EURO 2008 Is Here
The EURO 2008 has started and 300 million people are watching closely to see who is going to win it this time. Last time in Portugal (2004), the Greeks surprised everyone as they were the underdogs of the championship and ended up crowning themselves champions. Many people back then lost a lot of money in bets as none expected Greece to win. This time the games are co-hosted by Austria and Switzerland and many of the big teams maybe title-hungry but they sure now keep an eye at the smaller teams in case there is another underdog out there with hidden talents. Another highlight of the show will be the games Greece will play (starting with Sweden 10/06) to see if they can defend the title.
Who do you think will win it this time?
United Nations Data Are Now Online
The United Nations creates a few days ago an online service with all the statistical databases of the organisation. I think that this is a valuable tool for every research, project, study etc.
Over the past 60 years UN has collected valuable information for every country and now every one of us has the chance, via the provided search engine, to gain access.
At this moment the UN Data (as it is called) has over 55,000,000 entries. I made a test search for “Greece” and it gave me 748 entries! One of them was about the number of mobile phone users. In 1993 there were 48,000 users, in 1998 2,047,000 and in 2004 11,044,232! This is quite a number considering that Greece’s population is 10,706,290 (July 2007 est.)
Interested? Then go to 
http://data.un.org
The New Design for the Two Euro Coin Is Here!
The European Union is celebrating a decade from the launch of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and the introduction of the euro in our lives. A voting took place for EU citizens to choose their favorite design. The voting closed on the 22th of February and the winner is….
After the 141675 votes were counted it was found that a staggering 41.48% of went toward the winning design, the work of George Stamatopoulos from Greece.
The official description behind the new design is:
“The euro is the latest step in the long history of trade, from pre-historic barter ? evoked by the deliberately primitive design ? to economic and monetary union.”.
These new coins will be distributed to all euro-area Member States by January 2009. The winner of the voting is Michal Milewski from Poland, who won a high-value set of euro collector coins.
Kerkira, Greece, Is Shaken By Earthquake (24/02/2008)
On the 24th of February, at 01:07 Local time, a new earthquake, 5km South of the City of Kerkira (at Kerkira island, Greece). The European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre gave an earthquake reading of 3.5 in the Richter scale. No casualties were reported only minor damages inside houses from items falling. Normally such a low magnitude earthquake, like the one in Kerkira today would pass un-noticed but it is feared that is may be linked to the intense seismic activity in Greece over the past 2 months. Some scientists fear that this may lead to earthquakes of larger magnitude.
Update: According to Geologists, this earthquake is not linked with the seismic activity that has been upsetting southern Greece the past 2 months.
Update 2: On the radios and TVs scientists are tried to reassure people that the intense seismic activity that has been recorded in Greece over the past 2 months, will not cause an even larger earthquake in the region. That does not mean that there will never be anymore earthquakes in the region, sometime in the future.
6.1 Earthquake Shocks Greece for the 5th Time in 2 Months
Today, 21st of February at 20:27, the 5th earthquake in 2 months shook Greece. The epicenter was 39 km south of the town of Methoni in the sea. The European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre gave an earthquake reading of 6.1 in the Richter scale and so far no damager or casualties have been reported. The recent seismic activity is worrying as a 6+ earthquake could cause a lot of casualties if it hits a populated area.
Was this earthquake predicted with the V.A.N. method that Prof. Varotsos and his team designed? Previous shocks were predicted, and this might mean that the VAN method could become an early warning system and save lives in the future.
Earthquake Early Warning System for Your House
Yet another article regarding earthquakes. It might be a bit tiring but I think this is an issue that matters to many people out there as most of us on this planet are on seismologic zones.
So tell me how much money did you give this year to buy a mobile phone? a PC or to serf the Internet? Something tells me that you already have given more than 220 euro, an amount with which you could have bought the Earthquake Early Warning system (including P&P)
That is it? It is a device which will notify you few seconds before an earthquake strikes. Surely you cannot do much with in few seconds but you can certainly make a plan to avoid the worse, including to vacate the house.
When an earthquake takes place, two types of waves are emitted. P waves and κύματα S. The S are the waves that shake the ground and tear down houses, where as the P waves are faster and reach us first. This device detects the P waves and an alarm immediately sounds to warn us of the incoming earthquake. The furthest away you are from the epicenter the longer you have to prepare (I am not an Earthquake expert so if I misrepresented the wave physics do tell me )
I am thinking if I should get one of these devices, it price is certainly low compared with chance to save your life. So what do you think would you buy it?
See the relative video
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