Science & Mathematics Questions & Answers

Frank Sortino, now the director of a pension research institute in San Francisco, developed the Sortino Ratio. Many global Mutual Fund rating agencies prefer this risk-adjusted return measure over the Sharpe Ratio, because it is simple and easy. The Sortino Ratio is similar to the Sharpe Ratio, except that instead of using standard deviation as the denominator, it uses downside …

The solar system along with the universe is balanced and dominated by three universal forces – repulsion, gravitation and retraction. But present science knows only one universal astronomical force – gravitation. The other two forces are still unknown. With efforts spanning over 25 years, the scientific fraternity has devised a new technology called the Sorlod Space System (SSS). With this, …

We all use computers. If you use Windows on your machine, like me, you will have a small button at the the bottom of your screen called ‘Start’. Every machine in the world which has the Windows software installed has to have that button. However, we can have different screen colours, different text sizes, wallpapers etc. Similarly our bodies are …

In London a moment of historic pageantry was celebrated on this day-the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. It was also the day when London heard the news of the conquest of Mount Everest’s 9,608 m by Edmund Hillary, a New Zealander, and Tensing, the famous Sherpa porter from Nepal. The London Times wrote: ‘Seldom since Francis Drake brought the Golden …

The principle of the thermocouple was first described by Seebeck in 1821. Seebeck discovered that when wires of two dissimilar metals were joined together to form a circuit of at least two junctions, a current would flow when the junctions were at different temperatures. This phenomenon, called the Seebeck Effect, is the basis upon which thermocouples are designed.

The great stones stand gaunt against the sky in the countryside of Wiltshire, England. What is their origin? There are many theories. One of the earliest recorders of this stone system was Henry of Huntingdon, who died in 1154. But the stones are older than that. Some people thought that Boadicea, a queen of the ancient Britons was buried there. …

You get into an elevator (or a lift, as we sometimes call it) and for a second or two, just as the elevator moves down, we feel weightless. On the other hand, if we go up in an elevator, we suddenly feel heavier just as the elevator lurches upwards. To understand this feeling of weightlessness, we need to understand a …

The Scopes Trial brought about a prosecution in 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee. The prosecution was of a high school biology teacher who taught the theory of evolution. The teacher, John T Scopes, was accused of having violated the Butler Act, a Tennessee law that forbade the teaching of the theory of evolution in public schools because it contradicted the account …

The Schwarzschild Radius is a characteristic radius associated with every quantity of mass. It is a radius of a sphere in space, that if containing a corresponding sufficient amount of mass, the force of gravity from the contained mass would be so great that no known force or pressure could stop the mass from continuing to collapse in volume into …

The Saros Cycle is an eclipse cycle with a period of nearly 18 years, 11 days and 8 hours. The earliest discovered historical record of the Saros Cycle is by the Chaldeans (ancient Babylonian astronomers). It is very useful for predicting the times at which nearly identical eclipses of the sun and moon will occur. A complication with the Saros …