Virtual Whistler

How do these rumors get started? Or, more to the point, how do they get perpetuated?

Late Thursday, a site called tinycomb (”Hand-Picked Tech News”) reported that Facebook had been banned “for life” from every Apple (AAPL) store in the United States — some 207 retail outlets in all, by my count.

This must have been one of those facts that was too good to check, because I’m pretty sure none of the half-dozen newspapers and blogs that repeated and embellished the story bothered to do any legwork to confirm it.

It certainly seems that most of the readers who applauded the reported ban — a couple dozen at tinycomb, nearly 40 at Digg, more than 120 at MacRumors — took it as fact.

“Why has this been kept under the radar?” asked SherwinNero at tinycomb.

“Has it really been kept under the radar,” answered Max, “or was it considered ‘not significant enough’ to put it on the front pages everywhere?”

Or is, just possibly, not true?

I know from experience that some Apple stores put limits on where on the Web you can take their demo machines — sometimes restricting Safari to Apple’s promotional pages.

And it’s certainly possible that individual stores have blocked Facebook — as MySpace has been blocked since May 2007 — because some of its members were hogging the machines.

Indeed, Ars Technica quotes an unnamed Apple employee who says his store has been blocking Facebook for about a month.

“It’s just trying to find a balance between letting people try out the computers, but not tying them up so others can try them as well,” he told Ars.

But a person at Apple headquarters in a position to know assures me that there is no nationwide ban on Facebook in effect — permanent or otherwise.

I’m headed to the nearest Apple store to check it out. If you’re in one now, let us know in the comment stream where you are and whether the demo machine you’re using will let you get to your Facebook page.

Radium was discovered by Marie Curie. She is the first woman to receive Nobel Prize.

Marie Curie, daughter of a teacher was born at Warsaw (Poland). After her studies she started her career with Prof. Becquerel the discoverer of radioactivity.

He had left some pieces off uranium in his table drawer. Marie used them to weigh photo plates. When, those photo plates were developed. She saw few lines there and suspected that some rays had emanated from the Uranium.

Marie had marries Pierre Curie, physicist. The couple started conducting experiments on their own. They found abundant Uranium pitchblende in the country of Bohemia. They obtained about 10,000 Kilograms from the government on request.

They extracted "Radium" from it. The radium delivered a strange blue light when it was kept in a test tube in a dark room. Marie curie was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for her work on the isolation of Radium and Polonium.

To honor Marie curie a chemical element 'Curium' and a unit of radioactivity 'Curie' have been named after her.

Enrico Fermi invented nuclear reactor. He is known as the father of nuclear physics. He discovered the chain reactions.

Fermi was born on September 26, 1901 in Rome. He obtained his PhD degree in the field of X-rays. He made research and discovered that when the element is bombarded by a slow moving neutron, it becomes radio active and starts emitting radiations.

In this process one element changes into the other element. He also discovered that a fundamental particle named neutrino and produced 80 new artificial nuclei by neutron bombardment.

He succeeded in splitting the uranium nuclei by the bombardment of neutrons. He had worked on the controlled chain reactions.

After several years of arduous research and hard work he designed the nuclear reactor in Chicago. In this reactor he generated the energy by nuclear fission.

Edward Jenner was the discoverer of small pox vaccination. Vaccination prevents men from falling sick. Small pox was a very dreaded disease in 18th century and earlier. Cow pox was a milder disease with similar symptoms. It was a disease of cows.

A milkmaid came to Jenner seeking his advice. She told him that she suffered from cow pox. Jenner took some fluid from a cow pox sore on the milk maid's finger. Then he injected it into an eight year old boy who had mild attack of cow pox.

After seven weeks, Jenner took some fluid from the sore of a man suffering from small pox and injected into the arm of the boy. The boy was not affected by small pox germs.

This proved that he had become immune to small pox due to cow pox. Jenner went on collecting cow pox fluid consistently for the formulation of small pox vaccination. Thus the practice of vaccinating for the prevention of small pox became wide spread.

Jenner's vaccinations helped wipeout this harmful disease which prevailed at that time. Vaccinations are injected into our body making its natural defense system to produce antibiotics which kill germs and protects white blood cells that combat that type of infection. If the body in case be invaded by these germs, it would be ready to destroy them immediately.

Wilbur Wright and Orville Wright were brothers born to Milton Wright, a Bishop of Dayton, Ohio USA. One day he brought a toy which spurred the brothers to build to a large sized model of the same so that they could climb on and reach the clouds.

Naturally, the idea was superb. The toy was flying up to the ceiling of the room. It was made of paper, bamboo and cork. A rubber band rotated a propeller and made the toy to fly straight in the air.

Wilbur noticed in his shop where the used to work, a box which had bent edges. He felt that the wings of the flying plane could be made in this form. He thought that wings should be designed in such a way that they could be moved up and down during the flight.

The brothers made a model of a plane in 1899. It was kite shaped. They went to Carolina for conducting its trial. Then for four years they continued the trials.

It was December 17, 1903 Orville Wright made the first controlled successful flight. He took it off from Kill Devil Hill at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina on 12 horse power by plane. It was built by the brothers.

The plane reached a height of 10 feet and covered a distance of 37 meters. The fourth and last flight made by Wilbur flied a distance of 850 feet in 60 seconds. But a gust of air crushed it.

However Wilbur made many flights up to a height of 91 meter. He died in 1912. Orville continued his work and made 57 flights. On his self built plane he reached a height of 27 meters.

He lived till 1947 when the flying machine or aircraft had already started flying at supersonic speeds. Today we travel in aero planes to long distances with comfort at the speed of the sound .

These two inventors are remembered as the Wright Brothers.

Sir Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) the famous Bacteriologist discovered penicillin and shared the noble prize for medicine in 1945 with two other British scientists Howard Florey and Ernst Chain.

Penicillin is an antibiotic drug useful in the prevention and treatment of infections. Antibiotics are themselves made from bacteria, molds or larger plants. Fleming discovered Penicillin while he was doing research on another subject.

He successfully isolated and described an antibacterial agent, which he called Iysozyme and which is an enzyme found in tears and mucus secretions. He continued furthering his work and in 1928 discovered Penicillin. It was discovered accidentally all because the scientist has neglected to clean his culture dish.

It seemed to inhibit the growth of bacteria. Fleming isolated that particular culture dish and grew it into a pure culture. The green mould that grows on bread is Pencillium glancum. A like of it is found in the soil called Pencillium notatum from which we get Penicillin.

Fleming's discovery helped other scientists to search for other antibiotics. Today we have several antibiotics like streptomycin, aureomycin etc. These antibiotics are saving the lives of millions of people all over the world.

Paper is common today. Starting from school we use paper for writing and printing till we become old. Paper is a mat of tiny fibers felted together. These fibers are small particles of cellulose. Plants yield cellulose.

The ancient Egyptians about 4000 years ago used paper in a different way. They took the stems of the paper in a different way. They took the stems of the papyrus plant and peeled them apart and flattened them.

They laid them cross wise and pressed them down to stick them together. Soon they become dry; this made a sheet of Papyrus and could be written on.

Actually the real paper was invented by Chinese in 105 A.D. The person who invented is Ail Un. He used stringy inner bark of the mulberry tree to make paper.

He pounded the bark in water to separate the fibers, and then poured the soup mixture on a tray with a bottom of thin bamboo strips. The water was drained away and the soft mat was laid on a smooth surface to dry. Bamboo and old rags were also used.

The paper was later improved by brushing starch on it. Then the art of paper making spread all over Europe.