Major decline in foreign students to US colleges
There were less F1 student visas for the US issued across India in financial year 2009 (Oct 08-Sep 09) than the
previous FY08. In fact, 25,860 issuances in FY09 actually translates into a whopping 25% decline over 34,510, which was the number issued last year.
Most experts and consultants feel [...]

The pale halo-shaped cloud was hovering over Moscow on Wednesday
In what could have been a scene from the film Independence Day, a luminous ring-shaped cloud could be seen hovering over the city of Moscow last week.  The pale gold ‘halo’ could be seen above the Russian capital city’s Western District on Wednesday, and was captured [...]

Google accounted for 71.08% of all US searches conducted in the four weeks ending Oct. 3, 2009, according to research just released by Experian Hitwise. Yahoo Search, Bing, and Ask.com received 16.38%, 8.96%, and 2.56%, respectively. The remaining 52 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.04% of US searches:
 

Pension funds for police officers and other public employees have been battered and face a long recovery
The financial crisis has blown a hole in the rosy forecasts of pension funds that cover teachers, police officers and other government employees, casting into doubt as never before whether these public systems will be able to keep their [...]

Featured Invention at the Colorado Inventor Showcase 2009
 UFO Micro Furnace is the world’s smallest, lightest, most portable, easiest to use and most affordable furnace for performing assays of precious metal ore.  It is the only one that can be taken to the mine site, and is so simple to use that a trip to the [...]

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Techcrunch Crunchpad
Most breakthrough innovations make their greatest contributions when they become products people can buy. That’s why Popular Mechanics awarded the top 10 most brilliant gadgets, tools and toys that you can buy in 2009. (Pics)
 

NASA is planning to drop a spent rocket motor into the Cabeus crater on the moon Friday morning as part of the search to find lunar water. The motor is a leftover piece of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite that includes a “shepherding spacecraft” that will follow behind the rocket motor before it [...]

Image: Mohd Abubakr
The modern periodic table of elements has been attributed to Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev, which he published in 1869. Pictured above is a proposed alternative that is shaped like a circle in order to arrange atoms by relative size:
According to Mohd Abubakr from Microsoft Research in Hyderabad, the table can be improved by [...]

The pit crew worked furiously to get Bossy ready to roll again,
but as everyone knew, cow repair was not an exact science

Andy Warhol once said, “Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there – I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. Right when I [...]