YOU ARE WHO YOU INSPIRE TO BE

TO MAKE YOU BETTER

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY

THE AMERICAN DREAM

AS THE 44TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES MAKES HIS WAY TO THE CAPITOL FOR HIS INAUGURATION INTO OFFICE FOR A SECOND TERM WE CAN´T STOP TO THINK THAT THIS IS JUST THE RIGHT DAY FOR THIS TO HAPPEN. ITS MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY AND THE DREAM HAS BECOME AN AMERICAN STORY! GOD BLESS AMERICA. GOD BLESS THE PRESIDENT, BARAK OBAMA AND GOD BLESS OUR FIRST LADY AND THE TWO FIRST DAUGHTERS. HISTORY CONTINUES!

LET US LOOK AT MARTIN LUTHER KING JR´S SPEECH ON THIS DAY: “I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. “But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. “In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’ “But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. “We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children. “It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. “But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. “The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. “We cannot walk alone. “And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. “We cannot turn back. “There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, ‘When will you be satisfied?’ We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: ‘For Whites Only.’ We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until ‘justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.’ “I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. “Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends. “And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. “I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. “I have a dream today! “I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of ‘interposition’ and ‘nullification’ -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. “I have a dream today! “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; ‘and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.’ “This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with. “With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. “And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning: ‘My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, From every mountainside, let freedom ring!’ And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that: Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring. “And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’”

WHO INVENTED THE HEATER

Willis Haviland Carrier (November 26, 1876 – October 7, 1950) was an American engineer and inventor, and is known as the man who invented modern air conditioning.
In Buffalo, New York, on July 17, 1902, in response to a quality problem experienced at the Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographing & Publishing Company of Brooklyn, Willis Carrier submitted drawings for what became recognized as the world's first modern air conditioning system. The 1902 installation marked the birth of air conditioning because of the addition of humidity control, which led to the recognition by authorities in the field that air conditioning must perform four basic functions: 1.) control temperature; 2.) control humidity; 3.) control air circulation and ventilation; 4.) cleanse the air.
After several more years of refinement and field testing, on January 2, 1906, Carrier was granted U.S. patent No. 808897 on his invention, which he called an "Apparatus for Treating Air," the world's first spray-type air conditioning equipment. It was designed to humidify or dehumidify air, heating water for the first and cooling it for the second.
In 1906, Carrier discovered that "constant dew-point depression provided practically constant relative humidity," which later became known among air conditioning engineers as the "law of constant dew-point depression." On this discovery he based the design of an automatic control system, for which he filed a patent claim on May 17, 1907. The patent, No. 1,085,971, was issued on February 3, 1914.
On December 3, 1911, Carrier presented the most significant and epochal document ever prepared on air conditioning – his "Rational Psychrometric Formulae" – at the annual meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. It became known as the "Magna Carta of Psychrometrics." This document tied together the concepts of relative humidity, absolute humidity, and dew-point temperature, thus making it possible to design air-conditioning systems to precisely fit the requirements at hand.
With the onset of World War I in late-1914, the Buffalo Forge Company, for which Carrier had been employed 12 years, decided to confine its activities entirely to manufacturing. The result was that seven young engineers pooled together their life savings of $32,600 to form the Carrier Engineering Corporation in New York on June 26, 1915. The seven were Carrier, J. Irvine Lyle, Edward T. Murphy, L. Logan Lewis, Ernest T. Lyle, Alfred E. Stacey, Jr., and Edmund P. Heckel. The company eventually settled on Frelinghuysen Avenue in Newark, New Jersey.
Despite the development of the centrifugal refrigeration machine and the commercial growth of air conditioning to cool buildings in the 1920s, the company ran into financial difficulties, as did many others, as a result of the Wall Street Crash in October 1929. In 1930, Carrier Engineering Corp. merged with Brunswick-Kroeschell Company and York Heating & Ventilating Corporation to form the Carrier Corporation, with Willis Carrier named Chairman of the Board.
Spread out over four cities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, Carrier consolidated and moved his company to Syracuse, New York, in 1937, and the company became one of the largest employers in central New York. In 1930, he started Toyo Carrier and Samsung Applications in Korea and Japan. South Korea is now the largest producer for air conditioning in the world.
The Great Depression slowed residential and commercial use of air conditioning. Willis Carrier's igloo in the 1939 New York World's Fair gave visitors a glimpse into the future of air conditioning, but before it became popular, World War II began. During the post-war economic boom of the 1950s, air conditioning began its tremendous growth in popularity.
The company pioneered the design and manufacture of refrigeration machines to cool large spaces. By increasing industrial production in the summer months, air conditioning revolutionized American life. The introduction of residential air conditioning in the 1920s helped start the great migration to the Sunbelt. The company became a subsidiary of United Technologies Corporation in 1980. Carrier remains a world leader in commercial and residential HVAC and refrigeration. In 2007, the Carrier Corporation had sales of more than $15 billion and employed some 45,000 people.

WHO INVENTED THE DIGITAL CAMARA?

Steven J. Sasson (b. 1950) is an electrical engineer and the inventor of the digital camera.

His invention began in 1975 with a very broad assignment from his supervisor at Eastman Kodak Company, Gareth A. Lloyd: Could a camera be built using solid state electronics, solid state imagers, an electronic sensor known as a charge coupled device (CCD) that gathers optical information?

Texas Instruments Inc. had designed an electronic camera in 1972 that was filmless but not digital, using instead analog electronics. After a literature search on digital imaging came up virtually empty, Sasson drew on whatever was available: an analog-to-digital converter adapted from Motorola Inc. components, a Kodak movie-camera photographic lens|lens and the tiny CCD chips introduced by Fairchild Semiconductor in 1973.

He set about constructing the digital circuitry from scratch, using oscilloscope measurements as a guide. There were no images to look at until the entire prototype - an 8-pound (3.6-kilogram), toaster-size contraption - was assembled. In December 1975, Sasson and his chief technician persuaded a lab assistant to pose for them. The black-and-white image, captured at a resolution of .01 megapixels (10,000 pixels), took 23 seconds to record onto a digital cassette tape and another 23 seconds to read off a playback unit onto a television. Then it popped up on the screen.

"You could see the silhouette of her hair," Sasson said. But her face was a blur of static. "She was less than happy with the photograph and left, saying 'You need work,"' he said. But Sasson already knew the solution: reversing a set of wires, the assistant's face was restored.

In 1978, Sasson and Lloyd were issued United States Patent 4,131,919 for their digital camera.

Sasson now works to protect the intellectual capital of his employer, Eastman Kodak Company.



Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_invented_the_digital_camera#ixzz1dtNWuyLQ

“Pea hybrids form germinal and pollen cells that in their composition correspond in equal numbers to all the constant forms resulting from the combination of traits united through fertilization.”


Gregor Johann Mendel was born on July 22, 1822 to peasant parents in a small agrarian town in Czechoslovakia. During his childhood he worked as a gardener, and as a young man attended the Olmutz Philosophical Institute. In 1843 he entered an Augustinian monastery in Brunn, Czechoslovakia. Soon afterward, his natural interest in science and specifically hereditary science led him to start experiments with the pea plant. Mendel's attraction for scientific research was based on his love of nature in general. He was not only interested in plants, but also in meteorology and theories of evolution. However, it is his work with the pea plant that changed the world of science forever.
His beautifully designed experiments with pea plants were the first to focus on the numerical relationships among traits appearing in the progeny of hybrids. His interpretation for this phenomenon was that material and unchanging hereditary “elements” undergo segregation and independent assortment. These elements are then passed on unchanged (except in arrangement) to offspring thus yielding a very large, but finite number of possible variations.
Mendel often wondered how plants obtained atypical characteristics. On one of his frequent walks around the monastery, he found an atypical variety of an ornamental plant. He took it and planted it next to the typical variety. He grew their progeny side by side to see if there would be any approximation of the traits passed on to the next generation. This experiment was “designed to support or to illustrate Lamarck's views concerning the influence of environment upon plants.” He found that the plants' respective offspring retained the essential traits of the parents, and therefore were not influenced by the environment. This simple test gave birth to the idea of heredity.
Overshadowing the creative brilliance of Mendel's work is the fact that it was virtually ignored for 34 years. Only after the dramatic rediscovery of Mendel’s work in 1900 (16 years after Mendel's death) was he rightfully recognized as the founder of genetics.1


Why Peas?
Pisum sativum

Mendel was well aware that there were certain preconditions that had to be carefully established before commencing investigations into the inheritance of characteristics. The parental plants must be known to possess constant and differentiating characteristics. To establish this condition, Mendel took an entire year to test “true breeding” (non-hybrid) family lines, each having constant characteristics. The experimental plants also needed to produce flowers that would be easy to protect against foreign pollen. The special shape of the flower of the Leguminosae family, with their enclosed styles, drew his attention. On trying several from this family, he finally selected the garden pea plant (Pisum sativum) as being most ideal for his needs. Mendel also picked the common garden pea plant because it can be grown in large numbers and its reproduction can be manipulated. As with many other flowering plants, pea plants have both male and female reproductive organs. As a result, they can either self-pollinate themselves or cross-pollinate with other plants. In his experiments, Mendel was able to selectively cross-pollinate purebred plants with particular traits and observe the outcome over many generations. This was the basis for his conclusions about the nature of genetic inheritance.3


Mendel observed seven pea plant traits that are easily recognized in one of two forms:

1. Flower color: purple or white
2. Flower position: axial or terminal
3. Stem length: long or short
4. Seed shape: round or wrinkled
5. Seen color: yellow or green
6. Pod shape: inflated or constricted
7. Pod color: yellow or green


Mendel's Law of Segregation

Mendel's hypothesis essentially has four parts. The first part or “law” states that, “Alternative versions of genes account for variations in inherited characters.” In a nutshell, this is the concept of alleles. Alleles are different versions of genes that impart the same characteristic. For example, each pea plant has two genes that control pea texture. There are also two possible textures (smooth and wrinkled) and thus two different genes for texture.
The second law states that, “For each character trait (ie: height, color, texture etc.) an organism inherits two genes, one from each parent.” This statement alludes to the fact that when somatic cells are produced from two gametes, one allele comes from the mother, one from the father. These alleles may be the same (true-breeding organisms), or different (hybrids).
The third law, in relation to the second, declares that, “If the two alleles differ, then one, the dominant allele, is fully expressed in the organism's appearance; the other, the recessive allele, has no noticeable effect on the organism's appearance.”
The fourth law states that, “The two genes for each character segregate during gamete production.” This is the last part of Mendel's generalization. This references meiosis when the chromosome count is changed from the diploid number to the haploid number. The genes are sorted into separate gametes, ensuring variation. This sorting process depends on genetic “recombination.” During this time, genes mix and match in a random and yet very specific way. Genes for each trait only trade with genes of the same trait on the opposing strand of DNA so that all the traits are covered in the resulting offspring. For example, color genes do not trade off with genes for texture. Color genes only trade off with color genes from the opposing allelic sight as do texture genes and all other genes. The result is that each gamete that is produced by the parent is uniquely different as far as the traits that it codes for from every other gamete that is produced. For many creatures, this available statistical variation is so huge that in all probability, no two identical offspring will ever be produced even given trillions of years of time.
So, since a pea plant carries two genes, it can have both of its genes be the same. Both genes could be “smooth” genes or they could both be “wrinkled” genes. If both genes are the same, the resulting pea will of course be consistent. However, what if the genes are different or “hybrid”? One gene will then have “dominance” over the other “recessive” gene. The dominant trait will then be expressed. For example, if the smooth gene (A) is the dominant gene and the wrinkle gene (a) is the recessive gene, a plant with the “Aa” genotype will produce smooth peas. Only an “aa” plant will produce wrinkled peas. For instance, the pea flowers are either purple or white. Intermediate colors do not appear in the offspring of these cross-pollinated plants.

The observation that there are inheritable traits that do not show up in intermediate forms was critically important because the leading theory in biology at the time was that inherited traits blend from generation to generation (Charles Darwin and most other cutting-edge scientists in the 19th century accepted this “blending theory.”). Of course there are exceptions to this general rule. Some genes are now known to be “incompletely dominant.” In this situation, the “dominant gene has incomplete expression in the resulting phenotype causing a “mixed” phenotype. For example, some plants have “incomplete dominant” color genes such as white and red flower genes. A hybrid of this type of plant will produce pink flowers. Other genes are known to be “co-dominant” were both alleles are equally expressed in the phenotype. An example of co-dominant alleles is human blood typing. If a person has both “A” and “B” genes, they will have an “AB” blood type. Some traits are inherited through the combination of many genes acting together to produce a certain effect. This type of inheritance is called “polygenetic.” Examples of polygenetic inheritance are human height, skin color, and body form. In all of these cases however, the genes (alleles) themselves remain unchanged. They are transmitted from parent to offspring through a process of random genetic recombination that can be calculated statistically. For example, the odds of a dominant trait being expressed over a recessive trait in a two-gene allelic system where both parents are hybrids are 3:1. If only one parent is a hybrid and the other parent has both dominant alleles, then 100% of the offspring will express the dominant trait. If one parent has both recessive alleles and the other parent is a hybrid, then the offspring will have a phenotypic ratio of 1:1.


Mendel's Law of Independent Assortment

The most important principle of Mendel's Law of Independent Assortment is that the emergence of one trait will not affect the emergence of another. For example, a pea plant's inheritance of the ability to produce purple flowers instead of white ones does not make it more likely that it would also inherit the ability to produce yellow peas in contrast to green ones. Mendel's findings allowed other scientists to simplify the emergence of traits to mathematical probability (While mixing one trait always resulted in a 3:1 ratio between dominant and recessive phenotypes, his experiments with two traits showed 9:3:3:1 ratios).
Mendel was so successful largely thanks to his careful and nonpassionate use of the scientific method. Also, his choice of peas as a subject for his experiments was quite fortunate. Peas have a relatively simple genetic structure and Mendel could always be in control of the plants' breeding. When Mendel wanted to cross-pollinate a pea plant he needed only to remove the immature stamens of the plant. In this way he was always sure of each plants' parents. Mendel made certain to start his experiments only with true breeding plants. He also only measured absolute characteristics such as color, shape, and texture of the offspring. His data was expressed numerically and subjected to statistical analysis. This method of data reporting and the large sampling size he used gave credibility to his data. He also had the foresight to look through several successive generations of his pea plants and record their variations. Without his careful attention to procedure and detail, Mendel's work could not have had the same impact that is has made on the world of genetics.

Mendel and Darwin

Mendel's ideas on heredity and evolution were diametrically opposed to those of Darwin and his followers (although neither Mendel nor Darwin knew of the other’s work).2 Darwin believed in the inheritance of acquired characters. This led him to his famous theory of continuous evolution. Mendel, in contrast, rejected both the idea of inheritance of acquired characters (mutations) as well as the concept of continuous evolution. The laws discovered by him were understood to be the laws of constant elements for a great but finite variation, not only for cultured varieties but also for species in the wild.3 In his short treatise, Experiments in Plant Hybridization, Mendel incessantly speaks of "constant characters", "constant offspring", "constant combinations", "constant forms", "constant law", "a constant species" etc. (in such combinations the adjective "constant" occurs 67 times in his original paper). He was convinced that the laws of heredity he had discovered corroborated Gärtner's conclusion "that species are fixed with limits beyond which they cannot change". And as Dobzhansky aptly put it, "It is...not a paradox to say that if someone should succeed in inventing a universally applicable, static definition of species, he would cast serious doubts on the validity of the theory of evolution".
As the Darwinians won the battle for the minds in the 19th century, no space was left in the next decades for the acceptance of the true scientific laws of heredity discovered by Mendel. Further work in genetics was continued mainly by Darwin's critics. In agreement with de Vries, Tschermak-Seysenegg, Johannsen, Nilsson, et al., Bateson stated:

“With the triumph of the evolutionary idea, curiosity as to the significance of specific differences was satisfied. The Origin was published in 1859. During the following decade, while the new views were on trial, the experimental breeders continued their work, but before 1870 the field was practically abandoned. In all that concerns the species the next thirty years are marked by the apathy characteristic of an age of faith. Evolution became the exercising-ground of essayists. The number indeed of naturalists increased tenfold, but their activities were directed elsewhere. Darwin's achievement so far exceeded anything that was thought possible before, that what should have been hailed as a long-expected beginning was taken for the completed work. I well remember receiving from one of the most earnest of my seniors the friendly warning that it was waste of time to study variation, for "Darwin had swept the field.”” 4

The general acceptance of Darwin's theory of evolution and his ideas regarding variation and the inheritance of acquired characters are, in fact, the main reasons for the neglect of Mendel's work, which (in clear opposition to Darwin) pointed to an entirely different understanding of the questions involved.1

1. Genetics 131: 245-253, 1992.

2. Callender, L. A., Gregor Mendel: An opponent of descent with modification. History of Science 26: 41-75. 1988.

3. Mendel, Gregor. Experiments in Plant Hybridization. 1865.

4. Bateson, W. Mendel's Principles of Heredity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1909.