MAQzine

HEC scholar completes two PhDs from France in record time The Higher Education Commission (HEC) scholar Kashif Mehmood has made the whole nation proud by successfully completing two PhD degrees from France within a period of four years. He is among those few fortunate researchers in the world who have secured double doctorates in two different disciplines (Business Administration and Computer Science) from two leading universities. Dr. Kashif Mehmood completed four postgraduate degrees (PhD in Computer Science, PhD in Business Administration, MPhil in Business Administration, MS in Computer Science) within the last five years. He was awarded HEC scholarship under Overseas Scholarship Scheme for PhD in Selected Fields (Phase-1) in 2004. Based on his education and experience, he secured admission in MS programme at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) that is ranked among the best universities in the world. During his research internship, Dr. Kashif impressed his supervisor ...

Final World Cup Squads All teams have announced their final 15 players for  World Cup  starting in Dhaka on February 19. The tournament is being hosted jointly by India, Sir Lanka and Bangladesh and first match will see India take on Bangladesh in Dhaka. The final will be held in Mumbai's Wankhede Stadium on April 2. The squads (final 15) India:   Mahendra Singh Dhoni  (captain), Virender Sehwag (vice captain), Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir, Virat Kohli, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Munaf Patel, Praveen Kumar, Ashish Nehra, R Ashwin, Yusuf Pathan, Piyush Chawla Pakistan:  Muhammad Hafeez, Ahmed Shehzad, Younis Khan, Misbah-ul-Haq, Umar Akmal, Asad Shafiq, Kamran Akmal, Shahid Afridi , Abdul Razzaq, Abdul Rehman, Saeed Ajmal, Shoaib Akhtar, Umar Gul, Wahab Riaz, Sohail Tanvir. Australia:  Ricky Ponting  (captain), Michael Clarke, Doug Bollinger, Brad Haddin, John Hastings, Nathan Hauritz, David Hussey, Mike Hussey, Mit...

Obama unlikely to close Guantanamo as 'War on Terror' continues Some Guantanamo inmates will continue to be indefinitely detained The politics of war and terrorism have put President Obama's order to close Guantanamo on hold. In America , the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists remains an accepted cost of waging a global war. Just two days into his first term, US President Barack Obama ordered the Guantanamo Bay detention camp to be closed. However, his initial earnestness has given way to a painstaking implementation process fraught by the politics of war and terrorism. Last December, Congress blocked funding to transfer detainees out of Guantanamo . The move came a month after the surprisingly narrow conviction of Ahmed Ghailani for his role in the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa . Ghailani's controversial trial raised concern about the unpredictability of prosecuting terrorism suspects in civilian courts. This politically charged environmen...

by Saalik Siddikki The digitalized era has deprived us of many small and simple fascinations that we used to enjoy till four five decades ago.  One of the enthrallments was a rhythmic tick . . . . tick . . . . tick of pendulum clocks. When I was about 6 and, being the only child of my parents, also was all alone in the house to play with my toys, I was not allowed to go out to play with the street kids for longer periods.  So, I fell victim to indulging in my own world of fantasies. And most probably that was the only reason that I got into the habit of deep thinking, creative visualization and self-talking.  I read about these subjects in the fourth decade of my life that, quite interestingly, became my favourite subjects for study and practice. To be very fair, these three subconsciously developed habits have always played a vital role in saving me from mental collapse on numerous occasions. Sometimes, I wanted to take down the clock to put it among my characterize...

ABCDEFG V. , by Thomas Pynchon M , by John Sack Z , by Vassilis Vassilikos S. , by John Updike C , by Tom McCarthy a , by Andy Warhol W, or the Memory of Childhood , by Georges Perec H , by Elizabeth Shepard G. , by John Berger O , by Anonymous Read more:  http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,2043895,00.html#ixzz1Bxg4MdW0

While warming up for her third-round Australian Open match, Russian tennis star  Maria Sharapova  noticed a bouncy spot on the court. "It was a little bit strange,"  she said . "I thought Nike had put some extra cushioning in my shoes!" The chair umpire came out to inspect the area and tried to bounce a ball on the spot. The result has to be seen to be believed: Source :  http://sports.yahoo.com/tennis

Hidden Dwarf Lurks Nearby? Signs point to an invisible "Galaxy X" just outside our own. Richard A. Lovett in Seattle , Washington for   National Geographic News Published January 14, 2011 An entire   galaxy   may be lurking, unseen, just outside our own, scientists announced Thursday. The invisibility of "Galaxy X"—as the purported body has been dubbed—may be due less to its apparent status as a dwarf galaxy than to its murky location and its overwhelming amount of dark matter, astronomer   Sukanya Chakrabarti   speculates. Detectable only by the effects of its gravitational pull, dark matter is an invisible material that scientists think makes up more than 80 percent of the mass in the universe. (See   "Dark Matter Detected for First Time." ) Chakrabarti, of the University of California , Berkeley , devised a technique similar to that used 160 years ago to predict the existence of Neptune , which was given away by the wobbles its gravity induced in...

Sat Jan 15, 9:17 pm ET WASHINGTON (AFP) – Those first few puffs on a cigarette can within minutes cause genetic damage linked to cancer, US scientists said in a study released. In fact, researchers said the "effect is so fast that it's equivalent to injecting the substance directly into the bloodstream," in findings described as a "stark warning" to those who smoke. The study is the first on humans to track how substances in tobacco cause DNA damage, and appears in the peer-reviewed journal Chemical Research in Toxicology, issued by the American Chemical Society. Using 12 volunteer smokers, scientists tracked pollutants called PAHs, or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, that are carried in tobacco smoke and can also be found in coal-burning plants and in charred barbecue food. They followed one particular type -- phenanthrene, which is found in cigarette smoke -- through the blood and saw it form a toxic substance that is known to "trash DNA, causing mutatio...