May 13, 2013
The Sky’s Not the Limit
Canadian astronaut, Chris Hadfield, concluded his five month stay in space with style – he filmed a music video of himself covering David Bowie’s hit “Space Oddity”. The 53-year old astronaut can be seen floating in zero gravity on the International Space Station, strumming on his acoustic guitar while he sings. The lyrics are, of course, suited to the occasion.
This is Major Tom to Ground Control
I’m stepping through the door
And I’m floating
In a most peculiar way
And the stars look very different today
For here
Am I sitting in a tin can
Far above the world
Planet Earth is blue
And there’s nothing I can do
Though I’m past
One hundred thousand miles
I’m feeling very still
And I think my spaceship knows which way to go
May 7, 2013
Stock market players could be turning to Google suggest for financial insight in the near future. A recent study conducted by U.S. and UK academics has suggested that there is a connection between the direction of stock market trends and search data.
Can Google Predict Stock Market Trends?
The analysis by researchers from the Universities of Warwick and Boston is the newest attempt to pinpoint online behaviour patterns for the purpose of chartering movements in financial markets. The published results have shown that during the period of the study, Google Trends data was effectively used to gain insight into the current state of the economy. An example given from the findings was the increase of search terms such as “stocks,” “economics” and “portfolios” by individuals during times of global economic stress. The conclusion drawn from the changes in search frequency for the collection of financial terms used (98 in total), is that they could be used as early signals of upcoming stock market trends.
May 2, 2013
G20 Meeting Calms Fears
After predictions that the deliberate devaluing of the Japanese and Chinese currencies by their leaders would lead to a domino effect across the global market, mentions of an upcoming currency war appear to have ceased.
In February, both Asian nations faced criticism from Western leaders, accused of pushing up the values of other currencies and harming their export market. However, at a recent meeting of the G20 nations, countries kept their currency criticisms to themselves.
Fickle Financials
At least your forex broker can breathe a sigh of relief – it appears that the financial market is not about to implode anytime soon. The Chinese yuan, however, is at a 20-year low to the US dollar, whilst the Japanese yen has dropped below the 100 yen to the dollar mark.
April 22, 2013
Search Engine Giant Adds 66th Language
Google’s famous translation service has just added its 66th language – Khmer, the official language of Cambodia. There are around 16 million speakers of the language, but Google had great difficulty in adding Khmer since there are not a lot of web resources available, and the language doesn’t usually use spaces to separate the words.
Google Translate currently supports languages such as Afrikaans, Basque, Icelandic and Lao, which was the 65th language to be added last year in September. Whilst the translate tool can be incredibly useful, it is best to rely on professional translators for business or legal documents, in order to avoid embarrassing gaffes that sometimes occur when translations are left to algorithms and machines.
Humans versus Machines
Indeed, the offices at Google Translate do not contain native speakers of the languages that are featured. Instead, the algorithms examine language patterns already present in existing documents and books. Thus, the more literature available for a particular language, the more accurate the online translation is likely to be.
April 17, 2013
BRICS Ditch the Euro
The BRICS nations, consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, have been unloading their foreign exchange holdings of the Euro over the past two years. In 2012, the combined group of countries dropped almost $46.5 billion worth of the European currency. As a result, the status of the Euro as a world reserve currency has been greatly reduced.
For those with a CFD broker, who enjoy forex trading and playing the stock market, it would be wise to keep an eye on the fluctuating financial markets. Currently, the euro accounts for 24% of the allocated reserves held by 109 of the IMF members designated as developing economies. This is the lowest percentage since the euro was introduced in 2002.
A senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Edwin Truman, announced that as a result, “The effects of the euro crisis will linger, growth will be slow, interest rates will remain low, and the general attractiveness of euro assets low”.
Consultants and researchers at Loughborough University have successfully charted the health and safety track record of the London 2012 Olympic construction and the results have been excellent. Considering the construction health and safety, time management and budget of the project, the construction of the Olympic Park, the facilities and the regeneration of the surrounding areas by the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) has been a tremendous achievement all round. 
The Carter Centre has been waging war on the guinea worm. In 1986 when the Carter Centre began its eradication programme there were an estimated 3.5 million cases in 21 African and Asian Countries. The guinea worm eradication programme has been so successful that in 2006 the world was looking at just 25 217 cases. That’s over 90% success.