Meghalaya: Average annual rainfall: 11,777mm

1. In a scene played out every weekday morning, students of the RCLP School in Nongsohphan Village, Meghalaya, India, cross a bridge grown from the roots of a rubber tree. In the relentless damp of Meghalaya's jungles, wooden structures rot away too quickly to be practical. For centuries the Khasi people have instead used the trainable roots of rubber trees to "grow" bridges over the region's rivers.
 
2. The village of Mawsynram, claiming to have the highest average rainfall on Earth. Perched atop a ridge in the Khasi Hills of India's northeast, the village receives 467 inches of rain per year - thirteen times that of Seattle. The heavy rainfall is due to summer air currents sweeping over the steaming floodplains of Bangladesh, gathering moisture as they move north. When the resulting clouds hit the steep hills of Meghalaya they are "squeezed" through the narrowed gap in the atmosphere and compressed to the stage they can no longer hold their moisture, causing the near constant rain the village is famous for.


3. Rain hammering down on a roof in the village on July 6, 2014. In the two peak monsoon months of June and July Mawsynram is hit with an average 275 Inches of rain - New York receives 60 inches in a year.

4. The weather station on the outskirts of Mawsynram. Measurements from the station are taken monthly, but by the end of 2014 an automated digital measurement system will replace this station.


5. Three laborers walk into Mawsynram under the traditional Khasi umbrellas known as knups. Made from bamboo and banana leaf, the knups are favored for allowing two-handed work, and for being able to stand up to the high winds which lash the region during heavy rainstorms.


 
6. An elderly Khasi woman is the first arrival to Sunday mass in Mawsynram's Catholic church. Around 70% of Khasi are Christian, largely due to the Reverend Thomas Jones who, in 1841 clambered up into the hills from the plains of Bangladesh and established the region's first church in the neighboring town of Cherrapunji.
 
7. The entrance to Mawsynram Village. Like most villages in the Meghalaya region of India's northeast, the people here are Khasi, an indigenous minority numbering about 1.2 million within India.

Diamonds are a girl’s best friends and diamonds are forever, but did you know that, despite the fact we are told that diamonds are the hardest natural substance on earth, if you hit a diamond hard enough with a hammer, it will shatter into tiny pieces?  Diamonds were formed deep beneath the earths crust billions of years ago and they are brought to the surface by volcanoes. They are made of pure carbon with just a few impurities that give some diamonds their colour. They are rare, they are beautiful, and they have been sought after and revered for thousands of years. 

1. The largest diamond ever found weighed 1.33 pounds.
The largest diamond ever found weighed in at a whopping 1.33 pounds, or 3,106 carats. It was discovered in South Africa in 1905 and given by the South Africans to King Edward of England. The diamond was cut into nine large diamonds, one of which is now a part of the Crown jewels of England.
2. Diamonds are found all around the world.
Most people know about the diamond mines of South Africa and the giant DeBeers mining corporation, but diamonds are actually mined all around the world. The world’s first main source of diamonds was India and diamonds and some of the world’s most brilliant diamond’s now come from Botswana, Canada, Russia and Namibia.
3. Diamonds are rare, but not as a rare as you think.

Although you are unlikely to stumble across one in your back garden, there are more diamonds on the earth than you realise. The fact is that the big diamond miners, like DeBeers, stockpile diamonds so that they remain rare and that keeps the price high. If they released all the diamonds they have in stock today, the price of diamond jewellery would plummet.
4. Diamonds come in lots of different colours.
The clear, or white, diamonds are the ones that most people are familiar with, but diamonds actually do come if a range of different colours. The colours are caused by tiny amounts of impurities in the stones and you can find diamonds in just about every colour that you could think of.
5. Most diamonds that are mined are used in industry.
By far the majority of diamonds that are mined do not find their way onto jewellery, they are used in industrial processes for things like drill bits and abrasives. That was also the case when diamonds were first discovered by humans. In China, diamonds were used over 4,500 years ago to polish ceremonial axes to a mirror like finish. Today, more than 80% of the diamonds extracted from the ground are used for industrial purposes.
6. There is a diamond star.
Astronomers have discovered a star that they believe is just one huge diamond. Named after the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, the star is made of crystallised carbon, and is located in the Centaurus constellation of the Milky Way. If scientists are right about this star, then it’s one big diamond because it would weigh-in at 10 billion trillion trillion carats!
7. Diamonds are not the hardest substance on the planet.
Jewellers love to tell you that diamonds are the hardest substance on earth, but they are wrong. There are at least three substances that can scratch a diamond, including Rhenium Diboride, Ultrahard Fullerite and Aggregated Diamond Nanorods. The diamond is, however, still the hardest naturally occurring mineral on the planet, as far as we know.
8. Diamond engagement rings are nothing more than a marketing ploy.
Diamond engagement rings are not used because they have a century’s long tradition of being used as a sign of eternal love. Far from it, diamond engagement rings only become popular in the 1930s, when DeBeers hired an advertising agency to promote the sales of diamonds. The advertising agency undertook a huge advertising campaign to make diamonds the preferred gem for engagement rings and that’s the only real reason why diamonds are still so popular in engagement rings.
9. Diamonds are no good as investments.
 
If you are looking for something to invest money in that will appreciate in value, diamonds are definitely not the best choice. The price of diamonds is artificially controlled by the big diamond companies, so the price remains relatively stable all the time. With diamonds, there are also two distinct prices; the retail price and the wholesale price, so it is very unlikely you would ever be able to sell a diamond ring for more than you bought it for.
10. Why are diamonds measured in carats?
 

Atomic Fingerprinting

In the sophisticated world of counterfeiting, it can often be difficult to tell fakes from the real deal. But now, scientists have developed a new method that can stamp things with "atomic fingerprints" to keep phony products at bay.

"There is no bigger crime than counterfeit crime," said Robert Young, a professor of physics at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom and chief technology officer of the tech startup Quantum Base.
Earlier this month, Young and his colleagues announced a relatively simple technique for confirming the authenticity of an object — an advance that could put a dent in the counterfeit industry, where fakes, forgeries and imitations cost the global economy half a trillion dollars in lost revenue each year, according to the most recent data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, headquartered in Paris.


The new anti-counterfeiting method, published online in ArXiv, the open-access preprint journal from Cornell University, has two components: a unique molecular pattern that can be incorporated into a holographic label and a smartphone app.
The unique pattern is created by intentionally fabricating flaws into an atom-thin layer of material, such as graphene oxide. Flaws may include removing a carbon atom, or adding extra oxygen atoms, or creating a ridge of atoms, according to the researchers. Once the flaw is set, the material is incorporated into an ink and then, using an inkjet printer, printed onto a hologram, which can be added as a label to any product.
To confirm the presence of the atomic pattern, a person would use a smartphone camera and its built-in flash to photograph the label. The flash excites the atoms, which produce a unique color based on the pattern. A corresponding app can instantly analyze the image and confirm whether the label is authentic or not, the researchers said."I'm really satisfied by how simple it is," Young told Live Science.


Solving such an extensive problem like counterfeiting requires a solution that can be adopted by a large number of people, Young added. A technique that's easy to incorporate and easy to analyze could ensure that it's widely adopted much faster, he said.
Young and his team are working with a company that prints 10 billion holograms per year and said that the first application could be in the automotive industry, where parts are already spray-painted with labels. By piggybacking onto existing manufacturing applications, the researchers can prove that the method works, according to Young.
"We're expecting the first products in market in the first quarter of next year, in 2018," he said.
From there, the researchers would like to branch out to other industries, including pharmaceuticals, where $200 billion a year is lost from counterfeit drugs, Young said. And what's worse, this illegal medicine can sometimes lead to death.
"Thirty percent of counterfeit pharmaceuticals don't contain the correct active ingredient," Young said. "People buy these things, believe they're real, but they're not being treated for the disease."
Young said that eventually, the atomic fingerprints his team has developed could be laminated directly onto individual pills.
"This is genuinely a really exciting application," he said.

Brain Hacking Technology

There's been a lot of hype coming out of Silicon Valley in recent months about technology that can meld the human brain with machines. But how will this tech help society, and which companies are leading the charge?
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk made waves in March when he announced his latest venture, Neuralink, which will design so-called brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). Initially, the BCIs will be used for medical research, but the ultimate goal is to prevent humans from becoming obsolete, by enabling people to merge with artificial intelligence.
While these may seem like lofty goals, Musk is not the only one who's trying to bring humans closer to machines. Here are five companies that have doubled down on hacking the brain. [Super-Intelligent Machines: 7 Robotic Futures]

Neuralink

According to Musk, the main barrier to human-machine cooperation is communication "bandwidth."
This means that using a touch screen or a keyboard is a slow way to communicate with a computer. Musk's new venture aims to create a direct "high-bandwidth" link between the human brain and machines.
What that system would actually look like is not entirely clear yet. Words like "neural lace" and "neural dust" have been bandied about, but all that has really been revealed is a business model. Neuralink has been registered as a medical research company, and Musk said the firm will produce a product to help people with severe brain injuries within four years.
This will lay the groundwork for developing BCIs for healthy people, thus enabling humans to communicate by "consensual telepathy," which could be ready within five years, Musk said. Some scientists, particularly those in the neuroscience community, are skeptical of Musk's ambitious plans.

Facebook

Not to be outdone, just a few weeks after Musk launched Neuralink, Facebook announced that it is working on a way to let people type with their thoughts.
The goal is to build a device that would allow people to "type" up to 100 words per minute, according to Regina Dugan, head of the company's secretive Building 8 research group. Dugan also suggested that the device could work as a "brain mouse" for augmented reality (AR), removing the need to track hand movements to control cursors, The Verge reported.
Facebook has also been light on the details of its plans. The company has said it does not think implants are feasible in the long term, so it's focusing on developing some kind of cap that could track brain activity noninvasively, most likely using optical imaging.
But this technology doesn't exist yet. So, in the meantime, Facebook said that, within two years, it plans to create a prototype medical implant that would pave the way for future devices.

Kernel

Musk wasn't the first wealthy entrepreneur to dive into the underdeveloped neurotechnology space. Last August, Bryan Johnson, founder of the online payments company Braintree, invested $100 million into the startup called Kernel.
The company's initial goal was to develop a chip that could record memories and redeliver them to the brain, based on research by Theodore Berger, a biomedical engineer and neuroscientist at the University of Southern California. But six months later, the two parted ways due to the long timescales involved, reported MIT Technology Review, and the company is now focusing on technology similar to Neuralink.
Kernel plans to build a flexible platform for recording and stimulating neurons, with the goal of treating diseases such as depression and Alzheimer's. But like Musk, Johnson is not afraid to discuss the prospect of using the technology to augment human abilities and merge with machines.
"There's this huge potential to co-evolve with our technology," Johnson told CNBC.

Emotiv

Unlike some other companies in this burgeoning industry, Emotiv actually makes products — electroencephalography headsets that record brain activity noninvasively.
The technology is lower fidelity than the kinds of neural implants other companies, such as Neuralink, are considering, but it is more established. The company has a research-grade device, called EPOC+, which sells for $799. But it also produces a more consumer-oriented headset, called Insight, which retails for $299.
Emotiv also produces a variety of software products that allow users to visualize their brain activity in 3D; measure their brain fitness; and even control drones, robots and video games, reported The Daily Dot. The company was selected to be part of the Disney Accelerator program in 2015, with the aim of creating a "wearable for the brain."

DARPA

Although it's not a company itself, the U.S. military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced a $60 million program last year to develop an implantable neural interface in collaboration with a consortium of private companies.
The project, which is a part of former President Barack Obama's BRAIN Initiative, is ambitious. DARPA wants a device that can record 1 million neurons simultaneously and stimulate at least 100,000 neurons in the brain. DARPA also wants the device to be wireless, the size of a nickel and ready in four years, which is an incredibly aggressive deadline, according to MIT Technology Review.
Potential applications include compensating for sight or hearing problems because the device could feed digital auditory or visual information directly into the brain. The exact technological approach is unclear at this stage, but the project has the heft of some major engineering giants, such as Qualcomm, behind it,  Quartz reported.

Have you ever thought of trying a new business or which field of business would be the most difficult to enter ?? Hopefully you must have thought about it at least once, not only you but many people think about making big in this world but only some who have the patience and courage to go all in and make it big. Well we have 2 very such people in this post i.e. Caleb Bradham founder PepsiCo and  John Pemberton founder Coca-Cola.


PepsiCo and Coca-Cola are the 2 biggest beverage companies present in this world at this time. These mammoths gained their position slowly and steadily with very less sales, absence of today's refrigeration tech added to their difficulties, but they overcame all the hurdles that came in the way to become what they are.

There are many factors which make them the best of best and unbeatable kings some of them are :

1. They are simply everywhere, which literally means everywhere, even the places where government has no reach are not inaccessible for them. You can find their products everywhere in the remotest places to the metropolis. You can have a chilled coke or pepsi even a place where water scarcity is killing thousands.

2. The distribution network of these mammoths is also exceptional, and these are connecting the remotest places on the globe and as said you can have a chilled beverage in places where people are dying of thirst. They have enhanced their distribution to such a level that some of the African countries are dependent on them for medicines and vaccines in remote areas.

3. High Bottling cost has made it difficult for a noob to enter the market, as no one would invest such a huge amount in the market when the future is not promised.

4. Profit margins in the financial year 2016 for Coca Cola is 60.67% and for PepsiCo is 55.08%, this provides a strong base for investments and gain them trust of their investors by providing a return equity of about 29%.

5. At last, being each others biggest rivals have not made them loose each others respect, one such incident is when Williams, 41, of Norcross, Ga., Ibrahim Dimson, 30, of New York and Edmund Duhaney, 43, of Decatur, Ga., were charged with wire fraud and unlawfully stealing and selling Coke trade secrets, PepsiCo alerted Coca Cola of the deal and thus gained respect of their rival, "Competition can sometimes be fierce but must be fair and legal " said PepsiCo spokesperson Dave Dececco.

As quoted in the movie Rush (2013), "A Wise man learns more from his enemies than a fool learns from his friends".

Huns was the first one to do the destruction under Mihirakula during the reign of Skandagupta. But the library was restored and improved with bigger building and better faculties by Skanda’s successors. The second destruction was done by the Gaudas which was again restored by Harshavardhana, the Buddhist king. But the army led by Turkish leader Bakhtiyar khilji did the most destructive attack in 1193 who tried to destroy the roots of knowledge, Buddhism and Ayurveda, from the country. Khilji was an illiterate person who was hired by some Turkish rulers due to his military skills. He was good at killing people (including Muslims) irrespective of their religion.

7. There were some sane people to witness the actions of rulers
According to “Tabqat-e-Nasiri,” Minhaj-e-Siraj, who was a Muslim scholar, witnessed the destruction and didn’t approve it. He was one of the “alem” (title in Islam given to knowledgeable person) who used to call Nalanda University as “madrasah” (Means College in Persian language) and the monks as “Brahman-alem”. But as because these minority scholars like Minhaj didn’t had any voice in the war decisions, they had to quietly witness such wrong deeds by the ruling family.

8. Well known scholars studied in Nalanda University
Some of the famous scholars who studied in Nalanda University include Harshavardhana, Dharmapal, Vasubandhu, Suvishnu, Dharmakirti, Asanga, Shantarakhsita, Aryadeva, Nagarjuna, Padmasambhava and Xuanzang.
Buddhism is a major religion in India which had seen a setback for around hundred of years due to the loss of the religious texts.

9. Myth and Fact about Nalanda University
Myth- Most people come up with these words, “Muslims were responsible for the destruction of Nalanda”.
Fact- A person destroyed Nalanda University who was an Indian and only he was responsible for what he did and no one else.

10. Nalanda University reopened after 800 years
 The good news is that, there have been plans to revive it from many years and presently the university is in action with two departments. It all started when our former president late Dr APJ Abdul Kalam visited the ruins of Nalanda University during his tenure and mooted the idea of reviving the university with the same glory and standards of the ancient seat of learning to the central government and the proposal got approved. Presently, Nalanda University has a self sustained campus and is a source of energy for the neighboring villages.

The spray technology works on large or irregularly shaped surfaces.

While touch sensing is common on small, flat surfaces such as smartphone or tablet screens, researchers have now developed a technology to turn surfaces of a wide variety of shapes and sizes into touchpads using tools as simple as a can of spray paint.


The technology, called Electrick, can turn walls, furniture, steering wheels and even toys into touch sensors, the researchers said. The “trick” is to apply electrically conductive coatings or materials to objects or surfaces, or to craft objects using conductive materials. By attaching a series of electrodes to the conductive materials, researchers showed they could use a well-known technique called electric field tomography to sense the position of a finger touch.
“For the first time, we’ve been able to take a can of spray paint and put a touch screen on almost anything,” said Chris Harrison, Assistant professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, US.

The group is scheduled to present Electrick at CHI 2017, the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, this week in Denver, Colorado. Until now, large touch surfaces have been expensive and irregularly shaped, or flexible touch surfaces have been largely available only in research labs. Some methods have relied on computer vision, which can be disrupted if a camera’s view of a surface is blocked. The presence of cameras also raises privacy concerns.
With Electrick, conductive touch surfaces can be created by applying conductive paints, bulk plastics or carbon-loaded films, among other materials. Like many touchscreens, Electrick relies on the shunting effect — when a finger touches the touchpad, it shunts a bit of electric current to ground. By attaching multiple electrodes to the periphery of an object or conductive coating, the researchers showed they could localise where and when such shunting occurs.


They did this by using electric field tomography — sequentially running small amounts of current through the electrodes in pairs and noting any voltage differences. The researchers used Electrick to add touch sensing to objects as varied as a steering wheel and the surface of a guitar, among others. The technology could be used to make an interactive smartphone case — opening applications such as a camera based on how the user holds the phone.

Here Are Some Beautiful Places That You Must Visit

1. Whitehaven Beach – Australia

 2. Westin Maui Resort & Spa Hawaii

3. The Fairy Pools on the Isle of Skye – Scotland

4. Marble Caverns of Carrera Lake – Chile

5. The Shahara Bridge – Yemen

6. Havasu Falls – Grand Canyon National Park

7. Fjaðrárgljúfur Canyon – Iceland

8. Arang Kel, Neelum Valley – Kashmir, Pakistan

9. The Dark Hedges – Northern Ireland

10. Coast near Marsa Matruh – Egypt

In keeping with this site’s love of helping out with holiday plans, this is a list on the top 10 most dangerous places in the world – these are all places you might consider not visiting when planning your next holiday. Some of the items may be a little controversial, but you are, of course, free to ignore our advice and go anyway!

 

In this crime-ridden, ex-Soviet state, no longer does the government stuff their Armani suits with rubles, but the vandals and gangsters. The Russian mafia runs amuck, there are more gangsters than police, and a Russian is assassinated every 18 minutes, averaging 84 murders per day in a nation of 143 million. The nucleus of Russian crime is stationed in the Republic of Chechnya, a region within Russia just north of Georgia. Prostitution, drug trafficking, and underground restaurants are arbitrarily controlled by the Chechens. Foreigners are kidnapped more frequently due to the higher ransom allocated. Crimes towards include but are not limited to: pick pocketing wallets, cell phones, cameras, cash, and physical assaults. From superpower to Third World country, think tanks are beginning to speculate if communism really was the cure for Russia.


For anyone traveling to Brazil, it is not a matter of whether you get mugged, it is a matter of when! Grinding poverty still lives alongside incredible wealth in a country that is riding a wave of economic growth. But with prosperity, rates of crime have also soared. Street crime is rampant in parts of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo, and whilst many victims are left unharmed, having a broken bottle put to your throat for your bracelet is not pleasant. The incidences of “quicknappings” has risen in major cities. This involves being abducted and taken to an ATM to pay your ransom. If you can’t pay, thanks to mobile technology, your family is only a call away. Along with street crime, organized criminal groups have waged wars against police and public institutions that were unable to be bribed. Prison riots are brutally suppressed, drugs and narco-terrorism claim civilian casualties and if you survive all that – the piranhas are waiting.

Any nation described as the ‘rape capital of the world’ should be one to take extra special care in. Although rape had shown a declining trend to 113.7 in 2004, it increased in 2005 to 118.3 per 100 000. Another damning statistic for South Africa is its appallingly high murder rate. The 2010 World Cup host is consistently in the Top 5 list of countries by homicide rate. Most crime is confined to poor areas but it hasn’t stopped gated communities springing up all over South Africa and armed guards protecting wealthy tourist groups. Farming in South Africa has become one of the most dangerous professions in the world. The murder rate for farmers is 313 per 100 000 – about 8 times the national average. And like anywhere, sex can be very dangerous in South Africa, where more than 10 million people are infected with HIV.
This small, densely populated and poor nation has giant problems. A civil war between Hutus and Tutsis tore the nation apart between 1993 and 2006. A ceasefire was declared however most provisions have not been implemented. Mass murder and mayhem compete with environmental problems as the biggest headaches for the people of Burundi. The list of assassinated leaders is extensive, and control of the nation has changed hands numerous times in the last 50 years. Crimes committed by roaming gangs and armed children are risks for visitors. Muggings, carjackings and kidnappings await, so you are advised not to stop the car for souvenirs. Should you be injured or harmed while in Burundi, you may need to be well trained, as local clinics have almost no resources to assist you.


While murder, rape and robbery may not be a big problem in this part of the world, the hostile conditions are. Antarctica is home to some extreme weather conditions, with the mercury regularly dropping below -60 degrees Celsius (-100F) and winds tearing in at more than 100km/hr. If exposed to this weather for more than an hour, you will most certainly die. Antarctica has no hospitals, no food to forage and if you get lost, not a lot of hope. Stay with the tour groups. At least there is a McDonald’s at Scott Base if you manage to find it.

5. Afghanistan

This nation has for hundreds of years, been one of the worlds most strategically important and lusted after territories. However it remains one of the poorest, undeveloped and unstable. During the Soviet invasion, the Red Army planted more than 12 million landmines in Afghanistan. Hundreds of people are killed, shredded, and maimed each year due to these insidious devices. Following the Soviets came the Taliban, whose control meant women were banned from jobs and universities. In 2001, the United States overthrew the Taliban, but banditry, tribal rivalries and drug related violence has left the nation unstable. Suicide bombings are a constant threat, and nobody in Afghanistan is safe. The most lethal suicide attack occurred in Baghlan Province in November 2007, killing more than 70 people. Did I mention Afghanistan is also the worlds largest supplier of top grade hashish and opium?

Somalia is a failed state known for its anarchy, corruption, lack of government, and starvation. Travelers are warned against entering Somalia, the self-proclaimed “independent Republic of Somaliland” or even sailing near the Horn Of Africa. Pirates patrol these waters armed with AK-47s and will seize craft and hold crews to ransom. Inter-clan fighting has claimed thousands of lives in the north of the country, while territorial control in the capital, Mogadishu is carved up between many clans and warlords. Ethiopia attacked Islamic troops in Somalia in late 2006, resulting in hundreds of casualties and the internal displacement of thousands. Heck, if this place is too much for the Marines, what chance do you stand? Make sure your insurance is fully up to date.

Desperation, death and destruction are synonymous with Sudan. Terrorism is a mainstay of this nation, which has been controlled by Islamic military regimes since its independence. Some of the worlds most famous killers have earned their stripes in Sudan, finishing with degrees in car-bombing, rocket launching and genocide. Violence is rife in the Darfur region between government-backed militias, government troops and local insurgent groups. Sudan has been in open warfare with Chad partly due to the Darfur conflict. Since 2003, 230,000 Sudanese refugees have fled to eastern Chad from Darfur. More than two million have died during the 2 civil wars that spanned the last 50 years. Along with its bleak desert conditions, Sudan is one of the worst places on the planet.