Top 10 Cocktails For Any Occasion Review | A Girl Has to Eat ...

If you love experimenting with a cocktail shaker, muddler and strainer, buy spirits online and learn to prepare 10 of the best cocktails perfect for any occasion.

1. Mojito

The mojito, the national drink of Cuba and one of Ernest Hemingway?s favourites, is a winner, no matter which recipe you choose. The traditional Cuban recipe includes white sugar, white rum, mint leaves, lime, club soda, and ice. Golden rum may give the cocktail a stronger taste.

2. Cosmopolitan

The Cosmo is very popular among ladies, especially since Sex and the City became a TV sensation. The cocktail is prepared with citron vodka, Cointreau, cranberry juice, lime juice, and ice.

3. Margarita

The national cocktail of Mexico is one of the most refreshing and easy-to-make drinks. The classic version is based on tequila ? you can use silver or golden tequila ? as well as orange liqueur, lemon or lime juice, syrup, and ice.

4. Apple Martini
The delicious cocktail suits any occasion, from weddings to corporate events. Apple martinis should contain at least one ingredient with an apple flavour, be it plain apple juice, puree, or liqueur. You can try mixing apple flavoured vodka, sour apple liqueur, pineapple juice, and apple juice.

5. Caipirinha

The basic ingredient is Cachasa but adding limes, lime juice and brown sugar is essential for giving the cocktail a unique honey taste.

6. Mint Julep
To prepare the cocktail, you can use all the bartending elements from stirring to muddling to straining to shaking. You need bourbon, white sugar, mint leaves, bitters, club soda, lime juice and ice.

7. Bellini
The classic bellini was invented in the favourite bar of Orson Welles and Ernest Hemingway opened in 1931. It?s based on chilled champagne or sparkling wine and peach puree or juice.

8. Mimosa
The recipe is probably the easiest one. By mixing chilled sparkling wine and orange juice, you get a light drink perfect for brunch.

9. Manhattan

The cocktail contains Italian vermouth, whiskey, and dash angostura. Rye whiskey may be substituted for bourbon if you like.

10. Rum Swizzle
This rum-based cocktail is often called Bermuda?s national drink. It contains rum, angostura bitters, pineapple juice, orange juice, and sweet syrup.

Stick to classic recipes or experiment, but use only quality spirits for the cocktails. To make them really avant-garde, use ice in different shapes, sizes and flavours.

This is a paid for advertorial.

Source: http://agirlhastoeat.com/top-10-cocktails-for-any-occasion-spirits-online-cellarvie-wines/

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Dragonfly Shows Human-Like Power of Concentration

Dragonflies lack humans' big brains, but they still get the job done, according to new research that suggests that these insects have brain cells capable of feats previously seen only in primates.

Specifically, the dragonflies can screen out useless visual information to focus on a target, a process called selective attention. The new study, published Dec. 20 in the journal Current Biology, is the first to find brain cells devoted to selective attention in an invertebrate animal.

Selective attention is crucial for responding to one stimulus among the dozens of distractions that clamor for notice at any given time, said Steven Wiederman of the University of Adelaide in Australia.

"Imagine a tennis player having to pick out a small ball from the crowd when it's traveling at almost 200 kilometers an hour," Wiederman said in a statement. "You need selective attention in order to hit that ball back into play."

But little is known about how the brain locks onto its targets and ignores all else. To find out, Wiederman, who is from the university's Center for Neuroscience Research, and his colleague David O'Carroll turned to an unlikely animal. The researchers have long studied insect vision, and the dragonfly turns out to be quite adept in that arena. [Photos: Dew-Covered Dragonflies & Other Sparkling Insects]

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"The dragonfly hunts for other insects, and these might be part of a swarm ? they're all tiny moving objects," Wiederman said. "Once the dragonfly has selected a target, its neuron activity filters out all other potential prey. The dragonfly then swoops in on its prey ? they get it right 97 percent of the time."

Using a glass probe with a tip 1,500 times smaller than a human hair, the researchers measured the neuronal activity that enables such amazing aerial hunting. A similar process is at work in the primate brain, O'Carroll said in a statement, but researchers weren't expecting to see the same thing in an insect that evolved 325 million years ago.

"We believe our work will appeal to neuroscientists and engineers alike," O'Carroll said. "For example, it could be used as a model system for robotic vision. Because the insect brain is simple and accessible, future work may allow us to fully understand the underlying network of neurons and copy it into intelligent robots."

Plenty of other insects have inspired robot designs. Swiss scientists, for example, have built a hovering drone that mimics insects in its ability to survive collisions with hard objects. Sometimes insects are recruited directly. North Carolina State University researchers reported in September that they'd managed to create cyborg Madagascar hissing cockroaches. The scientists wired a microcontroller to the insects' sensory organs, enabling them to steer the cockroaches' movements.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas?or LiveScience @livescience. We're also on Facebook?& Google+.

Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/dragonfly-shows-human-power-concentration-000311471.html

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Religious & Cultural Beliefs On Death And Dying | The 20 Life

Different religions and cultures greatly affect our perception and views about life and death. Consequently, bereavement and funeral practices and tend to vary from one religion to another.

Thus, although death is a universal experience, it is interpreted in numerous ways in all the cultures and religions. Consequently, there are different methods for disposing of the body of the deceased.

Christianity

Christianity believes in an afterlife in Heaven or Hell depending on one?s conduct on earth and belief or disbelief in God. The believers face death without fear and gain eternal life in Heaven in the presence of God.

It is believed that the body itself is also a gift from God. Thus, it has to be celebrated and honored. Therefore, elaborate funeral procedures are performed after death.

In general, Christians are free to either bury or cremate the dead body. The Catholics, however, prefer burial over cremation. You can read about the Christian beliefs on Afterlife at Religion Facts.

Islam

Islam believes in continued existence of the soul with transformed physical existence and a Day of Judgment (similar to Catholicism) deciding eternal destination of the human beings to Paradise and Hell.

Thus, when one approaches death, the family and friends give comfort to the individual and recite from the Qur?an, thereby reminding one of God?s mercy and forgiveness.

Upon death, the near and dear ones are encouraged to stay calm and consider the loss as God?s will because He is the one who gives life and takes it away.

After death, there are no complicated rituals, and the body is washed and wrapped in a shroud for burial as soon as possible, preferably within 24 hours, in order to avoid embalming.

Cremation is usually prohibited in Islam. You can get detailed information on the Islamic view on death at www.deathreference.com. To understand read about cremation, visit Cremation Resource.

Hinduism

According to Hinduism, the oldest known religion in the world, death is a natural process in the existence of a soul that takes several births and reincarnations on the basis of karma.

It explains body like a set of clothes covering the soul. Hence, the soul changes bodies like one changes clothes.

Hindus think of prolonging one?s life artificially as interfering with karma and hence does not encourage it. More often than not, they prefer dying at home.

So, they mostly bring terminally ill loved ones home so that they can die at home peacefully while family members sing, pray, and read the scriptures to help the dying individual focus on Brahman.

After death, Hindus generally dispose of the dead body by way of cremation (except for great spiritual leaders who are respectfully buried) and disperse the cremated remains in holy waters.

During funeral, wearing white or dress casually but avoid black. To read more about Hindu beliefs on death, dying, and funeral rites, visit Hinduism Today. Plus, you can get information on traditional Hindu beliefs on this page.

Buddhism

Buddhist funeral traditions tend to vary because there are different types of Buddhism. Nevertheless, like Hindus, Buddhists also believe in rebirth which is influenced by the state of mind in which a person dies.

Thus, while dying, a Buddhist is surrounded by family member, friends, and monks who chant mantras and recite Buddhist scriptures to help the person leave the mortal body in a peaceful state of mind.

After death, Buddhists can either be buried or cremated, as per their tradition. You may read about Bhuddist reflections on death, here.

Chinese Folk Religion

Chinese folk religion is among major religious traditions in the world with at least 800 million adherents. It is a combination of Taoism and Mahayana Buddhism.

According to this religion, it is believed that at the time of death, the spirit is taken to Ch?eng Huang, the God of walls and moats for a sort of preliminary hearing.

Those found virtuous in this hearing are allowed to go to one of the Buddhist paradises. Besides, they may go to the place were Taoist immortals reside. Furthermore, they can be sent to the Tenth Court of Hell, followed by immediate rebirth.

Sinners, on the other hand, are sent to Hell for a fixed period of punishment. Hell is located at the base of the cosmic mountain, Mount Meru.

After the punishment is over, the souls are supposed to drink an elixir of oblivion. It helps prepare them for their next reincarnation.

Thus, as per Chinese folk religion, death opens a gap between earthly and spiritual existence. It is believed that the sinners descend to Hell after 49 days.

Hence, there are ceremonies performed at least for 49 days, especially during the first 7 days. You can read more about this religion at Faithology and Light Planet.

You can learn more about cultural aspects of death and dying at Dimensions of Cuture.

Source: http://www.the20life.com/religious-cultural-beliefs-on-death-and-dying/

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Nikkei hits eight and a half month high on yen, Asian shares ease

TOKYO (Reuters) - The Liberal Democratic Party of Japan's electoral triumph propelled the yen to a 20-month low against the dollar that saw the Nikkei stock average <.n225> touch a 8-1/2-month high on expectations of much better export earnings.

But MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> eased 0.1 percent, after ending last week near 16-month highs which it had hit successively since December 5.

Regional bourses faced profit-taking from last week's rally as investors worried whether the U.S. could reach a compromise over its budget crisis before the end-of-year deadline.

Shanghai shares <.ssec> bucked the trend with a 0.8 percent jump after the official Xinhua news agency said on Sunday that China pledged to maintain steady economic policies in 2013, leaving room for maneuver in the face of global risks while deepening reforms to support long-term growth.

The Shanghai Composite Index soared 4 percent and Hong Kong shares <.hsi> rose to a 16-month peak on Friday.

In a likely effort to restore confidence in China's stock markets which have fallen by over 60 percent since November 2007 and have markedly lagged Asian peers in recent rallies, China's foreign exchange regulator has removed the $1 billion limit for foreign sovereign wealth funds, central banks and monetary authorities buying Chinese assets through the Qualified Institutional Investor Programme.

Global shares fell on Friday displaying investor unease over the lack of progress in the U.S. fiscal talks, amid signs of a deepening recession in the euro zone as disappointing German manufacturing sector figures and a rise in euro zone unemployment overshadowed a small pick-up in purchasing manager data.

Australian shares <.axjo> fell 0.2 percent in thin trade on uncertainty over the U.S. fiscal woes.

"The volumes are very tiny," Patersons Securities dealer Martin Angel of Australian stocks, adding many players were now out for the Christmas and New Year break. "There has been a lot of money sitting on the sidelines and people are just nibbling away at some quality stocks."

South Korean shares <.ks11> inched down 0.1 percent after a steep weekly rise of 1.9 percent last Friday.

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner's offer to accept a tax rate increase for the wealthiest Americans knocks down a key Republican roadblock to a deal on the year-end "fiscal cliff," but a deal has yet to be done, despite the looming deadline.

Failure to avert some $600 billion of tax hikes and spending cuts scheduled to start in January could threaten to throw the U.S. back into recession and damage the fragile recovery taking place elsewhere, such as in No. 2 global economy, China.

CHANGE OF GUARD IN JAPAN

The LDP surged back to power in a landslide election victory on Sunday, giving Prime Minister Shinzo Abe a chance to push his radical economic strategy calling for "unlimited" monetary easing and huge public works spending to bring the country out of decades-long deflation.

The Bank of Japan meets later this week and is widely expected to take further easing steps, but hold off from drastic measures until its next meeting after Japan's new cabinet is formed sometime later this month, analysts have said.

Analysts have predicted the yen will keep its weak trend underpinning equities, while the rise in stocks was unlikely to sharply raise the benchmark 10-year Japanese government bond yield.

The 20-year JGB yield rose to an eight-month high of 1.710 percent after the election.

The dollar rose as far as 84.48 yen in early Asia, its loftiest since April 2011, from around 83.50 late in New York on Friday. The euro jumped more than 1 yen to well above 111 yen, a 7-1/2-month high, early on Monday.

"I think that the policies that Abe plans to introduce will only serve to weaken the yen even further. If there is an unwinding opportunity, it will likely be short-lived, maybe falling back to 82 or so on the USD/JPY," said Neal Gilbert, market strategist at GFT Forex.

Gilbert said the yen weakness will continue because Abe is likely to choose a BOJ governor who shares his policy ideas when current governor Masaaki Shirakawa's term ends in April.

With the change of guard in Japanese politics drawing so much attention globally, some worry of the potential implications for financial relations between Tokyo and its key ally, the United States.

"What are the potential negative effects of decisive action to weaken the yen? How this impacts Japan's relationship with the U.S. directly, and China in a different complex way, will have to be defined as it evolves," said Richard Hastings, macro strategist at Global Hunter Securities.

U.S. crude was up 0.3 percent to $86.94 a barrel and Brent was steady around $108.19.

Asian credit markets were a touch safer as equities struggled to extend gains, widening the spreads on the iTraxx Asia ex-Japan investment-grade index by 1 basis point.

(Additional reporting by Victoria Thieberger in Melbourne; Editing by Eric Meijer)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/yen-fall-boosts-nikkei-asian-shares-pause-fiscal-004452218--finance.html

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HBT: Powerball numbers had Royals connection

UPDATE: Darn it, too good to be true. Sam Mellinger has tweeted the winning ticket and it appears as though the numbers were a ?quick pick,? meaning they were automatically generated (note the ?QP? after the number). ?Oh well. I guess it always was strange to think that a fan liked Mark Gubicza more than Brett Saberhagen.

10:30 AM: Not gonna lie. I bought a lottery ticket before that $580 million drawing the other day. This despite the fact that I am fully aware of the folly of doing so and the odds against winning. My reasoning is, at least when the jackpots get huge, that a few minutes of lottery fantasies are worth a buck or two. I?m not planning my life around winning a lottery and I don?t buy tickets that often, but it can be fun.

My problem, though, is that I don?t go all-in. I am aware of the randomness of it all, so I don?t pick my own numbers, I don?t believe any certain numbers have magic of?significance?to them and I don?t believe that any amount of?superstition will help me win. ?In light of this, however, I probably should re-think that approach:

One of the two?Power Ball winners is from Dearborn, Missouri, about 30 minutes North of the Kansas City Metro area. The winning numbers? 5 (George Brett),?16 (Bo Jackson),?22 (Dennis Leonard), 23 (Mark Gubicza), 29 (Dan Quisenberry), and the power ball of 6 (Willie Wilson).

After taxes and discounting for present value the winner likely does not have enough money to buy the Royals himself. But I bet he?ll find a way to spend his millions more effectively than David Glass spends his.

Source: http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/11/30/the-powerball-winner-won-by-picking-his-favorite-kansas-city-royals-players-numbers/

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The beginning of everything: A new paradigm shift for the infant universe

Friday, November 30, 2012

A new understanding of the earliest eras in the history of the universe has been developed by scientists at Penn State University. Using techniques from an area of modern physics called loop quantum cosmology, developed at Penn State, the scientists now have extended analyses that include quantum physics farther back in time than ever before -- all the way to the beginning. The new paradigm of loop quantum origins shows, for the first time, that the large-scale structures we now see in the universe evolved from fundamental fluctuations in the essential quantum nature of "space-time," which existed even at the very beginning of the universe over 14 billion years ago. The achievement also provides new opportunities for testing competing theories of modern cosmology against breakthrough observations expected from next-generation telescopes. The research will be published on 11 December 2012 as an "Editor's Suggestion" paper in the scientific journal Physical Review Letters.

"We humans always have yearned to understand more about the origin and evolution of our universe," said Abhay Ashtekar, the senior author of the paper. "So it is an exciting time in our group right now, as we begin using our new paradigm to understand, in more detail, the dynamics that matter and geometry experienced during the earliest eras of the universe, including at the very beginning." Ashtekar is the Holder of the Eberly Family Chair in Physics at Penn State and the director of the university's Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos. Coauthors of the paper, along with Ashtekar, are postdoctoral fellows Ivan Agullo and William Nelson.

The new paradigm provides a conceptual and mathematical framework for describing the exotic "quantum-mechanical geometry of space-time" in the very early universe. The paradigm shows that, during this early era, the universe was compressed to such unimaginable densities that its behavior was ruled not by the classical physics of Einstein's general theory of relativity, but by an even more fundamental theory that also incorporates the strange dynamics of quantum mechanics. The density of matter was huge then -- 10 to the 94 grams (10^94) per cubic centimeter, as compared with the density of an atomic nucleus today, which is only 10 to the 14 grams (10^14).

In this bizarre quantum-mechanical environment -- where one can speak only of probabilities of events rather than certainties -- physical properties naturally would be vastly different from the way we experience them today. Among these differences, Ashtekar said, are the concept of "time," as well as the changing dynamics of various systems over time as they experience the fabric of quantum geometry itself.

No space observatories have been able to detect anything as long ago and far away as the very early eras of the universe described by the new paradigm. But a few observatories have come close. Cosmic background radiation has been detected in an era when the universe was only 380-thousand years old. By that time, after a period of rapid expansion called "inflation," the universe had burst out into a much-diluted version of its earlier super-compressed self. At the beginning of inflation, the density of the universe was a trillion times less than during its infancy, so quantum factors are much less important in ruling the large-scale dynamics of matter and geometry.

Observations of the cosmic background radiation show that the universe had a predominantly uniform consistency after inflation, except for a light sprinkling of some regions that were more dense and others that were less dense. The standard inflationary paradigm for describing the early universe, which uses the classical-physics equations of Einstein, treats space-time as a smooth continuum. "The inflationary paradigm enjoys remarkable success in explaining the observed features of the cosmic background radiation. Yet this model is incomplete. It retains the idea that the universe burst forth from nothing in a Big Bang, which naturally results from the inability of the paradigm's general-relativity physics to describe extreme quantum-mechanical situations," Agullo said. "One needs a quantum theory of gravity, like loop quantum cosmology, to go beyond Einstein in order to capture the true physics near the origin of the universe."

Earlier work with loop quantum cosmology in Ashtekar's group had updated the concept of the Big Bang with the intriguing concept of a Big Bounce, which allows the possibility that our universe emerged not from nothing but from a super-compressed mass of matter that previously may have had a history of its own.

Even though the quantum-mechanical conditions at the beginning of the universe were vastly different from the classical-physics conditions after inflation, the new achievement by the Penn State physicists reveals a surprising connection between the two different paradigms that describe these eras. When scientists use the inflation paradigm together with Einstein's equations to model the evolution of the seed-like areas sprinkled throughout the cosmic background radiation, they find that the irregularities serve as seeds that evolve over time into the galaxy clusters and other large-scale structures that we see in the universe today. Amazingly, when the Penn State scientists used their new loop-quantum-origins paradigm with its quantum-cosmology equations, they found that fundamental fluctuations in the very nature of space at the moment of the Big Bounce evolve to become the seed-like structures seen in the cosmic microwave background.

"Our new work shows that the initial conditions at the very beginning of the universe naturally lead to the large-scale structure of the universe that we observe today," Ashtekar said. "In human terms, it is like taking a snapshot of a baby right at birth and then being able to project from it an accurate profile of how that person will be at age 100."

"This paper pushes back the genesis of the cosmic structure of our universe from the inflationary epoch all the way to the Big Bounce, covering some 11 orders of magnitude in the density of matter and the curvature of space-time," Nelson said. "We now have narrowed down the initial conditions that could exist at the Big Bounce, plus we find that the evolution of those initial conditions agrees with observations of the cosmic background radiation."

The team's results also identify a narrower range of parameters for which the new paradigm predicts novel effects, distinguishing it from standard inflation. Ashtekar said, "It is exciting that we soon may be able to test different predictions from these two theories against future discoveries with next-generation observational missions. Such experiments will help us to continue gaining a deeper understanding of the very, very early universe."

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Penn State: http://live.psu.edu

Thanks to Penn State for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/125606/The_beginning_of_everything__A_new_paradigm_shift_for_the_infant_universe

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