TopYaps

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• Top 10 Worst Cities To Live In
• Top 10 Online Learning Platforms
• Top 10 Reasons Why God Is Indifferent
• Top 10 Cosmological Breakthroughs Of The Last Decade
• Top 10 Overrated People In History

Top 10 Worst Cities To Live In Posted: 01 Sep 2013 07:44 AM PDT We often find people complaining about their home towns and cities. In fact, we are also one of them. Sometimes we hate our city's commute system, sometimes we frown at the weather and sometimes it's the city's pollution that we grumble about. We informally rate some of the cities as the worst cities to live in. However, there are cities which do not pass a single test of 'liveability'. You will be startled once you have a look at some of these cities. The under-written 10 cities either have high level of crime rate, or have worst transport links. Let's have a look at the top 10 worst cities to live in. 10. Dzershinsk, Russia: Most chemically polluted Dzershinsk was homeland to a famous gasoline factory that produced a toxin, TEL. 30,000 tons of chemical weapons waste was dumped here during the period 1930-1998. Water in this city contains 17 million times more pollutants than the safe limit. The pollutants are basically phenol and dioxin. Death rate in this chemically polluted city of Russia exceeded the birth rate by 260% in 2003. Life expectancy rate in Dzershinsk is 42 years and 47 years for men and women respectively. 9. Bangkok, Thailand: Hottest city This capital city of Thailand is the also one of the most populous cities of the world. However, we will not ask you to drop your plans of living here just because of its population. The reason for Bangkok's inclusion in the list of top 10 worst cities to live in is its extremely high temperature. Yes! Bangkok is the hottest city in the world. During the hottest months, average temperature here exceeds 34 degrees. Climate is not only hot but humid too. The humidity is usually at a very uncomfortable level, more than 90%. So, Bangkok will not only make you sweat but also make you feel suffocating. 8. Sao Paulo, Brazil: Worst commute Sao Paulo is home to more than 11 million people. However, management of traffic in this city is the worst in the world. Traffic jams of average 112 miles in length are common here. On a bad day, Sao Paulo has also witnessed these jams stretching over 183 miles. Riots on streets are often seen and this worsens the commute. President DilmaRousseff's announcement of $ 4 billion for the betterment of commute system in Sao Paula also doesn't seem to be enough for this city of Brazil. 7. Tokyo, Japan: Most Expensive Tokyo is the most expensive city in the world. You will get a cup of coffee for $ 8.37 and a newspaper costs @ 6.44. Despite the fact that relative cost of living is dropping all over the world, Tokyo still stands tall at the position of the world's most expensive city. One more amazing fact: Tokyo has retained the position for 14 out of last 20 years! 6. Yakutsk, Russia: Coldest city Yakutsk is a remote city in East Siberian region and it is cold, really cold! In the month of January, the average high is around -40 degrees. Temperature drops below the freezing point in September and don't even touch the 0 degree mark until May. Lowest temperature recorded for the city is -81.4 degrees. Transport system of the city worsens the liveable condition. There is no railway link to Yakutsk and it's a 6 hour plane ride from Moscow. 5. Mogadishu, Somalia: Most lawless Mogadishu is the war-torn city of Somalia. There have been no effective government in Somalia since 1991. Though open warfare has stopped, for now, yet bombings and shootings are like a daily humdrum. 500,000 people have fled the city and more than 1 million deaths have been registered in last 21 years. Civil war has been rampant in this city for more than 21 years. 4. Manila, Philippines: Densest population The second largest city of Philippines is the most crowded one too. It has 43.079 people per square kilometre. The residents of Manila are also wretched by more than 20 cyclones, volcanoes, earthquakes and Tsunamis per year. Typhoons and floods occur frequently. This city has acute pollution level too. Air pollution is eminent, causing more than 4000 deaths in a year. Overall, we can say that the vices of Manila, outrun its scenic beauty. 3. Pyongyang, North Korea: Most censored Due to its over-isolationism policies, North Korea has not accepted mainstream internet and telecom technologies. The only media allowed in Pyongyang is state controlled propaganda. Owing a shortwave radio is considered as illegal and possessing a cell phone leads to conviction as a war criminal! Even the tourists and visitors are not permitted to carry a radio. Special permission, from approved officers is required to be taken by the residents of this city, to buy a radio are a TV-set. 2. San Pendro Sula, Honduras: Most murderous This city has the highest murder rate in the world. More than 1150 homicides occur in this city per year. Economy of Honduras is weak and whole nation is poverty-struck. Murders, brutality, tragedy are like everyday affair in this city of Honduras. Drug-cartels, mafias and gangs run rampant killings and smugglings. Poor people tend to get lured by the golden dreams shown by mafias and do killings for them in the greed of currency. 1. Pripyat, Ukraine: Most radioactive Pripyat is the deserted town of Ukraine. It was not in the condition in which it is today till 1986. The infamously known 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster turned Pripyat from a prosperous (50,000 population) to a ghost town. Buildings, schools, houses, etcetera have been despoiled and ravaged over the years. They have not been looked upon and taken care of since 1986. It is said that Pripyat will not be habitable for 20,000 years. The post Top 10 Worst Cities To Live In appeared first on TopYaps.

Top 10 Online Learning Platforms Posted: 01 Sep 2013 04:30 AM PDT We stress the word 'Electronic' because this word has overpowered everything in this era of technocrats. This digital revolution has changed the outlook of our young generation completely. Be it smart phones, digital cams, tabs, laptops or anything, 2G's are moving to 3G's and 4G's at an extremely fast pace and this is mesmerizing students on the learning curve. If we start from a very basic level, we find that students are no more into paper work; they submit assignments and all such documents online.  Having much experience with internet, this is the common way of communication for students. Technology has also provided plenty of online learning platforms to one and all on a global geography, extending its reach even into remote areas. Let's have a look at the top ten online learning platforms that can help you grow your skill set: 10. Udemy: If you are a teacher and one of your own kinds, who wants to change the world with your skill set, then Udemy is where everything is stored in for you. It offers a wide range of lessons of divergent subjects be it web designing, creating apps or other education oriented courses. If you are an education freak, Udemy course-selection system is worth trying out. 9. Coursera: Coursera has large number of educational courses available for teachers.  This is the most famous online platform used by schools and universities the world over. Its pedagogy and detailed homework assignments that come with every course, sets it apart from other online learning platforms. 8. Versal: Versal is a newly launched e-learning platform and presently is focusing on teachers. It is an interactive platform where teachers are allowed to build courses online. So if you are merely looking for a way to share your brilliance this is the best online space to be in. 7. RCampus: RCampus is a web-based online platform for teachers to create and conduct courses online. It is an excellent platform to post assignments, host discussions, post videos and one can also manage the grade book. 6. Learnopia: Learnopia is an e-learning platform that hosts a free service to users. People can create courses, add assignments and learn a lot of things by making use of all the tools Leanopia has. It however comes with a caveat that if the course creator creates the course for free, then only the user can use the services for free. 5. Peer 2 Peer University: Also known as P2PU, this platform is like an online community where students and university teachers share their knowledge. If you are an expert in any course, you can create and post it here for members. Although the courses are free of cost, only handful of people are allowed to enroll. This is done to make sure that the course and teachings are delivered properly to every member. 4. Moodle: Moodle is a virtual learning environment where everyone can learn and manage courses. To use this you'll have to install it on to your server or you can use it if someone can host the services for you. This excellent hosting services has many tools that can help you increase knowledge levels and create a better learning environment. 3. Claroline: The services offered by Claroline equals that of a virtual classroom where teachers can monitor student's activities, post and collect assignments, conduct assessment activities, build personal wiki and create discussion forums to conduct useful discussions. 2. eDhii: It is an online learning service which allows you to take and create self-learning courses for just about any topic. The fee, however, depends upon the course creator. If the course creator wants to charge any fee while creating the course, the students will be charged. Plentry of courses are available on eDhii with different course contents. The course content involves everything from texts, images, videos and everything required. 1. EDX: EDX is a total new experience. From arts, science, to technology, EDX simply has the best courses on offer that the put together by the best teachers from the best universities. It has the coolest tools and game-like labs that make the molecule structure into an interesting 3D virtual structure. On this e-learning platform, one is not only privileged to learn from the best but it also provides access to befriend smart people. The post Top 10 Online Learning Platforms appeared first on TopYaps.

Top 10 Reasons Why God Is Indifferent Posted: 01 Sep 2013 02:04 AM PDT The most debated topic in the history of debates, humans and the world is the existence of God. This debate is still going on today and in spite of more and more people choosing to be atheists, this debate will continue to rage on for a long time. One of the questions that lead to the question of God’s existence is about his seeming indifference to human plight. If he exists then how can he let people suffer in this way? Why is God so indifferent? Here are the top 10 reasons why God is indifferent. 10. God Does Not Exist: The first reason is the one adopted by the atheists. God doesn’t exist so the question of his indifference doesn’t arise. It’s one way to look at things and the way the world has been for the last few thousand years, this does seem to be a valid outlook. On the other hand it does seem like a copout to the question of God’s indifference. 9. God Does Not Know We Exist: An interesting point to note is that maybe God doesn’t know we exist. Maybe God did create the universe and he is super powerful but maybe he isn’t all knowing. Maybe he doesn’t know that on speck of dust in his creation, there exist people who pray and debate about his existence. That could explain why he seems to be so indifferent. He just doesn’t know about us. 8. God Does Not Care: Maybe God is indifferent because he just doesn’t care. He knows we are here and he knows we go through pain and suffering but he just doesn’t care about us. For a God who created the whole universe we’d be just a very small part of it. He’d love stars and galaxies but maybe he just doesn’t care about this little thing called life that has evolved on one of the planets revolving around one of the stars. 7. God Has No Time: What if God has no time to cater to our personal needs? He created all of universe and all of us so what’s to say that he didn’t create life on other parts of the universe. Maybe there is too much life in the universe and all of it is praying and trying to get God’s attention. In such a case the one lonely God will have no time to listen to everyone’s prayers and answer them personally. Maybe we’ve sent him so much spam prayers that he’s put us into his spam folder! This also explains why some times prayers are answered and why miracles were more frequent when our population was less. 6. God Is Angry: Let’s say that God created us in his own image. He wanted to have some friends or maybe he wanted devotees to worship him. As long as all of humanity was worshiping him, he was nice to us but since people started not believing in him, he’s gotten angry and is giving us the silent treatment. Maybe he sees all and still remains indifferent because he’s just angry that we are not all praying to him anymore. 5. God Works in Very Large Time Scales: God can seem indifferent if we don’t realize what he’s doing. Maybe he works in such large time scales that his actions have very little effects on our short life. Maybe in the long run he has been working to eradicate evil and support good, we just don’t know it yet because it’s only been a few thousand years. That’s like an eye blink in God time. Give the man some time and stop whining. 4. God Has Too Much On His Plate: If God created the whole universe and he has to see to its operation daily then maybe God is just super busy with everything he has to deal with. Maybe our human prayers are on his to do list but he hasn’t gotten to it yet. He’s not indifferent, just jammed. Or maybe he’s a procrastinator just like the rest of us. What if he gets on Facebook instead of answering our prayers! 3. Good and Bad Are Human Perspectives: One serious alternative to God’s indifference can be the fact that what seems good and evil to us is all the same to God. Think about it, God created everything in the universe. The whole universe is his child and anything that is done by his children is all good in his eyes. Maybe what seems evil to us is just our way of thinking. As long as the universe continues to go on, everything is good for God. 2. God Has Forgotten About Us: Maybe God has forgotten about us. Maybe he’s got attention deficit disorder or something. Maybe he created us to play with us but then got bored and went on to create other things. Maybe God is a child who started earth as his favorite new project only to leave us in his closet and get busy with other projects. Now here we are alone in the dark and wondering why God is indifferent to us. 1. God Works in Mysterious Ways: We just can’t perceive his work because he works in mysterious ways. We think that if we are suffering then the guy who made us suffer should be punished by God. We want that guy to fail in life, we want his wife to leave him and we want him to end up on the side of the road. But maybe God does punish him but just not in the way that we want. We see him continuing to live a good life but we can’t see how unhappy he might be from inside. We can’t expect God to tell us how he’s been working to answer our prayers but in one way or another he does answer every prayer. The post Top 10 Reasons Why God Is Indifferent appeared first on TopYaps.

Top 10 Cosmological Breakthroughs Of The Last Decade Posted: 01 Sep 2013 12:30 AM PDT In the quest to learn more about the universe, we have come up with numerous cosmological breakthroughs in the past decade. The last 10 years has seen it all from the time of Hubble and Einstein to Robotic Rovers. Some of them dispelled our existing misconceptions while others have paved the way for the new discoveries to be made in the future. Here are top 10 cosmological breakthroughs of the last decade. 10. Hubble Space Telescope and MACSSO647-JD: It is one of the most outstanding cosmological breakthroughs made in the last decade. When NASA launched Hubble Telescope (the first space based optical telescope) little did they know what they are going to achieve in the near future. The telescope this year sighted the MACSSO647-JD, a galaxy that is almost 13 billion light years away from earth. This galaxy was identified through a gravitational lens. 9. Rogue Planet: A giant sized planet was discovered that is believed to be situated at a distance of 100 light years away from the earth. This Rogue Planet is located in the constellation Doradus and scientifically logged as CFBDSIR2149. The Rogue Planet is known to produce a faint infrared glow and its size is estimated to be almost 5 times that of Jupiter. 8. Phoenix Cluster: In the year 2012, scientists from Chandra X-Ray Observatory came out with a surprising new discovery. The galaxies situated in the Phoenix cluster, located at a distance of about 6 light years from earth they were found to be producing about 700 new stars yearly. It's unusual for the reason that even Milky Way, a very active galaxy, produces two to three stars in a year. 7. Higgs Boson: The scientists in 2012 finally laid claim to having discovered the Higgs Boson using the Hadron Collider at CERN. The discovery is considered to be path breaking for the reason that one can now comprehensively understand how the universe operates. With the discovery of Higgs, the last particle in an atom as described by standard model of physics has made its appearance before the scientific world through a multi-billion dollar experiment. 6. Earth Sized Planet: Scientists have reported discovering various kinds of exo-planets or planets outside our solar system. Till date, the total number of such discoveries claimed are over 800, with many being made by using advanced telescopes such as the Hubble telescope. Planet gazers were surprised to find one exo-planet that was almost the size of earth in 2012. The planet was named Alpha Centauri Bb and is distanced about 4.3 light years away from earth. 5. Edge of Solar System: With the launch of NASA's IBEX in the year 2008, a great breakthrough was recorded in the cosmological science. In 2012, IBEX came up with evidence that there is a absence of 'bow shock' as the bubble around the solar system pushes through the void ahead. Scientists always believed that solar system always produces bow shock in its every part. This absence may prove that there is certainly an edge existing to our solar system. 4. Black Hole Power: M87, a galaxy in our universe was discovered to be possessing black hole. The black hole is almost equivalent to around 6 billion suns and produces around 5000 light year long stream of ionic material. The discovery is all the more important because it will pave the way to know more about the occurrences under extreme relativistic conditions. 3. Studying Asteroid Vesta: USA space agency NASA launched spacecraft named Dawn in 2011 to study some of the vast number of asteroids. Images of one asteroid Vesta taken between 2011 and 2012, broken down on the coloured spectrum scale to identify compounds, showed the presence of hydrated compounds on the surface of asteroid. The spacecraft is scheduled to encounter the asteroid Ceres in 2015. 2. White Window Model: A path breaking paper by scientist J Craig Wheeler in 2012 sets out to prove why stellar remnants of Type 1A supernova are not observed generally. Wheeler postulates by way of the 'white window model' how white dwarf consumes an M dwarf star. The paper is believed to be an important torchbearer is dismissing some of the myths about existence of supernovas. 1. Mars Curiosity Rover: The Mars Rover that landed on Mars in August 2012 has beamed back some of the most stunning images of the red planet. Some of the images studied by scientists have concluded that water once did flow on the dry planet. Experiments conducted by the rover on the plant have shown the presence of different kinds of gases which include methane, on the planets surface. The post Top 10 Cosmological Breakthroughs Of The Last Decade appeared first on TopYaps.

Top 10 Overrated People In History Posted: 31 Aug 2013 10:43 PM PDT History is full of overrated people. The truth is the once you become popular you keep gaining popularity just because you are popular till you reach the level of a legend. But if you look closely at the lives of some of these people you’ll find that they are not that legendary after all. I’m not saying that these people have never done anything great or worthwhile, but it’s just that they’ve become more popular than they deserve to be. Here are the top 10 overrated people in history. 10. Justin Bieber: Ok so Justin Bieber doesn’t really belong in history yet but his popularity is so superfluous that I had to add him to this list. I’m not saying that he’s not a good singer but does he really deserve the kind of fame he’s received? He’s definitely not the greatest singer of our times. He’s just a kid for crying out loud. Carrying plethora of reasons to be hated, he’s definitely the most overrated personality in recent history. 9. Alexander The Great: Alexander is called the great because he gave himself that title. This is a case of history being written by the victorious. He was a sadistic and greedy king who spread his empire half way across the world. In doing so he killed thousands of people and drove his own army mad by his unrelenting pursuit to conquer more and more. What’s the greatness is having an army at your disposal and leading them into one war after another? 8. Mother Teresa: Mother Teresa helped the lepers of Calcutta in India. She is seen as the image of a saint who dedicated her whole life to serving the poor. But in reality she spent more money on spreading her convent than on helping the poor. She was also against birth control and fought strenuously against it. She did a lot of good work to help a lot of people but she definitely doesn’t deserve all the popularity that she’s received. 7. Nostradamus: This guy predicted everything. The only problem is that his writing is not a simple account of the future but rather poems that can be interpreted to match any event. And that’s what’s been happening. He’s far too popular and overrated than for what he achieved. Thankfully now only the History channel cares about Nostradamus. 6. Confucius: Confucius is another personality like Nostradamus that’s become a household name but people don’t know much about him. Confucius preached personal and governmental morality which means that he preached that everyone should follow the rules so as to be moral and ethical. If his teachings were to be followed it would lead to a society where everyone was the same and there was no independence or freedom of thought. Everyone would fit into the rules of the society and be a good moral citizen. 5. Elvis Presley: Elvis Presley didn’t write his own songs and he couldn’t play the guitar. His trademark moves weren’t really dance moves and he couldn’t act to save his life. Just because of a tragic death, he’s considered the King of Rock n’ Roll. He’s another case of popularity leading to much more popularity. He definitely didn’t deserve to be as famous as is. 4. Kurt Cobain: Another overrated musician is Kurt Cobain. People think he’s God but the truth is he was a crappy vocalist. He couldn’t sing at all. His guitar work wasn’t impressive either. He was just the guy who rode in on the wave of popularity of that awful genre called Grunge. He wasn’t even one of the main guys of the Grunge scene yet for some reason he ended up becoming the most famous. His suicide made him even more popular and now he’s become a legend. 3. Christopher Columbus: Christopher Columbus set out to find a new route to India and ended up discovering the new world. That’s what we hear but all of it is not true. He wasn’t trying to prove that the world was round as Aristotle had already known that 1800 years earlier. He wasn’t even the first European to land in the Americas. The fact is he thought he had landed in India and refused to believe that he had discovered a new continent till his death. 2. Abraham: Abraham gave us Christianity, Judaism and Islam and thousands of years of blood shed and holy wars. If he ever really existed, he heard a voice in the desert and was ready to kill his own son just because the voice told him to. Not a great role model for forming religions around. 1. Jesus: There is no evidence that Jesus really existed and even if he did, there is absolutely no evidence to prove that he was son of God. He suffered for humanity’s sins and died and the resurrected and then disappeared into heaven. But what did all this accomplish? Except creating a religion that has fought many holy wars in his name. Fictional or real, Jesus is probably the most overrated personality in history. The post Top 10 Overrated People In History appeared first on TopYaps.

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