| Domain registration statistics | ||
| TLD | Amount Registered |
Country |
| .com | 81,175,731 | Global Generic |
| .de | 13,000,023 | Germany |
| .cn | 12,545,589 | China |
| .net | 12,332,869 | Global Generic |
| .uk | 7,703,790 | United Kingdom |
| .org | 7,694,858 | Global Generic |
| .info | 5,223,940 | Global Generic |
| .nl | 3,439,168 | Netherlands |
| .eu | 2,913,267 | European Union |
| .biz | 2,045,870 | Global Generic |
| .ru | 1,970,742 | Russia |
| .br | 1,725,114 | Brazil |
| .it | 1,706,446 | Italy |
| .us | 1,632,373 | United States |
| .fr | 1,461,689 | France |
| .pl | 1,437,833 | Poland |
| .au | 1,417,297 | Australia |
| .ch | 1,308,595 | Switzerland |
| .ca | 1,225,895 | Canada |
| .es | 1,151,942 | Spain |
| .jp | 1,098,360 | Japan |
| .dk | 1,007,529 | Denmark |
| .kr | 1,004,115 | Korea |
| .be | 924,470 | Belgium |
| .se | 885,704 | Sweden |
| .at | 868,070 | Austria |
| .mobi | 845,038 | Global Generic |
| .cz | 575,495 | Czech |
| .no | 437,179 | Norway |
| .nz | 362,349 | New Zealand |
| .mx | 320,310 | Mexico |
| .pt | 272,801 | Portugal |
| .cl | 249,210 | Chile |
| .fi |
214,078 | Finland |
| .asia | 213,091 | Asia Pacific |
| .tr | 195,309 | Turkey |
| .sk | 189,232 | Slovakia |
| .hk | 176,824 | Hong Kong |
| .ie | 127,455 | Ireland |
| .lt | 103,714 | Lithuania |
Domain registration statistics
October 7th, 2009More oxygen – colder climate
September 11th, 2009
Using a completely new method, researchers have shown that high atmospheric and oceanic oxygen content makes the climate colder. In prehistoric times, the earth experienced two periods of large increases and fluctuations in the oxygen level of the atmosphere and oceans. These fluctuations also lead to an explosion of multicellular organisms in the oceans, which are the predecessors for life as we know it today. The results are now being published in Nature.
Everybody talks about CO2 and other greenhouse gases as causes of global warming and the large climate changes we are currently experiencing. But what about the atmospheric and oceanic oxygen content? Which role does oxygen content play in global warming?
This question has become extremely relevant now that Professor Robert Frei from the Department of Geography and Geology at the University of Copenhagen, in collaboration with colleagues from Departamento de Geologı´a, Facultad de Ciencias in Uruguay, Newcastle University and the University of Southern Denmark, has established that there is a historical correlation between oxygen and temperature fluctuations towards global cooling.
The team of researchers reached their conclusions via analyses of iron-rich stones, so called banded iron formations, from different locations around the globe and covering a time span of more than 3,000 million years. Their discovery was made possible by a new analytical method which the research team developed. This method is based on analysis of chrome isotopes – different chemical variants of the element chrome. It turned out that the chrome isotopes in the iron rich stones reflect the oxygen content of the atmosphere. The method is a unique tool, which makes it possible to examine historical changes in the atmospheric oxygen content and thereby possible climate changes.
“But we can simply conclude that high oxygen content in seawater enables a lot of life in the oceans “consuming” the greenhouse gas CO2, and which subsequently leads to a cooling of the earth’s surface. Throughout history our climate has been dependent on balance between CO2 and atmospheric oxygen. The more CO2 and other greenhouse gases, the warmer the climate has been. But we still don’t know much about the process which drives the earth from a period with a warmer climate towards an “ice age” with colder temperatures – other than that oxygen content plays an important role. It would therefore be interesting to consider atmospheric and oceanic oxygen contents much more in research aiming at understanding and tackling the causes of the current climate change,” says Professor Robert Frei.
The results Professor Frei and his international research team have obtained indicate that there have been two periods in the earth’s 4.5 billion year history where a significant change in the atmospheric and oceanic oxygen content has occurred. The first large increase took place in between 2.45 billion years and 2.2 billion years ago. The second “boost” occurred for only 800 to 542 million years ago and lead to an oxidisation of the deep oceans and thereby the possibility for life to exist at those depths.
”To understand the future, we have to understand the past. The two large increases in the oxygen content show, at the very least, that the temperature decreased. We hope that these results can contribute to our understanding of the complexity of climate change. I don’t believe that humans have a lot of influence on the major process of oxygen formation on a large scale or on the inevitable ice ages or variations in temperature that the Earth’s history is full of. But that doesn’t mean that we cannot do anything to slow down the current global warming trend. For example by increased forestry and other initiatives that help to increase atmospheric and oceanic oxygen levels,” explains Professor Robert Frei, who, along with his research team, has worked on the project for three years so far.
New material for nanoscale-computer chips
August 20th, 2009
Researchers cross organic and non-organic nano wires like Mikado sticks and thereby make nanoscale prototype computer electronics. Image by Asmus Dohn.
New data from Chinese-Danish collaboration shows that organic nanoscale wires could be an alternative to silicon in computer chips. The discovery has just been published in the respected scientific journal, Advanced Materials.
Nanochemists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Nano-Science Center, Department of Chemistry have developed nanoscale electric contacts out of organic and inorganic nanowires. In the contact they have crossed the wires like Mikado sticks and coupled several contacts together in an electric circuit. In this way they have produced prototype computer electronics on the nanoscale.
Alternative to silicon computers
Today the foundation of our computers, mobile phones and other electronic apparatus is silicon transistors. A transistor is in principal an on- and off- contact and there are millions of tiny transistors on every computer chip. However, we are reaching the limit for how small we can make transistors out of silicon.
We already use various organic materials in, for example, flat screens, such as OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode). The new results show how small and advanced devices made of organic materials can become. Thomas Bjørnholm, Director of the Nano-Science Center, Department of Chemistry at University of Copenhagen explains:
- “We have succeeded in placing several transistors consisting of nanowires together on a nano device. It is a first step towards realisation of future electronic circuitry based on organic materials – a possible substitute for today’s silicon-based technologies. This offers the possibility of making computers in different ways in the future.”
Danish-Chinese nanoelectronics
The researchers have used organic nanowires combined with the tin oxide nanowires in a so-called hybrid circuit. As in a Mikado game, the nanowires cross in a device consisting of 4-6 active transistor moieties. The devices have a low operational current, high mobility and good stability and that is essential in order for the material to be able to compete with silicon.
Professor Wenping Hu, Chinese Academy of Sciences is excited over the results:
- “This work is the first significant result of our collaboration with the researchers from the Nano-Science Center. It is a good starting point for our new Danish-Chinese research centre for molecular nano-electronics and it underlines the fact that we can complement each other and that together we can achieve exciting and important results.”
Source:
| University of Copenhagen |
The greenhouse gas that saved the world
August 18th, 2009
Chemistry researchers uncover why the archean world was not frozen solid
When Planet Earth was just cooling down from its fiery creation, the sun was faint and young. So faint that it should not have been able to keep the oceans of earth from freezing. But fortunately for the creation of life, water was kept liquid on our young planet. For years scientists have debated what could have kept earth warm enough to prevent the oceans from freezing solid. Now a team of researchers from Tokyo Institute of Technology and University of Copenhagen’s Department of Chemistry have coaxed an explanation out of ancient rocks, as reported in this week’s issue of PNAS
A perfect greenhouse gas
- “The young sun was approximately 30 percent weaker than it is now, and the only way to prevent earth from turning into a massive snowball was a healthy helping of greenhouse gas,” Associate Professor Matthew S. Johnson of the Department of Chemistry explains. And he has found the most likely candidate for an archean atmospheric blanket. Carbonyl Sulphide: A product of the sulphur disgorged during millennia of volcanic activity.
- “Carbonyl Sulphide is and was the perfect greenhouse gas. Much better than Carbon Dioxide. We estimate that a blanket of Carbonyl Sulphate would have provided about 30 percent extra energy to the surface of the planet. And that would have compensated for what was lacking from the sun”, says Professor Johnson.
Strange distribution
To discover what could have helped the faint young sun warm early earth, Professor Johnson and his colleagues in Tokyo examined the ratio of sulphur isotopes in ancient rocks. And what they saw was a strange signal; A mix of isotopes that couldn’t very well have come from geological processes.
- “There is really no process in the rocky mantle of earth that would explain this distribution of isotopes. You would need something happening in the atmosphere,” says Johnson. The question was what. Painstaking experimentation helped them find a likely atmospheric process. By irradiating sulphur dioxide with different wavelengths of sunlight, they observed that sunlight passing through Carbonyl Sulphide gave them the wavelengths that produced the weird isotope mix.
- “Shielding by Carbonyl Sulphide is really a pretty obvious candidate once you think about it, but until we looked, everyone had missed it,” says Professor Johnson, and he continues.
- “What we found is really an archaic analogue to the current ozone layer. A layer that protects us from ultraviolet radiation. But unlike ozone, Carbonyl Sulphide would also have kept the planet warm. The only problem is: It didn’t stay warm”.
Life caused ice-age
As life emerged on earth it produced increasing amounts of oxygen. With an increasingly oxidizing atmosphere, the sulphur emitted by volcanoes was no longer converted to Carbonyl Sulphide. Instead it got converted to sulphate aerosols: A powerful climate coolant. Johnson and his co-workers created a Computer model of the ancient atmosphere. And the models in conjunction with laboratory experiments suggest that the fall in levels of Carbonyl Sulphide and rise of sulphate aerosols taken together would have been responsible for creating snowball earth, the planetwide ice-age hypothesised to have taken place near the end of the Archean eon 2500 million years ago. And the implications to Johnson are alarming:
- “Our research indicates that the distribution and composition of atmospheric gasses swung the planet from a state of life supporting warmth to a planet-wide ice-age spanning millions of years. I can think of no better reason to be extremely cautious about the amounts of greenhouse gasses we are currently emitting to the atmosphere”.
| Source: University of Copenhagen |
Fine-tuning an anti-cancer drug
August 18th, 2009
Cancer remains a deadly threat despite the best efforts of science. New hopes were raised a few years ago with the discovery that the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells could be thwarted by blocking the action of proteasomes. Biochemists at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) have illuminated a reaction pathway that does just that, in collaboration with researchers from Nereus Pharmaceuticals, based in San Diego, California. In the current issue of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, they report insights that could potentially lead to the development of custom-tailored anti-cancer drugs.
What makes cancer cells so dangerous is that they proliferate much more rapidly than other cells. An important contribution to this capability is made by a particular group of proteins, the so-called kinases. And it’s against the kinases that many cancer drugs in development today take aim. Another promising approach came to light a few years ago with the discovery that the proliferation of cancer cells could also be arrested through proteasome inhibition. Yet the first drug to employ this strategy caused a number of severe side-effects. Despite that, the drug is expected to generate revenues of more than a billion U.S. dollars this year.
In the search for alternatives, San Diego-based Nereus Pharmaceuticals homed in on a species of marine bacteria known as Salinispora tropica. These bacteria produce a small molecule that kills affected cells by disabling proteasomes, which serve as their waste processing plants. “In the life cycle of a cell, proteins are always being built up that will need to be demolished after they have done their work,” explains TUM Professor Michael Groll, leader of the research team in Munich. “If this breakdown is blocked, the cells choke on their own waste.”
After promising preclinical trials, the bacteria-produced Salinosporamide A (NPI-0052; Sal-A) has advanced into human clinical trials. “Over millions of years, the bacteria developed this substance into a perfect weapon,” says Dr. Barbara Potts, vice president for chemical and oncological development at Nereus Pharmaceuticals. The ideal cancer drug would kill only cancer cells, while doing the least harm possible to healthy cells. The researchers took a closer look at the pathway for this reaction, in the hope that they might better understand the mechanism and the best approach to future generation analogues.
The research team of Barbara Potts and Michael Groll managed to produce crystals of proteasomes blocked by Salinosporamide A and determined, through X-ray crystallography, the precise arrangement of the atoms. It became clear why the bacterial poison is so effective: The molecule fits an opening in the proteasome like a key, and locks it up. A subsequent reaction transforms the molecule to a complex that can no longer be detached, in effect breaking off the key in the lock. Vital processes come to a halt.
Halogen-hydrocarbons are favored in industrial chemistry, because the halogen atom can be easily separated from other groups. It’s just this trick that the Salinispora tropica bacterium employs in the case of Salinosporamide A. It uses a chloride as its so-called “leaving group” to trigger an internal reaction forming a ring-like bond. If the ring is closed, the lock is jammed.
The researchers next produced variants of Salinosporamide A and once again succeeded in crystallizing them and using X-ray techniques for structural analysis. By replacing the chlorine atom with fluorine, they were able to observe the progress of the reaction. After the key had been stuck in the lock for one hour of reaction time, the biochemists were still able to pull it out again. A few hours later, the fluorine was split off, and the lock was blocked.
“After the millions of years that have gone into the evolutionary development of this method in bacteria, it’s unlikely that a better way to block the proteasome is even possible,” Groll says. “Now that we know how the best possible reaction proceeds, we can alter it in targeted ways with the aim of developing tailored proteasomal drugs that will have improved safety and efficacy.”
http://portal.mytum.de/pressestelle/pressemitteilungen/news_article.2009-08-18.7471475400
Internet Society Announces News Board of Trustees
August 4th, 2009
The Internet Society yesterday announced its new Board of Trustees, comprised of leaders from industry, academia, and the global Internet community.
The diverse and distinguished board membership reflects the Internet Society’s mission of providing global leadership in promoting the open development, evolution, and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world.
Members of the Board with terms beginning this year are:
* Eric Burger, Chief Technology Officer at Neustar
* Khaled Koubaa, Founder of the Arab World Internet Institute
* Philip Smith of the Internet Architectures Group of Cisco Systems
* Jonathan Zittrain, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he co-founded its Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
Raúl Echeberría, the Executive Director of LACNIC (the Internet Address Registry for Latin America and the Caribbean), continued as a board member and was selected as the new chair of the Board.
“I look forward to working with the worldwide Internet Society community of members and chapters, and my colleagues on the board, to continue the important work of the Internet Society in promoting access to, and supporting the continued growth of, the Internet while preserving its core values,” said Raúl Echeberría, Chair of the Internet Society’s Board of Trustees.
During its first meeting, the Board formally thanked outgoing chair Daniel Karrenberg for his service over the past three years.
Daniel Karrenberg, Chief Scientist at RIPE NCC, said, “It has been both an honour and a pleasure to chair the board. After three years it is time to take a step back. I look forward to serving another two years as a trustee and to supporting Raul in taking over as chair.”
Continuing Members of the Board of Trustees are:
* Hiroshi Esaki, Professor, The University of Tokyo
* Ted Hardie, Director, Internet and Wireless, for Qualcomm’s Research and Development group
* Daniel Karrenberg, Co-founder and Chief Scientist of RIPE NCC
* Désirée Miloshevic, International Affairs and Policy Development Advisor at Afilias Global Registry Services
* Alejandro Pisanty, Professor, the National University of Mexico
* Patrick Vande Walle, Official of the European Commission
* Bert Wijnen, Research Engineer at RIPE NCC
“The Internet Society Board of Trustees is truly international–a tremendous benefit as we work to fulfill our mission of an Internet that is accessible for everyone, everywhere,” said Lynn St. Amour, President and CEO of the Internet Society.
The Board of Trustees reappointed Ted Hardie as Treasurer and Scott Bradner as Secretary.
Trustees serve in the interest of the Internet Society as a whole, and are appointed or elected by the following groups: Chapters, Organization members, and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB). More information, including biographical details of all Board members and details of the Board selection process are available at: http://www.isoc.org/isoc/general/trustees
5 Tips For More Cost Effective Adwords Advertising
August 3rd, 2009Google presents together a short video outlining 5 tips on very simple things you can do to help ensure that your AdWords advertising is cost effective and successful in attracting users to your website.
Extinct rodent species discovered
July 28th, 2009
An international team of scientists has discovered an extinct rodent species, based on fossil tooth remains found in Alborache, Valencia. Eomyops noeliae, from the Eomyidae family, represents the oldest find within this genus in the world
The small number of fossils found has prevented the scientists from the University of Valencia (UV), who have led this research study, from being able to gain a full picture of this “new” rodent. However, they have been able to prove – on the basis of just the teeth, the only fossil remains discovered – that Eomyops noeliae was morphologically and biometrically different from other rodents of the Eomyops genus. The new species provides valuable evolutionary, biostratigraphic and paleoenvironmental information related to this rodent, which was of average size within the group.
“Until now, the Eomyops genus was made up of a group of small species and one large one, but no intermediately-sized kinds such as Eomyops noeliae had been found”, Francisco Javier Ruiz-Sánchez, lead author of the study published in the French journal Comptes Rendus Palevol and a researcher in the UV’s Department of Geology, tells SINC.
The palaeontologists have also confirmed the age of the find. “The fossils found in the Morteral 20A deposit in Valencia show that this is the oldest species within the genus known in the world with absolute certainty”, points out Ruiz-Sánchez. According to this data, Eomyops noeliae would have lived during the Aragonese period “perhaps between the Lower and Middle Miocene (around 16 million years ago)”, underscores the researcher.
The rodent’s wet environment
The varied fauna of micro-mammals and the new species found in the Valencian deposit provide information about the environmental conditions in which these animals would have lived at the time. “The rodent taxa found show evidence that the environment was very wet”, says Ruiz-Sánchez, even though the full study on all the fossil rodent remains, begun with this new eomyid, has still not been completed.
According to the study, the environment was “relatively thickly wooded, and the climate was wet”, although other factors such as temperature have not yet been defined.
The biogeographical data also show that Eomyops noeliae lived throughout the east of the Iberian Peninsula during the Lower-Middle Miocene. This has been confirmed from the Eomyops species remains excavated from the “most recent” Morteral 22 deposit, which is very close to Morteral 20A.
Ruiz-Sánchez says the finds of this species’ teeth in deposit strata separated by just a few metres show that “how this species survived in the east of the peninsula over a specific time period that is currently hard to define, but which must have gone on for several tens of thousands of years”.
Source: Plataforma SINC
5-Step Process To Optimize The Adsense Ads On Your Sites
July 27th, 2009
Mel Ann and Tim are two AdSense Optimization Specialists from the Google office in Sydney, who work with publishers to help them improve the performance of their ads. Today, they’ll walk you through a 5-step process to optimize the AdSense ads on your sites, and will also share tips that many publishers have found successful.
Step 1: Analyze your webpages
The first step to a successful optimization is to analyze your
webpages. Ask yourself the following questions as you think about where
to place ads on your site:
- What type of content do you have? People interact differently on
articles, forum, and video sites, for example, so think about how
people will be interacting on your site.
- Where is visitor attention likely to be focused? You should place ads
where your users are most likely to look, but as Ricardo Prada
mentioned in week two of this series, make sure that they won’t get in
the way of users trying to complete tasks on your site.
- How can you integrate ads into an area without getting in the way of
your users? You can view a heat map we’ve put together showing where
ads perform well, and keep in mind that above the fold ads and ads
close to primary content tend perform better.
- Don’t forget to think about how advertisers would like to appear. If
you can make your site more appealing to advertisers, while keeping the
above tips in mind, you’re more likely to be able to attract
advertisers and placement targeted ads.
Step 2: Set up custom channels
Custom channels will help you figure out how different ad units are
performing based on a number of variables you can choose, like
placement, size, and color. Create a channel for individual ad units
and categorize them to see how they’re performing. For example, you can
track your leaderboard and medium rectangle to see which performs
better, and use this information in step four below. Custom channels
will also allow you to track and measure results from your
optimizations.
Step 3: Optimize your ad unit design and placement
The next step is to look at color, position, and size of your ad units
and optimize these for user experience, advertiser experience, and
performance. We’ve found that the medium rectangle (300 x 250), wide
skyscraper (160 x 600), and the leaderboard (728 x 90) tend to perform
best. You can also opt in to image ads to receive rich media and video
ads, which tend to perform well too. It’s important that you implement
your ads in a consistent manner and in a way that is desirable to
advertisers. Use colors effectively. Blend ads in, but not too much
that users don’t see them. Borderless ads tend to work well, as does
highlighting the link and URL. Test different colors and placements,
and then keep the changes that perform best.
Step 4: Maximize revenue from multiple units
We recommend adding multiple ad units to your pages, while still
keeping the user experience in mind when deciding on placements. You
can use custom channel reporting to determine which ad unit performs
best, and structure your page to optimize performance based on that.
The highest paying ad we have for your site will be shown in the first
ad unit that shows up in your HTML code. If you have a leaderboard at
the top, but learn with custom channel reporting that a medium
rectangle halfway down the page is outperforming it in terms of CTR and
eCPM, try putting the medium rectangle first in your HTML code. You can
do this by switching the location in the HTML if you’re comfortable
editing the code, or by changing the actual location of the leaderboard
on the page.
Step 5: Track and measure results
The last step is to understand whether your optimizations have made a
difference. Here, use the custom channels you set up earlier to
generate reports on your different ad units. Generate reports on your
custom channels and group results by channel (remember, this depends on
how you’ve set them up) to see how different sizes, colors, and
placements are performing. You can also look at placement targeting
reports to see which ad units are receiving placement-targeted ads, and
if they’ve resulted in improved performance.
We hope these steps and tips are informative, and strongly encourage
you to take the time to try an optimization on your own.
Source: Google Adsense Newsletter
The Longest Total Solar Eclipse This Century
July 22nd, 2009People in Asia have seen the longest total solar eclipse this century, with large areas of India and China plunged into darkness.
Amateur stargazers and scientists travelled far to see the eclipse, which lasted six minutes and 39 seconds at its maximum point.
The eclipse could first be seen early on Wednesday in eastern India.
It then moved east across India, Nepal, Burma, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, Japan and the Pacific.
The eclipse first became total over India at 0053GMT, and was last visible from land at Nikumaroro Island in the South Pacific nation of Kiribati. It ended at 0418GMT.
Elsewhere, a partial eclipse was visible across much of Asia.
The next total solar eclipse will occur on 11 July, 2010. It will be visible in a narrow corridor over the southern hemisphere, from the southern Pacific Ocean to Argentina.
Video Solar Eclipse 2009: