How Can I Be Underweight

The high prevalence of obesity and overweight problems in our culture means much more emphasis is placed on losing weight rather than gaining weight. It is easy to forget about people who have the problem of being too thin.
Being underweight can result from eating disorders, chronic diseases, and it is also a concern for athletes and naturally thin people who wish to be bigger, stronger, and more muscular. Elderly people may become underweight. The gradual loss of taste and smell, or the inability to prepare healthy meals, results in becoming too thin.

While being overweight or obese is a well-known risk factor for chronic diseases, being too thin may also increase a person's risk of dying from diseases such as heart failure and cancer. Elderly women who are underweight may become frail, which means they are more likely to suffer from osteoporosis and hip fractures. Being underweight may also increase a man's chance of erectile dysfunction.

What To Eat To Gain Weight

Increasing your intake of junk foods and greasy foods is not a good way to gain weight. Junk foods usually contain unhealthy trans fats or saturated fats. Even though you need to increase your calorie consumption to gain weight, those calories should come from foods that are good for you.
Healthy fats include omega-3 essential fatty acids sources like tuna, salmon, flax, and walnuts. Good sources of protein include lean meats, fish, poultry, nuts, seeds and legumes. Healthy carbohydrate sources include fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

It may be easier to eat five or six smaller balanced meals per day rather than eating three large meals, especially if you are not used to eating much at one sitting.

Protein powders and nutritional supplement drinks such as Ensure (buy direct) can be added as in-between meal snacks if you still need more calories. Some protein powders are flavored and only need added water and some others can be blended with your choice of juice or milk to improve the taste.

It would also be a healthy idea to add a small amount of flax seed oil and some psyllium powder to add some omega-3 essential fatty acids and extra fiber.

Dietary Supplements and Gaining Weight

A high-quality multivitamin and mineral supplement is a good idea to make sure you are getting all of the vitamins and minerals you need. Some people find that their muscle mass increases with protein supplements that contain certain blends of amino acids such as creatine (buy direct) and glutamine (buy direct). Some people who are very ill may need liquid nutritional preparations that are available through their doctors.
Resistive Exercise To Gain Weight
Exercise is also important for healthy weight gain. Resistance training exercises such as lifting weights will help to increase your muscle size. Aerobic exercises such as running and stationary bicycling are better for fat loss and excessive aerobic training may cause you to lose more weight. Resistance training can be done at a health club, gym or at home with the proper equipment.
Remember that it can take a while to gain the weight you need, but be patient and continue to choose healthy foods until you reach your goal weight.

Tools to Help You Gain Weight

Use these tips and tools to help gain weight:
Start with this Calorie and Nutrition Guide to find out how many calories you will need to reach the weight you desire.
Use a food diary to track your calorie intake to be sure you are getting all of the calories and foods that you need.
You can also use an online program such as Calorie Count Plus to track your calorie intake, your exercise and your changes in weight. Calorie Count Plus has a large data base of nutrition information for almost any food you like to eat.
Add healthy calories to breakfast with an extra slice of whole-grain toast and peanut butter.
Mid-morning and afternoon snacks should be nutritious, not junk. Trail mixes contain healthy nuts, dried fruits and can add healthy calories to your diet.
Don't add calories to your meals by choosing unhealthy fried foods such as french fries, chicken nuggets and fish sticks. Choose healthy foods such as baked potatoes, baked chicken and fish, just make your portions a bit bigger.
Keep your meals balanced. One meal should have a healthy protein source such as fish, low fat meat, chicken or legumes plus two or three servings of vegetables. Green vegetables add lots of vitamins and phytonutrients while starchy potatoes and corn add extra calories.
Drink healthy beverages such as milk and fruit juices to add calories. Don't choose sugary sodas, which only add calories and no nutrition.
Design a weight training program with help from About.com's exercise site and our weight training site.

Source: http://nutrition.about.com

quantum computers

Why quantum computers?

The history of computer technology has involved a sequence of changes from one type of physical realisation to another --- from gears to relays to valves to transistors to integrated circuits and so on. Today’s advanced lithographic techniques can create chips with features only a fraction of micron wide. Soon they will yield even smaller parts and inevitably reach a point where logic gates are so small that they are made out of only a handful of atoms.

Shrinking size of a computer

On the atomic scale matter obeys the rules of quantum mechanics, which are quite different from the classical rules that determine the properties of conventional logic gates. So if computers are to become smaller in the future, new, quantum technology must replace or supplement what we have now. The point is, however, that quantum technology can offer much more than cramming more and more bits to silicon and multiplying the clock--speed of microprocessors. It can support entirely new kind of computation with qualitatively new algorithms based on quantum principles!

What are qubits?

From a physical point of view a bit is a physical system which can be prepared in one of the two different states representing two logical values --- no or yes, false or true, or simply 0 or 1.

Bit versus qubit

Quantum bits, called qubits, are implemented using quantum mechanical two state systems; these are not confined to their two basic states but can also exist in superpositions: effectively this means that the qubit is both in state 0 and state 1.

Quantum register - popular illustration of the idea

We can push this idea further. Any classical register composed of three bits can store in a given moment of time only one out of eight different numbers. A quantum register composed of three qubits can store in a given moment of time all eight numbers in a quantum superposition.

How quantum computers compute?

Once the register is prepared in a superposition of different numbers one can perform operations on all of them.

Quantum processor

Thus quantum computers can perform many different calculations in parallel: a system with n qubits can perform 2ⁿ calculations at once! This has impact on the execution time and memory required in the process of computation and determines the efficiency of algorithms.

How powerful are quantum computers?

For an algorithm to be efficient, the time it takes to execute the algorithm must increase no faster than a polynomial function of the size of the input. Think about the input size as the total number of bits needed to specify the input to the problem—for example, the number of bits needed to encode the number we want to factorize. If the best algorithm we know for a particular problem has the execution time (viewed as a function of the size of the input) bounded by a polynomial then we say that the problem belongs to class P.

Computational complexity

Problems outside class P are known as hard problems. Thus we say, for example, that multiplication is in P whereas factorization is not in P. “Hard�? in this case does not mean “impossible to solve�? or “non-computable.�? It means that the physical resources needed to factor a large number scale up such that for all practical purposes, it can be regarded as intractable. However some of quantum algorithms can turn hard mathematical problems into easy ones --- factoring being the most striking example so far. The difficulty of factorisation underpins the security of what are currently the most trusted methods of public key encryption, in particular of the RSA (Rivest, Shamir and Adelman) system, which is often used to protect electronic bank accounts. Once a quantum factorisation engine (a special-purpose quantum computer for factorising large numbers) is built, all such cryptographic systems will become insecure.

Potential use of quantum factoring for code-breaking purposes has raised the obvious suggestion of building a quantum computer.

How to build a quantum computer?

Quantum networks

In principle we know how to build a quantum computer; we start with simple quantum logic gates and connect them up into quantum networks. A quantum logic gate, like a classical gate, is a very simple computing device that performs one elementary quantum operation, usually on two qubits, in a given time. Of course, quantum logic gates differ from their classical counterparts in that they can create and perform operations on quantum superpositions.

Why is it difficult to build a quantum computer?

As the number of quantum gates in a network increases, we quickly run into some serious practical problems. The more interacting qubits are involved, the harder it tends to be to engineer the interaction that would display the quantum properties. The more components there are, the more likely it is that quantum information will spread outside the quantum computer and be lost into the environment, thus spoiling the computation. This process is called decoherence. Thus our task is to engineer sub-microscopic systems in which qubits affect each other but not the environment.

What are the most promising technologies?

It is not clear which technology will support quantum computation in future. Today simple quantum logic gates involving two qubits are being realised in laboratories. Current experiments range from trapped ions via atoms in an array of potential wells created by a pattern of crossed laser beams to electrons in semiconductors. The next decade should bring control over several qubits and, without any doubt, we shall already begin to benefit from our new way of harnessing nature.

Source :http://www.quantiki.org

Nokia's 'Booklet 3G' Netbook

Nokia's 'Booklet 3G' Netbook With 12 Hour Battery-Life. Form and Functionality.

If you're a fan of Netbooks, and also a fan of Nokia, you'll soon be able to indulge your preference. On 2 September 2009, Nokia plans to release availablity and pricing details for their new netbook called the "Booklet 3G"

Nokia is bringing out its own kind of Netbook, and even though it may look like a regular netbook, it will carry the classy, smooth design we're used to see from Nokia
The Booklet 3G will be Windows based and powered by the popular and efficient Intel Atom processor with a whopping 12 hour battery life. This means people will be able to leave their power cables behind a little more often, without losing connectivity.

Weighing only 1.25 kilograms, this new lightweight plans to pack a significant punch with its highly portable alluminum casing. It's little more than 2 centimetres thick.

Connectivity options include 3G/HSDPA as well as Wi-fi, offering users high speed access to the internet.

The device features a HDMI port enabling HD video out, a built-in camera for video calling, bluetooth and SD card reader. Featuring a 10-inch glass HD ready display and a built-in A-GPS (which works with the Ovi Maps gadget), pinpointing your exact position takes only seconds.

Source :http://www.new-technology-world.com

Use IPv6

What is IPv6?

IPv6 is the next generation of the internet protocol. When IPv4 (the current standard developped in 1981) came out, they figured that an estimated 4.294 billion addresses would be enough. It turns out that this internet thing really caught on and there's actually a shortage of IP addresses. To remedy this situation, there have been many proposed solutions, but the one that has really caught on with the techs around the world is IPv6.

Why not just use Network Address Translation (NAT)?NAT is a fantastic temporary solution, but that is all it really is. The internet is designed so that computers can communicate directly to each other around the world. In due time there will be no extra IP addresses and we will be forced to move to IPv6 as the internet protocol. Until that time, computers will be huddled in their own private networks behind NAT servers and gateways. The down side of this is that your computer, rather than having complete, unlimited access, incoming and outgoing to the internet, is being blocked by it's gateway to the internet.

At the present time (Summer 2003) the small office / home office (SOHO) router makers (LinkSys, D-Link and Netgear) are not using IPv6. Eventually they will be forced to. At that time, you'll either be able to upgrade the firmware on your router if they're nice, or you'll have to buy a new router. If you want to start to play with IPv6 and you don't have an public IP address (that is to say, you are stuck behind a NAT gateway or proxy) you will have to use a very newer access method called teredo.


IPv6 prefix lengthsIPv6 prefix lengths are comparable to the subnets of IPv4, they are much bigger though because IPv6 is based on a completely different address structure.

A /64 is the address length in the form of:

ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:0000:0000:0000:0000

where the last part of the address will usually look something like:

ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:0200:00ff:fe00:0000

and would be filled in with the MAC address of the network card. For example, a MAC Address of 00:08:DB:EF:34:33 would result in an IPv6 address like:

ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:0208:dbff:feef:3433

Each part of an IPV6 address with prepending 0s can be omitted, but still represent the same address. The following are some examples...

ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:0208:dbff:feef:3433shown as:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:208:dbff:feef:3433
ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:0000:0000:00a0:feb5shown as:ffff:ffff:Ffff:ffff::a0:feb5

A /64 contains 2^64 nodes or 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 IPv6 addresses. That's 18.446 quintillion for those of you who need to call it something. A /48 contains 65,535 /64s. So the since the current spec for IPv6 gives you a /64 for being able to breathe.
This means that a /48 contains 1,208,907,372,870,555,465,154,560 IPv6 address, which is 1.208 octillion addreses.

Approximate Number of IPv6 Addresses Size Easier to Say Mask

18,446,744,073,709,551,616 /64 18.466 quintillion ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:: 1,208,907,372,870,555,465,154,560 /48 1.208 octillion ffff:ffff:ffff:: 79,225,744,681,071,852,408,904,089,600 /32 79.225 nonillion ffff:ffff:: 5,192,059,177,674,043,847,617,529,511,936,000 /16 5.192 undecillion ffff::

Getting an IPv6 AddressSo you want to get an IPv6 address today, there's a few ways to do it.

The first one, and the best one is if your Internet Service Provider (ISP) supplies them to you. This is great, because all you have to do now is enable ipv6 on your computer and you're done.

Source :http://www.useipv6.com/