Why do we blink?

Why do we blink?

Blinking is something you rarely think about but is essential to keeping our eyes healthy. Each blink bathes the eyes in warm tears that remain on the surface of the eye as a tear film, preventing injury, regulating sensory input from the eye to the brain and providing, nutrition, comfort and clear vision. So what causes us to blink? Research at Cardiff University is testing a theory based on the temperature of tears.

‘The theory is that as the tear film evaporates from the surface of the eye, the eye gets cooler and this is what triggers the blink’, explains Christine Purslow of the School of Optometry, Cardiff. ‘If we can determine what causes us to blink, then we could stimulate this natural process in those who suffer from dry eyes’.

Not all individuals blink as much as others and some conditions like Parkinson’s reduce the blink rate. Humans are therefore being studied to see what it is about their tear film that relates to their blinking pattern. There are also differences between different species. ‘Rabbits would definitely win a staring contest’, says Christine. ‘They hardly ever blink, we think, due to differing properties of their anterior eye and tear film’.

At our Royal Society exhibit you will find out why we all blink at different rates – take part in a survey about blinking which will help us find out more about this topic. You will need a friend to record your blink rate in order to take part

Best gaming experience from APHROS XS

APHROS XS

The Aphros XS is one of the most powerful systems available. Powered by two Intel Core 2 QX9775 Quad CPUs means this system doesn’t just crunch numbers, it smashes them. Backing up the processors and bearing the graphical grunt is a pair of the most powerful GPUs available to gamers on the market today. The 4870X2 tames even the greediest graphical gluttons like Crysis and will offer you the best seat in the house to view thousands of gaming worlds at resolutions as high as 2560x1600.

Seeing as the Aphros XS comes with Paraflow cooling solution, one of the most effective liquid cooling set-ups on the market. It would be a shame not to overclock the two CPUs and increase the amount of power that this system is capable of from unthinkable to unimaginable.

If you are a person with very little patience the XS is for you, download, encode and play all at the same time. The eight cores of pure CPU performance beating in the heart of this machine wont even break a sweat. In fact they will probably ask you for more.

Memory munching applications for video editing, 3D rendering and music creation are also taken into account, as the 8gb of memory is enough to wrestle the most demanding applications into submission.

Case Lian Li PC-80B Armorsuit Black Aluminium Full Tower Case Dimensions: 220 mm (W) x 633 mm (H) x 610 mm (D) Processor 2 x Overclocked Liquid Cooled Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9775 Quad Core Chipset Liquid Cooled Intel D5400XS Cooling Liquid Cooling System EK Graphics Card Waterblocks 2 x D-Tek Fuzion v2 CPU Blocks 3 x 240mm Radiators Laing DDC 12v with Modded Plexitop MCubed T-Balancer bigNG Automatic Fan Controller Power Supply Coolermaster 1100w UCP Ultimate Motherboard Intel D5400XS “Skulltrail” socket 771 eATX PCI-EXPRESS FB-DIMM DDR2 Memory 8GB (4 x 2GB) FB-DIMM DDR2-800MHz Disk Drives 3 x 128GB 2.5” Solid State Drives (SSD) [RAID] 1 x 1TB (1000GB) Samsung Spinpoint F1 SATA II HDD [Storage] (Upgrade options at checkout) Graphics 2 x AMD-ATi HD4870X2 2GB GDDR5 (crossfire) (Upgrade options at checkout) DVD Drives LG Blue-Ray ReWriter/HD-ROM Reader (Upgrade options at checkout) Sound Card Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional PCI System Software Windows Vista NERO Burning ROM PowerDVD (Upgrade options at checkout) Expansion/USB 10 x USB 2.0 ports Networking Capabilty KillerNIC M1 Network Card with 400MHz Processor Gigabit (10/100/1000 Mbits/sec) LAN Subsystem Warranty 1 Year Collect and Return Full Parts and Labour (Upgrade options at checkout) Benchmarking 3dMark06: 26000 Base Price £8853

SPH-M800+technology

reach out

Communication that you can touch is here with the SAMSUNG INSTINCT smartphone. Scroll and swipe through the touch sensitive interface, loaded with turn-by-turn GPS, live TV and full HTML internet browsing. Grab every moment with the 2.0MP camera and video recorder. And forget feeling out of the loop - INSTINCT keeps email, instant messaging and music at your fingertips all the time.

full-feature touchscreen

The SAMSUNG Instinct™ has a large, extremely responsive touchscreen that gives tactile response to touch and can also be used with a stylus.

web browser

The SAMSUNG Instinct™’s advanced Web browser lets your customers view full HTML pages and stream videos.

2 megapixel camera/camcorder

The SAMSUNG Instinct™ has a 2 megapixel camera and camcorder that enables your customers to capture high-resolution images and videos to keep, view, or send

SGH-a436-SAMSUNG mobile

Bluetooth® technology

You can easily connect with a Bluetooth-enabled headset or handsfree car system so you don't get all tangled up in technology. It also connects with compatible printers, laptops and whatever else those Bluetooth people come up with.

speakerphone

Get a few friends together and huddle around your new phone. The built-in speakerphone makes group conversations easy.


key specifications

• Talk time : up to 3hrs
• Standby : up to 250hrs
• Camera Resolution : VGA
• Video telephony : No
• 
  

Mercedes’ new Gullwing

CAR Online has obtained the best info yet on Mercedes’ new AMG ‘Gullwing’ supercar. Depicted in our artist’s impression, the super coupe is codenamed C197 and will make its debut at the 2010 Geneva motor show; a roadster tagged R197 follows a year later.

The new two-seater will be badged an AMG, not as a Mercedes (our artist’s impression still displays the Merc star). It’s thus the first standalone product of the go-faster department – and it probably won’t be the last.

The coupe and roadster will cost around the same as a well-equipped Porsche 911 Turbo – the target is €150,000 (£105,000) – and in size they are closer to the SLR than the SL.

How big’s the new Gullwing, then?

CAR Online has seen documents spelling out the pair’s dimensions:

• Length 4650mm
• Width 1950mm
• Height 1250mm
• Wheelbase 2700mm
• Luggage capacity 200 litres (coupe), 175 litres (roadster)

That’s quite a big car, then, but it will, intriguingly, be even lighter than the SLR. The target weight for the engineers is 1650kg – 45 kilos less than an SLR and 235kg less than an SL55.

How do they do it? By introducing a brand-new advanced aluminium spaceframe technology which is allegedly even more rigid than that carbon fibre tub designed in Woking.

brain must be as fast as this bmw car

BMW X6 extends its product range to include powerful xDrive50i model

The BMW X6, the world’s first Sport Activity Coupé, has extended its product range to include a more powerful X6 xDrive50i variant that features a new 4.4-litre V8 engine with Twin Turbo technology. The latest model joins the highly successful BMW X6 xDrive35i that was launched in the Middle East earlier this year.

The new X6 xDrive50i model is the world’s first eight-cylinder gasoline engine with the turbo-charger and catalytic converters housed in the V-section between the two rows of cylinders, giving a maximum output of 407 hp and 442 lb-ft of torque.

As with the already popular BMW X6 xDrive35i, the BMW X6 xDrive50i comes equipped as standard with BMW’s intelligent xDrive all-wheel drive technology and Dynamic Performance Control for agility, stability, precision and traction in any driving situation.

Studying and Thinking About Problems I

The first course in chemistry will be a new experience—

perhaps a difficult one.

To understand chemistry, you will have to work hundreds of problems. For many students, the mathematical side of the course may seem more difficult than it should, leading to unnecessary frustration. There appear to be two main sources of this difficulty and frustration;

they center around ( I ) study habits, and (2) the way you analyze a problem and proceed to its solution. The following suggestions, taken seriously from the very beginning, may be of great help to you. For most people, improved study habits and problem-solving skills come only with practice and with a determined effort
spread over a long time.

It's worth it.

Curve tracing

Curve Sketching

		Symmetry

		A curve is symmetric with respect to:

		1. The x axis, if its equation is unchanged when y is replaced by -y, that is, f(x) = y and f(x) = -y both hold.

		2. The y axis, if its equation is unchanged when x is replaced by -x, that is f(-x) = f(x).

		3. The origin, if its equation is unchanged when x is replaced by -x and y by -y, simultaneously, that is, f(-x) = - f(x).

		4. The line y = x, if its equation is unchanged when x and y are interchanged, that is, y = f(x) implies x = f(y).

		Intercepts

		An intercept is a point on either axis of a coordinate system where the curve of a function passes through or intercepts. The x intercepts are obtained by setting y = 0 in the equation for the curve and solving for x (when possible). The y intercepts are obtained by setting x = 0 and solving for y.

Rolle's theorem

Rolle's Theorem

	If f(x) is continuous on the interval , if f(a) = f(b) = 0, and if f'(x) exists everywhere on the interval except possibly at the endpoints, then f'(x) = 0 for at least one value of x, say x = xo, between a and b. Geometrically, this means that if a continuous curve intersects the x axis at x = a and x = b, and has a tangent at every point between a and b, then