Manchester is the major urban centre inside the state of New Hampshire and north of Boston in a region containing the states of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Having a population of over 109,000 people The city of Manchester ranked thirteenth within a report on the one hundred best cities to live in CNN.MONEY.com, not to mention has been voted the second most tax friendly metropolis in the states by Kiplinger’s. Manchester features one of the fastest expanding economies in New England.

Manchester features a four-season climate together with wintry winters as well as warm summers, springtime and fall are generally crisp and brief transitions.

Manchester presents several ethnic activities at the historic Palace Theatre, the Currier Museum of Art and the New Hampshire Institute of Art. The Verizon Wireless Arena is a civic center which serves a range of events, from sporting events to concerts with major recording artists, comedians, theatrical productions as well as family focused programs and fairs.

Manchester school system has four public high schools, four public middle schools and fourteen public elementary schools. In addition there are lots of private and faith based schools. You can find 7 post secondary university in the Manchester area.

The city is served by 4 newspaper publishers, a New Hampshire public tv station and one commercial television station, WMUR-TV Channel 9, an ABC affiliate, as well as varied AM and FM radio stations.

Manchester hosts Manchester Fischer Cats, a minor baseball team, and the Manchester Monarchs, AHL professional ice hockey.

For transportation Manchester has the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport, which is serviced by almost all major airlines, with the largest share used by Southwest Airlines. The airport features international service via Air Canada to Ontario and Toronto. Public transportation is supplied by Manchester Transit Authority that runs buses through the city. Concord Trailways and Boston Express run commuter services to Boston along with other regions of the state.

Key highways include Interstates 93 and 293, and the Everett Turnpike which are multi-lane highways and connect the metropolitan area to Concord and the White Mountains to the north, and Nashua and Boston to the south. NH 101 is a 4 lane highway eastbound from Manchester to Hampton and beaches on the seacoast as well as Maine and Interstate 95 to the north shore of Massachusetts. Westbound NH 101 is a two lane highway serving as the main artery to Keene, the Monadnock region and points west.

Manchester features 2 significant retail spots: downtown Manchester and South Willow Street. The Mall of New Hampshire is found on South Willow Street, exceeding 125 stores.

If you don’t have a driving licence, you could be missing out on a number of advantages. Here are 10 reasons why your New Year’s resolution should be learning to drive.

1. Driving could provide you with your first taste of independence, especially if you live at home with your parents.

2. If you have children, having a driving licence means being able to take them to school and pick them up, so you always know they’re safe.

3. Because you’ll have the convenience of a vehicle, you won’t have to use public transport to get your little ones to and from school.

4. You’ll also have the convenience to go to the shops, whenever you want to, not when a bus timetable permits or when you can get a lift.

5. If you’re a young adult, having a driving licence means having the freedom to pick up your friends and go to a wider array of venues to socialise.

6. If you’re in a long-distance relationship, you may want to use your driving licence to see your partner more often or with less hassle than you currently do.

7. If you currently have to carry shopping onto public transport, having a car could take a lot of stress out of the process.

8. One of the most popular methods of transport for people without a driving licence is by taxi, but this can be very expensive. Having a car could reduce this needless expense.

9. You may want a driving licence to take your family on holiday. The convenience of the car means you can go whenever you want.

10. Many people learn to drive because they have relatives they want to be able to visit more often and with greater convenience.

If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to learn how to drive, you’re going to need to find a suitable teacher in your city or town. For instance, you may require Manchester driving schools to help you.

Why not use an online Manchester business directory to find schools in the city? As well as driving schools, it can also help you find everything from a Manchester dentist to a Manchester solicitor.

The father of ‘Victorian Art Photography’ Oscar Gustav Rejlander or Oscar Rejlander (1817-1875) was born in Sweden. He started his career as an artist and a portrait painter in Italy. Inspired by one of the assistants of Fox Talbot however, Oscar abandoned his profession to pursue photography. He took training in photography in 1850, and discarded the concept of photography as a technical or scientific medium. He lifted the standard of photography to ‘Fine Art,’ by imitating paintings, or creating painting like scene and then clicking it, instead of going for typical real life photographic captures. His most famous photograph “The Two Ways of Life” is a ‘Symbolic’ allegory, and a masterpiece of Oscar’s ‘Art Photography.’

Approximately 32 negatives were put together to create the ‘Combination Print’ “The Two Ways of Life” (1857). Here, with his unique style, Oscar captures the moral choice between good and evil. Measuring 41 cm x 79 cm, this Gelatin Silver Print work depicts a patriarch guiding two young men to manhood. One of the men is attracted towards sinful pleasures, while the other one is drawn to virtuous pleasures. In the middle of the scene, appears a veiled, partly clothed figure, Symbolizing regret. It is shown turning towards good.

“The Two Ways of Life” was based on the background of Raphael’s ‘School of Athens’ (1509-1511). The same year, Rejlander’s photograph was shown in the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition, Manchester, England, UK. The work created controversy among many of the great artists and photographer. Eventually however, the artist was appreciated for his great work, especially after Queen Victoria purchased a copy of it. His membership of the Royal Photographic Society of London was extended, which also gave him a lot of respect in the high society of London.

In 1858, Rejlander addressed a seminar on his most famous photograph “The Two Ways of Life.” He stated that it took him around six weeks to finish his work, accomplished through an old, patched, broken camera, fitted with a Ross lens. A pressure-printing frame, half the size of the final print, was used to create the prints of his photograph. Initiated with foreground figures, Rejlander’s “The Two Ways of Life” was completed with those in the background. He decided the size of the foreground and used a pair of compasses to determine the size of background figure on the focusing glass. Due to its large size, the final print of the photograph was printed in two sheets of paper.

As per the records, only five prints of “The Two Ways of Life” were produced. One Queen Victoria gifted to Prince Albert. The second one was displayed at the Birmingham Photographic Society’s meeting. A Scottish physicist, Sir David Brewster, bought the third one, while Oscar Rejlander sold the fourth one, which was later presented to the Royal Photographic Society, in 1925. The print with Royal Photographic Society is supposed to be the only copy still in existence. A fifth print was sold to a man at Streatham.

Mr Harvey Goldstein is a successful American businessman in Asia, a prominent public figure and a spokesman for the foreign business community with the respective governments of Asia, particularly Indonesia. He is a catalyst and a participant in private sector growth and development in the Asia – pacific region. He has had three decades of residence in Southeast Asia.

In 1987, Mr. Goldstein created Harvest International Inc., an entity through which venture capital and consulting assistance can be provided to foreign and local entrepreneurs. Harvest International Inc. was conceived as a response to a felt need for merchant banking facilities and locally sensitive expertise in the formation and operation of viable business ventures in Southeast Asia. As its founder and Chairman Mr. Goldstein facilitates the flow of investment capital into the region to stimulate and expand opportunities for the private sector to grow, create jobs and generate new economic dynamics in these developing countries.

In March 1987, Mr. Goldstein was one of the principle founders of the Manchester Group, Ltd. (The Group) which provides a board spectrum of services to assist companies in developing new international business, and in resolving problems with their existing business operations.

Through its four member companies, The Group can assist clients to:

o Identify partners and develop opportunities for new investments;

o Finance projects;

o Negotiate joint venture or other contracts

o Complete feasibility analysis;

o Increase access to international markets;

o Meet countertrade obligations; and

o Deal effectively with government with all aspects of international operations.

With offices in eight international cities, the group companies offer board geographic coverage in some of the world’s most important markets. Each member of The Group – Interact, Manchester Associates, Ltd. , Altman Inc. and Harvest International – has an independent reputation for excellence in services to its clients. The interested operations of The Group allow clients to receive the benefit of the board experience of all of The Group’ s member companies.

The Group headquartered in Washington D.C. , function as a merchant bank. Helping companies to identify, develop and implement investment and financing opportunities and strategic financial alliances. The Group has strong working relationships with the international development banks, The World Bank, Asian Development Bank Inter America Development Bank and African Development Bank and assist in securing project export credit agencies of Canada, France, and West Germany., Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States as well as from U.S and foreign commercial and investment banks and insurance companies.

• The World's Strongest Material- 200 times stronger than Steel!
• Yet Flexible
• Conducts Electricity Better than Copper

Grapene compares in significance with the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. We will call Graphene the Graphene Age. Graphene is an allotrope (form) of carbon which consist of a single layer of carbon atomes. They form a hexagonal lattice of 2D material. It is ultra-light but also extremely tough. It is 200 times stronger than steel yet flexible. It is the thinnest material possible and is transparent. It is a better conductor than copper and is a perfect barrier.

The University of Manchester is working with Graphne in the following applications:

• Energy
• Membranes
• Composites and Coatings
• Biomedical
• Sensors
• Electronics
• Wearable Technology

Unbrakeable Mobiles

Indium-tin oxide is the material used for touch screens now, but it is brittle. Graphene's flexibility and durability together with its conductivity properties will transform everyday devices. You could wear your smartphone on your wrist. Your tablet could be so thin and flexible, you could roll it up and put it in your top pocket. You've never got to worry about braking your phone again. It would be virtually indestructible.

Grapne in batteries

Samsung have developed graphene batteries that can now charge mobile phones and car batteries faster. Much faster! With a conventional lithium battery, it takes about an hour to recharge a mobile. The new graphene battery could recharge it in 12 minutes. That is a 5 times faster.

Samsung also wants to improve electric car batteries. Imagine completely charging your electric car in only one hour. To do this, scientists at Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology have synthesized graphene into a 3D form – using silicon dioxide. This 3D form (known as a graphene ball) is used to coat the electrodes of the battery. The result is a massive 45% increase in capacity, and has, as said earlier, 5 times the charging speed.

It's difficult to get energy in and out of traditional batteries quickly. For example, if you take an Electric Ferrari, you can not get from 0-60 in 3 seconds? Because graphene is such a good conductor, super capacity batteries could release the kick of energy needed to hit that 0-60 in 3 seconds.

Energy Storage

The 45% capacity increase has other uses. The University of Manchester is testing graphene battery storage with wind and solar power for the national grid.

Graphene Filtration

Graphene oxide membranes are able to form a perfect barrier for liquids and gasses. They can separate organic solvent from water and remove water from a gas mixture. They can even stop helium, the hardest gas to block. Manchester University are currently testing grahene membrane for water filtration, gas separation and desalination.

Graphene Semiconductores

Due to it's unique properties of thinness and conductivity, researchers have seen graphene's potential as a semiconductor. At only 1 atom thick, graphene can conduct electricity at room temperature. These two useful properties could mean an end to silicon computer chips for graphene chips. The research has already shown that graphhene chips are much faster processors than silicon chips.

Graphene used for Biomedicine

Graphene displays a lot of useful properties. It has high electrical conductivity, thermal stability and is 200 times stronger than steel. All these properties can be applied to biomedics. It could be applied to healing skin wounds; drug delivery inside the body and potentially change the behavior of cells inside the body. eg Cancer treatment.

Grahene-infused Packaging

Plastic packaging may seem impenetrable but water molecules can still pass through them. This can effect the lifespan of food, electronic goods and medicines.

With a single layer of graphene fused onto polymer packaging, the water absorption is reduced by a million times. Products are then protected from dust, bacteria and water.

For example, a moisture-sensitive device such as an organic light-emitting diode must have water restricting packaging. Graphene infused polymer have increased the diodes lifespan by more than a year compared to 30 minutes with a non-graphhene polymer.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the potential use of graphene coatings as a water-repellant surface. It could find use on ship's hulls, pot / pan liners, glass surfaces (mirrors, windows, windshields) and textiles.

The benefits of graphene in so many applications is mind-boggling. The commercial production on a large scale is the next challenge. We should see graphhene-based products on the market this year (2018)

Full market penetration will come into effect in the next 5 to 10 years. A very exciting time for the advancement of science and technology.

With the Pizza chain’s claiming record takings last year it seems that when the British public get stressed about the financial situation of the country they turn to food. The large chain that is making these claims also predicts that its profits will continue to increase over the coming year. It seems that the downturn in the market has made people think about how they are spending their money and many are choosing to stay home and have their food delivered at home rather than going out and enjoying the quality of a restaurant.

Many restaurants across the country have experienced a reduction in their profits and while some have chosen to get their heads down and weather the storm many enterprising restaurants have decided that in hardship comes opportunity and have decided to increase the marketing of their business. Coming from the Manchester/Liverpool area the businesses are using the internet to make theirs businesses more accesible to the public allowing them to rate their restaurants as they visit them and leave helpful comments about each restaurant.

Restaurants that offer a takeaway service or takeaway meal are seeing an upturn in their enquiries with the British Public whipped into their homes like naughty curs by the poor choices of an impotent government, and only venturing to their phones and computers to get in their normal supply from the Indian restaurant, Chinese restaurant, Italian restaurant and any other restaurant you can think to shake an empty carton at. Good restaurants are seeing that you sometimes have to speculate to accumulate, and the only way many are going to survive is to invest in decent websites and good online marketing, which includes decent search engine optimisation and choice referral websites.

The Manchester and Liverpool restaurants that I have spoken to, see this form of marketing as the way to go with more and more of society heading online. A quick ring round of Staffordshire restaurants, Lancashire restaurants, Derbyshire restaurants and North Wales restaurants has left me with the distinct feeling that the internet will be playing a larger part in everybodies lives in the future.

This A4 Pacific class locomotive ‘Sir Nigel Gresley’, named after the engineer responsible for its design, is an example of the type of loco that still holds the record fastest speed ever achieved by a steam train (123 mph). ‘Mallard’ named after our most common species of wild duck.

As eager children, we would journey up to York station to catch a glimpse of these fabulous engines – we were always rewarded – some days it would be ‘Mallard’ or ‘Sir Nigel Gresley’, but on others it might be ‘Bittern’, ‘Sir Archibald Sturrock’ or ‘Dwight D. Eisenhower’.

Towards the end of their time pulling express passenger trains up and down the country, they began to be replaced by the new ‘Deltic’ class of diesel-electric locomotives. These were named after former Epsom Derby winners, and had names like ‘St. Paddy’, ‘Ballymoss’, ‘Meld’, and ‘Crepello’.

I remember seeing one of these monsters in York station – the vibration from the huge English-Electric engines was so great that the lines cracked underneath its wheels and the passengers heading south had to wait until a replacement engine could be brought in and the lines replaced.

On the Manchester – Sheffield line, through the now closed Woodhead Tunnel, sky-blue electric locomotives pulled passenger and goods trains alike across Dinting Viaduct. They were chiefly housed in sheds in Reddish near Stockport and had names like ‘Electra’, which sounded marvelously modern to us children as we took down their numbers in our notebooks before transferring them into our ‘G. Bland’ pocketbooks, which held all the numbers of locomotives on British Railways at the time.

This was in the 1960s. Living as I did near a line (the Manchester Victoria-Huddersfield mainline), I never missed the chance to watch the huge, dirty trains hurtle through our valley of Saddleworth. In those days, you could set your watch by them with the Palethorpe Sausage train coming through at five o’ clock, pulled by a ‘black-five’, a ‘namer’ like ‘Bihar and Orissa’, or a Patriot class with windshields; ‘E.Tootal Broadhurst’, or ‘Private E. Sykes VC’. More usually though it was a workhorse 73 or 92 numbered locomotive. We soon grew tired of these and made a face at the drivers as their blackened faces peered out at us as they passed noisily.

After the train had gone, we mooched back for tea – dinner, and hoped we would see a ‘semi’ like ‘Sir William A. Stanier F.R.S.’or a Princess class engine – ‘Princess Alice’, for our collection of numbers.

As steam engines, which were responsible for the blackening of dry-stone walls in our valley, came to be replaced by diesels that were identical whichever way they were going, we were drawn down to the railway less and less. Instead, we took to the hills and did our own naming; we watched out for imagined ambushes in ‘Rustlers’ Den’ and the ‘tomahawk’ and the ‘Winchester’ figured in our talk. Slowly, the names of former American presidents, chief engineers from British Railways, the names of Indian states and heroes of Rork’s Drift and the like left our youthful lexicon.

We learned words like ‘lariot’, and expressions like ‘dry-gulched’; we rode through ‘Blanco Canyon’ with Wyatt Earp and Doc Halliday, and the ‘Dalton gang’ into Dodge City.

Our youthful minds were full of episodes of ‘Wagon train’, ‘Wells Fargo’ and ‘Laramie’, and the green and purple hills of Saddleworth with names like ‘Pots and pans’, ‘Alphin’, and ‘Alderman’ became so many ‘butes’ like the ones we had seen in the blood-red sunsets of Montana on our TV screens.

We used expressions like “Aw shucks”, and “Well, I’ll be” and talked out of the corners of our mouths in imitation of our heroes; Dale Roberston from ‘Wells Fargo’ and ‘Trampus’ from ‘The Virginian’.

We ‘toted’ revolvers – ‘six-shooters’, and wore ‘Stetsons’ as we re-enacted the ‘shoot-outs’ and ‘ambushes’ that we loved so much. We watched out for ‘sheriffs’, ‘deputies’ and ‘bounty-hunters’ as we crept around the bulrushes at the edge of Royal George Mill lodge, and learned to duck when one of the mill foremen spotted us and threatened to tell our fathers working away inside if we didn’t “skedaddle” or “beat it”.

In the more modern era in which we exist and sometimes live, trainspotting, even play, is ridiculed – the hobby of an ‘anorak’. This hobby and that play connected me to worlds away from my closed set of experiences, and those clothed my dreams and made me wander to find what real life was.