just like google its not just a search engine but also provide other services like Baidu maps, image search, video search, baidu games and a host of other features.

It is the 5th most popular website of the world and a really competitive one, because you see just like android of google it has released its own mobile OS Baidu Yi. So the Chinese are fine without google and similarly Facebook can be substituted by Renren another indigenous social networking site.


Sources: Quora, Wikipedia, google china and Google
Researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine have discovered that aging in mice is regulated by cells in the hypothalamus, the structure found in vertebrates' brains that control metabolism and growth.
Hypothalamus is like the size of almond as seen on the figure
In their Nature paper, the team showed that hypothalamic stem cells are least partly responsible for how fast the aging process occurs. The number of these cells begins to diminish when the rats are 10 months old, which is considerably earlier than when the first visible signs of aging appear. By 24 months, when the mice were very old, most of these cells were gone.
"Our research shows that the number of hypothalamic neural stem cells naturally declines over the life of the animal, and this decline accelerates aging," senior author Professor Dongsheng Cai said in a statement. "But we also found that the effects of this loss are not irreversible. By replenishing these stem cells or the molecules they produce, it's possible to slow and even reverse various aspects of aging throughout the body."
The hypothalamic stem cells release microRNA molecules into the cerebrospinal fluid of animals. Unlike standard RNA molecules that are crucial to the synthesis of proteins, the microRNA’s function appears to be the regulation of gene expression.
The scientists took a group of middle-aged mice and disrupted the hypothalamic stem cells in their brains. The disrupted mice began aging faster than regular mice. "This disruption greatly accelerated aging compared with control mice, and those animals with disrupted stem cells died earlier than normal," added Dr Cai.
The team also wondered if the hypothalamic stem cells could be used in reverse to slow down the aging process. The researchers injected microRNA extracted from the hypothalamic stem cells into the cerebrospinal fluid of the control mice and the middle-aged mice whose hypothalamus had been disrupted. Aging in both groups was seen to slow down, which was measured by assessing coordination, muscle endurance, social behavior, and cognitive ability.
Researchers are now looking into exactly how the microRNA molecules help to fight the aging process and if this can be translated to humans. Apart from an apparent youth elixir, these molecules could be pivotal to fight age-related degenerative diseases.


When eight baby hedgehogs lost their mother after being run over by a car, newly born and in desperate need of milk and affection hedgehogs, their future looked very uncertain. Fortunately after a little hunting around at Sadgorod Zoo in the Russian city of Vladivostok, the hoglets found an unlikely wet-nurse in Musya the cat, who could be seen feeding the babies, Thursday.
Prior to their adoption, the baby hedgehogs refused to be fed from a bottle or syringe and still blind, and were beginning to starve. The zoo was left with no other suitable choice but to try putting the mammals together with a new mother. Musya the cat still had milk left after taking care of several foster kittens, and luckily, the babies took to her very quick.
Musya not only feeds both the hoglets during day time and her babies at night. For the most part, the standby mum and the hedgehogs get on well. 


Titan is one of the most interesting bodies in our Solar System, with complex organic chemistry, a thick nitrogen-based atmosphere, and bodies of liquid on the surface,
An international team of planetary scientists has detected vinyl cyanide in the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, which is exciting news. If life is possible on Titan, then it's likely this molecule plays an important role in it.
The research, published in Science Advances and led by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, estimates there are around 100,000 billion molecules in every cubic centimeter of the atmosphere. While that figure might seem extremely large, it corresponds to about one-millionth a percent of the moon’s atmospheric composition. But if the conditions are right, even this tiny percentage could be impactful.
With a temperature of around -180°C (-290°F) and a dense nitrogen atmosphere, Titan is not a welcoming world for life as we know it. But despite that, researchers have been toying with what simple life forms could look like on the Saturnian moon, with vinyl cyanide being suggested as a good molecule to build cell-like membranes.
On Earth, cell membranes are made of fatty molecules, so-called lipids, but these wouldn’t be able to form on a frigid world like Titan. Instead, vinyl cyanide could be used to form cell membranes.
This was all theoretical until hints of the molecules were observed by Cassini, triggering the curiosity of scientists. Further simulations showed that vinyl cyanide can form stable membranes in a Titan-like environment.



A portion of Ligeia Mare, Titan's second largest body of liquid. NASA


Researchers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to study the atmosphere of Titan. ALMA collected observations from February to May 2014, and with that data researchers were able to confirm the presence of vinyl cyanide. The molecules were found mostly at altitudes of more than 200 kilometers (125 miles), matching the expected model of the atmosphere of Titan.
If the molecules rain down on the moon, they are likely to end up in one of the many methane lakes and seas. The team estimate that if cell membranes were forming on Titan, there would be 10 million per cubic centimeter in Ligeia Mare, Titan's second largest body of liquid. By comparison, there are about 1 million bacteria per cubic centimeter in coastal ocean waters on Earth.
Titan is the only other place in the Solar System where stable bodies of surface liquid have been found. This research could help launch many studies on how life sporting a vinyl cyanide membrane might form, live, and thrive on Titan.
Studies like this one also might help us understand the intricate connection between the moon's surface and atmosphere – and maybe help us nail down the possiblity of life. 

The FCC just approved the company's application for an experimental license to test millimeter wave technology in two locations near the company's offices in Milpitas, California. The application makes particular reference to using the 28 and 39 GHz bands, which the FCC approved for commercial use for 5G services last year.

Whats the sped of 5G?
Samsung already showcased its 5G Home Routers, which achieved speeds of up to 4 gigabits-per-second (Gbps), according to PCMag. That's 500 megabytes-per-second, which could let you download a 50GB game in under two minutes, or a 100GB 4K movie in under four minutes.

The fact that Apple is exploring the millimeter wave band for 5G tests is interesting though, given that recent 5G announcements from companies Sprint and T-Mobile have both shied away from the high-frequency bands that Apple is testing. T-Mobile will be focusing its 5G network on the longer-range and lower-frequency 600MHz spectrum, while Sprint will be looking to launch in the 2.5GHz band.

Microsoft is releasing Windows 10 S, a new Windows version designed to run Windows Store apps only, to MSDN subscribers today. The new operating system will be available in an ISO file format so developers can download and install it to test their apps on it. Basically, Microsoft wants education-focused developers to properly test Windows 10 S to make sure it’s ready for that audience. This is also a first step towards making Windows 10 S more broadly available to schools, as Microsoft promised back in May.

At the mean time anyone with an MSDN subscription will be able to download and test Windows 10 S now, Microsoft still isn’t making it available directly to consumers to update to. It’s unlikely we’ll see that change, but Microsoft is making an Update Assistant Tool available next week that will include Windows 10 S. 
Yesterday many multimedia sites published articles about Jeff winning over Bill gates' net worth. Well, it seems like theres alot to learn in the world of business.
BBC also posted this on 27th July 2017 (Yesterday)

"Founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos has won Bill Gates as the richest man on earth with a value of $ 90.6 billion.
The Amazon stock exchange on Thursday means that Bezos's value has won the founding of Microsoft Bill Gates according to The Forbes magazine.Mr Bezos owns five times the shareholders whose value has exceeded $ 500 billion."


Here's the reality now

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is once again the world’s second richest person, after a brief stint earlier today as the wealthiest individual on Earth. Amazon reported its second quarter earnings today, showing a profit of just $197 million on strong sales of $38 billion. The unfortunate dip in profit, a drop of 77 percent from $857 million this time a year ago, is mainly due to Amazon’s aggressive investments in its own business.

It does mean, however, that Bezos’ personal fortune, given his roughly 80 million shares in Amazon, will take a sizable enough hit to keep him from climbing back to the top. Bezos was already back at second place at the time of market close today, but strong enough earnings would have clinched him the crown going into tomorrow. Yet Amazon’s stock is down 2 percent in after-hours trading, thanks to the earnings miss, making it highly likely Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates will hold onto the title with his personal fortune of $90.8 billion and climbing.

Of course, no one was really expecting Bezos to stay atop the list for long, so did I — and these kind of absurd proclamations tied to personal wealth are a bit of silly tech industry posturing when you take them at face value. But given the fluctuations in market cap for both Amazon and Microsoft, it’s highly likely the two billionaires will trade the title back and forth a number of times in the coming months as both Amazon and Microsoft continue to grow and amass influence in their respective sectors.

The one area that will be interesting to watch is cloud computing. That’s where Amazon and Microsoft are both fiercely competing with one each other to win over businesses that are increasingly looking to the cloud for hosting and computationally intensive tasks like training and operating artificial intelligence software. In that realm, Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud platform, continues to make impressive gains. AWS posted operating income of $916 million this most recent quarter, a 28 percent jump from a year ago, on sales of $4.1 billion. Though it lags behind Microsoft’s overall “Intelligent Cloud” division, which recently posted $7.4 billion in sales and an annual run rate of nearly $19 billion, AWS remains a market leader in key segments like cloud hosting.


That the two companies’ public-facing founders are now sparring for the world’s richest title — just as their respective corporations are battling for control of the cloud — is rather fitting. And although Bezos lost the title today, it probably won’t be long before the long-term investments his company is funneling into real-world logistics, robotics, and, most recently, groceries pay off, likely in the form of an ever-ballooning market cap and more control over how consumers buy and consume products every day.

Sources, BBC and The Verge

Evolution has been occurring for billions of years, producing organisms that are perfectly adapted to their environments. And this includes abilities that we would normally consider superpowers if humans were to have them. But these powers really do exist in the animal kingdom.
1. Echolocation
In the superhero world, Matt Murdock, who was blinded by radioactive waste as a child, developed a superhuman ability to sense using sound waves and became the superhero Daredevil. This gives Daredevil a 360-degree field of “vision”, allowing him to precisely locate objects or people in all directions, an obvious advantage over normal vision.
Bats, despite being nocturnal animals, cannot see in the dark. Instead they have evolved a similar ability known as use echolocation to navigate and locate prey at night. The bat emits a very high frequency sound and listens for the echo that bounces off objects. The difference in time between emitting the sound and hearing the echo allows the bat to build up a mental “picture” of its environment. Sounds that take longer to bounce back indicate that the surroundings are further away.
Matt Murdock’s ability may not be too far from reality as humans can also learn to use echolocation. By making clicking noises or stomping their feet some visually impaired people are able to accurately “visualise” their surroundings.
2. Magnetic Sense
The X-Men’s arch-villian Magneto can sense and manipulate magnetic fields with his mind. And some animals have a similar magnetic sense known as “magnetoreception” that they use to navigate and orient themselves. For example, homing pigeons are able to navigate back to their home lofts when visual cues are missing but can’t do so when magnets are nearby. This suggests that they may use the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate.
Although we don’t understand exactly how they do this, pigeons have been found to possess a substance called magnetite in their beaks, which becomes magnetised when exposed to magnetic fields. So they may be following their nose, so to speak.
Of course, Magneto’s magnetic powers can produce a much wider range of effects, from lifting and manipulating metal objects to rearranging matter (a power definitely not seen in animals). However, his daughter Polaris has the ability to perceive the world as patterns of magnetic energy, which actually isn’t too dissimilar to the powers present in the animal kingdom.
3. Shapeshifting
The ability to shapeshift and mimic the form of others is a formidable power for a superhero or villain – and has been used by X–Men’s Mystique on many occasions to lure and manipulate her foes. A rare few animals are capable of changing their shape and size in the real world, most notably the mimic octopus.
It can alter its colour, behaviour, shape and texture to mimic a diverse range of species, with at least 13 examples recorded so far including sea snakes, jellyfish and sea anemones. Most of the impersonated species are poisonous, and so pretending to be them helps the octopus ward off predators. But this shapeshifter is also able to imitate its prey, possibly in an attempt to lure them in closer before feasting on them.
4. Absorbing powers
The ability to steal the superpowers of another individual is surely the ultimate power, enabling you to have any power in existence. X–Men’s Rogue has the incredible ability to absorb superpowers of anyone she touches – but so do the Pitohui birds of New Guinea (well, almost). The feathers and skin of Pitohui contain a noxious substance, making them possibly the only poisonous birds in the world and giving them defence against predators. But the birds don’t appear to be able to produce the toxic substance directly. Instead, they acquire it by eating Choresine beetles.
Furthermore, scientists think this toxicity might even rub off onto the birds’ eggs and young, making them toxic to predators as well, even though they have never eaten the Choresine beetles. So the infant birds are essentially absorbing the superpower from their parents in the same way that Rogue absorbs powers when she touches other people.
5. Chemical weapons
One animal ability even goes beyond what has been imagined by superhero fiction. Bombardier beetles are noted for their unique defence mechanism that enables them to produce acid gas bombs to deter predators such as ants. In extreme cases they may bombard predators with a lethal dose of these chemical bombs that they kill them. The acid bombs consist of two chemical compounds stored separately in the beetle’s abdomen. When threatened, the beetles combine the two compounds, resulting in the production of a boiling mixture that explodes out of the tip of the directional abdomen as a gas.
You’d think this remarkable “weapon” was surely the precursor for a superpower. And the superheroes Anarchist and Zeitgeist (members of X Force) both have acid generation powers. Anarchist secretes an acid–like sweat, whereas Zeitgeist spews acidic vomit. But these are hardly formidable weapons. Perhaps it is time that some superheroes caught up with the amazing set of powers that have already evolved in the animal kingdom.

This article is an adapted extract from a chapter in “The Secret Science of Superheroes” published by the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Louise Gentle, Senior Lecturer in Behavioural Ecology, Nottingham Trent University
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
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