Water Sports

Situated south of Sri Lanka with a collection of close to 1200 islands in the Indian Ocean is the tourist paradise, Maldives. Consisting of 99% water and just above the equator, Maldives offers sunny weather and an inexhaustible supply of water sport opportunities. Not only for the adventurous wishing to unravel the secrets of the deep sea, but also for children, elderly and non swimmers, there are a number of safe water sports available close to the shore.

Snorkelling is one of the major attractions at Maldives. Get on a mask and flippers and enjoy the sight of rainbow fish among the exotic coral gardens. Most resorts have their own small coral garden closer to shore for children and the elderly while others seeking a more challenging experience can sail into the deep sea. The crystal clear waters make Maldives a snorkelling paradise. Riding the waves is a favourite pastime among locals and there are a number of locations not far from Male with massive waves to satisfy the most daring surfers. Kite surfing has also become popular in recent times and is best for the more adventurous and requires practice. Windsurfing allows you to enjoy both the wind in your hair and the sea spray in your face.

There are a dozen different kinds of sailing one could do in the Maldives from parasailing to sailing in the high seas in search of fish. Para-sailing is popular among tourists for the outstanding birds-eye view of the lush greenery and the splendid blue waters below. While water skiing, knee boarding and Fun Tubes give you that crazy adrenaline rush, catamaran sailing and Banana Boating is most relaxing and allows you to enjoy the cool sea breeze and spectacular view of the green islands. Night time fishing is popular among tourists. Watch the golden sun set from out at sea and relax on the deck under a star strewn sky until a fish takes the bait is extremely relaxing and ideal for the older travellers. There is also morning fishing and big-game fishing to experience.

Adaaran Prestige Vadoo is a beautiful Maldives Resort that offers plush surroundings and superb service. Your Maldives Island Resort will be able to provide you all the equipment and even lessons necessary to have a most fun filled time on the water.

About the Author:
Pushpitha Wijesinghe is an experienced independent freelance writer. He specializes in providing a wide variety of content and articles related to the travel hospitality industry.

Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com/Article/Water-Sports/4130789

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How Family Holidays can benefit your Child's Education | travelling ...

Families who are looking for holiday destinations to travel to together would benefit greatly if they broadened their horizons, and looked a bit further than the Paradise Island or Spanish Costa resort. Combining a holiday with an educational experience could end up being one of the most memorable vacations you and your family take together.

Kids will really enjoy researching their holiday destination before they go, not only will they learn about the history of a country, the demographics and the culture, it will give them a few lessons on how to use the Internet as a research tool, which is paramount these days to children?s education. Get them to choose places they want to visit ? you could even get them involved in booking tickets.

Armed with loads of valuable information about their destination, children would have already acquired bucket loads of general knowledge before they get there. Exploring the world, experiencing different cultures and meeting new people, will give children an exciting opportunity to learn new things out of the boring confines of the rigid classroom environment.

Adventure holidays offer a chance for children to pick up some basic practical skills. They will love the challenge, stimulation and excitement of being outdoors, and the chance to learn new things, whether it is how to identify a certain animal, plant or even a weather pattern.

Kids can learn simple and practical life skills like how to put up a tent, tie various knots, build campfires and cook on an open fire without all the modern bells and whistles they have at home. An integral part of a child?s education?is having the chance to do things, learn things and experience things hands on.

Kids love getting dirty, wet, muddy and tired. A, a day spent out in nature is one of a child?s favourite things to do. And they love it when the parents get involved and they can do stuff together as a family.

Working as a team is an important life skill for everyone to have mastered. Going on a camping holiday is one of those opportunities for kids to learn about working as a team and to interact with other kids who may be camping.

Rather than having kids strain to keep awake in a boring natural science class, take them down to a holiday at the sea, explore the rock pools, identify the birds, let them see first-hand how the tides work, show them how to thread a fishing line, pick mussels off the rocks and who knows, what they might get a chance to see lurking under some of the rocks. Chances are they will not only enjoy it thoroughly, but that will be one lesson in marine life they will never forget, and that they will pass on to their own children.

Going on holiday to a nearby wine farm? Enquire about the cellar tours, kids will be delighted with the chance to explore underground cellars and who knows, you may even plant a seed that ignites a career choice later down the line. There are so many fabulous destinations around the world that are not only a break from home, but a wonderful educational experience for the whole family.

About this article: Brianna Kelly has over 5 years experience publishing articles on childcare education and parenting. She writes articles on behalf of Giraffe Montessori Schools, who have 18 childcare schools based in Dublin, Ireland.

Source: http://travellingtoddler.com/how-family-holidays-can-benefit-your-childs-education/

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HBT: Angels' Trout continues to amaze

In going deep again Tuesday night, Mike Trout became the 33rd player ever and first rookie to hit 25 homers and steal 40 bases in a season.

Trout, who just turned 21 this month, is also the youngest to?accomplish?the feat.

Trout is one of 10 players with 25 HR-40 SB seasons since 2000:

Vladimir Guerrero ? 39 HR, 40 SB in 2002
Alfonso Soriano ? 39 HR, 41 SB in 2002
Carlos Beltran ? 26 HR, 41 SB in 2003
Bobby Abreu ? 30 HR, 40 SB in 2004
Carlos Beltran ? 38 HR, 42 SB in 2004
Alfonso Soriano ? 46 HR, 41 SB in 2006
Hanley Ramirez ? 29 HR, 51 SB in 2007
Jimmy Rollins ? 30 HR, 41 SB in 2007
Matt Kemp ? 39 HR, 40 SB in 2011
Mike Trout ? 25 HR, 41 SB in 2012

Trout won?t get to 40-40 this season, though perhaps he could have had he been on the Angels? Opening Day roster (the 25 homers have come in 106 games). He does have a real shot of becoming just the third 30-50 guy ever. Eric Davis (37 HR, 50 SB) did it for the Reds in 1987. Barry Bonds (33 HR, 52 SB) accomplished the feat three years later for Pittsburgh.

Source: http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/08/29/mike-trout-is-first-rookie-with-25-hr-40-sb/related/

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Pick 6: Unforgettable Openers

One game can change a season in college football ? and it could happen in Game 1.

This season starts with a long weekend of games, kicking off Thursday night and ending Monday night. While the schedule is mostly packed with powerhouse-vs.-pushover tilts, there are some intriguing matchups: Alabama against Michigan, Boise State at Michigan State, South Carolina against Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech facing Virginia Tech.

But as Appalachian State reminded us all a few years back, you never know when a classic is about to break out.

That unforgettable upset makes this Pick 6 of memorable season-openers in college football history.

___

USC 42, ALABAMA 21, Sept. 12, 1970.

The Sam "Bam" Cunningham Game. At this point the legends have probably overtaken the reality, but this much is true: USC fullback Sam Cunningham, who is black, ran for 135 yards and two touchdowns on 12 carries at Legion Field in Birmingham against an all-white Crimson Tide team.

Alabama coach Bear Bryant had already taken steps to integrate the Crimson Tide after years of segregation. But Cunningham and the Trojans made it clear to anyone who was uncomfortable with that plan that if Alabama didn't start recruiting more black players it would not remain a football power.

___

UCLA 20, NEBRASKA 17, Sept. 9, 1972

The Cornhuskers were No. 1 and hadn't lost a game since 1969. The Bruins were coming off a two-win season.

Led by Mark Harmon, yes the actor, running a newly installed wishbone offense, UCLA snapped Nebraska's 32-game unbeaten streak. Harmon passed for 65 yards and ran for 71 and a touchdown at the Los Angeles Coliseum and Efren Herrera hit a 29-yard field goal to provide the winning margin with 20 seconds left.

___

GEORGIA 16, TENNESSEE 15, Sept. 6, 1980

Herschel Walker's first game. And on his carry, he brought the house down.

With the Bulldogs down 15-2, Walker ran 16 yards for a touchdown, busting through Tennessee tacklers and running over safety Bill Bates.

The longtime great Georgia play-by-play man Larry Munson famously said what everybody else was thinking: "My God, a freshman!"

____

MIAMI 31, FLORIDA STATE 0, Sept. 3, 1988.

Bobby Bowden's first preseason No. 1 team was loaded, with Deion Sanders, LeRoy Butler and Sammie Smith, just to name a few.

And the Hurricanes ripped the overconfident Seminoles to shreds, behind a ferocious defense anchored by Cortez Kennedy and Russell Maryland up front.

Florida State didn't lose again and finished No. 3 in the country. Miami lost only once, a 31-30 defeat at eventual national champion Notre Dame, and finished No. 2.

___

THE CITADEL 10, ARKANSAS 3, Sept. 5, 1992.

This was no way to move into a new conference. The Razorbacks' first game as a member of the Southeastern Conference was one of the low points in program history.

After losing to the I-AA (now FCS) team from South Carolina, Arkansas coach Jack Crowe resigned the next day.

___

NORTHWESTERN 17, NOTRE DAME 15, Sept. 2, 1995.

Northwestern was the worst. Simple as that. For years, the Wildcats epitomized football futility.

There was no reason to expect anything different in 1995. Then the Wildcats, a 28-point underdog, beat the ninth-ranked Fighting Irish at Notre Dame Stadium.

Northwestern had not opened the season with a victory since 1975. The Wildcats were far from done, going on to win the Big Ten and play in the Rose Bowl for the first time since 1949.

____

APPALACHIAN STATE 34, MICHIGAN 32, Sept. 1, 2007.

The day college football fans became acquainted with Boone, N.C. The Mountaineers were a Division I-AA (now FCS) powerhouse but still nobody gave them a chance at the Big House against the No. 5 team in the country.

The Wolverines had Chad Henne, Mike Hart and Jake Long on a powerful offense, but the defense was helpless to stop Armanti Edwards, Dexter Jackson and App State's spread offense.

Appalachian State kicked a 24-yard field goal with 1:11 left to go ahead and Corey Lynch blocked Michigan's 37-yard attempt as time expired and for the first time a ranked major college team had lost to a team from the lower tier of Division I.

___

Follow Ralph D. Russo at www.Twitter.com/ralphDrussoAP

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pick-6-unforgettable-openers-082701277--spt.html

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Space-warping white dwarfs produce gravitational waves

ScienceDaily (Aug. 28, 2012) ? Gravitational waves, much like the recently discovered Higgs boson, are notoriously difficult to observe. Scientists first detected these ripples in the fabric of space-time indirectly, using radio signals from a pulsar-neutron star binary system. The find, which required exquisitely accurate timing of the radio signals, garnered its discoverers a Nobel Prize. Now a team of astronomers has detected the same effect at optical wavelengths, in light from a pair of eclipsing white dwarf stars.

"This result marks one of the cleanest and strongest detections of the effect of gravitational waves," said team member Warren Brown of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO).

The team discovered the white dwarf pair last year. (White dwarfs are the remnant cores of stars like our Sun.) The system, called SDSS J065133.338+284423.37 (J0651 for short), contains two white dwarf stars so close together -- one-third of the Earth-moon distance -- that they make a complete orbit in less than 13 minutes.

"Every six minutes the stars in J0651 eclipse each other as seen from Earth, which makes for an unparalleled and accurate clock some 3,000 light-years away," said study lead author J.J. Hermes, a graduate student working with Professor Don Winget at The University of Texas at Austin.

Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that moving objects create subtle ripples in the fabric of space-time, called gravitational waves. Gravitational waves should carry away energy, causing the stars to inch closer together and orbit each other faster and faster. The team was able to detect this effect in J0651.

"Compared to April 2011, when we discovered this object, the eclipses now happen six seconds sooner than expected," said team member Mukremin Kilic of The University of Oklahoma.

"This is a general relativistic effect you could measure with a wrist watch," added SAO's Warren Brown.

J0651 will provide an opportunity to compare future direct, space-based detection of gravitational waves with those inferred from the orbital decay, providing important benchmark tests of our understanding of the workings of gravity.

The team expects that the period will shrink more and more each year, with eclipses happening more than 20 seconds sooner than otherwise expected by May 2013. The stars will eventually merge, in two million years. Future observations will continue to measure the orbital decay of this system, and attempt to understand how tides affect the merger of such stars.

The team's results will be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and are available online.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

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Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120828134938.htm

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Windstream Teams with LifeSize - Zacks.com

Windstream Corporation (WIN) recently announced that it has joined hands with LifeSize Communications, a division of Logitech International SA (LOGI) to provide high definition (HD) video conferencing services. As per the agreement, LifeSize, which specializes in HD video communications, will offer video conferencing solutions to customers using Windstream's IP networking solutions.

Windstream expects the agreement to entail increased customer satisfaction as they will benefit from the latest technology solutions in enterprise segment.? Given the ramp-up in mobile enterprise, customers are increasingly utilizing the remote conferencing technology. Windstream intends to tap this opportunity by providing its business customers with latest HD video conferencing solutions.

The company seeks to further expand in the enterprise market by enhancing its service offerings to businesses with VoIP services, data bundles, cloud and managed services, data center services, and fiber transport, and grow distribution channels. We believe that the company?s strategy of providing consumer voice service with high-speed Internet service will facilitate subscriber additions while reducing churn rates.

This apart, the company has further strengthened its position in the enterprise market with the acquisition of PAETEC Holding Corp. It has also increased the opportunities in cloud computing and managed services. Windstream is also planning to roll out customized business solutions that will help improve its competitive position in the industry against rivals like Frontier Communications (FTR).

To attract long-term enterprise customers, the company continues to invest in growth initiatives such as fiber-to-the-tower (FTTT) deployment, data center expansion and broadband network capability. With the rise in demand and contract wins, Windstream is ramping up its FTTT constructions.

Windstream expects additional 2,300 towers to be constructed within the next 12 month. With respect to broadband expansion, Windstream is focused on enhancing coverage and speed in under-served areas.

We are currently maintaining our long-term Neutral recommendation on Windstream supported by a Zacks #3 Rank (Hold).

Read the full analyst report on LOGI

Read the full analyst report on WIN

Read the full analyst report on FTR

Source: http://www.zacks.com/stock/news/81823/windstream-teams-with-lifesize

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Small family size increases wealth of descendants but reduces evolutionary success

ScienceDaily (Aug. 28, 2012) ? Scientists have taken a step closer to solving one of life's mysteries -- why family size generally falls as societies become richer.

Evolutionary biologists have long puzzled over this because natural selection is expected to have selected for organisms that try to maximise their reproduction. But in industrialised societies around the world, increasing wealth coincides with people deliberately limiting their family size -- the so-called 'demographic transition'.

In a study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the Centre for Health Equity Studies (Stockholm University/Karolinska Institutet) and UCL (University College London) reject a popular theory put forward to explain the phenomenon. This 'adaptive' hypothesis proposes that low fertility may boost evolutionary success in the long term by increasing offspring wealth, which in turn eventually increases the number of long-term descendants because richer offspring end up having more children.

The researchers found that having a small number of children increased the economic success and social position of descendants across up to four generations, but reduced the total number of long-term descendants. They conclude that the decision to limit family size can be understood as a strategic choice to improve the socioeconomic success of children and grandchildren in modern societies, but this socioeconomic benefit does not necessarily translate into an evolutionary benefit.

The study indicates a conflict in modern societies between behaviours promoting social and economic benefits versus biological success. This contrasts with traditional populations in the developing world, where behaviours that promote wealth and social status usually lead individuals to leave behind more genetic descendants.

The researchers tested these hypotheses using data from the Uppsala Multigenerational Birth Cohort Study, which tracks 14,000 people born in Sweden in the early 1900s and all their descendants to the present day.

They measured the socioeconomic success of each generation by looking at their school marks, at whether they went to university and at their household income across adulthood. Reproductive success was assessed by survival to adulthood, marriage before age 40 (a proxy for 'mating success') and fertility (number of offspring up to 2009).

Among both male and female children in the original cohort, smaller family size and higher parental socioeconomic position were both associated with substantially higher school marks, university entrance and income. These effects were particularly large when low fertility and high socioeconomic status coincided, with the benefits of small family size being particularly marked in wealthier groups. Moreover, these advantages were in turn passed on to the grandchild and great-grandchild generations.

But contrary to the adaptive hypothesis, small family size and high parental wealth either did not affect reproductive success beyond the first generation of offspring or if anything showed a negative effect in subsequent generations.

Lead author Dr Anna Goodman, Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: "Under natural selection, you would expect organisms to use their resources to produce more genetic descendants, and so increase their Darwinian fitness. The demographic transition is a puzzle because at first sight it doesn't look like people are doing this. One adaptive explanation for the puzzle is that there exists a quantity-quality trade-off, such that having more children leads to those children being less able to reproduce in turn -- i.e. higher 'quantity' leads to lower biological 'quality'. However our study found this quantity-quality trade off only applied to descendants' socioeconomic success, not their reproductive success."

Co-author Dr David Lawson, from the Department of Anthropology at UCL, said: "One of our most interesting findings is that being from an initially wealthy household makes the benefits of small family size even bigger. Poorer households in contrast have relatively little to gain by limiting fertility, perhaps because the success of their children is more determined by broader societal factors, rather than investment and inheritance from parents, which is in short supply. This observation suggests a certain economic rationality to fertility patterns in the modern world, since fertility rates often drop first and most substantially in the wealthier sections of society when populations undergo demographic transition."

Professor Ilona Koupil, from the Centre for Health Equity Studies (Stockholm University/Karolinska Institutet) said: "It is important to note the equity implications of these findings. First, this research indicates that differences in family size may have lasting consequences on social inequalities. Second, this research provides evidence for the fact that people's educational levels and wealth not only affect schoolmarks and income in their children but also in their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. From a broader social policy perspective, our findings show that even in a country like Sweden with relatively low levels of inequality, we need policies that seek to equalise children's opportunities across families."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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Journal Reference:

1. A Goodman, I Koupil, D Lawson. Low fertility increases descendant socioeconomic position but reduces long-term fitness in a modern post-industrial society. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, August 29, 2012 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2012.1415

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/C_QqkoqV2ZM/120828190921.htm

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