AK Srivastava (SriAKS)

. Dead man with 100 wives gets Facebook page to reunite family at funeral Acentus Akuku, Kenya’s most famous polygamist, is now on Facebook in a bid to reunite his family, which includes his 100 wives. Akuku was in his late 90's when he died from natural causes earlier this month. He married more than 100 women in his lifetime and fathered nearly 200 children.  Now, Nickson Mwanzo, one of his grandsons, has created a page on Facebook, where he wrote, "If you are Akuku's family pliz join and say more about yourself. This is to bring the relatives together" to convince Akuku's children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, to come together for his burial, scheduled for December.  According to ABC News, one Facebook post said that Akuku left a lasting mark, "not only among family" but with the "whole world." Akuku married his first wife in 1939, and his second wife soon after, becoming a polygamis...

. Brain's Journey from Early Internet to Modern-Day Fiber Optics: Computer Program Shows How Brain's Complex Fiber Tracks Mature The brain's inner network becomes increasingly more efficient as humans mature. Now, for the first time without invasive measures, a joint study from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the University of Lausanne (UNIL), in collaboration with Harvard Medical School, has verified these gains with a powerful new computer program. Reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences early online edition, the soon-to-be-released software allows for individualized maps of vital brain connectivity that could aide in epilepsy and schizophrenia research. "The computer program brings together a series of processes in a 'pipeline' beginning with individual MRIs and ending with a personalized map of the fiber optics-like network in the brain. It takes a whole team of engineers, mathematicians, phys...

. Talaq JOKE on Skype, Ends Marriage LUCKNOW: Talaq is no joke. An e-savvy Qatar resident learnt this the hard way when he typed talaq thrice while chatting with his wife on Skype. He says he did not mean it but Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband has ruled that his nikah stands terminated. That's not all. For his careless 'chat', the man can remarry his divorced wife only after halaala, a practice under which the woman has to marry and divorce another man before she can marry her previous husband again. Deoband's fatwa section — Dar-ul-Ifta (DuI) — recently received a written request from Qatar, seeking a fatwa on a rather amusing situation. The youth stated that he was recently chatting with his wife on Skype when he typed the word 'talaq' three times, though he did not mean it and asked if his nikah was still valid. Dar-ul-Ifta shot back that the nikah stands terminated. "When you pronounce talaq three times, it means talaq has taken place, and...

. Polls in UP, Bihar create worker shortage in Ankleshwar BHARUCH: Industrialists here are frightened of production loss this Diwali because of shortage of workers who have left for their home towns in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar to exercise their right to franchise in the local body and Vidhan Sabha elections taking place there respectively. The maximum number of workers in Ankleshwar, Panoli, Jhagadiya and Dahej industrial estates in Bharuch district are from UP, Bihar and Orissa. Interestingly, some of the candidates who have filed their nominations for elections in the two states have sponsored the trips of these workers. Besides cash for travel expenses, they had also sent them the railway tickets, sources said. "We are going to suffer a loss this time as many orders are pending and we are short of staff. Production, packaging and dispatch work has been hit by staff shortage," an industrialist from Ankleshwar said. Industri...

. Thinking Like Hackers, Programmers Find Security Loopholes in 'Secure' Microchips ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2010) — Used in a variety of products from credit cards to satellite televisions, secure chips are designed to keep encoded data safe. But hackers continue to develop methods to crack the chips' security codes and access the information within. Thinking like hackers, Prof. Avishai Wool and his Ph.D. student Yossi Oren of Tel Aviv University's School of Electrical Engineering have developed an innovative way of extracting information from chip technology. By combining modern cryptology methods with constraint programming -- an area of computer science designed to solve a series of complex equations -- Prof. Wool and Oren were able to extract more information from secure chips. Their research, which could lead to important new advances in computer security, was recently presented at the 12th Workshop on Cryptographic Hardwar...

. Bihar Polls: 104 Multi-Millionaires, 219 Criminals in NEXT 2 ROUNDS Alone PATNA: Against only 36 multi-millionaires in the last assembly elections, there are over 100 multi-millionaires in the second and third phases of the ongoing Bihar polls , a report by two NGOs has said. It adds that 219 candidates have criminal records. The Association of Democratic Reforms and the National Election Watch said Thursday that 104 candidates contesting for the second and third phases on Oct 24 and Oct 28 were multi-millionaires. The report was compiled after analysing 503 affidavits of candidates contesting for the second and third phases in Bihar polls. "This shows the role of increasing money power in politics," said Anjesh Kumar of the Association of Democratic Reforms. He said 219 candidates were criminals . Of them, 129 face serious crimin...

. FOR years, your itinerant correspondent toted a palmtop computer, rather than a laptop, to do his e-mail as well as to file stories while on his peregrinations abroad. The first pocket-size computer he bought back in the late 1980s was a diminutive DOS machine made by Sharp of Japan. It weighed under a pound (454 grams), had a tiny six-inch (15cm) monochrome screen, a two-thirds-size qwerty keyboard, a painfully slow dial-up modem, and a rechargeable battery that lasted for just about 12 hours. Though limited in performance, it got the job done—and was an easy compromise to accept when laptops and their paraphernalia weighed in at over 12lb. When, after a decade of use and abuse, the trusty little Sharp finally broke beyond repair, it was replaced with a more up-to-date equivalent made by Hewlett-Packard of California. Likewise, the HP Jornada 720 weighed little more than a pound, had a two-thirds-size keyboard, a battery life of around 12 hours, and could be slipped j...