Rubidium Facts
December 21, 2011 | 
Author Rubidium, a trace mineral that may be beneficial in treating depression, and which carries small amounts of nutrients to the body’s organs, has no defined daily allowance, but an amount between 1mg and 5mg is recommended.
High amounts of rubidium can be found in coffee, black tea, fruits, and vegetables, particularly asparagus; it can also be found in poultry and fish.
Relative non-toxic, rubidium can replace, serve as a partial replacement for, potassium in humans. Rubidium may also have chemotherapeutic properties, possibly reducing the incidence of cancer.
More Rubidium facts
Some signs of rubidium deficiency, by showing a slowing of their growth processes, have indicated a rubidium deficiency in goats. The deficiency also decreases their life expectancy. Could the same be true for humans?
Even though it has no established recommended daily allowance, everyone needs rubidium. Some nutritionists state, in fact, that many of us need to take a broad spectrum mineral supplement, supplying both the trace and major minerals people once got from foods grown in mineral-rich soils..
Vegetables would, in the past, contain minerals absorbed from the soil, which we would then consume. Unfortunately, our soils no longer contain the amounts of minerals necessary or us to maintain our health.
You may have already experienced rubidium’s ability to helping to counter depression and create a positive mindset. It does this by increasing “platelet GABA binding, and in the presence of rubidium, 5-HT accumulation, the rate of synthesis of 5-HT, in the brain is enhanced.”
Whatever the truth is, trace minerals are very important requirements for both our health and overall vitality.
Things to Watch Out For
Different people, depending on their lifestyles and diets, may have different rubidium requirements.
Women who are nursing or pregnant should, as a precaution, refrain from taking rubidium supplements unless having first talked with their physician.
Time Synchronization on Windows 7
Windows 7, the latest operating system from Microsoft is also their first operating system that automatically synchronizes the PC clock to an internet source of UTC time (Coordinated Universal Time). From the moment a Windows 7 computer is switched on and is connected to the Internet it will request time signals from the Microsoft time service – time.windows.com.
While for many home users this will save them the hassle of setting and correcting their clock as it drifts, for business users it may be problematic as internet time sources are not secure and receiving a time source through the UDP port on the firewall could lead to security breaches and as Internet time sources can’t be authenticated by NTP (Network Time Protocol) the signals can be hijacked by malicious users.
This internet time source can be deactivated by opening the clock and date dialogue box, and opening the Internet Time tab, clicking the ‘Change’ setting button and unchecking the ‘Synchronize with an Internet time server option.’
Whilst this will unsure no unwanted traffic will be coming through your firewall it will also mean that the Windows 7 machine will not be synchronized to UTC and its timekeeping will be reliant on the motherboard clock, which will eventually drift.
To synchronize a network of Windows 7 machines to an accurate and secure source of UTC then the most practical and simplest solution is to plug in a dedicated NTP time server. These connect directly to a router or switch and enable the safe receiving of an atomic clock time source.
NTP time servers use the highly accurate and secure GPS signal (Global Positioning System) available everywhere on the planet or more localized long wave radio signals transmitted by several national physics laboratories such as NIST and NPL.
5 Important Factors to Consider When Buying Talking Watches For the Visually Impaired
One of the key things people miss when they become visually impaired or blind is the ability to know what time it is. It can be very frustrating to keep asking for the time especially for someone living in a nursing home or assisted living facility where there is not someone around to ask at all times. And if the visually impaired person must be somewhere (for example in dialysis or in the cafeteria) at a certain time on a regular bases, he or she really wants to know what time it is.
One of the best ways to solve this problem is with talking watches or a talking alarm clock. 5 important things to consider in selecting a talking watch for the visually impaired are summarized below:
Number of Buttons:
To someone that is visually impaired, the number and location of the buttons on talking watches is a big deal. The fewer buttons the talking watch has, the better. However, even if there is more than one button, the positioning of those buttons is paramount.
For example, if you get a talking watch with 4 buttons and they are positioned symmetrically with 2 buttons on each side in the same relative positions, how will a visually impaired or blind person going to know if the watch in on upside right or upside down? If the talking watch is on upside, and the person hits the wrong button, will it screw up the settings? How will they reset the watch properly if they can’t see it? Generally, a one-button talking watch or two-button talking watches will have the buttons on one side only which prevents this problem.
Also, the more buttons the talking watch has, the more difficult it is too learn.
Setting The Time:
A key issue with any kind of watch, not just talking watches, with a visually impaired or blind person is how they will set the time correctly. For this reason, you may want to consider atomic talking watches which will automatically set the time, day, date, daylight savings, and even world time zone all by itself. This is certainly the easiest option. By the way, I have not found any atomic watches with less than 4 buttons, and these buttons are symmetric. Check the Resource Box for a way to solve the “4 Symmetrical Buttons” issue.
Wind-Up Versus Battery Power Talking Watches:
Assuming you have selected the number of buttons and addressed how your visually impaired loved one will set the watch, you need to consider if they will are cognizant and responsible enough to wind it regularly. Will he or she wind it daily (and not over wind it), or should you get a battery-powered watch? If you choose to get an atomic talking watch, this decision is made for you; they are all battery-powered.
Volume and Voice:
Fortunately, most visually impaired people have a keen sense of hearing (sort of an adaptation response to losing the sense of sight), and they can hear talking watches pretty well. However, many talking watches have a tinny or low volume setting with no ability to change the volume level. For this reason, you should consider whether you want a man’s voice or a lady’s voice and how loud the watch will play. You should also consider what will carry best in the typical noise environment and living conditions where the visually impaired person lives.
How Do You Carry Your Talking Watch:
The world of talking watches is not just limited to a talking wrist watch; you can also get a talking pendant watch to hang around your neck or a talking pocket watch which you carry in your pocket. This could be a simple preference of the person getting the watch, or there may be important considerations.
For example, my mother wants to know how much longer her 3-hour dialysis sessions have to go until she can move again. So a talking pendant watch would tend to fall to her side where she can’t get to it when she is reclined for dialysis, and a talking pocket watch would be difficult to get out of her pocket. Of course, most women’s clothes don’t have pockets. A talking pendant watch, on the other hand, can easily be worn around your neck making it easier to put on and take off than a talking wrist watch.
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Tags: Buying, Consider, Factors, Impaired, Important, Talking, Visually, Watches | 
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Choosing a Time Source For Atomic Clock Synchronization
Ensuring a computer network is time synchronized is vital in modern computer networks. Synchronization, not just between different machines on a network, but also each computer network that communicates with other networks needs to be synchronized with them too.
UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) is a global timescale that allows networks on other sides of the globe to be synchronized together. Synchronizing a network to UTC is relatively straightforward thanks to NTP (Network Time Protocol) the software protocol designed for this very purpose.
Most operating systems, including the latest Microsoft incarnation Windows 7, have a version of NTP (often in a simplified form known as SNTP), that allows a single time source to be used to synchronize every computer and device on a network.
Selecting a source for this time reference is the only real difficulty in synchronizing a network. There are three main locations where UTC time can accurately be received from:
Internet Time
There are many sources of internet time and the latest version of Windows (Windows 7) automatically synchronizes to Microsoft’s time server time.windows.com, so if Internet time is adequate Windows 7 users need not alter their settings. However, for computer networks where security is an issue then internet time sources can leave a system vulnerable as the time has to be received through the firewall forcing a UDP port to be left open. This can be utilized by malicious users. Furthermore, there is no authentication with an internet time source so the timecode could be hijacked before it arrives at your network.
GPS Time
Available literally everywhere on the globe, GPS provides a 24-hour, 365 days-a-year source of UTC time. Delivered externally to the firewall via the GPS satellite signal, time synchronization with GPS is accurate and secure.
Radio Transmissions
Usually broadcast by national physics laboratories such as NIST in the US and the UK’s NPL, the time signals are received via longwave and are also external to the firewall so are secure and accurate.
A dedicated NTP time server can receive both radio and GPS time signal guaranteeing accuracy and security.
European Time Synchronisation With DCF-77
The DCF 77 signal is a long wave transmission broadcast at 77 KHz from Frankfurt in Germany. DCF -77 is transmitted by Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, the German national physics laboratory.
DCF-77 is an accurate source of UTC time and is generated by atomic clocks that ensure its precision. DCF-77 is a useful source of time that can be adopted all over Europe by technologies needing an accurate time reference.
Radio controlled clocks and network time servers receive the time signal and in the case of time servers distribute this time signal across a computer network. Most computer network use NTP to distribute the DCF 77 time signal.
There are advantages of using a signal like DCF for time synchronisation. DCF is long wave and is therefore susceptible to interference from other electrical devices but they can penetrate buildings that give the DCF signal an advantage over that other source of UTC time generally available – GPS (Global Positioning System) – which requires a open view of the sky to receive satellite transmissions.
Other long wave radio signals are available in other countries that are similar to DCF-77. In the UK the MSF -60 signal is broadcast by NPL (National Physical Laboratory) from Cumbria while in the USA, NIST (National Institute of Standards and Time) transmit the WVBB signal from Boulder, Colorado.
NTP time servers are an efficient method of receiving these long wave transmissions and then using the time code as a synchronisation source. NTP servers can receive DCF, MSF and WVBB as well as many of them also being able to receive the GPS signal too.
Accurist Watches – A Timeless British Classic
Accurist are a quintessential British watch brand, a ‘timeless British classic’, started in 1947 by Asher and Rebecca Loftus who felt that the U.K. watch market needed diversifying. They decided to design and make high quality watches from Swiss components that looked good and performed well but would be competitively priced. The brand took off and became part of the nations consciousness through a series of advertisements broadcast during ‘Saturday Night at the London Palladium’, one of the most viewed television programs of its day.
Accurist watches became synonymous with vibrant 1960′s fashion when they released a range called ‘Old England’. But there was nothing traditional about these new watches, they were brightly coloured, oversized contemporary time pieces that were seen on the wrists of key players in the fabulous the 1960′s fashion scene. The Beatles, Twiggy and Princess Anne were just a few of these celebrities that were seen to wear Accurist watches, inspiring millions of people worldwide to own one of these stylish Accurist watches.
Accurist did not stop there. In the 1970′s, after the invention of digital quartz technology they created a range of LCD digital quartz watches that were so modern they became the official watch for pilots of the newly launched Concorde aircraft.
You may have recently seen an advertisement on television for Accurist watches featuring the legendary John Cleese looking rather youthful. It is a rework of an multi award winning advert (including the prestigious Palm d’Or Advertising Award) that was released in the 1970′s. The now famous ‘accu-ankle, accu-wrist’ sketch has been relaunched to give new viewers a chance to enjoy this great ad.
The list of Accurist’s world firsts goes on…they became the first ever sponsors of British Telecom’s speaking clock which has received over 3 billion calls since 1986, causing them to describe Accurist Watches as ‘the standard by which all watches are set’. They were the first watch brand to receive the National Association of Goldsmiths Award of Excellence, in recognition of their multiple contributions to the watch industry. In 1993 the Royal Observatory at Greenwich was renovated. In 1884 this observatory was designated as 0 degrees longitude making it the starting point for every global day. Accurist are the first and only watch brand to be associated with this historical observatory. They provided it with a new atomic clock, an exceptionally accurate form of timekeeping, which officially records the time in the world. It was the clock that all the TV cameras were pointed at when 1999 gave way for the new millennium.
Accurist also have a strong commitment to their customers, in 2001 this earned them another prestigious award, the Customer Service Award at the UK Jewellery award ceremony. The Accurist brand is in the control of a young, dynamic and forward thinking management team which will mean even more great things for the brand in upcoming years.
Accurist have a reputation for designing and creating world class watches, if you look at their collection you will see why. Accurist have won multiple awards for innovation and customer service, making the brand a timeless British classic – the standard by which all watches are set.
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Using Windows 7 – Reasons Your Network Still Needs an NTP Server
Time synchronisation becomes more and more relevant as we become more dependent on the internet. With so many time sensitive transactions conducted across the globe, from banking and commerce to sending emails, the correct and accurate time is vital in preventing errors and ensuring security.
Increasingly, more and more people are relying on sources of internet time especially with many of the modern flavours of Microsoft’s Windows such as Windows 7 having NTP and time synchronisation abilities already installed.
Windows 7 and Time Synchronisation
Windows 7 will, straight out of the box, attempt to find a source of internet time; however, for a networked machine this does not necessarily mean the computer will be synchronised accurately or securely.
Internet time sources can be wholly unreliable and insecure for a modern computer network. Internet time has to come through the firewall and as a gap is left for these time codes to come through, malicious software can take advantage of this firewall hole too.
Not only can the accuracy of these devices vary depending on the distance away your network is but also an internet time source very rarely comes direct from an atomic clock.
In fact, most internet time sources are known as stratum 2 devices. This means they connect to another device – a stratum 1 device – namely a NTP time server which gets the time directly from the clock and transmits it to the stratum 2 device.
Stratum 1 NTP time servers
For true accuracy and security, there is no replacement for your network’s own stratum 1 NTP server. Not only are these devices secure, receiving a time source externally to the firewall (often using GPS) but also they receive these signals direct from atomic clocks (The GPS satellite that transmits this signal has an onboard atomic clock that generates the time.
A Brief History of Timepieces
Surrounded by computers linked via the internet with atomic clocks measuring time all of the world, we often forget the amount of engineering that goes into accurately keeping time. For example, imagine yourself lost in a forest without a watch and needing to find the hour of day. (Don’t ask me why you need to know it; you just do.) Suddenly the problem seems a bit more difficult, and indeed it is, which is precisely why it took so long to invent the watch.
The first clocks, developed by the Babylonians more than thirty-six centuries ago and adopted throughout the ancient world, were either sundials, which relied on the sun to tell the time of day, or clepsydrae (water-clocks), which used the steady flow of water to measure elapsed time. These devices made for very poor pocketwatches, because they either didn’t work indoors or at night, or spilled, causing the people carrying them to look as though they had wet their togas. Surprisingly, it was at this point that timekeeping technology stagnated for more than a millennium. Although they had borrowed the idea of the twenty-four hour day from the Ancient Greeks, the Romans actually had little regard for precise timekeeping, an attitude that survives among their descendents to the present day. In fact, it has often been theorized that, had an ancient Mediterranean culture succeeded in building an accurate clock, they would have become so enraged at it for constantly reminding them of how late they were for everything that they would have completely eradicated all knowledge of its existence, probably killing the inventor in the process.
Consequently, it wasn’t until the Middle Ages that reliable devices for measuring the passage of time became commonplace. A series of innovations in mechanical technology made clocks more compact and more accurate, rendering water-driven clocks completely obsolete by the fifteenth century. The first mechanical clocks used weights to power their operation, until it was discovered that springs provided power in a more efficient and controllable manner. With the invention of the mainspring it became possible to construct watches small enough to be carried around. Early portable watches were designed to be worn around the neck, a style that we have thankfully abandoned. As people began to wear waistcoats and carry their watches around in their pockets, watch styles changed, and the pocketwatch was born. This new design was an improvement in many ways and also made it possible to look very important while simply checking the time.
At the beginning of the twentieth century pocketwatches fell out of fashion. World War I soldiers and pilots found that digging through their pockets to find their watches while carrying supplies into battle or flying through the air was extremely inconvenient, so they took to wearing their watches around their wrists. The improvement survived the war, and became standard practice, making pocketwatches completely obsolete within a few years. Today, less than a century later, wristwatches have become an indispensable accessory to modern life.
What is the Correct Time? The Development of Time Scales From GMT to UTC and NTP Servers
Asking somebody the time may be one of today’s most common questions but have you ever wondered where the time on our watches comes from?
Accurate clocks have only been around since the mid 17th century, before then, time was completely subjective. People would use the celestial bodies as a time reference such as noon (when the sun was highest) and midnight (when the moon is at its highest) and also dawn and dusk. Often lengths of time were referred to in comparison such as the time it would take a man to walk a mile.
Standard timescales did not exist until the 1840′s when it became necessary during the height of the railway’s popularity when a railway standard time for all England, Wales and Scotland replaced all the local timescales.
A few years later the Royal Observatory in Greenwich developed its own time scale. This was based on the sun and moon, with 12 o’clock (noon) being when the sun was over the Greenwich Meridian, they began transmitting this timescale using the telegraph and by 1855 most of Britain used GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) and it soon became a recognized time reference throughout the world.
However, it became apparent with the invention of atomic clocks that basing a time reference on the movement of the Earth was not accurate enough. In 1967 the second was defined by the oscillations of the caesium -133 atom (as used in atomic clocks) and provided the most accurate reference for time yet but attempts to couple GMT with this new definition proved unsatisfactory when it was discovered that the Earth slows (and speeds up) on its axis.
This variations in the rotation of the Earth meant a new timescale UTC, (Coordinated Universal Time) which made adjustments for this slowing adding (or subtracting) a second when ever necessary (failure to do so would mean eventually day would become night as time would slip, albeit in many millennia). This addition is known as a Leap Second.
UTC has become vital in allowing the global community to communicate with each other. UTC allows the world to synchronise to one time scale regardless of the time zone (UTC handles timezones with a + or minus such as UTC +5 or UTC -2)
UTC enables computers to synchronise together all over the world using NTP (Network Time Protocol). Without NTP it would be impossible to conduct time sensitive transactions such as buying an airline ticket or bidding on eBay.
Most NTP time servers receive UTC time atomic clocks from either a broadcasted signal from a large physics laboratory or via the GPS network.
Reasons A Business Should Use a Time Clock
A time clock – also known as a clock card machine, punch clock or time recorder – is a mechanical (or electronic) device that helps track the number of hours that an employee spends in a company. Early mechanical clocks operate by inserting a heavy paper card or time card into a slot on the clock. As soon as the card hits a contact at the end of the slot, the machine prints the day and time information on the card. By doing so, the timekeeper can calculate an employee’s pay based on the hours he or she worked.
Companies have certain rules and regulations about time and attendance. This is because time is an important element that should be used correctly and companies expect employees to make good use of their time to increase office productivity.
To realize this goal, the human resources department of a company must have an effective way of tracking and monitoring the time and attendance of employees. This will ensure that employees are using their time wisely. Modern clocks fulfill this need by providing companies with a system that will help the company run effectively and efficiently.
Time clock software helps track, monitor and manage the time records of employees. This software has many advantages over the manual means of tracking attendance through paper. No wonder it is a great help to companies with a large work force. It represents an ideal method of time management for today’s businesses.
Now, more than ever, it is vital to update our methods of time and attendance management. Traditional clocks fall short of the mark and fail to meet the needs of the modern office environment. Modern clocks offer a comprehensive solution that will improve operations, simplify timekeeping, and save companies a lot of money.