PC Magazine June 2008
June 2008 | 124 Pages | PDF | 18.41MB
June 2008 | 124 Pages | PDF | 18.41MB
WIPO Magazine, June 2008
English | 32 pages | PDF | 1.4 MB
English | 32 pages | PDF | 1.4 MB
The bimonthly WIPO Magazine (available in English, French and Spanish) aims to inform readers about WIPO-led activities, and to show intellectual property, creativity and innovation at work across the world. New Rice for Africa Climate change, drought, desertification, soaring food prices, hunger …Nowhere do these inter-twined threats to development menace more starkly than in Africa.
To mitigate the threats, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called, at the annual meeting of the Commission for Sustainable Development in May, for a fresh generation of agricultural technologies to usher in a second green revolution, - “one which permits sustainable yield improvements with minimal environmental damage and contributes to sustainable development goals.”
Plant-breeding technologies – often combining traditional knowledge with cutting edge biotechnological techniques – are already making real impact in meeting the challenge. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s Rice Market Monitor reports that rice production in Africa has risen consecutively for over seven years, and is forecast to rise further in 2008 to 23.2 million tonnes. A major factor in this growth has been the success of a new type of rice, known as the New Rice for Africa – or Nerica.
The new rice was the result of years of work by a team of plant breeders and molecular biologists led by Sierra Leonean scientist Monty Jones at the West Africa Rice Development Association (WARDA – now the Africa Rice Center). When Dr. Jones set up the biotechnology research program in 1991, some 240 million people in West Africa were dependant on rice as their primary source of food energy and protein, but the majority of Africa’s rice was imported, at an annual cost of US$1 billion. WARDA’s objective was to produce a rice variety which was better suited to the harsh conditions in African. ...
Smarty is a templating engine for PHP. Designers who are used to working with HTML files can work with Smarty templates, which are HTML files with simple tags while programmers work with the underlying PHP code. The Smarty engine brings the code and templates together. The result of all this is that designers can concentrate on designing, programmers can concentrate on programming, and they don't need to get in each others way so much. Even if you are developing a site on your own, Smarty is a powerful way to make your code clearer to you and others, as well as easier to debug and modify later. This book is a comprehensive guide to all aspects of using Smarty.
In what Collins terms a prequel to the bestseller Built to Last he wrote with Jerry Porras, this worthwhile effort explores the way good organizations can be turned into ones that produce great, sustained results. To find the keys to greatness, Collins's 21-person research team (at his management research firm) read and coded 6,000 articles, generated more than 2,000 pages of interview transcripts and created 384 megabytes of computer data in a five-year project).That Collins is able to distill the findings into a cogent, well-argued and instructive guide is a testament to his writing skills. After establishing a definition of a good-to-great transition that involves a 10-year fallow period followed by 15 years of increased profits, Collins's crew combed through every company that has made the Fortune 500 (approximately 1,400) and found 11 that met their criteria, including Walgreens, Kimberly Clark and Circuit City.
Silverlight is a lightweight browser plug–in that frees your code from the traditional confines of the browser. It is a rules–changing, groundbreaking technology that allows you to run rich client applications right inside the browser. Even more impressively, it is able to host true .NET applications in non–Microsoft browsers (like Firefox) and on non–Microsoft platforms (like Mac OS X). 
Beginning C# is a book that offers a lot of guidance, in a format that readers find intuitive to follow. The exercise-based format of the Wrox Beginning series has a strong following by all levels of readers, and is one that works very well in the classroom or home. Written by a veteran programming instructor, this is the perfect mix of tutorial, and hands-on coding new programmers are looking for - written from their point of view. 
Whip up awesome Wii games using Flash and ActionScript. Nintendo Wii Flash Game Creator's Guide lays out each next-generation technique alongside real-world examples and cut-and-paste code samples. Learn how to design exciting Flash animations, create cool characters, simulate realistic motion, and use the Wii remote control in innovative ways. Plus, you'll get the latest tricks for supercharging your games and tips for distributing them on the Web. 
In just 24 sessions of one hour or less, you will be up and running with Visual C# 2008. Using a straightforward, step-by-step approach, each lesson builds upon the previous one, allowing you to learn the essentials of Visual C# from the ground up.
