ScienceDaily (Apr. 16, 2008) — The world's oldest recorded tree is a 9,550 year old spruce in the Dalarna province of Sweden. The spruce tree has shown to be a tenacious survivor that has endured by growing between erect trees and smaller bushes in pace with the dramatic climate changes over time.

For many years the spruce tree has been regarded as a relative newcomer in the Swedish mountain region. "Our results have shown the complete opposite, that the spruce is one of the oldest known trees in the mountain range," says Leif Kullman, Professor of Physical Geography at Umeå University.

A fascinating discovery was made under the crown of a spruce in Fulu Mountain in Dalarna. Scientists found four "generations" of spruce remains in the form of cones and wood produced from the highest grounds.

The discovery showed trees of 375, 5,660, 9,000 and 9,550 years old and everything displayed clear signs that they have the same genetic makeup as the trees above them. Since spruce trees can multiply with root penetrating braches, they can produce exact copies, or clones.

The tree now growing above the finding place and the wood pieces dating 9,550 years have the same genetic material. The actual has been tested by carbon-14 dating at a laboratory in Miami, Florida, USA.

Previously, pine trees in North America have been cited as the oldest at 4,000 to 5,000 years old.

In the Swedish mountains, from Lapland in the North to Dalarna in the South, scientists have found a cluster of around 20 spruces that are over 8,000 years old.

Although summers have been colder over the past 10,000 years, these trees have survived harsh weather conditions due to their ability to push out another trunk as the other one died. "The average increase in temperature during the summers over the past hundred years has risen one degree in the mountain areas," explains Leif Kullman.

Therefore, we can now see that these spruces have begun to straighten themselves out. There is also evidence that spruces are the species that can best give us insight about climate change.

The ability of spruces to survive harsh conditions also presents other questions for researchers.

Have the spruces actually migrated here during the Ice Age as seeds from the east 1,000 kilometres over the inland ice that that then covered Scandinavia? Do they really originate from the east, as taught in schools? "My research indicates that spruces have spent winters in places west or southwest of Norway where the climate was not as harsh in order to later quickly spread northerly along the ice-free coastal strip," says Leif Kullman.

"In some way they have also successfully found their way to the Swedish mountains."

The study has been carried out in cooperation with the County Administrative Boards in Jämtland and Dalarna.



Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080416104320.htm

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You may want to contact them for specs regarding their new web version.

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MS Allure of the Seas is a cruise ship owned and operated by Royal Caribbean International. Together with her sister ship, Oasis of the Seas, she holds the record for the largest passenger ship ever constructed, although the Allure is 50 millimetres (2.0 in) longer than the Oasis, making her technically the largest despite the fact that both ships have identical superstructures.[8] Designed under the name "Project Genesis", she was ordered from Aker Finnyards in February 2006 and her construction began at the Perno shipyard in Turku, Finland, in February 2008.[9] She was named in May 2008 after a contest was held to name her and her sister.[10] The keel of the Allure of the Seas was laid on 2 December 2008, shortly after the shipyard had been acquired by STX Europe

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Allure_of_the_Seas

A savvy business, especially during times of economic downturns, will look to consolidate, solidify and aggressively hunt for new opportunities. Communication facilities are the essential lifeline to every business. It is imperative to accurately determine whether business communication infrastructure is functioning smoothly and effectively.

Communication managers have always had the demanding job of finding new savings in tightly controlled budgets. Managers must walk a tightrope in effective management of current facilities while identifying and implementing new and innovative solutions that enhance business communications, improve the customer experience and increase productivity.

Traditional telephone reporting was generally based on a basic call log that provided nuggets of valuable information such as date, time, duration and digits dialed. This information could be monitored, processed and stored in a database for detailed reporting. There are many vendors of call accounting software that provided these tools for itemizing, reconciling and analyzing telephone activity.

In a complex ecosystem managers are often unaware of misuse, detrimental quality of service and or system hacks that can cause irreparable damage to the reputation of the organization and the bottom line. Communication management solutions can help shield companies from system overload and fraudulent activity. A comprehensive total unified communication management system can pinpoint bottlenecks and suspicious activity, formulate migration strategies and control telecom spend.

Core components such as call accounting can help reconcile carrier invoices with business activity. Some businesses make it a practice to bill employees for excessive non-business and long distance calls. In many cases, the call accounting system acts as a watchdog and reduces personal activity. This results in more right to business calls and greater productivity. Some studies suggest that proper telecom accountability can result in a 10% to 30% savings in telecom expenses.  A study by the Aberdeen Group supports these assertions. "The telecommunications spending area is so wrought with inefficiency, in fact, most enterprises don't know how much they spend on telecom services, never mind how they can best manage those budgets." These survey results highlight the critical need for all encompassing total communication management software solutions that can provide concise metrics about calling patterns and comparative analysis of various plans.

With the adoption of IP-based telephone systems over traditional PBX systems, new complexities have arisen that change the way communication metrics are attained. Customers can share facilities and resources across multiple offices in different buildings, cities or time zones. The boundaries present in self contained traditional PBXs are no longer a barrier in dynamic IP-based communication networks.

SIP communications allow individuals to be connected to enterprise communication servers from their home office, cottage or anywhere around the globe. Contact centers can be transparently implemented across an enterprise that is physically sprawled in many locations and calls can be distributed without incurring additional long distance charges.  SIP is an open protocol, and Voice over IP through SIP relies on a set of other open protocols and standards that facilitate communication. Individuals are no longer limited to an extension from a closed telephone switch but can now become subscribers in an enterprise ecosystem.

Traffic can now be routed over many different channels and can include voice and data multimedia communication. Call detail record logging has become much more elaborate than simply monitoring a serial port for CDR data. Call accounting for today's world needs to bring together the metrics from various communication facilities under one umbrella. These platforms may include mobile/wireless, video and call detail data from traditional and converged communication servers.

Cloud-based communication management can be a Software as a Service (SaaS) alternative to expending internal resources to manage costly in-house hardware and software.  Often these services can be tailored to the needs of the customer.  The focus can be strictly for basic incoming and outgoing telephone call tracking from a PBX system or all encompassing of the entire communication ecosystem. Some companies offer complete outsourcing services for remote data collection, network planning, traffic analysis, carrier/service comparisons, SIP / IP PBX reporting, workgroup reporting, auto attendant, mobile tracking, internet usage and more.

Founded in 1990, Resource Software International Ltd. (RSI) offers a wide range of products including call accounting, hotel billing, real-time dashboard, CRM integration, switch administration, emergency/event notification, mobile tracking and remote cloud-based telemanagement services.  Our solutions harness telecom metrics to track, monitor and manage the performance of network facilities resulting in a more dynamic, responsive and productive communication ecosystem.   For more information visit http://www.telecost.com.



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Most children fathered
Moulay Ismail Ibn Sharif, Morocco

Moulay Ismail Ibn Sharif set this sex record in the 17th century when he added a whopping 1,042 recorded offspring to his harem of about 500 wives. He had been a busy boy -- what with all those weddings, births and, no doubt, a few funerals. If you’re wondering who this guy is, he was the second ruler of the Moroccan Alaouite dynasty. He is known as a great figure in Moroccan history, but not only for his contribution to the birth statistics; he contributed to the lasting respect of Moroccan independence.

Amazingly, the woman to give birth to the most children was a peasant’s wife from Shuya (east of Moscow); in 27 births between 1725 and 1765, she expelled 16 pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets.

According to recent research, women's breasts are getting bigger and bigger.

A recent research commissioned by Bodyfashion Promotion in the Netherlands found that Dutch women are getting bigger breasts and 32 percent of them now have a D-cup or bigger compared with 20 percent five years ago.

Some 42 percent of women aged 30-39 have D-cup breasts and feel in general okay about that. Women with a large bra size are now the largest group in the Netherlands.

In the Western world, breast size has been increasing for the past 10-15 years. Beside the natural changes, there has been a boom in plastic surgery aimed at women. Women's magazines and television program are full of stories related to breast implants or other non-surgical procedures for more shapely and proportionate bodies through plastic surgery breast lift procedures procedures. In addition, the availability of better bras that can create remarkable improvement in a woman's appearance.

In a survey by Allure, 70% of women wanted bigger or rounder breasts, although more than half of American men were satisfied with their partner's breasts size.