Friday, October 5, 2012

Researchers Unearth Bacterium that Produces Pure Gold

Gold is now being sold at one of its highest rates in years. Wouldn't it be nice if you could figure out a way to make your own gold? Two professors at Michigan State University may have beaten you to it. They have discovered a way to use bacteria to make 99.9% pure gold.

Kazem Kashefi, an assistant professor of microbiology and molecular genetics, and Adam Brown, an associate professor of electronic art and intermedia, created a compact laboratory to conduct their experiment. Brown and Kashefi made the gold by combining the bacterium, Cupriavidus metallidurans, and gold chloride. Gold chloride has no real value and is a toxic chemical liquid found in nature. Once it's added to the bacteria, the bacteria ingest all of the liquid's toxins and waste. Then, over the course of a week, the toxic substance becomes a solid 24-karat gold nugget. There's no word yet on the actual value of the gold that's created in the lab. The researchers believe the magic they created in their compact factory happens in nature all the time without human interference.

Kashefi calls the process they use to create the gold "microbial alchemy" and says that it is "transforming gold from something that has no value into a solid, precious metal that's valuable." The compact factory that the scientific duo used to create the gold is more like an art installation, so much so that they named it "The Great Work of the Metal Lover." The work received honorable mention at the cyber art convention, Prix Ars Electronica, and is on exhibit until October 7.

Unfortunately, do not expect Brown and Kashefi's work to translate into golden nuggets for you. The researchers have said their experiment is not cost-effective enough to repeat on a large scale.

Source : http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/trending-now/researchers-unearth-bacterium-produces-pure-gold-181100690.html

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

JQuery Time Picker

Hi guys,

Dynamic web applications make use of the date frequently but there certain moments when there is need to pick the time as well, e.g. online booking for appointments at a clinic, restaurant etc. I came across this wonderful jquery control for picking up the time. I thought its worth sharing, so here is the link:



Source : http://haineault.com/media/examples/jquery-utils/demo/ui-timepickr.html

Collection of Awesome PSD Buttons


20 Fantastic PSD Web Button Packs

Buttons add a ton of personality to your site, so much so that they can often define much of the impression of the aesthetic quality of the page. One way to start off in the direction of a solid design is to grab some high quality button graphics.

Collection of Awesome PSD Buttons

Free Button Collection


Collection of Awesome PSD Buttons

Chunky 3D Web Buttons


Collection of Awesome PSD Buttons

38 “Call to Action” Button Templates That Really Stand Out

Make it big, make it clear, make it delicious. That’s the primary rule of successful “call to action” button, a button that leads your site visitor to your defined target such as product purchase or site conversion. While there is in-depth article that briefs about guidelines, best practices and examples to create a deadly effective “call to action” buttons, few might failed to achieve it due to issues like insufficient design skill or time.

Collection of Awesome PSD Buttons

Web Buttons in PSD (Pack of 60)


Collection of Awesome PSD Buttons


Source : http://superdit.com/2011/05/19/58-freebies-psd-web-button-packs/

How to calculate CPU usage of a PHP script


There are many PHP scripts that calculate it’s execution time, memory usage and even the number of queries sent to databases.

All of these indicators are extremely important when testing the code to optimize it later. For me, however, there is still one parameter missing: the percentage of time the processor spends on execution of the PHP script itself!

Solution
In most cases, the calculation is very simple. Just use the built-in getrusage() function:


function onRequestStart() {
 $dat = getrusage();
 define('PHP_TUSAGE', microtime(true));
 define('PHP_RUSAGE', $dat["ru_utime.tv_sec"]*1e6+$dat["ru_utime.tv_usec"]);
}

function getCpuUsage() {
    $dat = getrusage();
    $dat["ru_utime.tv_usec"] = ($dat["ru_utime.tv_sec"]*1e6 + $dat["ru_utime.tv_usec"]) - PHP_RUSAGE;
    $time = (microtime(true) - PHP_TUSAGE) * 1000000;

    // cpu per request
    if($time > 0) {
        $cpu = sprintf("%01.2f", ($dat["ru_utime.tv_usec"] / $time) * 100);
    } else {
        $cpu = '0.00';
    }

    return $cpu;
}

?>

Instruction for this script is fairly simple. You have to call the onRequestStart() function during the start of application. Then later in the code you can call the getCpuUsage() function any time you want to get the current CPU usage of your program (preferably you should do this by the end of the script).
Source : http://php.webtutor.pl/en/2011/05/13/how-to-calculate-cpu-usage-of-a-php-script/