Temples in AndhraPradesh

SAHARA

Photographer Mike Hettwer has been kind enough to share with us some of his photographs depicting what remains of the Green Sahara. About 9,000 years ago, a very wet climate prevailed in parts of the Sahara Desert called the Neolithic Subpluvial period. Lasting several thousand years, this Green Sahara was home to many grassland and woodland animals as well as humans. While on an expedition for dinosaur fossils with paleontologist Paul Sereno in Niger in 2000, Hettwer discovered a burial area containing hundreds of skeletons from two distinct cultures, each thousands of years old - the Kiffian and Tenerian. Also found in the dry and desolate site were hunting tools, pottery, and bones of large land animals and fish. Mike Hettwer's photographs have appeared in 2,500 magazines, newspapers books and web sites - many of these photos are from his article "Lost Tribes of the Green Sahara" in the Sep. 2008 issue of National Geographic. Also included are related photos from other expeditions, and with paleoanthropologist Meave Leakey

In the Gobero Area of the Sahara Desert in Niger, a 6,000 year old "Tenerian" skeleton was found with his middle finger in his mouth for reasons that are unknown. The average daily high temperature in this part of the Sahara Desert was 120F degrees (49C), a far cry from the Green Sahara 4-9,000 years ago.

In the city of In Gall, Niger, men from the Wodaabe tribe dance and sing at the Gerewol festival just as a massive sandstorm hits. The Gerewol is an annual courting festival where the men try to look as beautiful as possible so they are chosen for mates by Wodaabe women. The women can select up to four men, and a man if not chosen, will be very lonely for the next year. The Wodaabe may be related to the ancient human groups that lived in the Gobero area thousands of years ago.

The Gobero archeology excavation site is an utterly desolate area of the Sahara, so remote that camels are never seen. This wide aerial view of camp shows distant sand dunes, the team's tents and a tiny group of archaeologists excavating skeletons (lower left). Looking at it today, It is hard to believe this was the Green Sahara thousands of years ago.

This cast of a Suchomimus dinosaur seen in Agadez, Niger, was donated to the country of Niger by paleontologist Paul Sereno at the Flamme de la Paix ceremony, that celebrated the end of a five year civil war. Suchomimus was a 110 million year old meat eater with a dinosaur's body and a crocodile's head. Over 20 new species of dinosaurs and crocodiles were found on this three month expedition.

Nigerien Army guards, on hand for protection from possible bandits, watch over the excavation of a 6,000 year old skeleton at a very rich archeology site in the Sahara Desert in Niger. Over 250 skeletons and thousands of tools, weapons, pot shards and ornaments were found in this site in the Gobero area.

Six thousand years ago, a mother and two children died at the same time and were buried here holding hands. Someone obviously cared a great deal, as the scientist found that flowers were placed above and below the bodies. It is not yet known how they died.

One of the most well preserved Tenerian skeletons looked as if it had just fallen asleep in the sand six thousand years ago.

Dr. Chris Stojanowski of Arizona State University and an an undergrad student examine a woman who died at age twenty at the very rich Gobero archeology site. 

This Tenerian man was found with his head buried in a pot and was affectionately known as "Pot Head". He also had a crocodile ankle bone and a wild boar tusk among the grave goods.

This 8,000 year-old giraffe rock carving in DaBous, Niger is considered one of the finest petroglyphs in the world. The giraffe has a leash on its nose implying some level of taming the animals. It was found relatively recently on the top of a granite hill by local Touaregs and dates to the Kiffian era of 7,000 - 9,000 years ago. 

Two Tenerian skeletons almost perfectly preserved, were found early in the excavation process. The skeleton on the left was found with its middle finger in its mouth. The one on the right was buried in a grave where the bones of a previous burial were pushed out of the way.

A previous burial was pushed out of the way to make way for this woman's skeleton. There were two football-field-size cemeteries found on this site, where 250 skeletons were found

History of INDIAN RUPEE

Indiawas one of the earliest issuers of coins (circa 6th century BC). The first "rupee" is believed to have been introduced by Sher Shah Suri (1486-1545), based on a ratio of 40 copper pieces (paisa) per rupee. Among the earliest issues of paper rupees were those by the Bank of Hindustan (1770-1832), the General Bank of Bengal and Bihar (1773-75, established by Warren Hastings) and the Bengal Bank (1784-91), amongst others.

During British rule, and the first decade of independence, it was subdivided into 16 annas. Each anna was subdivided into 4 paise (also written pice) or 12 pies. Until 1815, the Madras Presidency also issued a currency based on the fanam, with 12 fanams equal to the rupee.

Historically, the rupee, derived from the Sanskrit word raupya, which means silver, was a silver coin. This had severe consequences in the nineteenth century, when the strongest economies in the world were on the gold standard. The discovery of vast quantities of silver in the U.S. and various European colonies resulted in a decline in the relative value of silver to gold. Suddenly the standard currency of Indiacould not buy as much from the outside world. This event was known as "the fall of the rupee." 

In 1898, the rupee was tied to the gold standard through the British pound by pegging the rupee at a value of 1 shilling 4 pence (i.e., 15 rupees = 1 *pound). In 1920, the rupee was increased in value to 2 shillings (10 rupees = 1*pound). However, in 1927, the peg was once more reduced, this time to 1 

shilling 6 pence (13⅓ rupees = 1*pound). This peg was maintained until 1966, when the rupee was devalued and pegged to the U.S. dollar at a rate of 7.5 rupees = 1 dollar (at the time, the rupee became equal to 11.4 British pence). This peg lasted until the U.S. dollar devalued in 1971.

The Indian rupee replaced the Danish Indian rupee in 1845, the French Indian rupee in 1954 and the Portuguese Indian escudo in 1961. Following independence in 1947, the Indian rupee replaced all the currencies of the previously autonomous states. Some of these states had issued rupees equal to those issued by the British (such as the Travancore rupee). Other currencies included the Hyderabad rupee and the Kutch kori.

In 1957, decimalisation occurred and the rupee was divided into 100 naye paise (Hindi for "new paise"). In 1964, the initial "naye" was dropped. Many still refer to 25, 50 and 75 paise as 4, 8 and 12 annas respectively, not unlike the usage of "bit" in American English for ⅛ dollar.

International standard conversion for Indian currency, INR

The Indian Rupee is the currency in India(IN, IND). The symbol for INR can be written Rs, IRs. The Indian Rupee is divided into 100 paise. The exchange rate for the Indian Rupee was last updated on October 23, 2007 from The International Monetary Fund. The INR conversion factor has 6 significant 

digits. Large amounts of Rupees are expressed in lakh rupees or crore rupees. A Lakh Rupee is one hundred thousand rupees and a crore rupee is ten million rupees.

India 1835

BlackBerry Storm

The Storm is BlackBerry's first touchscreen device.  Stocked with all your favorites, some features of the Storm include a music player, a full QWERTY keyboard in landscape mode and a SureType keyboard when in portrait, and a 3.2 megapixel camera with variable zoom, auto focus and flash that also provides continuous lighting when recording video.

UTStarcom Quickfire

The ATT (UTStarcom) Quickfire sports a large QVGA (Quarter Video Graphics Array) diplay that covers a full QWERTY("QWERTY is the most common modern-day keyboard layout on English-language computer and typewriter keyboards")  keyboard perfect for anyone who needs to email, IM or text message frequently. Key features include a 1.3 megapixel camera, touchscreen, microSD slot, Bluetooth, MP3 player, speakerphone, and GPS. 

Five things killed by CELL PHONE

Calling a cellphone a mere phone seems a little silly these days. The little pocket wonders now do so much they are really handheld computers. With extras. The process of mashing one or more gadgets together in the same box used to be called convergence, but that approach quietly died as the mobile phone ate up any and every rival device.
So successful has this been that whole product categories have had the life choked out of their twitching bodies by the phone. The following list is an obituary to five of them, plus a look at the cellphone's next victim.

The PDA
Remember the PDA? Right back to the Psion Organizer in 1984 (above), the PDA has essentially been an electronic calendar, address book and notepad. And right back to the Psion, with its squishy, non-QWERTY keyboard, they've been harder to use than their paper equivalents.
Still, despite this, it took the cellphone to finally kill them off. The fatal shortcoming? The address book. Who on earth would take out their PDA, call up a contact and then tap the phone number into their phone? Nobody, which is why, as the calendaring functions of phones got better, the PDA was quietly retired.

The Camera
We're not saying that the standalone camera is dead. Far from it — one look in the street will show you how popular is the modern DSLR. But for people below a certain age, the camera phone is the one they use, and it has already killed off the cheap, junky bottom end of the digicam market. It's easy to see why: Although the pictures from the small sensors might not be great, the camera phone is always in your pocket, and you can snap and send pictures over the network in seconds.
This convenience more than makes up for the noisy pictures. Remember the saying: The best camera is the one you have with you.

The UMPC
The Ultra Mobile PC was a failed experiment, although once in while a company will drag the rotting corpse from its comfortable grave, slap on a bit of makeup and try to sell the idea again. The reason? Cellphones. Think about it: The UMPC was a full-fledged computer crammed into a tiny box with an impossible-to-use keyboard, with pathetic battery life and a hilariously high price tag. The phone, in contrast, offers an operating system and interface designed for the modest hardware on which it will run. It's cheap, and the battery lasts for days.
Better still, phones are only getting more powerful. The iPhone and the G1 are both handheld computers which happen to have a phone attached. And if you really do need a bigger screen, you can pick up two or three netbooks for the price of one UMPC.

The Phone
Hands up who still has a home land line with a telephone attached? Now, keep your arm in the air if you ever make calls on it. We don't see many hands.
We still keep these old tethered phones around, for calling the emergency services if nothing else, or because its cheaper to buy an all-in-one package from the local telco. But the main phone for many people is the cellphone. Part of this is the convenience of always having it with you, even in the house.
But we think a bigger part is that the humble telephone just hasn't kept up with technology. The handsets just don't have the features we're used to. And when we do use a land line, we look up the number on our cellphone and then type it in. Small wonder that most people just press the green button on the mobile instead.

The MP3 Player
Almost every phone comes with an MP3 player. We guess that in a few years, even the iPod will be dead, replaced entirely by the iPhone (and the iPod Touch, which is really just a cellphone without a phone). Music playback and a headphone jack is now a standard feature on even the cheapest of handsets (with some notable exceptions). Our prediction? The MP3 player will join the PDA in the gadget graveyard within a few short years.

Next: The Notebook
It will take some time, but it's easy to imagine the cellphone completely replacing the laptop for mobile use. Sure, we might keep one at home for work, but the cellphone already does most of what our notebooks do. We can listen to music, play movies and use the internet. One day, those big old, battery-sucking computers will be an amusing relic.
Ironically, these future phones might be lacking the one thing that gave them their name — a phone. When fast data connections are ubiquitous, voice traffic will inevitably be sent over the internet.