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«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 400 of 427 Newer› Newest»hai..Now i would like to talk about 'CPR'.
CPR or Cardiopulmonary resuscitation is a lifesaving procedure that is performed when someone's breathing or heartbeat has stopped, as in cases of electric shock, drowning, or heart attack. CPR is a combination of rescue breathing, which provides oxygen to a person's lungs and chest compressions, which keep the person's blood circulating.Permanent brain damage or death can occur within minutes if a person's blood flow stops. Therefore, you must continue these procedures until the person's heartbeat and breathing return, or trained medical help arrives.
CPR can be lifesaving, but it is best performed by those who have been trained in an accredited CPR course. The procedures described here are not a substitute for CPR training.Time is very important when dealing with an unconscious person who is not breathing. Permanent brain damage begins after only 4 minutes without oxygen, and death can occur in as little as 4 to 6 minutes later.
When a bystander starts CPR before emergency support arrives, the person has a much greater chance of surviving. Nevertheless, when most emergency workers arrive at a cardiac arrest, they usually find no one giving CPR.
Machines called automated external defibrillators (AEDs) can be found in many public places, and are available for home use. These machines have pads or paddles to place on the chest during a life-threatening emergency. They use computers to automatically check the heart rhythm and give a sudden shock if, and only if, that shock is needed to get the heart back into the right rhythm.
The following steps are based on instructions from the American Heart Association.
Check for responsiveness. Shake or tap the person gently. See if the person moves or makes a noise. Shout, "Are you OK?"
Call 999 if there is no response. Shout for help and send someone to call 999. If you are alone, call 911 and retrieve an AED (if available), even if you have to leave the person.
Carefully place the person on their back. If there is a chance the person has a spinal injury, two people should move the person to prevent the head and neck from twisting.
Open the airway. Lift up the chin with 2 fingers. At the same time, tilt the head by pushing down on the forehead with the other hand.
Look, listen, and feel for breathing. Place your ear close to the person's mouth and nose. Watch for chest movement. Feel for breath on your cheek.
If the person is not breathing or has trouble breathing:
Cover their mouth tightly with your mouth.
Pinch the nose closed.
Keep the chin lifted and head tilted.
Give 2 rescue breaths. Each breath should take about a second and make the chest rise.
Perform chest compressions:
Place the heel of one hand on the breastbone -- right between the nipples.
Place the heel of your other hand on top of the first hand.
Position your body directly over your hands.
Give 30 chest compressions. These compressions should be FAST and hard. Press down about 2 inches into the chest. Each time, let the chest rise completely. Count the 30 compressions quickly: "1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30, off."
Give the person 2 more breaths. The chest should rise.
Continue CPR (30 chest compressions followed by 2 breaths, then repeat) until the person recovers or help arrives. If an AED for adults is available, use it as soon as possible.
If the person starts breathing again, place them in the recovery position. Periodically re-check for breathing until help arrives.
hai...today i like to talk about 'taekwondo'.
Taekwondo is one of the most systematic and scientific Korean traditional martial arts, that teaches more than physical fighting skills. It is a discipline that shows ways of enhancing our spirit and life through training our body and mind. Today, it has become a global sport that has gained an international reputation, and stands among the official games in the Olympics.
Let's take a closer look at the meaning of the word "Tae" "Kwon" "Do." It is composed of three parts as shown in the English spelling, though it is one word in Korean. "Tae" means "foot," "leg," or "to step on"; "Kwon" means "fist," or "fight"; and "Do" means the "way" or "discipline." If we put these three parts together, we can see two important concepts behind "Tae Kwon Do".
First, Taekwondo is the right way of using Tae and Kwon 'fists and feet,' or all the parts of the body that are represented by fists and feet. Second, it is a way to control or calm down fights and keep the peace. This concept comes from the meaning of Tae Kwon 'to put fists under control' [or 'to step on fists']. Thus Taekwondo means "the right way of using all parts of the body to stop fights and help to build a better and more peaceful world."
Taekwondo has been developing with the 5000-year long history of Korea, being called by several different names in the course. In Korea, Taekwondo began as a defense martial art called "Subak" or "Taekkyon," and developed as a way of training body and mind in the ancient kingdom of Koguryo, under the name of "Sunbae." In the Shilla period, it had become the backbone of Hwarangdo that aimed at producing leaders of the country.
Taekwondo today is similar to the martial arts in other Oriental countries and shares some features with them, because in the course of its evolution it has gained many different styles that existed in the martial arts of the countries surrounding Korea, like Japan and China.
But Taekwondo is very different from many such oriental martial arts. First, physically it is very dynamic with active movements that include a mirage of foot skills. Second, the principle physical movements are in simpatico with that of the mind and life as a whole. Third, it possesses dynamic poses from another perspective.
Taekwondo can be characterized by unity: the unity of body, mind, and life, and the unity of the pose ["poomsae"] and confrontation, and cracking down. When you do Taekwondo, you should make your mind peaceful and synchronize your mind with your movements, and extend this harmony to your life and society. This is how in Taekwondo the principle of physical movements, the principle of mind training, and the principle of life become one and the same. On the other hand, the right poomsae lead to the right confrontation, which will eventually produce great destructive power.
How come we reach such a unity in Taekwondo? Taekwondo is a way of life, much like having a job, raising a family, fighting for a cause, or any one of numerous raison d'etre. What makes Taekwondo different from these is that it is an activity for survival in extremely antagonistic situations. One must always overcome the enemy that is trying to cause harm. But simply winning a fight is not enough to guarantee one's safety, because the enemy may recuperate and attack again. Moreover, there may be many other enemies than the one that was just defeated. One cannot ever feel safe unless one gains permanent peace. To attain this permanent or lasting peace, one needs unity. This is what Taekwondo aim for. Otherwise Taekwondo would be no different from any other street-fighting skills.
Taekwondo pursues harmonious growth and improvements of life through its unique activities. This is why one could say Taekwondo is a way of life. To ultimately enable ourselves to lead more valuable lives, we would do well by finding the guiding principles deeply hidden in Taekwondo
hai...Do yo know what is wushu?
Wushu is an important component of the cultural heritage of China, with a rich content that has remained untarnished over the centuries. Literally translated, "wu" is military, "shu" is art. Wushu therefore means the art of fighting, or martial arts.
Previously, wushu figured significantly in the simple matter of survival through China's many wars and political upheaval. Today, wushu has been organized and systematized into a formal branch of study in the performance arts by the Chinese. It reigns as the most popular national sport in the country of 1.1 billion people, practiced by the young and old alike. Its emphasis has shifted from combat to performance, and it is practiced for its method of achieving heath, self-defense skills, mental discipline, recreational pursuit and competition.
To describe wushu, it is best to understand the philosophy of its teaching. Every movement must exhibit sensible combat application and aestheticism. The wealth of wushu's content, the beauty of wushu movents, the difficulty factor, and the scientific training methods are the song of the elements that set wushu apart from martial arts. Routines are performed solo, paired or in groups, either barehanded or armed with traditional Chinese weaponry. In short, wushu is the most exciting martial art to be seen, felt, and ultimately practiced.
How is wushu related to kung fu and taijiquan? "Wushu" is the correct term for all Chinese martial arts therefore kung fu and wushu were originally the same. During the last thirty years, wushu in Mainland China was modernized so that there could be a universal standard for training and competing. In essence, much emphasis has been placed on speed, difficulty, and presentation. Consequently, wushu has become an athletic and aesthetic performance and competitive sport, while "kung fu" or traditional wushu remains the traditional fighting practice. Taijiquan is a major division of wushu, utilizing the body's internal energy or "chi" and following the simple principle of "subduing the vigorous by the soft."
Although still in budding stages in many countries, wushu is an established international sport. In 1990, wushu was inducted as an official medal event in the Asian Games. Since then World Championships have taken place with 56 nations participating. Wushu is also vying for the Olympic games in the 21st century
hai...do you like to eat chocolate?today i had read same article about can'death by chocolate'lead to'life by chocolate'?.in this article it state that chocolate also can give you a benefit in heath,such as It's rich in certain essential minerals, and it's packed with bioflavonoids, especially flavonols.
Chocolate is thought to improve blood flow and elasticity in blood vessels; lower blood pressure; improve overall heart health; and reduce the risk of death from cardiovascular disease.
It can decrease LDL (bad) cholesterol as well as the body's inflammatory immune responses.
Chocolate is thought to improve insulin resistance and sensitivity.
It can increase alertness, lessen pain and promote a general feeling of well-being.
Chocolate may reduce the risk of cancer.chocolate also a good source of magnesium,copper,and iron,the three ntriet here are really important.Magnesium is critical to a large number of body functions, including the formation and maintenance of strong bones, muscle and nerve function, and regular bowel function.
Iron is an important part of hemoglobin and thus is essential to oxygen transport in the body. Iron also assists short-term storage of oxygen in muscle tissue, including the muscle tissues in the heart.
Copper is an important antioxidant and is critical to the body's detoxification mechanism. It's also important to the formation of red blood cells.Chocolate also has a more direct stress-reducing effect. It contains a compound called anandamide—also known as the "bliss chemical"—that binds to certain receptors in the brain to promote relaxation. This happens in a manner similar to the effect of some components of marijuana—though the effect is much more subtle (and much more legal!). Further, chocolate contains enzyme inhibitors that decrease the body's ability to metabolize anandamide, thus "prolonging the high."
Dark chocolate is packed with antioxidants called bioflavonoids—containing more of them than any other food tested so far, including blueberries, red wine and green tea,which is good in antioxidants.there are more other chocolate benefit so you can read more in grinningplant.com.thank you
hai..i had search an article about stres and how to reduce it,here same tipson how to reduce your stress,first Manage Time Wisely: It’s important to give yourself plenty of time to work on your studies if you want to do well, and you can save yourself a lot of stress if you plan ahead with good time management skills. Setting up a schedule for study, breaking up your studies into smaller chunks, and other time management skills are essential.second,Get Organized: Have a system of organization for note-taking, keeping track of assignments, and other important papers. Being organized can bring you the peace of mind that comes from knowing where everything is, remembering deadlines and test dates, and clearing your mind of some of the mental clutter that disorganization brings. Keep a calendar, a schedule, and a filing system for your school assignments, and you’ll find it prevents a significant amount of stress!
next,Create a Good Study Environment: Creating a soothing environment can reduce stress and help you learn. Aromatherapy, for example, is a known stress reliever, and peppermint essential oil is said to wake up your brain, so I recommend burning it as you study. Playing classical music as you study can also soothe you and help you learn (unless you find it distracting).then,Know Your Learning Style: Did you know that we don’t all learn in the same way? It’s important to know whether you’re a visual, kinesthetic or auditory learner, as you can tailor your study practices around your particular learning style and make success easier to attain.beside Get Enough Sleep: If you want your performance to be optimum you need to be well-rested. Research shows that those who are sleep-deprived have more trouble learning and remembering, and perform more poorly in many areas. Work your schedule so you get enough sleep, or take power naps.
finally,Use Stress Management Techniques: Chronic stress can actually impair your ability to learn and remember facts as well, stress management is one of the most important--and most overlooked--school necessities. A regular stress management practice can reduce your overall stress level and help you to be prepared for whatever comes,you should read this article ecause it can help you a lot to reduce you stress.
'the village by the sea'.... is a novel set in a small fishing village in India by Indian American writer Anita Desai. It is about the poverty, hardships and sadness of rural citizens of India.is set in a small village called Thul, which is 14 kilometres from Bombay. Lila, the eldest child among four siblings, is thirteen years old, yet she already has the maturity of an adult. Her brother Hari, twelve, is the only person with whom she can share her troubles. Their mother is ill and needs constant care and nursing. She is aneamic due to malnourishment and she grows weaker and weaker with each passing day. Their father, who has been out of work for months, is in a permanent drunken stupor, from which he arises occasionally to shout at his family.
Women pray to a rock for the safety of the fishermen.
With two younger sisters to take care of as well as their mother, life for Lila and Hari is not easy. Their father is not very useful as he is often away at the local toddy shop, getting drunk. There is a constant need for money as the family is almost always in debt. Then one day, Hari decides he has had just about enough and leaves for Bombay– the Bombay where dreams come true and ambition yields.
Lila is left alone to manage her sisters Bela and Kamal, as well as her mother, and somehow keep the family strings together. Help comes from an unexpected source, the rich DeSilva's. Meanwhile, Hari is new in the great city of Bombay, and all alone. A kind restaurant proprietor, Jagu, takes pity on him and welcomes him to work in his restaurant, Sri Krishna Eating House. There, Hari builds a strong friendship with Mr. Panwallah, the lovable watch repairer whose shop is just beside Jagu’s. Through his experience with Mr. Panwallah and Jagu and the chain of events that take place in Bombay, Hari realises that he should return to his village with savings and help his family overcome their hardships.
Meanwhile, Lila, Bela and Kamal are forced to admit their sick mother in town hospital through the help of the DeSilvas. Their father turns over a new leaf, and accompanies their mother throughout her 7 month treatment without drinking and without having any debts. While Hari returns, he returns as a child who is adapted to the changing environment like the birds that are symbolized.
Anita Desai has explicitly described in her very own style of writing ,how Hari in the dilapidated conditions of the Sri Krishna Eating House finds warmth and affection through Mr Panwallah-owner and watch mender of the Ding-Dong watch shop .Mr Panwallah instills confidence in Hari and comforts him when he is terribly home sick.He even gives Hari a vivid and inspiring future and teaches him watch mending .This shows that even in one of the most busiest , rickety and ramshackled cities such as Bombay there is still hope ,love and affection.i like to read this novel because it showthe real life of family in india,who struggle i their life
Did you know that an Arkansas television anchorwoman died last Saturday, several days after she didn't answer her wake-up call and was found beaten in her home, hospital officials said.Anne Pressly, 26, died at St. Vincent Infirmary Medical Center, hospital.In a statement released by the hospital, Pressly's parents, Guy and Patti Cannady, asked for privacy as they grieved. Pressly was beaten around the head, face and neck. She had been unable to communicate with her family or police while being kept sedated in the intensive care unit. The anchor's death came only a day after a doctor said he was encouraged that her vital signs were stable while she remained in critical condition. Dr. Clifton R. Johnson told reporters Friday that swelling in Pressly's brain had gone down since being hospitalized and that doctors had slowly been reducing her sedative dosages. She was discovered Monday morning a half-hour before she was to appear on ABC affiliate KATV's "Daybreak" program. Her mother went to her home after she didn't answer her regular wake-up call.Police have yet to identify a suspect, though detectives have combed the area around Pressly's home in the Heights neighborhood — a mix of bungalows and mansions near the Little Rock Country Club. News reports have said detectives found evidence that Pressly's credit card was used Monday at a gas station a few miles from her home. Investigators suspect Pressly was the victim of a random attack. Davis did not return a call for comment Saturday night.No funeral arrangements were immediately announced.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081026/ap_on_re_us/tv_anchor_attacked;_ylt=ApcjXuSf4xMTqiF9h.sNlvJ34T0D
Assalamualaikum,
Did you know people who eat quickly and until they're full are three times more likely to be overweight than others, a Japanese study says. For the research, 1,122 men and 2,165 women, ages 30 to 69, filled out a diet history questionnaire about their eating habits, which revealed that 50.9 percent of men and 58.4 percent of women said they ate until they were full, while 45.6 percent of men and 36 percent of women said they ate quickly.Those who said they ate quickly and until they were full had a higher body mass index (BMI) and total energy intake, and were three times more likely to be overweight than those who didn't eat until they were full and didn't eat quickly.The study, published online Oct. 22 in the British Medical Journal, shows that eating quickly and until full has "a supra-additive effect on overweight," concluded Professor Hiroyasu Iso, of Osaka University, and colleagues. Until recently, most adults didn't have the opportunity to consume enough energy to enable the body to store fat, according to background information in the study. But eating behaviors have changed due to increased availability of inexpensive food in larger portions, fast food, fewer families eating together, and eating while distracted (such as watching TV). The study findings illustrate how current eating patterns in many nations may play a role in the epidemic of obesity, Elizabeth Denney-Wilson, of the University of New South Wales, and Karen Campbell, of Deakin University, both in Australia, wrote in an accompanying editorial.They said doctors need to work with parents to encourage healthy eating habits in children, such as eating slowly, serving appropriate portion sizes, and eating as a family in a non-distracting environment.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20081023/hl_hsn/eatingfastuntilfulltrip
Assalamualaikum,
"What contributes to overweight and obesity?"
Overall there are a variety of factors that play a role in obesity. This makes it a complex health issue to address. This section will address how behavior, environment, and genetic factors may have an effect in causing people to be overweight and obese.Overweight and obesity result from an energy imbalance. This involves eating too many calories and not getting enough physical activity. Body weight is the result of genes, metabolism, behavior, environment, culture, and socioeconomic status. Behavior and environment play a large role causing people to be overweight and obese. These are the greatest areas for prevention and treatment actions.When it comes to maintaining a healthy weight for a lifetime, the bottom line is — calories count! Weight management is all about balance—balancing the number of calories you consume with the number of calories your body uses or "burns off." A calorie is defined as a unit of energy supplied by food. A calorie is a calorie regardless of its source. Whether you’re eating carbohydrates, fats, sugars, or proteins, all of them contain calories. Caloric balance is like a scale. To remain in balance and maintain your body weight, the calories consumed (from foods) must be balanced by the calories used (in normal body functions, daily activities, and exercise). Genetics and the environment may increase the risk of personal weight gain. However, the choices a person makes in eating and physical activity also contributes to overweight and obesity. People may make decisions based on their environment or community. For example, a person may choose not to walk to the store or to work because of a lack of sidewalks. Communities, homes, and workplaces can all influence people's health decisions. Because of this influence, it is important to create environments in these locations that make it easier to engage in physical activity and to eat a healthy diet. Science shows that genetics plays a role in obesity. Genes can directly cause obesity in disorders such as Bardet-Biedl syndrome and Prader-Willi syndrome. However genes do not always predict future health. Genes and behavior may both be needed for a person to be overweight. In some cases multiple genes may increase one’s susceptibility for obesity and require outside factors; such as abundant food supply or little physical activity. Some illnesses may lead to obesity or weight gain. These may include Cushing's disease, and polycystic ovary syndrome. Drugs such as steroids and some antidepressants may also cause weight gain. A doctor is the best source to tell you whether illnesses, medications, or psychological factors are contributing to weight gain or making weight loss hard.
http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/contributing_factors.htm
Assalamualaikum,
An aggressive strategy of vaccinating older women against cervical cancer could deliver a crippling blow against the disease, cutting rates for that type of cancer in half for women through age 45. Vaccinating women in the United States by ages 12 through 45 against the cancer-causing human papillomavirus, or HPV, could reduce cases of cervical cancer by 85 percent for 12-year-olds and up to 55 percent for 45-year-old women. It could lower rates by 34 to 67 percent for 25-year-old women, Warner Huh of the University of Alabama told a meeting in Washington of the American Society for Microbiology and the Infectious Diseases Society of America. The model assumed 100 percent vaccination rates, which would be difficult to achieve in the United States. Most cases of cervical cancer are caused by the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus. Merck and Co's Gardasil vaccine is designed to protect against HPV types 16 and 18, which are known to cause about 70 percent of all cases of cervical cancer. It also is designed to protect against HPV strains 6 and 11, which cause genital warts. Gardasil is approved in the United States for use in girls and women ages 9 to 26, but Merck is seeking to expand its use to older women. The thinking has been that girls must be vaccinated before they are sexually active, because HPV is so common. The vaccine does not protect anyone who has already been infected with one of the strains of HPV. Huh's calculations included clinical trial data on GlaxoSmithKline's Cervarix vaccine, which is not yet approved for sale in the United States but which is approved in Europe. He assumed Cervarix gave 95 percent protection against HPV types 16 and 18, and 27 percent efficacy against all other high-risk HPV types. Vaccinating women over age 26 has not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and is not included in U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines. An estimated 11,070 new cases of cervical cancer will be diagnosed in 2008 in the United States, and 3,870 women will die from their cancers.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081025/hl_nm/us_cancer
THUNDERSTORM......
also known as an electrical storm or a lightning storm, is a form of weather characterized by the presence of lightning and its effect: thunder.It is usually accompanied by heavy rain and sometimes snow, hail, or no precipitation at all. Thunderstorms may line up in a series, and strong or severe thunderstorms may rotate.do you know the life cycle of thunderstorm?Warm air has a lower density than cool air, so warm air rises within cooler air, similar to hot air balloons. Clouds form as warm air carrying moisture rises within cooler air. As the warm air rises, it cools. The moist water vapor begins to condense. When the moisture condenses, this releases energy that keeps the air warmer than its surroundings, so that it continues to rise. If enough instability is present in the atmosphere, this process will continue long enough for cumulonimbus clouds to form, which support lightning and thunder.
All thunderstorms, regardless of type, go through three stages: the cumulus stage, the mature stage, and the dissipation stage. Depending on the conditions present in the atmosphere, these three stages can take anywhere from 20 minutes to several hours to occur
The first stage of a thunderstorm is the cumulus stage, or developing stage. In this stage, masses of moisture are lifted upwards into the atmosphere. The trigger for this lift can be insolation heating the ground producing thermals, areas where two winds converge forcing air upwards, or where winds blow over terrain of increasing elevation. The moisture rapidly cools into liquid drops of water, which appears as cumulus clouds. As the water vapor condenses into liquid, latent heat is released which warms the air, causing it to become less dense than the surrounding dry air. The air tends to rise in an updraft through the process of convection (hence the term convective precipitation). This creates a low-pressure zone beneath the forming thunderstorm. In a typical thunderstorm, approximately 5×108 kg of water vapor are lifted, and the amount of energy released when this condenses is about equal to the energy used by a city (US-2002) of 100,000 during a month.[citation needed]
In the mature stage of a thunderstorm, the warmed air continues to rise until it reaches existing air which is warmer, and the air can rise no further. Often this 'cap' is the tropopause. The air is instead forced to spread out, giving the storm a characteristic anvil shape. The resulting cloud is called cumulonimbus incus. The water droplets coalesce into heavy droplets and freeze to become ice particles. As these fall they melt to become rain. If the updraft is strong enough, the droplets are held aloft long enough to be so large that they do not melt completely and fall as hail. While updrafts are still present, the falling rain creates downdrafts as well. The simultaneous presence of both an updraft and downdrafts marks the mature stage of the storm, and during this stage considerable internal turbulence can occur in the storm system, which sometimes manifests as strong winds, severe lightning, and even tornadoes.
Typically, if there is little wind shear, the storm will rapidly enter the dissipating stage and 'rain itself out', but if there is sufficient change in wind speed and/or direction the downdraft will be separated from the updraft, and the storm may become a supercell, and the mature stage can sustain itself for several hours.
In certain cases however, even with little wind shear, if there is enough atmospheric support and instability in place for the thunderstorm to feed on, it may even maintain its mature stage a bit longer than most storms.
In the dissipation stage, the thunderstorm is dominated by the downdraft. If atmospheric conditions do not support super cellular development, this stage occurs rather quickly, approximately 20-30 minutes into the life of the thunderstorm. The downdraft will push down out of the thunderstorm, hit the ground and spread out. The cool air carried to the ground by the downdraft cuts off the inflow of the thunderstorm, the updraft disappears and the thunderstorm will dissipate.
There are four main types of thunderstorms: single cell, multicell, squall line (also called multicell line) and supercell. Which type forms depends on the instability and relative wind conditions at different layers of the atmosphere ("wind shear").
Thunderstorms occur throughout the world, even in the polar regions, with the greatest frequency in tropical rainforest areas, where they may occur nearly daily. Kampala and Tororo in Uganda have each been mentioned as the most thunderous places on Earth,[12] an accolade which has also been bestowed upon Bogor on Java, Indonesia or Singapore. Thunderstorms are associated with the various monsoon seasons around the globe, and they populate the rainbands of all[citation needed] tropical cyclones. In temperate regions, they are most frequent in spring and summer, although they can occur along or ahead of cold fronts at any time of year. They may also occur within a cooler air mass following the passage of a cold front over a relatively warmer body of water. Thunderstorms are rare in polar regions because of cold surface temperatures.
Some of the most powerful and dangerous thunderstorms occur over the United States, particularly in the Midwest and the southern states. These storms can produce large hail and powerful tornadoes. Thunderstorms are relatively uncommon along much of the West Coast of the United States,[13] but they occur with greater frequency in the inland areas, particularly the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys of California. Furthermore, in spring and summer, they occur nearly daily in certain areas of the Rocky Mountains. In the Northeast, storms take on similar characteristics and patterns as the Midwest, only less frequently and severely. Probably the most thunderous region outside of the Tropics is Florida. During the summer, violent thunderstorms are an almost daily occurrence over central and southern parts of the state. In more contemporary times, thunderstorms have taken on the role of a curiosity. Every spring, storm chasers head to the Great Plains of the United States and the Canadian Prairies to explore the visual and scientific aspects of storms and tornadoes
it is quit fun to read samething abuot nature,the amazing thing about thunderstorm.you can read this more in wikipedia.thank you
Fiber may protect against small bowel cancer
A healthy amount of fiber and whole grain foods in the diet not only protects against colon cancer, it also protects against cancer developing in the small intestine, research indicates.The small intestine makes up 75 percent of the digestive tract, yet rarely do cancers develop there, more often showing up in the large intestine, or colon, Dr. Arthur Schatzkin from the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland and colleagues explain in the journal Gastroenterology. To gauge the effects of dietary fiber and whole grain foods for protecting against the occurrence of small bowel cancer, they analyzed data gathered in 1995 and 1996 from 293,703 men and 198,618 women in the Diet and Health Study. During follow-up over an average of 7 years, cancer of the small intestine was diagnosed in 165 study subjects. Results showed that those with the highest intake of fiber from grains, relative to those with the lowest, had a significant 49 percent reduction in the risk of developing small bowel cancer. Those with the highest intake of whole grain foods had a 41-percent reduction in small bowel cancer risk relative to those with the lowest intake of whole grain foods. Current recommendations call for US adults to consume 20 to 35 grams of dietary fiber per day, but studies have shown that the average American's daily intake of dietary fiber is only 12 to 18 grams. The one-fifth of people in the current study with the lowest fiber intake averaged 12 grams per day, and the one-fifth in the highest ranking took in an average of 28 grams per day.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081024/hl_nm/us_fiber_cancer
Assalamualaikum,
Gastric bypass cuts heart risks. The risk faced by obese people of having a heart attack or other cardiovascular "events" is reduced substantially after they undergo gastric bypass surgery to lose weight, according to a recent study. The take-home message is that "bariatric surgery can be considered as a means to reduce cardiovascular risk (in obese patients) after conservative treatment options have failed," Dr. John A. Batsis told Reuters Health. Batsis, at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire and his colleagues identified six studies that looked at cardiovascular risk after bariatric surgery for obesity. The risk was estimated from standard tables that assigned a score for factors such as weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Depending on how the patients' risk was assessed, the researchers found that gastric bypass reduced the risk for a future cardiovascular event anywhere from 8 percent to 79 percent, compared to not having the procedure, the team reports in the American Journal of Cardiology. Looked at another way, the predicted chance of having a heart attack or needing heart surgery or dying of heart disease over 10 years fell from 7.0 percent to 3.5 percent after undergoing bariatric surgery. For people who did not have surgery, the probability fell from 7.1 percent to 6.5 percent. These figures were estimates. As Batsis noted, "Further studies are required to better understand the long-term impact of bariatric surgery on predicted cardiovascular risk in obese patients by determining the actual number of cardiac events."
SOURCE: American Journal of Cardiology, October 1, 2008. By Anthony J. Brown, MD Anthony J. Brown, Md – Mon Oct 20, 10:16 am ET
Assalamualaikum,
Many countries now have a mobile penetration rate above 100%. A new research report claims that 30 countries around the world now have a greater number of mobile phone subscriptions than the size of their population. The study from Informa Telecoms and Media, a provider of business intelligence and strategic marketing solutions, says that countries including Hong Kong, Kuwait and the Czech Republic have a mobile phone penetration rate of over 100%, while in some markets such as Sweden, the United Kingdom and Italy the penetration rate is over 110%. This reflects a trend for many users to buy second or third subscriptions. Meanwhile in most markets of the developed world the proportion of the population using mobile phones has stabilised at around 80-85%, the report states. Informa Telecoms and Media has forecast that by the end of 2006 the number of countries with a mobile penetration rate above 100% will reach 40, with Russia expected to be among the countries joining the list.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mobile
Assalamualaikum,
How to save electricity from all those gadgets
We all love our gadgets – and love having more and more of them – but technophilia has a downside: Running all those gadgets takes energy. For individual consumers, that means higher electric bills. For society as a whole, it means increased generation of greenhouse gases.Fortunately, energy experts say, you don't have to throw out your new LCD TV to curb your energy consumption. There are some easier, less painful steps you can take. And new technology either already on store shelves or coming online soon should help consumers cut their consumption even more, they say.A representative of the Consumer Electronics Association, an industry trade group, noted that the energy consumption of many individual products has come down considerably over time. Energy consumed by gadgets is rising rapidly at a time when consumption by other appliances, such as refrigerators and air-conditioning units, has fallen markedly. In 2001, the average U.S. household used about 778 kilowatt-hours per year to power tech gadgets, about 7 percent of total electricity use, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. That was up from 6 percent, or 633 kilowatt-hours, in 1997.Part of the increase reflects the proliferation of devices. DVRs, MP3 players and wireless routers have gone from exotic to commonplace over the past 10 years. Cell phones have grown in popularity. And many consumers have gone from having one PC at home to two or three. Along the way, consumers have frequently replaced older tech product with ones that are bigger and faster – and which often consume more power. TVs with liquid crystal displays, for instance, are typically more efficient than older ones with cathode ray tubes. But consumers often replace their older TVs with much bigger ones, which reduces any efficiency gains. With recent spikes in energy prices, growing concern about global warming and prodding from regulators and advocates, the electronics industry has increasingly focused on efficiency issues, analysts say. Many devices now use less power in standby mode than they did before, for instance. Mostly, though, it just takes awareness by consumers of how much energy their gadgets are using. And they have an incentive to do so: Conserving electricity saves money. Horowitz estimates that consumers can lower their power bills by 5 percent just by doing things like turning off gadgets.
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/business/story/277604.html
Assalamualaikum,
How to save electricity with electronics?
Firstly, measure your output. Electricity usage meters, such as P3 International's Kill A Watt (about $18 online), can tell you how much energy is consumed by particular devices when they are in use, on standby or simply plugged in. Secondly, dim your television. New LCD computer monitors and flat-screen TVs are frequently set to maximum brightness. Turning down the brightness can save significant energy without a notable difference in picture. Thirdly, turn ‘em off. Leaving gadgets like computers or routers on all the time can save time waiting for them to start up. But it also sucks energy – and burns money. Fourth, unplug. Tech devices frequently use significant energy even when they are nominally turned off. So can power adapters, even when they're not plugged into devices such as phones and laptops. Fifth, use power strips. It can be a pain to go around unplugging everything. Using a power strip can save time, allowing you to shut off multiple devices with the flick of a switch. Sixth, buy a smart strip. New power strips automatically turn off power to devices when they sense that the devices aren't in active use.
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/business/story/277604.html
Evolution of oil use
Early use
HUMANS started using oil as early as 5,000 years ago. According to Discover Magazine (20 Things You Didn’t Know About Oil, July 2008), by the eighth century, the Middle East already had a petroleum industry. The streets of Baghdad were paved with tar which were made from petroleum. In 347CE, Chinese drilled oil wells up to 240m deep with bamboo.
1594
35m deep oil wells are dug by hand at Baku, in what was formerly Persia (now Azerbaijan).
1849
Canadian Abraham Gesner develops process to distil kerosene from cannel coal and bituminous shale. He will be known as the “father of the petroleum industry.”
1814
Caldwell, Ohio, settlers Silas Thorla and Robert McKee accidently find oil while searching for an underground pool of salt brine. They consider it a nuisance, but later enterprisingly sold the substance as “a digestive elixir” called “Seneca Oil”. (Source: Roadside America - http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/11665)
July 1, 1859
Colonel Drake near Titusville, Pa pioneers a new way to produce oil: By drilling for it. People initially laughed at the idea. His work birthed the oil industry.
1948
The largest oil field in the world (measuring 280km x 30km), Ghawar, is discovered in Saudi Arabia.
1950s-1960s
The United States is the world’s largest oil producer.
1956
At an American Petroleum Institute meeting in San Antonio, Texas, M. King Hubbert, a geologist working for Shell Oil, predicted that oil production in United States will “peak” between 1965 and early 1970s. His theory was dismissed. In 1970, his prediction came true.
Sept 10€“14, 1960
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) is founded by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. The cartel now has 13 member countries: Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE and
Venezuela. The body plays a big role in stabilising and determining world oil prices.
1960s
Oil discoveries around the world peak.
1970
Oil production peaks in the United States.
October 17, 1973 to March 1974
Global energy crisis begins when Opec stops shipping oil to the United States, its allies in Western Europe and Japan, because of the Yom Kippur War. The countries had supported Israel in its conflict with Syria, Egypt and Iraq. Price of oil quadruple. Long lines began form at petrol stations in the US and gasoline is rationed.
Early 1980s
Oil is in surplus; prices fall. Price of oil is under US$25 a barrel.
1984
World oil production exceeds new oil discoveries. (Earth Policy Institute)
1999 and 2000
Production of the two North Sea oil producers - Britain and Norway - peaks.
2003
Price of oil starts rising from its “usual” price of US$25 per barrel to US$30.
2004
Oil production peaks in Mexico’s largest oil field: Cantarell. (It was discovered by Rudesindo Cantarell, a fisherman, in 1976.) According to US geologist Walter Youngquist, Cantarell is now in steep decline, and Mexico could be an oil importer by 2015. The oil field is the second largest in the world. (Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization by Lester R. Brown.)
2006
Russia becomes the world’s leading oil producer, eclipsing Saudi Arabia. (Source: Earth Policy Institute.)
The United States is the third largest oil producer, but Americans consume far more oil than the country can produce. (International Energy Agency) In 2007, The US consumed 142 billion gallons of oil, which translates to an average of 390 million gallons per day. The US produces 5.1 million barrels a day. (Oil Shock, Washington Post)
March 2008
Oil prices go above US$100 (around RM352) a barrel.
June 2008
Oil prices rise above US$146 (RM514).
September 2008
According to Bloomberg, Russia’s oil production fell for the ninth straight month in September. It is the country’s first annual drop in output since 1998.
October 2008
Oil prices fall by around 50% to US$70 (RM246). According to the International Herald Tribune (OPEC calls emergency meeting as oil prices fall, Oct 17, 2008), while consumers may cheer, Opec is worried that the situation “could set the stage for possible shortages of oil and higher prices when global demand picks up again.”
Another inconvenient truth
OIL is the excrement of the devil,” announces the narrator at the start of the documentary, A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash.
The documentary certainly doesn’t start on a bright note. Instead, it pounds several depressing facts into the viewer: oil is running out. The world will change irrevocably. Your comfortable modern life will be history.
Yet one is still drawn to the film’s sights and sounds. Archival footage €“ which include humorous TV advertisements from the 1960s €“ gives us a glimpse of the early, optimistic days of petroleum. But then came the fall, and the happy images are replaced by the bleak and apocalyptic sights of abandoned oil fields, with its rusting towers and muddy fields, in places like Baku, Azerbaijan.
The film, made by award-winning journalists and filmmakers Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack, has an impressive array of interviewees, many of them geologists, former oil industry insiders and academics. Gelpke and McCormack rely on their voices €“ there are no celebrity narrators here €“ to explain how the oil industry evolved, how people deluded themselves into believing that oil supply will never run out and how, through market and political forces, people have became addicted to oil, using it for nearly every aspect of their lives.
Oil is an amazing source of energy, says interviewee Republican Congressman Roscoe Bartlett. One barrel of oil will produce as much work as you would get from 12 people working all year.
Unfortunately, human beings are using it far too quickly and carelessly.
A dangerous thing to do since oil is not a renewable source of energy, and its supply will dwindle one day.
One can’t help but feel alarmed when one discovers that the great bulk of the world’s oil supplies was formed in two unique environmental periods of the Earth’s history, and over a period of millions of years.
Yet, human beings are guzzling it up in just over two centuries.
And as the reality of dwindling oil supplies sink in (even if the governments of the world refuse to acknowledge it), the “devilish” side of oil use comes forth: wars, price surges and turmoil in the market and society.
The film goes on to discuss energy sources that could replace oil. But can alternative energy like hydrogen fuels, solar and wind power, and fuel cell technology save mankind from the hole it has dug itself?
Happily ever after, and other fairy tales
By ADORO
THERE can’t be many of you who have not read Cinderella or Snow White, or at least watched the movie.
Notice the happily ever after ending to all those fairy tale stories? No matter how evil tries to pull them down, the heroes or heroines always manage to win, often without even having to fight.
Well, I am not a fan of these stories. Sorry little kids, it is just that reality hit me.
Do not get me wrong. I am not some weird kid who lives in the dark and dwell in all my misery. I happen to be the opposite.
I once used to lived in “Lala Land”, I was such a happy-go-lucky person that you could say that I looked like Frankenstein’s monster and I would still smile and reply cheerfully, “God bless you”.
Now, I am almost the same person, with just one difference. One big difference.
Anger caught up with me. Yes, I am barely 18 but I have the anger level of my 50-something Maths teacher.
I can get angry with anything, from the changed position of my soap, the sudden disappearance of my eraser, a bird chirping too loud, the little things.
Most of the time it is my younger sister who bears the brunt of my yelling and angry faces.
It is tough being the younger one, and I know it. That is why the shouts she gets are usually short and accompanied with warnings. Yes, what else are kid sisters for right? But why the sudden change, I wonder? Well, I blame it on Form Six.
Up till I was in Form Five, life was good. Pressure to do well in my studies was always there but not as much as now because this is my last chance to become someone.
An aeronautical engineer, actually, and every time someone asks me what I want to become and I reply, you can almost see the veins in their eyes that pop out.
It’s always the same line: “But you are a girl!”
Well, yes, I know I am a girl! I checked!
Truth is, I do not have a warm and fuzzy tale or touching story to tell. All I have is my own story from my view.
You see, until recently I was very sure that I wanted to become an aeronautical engineer. Now, I am not so sure.
No, it is not because of all the eye-popping. It is just that I am wondering, why should my life turn out to be so typical?
Why should I study hard, become what I want, work harder and just die? Why can’t I be more than that?
I feel that you should not be defined as successful by want you do, but who you are.
I don’t want to be an aeronautical engineer only. I also want to become a marine biologist, a zoologist, I want to sell ice cream, I want to be a tourist guide, a pilot.
I want to be many things and live out many dreams, but I have only one life.
So, this is what I will do. I am not a fan of planning things out €“ it never works out anyway €“ but this would be a rough sketch of my life.
I work my dream job (I’ll find a way to pick one), save money and stop working at the age of 40 and then do all the things I want to do in my list.
Yes, I have a list. It contains all the things I ever wanted to do and it does not matter how ridiculous it is or whether it is even possible.
Some of the things I really want to do include attending an Olympics, climb Mount Kinabalu, be in two places at once, own a Ferrari, ride a Suzuki GSX-R (without my parents knowledge, of course), create a record by playing PlayStation for 24 hours straight and other insane things.
So, all those of you that are unsure of your life, just take it one step at a time, quit planning, and just live it.
I know my life will not be happily-ever-after but I will be happy, just not always, because I have to live with my dry, frizzy hair, slow computer, loud birds and huge thighs, and not forgetting annoying sisters and a brother who is a pain in the neck.
For now, my sister will just have to bear with the yelling a little while longer. Or, at least until I find my patience. Welcome to reality.
>Parents and their children at any age can have different points of view over just about everything. Or do they? We invite parents and children to write in to show us where the generation gap closes and widens. E-mail us at starmag-gap@thestar.com.my. You must include your full name as it appears in your IC, your IC number, address, and contact phone number. Submissions without these details will not be entertained
No money, no love
I AM 25 this year, and have been working for almost three years after graduating from university.
I was dating this girl, J, for more than six years. She is still studying.
We just broke up recently. I love and miss her very much.
We had fought and broken up many times before but we always got back together after a few days of breaking up.
But this time, it’s different. She said that she couldn’t be together with me any longer because our opinions were so different all the time, and we were both suffering because of these differences.
No matter what I do, she will never be satisfied and even will not give me any support for it.
I tried to save money from the beginning of the year for our future marriage.
She changed a lot after entering university two years ago. She told me that a guy was in love with her and “chasing after” her. She enjoys the feeling of being chased.
She mentioned that this guy comes from a rich family. She might be in “love” with him because of his wealth.
The night before we broke up, she told me that she would not marry or be with me until I was rich.
She has taught me a very good lesson; that without money, there is no true love.
No Money, No Love
DON’T be so bitter. Is this girl really worth so much pain that you become such a harsh, cynical man?
You know her now for the manipulative, materialistic and malignant person that she is. She is cancerous, eating into your heart and mind, destroying your trust in love.
But if you could be rational and pragmatic, walk away and leave the hatred and bitterness behind. Then at least, you still have a chance to win in love.
Consider this your lucky break. A good man does not need a cold, mercenary woman.
She will never be happy and contented to share a sweet and simple life with you. She will probably make you feel a failure, a man who can never provide enough for her.
So stop thinking about her and get on with your life.
It is important that you know love and values. A good woman would know a good man, so be patient until true love finds you.
Earning my own money
By CHYE HONG CHENG
As students, we usually rely on our parents for pocket money. We do not even stop to contemplate the hardships our parents go through to earn money.
That was why I decided to work during my semester break to supplement my pocket money as I was running low on cash. I did not feel like asking extra cash from my parents as they have already fulfilled many of my ever changing wishes and whim. The time was right for me to experience the hardship of working for the first time.
Finding a job was itself hard work as I had to run around on a hot day going from shop to shop with `Help Wanted’ signs plastered on their windows. Approaching busy people in shops to enquire about vacancies require some thick skin.
The answers I received usually range from, “We only want girls” or “Sorry, we do noneed part time workers”. It was very depressing and humbling to be turned down by many of the shop owners. A few of the bosses took down my phone number and said they would call if they needed help. I waited a few days for their replies but it was all in vain.
My break came when I walked past a shop named MyNet with a sign saying “Part-time workers needed”.
As I had been turned down many times by possible employers, I was debating whether or not to try my luck. I had nothing to lose, so I went into the shop and asked the person working at the desk whether there was an opening available for part time workers. Imagine my relief when he told me they needed extra workers for an upcoming computer fair.
Training was provided the following day to give me an idea about my job and responsibilities. The training provided was quite short, but equipped me with the information needed to inform customers about the services I was supposed to sell. The instructions given were short and easy to understand. We were given t-shirts bearing the company logos, and instructed to turn up the next morning for the fair.
The PC fair was actually a three-day affair where anything related to computers can be obtained. Both buyers and sellers of computer parts and software flock here to compare prices and sell their wares. Our team was assigned to a big booth. My job as a salesman was to search for potential customers and persuade them to sign up for broadband services.
Walking around the fair asking strangers if they are interested in signing up was quite fun. If a person was to show interest in the Internet facilities I was selling, I would first try to befriend them before I painstakingly explain about the services and charges. My commission depended on how many customers I was able to persuade to register. As I was working solely on commission, it encouraged me to work harder and not be complacent at work.
The three days of working at the PC Fair has taught me many valuable lessons. First, the art of communication is an added advantage as we need to be able to relate to people to persuade them to buy our products or services.
It is better to befriend your potential customer before introducing them to your product rather than asking them straightaway. Once you have established a rapport with potential customers, they will be more receptive to your sales pitch.
Next, patience is required while working together with other people; be it your team mates, seniors or bosses. It is important to be professional and not get entangled in other people’s problems or politics.
Lastly, handling money with care is very important as we have to pay for the losses.
In conclusion, working during the holidays has made me more aware of the value of money and how commercialised everything is today. It has made me value all I have. I am now all the more determined to equipmyself with the knowledge and skills to compete in the work market when I graduate.
Enjoying work is crucial as it contributes to the happiness one experiences in life.
Read all about it
By ELIZABETH TAI
A FEW authors have taken the mantle to educate and warn the world about the impact of dwindling oil supplies on human civilisation. Here are some of the best books out there:
The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World
Author: Paul Roberts
Publisher: Mariner Books, 399 pages
(ISBN: 978-0618562114)
This is perhaps the most comprehensive and carefully researched book on peak oil there is. Roberts, a “longtime observer of both business and environmental issues”, is particularly excellent at explaining how nations are jostling for control of precious petroleum, and how powerful corporations are standing in the way of alternative fuels. Comprehensive and well-researched, End of Oil is a great book to understand oil’s effect on our lives.
Addicted to Oil: America’s Relentless Drive for Energy Security
Author: by Ian Rutledge
Publisher: I. B. Tauris & Company; 288 pages
(ISBN: 978-1845113193)
In the first few chapters, this book details how the United States became more and more addicted to oil. The blame, it seems, lies on the American love for automobiles: the bigger, the better.
Only 4% of Americans use public transport to work, says author Ian Rutledge. The car, he says, is the “lynch pin of an oil economy”.
However, the American’s (and the rest of the world who try to emulate their car-driven lifestyles) reliance on cars are not just fuelling the oil giants, but the wars that are being fought to preserve their lifestyles.
Oil on the Brain: Petroleum’s Long, Strange Trip To Your Tank
Author: Lisa Margonelli
Publisher: Bantam Books; 330 pages
(ISBN: 978-0767916974)
While most books on peak oil focuses on the macro effect of oil on the world, Margonelli zooms down to the people on the ground instead. She interviews owners of gas stations, workers at a drilling rig, truckers who haul the precious oil across states and the brokers that have to deal with oil’s fluctuating prices. She also visits nations such as oil-producing Venezuela and hungry oil consumer China.
The result is a fascinating micro view of the impact oil has on ordinary people and societies, and how intricately it weaves through and sustains our modern lifestyles.
Plan C: Community Survival Strategies for Peak Oil and Climate Change
Author: Pat Murphy
Publisher: New Society Publishers; 304 pages
(ISBN: 978-0865716070)
For Murphy, the time to seek technological solutions to the problem of dwindling oil sources is over.
Although Murphy calls his book a “numbers book” (and it is full of charts and graphs), he approaches the issue in a holistic, almost spiritual way, saying that humanity has to sit back and repent for their sins, namely the sin of greed and over-consumption.
The book is full of solutions and ideas on how to transform community and culture for a post-oil era, even if it sometimes gets bogged down by rhetoric about human morality (or lack thereof).
Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy
Author: Matthew R. Simmons
Publisher: Wiley, John & Sons, 464 pages
(ISBN: 978-0471790181)
Matthew R. Simmons is called the “high priest of peak oil” for a good reason. After studying technical studies which describes the state of Saudi Arabia’s oil fields, Simmons came to the conclusion that Saudi Arabia’s biggest fields were already past their peaks.
He then wrote Twilight, which reveals Saudi Arabia’s oil industry, which are plagued by political and societal instability. It’s far from the rosy picture that Saudi Arabia has trumpeted, and Saudi authorities dismissed his book.
However, many readers believe the facts, figures and theories which he laid out in meticulous detail in Twilight, and think of it as convincing proof that the world’s oil production will soon peak and decline. An engrossing and disturbing read.
The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power
Author: Daniel Yergin
Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 928 pages
(ISBN: 978-0671799328)
This 1992 Pulitzer prize-winning book talks about a century and a half of discoveries and developments in the oil industry.
Yergin, who spent nearly a decade researching for the book, succeeds in elaborating what happened, is happening and will happen €“ economically and politically €“ to the world because of the oil industry.
Interestingly, Yergin, who is the chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates (an organisation that often criticises peak oil theory), does not believe in peak oil.
Assalamualaikum,
How to have a conversation with the Teenage Brain?
What's going on inside your teenager's brain? and how can you get them to stop texting long enough to listen to all the great advice you're dying to give? Despite actions to the contrary, teens really want and need their parents' guidance, experts say. And you have more potential than you think to break through their sullen sighs and silences. In fact, a young person's need for guidance continues longer than you may realize – at least through age 21 or 22. That's because research shows the brain's decision-making capacity is still developing until then. “We can't expect them to make perfect decisions all the time without our assistance,” says Dr. Kristin Rager, director of adolescent medicine at Levine Children's Hospital and medical director of Teen Health Connection. Rager has no teens of her own but talks to them often in her work. She says that even though they may act like they want to do the opposite of what parents say, there's evidence teens are less likely to engage in risky behaviors if parents clearly communicate their expectations and values. With that in mind, here's some advice from Rager to help parents understand and communicate better with their teenagers and young adults. Until recently, the brain was thought to be fully developed by the end of childhood. Scientists now know that the part of the brain responsible for making judgments, setting priorities and controlling impulses – the prefrontal cortex – is one of the last areas to mature. It continues to develop until the 20s. Adolescents are believed to take more risks because their prefrontal cortex is immature. They have a hard time seeing the consequences of their actions. How to improve communication with teenagers is talk while you're doing something – like driving in the car – instead of sitting down for a “serious” lecture. Talk openly and listen calmly, even if you don't like what your teen is saying. Don't be instantly judgmental. Acknowledge their point of view and recognize their positive qualities. Tell your teen your expectations and values – everything from smoking to drinking and driving to using drugs or having sex. Don't try to be your teen's friend. He or she needs an authority figure. If you're doing your job, you won't always be liked. Set consequences that aren't excessively harsh. Make them about teaching instead of retaliation. Renegotiate rules as your child matures. Tell your teen they can call you in any situation that feels unsafe, even if they're somewhere they shouldn't be. Be willing to put off talking about it until the next day. College students need your guidance, too, but don't micro-manage. They need to experience the consequences of their decisions. Realize that even when teens act like they aren't listening, they probably are.
www.teenhealthconnection.org.
Assalamualaikum,
Depression During Pregnancy May Cause Premature Birth
Women who are depressed early in their pregnancy run a higher risk of preterm delivery, the leading cause of infant mortality, a new study suggests.For the study, researchers interviewed 791 San Francisco-area women near their 10th week of pregnancy. Forty-one percent reported "significant" symptoms of depression, and 22 percent reported "severe" symptoms. Those women with severe symptoms had almost twice the risk of an early birth, defined as before 37 weeks' gestation. Those with significant symptoms had a 60 percent risk of early birth, the study found. Women who were likelier to report depressive symptoms tended to be younger than 25, unmarried, less educated, poorer, black, and have a history of preterm delivery. Discovering a possible cause of preterm birth, about which little is known, makes the findings significant, said study lead author Dr. De-Kun Li, a perinatal epidemiologist and senior research scientist at Kaiser Permanente's Division of Research in Oakland, Calif. Scientists have been researching for the causes of high rates of infant mortality in the United States, Li said, but, "we don't know what is going on. If we can find something as obvious as depression that can be treated during pregnancy, that is very, very significant." The findings were published online Oct. 23 in the journal Human Reproduction. Dr. Shari I. Lusskin, director of reproductive psychiatry at New York University Medical Center, said she doesn't think the study establishes a link between depression in early pregnancy and preterm delivery. She said the women in the study weren't clinically diagnosed with depression but had scored high on a screening test. "We don't know if the depression at 10 weeks is a marker for something that happens later in pregnancy, which is the real culprit," she said. Li hopes the study's findings will make "ante-natal depression" as widely recognized as postpartum depression has become. Until now, depression during pregnancy has been "under-estimated and under-treated," he said, "not just by women, but also by their doctors." One reason for this lack of attention is that there hasn't been strong evidence of a connection between depression in pregnant women and harm to the fetus, Li said. Women may not readily report depressed feelings when they are pregnant because of the societal expectation that having a baby should be a joyous occasion, said Dr. Jennifer Wu, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. "I think many patients are very stressed about pregnancy and worried about the pregnancy and not sure about its impact on their lives," Wu said. Lusskin tries to spread the word about the dangers of depression during pregnancy. "The more we know about postpartum depression, the more we realize that half the cases started in pregnancy," Lusskin said. Ante-natal depression also carries the risk of noncompliance with prenatal care, poor nutrition, inadequate sleep, self-medication with drugs and alcohol, and suicide, she explained. And, Lusskin added, "Ante-natal depression interferes with bonding with the baby both during pregnancy and post-partum." The take-home lesson from the Kaiser study, Lusskin said, "is that ante-natal depression and ante-natal depression symptoms have some effect on pregnancy, and they should be treated, even though we don't know how that mood is translated into the biochemistry of that pregnancy." She added that she is "a proponent of maintaining a good mood throughout pregnancy and breast-feeding, and doing what you have to do to do that. If a patient requires medication, she should do that. Then, it's a matter of finding the drugs that are best studied and most effective for the patient."
By Carolyn Colwell
HealthDay Reporter by Carolyn Colwell
healthday Reporter – Thu Oct 23, 11:48 pm ET
Assalamualaikum,
WASHINGTON – Drink a milkshake and the pleasure center in your brain gets a hit of happy — unless you're overweight. It sounds counterintuitive. But scientists who watched young women savor milkshakes inside a brain scanner concluded that when the brain doesn't sense enough gratification from food, people may overeat to compensate.
The small but first-of-a-kind study even could predict who would pile on pounds during the next year: Those who harbored a gene that made their brain's yum factor even more sluggish.
"The more blunted your response to the milkshake taste, the more likely you are to gain weight," said Dr. Eric Stice, a senior scientist at the Oregon Research Institute who led the work, published in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
A healthy diet and plenty of exercise are the main factors in whether someone is overweight. But scientists have long known that genetics also play a major role in obesity — and one big culprit is thought to be dopamine, the brain chemical that's key to sensing pleasure.
Eating can temporarily boost dopamine levels. Previous brain scans have suggested that the obese have fewer dopamine receptors in their brains than lean people. And a particular gene version, called Taq1A1, is linked to fewer dopamine receptors.
"This paper takes it one step farther," said Dr. Nora Volkow of the National Institutes of Health, a dopamine specialist who has long studied the obesity link. "It takes the gene associated with greater vulnerability for obesity and asks the question why. What is it doing to the way the brain is functioning that would make a person more vulnerable to compulsively eat food and become obese?"
It's "very elegant work," she added.
First, Stice's team had to figure out how to study the brain's immediate reactions to food. Moving inside an MRI machine skews its measurements, which ruled out letting the women slurp up the milkshakes. Yale University neuroscientist Dana Small solved that problem, with a special syringe that would squirt a small amount of milkshake or, for comparison, a tasteless solution into the mouth without study participants moving. They were told when to swallow, so researchers could coordinate the scans with that small motion.
Then they recruited volunteers, 43 female college students ages 18 to 22 and 33 teenagers, ages 14 to 18. Body mass index calculations showed the young women spanned the range from very skinny to obese.
Brain scanning showed that a key region called the dorsal striatum — a dopamine-rich pleasure center — became active when they tasted the milkshake, but not when they tasted the comparison liquid that just mimicked saliva.
Yet that brain region was far less active in overweight people than in lean people, and in those who carry that A1 gene variant, the researchers reported. Moreover, women with that gene version were more likely to gain weight over the coming year.
It's a small study with few gene carriers, and thus must be verified, Volkow stressed.
Still, it could have important implications. Volkow, who heads NIH's National Institute of Drug Abuse, notes that "dopamine is not just about pleasure." It also plays a role in conditioning — dopamine levels affect drug addiction — and the ability to control impulses.
She wonders if instead of overeating to compensate for the lack of pleasure — Stice's conclusion — the study really might show that these people with malfunctioning dopamine in fact eat because they're impulsive.
Regardless, most people's tongues find a milkshake quite tasty; the brain reaction is subconscious.
But if doctors could determine who carries the at-risk gene, children especially could be steered toward "recreational sports or other things that give them satisfaction and pleasure and dopamine that aren't food ... and not get their brains used to having crappy food," said Stice, a clinical psychologist who has long studied obesity.
"Don't get your brain used to it," he said of non-nutritious food. "I would not buy Ho Hos for lunch every day because the more you eat, the more you crave."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081017/ap_on_he_me/med_obesity_brain
Assalamualaikum,
Poor sleep tied to memory trouble in black seniors
Older African Americans who have difficulty falling asleep seem to be more likely to have memory problems, a new study suggests. The study, of 174 African Americans ages 65 to 90, found that those who said they often had a hard time falling asleep tended to have poorer scores on standard tests of memory. Research shows that up to 40 percent of older adults have sleep disturbances, particularly trouble falling asleep. Poor sleep has also been linked to problems with memory and other cognitive functions. However, no studies until now have looked at this relationship specifically in older black adults -- who, some research suggests, tend to be especially vulnerable to sleep problems. In the current study, reported in the journal Research on Aging, investigators found that participants who'd been having trouble falling asleep over the past year generally had lower scores on tests of short-term and working memory. Working memory refers to the ability to tackle multiple tasks at once. The link between sleep and memory problems held when the researchers accounted for several other factors, including depression and overall physical health. The findings raise a number of questions, according to lead researcher Alyssa A. Gamaldo, a Ph.D. candidate at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. For one, Gamaldo said in a statement, "it is not clear if lack of sleep is the issue. Is it the quantity of sleep, the quality of sleep, or something else altogether?" More research is needed to confirm that a lack of sleep, or a lack of quality sleep, drain memory in older adults, according to Gamaldo's team. If the current findings are confirmed, they add, then spotting and treating sleep problems in older adults could help them preserve their brain power. "If we can better understand how sleep quantity, as well as quality, influences general cognitive functioning," Gamaldo said, "perhaps we could better maintain memory throughout life -- including later in life."
SOURCE: Research on Aging, November 2008.
Tue Oct 21, 1:07 pm ET
Assalamualaikum,
Secondhand Smoke Worse for Children
Children exposed to secondhand smoke often have levels of carbon monoxide in their blood that are similar to those of adult smokers, and frequently higher levels than adults exposed to secondhand smoke, a new study found. The study, to be presented at the American Society of Anesthesiologists annual meeting that concludes Oct. 22 in Orlando, Fla., said the younger the child, the greater the potential for exposure. "The physiology of children -- especially the youngest -- is different from that of adults," Dr. Branden E. Yee, of the anesthesiology department at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, said in a news release issued by the society. "Children breathe in a greater amount of air per body weight compared to adults." The study measured levels of carboxyhemoglobin, which is formed when carbon monoxide binds to the blood, in 200 children between the ages of 1 and 12. The exact ramifications of high levels of carboxyhemoglobin are not entirely known, but long-term, low-level exposure includes changes in heart and lung tissue as it hampers delivery of oxygen to body tissue. While household and environmental factors such as stoves, heaters and automobiles are potential sources of carbon monoxide exposure, secondhand cigarette smoke is often the most likely source of elevated carboxyhemoglobin, the researchers said. Yee said educating parents about the need to change their smoking habits, especially around children, is vital. "Personalized education coupled with the act of physically showing a parent the carboxyhemoglobin measurement in his or her child's blood may provide a graphic and concrete message to that parent," he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20081021/hl_hsn/secondhandsmokeworseforchildren
Assalamualaikum,
Vitamin C Protects Some Elderly Men From Bone Loss
Eating fruits and vegetables can help elderly men guard against the bone loss that can lead to hip fractures, Tufts University researchers report. What's important to realize is "that bone mineral density, bone status and fracture risk are related to many more nutrients than just calcium," said study author Katherine Tucker, a professor of nutritional epidemiology at Tufts. She said vitamin C protects against inflammation, which contributes to bone absorption and bone loss, as well as being essential for the creation of collagen, which helps strengthen bones. The study was expected to be published in the October issue of The Journal of Nutrition. "Earlier studies reached similar conclusions about fruits and vegetables," Tucker explained, but weren't able to separate out vitamin C as one of the protective factors. Vitamin C supplements also benefited some of the men in the study, but it is too soon to recommend the use of such supplements, she added. Ironically, the study did not show similar benefits for Vitamin C in women who suffer from bone loss associated with osteoporosis earlier and more frequently than men, Tucker said. "We don't really have a clear explanation for that. We did expect it to be helpful in both men and women." Possible factors leading to different results in men and women could include the small sample size and a variation in susceptibility, she added. Vitamin C was less protective in men who were smokers, which was also an unexpected finding, Tucker said. There are limitations to this finding because of other confounding factors such as male smokers may have been taking more vitamin C in the first place, she explained. Dr. Mone Zaidi, director of the bone health program at Mt. Sinai Medical Center, said the study is one of many over the last decade that have shown an important association between vitamin C and protection against bone loss. He said the Tufts' research might have shown an even stronger association. The men and women in this study had a mean age of 75 years and consumed a total amount of vitamin C ranging from none to 482 milligrams for women and none to 520 milligrams for men. Zaidi added that laboratory experiments have shown that vitamin C inhibits bone reabsorption. To clearly establish that vitamin C protects men and women against bone loss as they age, Zaidi said that a randomized, double-blind, large clinical trial is needed. The problem is that because vitamin C can't be patented, drug companies, which usually finance this type of clinical trial, aren't interested, he said.
By Carolyn Colwell
HealthDay Reporter by Carolyn Colwell
healthday Reporter – Fri Sep 26, 11:46 pm ET
Assalamualaikum,
HIV may cause dangerous blood clots
The AIDS virus, HIV, may cause blood clots and other problems with blood vessels that can kill patients prematurely even if they are relatively healthy, researchers reported on Monday. They found that patients given breaks from their HIV prescriptions had higher levels of blood proteins associated with inflammation, an often dangerous immune response. The international study showed why it may be risky to give patients "breaks" from the drug cocktails that suppress the virus, the researchers reported in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine. The findings come from an international study into whether it would be truly beneficial to let patients take their HIV drug cocktails only intermittently after research had shown this was safe, would save money, and limit side-effects from the drugs. But the study was stopped early, in 2006, because patients who took breaks from their drug therapy were far more likely to die early than patients who took treatment continuously, and not from conditions usually associated with AIDS, the researchers found. James Neaton of the University of Minnesota and colleagues looked at 85 of the patients who died early, and compared their blood samples to 170 patients who did not. They found three so-called biomarkers, or blood proteins, that are linked with inflammation were higher in the people who died. They were high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, interleukin 6 (IL-6), and D-dimer. "IL-6 and D-dimer were strongly related to all-cause mortality. Interrupting (HIV drugs) may further increase the risk of death by raising IL-6 and D-dimer levels," the researchers wrote. "The magnitude of the increased risk of death associated with elevations of these biomarkers is clinically relevant," Neaton said in a statement. "Research aimed at understanding whether treating elevated levels of these markers is beneficial and is now needed." The researchers said it may be possible to develop drugs that fight this inflammation. Inflammation in general is linked with a range of heart conditions, cancer and possibly diabetes. Other studies have shown that HIV affects the insides of the blood vessels and may make blood more likely to clot. These clots can cause heart attacks, strokes and pulmonary embolisms. Cocktails of HIV drugs, called highly active antiretroviral therapy or HAART, keep the virus from replicating in the blood and destroying immune system cells. While there is no cure for HIV, these drugs can keep patients healthy.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081021/hl_nm/us_aids_death
Assalamualaikum,
Cold viruses activate killer genes, study finds
The common cold virus activates dozens of immune system genes in the lining of the nose, including some natural antivirals that might be used as the basis of new drugs, researchers reported on Friday. It also appears to shut down some genes, but to a lesser degree, the international team reported in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Of particular interest is a gene that controls a natural antiviral called viperin, said David Proud of the University of Calgary in Alberta, who led the study. Viperin, only discovered in the 1990s, was known to be involved in other viral infections but not the common cold, Proud said. "This had never been examined during rhinovirus infections," he said. Proud and colleagues, including a team at cold remedy maker Procter & Gamble Co, tested 35 people who agreed to be infected with a common cold virus called human rhinovirus 16. Hours after infection, the researchers scraped a little bit of the lining from inside the volunteers' noses and analyzed gene expression, or activity, in the cells. Every cell in the body carries all the genes, but certain genes become more or less active during various activities. "I think that is the ideal approach to trying to treat these viral infections. If you can find out what are the body's natural defenses, can you either boost them or supplement them?" Proud said in a telephone interview. "The findings are important because they provide us a blueprint for developing the ideal cold treatment: one that maintains the body's natural antiviral response while normalizing the inflammatory response," added P&G's Lynn Jump, who also worked on the study. Others had looked at immune responses one by one. "This was really the first study that looked at the entire human genome," Proud said. "We confirmed some of the things we knew, and we found an awful lot more that we weren't aware of." For instance, you might be able to blame a runny nose, sneezing and chills on viperin, the researchers found. Symptoms such as a stuffy nose, headache and cough were not associated with viperin, however. Several immune system chemicals called chemokines, which call in other virus-killing cells, became very active 48 hours after infection, they found. So did a class of immune system compounds called interferons. Viperin, on average, was six times as active in infected as in uninfected volunteers. Other antiviral substances that were activated included compounds called MX1 and MX2, which are linked with resistance to influenza. Proud said it will take years of careful study before researchers have any idea of how to control cold symptoms. "You need a little bit of inflammation to have some protection," he noted. More than 200 different viruses cause common cold symptoms, including the rhinoviruses but also others such as respiratory syncytial virus or RSV. Many, including RSV and rhinoviruses, are linked with more serious conditions such as asthma and chronic bronchitis, now grouped with emphysema as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. "In young children, if they have recurrent viral infections in early life that are rhinovirus-driven, they are 10 times more likely to develop asthma," Proud said."Eighty-five percent of acute asthma attacks are associated with viruses."
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor Maggie Fox, Health And Science Editor – Fri Oct 24, 12:30 am ET
Assalamualaikum,
Early teen drug, alcohol use ups sex and behaviour risks
Children who try drugs or alcohol before age 15 run a greater risk of being substance-dependent as adults, contracting sexually transmitted diseases, dropping out of school or being convicted of a crime, a study showed.And girls who dabble in drugs and alcohol early on are more likely to become pregnant before they are 21, added the study, published in the October issue of Psychological Science, which followed 1,037 children from the age of three until 32.At ages 13 and 15, the youngsters were asked if they had sniffed glue, gasoline or other inhalants, of if they had used illegal drugs or drunk alcoholic beverages in the past year.The children were also assessed for conduct disorders -- fighting, bullying, destroying property, telling lies, truancy and stealing -- before their teen years, and their family history, including whether either parent had a criminal record and whether the child was mistreated.Children who tried alcohol or drugs early on "were two to three times more likely than non-early-exposed adolescents to be substance dependent, to have herpes infection, to have had an early pregnancy, and to have failed to obtain educational qualifications," the study showed.Youngsters who were exposed to drugs and alcohol before 15 also had "significantly more criminal convictions" than those who were not.But although teens with a history of behavior problems were twice as likely to try drugs or alcohol prior to age 15 as were youngsters with no conduct-problem history, half the children who dabbled with drink and drugs early on had no prior history of behavior issues, the study found."Findings from this study are consistent with the message that early substance use leads to significant problems in adolescents' future lives, or the message that drugs are bad for kids, versus the message that young adolescents with a history of problems are just more likely to use drugs early and experience poor outcomes," said the study's lead author, Candice Odgers of the University of California, Irvine."Even adolescents with no prior history of behavioral problems or family history of substance abuse problems were at risk for poor health outcomes if they used substances prior to age 15," she said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081017/ts_alt_afp/ushealthchildren
Assalamualaikum,
2 greenhouse gases on the rise worry scientists
Carbon dioxide isn't the only greenhouse gas that worries climate scientists. Airborne levels of two other potent gases — one from ancient plants, the other from flat-panel screen technology — are on the rise, too. And that's got scientists concerned about accelerated global warming.The gases are methane and nitrogen trifluoride. Both pale in comparison to the global warming effects of carbon dioxide, produced by the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels. In the past couple of years, however, these other two gases have been on the rise, according to two new studies. The increase is not accounted for in predictions for future global warming and comes as a nasty surprise to climate watchers.Methane is by far the bigger worry. It is considered the No. 2 greenhouse gas based on the amount of warming it causes and the amount in the atmosphere. The total effect of methane on global warming is about one-third that of man-made carbon dioxide.Methane comes from landfills, natural gas, coal mining, animal waste, and decaying plants. But it's the decaying plants that worry scientists most. That's because thousands of years ago billions of tons of methane were created by decaying Arctic plants. It lies frozen in permafrost wetlands and trapped in the ocean floor. As the Arctic warms, the concern is this methane will be freed and worsen warming. Scientists have been trying to figure out how they would know if this process is starting.It's still early and the data are far from conclusive, but scientists say they are concerned that what they are seeing could be the start of the release of the Arctic methane.After almost eight years of stability, atmospheric methane levels — measured every 40 minutes by monitors near remote coastal cliffs — suddenly started rising in 2006. The amount of methane in the air has jumped by nearly 28 million tons from June 2006 to October 2007. There is now more than 5.6 billion tons of methane in the air."If it's sustained, it's bad news," said MIT atmospheric scientist Ron Prinn, lead author of the methane study, which will be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters Oct. 31. "This is a heads up. We're seeing smoke. It remains to be seen whether this is the fire we're really worried about."Whenever methane increases, you are accelerating climate change," he said.By contrast, nitrogen trifluoride has been considered such a small problem that it's generally been ignored. The gas is used as a cleaning agent during the manufacture of liquid crystal display television and computer monitors and for thin-film solar panels.Earlier efforts to determine how much nitrogen trifluoride is in the air dramatically underestimated the amounts, said Ray Weiss, a geochemistry professor with Scripps Institution of Oceanography and lead author on a nitrogen trifluoride paper. It is set to be published in Geophysical Letters in November.Nitrogen trifluoride levels in the air — measured in parts per trillion — have quadrupled in the last decade and increased 30-fold since 1978, according to Weiss, who is also a co-author of the methane paper.It contributes only 0.04 percent of the total global warming effect that man-made carbon dioxide does from the burning of fossil fuels.But nitrogen trifluoride is one of the more potent gases, thousands of times stronger at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Methane is more than 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide on a per molecule basis. Carbon dioxide remains the most important gas because of its huge levels and rapid growth.Still, methane and the potential of future increases is a worry, Weiss and others say.Its recent increase coincides with anecdotal evidence of more methane being released in the shallow parts of the Arctic Ocean. A scientific survey in late summer found methane levels in the east Siberian Sea up to 10,000 times higher than normal, said Orjan Gustafsson, an environmental scientist at Stockholm University who has just returned from the six-week survey.Prinn's data are consistent with the early results of "whole fields of methane bubbles" that Gustafsson said he found last month.The highest methane level increases were seen in monitoring stations in Alert, Canada, which with recent anecdotal evidence points to plants in permafrost thawing and decaying.Stanford University environmental scientist Stephen Schneider cautioned that the recent increase is new and that "it is pretty hard to be very confident of any trend or big story yet on methane." Methane levels have kept scientists guessing for the past decade. They were on the rise until about 1997, then soared in 1998 and then leveled off until jumping again in 2006.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081025/ap_on_sc/sci_greenhouse_gases
How too tell if the person is lying
The following are some simple methods widely used to judge how truthful a person is being about what they are telling you. It should, of course, be remembered that these are indications only. The use of body language is not an exact science but it certainly provides food for thought.
Reactions and method of interaction.
Someone who is lying will be uncomfortable when they have to face the person asking them questions or accusing them of a lie. Often this will translate into a person turning their body or head in a different direction.
It is also the case that a person who is lying will get very defensive. A person who is telling the truth will be more likely to attack or go on the offensive.
Liars may try to put physical barriers between them and the accuser. This may translate into the unconscious placing of an object, such as a piece of furniture, between themselves and the person who they are lying to, or they may cross their arms.
Body language
The physical expressions of a liar may appear to be stiff or limited. It is typical to see less hand and arm movement. The liar will try to withdraw into their own space.
A liar will often try to avoid eye contact. There of course may be other reasons for this response too and people with experience in a bi-cultural or multicultural setting may come across this trait without it being an indication or otherwise of honesty.
Another point that is often referred to in the literature on this topic is the tendency of someone who is lying is put their hands up near their face. Perhaps they will touch their throat or mouth, scratch their ear etc.
Contradictory emotional gestures.
The expressions or gestures do not match the verbal statement. For example a frown when they are saying something is very nice.
The expressions of a liar tend to be more often limited just to mouth movements when emotion is being faked, instead of using the whole face. A common example of this is with a smile. A ‘real’ smile involves the whole face the jaw and cheeks move, their eyes and forehead push down, nose may wrinkle and eyes may get squished. A forced or ‘fake’ smile sees only those muscles around the mouth move. A quick way to judge this is to look at person’s eyes.
Often duration and timing of the emotional gestures and the emotion are out of sync. The emotion displayed may stay longer than natural and also may stop very suddenly. This is because people are thinking it through, not letting it happen.
The timing between the emotional expression or gesture and the words spoken do not link up. Think of when someone has given you a present you have not really liked, you say ‘it’s great’ and then remember to smile.
The verbal content and context
A contracted statement is more likely to be true. A correct, more drawn out statement once again shows though rather than reaction. I.e. ‘I didn’t do it’ as compared with ‘No I did not do that thing’
Liars will often try to avoid actually lying. This is done by not making direct statements. The liar may imply an answer rather than denying it completely. I.e. Do you really think I would do something like that?
A liar will often try to reuse the words or phrase when denying something. Q. Did you take that money? A. No I did not take that money.
It has also been noted that liars may tend not to use pronouns. Their speech may be in a more monotonous tone than normal. A truthful statement tends to see emphasis placed on pronouns.
People that are telling lies also often become unusually verbose. The liar will often speak much more than normal. Thinking they need to convince you their answer is truthful.
A liar may mumble, or garble their words. The liar may speak very softly; the grammar and syntax may seem unnatural. The sentences may be not emphasized or muddled.
Other ways to detect a liar
One good method for catching out a liar is to change the subject of a conversation quickly. The liar will be happy, follow along quickly and may appear to visibly relax. The liar wants the subject changed; a truthful person will in these circumstances often appear confused and try to change the subject back to the previous subject.
A liar may try to use sarcasm or humor to avoid the subject.
http://www.articles.com.my/Article/Lies--Lies-And-Half-Truths----How-To-Tell-If-A-Person-Is-Lying/15073
FA08014
Assalamualaikum,
Sex education to be taught in all primary schools
Millions of children in England aged from five to 16 in state-funded schools will receive compulsory lessons about subjects including sex and drug use, a minister said on Thursday.Acknowledging, however, that the announcement raises "complicated issues," the government has appointed a headteacher to carry out a review into how the new proposals can be best implemented, given local circumstances and parents' values.The new policy will apply to 6.5 million schoolchildren in 22,500 schools in England, a government spokesman told AFP."This is a bold move and a necessary one," said England Schools Minister Jim Knight."Modern life is increasingly complex and we have a duty to equip our young people with the knowledge and skills to deal with it."In a statement, the Department for Children, Schools and Families said that Downing Street "sees education as key to supporting young people to avoid teenage pregnancy, STI (sexually-transmitted infections), drug and alcohol misuse."The statement said that ministers recognise that parents had to take the lead, but noted that schools could help by providing information and emotional and social skills for pupils.Collated figures for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland show one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in western Europe, and critics of the new policy warned that the proposals could raise that even higher.Christian Voice's National Director Stephen Green said the plans would "encourage experimentation," and added that teaching young children about sex was "a wickedness" from ministers who wanted to see "a whole generation fornicating."The lessons will be adapted to suit the target age group, with children as young as five learning that animals give birth to offspring, naming body parts and preparing for oncoming puberty.When it comes to drugs, primary school students will learn about how medicines and other toxins affect the body, while older pupils will study drug and alcohol misuse, the laws surrounding those issues and their social impact.Education is governed separately in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081023/wl_uk_afp/britaineducationsexdrugschildren
Assalamualaikum,
New MS Therapies Show Promise
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Fri Oct 24, 11:48 pm ET
Leukaemia drug in MS breakthrough AFP Graphic – Illustration showing how multiple sclerosis attacks the human body.(AFP Graphic)
THURSDAY, Oct. 23 (HealthDay News) -- Two medications may prove to be advances in the treatment of multiple sclerosis, researchers say.
In one study, an experimental drug called oral fumarate (BG00012) substantially reduced symptoms in patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, according to a phase II clinical trial by European and North American researchers.
And in a second trial, researchers found that the leukemia drug alemtuzumab (Campath) was about 70 percent more effective than another drug already widely used to treat MS. However, alemtuzumab also had significant side effects, including bleeding disorders, a greater risk of thyroid disease, and infections. This prompted experts to say that much more research is needed before alemtuzumab can be prescribed to treat multiple sclerosis.
Multiple sclerosis is a nervous system disease that affects the brain and spinal cord. It damages the myelin sheath, the material that surrounds and protects nerve cells. This damage slows or blocks messages between the brain and the body, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
Symptoms of the disease can include visual disturbances; muscle weakness; trouble with coordination and balance; sensations such as numbness, prickling, or "pins and needles;" and thinking and memory problems.
It's not known what causes multiple sclerosis. It may be an autoimmune disease, which happens when the body attacks itself. MS affects women more than men, and it often begins between the ages of 20 and 40. An estimated 400,000 Americans have the disease. Usually, the disease is mild, but some people lose the ability to write, speak or walk. There's no cure for MS, but medicines may slow it down and help control symptoms, according to the National Library of Medicine.
The 24-week study of BG00012 included 257 patients, ages 18 to 55, who were randomly assigned to receive either 120 milligrams of BG00012 once a day (64 patients), 120 milligrams three times a day (64 patients), 240 milligrams three times a day (64 patients), or a placebo (65 patients). The patients were assessed at weeks 12, 16, 20 and 24.
MRI brain scans showed that patients treated with 240 milligrams of BG00012 three times a day had 69 percent fewer new gadolinium enhancing (GdE) lesions -- a marker of MS-related inflammatory activity -- from week 12 to 24 than those who received the placebo. They also had fewer new or enlarging T2-hyperintense and T1-hypointense lesions at week 24.
The study also found that BG00012 reduced the annual relapse rate by 32 percent, but this finding wasn't statistically significant. Patients who received the drug were more likely than those in the placebo group to suffer adverse events such as abdominal pain and hot flush. Dose-related adverse events in patients taking the drug included headache, fatigue and feeling hot, the researchers said.
"Longer-term (phase III) studies of BG00012 in larger patient populations are underway to define its place in the future of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis treatment. If these studies show similar relapse rate reductions with BG00012, interferon beta, and glatiramer acetate, BG00012 could be a suitable initial treatment for relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis," wrote Professor Ludwig Kappos, of University Hospital Basel, in Switzerland, and colleagues.
The study was published in the Oct. 24 issue of the The Lancet.
In an accompanying comment in the journal, Professor Per Soelberg Sorensen and Dr. Finn Sellebjerg of the Danish Multiple Sclerosis Research Center, noted that "BG00012 might have a favorable benefit-to-risk ratio profile compared with its oral competitors and the currently available first-line injectable drugs. However, we will have to await the results from the ongoing large phase III trials to establish the place of BG00012 and of other oral drugs in the treatment of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis."
The study of the leukemia drug alemtuzumab, which temporarily depletes white blood cells and is part of a class of drugs called monoclonal antibodies, included 334 patients. Patients were randomly assigned to get either alemtuzumab or interferon beta, a standard MS therapy, for three years.
Alemtuzumab reduced by 74 percent the risk of MS relapse, the researchers reported in the Oct. 23 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
"The ability of an MS drug to promote brain repair is unprecedented," Alasdair Coles, of Cambridge University in England, and one of the study's leaders, told the AFP news service. "We are witnessing a drug which, if given early enough, might effectively stop the advancement of the disease and also restore lost function by promoting repair of the damaged brain tissue."
However, in an accompanying journal editorial, Dr. Stephen L. Hauser, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco, said the "toxic effects associated with alemtuzumab considerably dampen any enthusiasm for its routine use in patients with multiple sclerosis until more is known about its long-term safety and sustained efficacy."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20081025/hl_hsn/newmstherapiesshowpromise
Bad breath treatment
Halitosis is also known as bad breath. It is an extremely embarrassing problem for many people to deal with. Halitosis is the result of the action taken by bacteria that live in your mouth, tongue, and tonsils. We all have these bacteria, which make us possible to have bad breath. But, did you know that there are stomach bacteria that cause bad breath? If you think that bad breath is caused only by the bacteria living in your mouth, think again.
It was once suggested that one of the causes of bad breath is Helicobacter Pylori, the organism that causes stomach ulcers and ulcers in the duodenum. There was a laboratory test done that detects the substance in a breath if there’s a presence of this organism, but there was no firm proof that Helicobacter pylori is responsible for the unpleasant smell on the breath. Usually, stomach breath doesn’t exist. Unless you belch, but the odor that comes out from belching is associated with the food you have eaten.
Bad breath from the stomach is actually not a big of a deal. It is so, because only few bacteria can survive in our stomach due to the very acidic condition down in there. The only smell that you can detect from the stomach breath (when you belch) is the odor of foods like onions, garlic, or any other food with strong odor, instead of coming from the stomach bacteria that cause bad breath. However, this unpleasant smell is only temporary and will disappear in a day or so.
On rare occasion, a condition other than stomach bacteria that cause bad breath seems to come from lower down in our body. There are some illnesses like cancers that can cause our breath to have an odd smell. Liver or kidney disease can cause unpleasant stomach breath. It is true then that bad breath could be a sign of other serious problem.
If you notice an unpleasant and persistent smell from your breath that is not associated with the food or medications that you have taken, you should consult your doctor for a professional opinion. Do not try to ignore it or treat it by using bad breath products. For all you know it could be a serious health problem. And, if your concerns are still about stomach bacteria that cause bad breath, or if you think that you have other health problems, these should be discussed with your doctor, as well. Should your bad breath condition is indeed from your stomach, appropriate treatment must be taken.
http://www.articles.com.my/Article/Bad-Breath-Treatment/10601
FA08014
Assalamualakum,
New MS Therapies Show Promise
Two medications may prove to be advances in the treatment of multiple sclerosis, researchers say.In one study, an experimental drug called oral fumarate (BG00012) substantially reduced symptoms in patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, according to a phase II clinical trial by European and North American researchers.And in a second trial, researchers found that the leukemia drug alemtuzumab (Campath) was about 70 percent more effective than another drug already widely used to treat MS. However, alemtuzumab also had significant side effects, including bleeding disorders, a greater risk of thyroid disease, and infections. This prompted experts to say that much more research is needed before alemtuzumab can be prescribed to treat multiple sclerosis.Multiple sclerosis is a nervous system disease that affects the brain and spinal cord. It damages the myelin sheath, the material that surrounds and protects nerve cells. This damage slows or blocks messages between the brain and the body, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine.Symptoms of the disease can include visual disturbances; muscle weakness; trouble with coordination and balance; sensations such as numbness, prickling, or "pins and needles;" and thinking and memory problems.It's not known what causes multiple sclerosis. It may be an autoimmune disease, which happens when the body attacks itself. MS affects women more than men, and it often begins between the ages of 20 and 40. An estimated 400,000 Americans have the disease. Usually, the disease is mild, but some people lose the ability to write, speak or walk. There's no cure for MS, but medicines may slow it down and help control symptoms, according to the National Library of Medicine.The 24-week study of BG00012 included 257 patients, ages 18 to 55, who were randomly assigned to receive either 120 milligrams of BG00012 once a day (64 patients), 120 milligrams three times a day (64 patients), 240 milligrams three times a day (64 patients), or a placebo (65 patients). The patients were assessed at weeks 12, 16, 20 and 24.MRI brain scans showed that patients treated with 240 milligrams of BG00012 three times a day had 69 percent fewer new gadolinium enhancing (GdE) lesions -- a marker of MS-related inflammatory activity -- from week 12 to 24 than those who received the placebo. They also had fewer new or enlarging T2-hyperintense and T1-hypointense lesions at week 24.The study also found that BG00012 reduced the annual relapse rate by 32 percent, but this finding wasn't statistically significant. Patients who received the drug were more likely than those in the placebo group to suffer adverse events such as abdominal pain and hot flush. Dose-related adverse events in patients taking the drug included headache, fatigue and feeling hot, the researchers said."Longer-term (phase III) studies of BG00012 in larger patient populations are underway to define its place in the future of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis treatment. If these studies show similar relapse rate reductions with BG00012, interferon beta, and glatiramer acetate, BG00012 could be a suitable initial treatment for relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis," wrote Professor Ludwig Kappos, of University Hospital Basel, in Switzerland, and colleagues.The study was published in the Oct. 24 issue of the The Lancet.In an accompanying comment in the journal, Professor Per Soelberg Sorensen and Dr. Finn Sellebjerg of the Danish Multiple Sclerosis Research Center, noted that "BG00012 might have a favorable benefit-to-risk ratio profile compared with its oral competitors and the currently available first-line injectable drugs.However, we will have to await the results from the ongoing large phase III trials to establish the place of BG00012 and of other oral drugs in the treatment of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis."The study of the leukemia drug alemtuzumab, which temporarily depletes white blood cells and is part of a class of drugs called monoclonal antibodies, included 334 patients. Patients were randomly assigned to get either alemtuzumab or interferon beta, a standard MS therapy, for three years.Alemtuzumab reduced by 74 percent the risk of MS relapse, the researchers reported in the Oct. 23 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine."The ability of an MS drug to promote brain repair is unprecedented," Alasdair Coles, of Cambridge University in England, and one of the study's leaders, told the AFP news service. "We are witnessing a drug which, if given early enough, might effectively stop the advancement of the disease and also restore lost function by promoting repair of the damaged brain tissue."However, in an accompanying journal editorial, Dr. Stephen L. Hauser, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco, said the "toxic effects associated with alemtuzumab considerably dampen any enthusiasm for its routine use in patients with multiple sclerosis until more is known about its long-term safety and sustained efficacy."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20081025/hl_hsn/newmstherapiesshowpromise;
Assalamualaikum,
China finds fossils of small feathered dinosaur
Archaeologists in China have discovered fossils of a pigeon-sized feathered dinosaur which they believe to be an ancestor of birds.Its remains were found 90 percent complete, preserved in a slab of rock in Inner Mongolia's Ningcheng county in northern China, the researchers wrote in an article in Nature.Its four limbs lacked contour feathers for flight and it probably lived from the Middle to Late Jurassic periods, or 176 to 146 million years ago.This means it is older than the Archaeopteryx, which lived around 155 to 150 million years ago.Feathered but flightless, the small creature weighed just 164 grams and had buck teeth resembling that of carnivores.But scientists have no clue what it ate."Insects? Other reptiles or amphibians? Or plants?" Professor Fucheng Zhang of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences wrote in reply to a question from Reuters regarding its diet.Named the Epidexipteryx, it had four long and thin tail feathers and a short tail.The scientists said it belonged to a different group from the Microraptor, which had flight feathers and which some scientists believe flew sometimes in addition to gliding.But like the Microraptor -- which lived in a later period 130 to 125 million years ago -- it gave important evidence about the evolutionary relationship between birds and dinosaurs."You could say it was a link between dinosaur and birds. It was very close to the ancestor of birds," Zhang wrote."This new fossil adds yet more complexity to the early history of evolution from dinosaurs to birds."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081022/sc_nm/us_china_dinosaur
An Overview of Nuclear Energy
In the effort to get away from our oil and coal dependency, nuclear energy is getting attention again. Here is an overview of nuclear energy.
Harnessing a chemical reaction at the nuclear level of certain materials produces nuclear energy. The process is known as nuclear fission.
Nuclear fission occurs when certain materials, such as uranium, are manipulated in a manner that causes them to decay quickly. A byproduct of this decal is immense amounts of heat. The heat is then typically used to turn turbines much as occurs in hydropower dams. The spinning turbines produce electricity, which is then used for commercial applications and propelling naval vessels such as submarines.
The largest known nuclear reaction can be seen everyday in the sky. The sun is essentially a nuclear reaction, but on a much larger scale than we could ever replicate. It does not blow up because of its immense gravity. It does, however, shoot off massive solar flares which contain more energy than we could use in years.
Nuclear energy is a popular subject with governments because it produces a lot of energy with relatively small resource requirements. Countries such as Russia, France and China have invested heavily in nuclear energy production. There are, however, significant problems with nuclear energy.
Nuclear fission is a fairly unstable process. Energy is produced by speeding up and slowing down the decay process. Essentially, it is a balancing act. Allow the decay to happen to quickly and your risk a meltdown. Although meltdowns are rare, they are absolutely devastating when they occur.
The best known nuclear disaster was Chernobyl in 1986. Located in the Ukraine, the individuals controlling the reactor attempted an ill-advised test. Blame has been put on the controllers and the basic design of the plant, but nobody is really sure as to the exact cause. What is known is control was lost and the nuclear fission went to fast. Huge steam explosions occurred followed by a full nuclear meltdown. A huge radioactive cloud escaped and dropped radioactive material over much of Eastern Europe. 330,000 people around the reactor had to be evacuated. Thousands died immediately. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people have suffered health problems. Birth defects are a sad, regular occurrence. All and all, the meltdown produced 300 times the radioactive material produced in the two bombs dropped on Japan at the end of the Second World War.
Nuclear energy is a very efficient way to produce energy, but one that is extremely devastating when it goes wrong. All and all, we are better off finding another platform for our energy needs.
http://www.articles.com.my/Article/An-Overview-of-Nuclear-Energy/8616
FA08014
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Indonesia's Sulawesi hit by 6.4 quake, no tsunami
JAKARTA (Reuters) – An earthquake measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale jolted Indonesia's north Sulawesi island on Sunday, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage, the meteorology agency said.The quake struck at a depth of 32 km (20 miles), and the epicenter was 91 km (56 miles) southwest of Gorontalo town, said Suhardjono, an agency official. The agency did not issue a tsunami warning.Indonesia suffers frequent earthquakes, being located in an active seismic region where several tectonic plates meet.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081026/wl_nm/us_indonesia_quake;
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Terrorist 'tweets'? US Army warns of Twitter dangers
WASHINGTON (AFP) – A draft US Army intelligence report has identified the popular micro-blogging service Twitter, Global Positioning System maps and voice-changing software as potential terrorist tools.The report by the 304th Military Intelligence Battalion, posted on the website of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), examines a number of mobile and web technologies and their potential uses by militants.The posting of the report on the FAS site was reported Friday by Wired magazine contributing editor Noah Shachtman on his national security blog "Danger Room" at wired.com.The report is not based on clandestine reporting but drawn from open source intelligence known as OSINT.A chapter on "Potential for Terrorist Use of Twitter" notes that Twitter members sent out messages, known as "Tweets," reporting the July Los Angeles earthquake faster than news outlets and activists at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis used it to provide information on police movements."Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences," the report said.Hacktivists refers to politically motivated computer hackers."Twitter is already used by some members to post and/or support extremist ideologies and perspectives," the report said."Extremist and terrorist use of Twitter could evolve over time to reflect tactics that are already evolving in use by hacktivists and activists for surveillance," it said. "This could theoretically be combined with targeting."The report outlined scenarios in which militants could make use of Twitter, combined with such programs as Google Maps or cell phone pictures or video, to carry out an ambush or detonate explosives."Terrorists could theoretically use Twitter social networking in the US as an operation tool," it said. "However, it is unclear whether that same theoretical tool would be available to terrorists in other countries and to what extent."Besides Twitter, the report examined the potential use by militants of Global Positioning Systems and other technologies."GPS cell phone service could be used by our adversaries for travel plans, surveillance and targeting," it said, noting that just such uses have been discussed in pro-Al-Qaeda forums along with the use of voice-changing software."Terrorists may or may not be using voice-changing software but it should be of open source interest that online terrorist and/or terrorist enthusiasts are discussing it," the report said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081025/pl_afp/usattacksmilitaryinternettwitter
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Light Table iPhone app released (Macworld.com)
ingon iKorg Software Creations has released Light Table for the iPhone and iPod touch. It's available for download from the App Store for $0.99.Light Table helps you make collages of your photographs. It lets you import photos from your photo library, drag them around and rotate them until they fit. You can save a screenshot of your compilation once you've got them arranged how you like.You can manipulate photos in Light Table by pinching them, rotating and zooming in and out using the multi-touch interface. It's designed for photographers, designers and other creatives who might want to lay out catalogs and other photo collections.Light Table works with iPhones and iPod touches updated with iPhone 2.0 software or later.
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/macworld/20081024/tc_macworld
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VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. – A rocket carrying an Italian Earth-observation satellite blasted off Friday evening from the California coast.
The Delta rocket II lifted off around 7:30 p.m. and made an arc south over the dark Pacific Ocean as it headed toward orbit.
The payload was the third part of a four-satellite system called COSMO-SkyMed — short for Constellation of Small Satellites for Mediterranean Basin Observation — developed under an agreement between the Italian Space Agency and Italy's defense ministry.
The satellites use radar to create images for civil protection, defense, science and commercial purposes.
Col. David Buck, the mission's spacelift commander, said both sides overcame a language barrier to successfully launch the rocket.
"People don't always think about it, but this is rocket science, and our airmen and industry partners make it look easy," he said.
The first two satellites were launched last year from Vandenberg, 130 miles west of Los Angeles, and the system became operational in August.
It has already supplied images of such disasters as Myanmar's Cyclone Nargis and China's spring earthquake that have been used by international organizations in planning aid, according to the Italian Space Agency.
The third satellite is expected to increase the number of images from the current capacity of 900 a day to 1,350 a day. The fourth satellite in the billion-euro system should be launched in early 2010.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081025/ap_on_sc/italian_satellite;_ylt=AkNNEbwWzscX6oIJWFKfm3wPLBIF
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Cold, Arctic air was to make its first push of the fall season into the northern portion of the country on Sunday. Snow was expected in Minnesota and Wisconsin, with cool rain showers forecast for east of Lake Michigan.
Meanwhile, precipitation was to mostly end in New England. But in Maine, significant rain was expected in the late morning.
The rest of the country was to remain dry.
In the West, seasonally high temperatures were expected for much of the Southwest and West Coast.
Temperatures were expected to be in the 50s and 60s in the Northeast; 70s in the Southeast; 30s and 40s in the Northern Plains and Upper Midwest; and 80s and some 90s in the Southwest.
Temperatures in the Lower 48 states Saturday ranged from 14 degrees at Boulder, Wyo., to 96 degrees at Newhall, Calif.
___
On the Net:
Weather Underground: http://www.wunderground.com
National Weather Service: http://iwin.nws.noaa.gov
Assalamualaikum,
Death toll mounts in Yemen tropical storm
SHIBAM, Yemen – Mohammed bin Gohar saw an old woman drowning in flood waters from a deadly tropical storm in southern Yemen, but couldn't save her. He was carrying his two kids and running with his wife to escape the deluge."The only thing I could do was hug my kids and run away with my wife as water reached our chest," the 33-year-old said Saturday. "I heard people screaming from houses just few steps from my house."The death toll, now at 49, is expected to rise since scores of people are still missing and hundreds of families are homeless or trapped by the flood waters, said Hamid el-Kharashi, a police chief in the remote southern province of Hadramut.Damage from the storm, which first struck Thursday, has been extensive in Hadramut — Yemen's largest province — because most homes are made of mud brick. The government has struggled to distribute relief supplies because the floods have washed out many roads.At least 1,700 houses in the southern provinces of Mouhra and Hadramut alone have been destroyed, Yemen's official news agency said.Ahmed Salem's house was located in the ancient fortress city of Shibam — a UNESCO world heritage site with towering 16th century mud brick buildings that earned it the name "the Manhattan of the desert."Wet and exhausted, Salem said he fled with more than a dozen residents, including his wife and four children, to a safer neighborhood nearby. He returned Saturday morning to retrieve some belongings, and the house toppled over soon after he exited."I lived in this house all my life," Salem said. "I was born here."Karam Basalamah, a 60-year-old farmer in Shibam, blamed local government corruption for exacerbating the damage."Local officials authorized the building of houses on the flood plain," he said. "Now waters are diverted into the town, get trapped inside houses and cause them to collapse."Most of the residents of Shibam are well-off merchants who work in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries. Many fled in the middle of the night like Salem and had harrowing stories to tell when they returned Saturday.Yaslam bin Tarki, in his mid-60s, said he was stuck in a bed flooded with water in his one-story mud house for four hours because arthritis prevented him from getting up."I was almost missing until God sent me my neighbors to rescue me," he said.Television footage showed Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh moving from one devastated city to another. But most people affected by the disaster said they were receiving little help from the government."Officials disappeared, and they won't show up today or in a hundred years," bin Tarki said.Others were determined to get government assistance."I am not leaving until the president comes and helps me," said a 65-year-old woman who identified herself only as Safiya, sitting teary-eyed in front of her destroyed house in Shibam.The residents of Shibam were not alone in their misery. An Associated Press reporter riding in a helicopter saw the whole town of Tareem in Hadramut disappearing underwater. The reporter could only see the tips of houses rising out of a sea of muddy water. Elsewhere in Hadramut, some 18 tourists trapped in a city called Ayfan were rescued by helicopter and transferred to the Yemeni capital of San'a, according to the government. The province of Mouhra, sandwiched between Hadramut and the border with Oman to the northeast, was also affected by the storm.
On Friday, Mouhra deputy governor, Salem Numier, said floods had cut off main roads and caused power outages. There was also a shortage of food and medicine, he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081025/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_yemen_tropical_storm_5;_ylt=ApBxdiJ7GnhJMSY0KUsDUHZbsa8F
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Financial crisis divides EU on greenhouse gas cuts
VIENNA, Austria – What price clean air, sparkling streams, stately chestnut trees along busy avenues? In some ways it depends on whether you are a citizen of Old or New Europe.A debate on whether to stick to an ambitious European Union timetable meant to slash greenhouse gas emissions at a time of economic turmoil is dividing the continent.Most governments within the 27-nation bloc insist on going ahead with a December timetable for legislation requiring a 20 percent cut in EU emissions by 2020. They say that will send a strong signal to the U.S., China and other big industrial states to embrace a new global deal on reducing emissions after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012."The European Union must keep its leadership role" on the environment, French Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo told his EU counterparts this week.But eight former Soviet bloc countries argue the EU's envisioned pace could hurt them more than the prosperous members of "Old Europe" — the 15 west European nations that have not had to play catch-up to compensate for decades of ruinous communist economic policies.Voicing the easterners' concerns last week, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told an EU summit that the bloc's environmental and energy initiatives must also "be tolerable for the poorer member states."Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia all called for special consideration on the emissions cut timetable. Italy also complained about the plan.The European Parliament endorsed the emission plan with a 499-130 vote Wednesday, but the opposition in the east raises doubts since major EU decisions require agreement by all the member governments.The disagreement predates the global financial turmoil that threatens to cause a prolonged economic downturn. But as Hungary's currency crumbles, stocks hover at alarming lows in Poland and real estate prices plummet in Slovenia, the depth of malaise in the east has given greater urgency to New Europe's calls for scaling back planned emission curbs.Their push worries environmental activists. They question whether eastern Europe's post-communist commitment to the environment is shallow, with leaders happy for the opportunity to rechannel resources into bolstering pensions, boosting employment and lowering inflation."They're using the financial crisis as an excuse," said Tomas Wyns at Climate Action Network Europe, a Brussels, Belgium-based umbrella organization of more than 100 environmentalist groups.Eastern Europe has erased most — but not all — of communism's environmental sins since the Iron Curtain came down nearly two decades ago.The worst cases are sites like Copsa Mica, the Romanian town where communist-era rubber-dye factories and a lead smelter spewed out pollutants that colored snowflakes black, left high levels of carcinogens in the air and reduced life expectancy in the surrounding region to 41.The smelter is still operating. And the New York-based Blacksmith Institute environmental watchdog says newborns in the area have twice the safe levels of lead in their bodies; 96 percent of children ages 2-14 have chronic bronchitis and other respiratory problems; and life expectancy is still nine years below the national average of 63.In a 2006 report that mirrored the situation in many East European countries, the Czech government documented that worsening air quality affects 60 percent of its population — the price of developing rapidly after decades of economic stagnation under communism.While environmental consciousness is growing among the well-heeled in the more prosperous parts of eastern Europe, the poorest had more immediate concerns even before the financial maelstrom hit.In Serbia's capital, Belgrade, where the average monthly wage is little more than $500, the needy have little time to discuss the perils of climate change."Global warming? Who cares if we all starve to death," said retiree Mirjana Budimirovic. Serbia has one of the largest carbon footprints of any country in Europe. Its creaky, inefficient power sector uses twice as much energy per person than western Europe's average. Still, charges of environmental foot-dragging rankle government officials who point to progress made cleaning up the environmental catastrophes of the communist era. "Thanks to structural reforms from 1995 to 2005, greenhouse gas effects were reduced by 40 percent in Romania," said that nation's environment minister, Attila Korodi. Eastern officials argue their countries merit special consideration because communist policies left their economies more vulnerable to the cost of making deep, rapid cuts in greenhouse emissions. Poland, for instance, still depends on plentiful coal reserves to meet most of its heating needs, while coal use has lessened in recent decades in western Europe because of pollution concerns that were not an issue during the communist era in the east. Now, the EU's emission plans has Poland facing the expense of equipping its coal industry with costly filtering equipment — or the deeply unpopular option of turning to historic nemesis Russia to buy cleaner burning oil and natural gas. The Polish Environment Ministry's spokeswoman, Elzbieta Strucka, said Warsaw's opposition to the EU climate package has nothing to do with the financial crisis but stems from existing economic considerations for a poor country. The plan will result "in a shocking rise in energy prices," she said. "Poland and other nations that use coal energy cannot agree to this." She said Poland agrees to the principle of cutting emissions but wants to implement it more gradually than EU administrators envision. Tusk, the Polish prime minister, said that if the EU truly wants to set an example to the rest of the world, it must first persuade its poorer members to sign on to a deal acceptable to all. "If we are not able to accept it, what will a hundred countries much poorer than Poland say?" Associated Press writers Veronika Oleksyn, Jari Tanner, Monika Scislowska, Pablo Gorondi, Dusan Stojanovic, Karel Janicek and Alison Mutler contributed to this report.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081022/ap_on_re_eu/eu_europe_s_divide_climate;_ylt=AiXnos.K.daPihGeN.DUxI1pl88F
Assalamualaikum,
NASA tries again to get ailing Hubble working
WASHINGTON – NASA is trying again to wake up the sleeping science computer on the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble hasn't been able to take pictures since late September because its computer couldn't collect and transmit photos. NASA tried to wake up a backup system last week, but ran into new problems that shut the computer down again.
Engineers switched on Hubble's science computer Thursday in a process that will take more than a day. They hope minor fixes should prevent the glitches from returning.
If it works, Hubble should begin taking pictures Saturday and sending them down to Earth.
Because of the breakdown, NASA delayed its final Hubble repair mission by shuttle astronauts that was set for this month. Now the mission won't happen until next year.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081023/ap_on_sc/nasa_hubble;_ylt=Ar5i9RwSVpuY.2lCuwMFMGyHgsgF
Japanese Culture » Kawaii
Kawaii 可愛
Kawaii is a Japanese term which means "cute". Cuteness seems to be a highly valued aesthetic quality in Japanese society any particularly Japanese pop culture, and overpowering cuteness seems to carry less of the stigma of infantilization as it does in many other cultures. Kawaii is pronounced /ka.wa.ii/ (not to be confused with "kowai", /ko.wa.i/ the Japanese term for "scary"). "Kawaii" can be used to describe animals and people, including fully grown adults; while attractive women are usually described as "kawaii," young men are more likely to be described as kakkō-ii, meaning "good looking" or "cool". "Kawaii" is also used to describe some men who are considered to have "cute" personalities. Below are two symbols in Japan that are "Kawaii":
* Doraemon
* Hello Kitty
As a cultural phenomenon, cuteness is increasingly accepted in Japan as a part of Japanese culture and national identity. Tomoyuki Sugiyama, author of "Cool Japan" believes that "cuteness" is rooted in Japan's harmony-loving culture, and Nobuyoshi Kurita, a sociology professor at Musashi University in Tokyo, has stated that "cute" is a "magic term" that encompasses everything that's acceptable and desirable in Japan.
On the other hand, the minority of Japanese skeptical of cuteness consider it a sign of an infantile mentality. In particular, Hiroto Murasawa, professor of beauty and culture at Osaka Shoin Women’s University asserts that cuteness is "a mentality that breeds non-assertion ... Individuals who choose to stand out get beaten down."
http://www.chinatownconnection.com/kawaii.htm
FA08014
Assalamualaikum,
Sanofi-Aventis withdraws anti-obesity drug from sale in Europe
PARIS (AFP) – EU authorities suspended sales of pharmaceutical giant Sanofi-Aventis' anti-obesity drug Acomplia across the continent Thursday, the firm announced, adding that it had not ruled out a worldwide halt."Sales have been halted in all the pharmacies in the 18 countries of the European Union where it is distributed," a company spokesman told AFP.Sanofi-Aventis said the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) had warned that patients taking the drug ran almost double the normal risk of psychiatric problems."The risks of taking Acomplia are now greater than the benefits that the drug can bring the patient according to its current guidelines," the company said, citing the EMEA.Europe has allowed sales of Acomplia since 2006, but it has not been authorised in the United States where authorities believe it encourages suicidal thoughts, even in patients with no history of depression.The company said it had not ruled out withdrawing the drug in the 14 non-EU countries where it is sold. It said users of the drug should consult a doctor or pharmacist.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081023/hl_afp/francepharmacompanysanofiobesity;_ylt=ArpRCUQc6tG62c6oBkeppAnVJRIF
Hai..I want to share with you about this article by Salynn Boyles
People who smoke marijuana do not appear to be at increased risk for developing lung cancer, new research suggests.
While a clear increase in cancer risk was seen among cigarette smokers in the study, no such association was seen for regular cannabis users.
Even very heavy, long-term marijuana users who had smoked more than 22,000 joints over a lifetime seemed to have no greater risk than infrequent marijuana users or nonusers.
The findings surprised the study’s researchers, who expected to see an increase in cancer among people who smoked marijuana regularly in their youth.
“We know that there are as many or more carcinogens and co-carcinogens in marijuana smoke as in cigarettes,” researcher Donald Tashkin, MD, of UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine tells WebMD. “But we did not find any evidence for an increase in cancer risk for even heavy marijuana smoking.” Carcinogens are substances that cause cancer.
Tashkin presented the findings today at The American Thoracic Society’s 102nd International Conference, held in San Diego.
The study population was limited to people who were younger than 60 because people older than that would probably not have used marijuana in their teens and early adult years.
A total of 611 lung cancer patients living in Los Angeles County, and 601 patients with other cancers of the head and neck were compared with 1,040 people without cancer matched for age, sex, and the neighborhood they lived in.
All the participants were asked about lifetime use of marijuana, tobacco, and alcohol, as well as other drugs, their diets, occupation, family history of lung cancer, and socioeconomic status.
The heaviest marijuana users in the study had smoked more than 22,000 joints, while moderately heavy smokers had smoked between 11,000 and 22,000 joints.
While two-pack-a-day or more cigarette smokers were found to have a 20-fold increase in lung cancer risk, no elevation in risk was seen for even the very heaviest marijuana smokers.
The more tobacco a person smoked, the greater their risk of developing lung cancer and other cancers of the head and neck. But people who smoked more marijuana were not at increased risk compared with people who smoked less and people who didn’t smoke at all.That's all. Thank you.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,196678,00.html
FA08024
Japanese Culture » Kawaii
Kawaii 可愛
Kawaii is a Japanese term which means "cute". Cuteness seems to be a highly valued aesthetic quality in Japanese society any particularly Japanese pop culture, and overpowering cuteness seems to carry less of the stigma of infantilization as it does in many other cultures. Kawaii is pronounced /ka.wa.ii/ (not to be confused with "kowai", /ko.wa.i/ the Japanese term for "scary"). "Kawaii" can be used to describe animals and people, including fully grown adults; while attractive women are usually described as "kawaii," young men are more likely to be described as kakkō-ii, meaning "good looking" or "cool". "Kawaii" is also used to describe some men who are considered to have "cute" personalities. Below are two symbols in Japan that are "Kawaii":
* Doraemon
* Hello Kitty
As a cultural phenomenon, cuteness is increasingly accepted in Japan as a part of Japanese culture and national identity. Tomoyuki Sugiyama, author of "Cool Japan" believes that "cuteness" is rooted in Japan's harmony-loving culture, and Nobuyoshi Kurita, a sociology professor at Musashi University in Tokyo, has stated that "cute" is a "magic term" that encompasses everything that's acceptable and desirable in Japan.
On the other hand, the minority of Japanese skeptical of cuteness consider it a sign of an infantile mentality. In particular, Hiroto Murasawa, professor of beauty and culture at Osaka Shoin Women’s University asserts that cuteness is "a mentality that breeds non-assertion ... Individuals who choose to stand out get beaten down."
http://www.chinatownconnection.com/kawaii.htm
FA08014
Assalamualaikum,
Education protects against Alzheimer's impact
LONDON (Reuters) – Mentally demanding jobs and more education appear to protect people from the memory loss associated with Alzheimer's disease, Italian researchers said on Monday.The findings bolster the previous research about Alzheimer's and other forms of brain impairment, said Valentina Garibotto of the San Raffaele University and Scientific Institute and the National Institute of Neuroscience in Milan, Italy."The theory is that education and demanding jobs create a buffer against the effects of dementia on the brain, or a cognitive reserve," Garibotto said in a statement."Their brains are able to compensate for the damage and allow them to maintain functioning in spite of damage."An estimated 30 million worldwide have dementia, and Alzheimer's is the most common form.The study published in the journal Neurology involved 242 people with Alzheimer's, 72 men and women with mild memory problems and 144 volunteers with no memory problems.The researchers tested memory and cognitive skills and used brain scans to see how much of the brain had been affected by Alzheimer's.They found that people with more education and more mentally challenging jobs had significantly more changes and damage in their brains from Alzheimer's -- even if they had the same level of memory impairment as people with less damage but also less education.This was true in both people with Alzheimer's and those with mild memory problems who developed the disease during the study, suggesting the cognitive reserve is already in action before the condition sets in, the researchers said."The brain could be made stronger through education and occupational challenges," Garibotto said in a statement."Or, genetic factors that enabled people to achieve higher education and occupational achievement might determine the amount of brain reserve. It isn't possible to determine which accounts for our findings."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081020/hl_nm/us_alzheimers_education;_ylt=AqBgs_oJfIffGKpkm8eMZbg_cbYF
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Report: Kids less likely to graduate than parents
WASHINGTON – Your child is less likely to graduate from high school than you were, and most states are doing little to hold schools accountable, according to a study by a children's advocacy group.More than half the states have graduation targets that don't make schools get better, the Education Trust says in a report released Thursday.The numbers are dismal: One in four kids is dropping out of school, a rate that hasn't budged for at least five years."The U.S. is stagnating while other industrialized countries are surpassing us," said Anna Habash, author of the report by Education Trust, which advocates on behalf of minority and poor children. "And that is going to have a dramatic impact on our ability to compete," she said.In fact, the United States is now the only industrialized country where young people are less likely than their parents to earn a diploma, the report said, citing data compiled by the international Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.High schools are required to meet graduation targets every year as part of the 2002 federal No Child Left Behind law.But those targets are set by states, not by the federal government. And most states allow schools to graduate low percentages of students by saying that any progress, or even the status quo in some cases, is acceptable.In North Carolina, schools must improve by 0.1 percentage point each year. At that rate, it would take nearly a century to raise the graduation rate, now 72 percent, to the state goal of 80 percent.In Maryland, schools must improve their graduation rate by 0.01 percentage point each year. At that rate, it would take most of a millennium for the graduation rate among African-American students, now 71 percent, to reach the state goal of 90 percent.In Delaware and New Mexico, schools will never have to meet a state graduation goal as long as they maintain the same graduation rate. Delaware's graduation rate is 76 percent; New Mexico's is 67 percent.Why are states setting the bar so low?Because they can, said Bob Balfanz, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University.State and school officials are under pressure to improve test scores under the No Child Left Behind education law or face penalties. But they got a break on graduation rates: Schools must meet annual goals, but the government lets each state set its own goal."A lot of states said, `Well, we're under a lot of pressure; let's not make this too hard on ourselves,'" Balfanz said. "They were given a loophole, and they took it."So in North Carolina — which has won praise for a series of innovations to keep kids in school — the graduation goal has not changed. Officials are coming up with a new goal but are hoping No Child Left Behind will be rewritten to be less punitive."To be candid, we're waiting for NCLB to change," said June Atkinson, North Carolina's state schools superintendent. "Those numbers do not tell the story. Our mission is that 100 percent of our students will graduate from high school. Needless to say, we have a lot of work to do."In Maryland, officials say their slower goal is more realistic."If you really want to bring about change, you have to have reachable goals that people believe they can work toward," said Ronald A. Peiffer, Maryland's deputy superintendent for academic policy. "By not making these numbers pie-in-the-sky, I think we have a better chance," Peiffer said. Graduation rates take longer to improve than test scores, because a child's educational experience must be transformed over a period of years, Peiffer said. The U.S. was slow to realize it was facing a dropout crisis. For years, researchers reported dropouts as the number of kids who quit school in 12th grade, failing to capture those who left high school earlier. States and schools clouded the picture by using different methods to keep track of students who graduated, transferred or dropped out. Then came the 2002 No Child Left Behind law, with its requirement that states meet graduation goals. In 2005, the nation's governors made a pact to adopt a common system of tracking graduation rates. Now the federal government is poised to raise the bar on graduation rates. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is expected to issue new rules next week that will force states to use the common tracking system and will judge schools not only on graduation rates but on the percentage of black and Hispanic students who graduate, too. Among minority students, more than one in three students drops out of school. Spellings proposed the new rules earlier this year. Final rules may differ somewhat, but Spellings said earlier that states would be required in most cases to count graduates as students who leave high school on time and with a regular diploma. Critics have worried that by judging test scores more heavily and graduation less so, No Child Left Behind encouraged schools to push weak students out. Balfanz, the Johns Hopkins researcher, said the dropout problem is driven by "dropout factories," schools in poor communities where kids face challenges inside and outside the classroom. He said the government could make a big dent in the dropout problem by plowing more money — and firm guidance on how to spend it — into those schools. More resources are desperately needed, said Mel Riddle, who retired in July as principle of T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va. "The world's changed; we have to change to meet those demands," said Riddle, now an official of the National Association of Secondary School Principals. "To think we can do it in the same way, with the same resources, is not realistic."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081023/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/high_school_dropouts_7;_ylt=AqLy3jgDrt_1yXMKnXw9CwF2yLYF
Assalamualaikum,
No guarantee gas pipeline will be built
ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Contrary to Gov. Sarah Palin's campaign promises to "build a pipeline quickly," the massive project to send natural gas south is still no sure thing.TransCanada Corp. has been awarded a state license, but still needs approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which is years away. Canadian regulators must sign off on their portion. First Nation tribes in Canada are objecting to the proposed route. And even if it sails through financial and regulatory hurdles, TransCanada still has no obligation to build the pipeline.If the company doesn't complete the project, it could still receive up to $500 million in state subsidies, with startup costs split evenly until the company tries to secure contracts to ship gas through the supply channel. Between the time TransCanada locks in shipping commitments and files for a federal permit, the state will pick up 90 percent of the tab even before ground is broken.If TransCanada can't woo the energy companies to use its pipeline, banks won't finance the project. And unless the state or TransCanada decide to break the contract, the company must move forward with the federal permitting process for a project that would be all but doomed. The state treasury would cover most of those costs.According to a new report by the Congressional Research Service, TransCanada and state officials may be underestimating how long the project will take; the target finish date is 2018.Should TransCanada win federal permission to start digging, U.S. taxpayers could be on the hook, big time. Included in the company's bid is a proposal for the federal government to absorb up to $75 billion in liability over a 25-year period if the major natural gas suppliers refuse to ship their gas through the line, the CRS report said. Such a measure would require congressional approval.Meanwhile, ConocoPhillips and BP have launched a competing project completely outside the state's process — Denali-The Alaska Gas Pipeline — that promises to get the job done more quickly.Clearly, two pipelines won't be built, and already state officials acknowledge that the winners in Palin's process may end up being absorbed into a consortium with the multinational energy giants. After all, with no guaranteed gas supply, there's little need for a pipeline."Frankly, this continues to be one big negotiation," said Revenue Department Commissioner Pat Galvin.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081025/ap_on_el_pr/palin_pipeline_prospects;_ylt=AkGGHO9bBvjyLHVpMt5hFBgPLBIF
Japanese Kimono
A Japanese Kimono forms an important part of Japanese culture, Kimono's are made for men and woman and are traditional garments within Japan.
There are many different types of kimono styles, these vary depending on the occasion, the different styles range from formal to very casual, Kimono's also come in many different types of fabric, including silk, cotton and polyester.
http://www.chinatownconnection.com/japanese-kimono.htm
FA08014
Japanese Lifespan
by: Peter McGarry
A recent statistic in the World Bank Group states that the Japanese have the longest lifespan in the world. Japanese men live be 78 years old on average while the average lifespan of a Japanese woman is 85. How do the Japanese have such a long lifespan?
After personally experiencing the Japanese lifestyle in Tokyo for five years, I learned a little about why Japanese people live so long and will share a few of their secrets.
Part 1: It’s All in the Food
The Japanese diet does not center on delicacies eaten solely for taste. In fact, most dishes are consumed based on the health benefits people gain from them. Conscious decisions are based on ‘What would be good for me?’ as opposed to ‘What do I feel like eating?’ This leads one to contemplate what is the diet for the average Japanese person and what are their secrets?
Long Japanese Lifespan, Secret #1: Eating fish instead of red meat lowers the risk of heart attacks.
For a source of protein, fish is a common staple in most meals. Red meat is significantly more expensive and less frequently consumed. Fish is healthier and the fresher it is the better. Keep in mind that not all fish in Japan is consumed raw, there are many ways that fish is prepared (grilled, baked, fried, poached, etc) and served. Furthermore, Japanese women believe that the skin on fish helps bring out the natural beauty of their skin and improves their complexion.
Long Japanese Lifespan, Secret #2: Soy products help reduce heart disease and high blood pressure and are a great source of protein.
Tofu and soy products are also staples in the Japanese diet. Considering that saturated fats from meat and dairy products increase cholesterol, it is encouraging to know that foods derived from plants such as soy actually have the opposite effect. Soybeans provide adequate protein without the saturated fat and cholesterol of meats and high-fat dairy. Soy sauce, tofu, and natto (soy beans mixed with raw egg served over rice) are a few examples of soy products consumed daily.
Long Japanese Lifespan, Secret #3: Wheat and buckwheat flour helps in the digestive process.
The consumption of starches is at a minimum and usually contains no white flour. Japanese noodles are made from wheat flour or buckwheat flour. Both are significantly healthier than enriched white flour. Rice is a staple in the diet but consists of a small bowl at meals. The significance is to cleanse the mouth when changing dishes. Rice will remove the flavor in one’s mouth much like cheese and crackers when sampling wines.
Long Japanese Lifespan, Secret #4: Smaller portions reduce the opportunity for excessive eating.
Traditional Japanese meals are about half the regular portion of western dishes. Even though most dishes are viewed as healthy, portions are still relatively small.
Long Japanese Lifespan, Secret #5: Oolong tea counter balances some of the effects unhealthy food has on the body.
Finally, the consumption of Japanese green tea or Chinese oolong tea, served hot or cold, has numerous health benefits. Tea has half the caffeine of coffee. Oolong tea, in particular, helps to break up oil in the digestive system and is usually consumed at mealtime, particularly when fried or breaded foods are being served.
These five secrets help to explain why the Japanese are so healthy and have the longest life expectancy.
http://www.chinatownconnection.com/japanese-lifespans.htm
FA08014
Japanese Skincare Secret: Seaweed
Some years ago, I met a young Japanese woman in New York City, on a shuttle to Kennedy Airport. She was flying back to Tokyo. She told me she worked for one of the giant international advertising firms and she'd come to New York to receive one of the company's major annual awards. It was a little hard to believe. She was clearly intelligent, but very young.
I was bold enough to ask her age.
Amused, she said, "Guess."
"You look about 18," I said.
She laughed. "Twice that. Two months ago, I was 36."
I was amazed. I said, "If you ever want to advertise the secrets of Japanese skincare, you could be your own model."
She laughed again, told me she wasn't sure why she looked so young, and the conversation turned to her award-winning ad campaign.
These days, it's well known that Asian women, especially Japanese women, seem to age beautifully. Japanese skincare is a vital part of that.
Of course, there's more. Many Japanese get regular exercise throughout their lives. The Japanese eat much more seafood than Americans, which makes their diet rich in Omega-3s. These essential fatty acids are wonderful for reducing inflammation throughout the body and nourishing the skin.
But there are Japanese skincare secrets that go beyond these things. Things the Western world doesn't know about yet. A great part of the Japanese woman's healthy and youthful skin appearance is something now called Phytessence Wakame.
Wakame is a type of sea kelp native to Japan. The Japanese eat wakame, both fresh and dried, sometimes crumpled as a condiment. Phytessence Wakame is wakame that has been extracted and purified. Applied to the skin, it has tremendous benefits.
Wakame is loaded with minerals and vitamins that nourish the skin. It is very rich in the B-complex vitamins. It is also rich in potassium and calcium, both essential minerals.
Phytessence Wakame offers all this and more; you might call it Japanese skincare in concentrated form. It helps to keep skin elastic, smooth, and moisturized. That pretty much describes beautiful skin, doesn't it?
Here's how it works:
Phytessence Wakame blocks the action of a bodily enzyme called hyaluronidase. And hyaluronidase has one very undesirable effect: it breaks down hyaluronic acid, which is essential to skin elasticity, smoothness, and youthful appearance.
In your skin, you want all the hyaluronic acid you can get -- it helps keep your skin beautiful.
To say it simply: Phytessence Wakame is a wonderful skin care ingredient because it blocks the enzyme that degrades hyaluronic acid -- and hyaluronic acid keeps your skin healthy and youthful.
hi,
How to study math
Taking math examinations can be made easier by keeping up with your homework. Do the problems as they are assigned. Math usually builds from one problem or chapter to the next. If you understand the first step, you can start to understand the next one. Be sure to pay attention in class. Not paying attention will lead to much more time spent studying.
Try to get into a study group with several other students. By talking about the problems, you can find out how well you know them. Have an idea of what to expect from your teacher. Either find old tests or talk to others who have had the professor. Time yourself while doing your homework to see if you are ready for a test situation.
When you get your test, look over the entire document. Get an idea of what is being asked so you can set priorities as to which problems need the most attention.
Make sure that you read the instructions. Not doing what is asked is one of the most common ways to miss test questions. If you write out your work on one paper then copy it on the test, recheck it to make sure that you have written out each step correctly. Make sure that you do not skip a step in solving a problem.
When using a calculator, be sure to go back and redo the numbers. You can easily punch in a wrong number, but the odds that you will do it twice are not as high.
When taking your test, if you get to a problem or an area of problems that give you trouble, go on to the next section. You can always go back to the problem after you have completed the others. Never turn in a test paper without going over your work again.
http://www.studytips.org/mathexams.htm
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Analyze Writing Assignments
When you receive a writing assignment topic, it is a good idea to start brainstorming by listing main ideas or key concepts. Put the words or phrases down on paper and just jot notes by them. Many people put circles around each thought and join them by arrows. This process may lead to a longer article.
Decide on the type of paper you are writing. This may be assigned by your teacher, but you may have to give an opinion and justify the opinion. Keep in mind the correct subjects and verbs to use.
Start researching your topic. Make sure you know what your teacher will and will not let you use. Start with the most general source first, so you can learn about the topic then work your way out to the most specialized sources. Use print materials. Before you use internet materials, make certain you know what is allowed.
Establish parameters for your topic. You do not want to be too generalized or too specialized. Make sure you pick a topic where you can find enough information.
Make a précis of your information. It may help to take this to your teacher, so you will know if you are on the right track. If it is necessary to write out your opinion or your thoughts on a topic, make sure that you have the facts to back it. Always remember to be a critical thinker and keep an open mind. Don’t overlook important research material because it doesn’t match your thesis statement.
http://www.studytips.org/analyzewritingassignments.htm
hi,
Note Taking Techniques
The most comprehensive note taking systems require attention on your part. You must be alert enough in class to take legible, meaningful notes. You can't rely on "writing everything down" because a lot of information in a given lecture won't help you actually learn the material. If you have problems determining the specific relevant points in a particular class, you can always ask the professor to clarify them for you.
The 2-6 Method: The 2-6 refers to the way you divide the space on your notepaper. Make two columns, using the red line on the left of the page as your border. Then, when you take notes in class, use the 6 column for the notes and the smaller 2 column on the left as a highlighting system. Write main headings and important points on the left, including material you think you will be tested on. When you're finished, you should have a comprehensive page of information that you can quickly scan for important points. Studying is 99% perspiration; if you give it a real, concentrated effort over the course of a semester you will see an improvement. Your academic success is entirely up to you.
- By George Mason University
Split Page Method
Class lectures and your textbook--they're the primary sources of course content and you need to learn both. So combine them with the split page method of taking notes. Just divide your notebook page in half lengthwise. Draw a line down the middle of the page. Take class notes on one side of the page and outline the text on the other side. When you study you'll have both. Class notes and text together, integrated. Some students find it helpful to add a third column for questions they need to ask the professor.
- By Sherry Reynolds
Using Group Notes
Are you tired of struggling to keep up with a lecture while copying page after page of notes in class? My advice? Don't take the notes -- at least not every day. Instead, form a group with some of your classmates and take turns taking good class notes. When it's not your day to be the note-taker, really concentrate on what is being said in class. You might want to jot down a few particularly important points, but mostly try to participate in class. Ask questions when you can't understand the point your teacher is trying to get across, and score points by answering questions your teacher asks. After class you can either photocopy the notes from your classmate, or better yet, copy them over by hand while reviewing in your mind what happened in class.
- By Fred Weening
Secrets to Taking Better Notes
As a writer for Edinboro University and its Alumni News magazine, I spend a lot of time interviewing people. A key interviewing skill is taking good notes--a skill that is just as valuable in the classroom. There is no magic to taking good notes, just common sense. It's simply a matter of being thorough and accurate. Now, not many people can write fast enough to capture everything their professor says in class, so it is a good idea to also use a tape recorder. That way you won't miss something while you write, and you can double-check the tape for accuracy. Whether you use a recorder or not, it's important to transcribe your notes as soon as possible while the subject is still fresh in your mind. By re-writing or re-typing your notes, you become more familiar with the material. You mentally reinforce what was said in class. And you get practice writing the information, making it easier to write the material a second time whether it be for a test or a term paper.
- By Brian Pitzer
Noteworthy Notes
Are your grades as good as you want them to be? Are your notes worth reviewing? Notes are phrases and abbreviations that we hurriedly jot down while trying to follow a lecture. Later, when we go back to review our notes, there are times when we can't seem to understand or remember what those key words and phrases meant; sometimes we can't even read our own handwriting. Here is a note-taking study tip that has proven to be effective. After you have finished class, immediately rush to the nearest computer lab and retype your notes. You need to rewrite those phrases as complete thoughts and sentences; dot your I's, cross your T's and use "cut and paste" to put your notes into some type of a logical sequence. While retyping your notes you are using several modalities: you review as you read your notes aloud, you use your hand to type, and you reread again as you proof read what you have typed. Research indicates that 80% of new material can be recalled if you review notes within the first 24 hours of presentation. Also, clean typed notes are easier to read and highlight as you study. If you retype your notes daily, you will keep the task from becoming overwhelming, you will learn good study habits that aid in memory retention and, at the same time, improve your grades.
- By Janet Jenkins
Attend Class
The most important advice I can give to you is to make sure you attend your classes. Attendance in class enhances the chance you'll get a passing grade in a course. In addition to attending class, it is important to brush up on your note-taking skills to really achieve optimum success. Some general recommendations for improving note-taking skills are to:
Read all textbook material relevant to the topic being covered prior to attending class.
Make sure you take notes in class. If you fail to take notes, much of what you learn from the lecture will be forgotten in a few days. If you have something written down on paper, you can always refer to the material later.
Ask professors who lecture too fast if you can tape record their lecture. You'll generally find that many professors are willing to assist you in your efforts to gain as much from their lecture as possible.
By attending class and utilizing the note-taking techniques just described, your chances for success in college will increase significantly.
- By Kiran Misra
hi,
Good Study Habits
It will help you in your college career to develop good study habits. The first thing you need to do is take responsibility for your actions. You are the only one who can decide your priorities and how to use your time and resources.
Don’t allow yourself to become distracted by friends and fellow students. Keep in mind the bigger picture. Know what you have to do and when it needs to be done. Keep your goals in mind. Don’t let other people influence you into not doing your work.
Figure out your most productive times of the day. If you study best in the morning, plan to study your hardest subjects first. If you have trouble concentrating at a certain time, don’t get out your hardest subjects or your most complex project.
If you do not understand the course material, try some innovative ways to learn it. Don’t just keep rereading the material in hopes that you will eventually understand it. Ask your instructor for help. If your school has study sessions and peer tutors, take advantage of these offerings. Set up study groups within your class.
When you put your best effort in your work, then you have succeeded. If you are satisfied with what you have done and know that you have done your best, then your grade is the icing on the cake. Always give your best in the classroom and in study sessions. By doing so, you will know that you have tried.
http://www.studytips.org/goodstudyhabits.htm
hi,
V
Concentration and Memorization
Concentration is an important attribute when studying. If you concentrate, you can focus on what you need to do and eliminate outside distractions. In order to concentrate better, it helps to have a set place to study. Keep a study routine; know what time of day is best for what kind of studying. When you study, go ahead and focus your mind on the subject at hand. Look over notes and decide what you need to accomplish.
It may help to know that you will reward yourself if you concentrate. Think about a special treat at the end of a study session. Don’t study one topic for hours. Vary the routine and the subject matter. Be studying a bit and allowing the information to digest, you may understand it better. You need to schedule breaks for study time. Give yourself a chance to move around. Many people worry about studying, so it may be a good idea for you to schedule worry time for half an hour a day. Think about your problems then. It is amazing how scheduling time for worry decreases worry during the day.
Memorization is another technique to use to help with studying. Several memorization strategies are suggested for studying. One strategy is using acronyms. An acronym is a combination of letters that represent words that need to be remembered. An acrostic is a sentence or rhyme that has a first letter cue for you to remember. Many people use lists to memorize. You can also invent stories about each component of the list by using a strategy called chaining.
Another memory technique is to put what you have to remember in a certain location and walk to it. Keywords are another good memorization tool. Another tool is to put an image with a keyword in an effort to remember it.
http://www.studytips.org/concentration.htm
hi,
Grammar and Spelling
Grammar and spelling are extremely important in writing. Don’t turn in any writing assignment that has not used an electronic and/or a human spelling and grammar check.
It is a good idea to run grammar check when using a word processing program. It may help to keep a grammar usage handbook handy through your academic career so you can refresh your memory on rules regarding commas, semicolons and colons. Be sure to check for dangling and misplaced modifiers. Watch your parallelism and consistency in language.
Spelling errors are common, even on computers. If you know you have a spelling problem, keep a notebook or sheet of words you commonly misspell so you can check them in a paper. Have a spelling or word book handy. Another good idea is to keep a list of common spelling rules, such as the “I” before “e” except after “C” saying. You can refer back to this list while writing.
Always spell check documents on a word processor. When you are proofreading your writing, look for spelling errors. Look for words that you know that you frequently misspell.
It is often a good idea to get another person to look at your document. That person may spot an error that you did not see because you knew in your mind how it should read, not how it was printed. Keep a dictionary handy when writing. You may want to use a traditional dictionary or an online one. Whatever is easiest and works best for you is what you should use. Take advantage of any and all tutoring or assistance programs available to you.
http://www.studytips.org/grammar.htm
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Effective Learning
In order to become a successful student, you need to understand your learning processes. Learning to learn can be learned. You need to start by beginning to understand your own needs and interests, your ability to learn, your best way of learning, and your understanding of the subject.
Learning is a process. It is built upon steps. Analyze your studying. Figure out how you learn. It can be by memorizing, reading, speaking, summarizing or other methods. Find out how you study best. It can be in a quiet place by yourself or with a group. Find out how you test best. Testing can be by true/false, multiple choice, discussion or speaking.
Decide how much the topic intrigues you. It may be that you do not understand the subject but are determined to get a certain degree. Dedication is important in the learning process.
When you are studying, look over the subject matter. Get the feel of the topics through the headings, titles, bullets, key words and definitions. Decide if you need other references to help you such as a dictionary, atlas or thesaurus. Read the subject matter. See if you have more questions or if you need to come back to it later. You may decide that you need to talk with your teacher or go to a tutoring session.
A successful learner always reviews. Go back and look over the topic. Decide if you could have studied in a better, more effective manner. Learn your best study techniques and stay with them.
http://www.studytips.org/effective_learning.htm
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Self Discipline
Self-discipline provides the opportunity to improve your performance and your thinking. It is important to practice self-discipline in order to accomplish your goals. Don’t think of self-discipline as deprivation; think of it as a way to improve your life.
Learn how to schedule your priorities. Set small tasks at different times of the day. Do the tasks at the scheduled time. This will allow you to stay focused on your priorities. It is a good idea to keep a list of what you have done. You can refer to this list when you want to chart your progress, or if you are getting discouraged.
Even though it may sound boring, you need to develop a routine. Stay with that routine. Practice the action at the scheduled time of day. Once you have a routine, things start to become a habit. Time management is another route to follow. Break down tasks into smaller segments, so you will see accomplish each day.
It helps to schedule your day, your week and your month. It helps to have a “to-do” list for top priority items. Decide which items are most important and work on the most important ones first. Once you decide on a task, keep at it until the task becomes a habit.
Don’t let yourself get discouraged if you do not succeed at all your goals. Take them slowly. Give yourself positive feedback even if you don’t get something accomplished.
It will help if you have a friend or mentor to guide you and give you tips. If you have another person to talk to about your efforts, you will get feedback as to how they are perceived.
http://www.studytips.org/selfdiscipline.htm
Hye, good evening everyone. Have you heard a story called Valentine Roses?
It such a touching story. I love to share this story with all of you. Red roses were her favorites, her name was also Rose.
And every year her husband sent them, tied with pretty bows.
The year he died, the roses were delivered to her door.
The card said, "Be my Valentine," like all the years before.
Each year he sent her roses, and the note would always say,
"I love you even more this year, than last year on this day."
"My love for you will always grow, with every passing year."
She knew this was the last time that the roses would appear.
She thought, he ordered roses in advance before this day.
Her loving husband did not know, that he would pass away.
He always liked to do things early, way before the time.
Then, if he got too busy, everything would work out fine.
She trimmed the stems, and placed them in a very special vase.
Then, sat the vase beside the portrait of his smiling face.
She would sit for hours, in her husband's favorite chair.
While staring at his picture, and the roses sitting there.
A year went by, and it was hard to live without her mate.
With loneliness and solitude, that had become her fate.
Then, the very hour, as on Valentines before,
The doorbell rang, and there were roses, sitting by her door
She brought the roses in, and then just looked at them in shock.
Then, went to get the telephone, to call the florist shop.
The owner answered, and she asked him, if he would explain,
Why would someone do this to her, causing her such pain?
"I know your husband passed away, more than a year ago,"
The owner said, "I knew you'd call, and you would want to know."
"The flowers you received today, were paid for in advance."
"Your husband always planned ahead, he left nothing to chance."
"There is a standing order, that I have on file down here,
And he has paid, well in advance, you'll get them every year.
There also is another thing, that I think you should know,
He wrote a special little card...he did this years ago."
"Then, should ever, I find out that he's no longer here,
That's the card...that should be sent, to you the following year."
She thanked him and hung up the phone, her tears now flowing hard.
Her fingers shaking, as she slowly reached to get the card.
Inside the card, she saw that he had written her a note.
Then, as she stared in total silence, this is what he wrote...
"Hello my love, I know it's been a year since I've been gone,
I hope it hasn't been too hard for you to overcome."
"I know it must be lonely, and the pain is very real.
For if it was the other way, I know how I would feel.
The love we shared made everything so beautiful in life.
I loved you more than words can say, you were the perfect wife."
"You were my friend and lover, you fulfilled my every need.
I know it's only been a year, but please try not to grieve.
I want you to be happy, even when you shed your tears.
That is why the roses will be sent to you for years."
"When you get these roses, think of all the happiness,
That we had together, and how both of us were blessed.
I have always loved you and I know I always will.
But, my love, you must go on, you have some living still."
"Please...try to find happiness, while living out your days.
I know it is not easy, but I hope you find some ways.
The roses will come every year, and they will only stop,
When your door's not answered, when the florist stops to knock."
"He will come five times that day, in case you have gone out.
But after his last visit, he will know without a doubt,
To take the roses to the place, where I've instructed him,
And place the roses where we are, together once again."
http://www.indianchild.com/valentine_roses.htm
It is all about new technology. There are so many Mp3/Mp4 players on the market, but only a select few reached our high standards of price, features, usability, and warranty. This stunningly good looking touch screen MP4 player has just been launched in the UK (October 2008). It is both PC and MAC friendly, and can play almost all video file formats without the need to convert them, making is a breeze to use.
This touch screen MP3/4 Player looks fantastic with its Metallic outer rim and easy to use on screen buttons. With a massive 4 GIG of memory it can hold about 1000 songs, or 6 films, or thousands of photos, or a combination of these. It can play your Mp3 sound files but also films/tv programs. It even has an FM radio, voice recorder, and ebook function.
Although the 4 GB included memory is more than enough for most users, it also has a built in Mini SD Card slot which can hold up to a 32GB extra Mini SD Card, so you can easily expand it's capacity in the future if you need more storage space.
The display screen is a large 3.0" TFT (many other players only have 1.5") with 260,000 true colours. Navigation is a breeze, and you can select different Equalizers and play modes.
As you can see from the feature list at the bottom of this page the file types supported are also vast, enabling you to see and hear all your digital media. The battery life is also an impressive 7-10 hours, and the Mp3/Mp4 gadget can be charged from either the mains (UK charger included) or via your computers USB port (USB cable included).
If the above is not enough to wet your gadget mad appetite, this super gizmo is both Mac and PC compatible, and can also be used as a portable hard drive to carry/store/backup other files from your computer (Simply comes up as a plug and play drive).
Although it comes with quality headphones included in the pack, it also has in built speakers so you can watch films or listen to music without them.
Overall, it brings together everything you expect from an MP3/MP4 Player with great sound and crystal clear viewing of all your favourite films, combined with a host of other features not included in many other media players on the market.
http://www.paramountzone.com/touch-screen-mp4.htm
Did you have a friends which are bad temper? Let me told you what I had read about it. There once was a little boy who had a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he must hammer a nail into the back of the fence.
The first day, the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Over the next few weeks, as he learned to control his anger, the number of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence.
Finally the day came when the boy didn't lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper. The days passed and the boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone.
The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said, "You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a
scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out. It won't matter how many times you say I'm sorry the wound is still there. A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one."
http://www.indianchild.com/bad_temper.htm
hai...do you know anything about earth...?is the third planet from the Sun. Earth is the largest of the terrestrial planets in the Solar System in diameter, mass and density. It is also referred to as the World and Terra.
Home to millions of species, including humans, Earth is the only place in the universe where life is known to exist. Scientific evidence indicates that the planet formed 4.54 billion years ago, and life appeared on its surface within a billion years. Since then, Earth's biosphere has significantly altered the atmosphere and other abiotic conditions on the planet enabling the proliferation of aerobic organisms as well as the formation of the ozone layer which, together with Earth's magnetic field, blocks harmful radiation, permitting life on land
Earth's outer surface is divided into several rigid segments, or tectonic plates, that gradually migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of the surface is covered with salt-water oceans, the remainder consisting of continents and islands; liquid water, necessary for all known life, is not known to exist on any other planet's surface. Earth's interior remains active, with a thick layer of relatively solid mantle, a liquid outer core that generates a magnetic field, and a solid iron inner core.
Earth interacts with other objects in outer space, including the Sun and the Moon. At present, Earth orbits the Sun once for every roughly 366.26 times it rotates about its axis. This length of time is a sidereal year, which is equal to 365.26 solar days. The Earth's axis of rotation is tilted 23.4° away from the perpendicular to its orbital plane, producing seasonal variations on the planet's surface with a period of one tropical year (365.24 solar days). Earth's only known natural satellite, the Moon, which began orbiting it about 4.53 billion years ago, provides ocean tides, stabilizes the axial tilt and gradually slows the planet's rotation. A cometary bombardment during the early history of the planet played a role in the formation of the oceans.Later, asteroid impacts caused significant changes to the surface environment.
assalamualaikum.i would like to share with you about food.
Food is any substance, usually composed primarily of carbohydrates, fats, water and/or proteins, that can be eaten or drunk by an animal or human for nutrition or pleasure. Items considered food may be sourced from plants, animals or other categories such as fungus or fermented products like alcohol. Although many human cultures sought food items through hunting and gathering, today most cultures use farming, ranching, and fishing, with hunting, foraging and other methods of a local nature included but playing a minor role.
Most traditions have a recognizable cuisine, a specific set of cooking traditions, preferences, and practices, the study of which is known as gastronomy. Many cultures have diversified their foods by means of preparation, cooking methods and manufacturing. This also includes a complex food trade which helps the cultures to economically survive by-way-of food, not just by consumption.
Many cultures study the dietary analysis of food habits. While humans are omnivores, religion and social constructs such as morality often affect which foods they will consume. Food safety is also a concern with foodborne illness claiming many lives each year. In many languages, food is often used metaphorically or figuratively, as in "food for thought".
Almost all foods are of plant or animal origin, although there are some exceptions. Foods not coming from animal or plant sources include various edible fungi, such mushrooms. Fungi and ambient bacteria are used in the preparation of fermented and pickled foods such as leavened bread, alcoholic drinks, cheese, pickles, and yogurt. Many cultures eat seaweed, a protist, or blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) such as Spirulina.[1] Additionally, salt is often eaten as a flavoring or preservative, and baking soda is used in food preparation. Both of these are inorganic substances, as is water, an important part of human diet.
Between the extremes of optimal health and death from starvation or malnutrition, there is an array of disease states that can be caused or alleviated by changes in diet. Deficiencies, excesses and imbalances in diet can produce negative impacts on health, which may lead to diseases such as scurvy, obesity or osteoporosis, as well as psychological and behavioral problems. The science of nutrition attempts to understand how and why specific dietary aspects influence health.
Nutrients in food are grouped into several categories. Macronutrients means fat, protein, and carbohydrates. Micronutrients are the minerals and vitamins. Additionally food contains water and dietary fiber
Some countries list a legal definition of food. These countries list food as any item that is to be processed, partially processed or unprocessed for consumption. The listing of items included as foodstuffs include any substance, intended to be, or reasonably expected to be, ingested by humans. In addition to these foodstuffs drink, chewing gum, water or other items processed into said food items are part of the legal definition of food. Items not included in the legal definition of food include animal feed, live animals unless being prepared for sale in a market, plants prior to harvesting, medicinal products, cosmetics, tobacco and tobacco products, narcotic or psychotropic substances, and residues and contaminants
hai...do you know that music is one of the most effective therapy in the world:
Research has shown that music has a profound effect on your body and psyche. In fact, there’s a growing field of health care known as Music Therapy, which uses music to heal. Those who practice music therapy are finding a benefit in using music to help cancer patients, children with ADD, and others, and even hospitals are beginning to use music and music therapy to help with pain management, to help ward off depression, to promote movement, to calm patients, to ease muscle tension, and for many other benefits that music and music therapy can bring. This is not surprising, as music affects the body and mind in many powerful ways. The following are some of effects of music, which help to explain the effectiveness of music therapy
Brain Waves: Research has shown that music with a strong beat can stimulate brainwaves to resonate in sync with the beat, with faster beats bringing sharper concentration and more alert thinking, and a slower tempo promoting a calm, meditative state. Also, research has found that the change in brainwave activity levels that music can bring can also enable the brain to shift speeds more easily on its own as needed, which means that music can bring lasting benefits to your state of mind, even after you’ve stopped listening
Breathing and Heart Rate: With alterations in brainwaves comes changes in other bodily functions. Those governed by the autonomic nervous system, such as breathing and heart rate can also be altered by the changes music can bring. This can mean slower breathing, slower heart rate, and an activation of the relaxation response, among other things. This is why music and music therapy can help counteract or prevent the damaging effects of chronic stress, greatly promoting not only relaxation, but health
State of Mind: Music can also be used to bring a more positive state of mind, helping to keep depression and anxiety at bay. This can help prevent the stress response from wreaking havoc on the body, and can help keep creativity and optimism levels higher, bringing many other benefits.
Other Benefits: Music has also been found to bring many other benefits, such as lowering blood pressure (which can also reduce the risk of stroke and other health problems over time), boost immunity, ease muscle tension, and more. With so many benefits and such profound physical effects, it’s no surprise that so many are seeing music as an important tool to help the body in staying (or becoming) healthy
I just want to share with you all about an article on how to transform your body faster. There are some tips that we can do besides having good eating habit and frequent exercises. First, we must always stay positive. Believe that anything is possible or otherwise you could not do what you want even before you start it. Then, stay in the moment. Meaning to say that you just do what you know you can do today without thinking your end results. Everything we do may take some time before we can see the results itself.
Other than that, be sure to keep your expectations low. Do not expect too much too soon or you will get discouraged. Just stay realistic with smaller goals. Finally, stop using excuses. this is the hard one. Every people always make excuses as the backup for their failure. It is about our mindset and how determine we are to go through it. Excuses will stop you become stronger. Just believe yourself and fight for what you wants till the last blood.
I have just finished reading an article about some healthy habits to improve your life. Firstly, eat breakfast every morning. Breakfast eaters are champion of good heatlh. The second one is try to add fish and omega-3 fatty acids in your diet. It is a good protein source and have low amount in saturated fat. Moreover, it is also known to reduce the risk of heart disease. Some research also found that this omega-3 fatty acids may help to strengthen the immune system.
Make sure you always get enough sleep everyday. Our body need to get some rest or you will tired and a bit cranky. Having enough sleep also helps to keep you in a good emotion, heatlh and mental. All these will affect you and your daily life. Do not forget to make social connections. Research shows that social ties may help in some benefits for you to get emotional support and a sense of belonging.
Keep your body with frequent exercises. As we all know, exercises help you control your weight, maintain healthy body and reduce risk of developing high blood pressure and diabetes. Besides, drink water and eat dairy. Everybody knows that our body needs water to keep hydrated so that all parts anc funtion well. For dairy items, the calcium is very important for strong bones and teeth. And the last one, this is the most easiest one and we never realise that we are always used to it. Just take a daily walk. It is about to have some movements. You can have window shop at the store or you can take the stairs instead. I hope we can together practice these habits so that we can have a healthy life.
What is Halloween actually? This thing is always crossed in mind mind. Now I understand about it. Halloween has its origin in the ancient Celtis festival. It is a celebration of the end of harvest season. Halloween itself is actually shortened from All Hallows' Even. So, i wonder what is the relationship with the carved pumpkin? From the article, the carved pumpkin, with a candle inside it, is one of Halloween's most prominent symbols in America and is commonly called a jack-o'-lantern. Actually, Halloween is differently celebrated according to the countries. Every country has its own history and their way of celebrating it. The one we always see is from America. Maybe it is because there are lots of Hollywood movies. So we are more used with them. It is s holiday that celebrated on October 31. There are many activities during this festival including trick-or-treating, ghost tours, bonfires, costumes parties, visiting "haunted houses", carving Jack-o'-lanterns, reading scary stories and watching horror movies. For me, this Halloween seems very interesting. I hope I can get a chance at least once in a lifetime to experience Halloween.
Recently, i read a fiction book. It is called THE LITTLE BOOK.
First-time novelist Selden Edwards's tale, THE LITTLE BOOK, presents readers with the story of an amazing family, two members of whom have become dislodged from linear time.
Beyond the incredible lives of three generations of the Burden family, Edwards paints a picture of Europe on the brink of a new age. In 1897 Vienna holds all the promise of a fully realized and splendid civilization. But, as history has shown, collapse and violence were on the horizon.
Wheeler Burden --- famous American college baseballl player, rock star and author --- suddenly finds himself in Vienna. It is the end of the 19th century, and the city is full of artists, philosophers and musicians. It is the time of Mahler, Klimt and Freud, and the youth of the city are part of a social, artistic and intellectual revolution. Because of his prep school mentor, Arnauld Esterhazy (known as The Haze), whose memoir he edited and published, Wheeler knows all about Vienna. He steals some clothes and money and sets off to see the city. But that theft leads to an incredible chain of events that plays out over almost the next 100 years and then circles in on itself starting all over again.
In Vienna, Wheeler comes to meet his war-hero father who died when he was just a small boy. The two, Wheeler and Dilly Burden, agree not to interfere in history (as Dilly has time traveled to Vienna as well), but Wheeler falls in love with the beautiful Bostonian writer Eleanor Putnam. The biggest problem with their affair is that she is his own grandmother.
This incest, though explained away by Edwards, is problematic. Wheeler and Eleanor are supposed to be having a monumental love affair, but the duality of their relationship is hard to get past. This is not the only flaw in Edwards’s book. Full of big ideas and interesting characters, a blend of fantasy and historical fiction, THE LITTLE BOOK is often a victim of its own devices. The loops of time are occasionally confusing (which relationship came first: Wheeler and Eleanor as lovers, or as family?), the characters are more heroic and perfect than is realistic and their motivations are sometimes unclear. Whole sections of narration read like Freudian therapy sessions, which isn’t surprising since Freud (along with Mahler, Hitler and other famous Austrians) is an important figure in the story. Edwards owes just as much to Joseph Campbell and his theories on the hero's journey as he does to Freud in telling this ambitious tale.
In the end, while much of what Edwards attempts in THE LITTLE BOOK is compelling, the main characters, especially Wheeler, seem to lack any real humanity: they are beautiful and talented, brilliant and influential, and, for some reason, stuck in a time warp moving from California in 1988 to Vienna in 1897, all using a set of books (who wrote what first and inspired by whom? It gets lost in the narrative shuffle) to navigate their way around.
This story is about historical thriller.THE BLACK TOWER welcome us to Paris, c. 1818. After the execution of Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI, and the death of their son, the Dauphin, the Bourbon monarchy has at last been restored. But a remnant core of Republicans is still working to fulfill the promise of the Revolution, and the great Napoleon is plotting his next return to power from the rocky exile of St. Helena. Partisans on every side will do whatever it takes to advance their causes. Dr. Hector Carpentier is a partisan of no cause. His father, Dr. Julien Carpentier, saw first-hand the ravages of the Revolution and remained resolutely impartial to politics. His son, cowed by his domineering mother and missing his deceased father, leads a very quiet life.
Until he meets Vidocq, Paris’s most legendary police officer. As founder and chief of the newly created plain-clothes force called the Sûreté, Vidocq has used his mastery of disguise and surveillance and his extensive knowledge of the Parisian underworld to capture some of France’s most notorious and elusive criminals. And now he needs the help of the shy, provincial Hector Carpentier. Between the two of them, they may prove that the Dauphin, like Anastasia, lives, which could change the course of history.
THE BLACK TOWER © Copyright 2008 by Louis Bayard
DANCING IN THE LOWCOUNTRY is a novel about relationships --- those we are born into and those we choose on our own. Set in the warm, lush beauty of the South Carolina Lowcountry, the book centers on Ella Dubose, a Southern lady of a certain age, whose flower may be fading but who still wants to control her own destiny.
When her adult children begin questioning the wisdom of her independence, she gathers up her companion, a Cherokee Indian named Goldie, and drives down to a genteel seaside inn on Myrtle Beach. There, while waiting for her eldest son Tyler, a successful New York City novelist, to join her, she meets up with a gentleman doctor from New Jersey and the romantic sparks fly. But Ella and Tyler each have some unfinished business to attend to with one another, and while she awaits her son’s arrival, she relives some memories from times gone by and contemplates the choices we make in our lives that end up defining us.
James Villas, a successful food and wine writer for over 25 years, has an obvious passion for the people, places and details of his Southern heritage. An award-winning cookbook author who has often explored the culinary traditions of the Southern United States (THE GLORY OF SOUTHERN COOKING, MY MOTHER’S SOUTHERN KITCHEN), he has as confident and sure a style with fiction as he does with biscuits. DANCING IN THE LOWCOUNTRY is replete with the essence of South Carolina, from the descriptions of the dining table fare (just reading about the hush puppies is sure to make your mouth water) to the beach fishing to the detailed scenes describing the one and only Carolina Shag --- a unique dancing style typical of the area
DANCING IN THE LOWCOUNTRY is a perfect autumn read, when the change in seasons naturally encourages us to be a bit reflective about our lives. Villas’s obvious love for his setting and subject matter imbues the novel with classic Southern charm. And like a great beach song, a perfect slow dance, or a special Southern dinner among friends, the memory of these characters stay with you long after you have finished their story.
Copyright 1996-2008,
Bookreporter.com.
A SINGLE THREAD is a sometimes humorous and always touching story that features the strong, first person voice and lyrical style, small town values and the quilting imagery readers of Marie Bostwick’s historical novels have come to love. Her first full length novel in a contemporary setting, A SINGLE THREAD weaves the unforgettable story of four very different women, whose paths cross, changing their lives forever. As they stitch their unique creations, Evelyn, Abigail, Liza and Margot form a sisterhood they never sought --- but a bond they’ll be grateful for when the unexpected provides a poignant reminder… a single thread binds us all.
A SINGLE THREAD © Copyright 2008 by Marie Bostwick
The dreads are back. As a child, Meers Logan was haunted by memories of another time and place, always accompanied by the faint strains of elusive music. Now the hand of the past has reached out again. An envelope addressed to her and delivered to the Phoenix Foundation --- an institute dedicated to the recovery of past life memories --- contains a childhood drawing of an elaborate box that Meers recognizes... and a sheet from an auction catalogue identifying the object she spent years imagining as an eighteenth century gaming box.
Determined to unlock the mystery of who she once was, she travels to Vienna to find the box. With each step, she comes closer to remembering the connections between a clandestine reincarnationist society; the lost Memory Flute linked to Ludwig van Beethoven and rumored to open the door to the past; and to David Weiss, a journalist who knows all too well how the past affects the future.
Known internationally for his coverage of the Middle East, terrorism is more than a story for David --- it's a reality that cost him his family. He's seen every solution promised by security experts around the world --- and he's seen every solution fail. Now, in a concert hall in Vienna, he plans to force the world to understand the cost of those failures in a single act. Because those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it...
THE MEMORIST © Copyright 2008 by M. J. Rose
A number of prominent figures have been killed under mysterious circumstances in the past year. All unconnected. But when an esteemed U.S. ambassador is slain in a questionable hit-and-run in Washington, D.C. and his stepdaughter vanishes mere hours later in the mountains of northern New England, suspicions are raised by a Secret Service agent and a recovering Special Forces soldier in COLD PURSUIT, the newest novel by New York Times bestselling author Carla Neggers.
Secret Service agent Jo Harper finds herself on a forced sabbatical back in her hometown of Black Falls, in the heart of Vermont’s Green Mountains, laying low after an embarrassing incident involving the vice president’s precocious son is caught on video and becomes a YouTube sensation. But she doesn’t count on old flame Elijah Cameron being around. A sergeant in the Special Forces, Elijah is recovering from a near-fatal wound received on a secret mission in Afghanistan.
However, before Jo and Elijah can dredge up the past, esteemed U.S. ambassador Alexander Bruni is killed in a suspicious hit-and-run incident, and his stepdaughter, Nora --- a recent Black Falls resident --- bolts off into the wilds on rugged Cameron Mountain.
When their sources connect the ambassador’s death to the mysterious demises of a number of other prominent figures, Elijah and Jo suspect that Nora’s vanishing is not a coincidence --- she’s disappeared for her own safety.
But how secure is she? Not a safe place at the best of times, Cameron Mountain in November is a dangerous and treacherous peak. Determined to bring Nora back before the brutal elements and the unforgiving mountain overcome her, Jo forms an uneasy alliance with Elijah and they head off after her.
But they are not the only ones looking for the young girl. A professional killer is also on Nora’s trail and is resolved to make sure she --- and anyone who gets in his way --- doesn’t get off Cameron Mountain alive.
COLD PURSUIT © Copyright 2008 by Carla Neggers
2 Simple Rules to Avoid Yoga Injuries:
1. Warm-up:
Although this is common sense, I have noticed the following special occasions when warm-up is unfortunately skipped and the yogi ends up risking injury. Here are these three occasions when you need to be especially vigilant and avoid getting injured due to insufficient warm-up.
A. You are Late to Class:
Many times I see students who come in late to class jump right in and start doing the exercises and postures that the class is doing at full stream. This is a recipe for disaster. If you are late coming into a class which has already picked up steam, you need to start out very slowly and gently till you feel ready to catch up with the rest of the students.
B. You are Giving a Spot Demonstration:
Often if you are a yoga teacher or even just a regular yoga student, occasions arise where you are asked to, or want to, give a quick demo of a pose or exercise. If you encounter this situation, immediately your injury antenna should go up. This type of spot demonstration is perhaps the most common reason for injury. Don't try to show off at this time, but instead do the posture or exercise as gently and safely as you can. Trying to all of a sudden demonstrate Plough Pose, is the best way to injure your back, or worse, break your neck.
C. You Don't Have Enough Time:
Here is another dangerous situation which often leads to skipping a proper warm-up and jumping ahead to a challenging set or routine, when you don't have enough time to fit in your full practice. In this situation it is very important to make an adjustment to any difficult routine and posture and be conservative with regard to how hard you go at it. Tone it down in such situations and live to practice another day.
2. Don't Compete:
Yoga is not an Olympic sport. It is not a tournament. It is not a competition. It is amazing how when you put a bunch of people together for the same activity, comparisons and judgments immediately come into the picture. As a yogi, you have to remember the golden rule that yoga is just about you and you. It does not matter how anyone else is doing, it only matters how you are doing. Forget about competing and comparing with others and just do your practice, intelligently, mindfully and most import of all, safely. Comparing often leads to pushing yourself further than you should have, which is perhaps the number one reason for incurring injury.
Article From Article Health And Fitness
I cannot magnify enough the need to be calm and relaxed even under the severest of pressures if you are to keep a mane of healthy hair. Stress is among causes of hair loss. Stress interferes with the normal function of the body, and that includes the growth cycle of the hair and can cause hair loss. So, next time you are severely stressed up, remember that you are negatively contributing to the loss of your hair.
Hair loss symptoms can be exhibited in a number of ways. You may see excessively large amounts of hair on your brush when you comb your hair or your hair will have hair. If you notice that your hair has lost its volume, you should immediately consult a dermatologist. Lots of effective treatments exist to solve hair loss problems.
Scalp reduction is a hair loss remedy that is beneficial for individuals who have extensive baldness. The process of scalp reduction surgery includes-- the areas which are bald are reduced by removing several inches of the bald skin and pulling them together to be sutured. Scalp reduction can give you a natural looking hair line where you do not have one.
Traumatic events can have a disruptive effect on the natural hair growth cycle If you lose your loved one, you may lose your hair because of the effect of the grief in your body system. A terrible illness can take its toll on your hair and cause you to loose some of it.
Hair loss can be localized or spread out to some partts of the head. Alopecia Areata is a hair loss condition that spreads out to other areas of the head-- yes that is true. Hair loss can be patchy in its spread.
Minoxidil is a hair loss medication that really can helps to grow hair over bald patches. The side effect of minoxidil as a hair loss treatment includes the irritation of the scalp. If you are utilizing minoxidil for treating your hair loss problem and you aren't seeing visible results, you may be advised to discontinue its use.
The effects of balding can be devastating for some individuals. You may decide to withdraw from the social scene because of your baldness-- because of the lack of confidence to face people. To cope with baldness, try joining a balding support group as it can let you know that you are not alone in your problem.
The human hair is a delicate part of the body that needs to be treated with special care. Finding out the creams that best fit your hair type can reduce the risk of hair loss for you. Hair loss is a condition that many people would like to avoid because of its potential to decrease positive self image perception.
Article From Article Health And Fitness
These are tips of beauty.
Natural Beauty Tip #1: Drink lots of water! That is right. The more water you drink, the better you skin will look – How’s that for some completely free beauty advice.
Natural Beauty Tip #2: Eat plenty of fresh vegetables – the more uncooked ones you eat the better. That is some of the best beauty advice you will ever get. Your body needs all those minerals and nutrients that you get from raw and fresh vegetables. Your skin will thank and reward you with a healthy glow.
Natural Beauty Tip #3: Do not smoke cigarettes. Nicotine yellows your skin, clogs your pores and gives you those nasty blackheads. That’s not only a beauty tip, it is a health tip. Think of what it must do to the rest of your body, if it can do that to your skin! Just don’t smoke.
Natural Beauty Tip #4: Take your vitamins! They keep you healthy, help you sleep, and if you are taking the right vitamins they nourish not only your blood but your skin. All that nourishment will make you look and feel younger. As we all know, when we feel good, we look good. The real secret to beauty!
Natural Beauty Tip #5: Get plenty of rest. Don’t stay up too late, then get up too early, and do it too many days in a row. Sure, there are those times when we have to go the extra mile and it may show for a day in our overall beauty. Just don’t make a habit of it. Sleep is the time when the body regenerates. Let it get its full regeneration.
Natural Beauty Tip #6: Try to reduce stress in your life (and the beauty tips above will all help with that). Nothing shows on your whole body like stress: the way you walk, the look in your eye, the haggard appearance of your skin, the way you talk, even the way you sit in your chair. Here’s a little beauty advice: your stress shows on your whole body so do not let that stress become overwhelming.
The funny thing about these beauty tips is that you can easily see that it really is just one big beauty tip: keep yourself healthy and happy and it will show in your skin. Then when you use your creams and make up, and your lovely scents and soaps it will make you even that much more beautiful than you are naturally.
Article From Article Health And Fitness
Stress is a very common symptom nowadays. Nearly everyone is experiencing stress from time to time. Although this is no necessarily good, it will do no harm to your body. But what happens if you experience stress nearly all the time? What are the effects of stress on the body and what can you do against it?
Hair is considered by many a barometer of your inner health. So in stressful situations your hair may be the first part of your body to feel the repercussions. Hair loss is just another annoying way it can get the best of you. It basically boils down to your body being out-of-whack. This is just one of the many effects that stress can have on the body.
Cortisol is one of our primary stress hormones, and is often used to measure the stress response. Stress in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. Cortisol however is required in other processes such as laying down of new memories. But elevated levels of Cortisol affects the memory and if prolonged, can damage the hippocampus, the part of the brain which is concerned with memory. Chronic stress can definitely harm your memory.
Cortisol strongly suppresses the immune system. This means that a person experiencing chronic stress is more vulnerable to colds and viral flare ups. Cortisol, a hormone produced in the adrenal glands, plays an important role in the body's regulation of cardiovascular function and fat, protein and carbohydrate utilization. When the body experiences stress, Cortisol secretion increases, thus causing a breakdown of muscle protein and the release of amino acids to form glucose via gluconeogenesis, which means you are losing muscle tissue.
Chronically elevated hormone levels shift the balance of water, oxygen and vital nutrients - which skin needs to thrive - impairing its natural immune function and its ability to properly heal and replenish itself. The result can range from excess oil production and breakouts to dehydration, irritation and inflammation, all of which can contribute to premature skin aging. Chronic stress can lead to heart disease or unstable angina. Angina leads to pain in your chest brought which is caused by insufficient supply of oxygen. Chronic daily stress (ie. a few common signs of weak adrenal function are: overeating and weight gain, low feeling of energy or fatigue, irritability, chronic tiredness, oversleeping and frequent immune system break down.
Feelings of being insecure, lacking in confidence, and feeling overwhelmed are also the emotional effects of stress to a person. Feel that tension in your neck, are your shoulders around your ears? The body will restrict circulation in an effort to limit the movement of bacteria and invading substances. Feel your stomach rising and falling. If your mind is racing, count your breaths, to slow down and get the relaxation you need.
Yoga can help you greatly to change your stress level. Yoga also helps to improve body alignment resulting in better posture and helping to relieve back, neck, joint and muscle problems. Yoga is a great way to reduce stress. Studies have shown that daily meditation can actually reduce blood pressure and helps in getting rid of stress symptoms and it is a wonderful way to alleviate the effects of stress on the body.
Article From Article Health And Fitness
The direct mechanisms causing hypertension is one or more of these factors:
- An increased tension in the blood vessel walls.
- An increased blood volume caused by elevated levels of salt and lipids in the blood holding back water.
- Hardened and inelastic blood vessels caused by arteriosclerosis.
The primary causes behind these mechanisms are not fully understood, but these factors contribute to causing hypertension:
- A high consume of salt
- A high fat consume.
- Stress at work and in the daily life.
- Smoking.
- Over-weight
- Lack of exercise.
- Kidney failure.
Article From Article Health And Fitness
Aromatherapy is such an effective and powerful way to relieve stress because you don't have to go to a gym, lie down or pop a pill. There are no side effects, (unless you are allergic, perform a spot test so that you are sure) you can take it with you and instantly make yourself feel better. You can carry around a little lavender in your purse, if you are at work, you can use a diffuser. So you can experience the benefits of aromatherapy from anywhere. It can become your traveling stress buster. Aromatherapy works especially well in helping to cheer us up, feel balanced, become more energized and even to calm us.
Article From Article Health And Fitness
Here are some simple advices to avoid disease in the heart and blood vessels and to help regain good circulatory health if such disease already are present.
- Do not smoke or use any other types of nicotine sources. Smoking is perhaps the most potent cause of circulatory problems.
- Have some exercises at least every second day that make your heart work harder. Jogging, cycling, playing ball, swimming or other activities where you increase your energy consume are good for your blood circulation. The exercises should however be adjusted to your present health condition.
- Get enough sleep each 24 hours. All the sleep does not however need to occur during night. You can for example take out some of your need for sleep as a siesta in the middle of the day. 7 hours sleep seems to be the ideal for optimal circulatory health. Much more sleep seems to be bad for your blood circulation.
- Avoid a high amount of stress over a longer period. If there is something in your lifestyle or work that makes you stressed, you should make adjustments. Meditation is a good method to stress down.
- Decrease the amount of fat in your diet. Do not add much oil, butter or other types of fat to your food. Do not consume much fast-food or ready made food that often contain great amount of added fat.
-Avoid altogether chemically altered fat, so-called trans-fat. This type of fat is often found in margarine and is often added to many types of cookies. Avoid great amounts of saturated fat, as found in fat milk, fat diary products, coconut products and butter.
- Still you need some fat. The fat you mostly need are mono-unsaturated fat as found in olives, olive oil, rape oil, canola oil and almonds, omga-3-polyunsaturated fat found for example in fish, seafood and flax oil and omga-6-polyunsatyrated found in sunflower oil, soy oil, corn oil, sunflower seeds and many types of nuts.
- Much of the fat you still choose to add to your food should be oils with mono-unsaturated fat like olive oil, rape oil, almond oil or canola oil. Marine oils or flax oil can be added to get enough omega-3-fat. You can also use some soy oil, corn oils and other types of natural oils with a high content of omega-6-fat, but do not use too much of these to avoid over-consuming this type of fat.
- Eat some nuts, almonds or sunflower seeds several times each week, since these food types give you fat valuable for your circulatory health.
- Eat fish at least every second day. Use lean meat, lean poultry, mushrooms, seafood and lean diary products in the food you make.
- Consume a moderate amount of carbohydrates. Avoid adding great amounts of sugar to your food. Avoid consuming much sweet drinks, cookies and snacks with great amounts of sugar and other carbohydrates.
- Use carbohydrate sources that contain fibre and that let the carbohydrates be taken up over some time, for example full corn bread and cereals, beans, peas and fresh fruit.
- Eat vegetables and fruit to each meal in order to get enough vitamins, minerals, fibres and anti-oxidants. They should be raw or only gently cooked so that the content of nutrients is not washed out.
- Consume just a little amount of salt. Do not add great amount of salt to your food or do not eat great amounts of salty food. By hot conditions and by heavy bodily work you will however need some more salt.
- A moderate alcohol consume is good for your blood circulation, especially red wine, but over-drinking has the opposite effect.
- Avoid excessive eating. Eating too much is not good for your blood circulation even though you eat sound food.
- Reduce excessive weight. The advices depicted above will often over time normalize your weight. If this is not enough you should carry through a more specific weight reduction program.
- If you suffer from diabetes, this disease should be well controlled.
- Extra supplements of vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids and anti-oxidants may be useful. Also some herbal supplements containing adaptogenic factors can be useful, for example supplements based on ginseng or roseroot (Rhodiola rocea). Supplements are especially useful if it is difficult to achieve a wholly satisfactory diet, or you have extra stressful conditions in your life you cannot avoid.
Article From Article Health And Fitness
Assalamualaikum...
Hai..now I want share from one of the interesting article that I had read..It is about the oldest radio service.The amater have been around since the beginning of radio itself when many individuals built, communicated and experimented with radio. They communicated using Morse code,that is strange configuration of dits and dahs still hold the fascinate of many operators today.
Amateur (hams) have been at the forefront of radio technology. Many of hams have pioneered of radio and provide experimetstion which had led to many of today's high technology communication capability. A good example of this experimentation is communication through a personal computer. Hams also commnicate with computers, but instead of using the phone lines to transfer the information, we can send the information over the air waves using HF or VHF/UHF radio equipment.that's all from me. Thank you.
source:estidotmy
FA08024
hi...
According to a study, there’s a love habit that’s crucial to the health of your union: focusing on each other’s good qualities. Of course, that’s easier said than done. It’s normal to see more of your guy’s flaws over time — the key is not letting them infringe on your affection. “If you can organize your thoughts around his strengths, you’ll concentrate on him as a whole instead of on his imperfections,” says study author John Holmes, PhD, professor of social psychology at the University of Waterloo. He found that couples who do this stay together longer.
We’re not suggesting you try to love his annoying behavior. But you can learn to flip your thinking so you look to the positive. Here, three ways to master the girlfriend mind trick.
when you’re bugged by something small your guy has done, it may not be that action that’s getting under your skin — something may be eating away at you on a deeper level. By figuring out what that is, you can shift your thinking so you’re less agitated.
First, question why you’re upset. For example, say he takes hours to reply to your texts, and you assume he doesn’t care about you. “Find evidence that proves you wrong,” suggests Los Angeles therapist Shannon Fox, PhD. Maybe he asked about an important meeting you had or wrote you the sweetest card. “Pointing out the contrary helps keep the annoyance in proportion,” notes Fox.
hello..today i have read about "skills?there are skills?
this article tells about parental skills.the daughter ask her mother what are the skills his mother need to be a good parent.the mother glancing at the wall calendar, noted that her next seven days included two appointment, one evening of lesson registration,three dead lines to hand in various forms at two different schools,and a reminder to pick up a cover for the pool.and then,she answered her daughter that is organisation skills.she also said parent should have financial skills.she have to budget, especially if she end up with two birthdays in one pay period.
next, the mother said that math comes in handy too when she is trying to divide seven lollies evenly among four kids.another are chemistry and biology skills.the mother said this used when her two-year-old shows you a blemish, she have to tell if it's the beginning of a flesh-eating disease or just a freckle.she also need to know which laundry soap makes the baby itch.the mother added,that a parent also need a good memory to remember birthdays,names of stuffed animals, which kid had chickenpox, who like peas and etc.finally, the creativity in art, craft, storytelling and music.for example, children need their parents to stick googlie eyes to clothes pegs and draw bubble letters. this article shows how hard it is to be a parent.
source:reader's digest november 2007
hello..i had read about the iceberg.The iceberg? a 'piece' of fresh water from glacier that floating in the ocean.
Long ago, earth had been covered by ice before its melting and become ocean and land. Based on the articles, iceberg can be found at the Greenland, a place near Artic and also at the Antartica. Iceberg had been captured in a breathtaking movie - The Titanic and the main cause that made the ship sank. Iceberg come in vary size, from 1 metre till over 75 metre height.
But now, there are less iceberg can be found at North and South Pole as they are melting caused by the global warming. That's why the sea level is rising and flood frequently happened in few countries. For your information, this 'giant ice' can move as fast as 7 km per year (in Greenland) and become the habitat for birds, pinguin and also some kind of artic animals. Watch out for this iceberg as it has small size outer the sea water and the rest is gigantic ice size inside the water. So, don't try to pick up the iceberg if you see them floating on the sea in a very small size. You can't lift them up!
source:www.cdli.ca and wikipedia
hello... i had read about halloween. This holiday will be celebrated on 31st October. People will wear the eery costumes and also serve candies for children. The other activities are visiting the haunted house, trick or treat and also they will carve the pumpkin and called the pumpkin as Jack O' Lantern. Actually, Halloween had been celebrated by the ancient for the harvest season. They wore the evil costumes just to fright the evil spirit so that they will get more good crops and healthy livestock.
Now, people just celebrate this holiday as the custom and they happy celebrating it especially for kids as they will get free candies and more friends.
source: wikipedia
Hello….I like to share about ‘nuts are good food’. They are many benefit of nuts to us such lowering cholesterol level, helping our heart, countering cancer, and defending against diabetes. For information, the more almond people ate, the lower their level of cholesterol. Eating 37grams of almonds a day lowered 4.4 per cent of cholesterol. Furthermore people who added a handful of pecans to their daily diets lowered their cholesterol by 11.3 per cent.
A form of vitamin E present in walnuts and pecans appears to slow the growth of lung and prostate cancer cell. Walnuts also contain melatonin, a hormone that destroys free radicals. Free radicals are unstable compound that are a by-product of cellular metabolism in our bodies .If they are neutralized, they can cause cardiovascular disease and cancer.
Eating nuts has been linked to reduce risk of diabetes of women. Those who ate nuts at least five times a week cut their risk of diabetes by nearly 30 per cent. Women who regularly ate peanuts butter lowered their risk by nearly 20 percent.
Source: wikipedia
Hello… I had read about hamster. Hamsters are rodents belonging to the subfamily Cricetinae. The subfamily contains about 18 species, classified in six or seven genera. Hamster is stout-bodied, with tails much shorter than body length and has small furry ears, short stocky legs and wide feet. Their thick, silky fur which can be long or short, can be black, grey, white or red depending on the species, or mix of any of those colors. they are small wit 5 to 34 cm.
Hamster are omnivorous .Their diet consist mostly of grains such as whole grain oats and corn but also includes fresh fruits ,roots such as carrots. However, hamsters in Middle East have been known to hunt in packs to find insects for food. For Syrian hamster are generally solitary and will fight to the death if put together. Hamster is primarily considered crepuscular and at one point was considered nocturnal as they are sometimes active all night.
Hamsters are known to stockpile large amounts of amounts of food, because of natural instinct from the wild. Because of this behaviors it is alright if you leave a hamster alone foe a few days. Lastly, the best-known species of hamster is the Syrian or Golden Hamster, which is the type of hamster most commonly kept as a pet.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamster
hello everyone...today i've read the interesting article about our university. the title is "Termites beaten to a pulp, thanks to researchers".A group of researchers from Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP) has created an artificial bait from oil palm pulp which will help to get rid of termites.The bait, which relies on natural resources, is environmentally friendly and effective to solve the termite woes faced by people.Research team leader Abdul Syukur Abd Razak said the cost of producing the bait, known as Pisoptera, is low as it is made from thin layers of dried oil palm pulp.
the oil palm pulp would act as an artificial bait and kill the termites.A Pisoptera will be placed on the route used by the termites. The termites will later carry the pulp to their colony.Once in the colony, the egg-laying queens will feed on the pulps and they will die. This will bring an halt to the egg-laying process.Abdul Syukur said UMP spent nearly two years to carry out the research with the assistance of Syarikat Mega Juara Pest Control Sdn Bhd.For those who purchase Pisoptera, it will show results within one and three months depending on the size of the house and encompassing land.Mega Juara Pest Control will be the sole dealer to market the product which is sold for between RM600 and RM1,000 depending on the size of the house. this price is far cheaper compared with the cost of imported pesticide.
as UMP student, we should proud of our university. our university had invent and do many researches that benefit to our country.as we all know, UMP won 2 gold medals out of 18, 3 silver and 3 bronze medals in bio innovation. what's the surprising is there are 400 participants!
source:NST online 19.8.08
Today I read about how smoking affects our health. There are no physical reasons to start smoking. The body doesn't need tobacco the way it needs food, water, sleep, and exercise. In fact, many of the chemicals in cigarettes, like nicotine and cyanide, are actually poisons that can kill in high enough doses.
The body is smart. It goes on the defense when it's being poisoned. For this reason, many people find it takes several tries to get started smoking: First-time smokers often feel pain or burning in the throat and lungs, and some people feel sick or even throw up the first few times they try tobacco.
The consequences of this poisoning happen gradually. Over the long term, smoking leads people to develop health problems like cancer, emphysema (breakdown of lung tissue), organ damage, and heart disease. These diseases limit a person's ability to be normally active — and can be fatal. Each time a smoker lights up, that single cigarette takes about 5 to 20 minutes off the person's life.
Smokers not only develop wrinkles and yellow teeth, they also lose bone density, which increases their risk of osteoporosis (pronounced: ahs-tee-o-puh-row-sus), a condition that causes older people to become bent over and their bones to break more easily. Smokers also tend to be less active than nonsmokers because smoking affects lung power.
Smoking can also cause fertility problems and can impact sexual health in both men and women. Girls who are on the pill or other hormone-based methods of birth control (like the patch or the ring) increase their risk of serious health problems, such as heart attacks, if they smoke.
The consequences of smoking may seem very far off, but long-term health problems aren't the only hazard of smoking. Nicotine and the other toxins in cigarettes, cigars, and pipes can affect a person's body quickly, which means that teen smokers experience many of these problems:
* Bad skin. Because smoking restricts blood vessels, it can prevent oxygen and nutrients from getting to the skin — which is why smokers often appear pale and unhealthy. An Italian study also linked smoking to an increased risk of getting a type of skin rash called psoriasis.
* Bad breath. Cigarettes leave smokers with a condition called halitosis, or persistent bad breath.
* Bad-smelling clothes and hair. The smell of stale smoke tends to linger — not just on people's clothing, but on their hair, furniture, and cars. And it's often hard to get the smell of smoke out.
* Reduced athletic performance. People who smoke usually can't compete with nonsmoking peers because the physical effects of smoking (like rapid heartbeat, decreased circulation, and shortness of breath) impair sports performance.
* Greater risk of injury and slower healing time. Smoking affects the body's ability to produce collagen, so common sports injuries, such as damage to tendons and ligaments, will heal more slowly in smokers than nonsmokers.
* Increased risk of illness. Studies show that smokers get more colds, flu, bronchitis, and pneumonia than nonsmokers. And people with certain health conditions, like asthma, become more sick if they smoke (and often if they're just around people who smoke). Because teens who smoke as a way to manage weight often light up instead of eating, their bodies lack the nutrients they need to grow, develop, and fight off illness properly.
so, get more at http://kidshealth.org/teen/drug_alcohol/tobacco/smoking.html
What is alcohol?. Alcohol is created when grains, fruits, or vegetables are fermented. Fermentation is a process that uses yeast or bacteria to change the sugars in the food into alcohol. Fermentation is used to produce many necessary items — everything from cheese to medications. Alcohol has different forms and can be used as a cleaner, an antiseptic, or a sedative.
So if alcohol is a natural product, why do teens need to be concerned about drinking it? When people drink alcohol, it's absorbed into their bloodstream. From there, it affects the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord), which controls virtually all body functions. Because experts now know that the human brain is still developing during our teens, scientists are researching the effects drinking alcohol can have on the teen brain.
hi...
Sex education is a broad term used to describe about human sexual anatomy,sexual reproduction, sexual intercourse,reproduction health,emotional relations,reproductive rights and responsibilities,contraception,and other aspects of human sexual behavior.Commmon avenues for sex education are parents or caregivers,school programs and public health campaigns.
Sex education may also be described as 'sexuality education',which means that it encompasses education about all aspect of sexuality, including information about family planning,reproduction (fertilization,conception and development of embryo and fetus,through to childbirth),plus informatio about all aspects of one's sexuality including body image,sexual orientation,sexual pleasure,values,decision making, communication,dating,relationships,sexually transmitted infections and how to avoid them and birth control methods.
Sex education may be taught informally,such as when someone recieves information from a conversation with parent,friend,religious leader or media.It may also be delivered through sex self-help authors,magazine advice columnists,sex columnists or through sex education wed sites. Formal sex education occurs when schools or health care providers offer sex education.
Sometimes formal sex education is taught as a full course as part of the curriculum in junior high school or high school. Others times it is only one unit whithin a more broad health class, home economics class, or physical education class. Some schools offer no sex education, since it remains a controversial issue in severtal countries, particularly the United States especially with regard to the age at which children shouldstart receiving such education, the amount of detail that is revealed, and topics dealing wiht human sxual behavior, such as safe sex practices, masturbation, premarital sex, and sexual ethics.
Time travel is possible
Today, we know that time travel need not be confined to myths, science fiction, Hollywood movies, or even speculation by theoretical physicists. Time travel is possible. For example, an object traveling at high speeds ages more slowly than a stationary object. This means that if you were to travel into outer space and return, moving close to light speed, you could travel thousands of years into the Earth's future.
Newton's most important contribution to science was his mathematical definition of how motion changes with time. He showed that the force causing apples to fall is the same force that drives planetary motions and produces tides. However, Newton was puzzled by the fact that gravity seemed to operate instantaneously at a distance. He admitted he could only describe it without understanding how it worked. Not until Einstein's general theory of relativity was gravity changed from a "force" to the movement of matter along the shortest space in a curved spacetime. The Sun bends spacetime, and spacetime tells planets how to move. For Newton, both space and time were absolute. Space was a fixed, infinite, unmoving metric against which absolute motions could be measured. Newton also believed the universe was pervaded by a single absolute time that could be symbolized by an imaginary clock off somewhere in space. Einstein changed all this with his relativity theories, and once wrote, "Newton, forgive me."
E=MC^2 Albert Einstein, whose theories of relativity changed our understanding of time and space, once wrote "Newton, forgive me."
Einstein's first major contribution to the study of time occurred when he revolutionized physics with his "special theory of relativity" by showing how time changes with motion. Today, scientists do not see problems of time or motion as "absolute" with a single correct answer. Because time is relative to the speed one is traveling at, there can never be a clock at the center of the universe to which everyone can set their watches. Your entire life is the blink of an eye to an alien traveling close to the speed of light. Today, Newtonian mechanics have become a special case within Einstein's theory of relativity. Einstein's relativity will eventually become a subset of a new science more comprehensive in its description of the fabric of our universe. (The word "relativity" derives from the fact that the appearance of the world depends on our state of motion; it is "relative.")
We are a moment in astronomic time, a transient guest of the Earth. Our wet, wrinkled brains do not allow us to comprehend many mysteries of time and space. Our brains evolved to make us run from saber-toothed cats on the American savanna, to hunt deer, and to efficiently scavenge from the kills of large carnivores. Despite our mental limitations, we have come remarkably far. We have managed to pull back the cosmic curtains a crack to let in the light. Questions raised by physicists, from Newton to Kurt Gödel to Einstein to Stephen Hawking, are among the most profound we can ask.
Is time real? Does it flow in one direction only? Does it have a beginning or an end? What is eternity? None of these questions can be answered to scientists' satisfaction. Yet the mere asking of these questions stretches our minds, and the continual search for answers provides useful insights along the way.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/time/through.html
FA08014
Marijuana is the most widely used illegal drug in the United States. It is a dry, shredded green/brown mix of flowers, stems, seeds, and leaves of the plant Cannabis sativa. A stronger form of marijuana called hashish (hash) looks like brown or black cakes or balls. The many street names for marijuana include pot, herb, weed, grass, Jane, reefer, dope, and ganja.
Marijuana is typically smoked in cigarettes (joints or spliffs), hollowed-out cigars (blunts), pipes (bowls), or water pipes (bongs). Some people mix it into food or brew it as a tea.
What Is Yoga?
It seems like a hot new trend, but yoga actually began more than 3,000 years ago in India. The word yoga is Sanskrit (one of the ancient languages of the East). It means to "yoke," or unite, the mind, body, and spirit.
Although yoga includes physical exercise, it is also a lifestyle practice for which exercise is just one component. Training your mind, body, and breath, as well as connecting with your spirituality, are the main goals of the yoga lifestyle.
The physical part of the yoga lifestyle is called hatha yoga. Hatha yoga focuses on asanas, or poses. A person who practices yoga goes through a series of specific poses while controlling his or her breathing. Some types of yoga also involve meditation and chanting.
There are many different types of hatha yoga, including:
* Ashtanga yoga: Ashtanga yoga is a vigorous, fast-paced form of yoga that helps to build flexibility, strength, concentration, and stamina. When doing Ashtanga yoga, a person moves quickly through a set of predetermined poses while remaining focused on deep breathing.
* Bikram yoga: Bikram yoga is also known as "hot yoga." It is practiced in rooms that may be heated to more than 100° Fahrenheit (37.8° Celsius) and focuses on stamina and purification.
* Gentle yoga: Gentle yoga focuses on slow stretches, flexibility, and deep breathing.
* Kundalini yoga: Kundalini yoga uses different poses, breathing techniques, chanting, and meditation to awaken life energy.
* Iyengar yoga: This type of yoga focuses on precise alignment of the poses. Participants use "props" like blankets, straps, mats, blocks, and chairs.
* Restorative yoga: This practice allows the body to fully relax by holding simple postures passively for extended periods of time.
* Vinyasa/power yoga: Similar to Ashtanga yoga, these are also very active forms of yoga that improve strength, flexibility, and stamina. This type of yoga is popular in the United States.
Yoga has tons of benefits. It can improve flexibility, strength, balance, and stamina. In addition, many people who practice yoga say that it reduces anxiety and stress, improves mental clarity, and even helps them sleep better.
Working Calcium Into Your Diet
Looking for ways to up your dietary calcium intake? Here are some easy ones:
* Put some cheddar in your omelet.
* Pack a yogurt in your lunch.
* Add white beans to your favorite soups.
* Add a slice of American, Swiss, or provolone to sandwiches.
* Use whole-grain soft-taco shells or tortillas to make burritos or wraps. Fill them with eggs and cheese for breakfast; turkey, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and light dressing for lunch; and beans, salsa, taco sauce, and cheese for dinner.
* Create mini-pizzas by topping whole-wheat English muffins or bagels with pizza sauce and low-fat mozzarella or soy cheese.
* Try whole-grain crackers with low-fat cheese as an afternoon treat.
* Dig into chili with red beans and cheese.
* Eat low-fat or fat-free frozen yogurt topped with fruit.
* Create parfaits with layers of plain yogurt, fruit, and whole-grain cereal.
* You're never too old to enjoy a glass of ice-cold milk with a couple of cookies or graham crackers.
What Is Caffeine?
Caffeine is a drug that is naturally produced in the leaves and seeds of many plants. It's also produced artificially and added to certain foods. Caffeine is defined as a drug because it stimulates the central nervous system, causing increased alertness. Caffeine gives most people a temporary energy boost and elevates mood.
Caffeine is in tea, coffee, chocolate, many soft drinks, and pain relievers and other over-the-counter medications. In its natural form, caffeine tastes very bitter. But most caffeinated drinks have gone through enough processing to camouflage the bitter taste.
Teens usually get most of their caffeine from soft drinks and energy drinks. (In addition to caffeine, these also can have added sugar and artificial flavors.) Caffeine is not stored in the body, but you may feel its effects for up to 6 hours.
What Are Vitamins and Minerals?
Vitamins and minerals make people's bodies work properly. Although you get vitamins and minerals from the foods you eat every day, some foods have more vitamins and minerals than others.
Vitamins fall into two categories: fat soluble and water soluble. The fat-soluble vitamins — A, D, E, and K — dissolve in fat and can be stored in your body. The water-soluble vitamins — C and the B-complex vitamins (such as vitamins B6, B12, niacin, riboflavin, and folate) — need to dissolve in water before your body can absorb them. Because of this, your body can't store these vitamins. Any vitamin C or B that your body doesn't use as it passes through your system is lost (mostly when you pee). So you need a fresh supply of these vitamins every day.
Whereas vitamins are organic substances (made by plants or animals), minerals are inorganic elements that come from the soil and water and are absorbed by plants or eaten by animals. Your body needs larger amounts of some minerals, such as calcium, to grow and stay healthy. Other minerals like chromium, copper, iodine, iron, selenium, and zinc are called trace minerals because you only need very small amounts of them each day.
Why Do People Worry About High Cholesterol?
When you have too much cholesterol, it can be dangerous to your health. When LDL cholesterol levels are high, cholesterol is deposited on the walls of arteries and forms a hard substance called plaque. Over time, plaque causes the arteries to become narrower, decreasing blood flow and causing a condition called atherosclerosis (pronounced: ah-thuh-ro-skluh-ro-sis), or hardening of the arteries.
When atherosclerosis affects the coronary arteries (the blood vessels that supply the muscles of the heart), the condition is called coronary artery disease, which puts a person at risk for having a heart attack. When atherosclerosis affects the blood vessels that supply the brain, the condition is called cerebral vascular disease, which puts a person at risk of having a stroke. Atherosclerosis may also block blood flow to other vital organs, including the kidneys and intestines. This is why it's so important to start paying attention to cholesterol levels as a teen - you can delay or prevent serious health problems in the future.
What Is Asthma?
Asthma (pronounced: az-muh) is a lung condition that causes a person to have difficulty breathing. Asthma is a common condition: More than 6 million kids and teens have it.
Asthma affects a person's bronchial (pronounced: brahn-kee-ul) tubes, also known as airways. When a person breathes normally, air is taken in through the nose or mouth and then goes into the trachea (windpipe), passing through the bronchial tubes, into the lungs, and finally back out again. But people with asthma have airways that are inflamed. This means that they swell and produce lots of thick mucus. They are also overly sensitive, or hyperreactive, to certain things, like exercise, dust, or cigarette smoke. This hyperreactivity causes the smooth muscle that surrounds the airways to tighten up. The combination of airway inflammation and muscle tightening narrows the airways and makes it difficult for air to move through.
In most people with asthma, the difficulty breathing happens periodically. When it does happen, it is known as an asthma flare-up also known as an asthma attack, flare, episode, or exacerbation.
A person having an asthma flare-up may cough, wheeze (make a whistling sound while breathing), be short of breath, and feel an intense tightness in the chest. Many people with asthma compare a flare-up to the sensation of trying to breathe through a straw - it feels extremely hard to get air in and out of their lungs. An asthma flare-up can last for several hours or longer if a person doesn't use asthma medication. When an asthma flare-up is over, the person usually feels better.
Between flare-ups, a person's breathing can seem completely normal, or a person may continue to have some symptoms, such as coughing. Some people with asthma feel as if they are always short of breath. Other people with the condition may only cough at night or while exercising and they may never have a noticeable flare-up.
Which gases cause air pollution
Nitrogen oxides are a very reactive group of gases which are released into the atmosphere whenever fuels are burnt. This means that every time you fire up the central heating, or take the car down to the shops, you are contributing to the problem. These gases react with the particulates and other chemicals. Nitrogen oxides also cause that reddish haze that you can often see hanging in the air near the horizon on warm days.
Nitrous oxides (one type of nitrogen oxide) are responsible for many health problems.
Nitrogen dioxide is one kind of nitrogen oxide which is particularly harmful as it reacts with sunlight to create ozone.
Ozone is a useful chemical when it is in the upper atmosphere, where it helps to protect the earth (and us) from the sun's ultraviolet radiation. But at ground level, it has a bad effect upon respiration. Not enough studies have been done to be certain of its effects upon human health. It is believed to worsen the effects of pollens - and other allergens - upon peoples' respiratory systems.
Ozone concentrations tend to be worse in the afternoon and in rural and suburban areas. The chemical reactions that cause ozone creation occur in built-up areas but the effects are actually worse further afield.
http://www.greenfootsteps.com/air-pollution-article.html
FA08014
hi...
That common yard or roadside plant you see during the growing season can be your ally against sickness and disease. The common dandelion has many essential vitamins and minerals inherent in it that can be part of your health regimen. Dandelions are an all-natural way to promote good health when used wisely.
The dandelion root and leaves contain vitamins A, C and D, as well as the B-complexes. They also contain iron, magnesium, zinc, copper, potassium, manganese, choline, boron, calcium and silicon. Choline has shown to improve memory function. Dandelion has found use as a treatment for breast illnesses, bloating (water retention), aching joints, skin problems and gastrointestinal disorders. It is also as a gentle diuretic and a purifier for the bloodstream and liver.
This plant contains luteolin, which is an antioxidant and beneficial as an immune system enhancer. Luteolin helps inhibit the degradation and wearing down of the body's cells. What's great about dandelion and its antioxidant properties is the fact that there is no toxic effect on cells associated with it.
Dandelions are also a medicinal herb. They increase waste elimination in the body through the urine. Like green tea's effects, this excretion of water and waste can lead to weight-loss. Dandelion is available naturally, as well as in pill, liquid, tablets and tea form. The Puritans used it strictly as a vegetable, although some who eat it as a prepared dish consider it to have a bitter taste.
The dandelion is part of the sunflower family. It is prevalent in temperate regions in Europe, Asia and North America. This plant finds itself a big part of culinary recipes. Taking the dandelion in this form is good for health, as it is in its most natural, unprocessed state. Some use dandelion as a tea to help in the fight against fever, insomnia and jaundice. Dandelion tea can also aid those who have rheumatism, eczema, constipation and even skin diseases.
It aids digestion by stimulating stomach secretions. However, it does increase the flow of bile in one's system, so you should not take dandelion if you have obstruction of the bile ducts. While generally safe, like anything else, you should consult a doctor when trying something new in your diet. This is to make sure it doesn't have harmful side effects or interact negatively with other herbs and medications.
For women, dandelion helps because of its diuretic capabilities. This means it helps eliminate excess water from a woman's system, which causes bloating. Those who experience premenstrual syndrome may find dandelion helps bring down their bloating and weight gain associated with water retention.
Another promising aspect of dandelion is the fact it contains lecithin. Lecithin is a lipid that contains choline primarily, along with inositol, phosphorous and linoleic acid. Lecithin elevates the brain's acetylcholine, which helps brain function. This, some researchers believe, may help slow down or stop the progression of Alzheimer's disease. Dandelion, again because of lecithin inherent in it, is beneficial for prevention of arteriosclerosis and cardiovascular disease too.
Sometimes we need to look only in our own backyards and surrounding environments to find plentiful foods that are healthy. Dandelions are one of earth's products that have found use for centuries. Whether as a recipe ingredient, a tea or a pill, dandelion is versatile. When used with care, it can help with weight-loss and be a health enhancer at the same time.
hai...today i would like to share about technology.
Many people see technology as a solution to some of the problems that exist on our planet. It’s true that technology can be used for good, but with new developments come new challenges issues. The digital divide is one such issue, one that people are actively trying to overcome. Telecentres aim to bridge the digital divide by providing people access and knowledge about information technologies. A global telecentre movement is growing right now. Unfortunately, even where computer facilities are readily available, the digital divide persists—even in the world's most wealthy countries, access to the latest and most beneficial technologies is limited for those in rural areas and people with disabilities.
There are many other issues to consider when talking about ICTs and their role in our lives, beyond the digital divide and universal accessibility. The internet has created new and innovative ways for people to shape and share their identity, and express themselves. However, to some people, the internet can appear to be a modern day “wild west,” or something to fear. The rise of online social networking, shopping, and other online interactions that ask people to share a large amount of personal information have led to a number of risks that every internet user needs to bear in mind.
The internet may looked uncontrolled; however, telecommunication companies and governments around the world own the infrastructure behind the internet, and different governments and companies are asserting that ownership in different ways. No sole entity controls the internet, which is making the concept of internet governance or the uniform application of rules a very complicated issue.
However, these are not the only observations to be made. Recently, many advances in mobile media and technology have been made, creating a new world of possibilities. Our challenge is to figure out how to use technology - both the existing and the emerging - for good, and how to assure its access and use in the most democratic way possible
hi...
Green tea is a form of tea made from the leaves of the Carmellia Sinensis, a shrub that is native to China and has spread to other areas of Asia including Japan and the Middle East. Drinking it is believed to impart many health benefits, including the prevention of obesity, heart disease and some forms of cancer and it has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for over 400 years.
Tea is known to have been consumed in China for around 5,000 years, and used, not only in Chinese medicine, but also in that of Japan, Thailand and India for a number of ailments including regulating blood sugar, treating wounds and digestive problems. The drinking of green tea to benefit the heart and other vital organs is described in the Kissa Yojoki (Book of Tea), written in 1191 by Eisai, a Japanese Zen priest.
This two-part book talks about the various medicinal benefits of green tea, such as preventing fatigue, curing beriberi, quenching thirst, clearing the thoughts, maintaining health of the urinary tract and improving digestive problems. It also explains how to grow tea and how to prepare and use the leaves. The methods of treatment of various ailments and medical conditions are described in the second part of the book.
The active ingredients in green tea are catechins, polyphenols with strong anti-oxidant properties. Antioxidants are important components of your diet due to their effect on free radicals. These are small molecules, generally oxygenated, such the superoxide cation and hydrogen peroxide that are generated during normal metabolic processes and also ingested in pollutants such as traffic and factory fumes and insecticides. Free radicals are also formed by the effect of the ultra-violet component of sunlight on your skin and other tissues.
The effect of free radicals on your body can be devastating, and they not only destroy cell membranes but also oxidize such molecules as the low density lipids (LDL) that carry cholesterol around your bloodstream. This allows the LDLs to be absorbed by the white blood cells and then deposited as fatty plaques in the walls of your arteries. The end result is a thickening and hardening of the arteries that leads to a condition known as atherosclerosis, where the blood supply to the brain and heart muscle is restricted, which can in turn lead to strokes and heart disease.
Their effect on your cells is to cause cancer and premature aging, among others, and free radicals are also believed to play a part in conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease and also inflammatory diseases such as arthritis and diabetes. They can also cause damage to your DNA.
It is essential, therefore, that these free radicals are destroyed as quickly as they are generated, and that is what antioxidants do. You might be more familiar with the antioxidants Vitamins A, C and E, and phytochemicals such as flavonoids and carotenoids, but there are many substances available to you that are even more powerful such as the polyphenols found in green tea.
Epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) is the most powerful of these with antioxidant properties at least twenty five times that of Vitamin E, and 100 times that of Vitamin C. EGCG comprises around 10-50% of the total catechin content of the tea and studies indicate that it likely helps to protect against DNA damage by free radicals, to protect against oxidation of LDL, provide protection against the damage of ultra-violet radiation and to protect you from the free radicals that are generated by smoking tobacco and general airborne pollution.
There are suggestions that the bioavailability of EGCG can be increased by consuming black pepper when drinking green tea, possibly due to the presence of piperine in the pepper. The piperine appears to retard the intestinal glucuronidation of EGCG and so allow more of it to be absorbed as opposed to excreted. So if you are using green tea for health reasons, spice up your food with a small amount of black pepper - that's all it needs. You don't have to smother your food in it! It should be stressed that these tests were carried out on animals, although the biochemistry involved is much the same.
The oxidation of fat by your metabolism to provide energy is a very important factor in weight control. If the contribution of the fats you ingest to the energy generated by your metabolism is low, then the fats can go on to be deposited in your body. This is not only unsightly, in that it can basically make you look 'fat', but is also dangerous to your health. Fat deposits around your midriff and round the major organs of your body can be extremely damaging and a severe risk to your health.
It has been shown by a recent study in the UK (Birmingham University) that those taking green tree extract displayed a 17% increase in fat oxidation over those given a placebo. Not only had that, but the ratio of fat oxidation to the overall energy expenditure showed a similar differential between the study and the control group. This provides evidence of green tea extract being able to control your weight by burning fat, and also to improve the tolerance to glucose and sensitivity to insulin of healthy people.
Many other health claims have been made for green tea extract, although many of these have little, if any, scientific basis. Among these are the claims that it can treat multiple sclerosis and be used to treat cancer, although claims that it can prevent the destruction of cell membranes due to its oxidative effect are supported by the biochemistry, if not the medical proof. There are cases where theoretical biochemistry can explain many of the applications of ancient remedies without needing modern day studies to support it.
hai..do you know what is exactly means by drug?
A drug, broadly speaking, is any chemical substance that, when absorbed into the body of a living organism, alters normal bodily function. There is no single, precise definition, as there are different meanings in medicine, government regulations, and colloquial usage.
In pharmacology, Dictionary.com defines a drug as "a chemical substance used in the treatment, cure, prevention, or diagnosis of disease or used to otherwise enhance physical or mental well-being." Drugs may be prescribed for a limited duration, or on a regular basis for chronic disorders.
Recreational drugs are chemical substances that affect the central nervous system, such as opioids or hallucinogens. They may be used for perceived beneficial effects on perception, consciousness, personality, and behavior. Some drugs can cause addiction and habituation.
Drugs are usually distinguished from endogenous biochemicals by being introduced from outside the organism.[citation needed] For example, insulin is a hormone that is synthesized in the body; it is called a hormone when it is synthesized by the pancreas inside the body, but if it is introduced into the body from outside, it is called a drug.[citation needed]
Many natural substances such as beers, wines, and some mushrooms, blur the line between food and drugs, as when ingested they affect the functioning of both mind and body.
A medication or medicine is a drug taken to cure and/or ameliorate any symptoms of an illness or medical condition, or may be used as preventive medicine that has future benefits but does not treat any existing or pre-existing diseases or symptoms.
Dispensing of medication is often regulated by governments into three categories — over-the-counter (OTC) medications, which are available in pharmacies and supermarkets without special restrictions, behind-the-counter (BTC), which are dispensed by a pharmacist without needing a doctor's prescription, and Prescription only medicines (POM), which must be prescribed by a licensed medical professional, usually a physician.[citation needed]
In the UK, BTC medicines are called pharmacy medicines which can only be sold in registered pharmacies, by or under the supervision of a pharmacist, these medications are designated by the letter P on the label, the precise distinction between OTC and prescription drugs depends on the legal jurisdiction.[citation needed]
Medications are typically produced by pharmaceutical companies and are often patented to give the developer exclusive rights to produce them, but they can also be derived from naturally occurring substance in plants called herbal medicine.[citation needed] Those that are not patented (or with expired patents) are called generic drugs since they can be produced by other companies without restrictions or licenses from the patent holder.
Drugs, both medicinal and recreational, can be administered in a number of ways:
Orally, as a liquid or solid, that is absorbed through the stomach.
Inhaled, (breathed into the lungs), as a vapor.
Injected as a liquid either: intramuscular, intravenous, intraperitoneal, intraosseous.
Rectally as a suppository, that is absorbed by the colon.
Vaginally as a suppository, primarily to treat vaginal infections.
Bolus, a substance into the stomach to dissolve slowly.
Insufflation, or snorted into the nose.
Many drugs can be administered in a variety of ways
Recreational drugs use is the use of psychoactive substances to have fun, for the experience, or to enhance an already positive experience. National laws prohibit the use of many different recreational drugs and medicinal drugs that have the potential for recreational use are heavily regulated. Many other recreational drugs on the other hand are legal, widely culturally accepted, and at the most have an age restriction on using and/or purchasing them. These include alcohol, tobacco, betel nut, and caffeine products.
The spiritual and religious use of drugs has been occurring since the dawn of our species. Drugs that are considered to have spiritual or religious use are called entheogens. Some religions are based completely on the use of certain drugs. Entheogens are mostly hallucinogens, being either psychedelics or deliriants, but some are also stimulants and sedatives
Some governments define the term drug by law. In the United States, the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act definition of "drug" includes "articles intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease in man or other animals" and "articles (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals." Consistent with that definition, the U.S. separately defines narcotic drugs and controlled substances, which may include non-drugs, and explicitly excludes tobacco, caffeine and alcoholic beverage....
hi...
Diabetes is an inflammatory condition caused by the autoimmune system, and manifests as resting hyperglycemia. Your blood glucose levels have to be maintained within fine concentration limits: both too high and too low a blood glucose concentration can be dangerous to your well being.
Type I diabetes, also known as juvenile onset diabetes, is an autoimmune condition in which the immune system destroys Beta cells because they are recognized as being foreign. It is the Beta cells that generate insulin, and so the condition can be fatal. Patients with Type I diabetes must take insulin throughout their lives, and while potential cures are currently under investigation, none are yet available. Although insulin can be effective it does not guarantee survival, and a better form of treatment is required.
Type II diabetes is by far the more common of the two, and is a form of resistance to insulin, where the body cells cannot use insulin properly. The pancreas initially reacts to this by producing more insulin in response to the increased blood glucose level, but through time it loses its ability to produce insulin as a reaction to an increase in blood sugar, even though this occurs as a result of digesting a meal.
The exact causes of either type of diabetes are not known for sure, although the general mechanism by which they work is known. However, Type II diabetes is believed to be due to some form of interaction between genetics and environment, and it is known that the majority of Type II sufferers are obese and also over 40.
The treatment for this type of diabetes is rarely insulin, but a controlled diet, control of your cholesterol level and blood pressure, exercise and specific medicines designed for sufferers of this form of diabetes. However, there are also natural supplements that can be used to control your blood sugar levels.
Among specific substances that can help are for control your blood sugar levels are:
Chromium: chromium helps your body to use insulin properly. When taken in the form of chromium picolinate, it helps to replace chromium that diabetics appear to be short of. Human studies have indicated that chromium can decrease insulin levels and improve the metabolism of blood sugar in those with Type II diabetes. Some claim that chromium is harmful to health, but the general opinion is that it helps, though you should consult your doctor before using it.
Cinnamon: If you take cinnamon daily, your blood sugar levels should gradually decrease. It appears to enable your cells to make better use of the insulin your blood, although there still discussion as to the mechanism by which this occurs and of the active ingredient in cinnamon that promotes it. Some claim it to be a flavonoid known as methylhydroxychalcone polymer, or MHCP. However, others claim it not to be MHCP, but polyphenol type-A polymer. Whichever it is, many people are finding cinnamon to be effective in reducing high levels of blood sugar to a more manageable level.
Milk Thistle: It is known that antioxidants can help to control blood sugar, and the flavolignins in Silymarin marianum, an herbal extract available from milk thistle seeds, work in this manner. It is also good for protecting the liver from toxins. Although it is not clear how it is done, silymarin appears to help to control Type II diabetes possibly by way of liver digestion of sugars in the blood. The liver processed glucose and improving its function through the consumption of milk thistle could help reduce blood sugar as well. Mulberry: The Chinese make what is known as “sugar control herbal tea” from mulberry leaves, green tea and jasmine. Mulberry leaves contain adenine, pectin and choline, and also high levels of Vitamins A and B types. This tea is used by the Chinese to control blood sugar levels, which might occur through the antioxidant effect of the mulberry constituents.
Salacia oblonga: This is an herb used in India and Sri Lanka that appears to cause a dramatic drop in the levels of insulin and sugar in the blood. It binds to enzymes in the intestine that break carbohydrates down into sugars, and so reduces the amount of sugar in your blood. That in turn reduces the amount of insulin released by the pancreas.
Glyconutrient complexes: we know that diabetes is an autoimmune disease for type I individuals. Supporting a properly function immune system requires a good diet as well as a diet rich in Glyconutrients. The polysaccharides found in glyconutrient formulas can help the immune system communicate better with the body and just possibly correct some autoimmune diseases which attach our cells.
hello..do you know what is imsomnia..or maybe you one of the person that get imsomnia?
Insomnia is a symptom of a sleeping disorder characterized by persistent difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep despite the opportunity. It is typically followed by functional impairment while awake. Insomniacs have been known to complain about being unable to close their eyes or "rest their mind" for more than a few minutes at a time. Both organic and non-organic insomnia constitute a sleep disorder.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in year 2007, approximately 64 million Americans suffer from insomnia on a regular basis each year. Insomnia occurs 1.4 times more commonly in women than in men
there are several different degrees of insomnia, about three types of insomnia have been clearly identified: transient, acute, and chronic.
Transient insomnia lasts from days to weeks. It can be caused by another disorder, by changes in the sleep environment, by the timing of sleep, severe depression, or by stress. Its consequences - sleepiness and impaired psychomotor performance - are similar to those of sleep deprivation.
Acute insomnia is the inability to consistently sleep well for a period of between three weeks to six months.
Chronic insomnia lasts for years at a time. It can be caused by another disorder, or it can be a primary disorder. Its effects can vary according to its causes. They might include sleepiness, muscular fatigue, hallucinations, and/or mental fatigue; but people with chronic insomnia often show increased alertness. Some people that live with this disorder see things as though they were happening in slow motion, whereas moving objects seem to blend together.Can cause double vision
The National Sleep Foundation's 2002 Sleep in America poll showed that 58% of adults in the U.S. experienced symptoms of insomnia a few nights a week or more. Although insomnia was the most common sleep problem among about one half of older adults (48%), they were less likely to experience frequent symptoms of insomnia than their younger counterparts (45% vs. 62%), and their symptoms were more likely to be associated with medical conditions, according to the 2003 poll of adults between the ages of 55 and 84.
In many cases, insomnia is caused by another disease or psychological problem. In this case, medical or psychological help may be useful.
A recent study found that cognitive behavior therapy is more effective than hypnotic medications in controlling insomnia. In this therapy, patients are taught improved sleep habits and relieved of counter-productive assumptions about sleep. Hypnotic medications are equally effective in the short term treatment of insomnia but their effects wear off over time due to tolerance. The effects of cognitive behavior therapy have sustained and lasting effects on treating insomnia long after therapy has been discontinued.
Many insomniacs rely on sleeping tablets and other sedatives to get rest. All sedative drugs have the potential of causing psychological dependence where the individual cannot psychologically accept that they can sleep without drugs. Certain classes of sedatives such as benzodiazepines and newer nonbenzodiazepine drugs can also cause physical dependence which manifests in withdrawal symptoms if the drug is not carefully titrated down.
In comparing the options, a systematic review found that benzodiazepines and nonbenzodiazepines have similar efficacy which was not significantly more than for antidepressants. Benzodiazepines did not have a significant tendency for more adverse drug reactions
there are other treatment that can be used
you can read more on wikipedia.thank you
Hi…Today I will talk about ‘Immune Boost Herbs’
We face more health challenges today than ever before, which makes it more crucial than ever to have a balanced immune system, something that many Americans lack. Although the US leads the world in quality of healthcare, an increasing number of people are suffering or dying from preventable health problems. The environment, lifestyle, genetics, age, and antibiotic resistance are just some of the factors that are to blame for this. Thankfully, boosting immune power can counteract the negative effects of these factors on health.
Most Americans do not sleep enough, do not eat right, and do not exercise like they should. Many of the most common health problems people suffer from today are a result of lifestyle. These problems include hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, depression, and unbalanced immune function. Despite this fact, Americans continue to take part in poor health habits and then give up billions of dollars in prescriptions, doctor’s visits, and surgeries each year when they encounter an illness.
A sedentary lifestyle is a major cause for disease, as inactivity and obesity are both potential risks. Exercising as little as three times a week has been proven to enhance well-being and improve health. A lack of exercise can also contribute to stress, which we all experience. However, a healthy immune system can make our bodies more capable of withstanding the effects of stress. If immune systems can be balanced, Americans may be better able to withstand the potential health problems that living in the modern world brings.
Older individuals are much more susceptible to disordered immune systems, as the progressive immune system dysfunction that coincides with aging has been shown to influence an increasing number of age-related disorders such as Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, and late-life lymphoma. With this knowledge, we should want to supplement and strengthen our immune systems, especially as they get older. We can work to avoid the occurrence of autoimmune disorders and cancers that so commonly occur as we age by keeping our immune systems strong and functioning at optimum levels. A lot of the potential health problems that we are facing today can be traced back to the environment. One environmental problem is the result of toxic chemicals, as the widespread use of pesticides and increase of benzene and other pollutants in the atmosphere are leading to cancer and other reproductive health problems such as endometriosis and fertility issues.
The chemical pollutants in our air, food, and water have been linked to asthma, allergies, autoimmune disorders and weakened immunity. Additionally, we are being exposed to increasing amounts of UV radiation, with occurrences of skin cancer continually rising. Researchers believe that one of the main reasons for the increasing number of melanomas may be due to people spending more time in the sun as well as artificial sources of UV radiation. There are many herbs available to help boost the immune system and detox the body to help one keep a strong immune system.
CUPID AND PSYCHE
by: Josephine Preston Peabody (1874-1922)
The following short story is reprinted from Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew. Josephine Preston Peabody. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1897.
Once upon a time, through that Destiny that overrules the gods, Love himself gave up his immortal heart to a mortal maiden. And thus it came to pass.
There was a certain king who had three beautiful daughters. The two elder married princes of great renown; but Psyche, the youngest, was so radiantly fair that no suitor seemed worthy of her. People thronged to see her pass through the city, and sang hymns in her praise, while strangers took her for the very goddess of beauty herself.
This angered Venus, and she resolved to cast down her earthly rival. One day, therefore, she called hither her son Love (Cupid, some name him), and bade him sharpen his weapons. He is an archer more to be dreaded than Apollo, for Apollo's arrows take life, but Love's bring joy or sorrow for a whole life long.
"Come, Love," said Venus. "There is a mortal maid who robs me of my honors in yonder city. Avenge your mother. Wound this precious Psyche, and let her fall in love with some churlish creature mean in the eyes of all men."
Cupid made ready his weapons, and flew down to earth invisibly. At that moment Psyche was asleep in her chamber; but he touched her heart with his golden arrow of love, and she opened her eyes so suddenly that he started (forgetting that he was invisible), and wounded himself with his own shaft.
Heedless of the hurt, moved only by the loveliness of the maiden, he hastened to pour over her locks the healing joy that he ever kept by him, undoing all his work. Back to her dream the princess went, unshadowed by any thought of love. But Cupid, not so light of heart, returned to the heavens, saying not a word of what had passed.
Venus waited long; then, seeing that Psyche's heart had somehow escaped love, she sent a spell upon the maiden. From that time, lovely as she was, not a suitor came to woo; and her parents, who desired to see her a queen at least, made a journey to the Oracle, and asked counsel.
Said the voice: "The princess Psyche shall never wed a mortal. She shall be given to one who waits for her on yonder mountain; he overcomes gods and men."
At this terrible sentence the poor parents were half distraught, and the people gave themselves up to grief at the fate in store for their beloved princess. Psyche alone bowed to her destiny. "We have angered Venus unwittingly," she said, "and all for sake of me, heedless maiden that I am! Give me up, therefore, dear father and mother. If I atone, it may be that the city will prosper once more."
So she besought them, until, after many unavailing denials, the parents consented; and with a great company of people they led Psyche up the mountain,--as an offering to the monster of whom the Oracle had spoken,--and left her there alone.
Full of courage, yet in a secret agony of grief, she watched her kindred and her people wind down the mountain-path, too sad to look back, until they were lost to sight. Then, indeed, she wept, but a sudden breeze drew near, dried her tears, and caressed her hair, seeming to murmur comfort. In truth, it was Zephyr, the kindly West Wind, come to befriend her; and as she took heart, feeling some benignant presence, he lifted her in his arms, and carried her on wings as even as a sea-gull's, over the crest of the fateful mountain and into a valley below. There he left her, resting on a bank of hospitable grass, and there the princess fell asleep.
When she awoke, it was near sunset. She looked about her for some sign of the monster's approach; she wondered, then, if her grievous trial had been but a dream. Near by she saw a sheltering forest, whose young trees seemed to beckon as one maid beckons to another; and eager for the protection of the dryads, she went thither.
The call of running waters drew her farther and farther, till she came out upon an open place, where there was a wide pool. A fountain fluttered gladly in the midst of it, and beyond there stretched a white palace wonderful to see. Coaxed by the bright promise of the place, she drew near, and, seeing no one, entered softly. It was all kinglier than her father's home, and as she stood in wonder and awe, soft airs stirred about her. Little by little the silence grew murmurous like the woods, and one voice, sweeter than the rest, took words. "All that you see is yours, gentle high princess," it said. "Fear nothing; only command us, for we are here to serve you."
Full of amazement and delight, Psyche followed the voice from hall to hall, and through the lordly rooms, beautiful with everything that could delight a young princess. No pleasant thing was lacking. There was even a pool, brightly tiled and fed with running waters, where she bathed her weary limbs; and after she had put on the new and beautiful raiment that lay ready for her, she sat down to break her fast, waited upon and sung to by the unseen spirits.
Surely he whom the Oracle had called her husband was no monster, but some beneficent power, invisible like all the rest. When daylight waned he came, and his voice, the beautiful voice of a god, inspired her to trust her strange destiny and to look and long for his return. Often she begged him to stay with her through the day, that she might see his face; but this he would not grant.
"Never doubt me, dearest Psyche," said he. "Perhaps you would fear if you saw me, and love is all I ask. There is a necessity that keeps me hidden now. Only believe."
So for many days Psyche was content; but when she grew used to happiness, she thought once more of her parents mourning her as lost, and of her sisters who shared the lot of mortals while she lived as a goddess. One night she told her husband of these regrets, and begged that her sisters at least might come to see her. He sighed, but did not refuse.
"Zephyr shall bring them hither," said he. And on the following morning, swift as a bird, the West Wind came over the crest of the high mountain and down into the enchanted valley, bearing her two sisters.
They greeted Psyche with joy and amazement, hardly knowing how they had come hither. But when this fairest of the sisters led them through her palace and showed them all the treasures that were hers, envy grew in their hearts and choked their old love. Even while they sat at feast with her, they grew more and more bitter; and hoping to find some little flaw in her good fortune, they asked a thousand questions.
"Where is your husband?" said they. "And why is he not here with you?"
"Ah," stammered Psyche. "All the day long--he is gone, hunting upon the mountains."
"But what does he look like?" they asked; and Psyche could find no answer.
When they learned that she had never seen him, they laughed her faith to scorn.
"Poor Psyche," they said. "You are walking in a dream. Wake, before it is too late. Have you forgotten what the Oracle decreed,--that you were destined for a dreadful creature, the fear of gods and men? And are you deceived by this show of kindliness? We have come to warn you. The people told us, as we came over the mountain, that your husband is a dragon, who feeds you well for the present, that he may feast the better, some day soon. What is it that you trust? Good words! But only take a dagger some night, and when the monster is asleep go, light a lamp, and look at him. You can put him to death easily, and all his riches will be yours--and ours."
Psyche heard this wicked plan with horror. Nevertheless, after her sisters were gone, she brooded over what they had said, not seeing their evil intent; and she came to find some wisdom in their words. Little by little, suspicion ate, like a moth, into her lovely mind; and at nightfall, in shame and fear, she hid a lamp and a dagger in her chamber. Towards midnight, when her husband was fast asleep, up she rose, hardly daring to breathe; and coming softly to his side, she uncovered the lamp to see some horror.
But there the youngest of the gods lay sleeping,--most beautiful, most irresistible of all immortals. His hair shone golden as the sun, his face was radiant as dear Springtime, and from his shoulders sprang two rainbow wings.
Poor Psyche was overcome with self-reproach. As she leaned towards him, filled with worship, her trembling hands held the lamp ill, and some burning oil fell upon Love's shoulder and awakened him.
He opened his eyes, to see at once his bride and the dark suspicion in her heart.
"O doubting Psyche!" he exclaimed with sudden grief,--and then he flew away, out of the window.
Wild with sorrow, Psyche tried to follow, but she fell to the ground instead. When she recovered her senses, she stared about her. She was alone, and the place was beautiful no longer. Garden and palace had vanished with Love.
Over mountains and valleys Psyche journeyed alone until she came to the city where her two envious sisters lived with the princes whom they had married. She stayed with them only long enough to tell the story of her unbelief and its penalty. Then she set out again to search for Love.
As she wandered one day, travel-worn but not hopeless, she saw a lofty palace on a hill near by, and she turned her steps thither. The place seemed deserted. Within the hall she saw no human being,--only heaps of grain, loose ears of corn half torn from the husk, wheat and barley, alike scattered in confusion on the floor. Without delay, she set to work binding the sheaves together and gathering the scattered ears of corn in seemly wise, as a princess would wish to see them. While she was in the midst of her task, a voice startled her, and she looked up to behold Demeter herself, the goddess of the harvest, smiling upon her with good will.
"Dear Psyche," said Demeter, "you are worthy of happiness, and you may find it yet. But since you have displeased Venus, go to her and ask her favor. Perhaps your patience will win her pardon."
These motherly words gave Psyche heart, and she reverently took leave of the goddess and set out for the temple of Venus. Most humbly she offered up her prayer, but Venus could not look at her earthly beauty without anger.
"Vain girl," said she, "perhaps you have come to make amends for the wound you dealt your husband; you shall do so. Such clever people can always find work!"
Then she led Psyche into a great chamber heaped high with mingled grain, beans, and lintels (the food of her doves), and bade her separate them all and have them ready in seemly fashion by night. Heracles would have been helpless before such a vexatious task; and poor Psyche, left alone in this desert of grain, had not courage to begin. But even as she sat there, a moving thread of black crawled across the floor from a crevice in the wall; and bending nearer, she saw that a great army of ants in columns had come to her aid. The zealous little creatures worked in swarms, with such industry over the work they like best, that, when Venus came at night, she found the task completed.
"Deceitful girl," she cried, shaking the roses out of her hair with impatience, "this is my son's work, not yours. But he will soon forget you. Eat this black bread if you are hungry, and refresh your dull mind with sleep. To-morrow you will need more wit."
Psyche wondered what new misfortune could be in store for her. But when morning came, Venus led her to the brink of a river, and, pointing to the wood across the water, said, "Go now to yonder grove where the sheep with the golden fleece are wont to browse. Bring me a golden lock from every one of them, or you must go your ways and never come back again."
This seemed not difficult, and Psyche obediently bade the goddess farewell, and stepped into the water, ready to wade across. But as Venus disappeared, the reeds sang louder and the nymphs of the river, looking up sweetly, blew bubbles to the surface and murmured: "Nay, nay, have a care, Psyche. This flock has not the gentle ways of sheep. While the sun burns aloft, they are themselves as fierce as flame; but when the shadows are long, they go to rest and sleep, under the trees; and you may cross the river without fear and pick the golden fleece off the briers in the pasture."
Thanking the water-creatures, Psyche sat down to rest near them, and when the time came, she crossed in safety and followed their counsel. By twilight she returned to Venus with her arms full of shining fleece.
"No mortal wit did this," said Venus angrily. "But if you care to prove your readiness, go now, with this little box, down to Proserpina and ask her to enclose in it some of her beauty, for I have grown pale in caring for my wounded son."
It needed not the last taunt to sadden Psyche. She knew that it was not for mortals to go into Hades and return alive; and feeling that Love had forsaken her, she was minded to accept her doom as soon as might be.
But even as she hastened towards the descent, another friendly voice detained her. "Stay, Psyche, I know your grief. Only give ear and you shall learn a safe way through all these trials." And the voice went on to tell her how one might avoid all the dangers of Hades and come out unscathed. (But such a secret could not pass from mouth to mouth, with the rest of the story.)
"And be sure," added the voice, "when Proserpina has returned the box, not to open it, however much you may long to do so."
Psyche gave heed, and by this device, whatever it was, she found her way into Hades safely, and made her errand known to Proserpina, and was soon in the upper world again, wearied but hopeful.
"Surely Love has not forgotten me," she said. "But humbled as I am and worn with toil, how shall I ever please him? Venus can never need all the beauty in this casket; and since I use it for Love's sake, it must be right to take some." So saying, she opened the box, heedless as Pandora! The spells and potions of Hades are not for mortal maids, and no sooner had she inhaled the strange aroma than she fell down like one dead, quite overcome.
But it happened that Love himself was recovered from his wound, and he had secretly fled from his chamber to seek out and rescue Psyche. He found her lying by the wayside; he gathered into the casket what remained of the philter, and awoke his beloved.
"Take comfort," he said, smiling. "Return to our mother and do her bidding till I come again."
Away he flew; and while Psyche went cheerily homeward, he hastened up to Olympus, where all the gods sat feasting, and begged them to intercede for him with his angry mother.
They heard his story and their hearts were touched. Zeus himself coaxed Venus with kind words till at last she relented, and remembered that anger hurt her beauty, and smiled once more. All the younger gods were for welcoming Psyche at once, and Hermes was sent to bring her hither. The maiden came, a shy newcomer among those bright creatures. She took the cup that Hebe held out to her, drank the divine ambrosia, and became immortal.
Light came to her face like moonrise, two radiant wings sprang from her shoulders; and even as a butterfly bursts from its dull cocoon, so the human Psyche blossomed into immortality.
Love took her by the hand, and they were never parted any more.
Hi…today I would like to talk ‘Apple Cider Vinegar’
Apple cider vinegar is an old folk remedy claimed to be beneficial in treating a long list of ailments. It is sold today by "health food" companies and others who claim it has remedial properties. Apple cider vinegar is a type of vinegar made by the fermentation of apple cider. Unlike white vinegar, apple cider vinegar is a light yellow-brown color and is often sold unfiltered and unpasteurized with a dark, cloudy sediment called mother of vinegar (consisting mainly of acetic acid bacteria) settled at the bottom of the bottle.
Over the centuries, vinegar has been used for countless purposes: making pickles, killing weeds, cleaning coffee makers, polishing armor, and dressing salads. While many of the folk medicine uses of vinegar are unproven (or were disproved), there is some medical research backing them up.
The main ingredient of apple cider vinegar, or any vinegar, is acetic acid. Apple cider vinegar is also said to contain an abundance of complex carbohydrates and dietary fiber. Do not use a metal container when making vinegar or storing it; acid in the mixture will corrode metal or aluminum objects making the solution unfit for consumption.
When it comes to losing weight, experts say you are what you drink. Apple cider vinegar has recently found new use as a weight loss and weight management aide, and has been included in many over the counter weight loss nutritional supplements. Anecdotally, ancient Egyptians used apple cider vinegar for weight loss. The acetic acid in this vinegar can curve the appetite which benefits those trying to loose weight and keep it off.
Some say apple cider vinegar can help arthritis, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, and assist in digestion. It is also thought to help the body maintain a healthy alkaline level. The acidic nature of this vinegar has been said to help scalp problems such as dandruff, itchy scalp, baldness and thinning hair. Apple cider vinegar can also help gastric problems as well.
The effect of vinegar on blood glucose levels is perhaps the best researched and the most promising of apple cider vinegar's possible health benefits. Several studies have found that vinegar may help lower glucose levels. For example, a small study compared the effect of vinegar with white bread on blood glucose and insulin levels. Keeping blood sugar lower is important to diabetic patients which can help reduce the use of insulin. Subjects with type 2 diabetes showed a slight improvement in insulin sensitivity, but postprandial blood glucose and insulin levels were not affected when apple cider vinegar was added to a meal.
Hi…today topic is what ’Alpha Lipoid Acid?’
A recent experiment which showed the conditions of rats that had been fed a diet that was totally deficient in vitamin E tested alpha lipoid acid, which caused the rats to return to full health even though no vitamin E was replenished. The results of this test are profound, as giving these rats an alpha lipoid acid caused existing stores of vitamin E that the body was previously unable to use to be regenerated.
Alpha lipoid acid is a vitamin-like antioxidant that has been used in Europe for a long period of time. It has recently emerged as an extremely impressive therapeutic agent that scavenges free-radicals. Recent studies have suggested that it has the ability to stop some degenerative diseases, the oxidative process of aging, and restores the health of diseased organs. Additionally, it has the ability to make up deficits of vitamin E or C and could potentially be one of the best treatments that have emerged for diabetes. Alpha lipoid acid (ALA) is considered to be more potent than vitamins E and C, as well as coenzyme Q10. Unlike other antioxidants, ALA has properties that make it superior because it is able to replace certain nutritional supplements, while potentiating others, and inhibiting tissues from deterioration that is associated with diseases. This supplement is also both fat and water soluble, which allows it to protect lipid and aqueous cell structures.
Alpha lipoid acid is a compound that is synthesized in small amounts in the body, but can also be supplied from food or supplement sources. A vitamin-like substance, it contains sulfur and also plays a crucial role in energy reactions. It can be found in liver, yeast, spinach, organ meats, broccoli, red potatoes, and red meat. When it is orally ingested, alpha lipoid acid is not compromised in the GI tract or the liver.
Numerous studies have been conducted on ALA, all of which confirm its positive effect on metabolic processes, with recent clinical tests supporting its ability to enhance free-radical protection, slow the aging process, and guard against a variety of degenerative diseases. ALA was discovered in the 1930s, where it was originally classified as a vitamin, and later categorized as an essential coenzyme when scientists discovered that it was involved in the energy processes of cell mitochondria. It wasn’t until 1988 that scientists found that it also has powerful antioxidant effects.
Alpha lipoid acid is important because it protects us from free-radicals which are present in a body as a result of the number of toxic substances such as auto exhaust, tobacco smoke, pollution, preservatives, and additives that we are exposed to on a daily basis. These free radicals can actually accelerate the aging process, causing premature tissue breakdown to occur. Additionally, our environment will continue to surround us with these pollutants that create free radicals.
Hi.. today topic is ‘Feverfew’.
The feverfew plant is a member of the Asteracea or Compositae family, along with flowers such as the daisy, sunflower, black-eyed Susan, Echinacea, calendula, dandelion, burdock, and marigold. Feverfew is often referred to by other names including featherfew, featerfoil, febrifuge, wild quinine, and bachelor’s button. A busy perennial that grows from one to three feet in height, feverfew looks similar to the daisy plant with white rays and a yellow center but is smaller in size. The entire plant has a strong bitter smell which allows it to repel bees and other insects. Many people believe that the name feverfew came from the use of the flower to bring down fevers, while others believe that its name originated from the English version, featherfew, which describes the shape of the leaves on the feverfew plant.
For thousands of years, feverfew has been used for the treatment of an abundant amount of ailments. Although the exact origin of the first use is unknown, references to feverfew can be found all throughout history. In ancient times, feverfew was used in childbirth, to treat fevers, melancholy, and congestion of the lungs, as well as inflammation and swellings. Feverfew was also used for many female problems and strengthening the womb, also promoting menstrual flow. Another use of feverfew was for painful headaches, especially migraines. Feverfew is an extremely complex substance, containing several essential oils such as L-camphor, L-borneol, terpens, and esters. Another active ingredient of the feverfew plant is parthenolide. Parthenolides have been found to inhibit prostaglandins, which are found to be partially responsible for migraines as well as the inflammation process.
With headaches being a problem since the beginning of time, they are one of the most common medical complaints. Migraines are caused due to inflammation of blood vessels in the brain, which causes an intense headache pain. To determine if a headache can be classified as a migraine one should note the following: if only one side of the head is affected; whether flashing lights, blind spots, or feelings of irritability and depression occur immediately before the headache; stomach distress along with nausea and vommitting; and someone in the immediate family also suffering from migraines. The two main contributors to the problem of migraines are the trigeminal nerve system and serotonin, the nerve chemical.
Migraines involve excessive dilation or contraction of the blood vessels that are found in the brain and make up about 6% of the total number of headaches, with about 10% of the population suffering from migraines at any given time of the year, and the majority of these people being women. Migraines can be triggered by the following factors: stress, eating certain foods, alcohol, food additives such as sodium nitrate, changes in weather, seasons, time zones, or altitude, disturbance in sleep patterns, disturbance in eating habits, hormonal fluctuations, pollution, loud noise, flickering lights, constipation, and low blood sugar.
Hi…now I would like to talk about ‘fiber’.
As a society we are undoubtedly suffering from a lack of dietary fiber. Although it is true that we are constantly warned that diets low in fiber can actually kill us, most of us continue eating the way we always have. Our diets are full of empty calories, refined foods, sugar, and very little when it comes to whole foods. As far as fiber is considered, many of us believe that a daily bowl of cereal is more than enough fiber. Sadly, the food in many of our houses consist of white flour products, cooked and canned vegetables, cookies, chips, all of which are fiber-less and artificially altered from their original state, making them less and less like actual food. The typical American eating habits have led to issues of chronic constipation, intestinal gas, bowel disorders, and a variety of infections all leading to colon cancer. .
The science of fiber began in the early 20th century, when studies were initiated on the laxative action of bran, as well as other subjects. Researchers in the sixties noticed that certain diseases, which were devastating our societies, were relatively rare in third world communities. It was concluded that all the diseases of our civilization were caused by our over-consumption of sugar and refined carbohydrates. Thankfully, the medical establishment has become more aware nowadays.
Today we know that the condition of the colon is related to all body systems and can influence numerous chronic diseases, which include cancer. A bacterial flora imbalance may be the cause of many diseases, with this condition being referred to as autointoxication. Autointoxication is caused by the array of poisons that an unhealthy colon can harbor and is based on the belief that what you eat determines the kind of bacteria which will inhabit your bowel.
It has been found that we rarely replenish the good flora by eating good sources of acidophilus and routinely kill the friendly bacteria by using antibiotics and other drugs and alcohol. This creates the perfect habitat for pathogenic bacteria to flourish and leaving our colons as a toxic waste dump. Intestinal microflora can be altered by increasing your intake of dietary fiber in as little as two weeks. Since fiber affects several vital metabolic processes, eating enough of it is extremely important in maintaining good health and preventing disease.
Hi…have your hear about ‘Colostrums’?
An impressive body of research has found that colostrums is responsible for the first transmission of immune signals in a newborn, which are valuable in shaping the knowledge of the newborn’s defense systems. When an infant is born, the immune system is somewhat naive to the various invaders that try to break down its defense systems and take over the body.
Since colostrums is the first food that the body traditionally takes in, the information that the mother has collected over her life of how to fight microbial invaders, cancerous cells, and other toxins effectively is immediately transferred to her newborn. At a time when the infant is vulnerable to thousands of invaders, nature provides a way to help the infant in the process of building his or her immune system in a quick and effective way. Colostrums is an essential part to this complex and timely process.
As soon as an infant is born, it is generally fed, with the first portion of fluid that comes from the mother being colostrums. It was thought by experts for decades that colostrums contained only vital nutrients in a nutritional sense, but many now believe that breast-feeding a child is much more beneficial than simply bottle-feeding a child with formula. It has now been discovered that colostrums is much more than a nutrient-rich fluid, it is a combination of immune agents.
This mix of nutrients contains agents that are not species-specific in their function, so they do not produce an allergic reaction when introduced to a foreign species. Some of the more prominent and devastating conditions that could be effectively prevented by the use of colostrums and its properties include viral and bacterial infections, parasitic infections, autoimmune disorders, neurological conditions, fungal infections, tissue damage, as well as many others.
The body uses an assortment of processes, mechanisms, and agents in order to defend itself. All of these make up what is known as the immune system. The body uses three interrelated functions making its defense mechanism effective. First, it recognizes foreign agents within the body, followed by enlisting a variety of cells and molecules to eliminate or neutralize the invader. Last, the body is able to remember the exact foreign substance so that next time it comes around; it can deal with it quickly and effectively.
If the invading organism is able to get through the physical barriers of the skin and mucous membranes in the nose and throat, there are several immune barriers that are ready to defend the body including the body’s temperature, hydrochloric acid found in the stomach, and interferon. Hydrochloric acid, along with the low pH of the stomach, defeats a large majority of viruses that make it past the mucous membranes of the nose and throat.
Interferon is derived from the virus of infected cells and binds and neutralizes nearby virus cells. If there is enough interferon’s present, this substance can neutralize large quantities of invading viruses. Colostrums helps the body manufacture interferon’s that can fight viruses and protect the body for a lifetime.
Hi…now I want to talk about ‘Chitosan’.
Many natural health practitioners are looking at chitin as a possible weight-loss tool in a diet program. Chitin is a positively charged polysaccharide that comes from an animal source. This source is shellfish in the form of shrimp, crab and lobster. A polysaccharide is a string of sugar molecules found in the outer shell of these crustaceans. Chitin is also found in marine coral and the outer shells of certain insects, such as beetles and ants. Chitin shares chemical similarities with cellulose and starch, which are plant fibers.
The weight-loss benefits of chitin are in its binding properties. Some researchers believe that the positively charged polysaccharides attract negatively charged bile acids and free fatty acids. These acids are now bound by the positively charged chitin and therefore are not absorbed into a person's system. The result is the prevention of an increase in dietary fat, which puts the pounds on a person's frame.
All types of fiber are beneficial for preventing the absorption of fat into the body, at least to some degree. Studies show that chitin, as an amino polysaccharide fiber may do this to a greater degree. Some proponents believe chitin has the capacity to expel up to four times its weight in fat. Some claim it binds 10 times its weight in fat and does this better than any other kind of fiber.
Some believe chitin works best when used in conjunction with a high-fat meal. If it's going to be one of those high-fat intake days, they say taking chitin can help you counter the fat. Taking chitin may help bind the fat molecules and take them through your system until they're eliminated. However, chitin does not bind carbohydrates, protein, or alcohol. Over-indulgence in them, even with chitin added to your diet, may mean you will still put on weight.
Because chitin is a non-digestible, non-absorbable fiber, it acts as a carrier. It doesn't absorb into your body as other foods can. It helps carry harmful fats away through its binding capabilities before they have a chance to settle in. Studies suggest chitin may do this and help improve blood cholesterol levels as it goes about its work.
Chitin is a calorie-free fiber supplement. A product that is abundantly available, it is even used in food manufacturing as an edible film to protect foods from spoiling. It is often found at a reasonable cost and is a product known for having few side effects. One caveat with chitin is that those allergic to shellfish should not consume chitin. In addition, pregnant women should not take chitin products because of a possible reduction in calcium and vitamin D absorption. Of course, any weight-loss program needs to rely on healthy foods and exercise in addition to any weight-loss supplements. It's all part of an overall healthy approach to losing weight.
Hello...today I would like to talk about ‘Herbal Tea’.
Tea is soaked in culture and history, with its roots dating back to ancient China. Chinese legend says that tea was created more than 5,000 years ago when the leaves fell into the boiling water of an early emperor. From there, tea has become a popular drink, with a culture of its own. True teas are made from the dried leaves of the tea plant, which was first cultivated in China and found growing wild in India. The different processing techniques are used on the leaves of the tea plant in order to produce the many different styles. Green tea is produced by steaming the fresh-picked leaves, followed by heat-drying, while black tea is made by allowing the tea leaves to ferment completely before firing. Oolong teas are made by partially fermenting the leaves before firing while white tea is the least processed of all the teas, with it not being oxidized or rolled by instead, dried by steaming.
Anything that doesn’t come from the Camellia sinensis plant is known as an herbal tea. Herbal teas contain herbs and spices that are often used for health purposes. Rooibos, which is the popular herbal tea, is also referred to as red tea, is full of polyphenols and falconoid which help reduce cellular damage that is caused by free radicals which weaken natural defenses. Red tea also contains many beneficial vitamins and minerals and helps to reduce cramping and gas.
Other herbal tea blends are made for various symptoms such as PMS, energy, weight control, and detoxing. An herbal tea blend that is comprised of astragalus, cranberry, rooibos, and three types of Echinacea can help to support the body’s natural defense system. Peppermint blend teas alleviate digestive disorders and insomnia, while Holy Basil tea helps to alleviate stress, lowers cortisol levels, and promotes a sense of well-being. All ingredients in an herbal tea have a purpose. The herbs and spices improve well-being and contribute to an active, balance, and healthy lifestyle.
A quality herbal tea looks at several aspects of the ingredients. Each herb is looked at for its medicinal value before being included in a tea. Higher quality herbs mean that a higher price is paid for the starting bulk materials, making the price of the finished tea product more expensive. Where the herbs are grown, how they are grown, and how they are harvested are all very important pieces of information to tea makers, who all want the best quality available for their tea formulas. The most important fact to tea makers is that the herbs are organic, and if they’re not organic, that they are wild-crafted, meaning that they go through quality control procedures to make sure that there are no chemical pollutants, heavy metals, or toxins in them.
Finally, the cut of the herbs is also especially important when creating teas, with tea bag cut producing the most effective single serving healthful tea. A tea bag cut means that they are small enough to be broken down and extract all the valuable components are able to be extracted out of the herbs in the shortest amount of time. Herbs should also be large enough that they don’t pass through the filter bag and leave residue in the cup. Herb quality and freshness is also very important, with the color of the herbs being vibrant and the smell obvious.
Hello, today I would talk about ‘Capsicum - Cayenne Red Pepper’
Capsicum also known as cayenne pepper has been known to the natives of the tropical Americas for thousands of years. It was first introduced to Europe by Christopher Columbus as Guinea Pepper and was originally used by Native Americans that were located south of the Mexican boarder as early as 700 B.C. The mixture of chocolate and red chilies was a taste treat that was reserved exclusively for Aztec royalty. Although the exact origin of the word Capsicum is somewhat a mystery, it is assumed to be derived from the Greek word kapto, which means to bite. Capsicum is a fruit found on a shrub-like tropical plant that is technically considered a berry. The designation of it as a pepper can be traced back to Columbus, who compared its hot taste sensation with that, a black pepper.
This cayenne red pepper was introduced to England by Dr. John Stevens in 1804 when it became the catalyst component in many herbal blends. Additionally, herbal and medical practitioners used Capsicum in order to fight infection and sustain the natural heat that the body produces. After, it became very well known in American dispensatories and pharmacopeia. In 1943, The Dispensary of the United States recorded Capsicum to be a powerful local stimulant that produces a sense of heat in the stomach and a general glow over the whole body when it is swallowed. It does all of this without having a narcotic effect.
Physicians in the twentieth-century recognized the medicinal value of Capsicum. This caused the herb to find its way to the American Illustrated Medical Dictionary, the Merck Manual and Materia Medica, where it is named a rubefacient, local stimulant, counter-irritant, gastric stimulant, and diaphoretic. Mexican Indians today use Capsicum as an intestinal disinfectant and protectant against contaminated food and, additionally, to treat fevers. In the world today, this cayenne pepper is no more appreciated and more widely used than in Mexico and a few other Latin American countries, which together are the original home of all the peppers. Practically every dish the Indians eat both in the morning and evening include Capsicum, just as it was 2,000 years ago. These peppers are a wonderful source of essential vitamins in a diet that is otherwise lacking of them.
Capsicum is a source of health and vitality in many countries which include the Bahamas and Costa Rica, in which it is used to treat colic and indigestion, in Africa for vascular disorders, and in North America as a tonic and natural stimulant. Currently undergoing a large variety of studies, Capsicum has emerged with an impressive list of actions. Scientists are currently taking notice and looking at Capsicum with a new respect and interest. Capsicum can be set apart from powerful pharmaceutical stimulants and pain killers because it possesses the potency without the delirious side effects.
Hi…
Bilberry has been used most commonly for centuries as a food, with the English traditionally eating bilberries with a rich cream. Large amounts of bilberries were imported annually from Holland, Germany and Scandinavia for use by pastry cooks and restaurant keepers to make jams, liqueurs, wines, and desserts up until World War II. Bilberry’s use is not only limited to food, as the juice of bilberry yields a clear, dark blue or purplish dye that has often been used to color wool in England.
Additionally, the berries are very rich in vitamin C, with their astringent action explaining their historical use for diarrhea and dysentery. Many believe that the berries contain a pigment that can kill many strains of bacteria. Bilberry fruit and tea that are dried have been used to treat nausea as well as indigestion. Along with the above, other traditional applications of bilberry include inflammation of the mucous membranes in the mouth and throat, eyestrain or fatigue, and as a circulatory tonic. The leaves and berries have also been used for a homeopathic treatment of diabetes.
One of the main reasons that bilberry’s medicinal value came to attention in the Western world was because of its legendary ability to improve the nighttime vision of the British Royal Air force pilots during World War II. After consuming bilberry, it was found that they experienced improved visual acuity, making it easier to carry our nighttime bombing raids. It was also found that their eyes could adjust to darkness quicker and their vision was able to better correct after the effects of prolonged glare.
In the proceeding years, scientific research found that bilberry offered a wide range of benefits for both vision and other vascular disorders. French studies found that bilberry supplementation significantly enhanced the ability to adjust for glare and darkness. Bilberry can help to prevent compromised vision for anyone who is susceptible to eyestrain. In the last few decades, more studies have confirmed the medicinal value of bilberry for a variety of eye disorders. Bilberry is routinely used by European medical practitioners for patients with cataracts, venous insufficiency, visual disorders, peptic ulcers, capillary fragility, and even dysmenorrheal.
Finally, bilberry has a great effect on the activity of many enzymes that participate in inflammatory responses. Those who bruise easily or have trouble with capillary weakness can benefit from the anthocyanidin content of bilberry. These anthocyanidins offer many actions including: stimulating the production of collagen; protecting existing collagen stores in the connective tissue; preventing the formation and release of inflammatory compounds including histamine, prostaglandins, and leukotrines; preventing certain enzyme reactions that occur as a result of inflammatory conditions; and scavenging for free radicals to reduce cellular damage from oxidizing agents.
Hi…have your hear about ‘comfrey’? of cause no, right! I also never hear about it.
Comfrey, one of the most valuable herbs known to botanical medicine, has been used for centuries to heal. It is full of amino acid, lysine, B12, and vitamins A and C as well as high in calcium, potassium, phosphorus, and protein. Additionally, it contains iron, magnesium, sulphur, copper, zinc, and eighteen amino acids. Echinacea is an herb that stimulates immunity within the body and increases its ability to fight infections. It includes vitamins A, E, and C, as well as iron, iodine, copper, sulphur, and potassium. Fennel is used to help stabilize the nervous system and move waste material out of the body.
It also has properties to help against convulsions and mucous and contains potassium, sulphur, and sodium. Garlic acts to rejuvenate the body in all of its functions as it stimulates the lymphatic system to help rid the body of toxins. This herb contains vitamin A and C, selenium, sulphur, calcium, manganese, copper, vitamin B1, iron, potassium, and zinc.
Along with the above herbs, there are others that are good for helping with herpes. Ginger is very effective in its ability to cleanse the bowels, kidneys, and skin and contains protein, vitamins A, C, and B complex, as well as calcium, phosphorus, iron, sodium, potassium, and magnesium. Mullein loosens mucus within the body and moves it out of the body. It is high in iron, magnesium, potassium, and sulphur and also contains vitamins A, D, and B complex. Sweet birch cleanses the blood and is extremely high in fluoride. It also contains vitamins A, C, E, B1, and B2, and calcium, chlorine, copper, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, and silicon. Thyme, which destroys fungal infections and skin parasites, has B complex, vitamins C and D, and iodine, sodium, silicon, and sulphur. White willow is also helpful in herpes, as it has a strong antiseptic ability for infected wounds, ulcerations, and eczema.
Along with all of the above herbs, there are many herbs that help protect and build the nervous system, which is closely related to the immune system. These herbs include: alfalfa, dandelion, fenugreek, gotu kola, hops, kelp, lady’s slipper, lobelia, parsley, passion flower, skullcap, wood betony, and red clover. Additionally, there are many herbs for circulation, which increase blood supply to the heart muscles and entire body. Good circulation is crucial for a healthy immune system and can be improved with capsicum, garlic, gentian root, hawthorn berries, kelp, licorice root, and lecithin.
Because the glands regulate many major body functions, these functions often interrelate with the circulatory and nervous systems. Some glandular herbs include: golden seal, Siberian ginseng, burdock, Echinacea, sarsaparilla, black walnut, chaparral, and red clover blossoms. Along with the above, there are several herbs that help with the skin, which can be extremely beneficial to those who are dealing with herpes.
Red marine algae is a natural algae that grows in the ocean. This algae is harvested by many countries including China, Japan, and the United States. Red marine algae contains polysaccharides that can boost the immune system. These special polysaccharides stimulate the immune system to fight viruses and disease which can help fight herpes.
Among these herbs is aloe vera, which helps to clean, soothe, and heal the skin as it contains calcium, potassium, sodium, manganese, magnesium, iron, lecithin, and zinc. Also, comfrey, golden seal, myrrh, bayberry, and oat straw are all good herbs for the skin. As you can see these herbs are loaded with vitamins, minerals and polysaccharides which are essential to the body to keep the immune system strong and the body able to fight off viruses and disease.
Hi…
Many parents have depended on these medicines for years to help with runny noses, coughs, and sleep disruptions. However, our kids are not the first generation to suffer from frequent respiratory troubles. Herbal and dietary remedies have been the first line of defense for centuries, with Elderberry being rich in flavonoids, essential oils, vitamin C and organic acids. It reduces mucous secretions, helps ease breathing, and soothes an irritated nose and throat.
If your child frequently deals with a runny nose, earache, and sinus infection, he or she may have hidden food intolerances. One doctor states that there are various ways that you can recognize hidden childhood allergies. A classic symptom is the “allergic salute”, which the child demonstrates when he is constantly rubbing his or her hand across the end of a runny nose.
Food allergies are difficult to determine with standard allergy testing, but by avoiding common allergic provoking foods like dairy, wheat, corn, and tree nuts, often brings relief to the child. Changing the family diet is the best way to eliminate offending foods. Replace all forms of sugar and other refined carbohydrates, as they slow down bowel transit time and increase exposure to toxic bowel contents. Natural sweeteners, which can be found in most health food stores, can be used instead. Since dairy products top the list of provoking foods, they should be replaced as much as possible with other beverages. Inspect labels carefully to determine if they contain casein, which is a milk protein that often causes problems. A liquid calcium supplement is a good idea to give your children if they are not receiving dairy products.
Allergic children are often prone to digestive problems, which is a condition referred to as intestinal dysbiosis. Antibiotic use disturbs the microflora in the gut by killing helpful bacteria. Psychological stress can also impact microflora, which poses the question of whether or not stress is having a negative impact on our children’s health. Studies in which some children were placed in a stress relieving program showed that treated groups of children increased their levels of secretary IgA, which gives them a greater ability to resist colds.
Allergic children also have disturbed bowel function, making them constipated, frequently pass gas, be bloated, and have foul smelling hard stools. A low fiber diet is one cause of constipation, but an imbalance in microflora in the gut is another reason, which causes toxins to enter circulation. Supplementing with Bifidobacteria and other helpful probiotics can restore normal gut function, alleviate allergic symptoms, restore immune competence, and reduce allied bowel problems. Supplementing with fiber can also support proper elimination of toxins in children as well as adults. Acidophilus, fiber, and herbal cold aids can be found at your local health food store.
Hi…do your believe that Polyphenols is an Antioxidant?
A lot of new evidence suggests that consuming more plant polyphenols is a powerful way to protect aging arteries. These polyphenol compounds help improve endothelial function, a critical factor in preventing atherosclerosis; inhibit abnormal platelet aggregation which causes most sudden heart attacks and strokes; fight inflammation; and support healthy blood lipids. Polyphenols that are of particular interest are those derived from green tea, cocoa, apples, and black chokeberry, which all complement each other in helping to build the body’s defenses against various ailments.
Modern science has found that edible plants are to be valued for their high vitamin and fiber along with their rich store of polyphenols. Polyphenols are found in fruits and vegetables, as well as cocoa, tea, and chokeberry and have been shown to be a type of chemical that may protect the body against some common health problems as well as certain effects of aging. Polyphenols protect cells and body chemicals against damage that is caused by free radicals and block the action of enzymes that cancers need for growth, deactivating substances that promote the growth of cancer. The increased consumption of polyphenols has been associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and potentially cancer and stroke.
The polyphenols found in cocoa occur in a higher concentration than can be found in any other food. They also have antioxidant activity much greater than those found in broccoli or red wine. The catechins and procyanidins that are found in cocoa seem to lower the risk of cancer and heart disease. Cocoa has also been proven in studies to reduce blood pressure, improve insulin sensitivity, and slightly ameliorate the lipid profile. Although cocoa is a healthy and tasteful food, it is high in caloric content and therefore, its ingestion must be accompanied by the careful reduction of calories from other sources.
Many studies have shown that tea polyphenols can be extremely beneficial to human health, possessing anti-obesity, antihypertensive, anti-diabetic, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anticancer effects. Tea is the world’s second most consumed beverage, although less popular in the Western diet. Green tea and white tea retain more polyphenols in their intact form, as oolong and black teas undergo more extensive processing before they are marketed. Tea polyphenols break down in high temperatures therefore; freshly brewed tea contains a higher amount of polyphenols per serving than do tea drinks that are canned or bottled.
Similar to the blueberry, the black chokeberry is high in anthocyanins and antioxidant activity. It is native to eastern North America and has become popular in Eastern Europe and Russia due to its health-promoting potential. This berry protects the liver from chemical poisoning and the stomach lining from ulcers. It also acts as an anti-inflammatory, lowers harmful cholesterol levels, and prevents dangerous swings in blood pressure. Some studies have shown that this berry seems to prevent the harmful mutations in cell cultures, regulates immune function of human white blood cell cultures, and suppressed the growth of human colon cancers.
Hi…now I want to talk about ‘Chlorella’.
A good diet depends on choosing what to eat and how much to eat, because otherwise food can actually harm someone. These dietary changes have caused an increase in body fat, sticky blood, damaged blood vessel walls, and rise in dietary-related diseases like hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipemia, cancer, heart disease, and cerebrovascular disease. These diseases are abundant in Western countries, with the number one cause of death in the United States being heart disease. It has been found that the main cause of death in many advanced countries is related to diet.
Chlorella has the ability to prevent diseases that are caused by diet. Chlorella is a type of algae, the very origin of the food chain, and is a highly regarded health-food supplement for use in maintaining the human body. Introduced to the health-food marketplace about 40 years ago, chlorella was first established in Japan and today is produced by Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Indonesia.
Not only is it used for health-food supplementation, but also in processed foods, food additives, medication additives, marine feeds, feed additives, and fertilizers. Chlorella is helpful in supplementing nutrients of high-quality, plant-based proteins, vitamins, minerals, chlorophyll, and antioxidants. It has been shown to help lower cholesterol, regulate the intestines, detoxify the body, lower blood pressure, and regulate the immune system, In short, chlorella helps the human body to maintain balance.
In size, chlorella is 2 to 10 microns, which is slightly smaller than a red blood cell. It is an ancestor of such vegetables as spinach and pumpkins. As compared to other plants, chlorella has a high concentration of chlorophyll, making its capability for photosynthesis many times higher than that of other plants. Because of its high-quality, plant-based protein, vitamins, minerals, dietary fiber, and antioxidants, chlorella is able to maintain human health and prevent and treat disease.
Diseases including hyperlipemia, hypertension, diabetes, arteriosclerosis, heart disease, stroke, and cancer are closely related to diet. Heredity, aging, and environmental factors including chemical substances and stress are also all liked to the above diseases. These diseases are on the rise in advanced countries, with a lot of them being the most prevalent causes of death in many countries. To prevent diet-related illnesses, the diet must be balanced and lowered immune function must be improved.
The body also needs to be protected from health-threatening chemical substances and stress. Scientists have found that Chlorella is effective for balancing the diet, improving lowered cell function and resistance, and detoxifying chemicals and alleviating stress. Many diet-related diseases can be prevented and treated by simply adding Chlorella to ones diet.
Hi…
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) today announced that it has doubled the amount of vitamin D recommended for infants, children and adolescents. The increase, from 200 international units (IU) to 400 IU per day, starting in the first few days of life, was detailed at the group’s annual meeting in Boston. The new advice replaces an academy recommendation issued in 2003.
"Breastfeeding is the best source of nutrition for infants. However, because of vitamin D deficiencies in the maternal diet, which affect the vitamin D in a mother’s milk, it is important that breastfed infants receive supplements of vitamin D,” said Carol Wagner, M.D., FAAP, member of the AAP Section on Breastfeeding Executive Committee and co-author of the report.
The new advice is based on mounting research about potential benefits from vitamin D besides keeping bones strong, including suggestions that it might reduce risks for cancer, diabetes and heart disease. But the evidence isn't conclusive and there is no consensus on how much of the vitamin would be needed for disease prevention.
"We know 400 IU a day is safe and prevents rickets," Greer said. "We don't have any idea if that amount of vitamin D is enough for other diseases. We also don't know if anything over 400 is safe."
The AAP also made these recommendations:
Infants who are breast-fed or partially breast-fed receive 400 IU a day of vitamin D in supplements, beginning in the first few days of life, continuing unless the infant starts taking at least one quart a day of vitamin D-fortified formula or whole milk, although whole milk should not be introduced until the child has turned 1. Non-breast-fed children and older children should also receive a vitamin D supplement of 400 IU per day.
Adolescents who do not obtain 400 IU of vitamin D per day through foods should receive a supplement containing that amount.
Children at increased risk of vitamin D deficiency (for example, those taking anti-seizure medications) may need higher doses, but this should only be done in consultation with a health-care professional. The new recommendations were expected to be published in the November issue of the journal Pediatrics.
hi..
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five active players each try to score points against one another by propelling a ball through a 10 feet (3 m) high hoop (the goal) under organized rules. Basketball is one of the most popular and widely viewed sports in the world.[citation needed]
Points are scored by shooting the ball through the basket above; the team with more points at the end of the game wins. The ball can be advanced on the court by bouncing it (dribbling) or passing it between teammates. Disruptive physical contact (fouls) is not permitted and there are restrictions on how the ball can be handled (violations).
Through time, basketball has developed to involve common techniques of shooting, passing and dribbling, as well as players' positions, and offensive and defensive structures. Typically, the tallest members of a team will play center or one of two forward positions, while shorter players or those who possess the best ball handling skills and speed, play the guard positions. While competitive basketball is carefully regulated, numerous variations of basketball have developed for casual play. In some countries, basketball is also a popular spectator sport.
While competitive basketball is primarily an indoor sport, played on a basketball court, less regulated variations have become exceedingly popular as an outdoor sport among both inner city and rural groups.
hi..
A history of the Samurai must begin with the most important aspect of a Samurai: Bushido. Knowing about Bushido is how one knows the Samurai warrior. "Bushi" is translated as "Warrior" and "do" is translated as "the way". Thus Bushido means "the Samurai way of life". Bushido consisted of a rigid code of ethics that was to be followed devoutly with bravery, honor and loyalty as the most important aspects . The most revered Bushido tenet was "freedom from fear". A Samurai was to live every moment with no fear of death, thus giving them the freedom to follow the Bushido code without hesitation and without fail. This philosophy was to be held sacred, even if one had to sacrifice one's life to pursue these ideals.
The elite Samurai warrior trained for many years in the art "Bujutsu". The Samurai were experts in a wide variety of combat skills including ground fighting, fighting unarmed, fighting with arms and fighting from horseback. Early Samurai used bow and arrows, and swords. Later Samurai used swords, spears and naginata (halberds). Samurai often named their swords, in a dedication of devotion. They believed that their warrior spirit was contained within their swords. They dedicated their lives to the combat arts of Bujutsu.
The Samurai wore two swords, a wakizashi and a katana. Their swords were made by master sword smiths and quality tested on the corpses of criminals.
The Samurai culture rose from the ongoing wars over land among the Minamoto, Fujiwara and Taira clans. Though the Samurai originated from regional groups of ancient warriors, they quickly lost their provincial ways. They developed a unique, sophisticated culture that was renowned for stoicism, honor and military expertise during the Kamakura period (1192-1333).
According to William Scott Wilson in his book "ideals of the Samurai": "The warriors in the Heike Monogatari served as models for the educated warriors of later generations, and the ideals depicted by them were not assumed to be beyond reach. Rather, these ideals were vigorously pursued in the upper echelons of warrior society and recommended as the proper form of the Japanese man of arms. With the Heike Monogatari, the image of the Japanese warrior in literature came to its full maturity." Wilson then translates the writings of several warriors who mention the Heike Monogatari as an example for their men to follow.
During the Muromachi period (1338-1573), Samurai culture created the idea of artist-warrior. Samurai training began to include the ritualized tea ceremony and flower arranging to add refinement and balance to the warrior persona. The code of Bushido became formalized.
The Samurai were considered the aristocratic warrior class of Japan. The peak of the Samurai era was in 12th century Japan where they enjoyed the benefits of belonging to a unique, privileged class. The Samurai were able to wear their swords freely and had the right to kill any peasant who offended them.
The downfall of the Samurai began during the Edo period (1603-1867). Two hundred and fifty years of peace had made the Samurai archaic: they were allowed to wear their swords, but had to accept non-warrior jobs to survive. The booming economy during this time of peace further excluded the ascetic principles of the Samurai, as most Japanese citizens were enjoying the new luxuries that accompany economic prosperity.
The gradual decline of the Samurai continued until the last Shogun resigned during the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Dissatisfied Samurai had led the revolt against the shogun, but the new government abolished feudalism and betrayed the Samurai by stripping them of all their privileges in 1871. Thus ended the era of the Samurai.
The history and philosophy of the Samurai lives on in the form of the Samurai sword, which has become a much sought after symbol of this historic and heroic bygone era
Hi…
Iron deficiency is the most common nutritional deficiency worldwide, with 20 to 50 percent of people affected. The average body contains only one teaspoon of iron, but this mineral is crucial in oxygen transportation throughout the bloodstream and into cells. A lack of iron will starve the body of oxygen and energy, which cause the symptoms of iron deficiency to be fatigue, foggy thinking, irritability, headaches, and lethargy.
A lot of athletes have inadequate iron intake, impairing their exercise performance as it decreases hemoglobin levels and the amount of oxygen that is delivered to the muscles while it increases the time that is needed to recover from exercise. Iron is also important in immunity, with optimal iron intake strengthening the immune system and building resistance to colds, infections, and diseases. Even though inadequate intake is a common concern, too much can also cause health problems including stomach and intestinal cramps, nausea, and constipation.
The most important function of selenium is its antioxidant enzyme glutathione peroxidase. This enzyme is invaluable in protecting red blood cells and cell membranes from free radical damage. Selenium works closely with vitamin E, sometimes replacing it in certain situations. Selenium holds an important role in maintaining the immune system and has been shown to reduce the risk of many health problems which include several types of cancer, heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and certain birth defects.
Zinc works in the eyes to protect them against sunlight-related free radicals. Zinc supplements have been found to slow the progression of macular degeneration, but high intakes of zinc and other antioxidants have been shown to lower the risk of developing this eye disease in the first place. This mineral can reduce the severity and duration of the common cold when in lozenge form, if started within 24 hours of the first cold symptom and taken every couple of hours. Taking 50mg of zinc daily or higher amounts for short periods of time is a good idea, but amounts over 150mg daily could cause metallic taste, stomach upset, or impair immune function.
Chromium is important in maintaining blood sugar levels, as well as many other roles in the body. Chromium deficiency impairs the blood sugar-insulin relationship, while chromium supplementation improves insulin response. Studies have shown that supplementing with chromium picolinate improves diabetes management by lowering blood sugar, insulin, cholesterol, or triglyceride levels and reducing the reliance on blood sugar medications. This mineral is also important in the metabolism of fat and carbohydrates.
Finally, Sulfur is needed in the joints to keep the connective tissues within them strong and stable. One source of sulfur, MSM, has been shown to significantly relieve pain and improve use of knee joints in studies. Through all of the above, one can see that trace minerals are extremely important contributors to health, even in small amounts.
Hi…
Bees collect pollen from flowers and mix it with their nectar, which transforms it into a nutrient-dense super food with bioactive ingredients numbering in the thousands including enzymes, bioflavonoid, essential fatty acids, free amino acids, natural cheated minerals, and whole vitamin complexes. Ancient Egyptians, Orientals, Hebrews, and South American natives often applied a combination of honey mixed with bee pollen to wounds, burns, and boils, while Orientals used honey and bee pollen mixed with fruit or vegetable juice as a health drink. Norse mythology even states that honey and bee pollen were the secret to the eternal life of their gods.
Whether bee pollen is the secret to eternal life or not, there have been many studies done which show the connection between its consumption and healthy longevity. Bee pollen is seen as an immune system enhancer due to its ability to strengthen the body against viral infections. It is also effective in relieving fatigue, improving concentration, the treatment of asthma and of allergies, and in confronting skin problems and inhibiting wrinkles.
Bee pollen has also helped many women with painful menstrual cramps or hot flashes. It can also relieve headaches and heart palpitations as well as increase sexual potency, fertility, and benefit the prostate. Bee pollen can be used to regulate colon problems and as a diuretic for the kidney and bladder. Evidence has even been found for bee pollen’s effectiveness on children with ADD.
Bee pollen is packed with many different nutrients including amino acids, antibiotic factors, DNA/RNA, enzymes, glycosides, hormones, minerals, vitamins, and other ingredients that have not yet been determined. There are a total of 22 amino acids in bee pollen, including all of the essential ones, which makes it an extremely usable and complete source of protein. It is higher in protein than steak, eggs or cheese weight for weight, without large amounts of fat.
Bee pollen is rich in photochemical such as falconoid, carotenes, and phytosterols, which allows it to provide important antioxidants including lycopene, selenium, quartering, and beta carotene. Bee pollen also has the ability to regulate intestinal bacterial, which neutralizes toxic waste and improves blood health. Bee pollen contains 18 different enzymes including amylase, diastase, phosphates, pepsin, and tryspin. Because bee pollen is such a rich source of enzymes, it greatly assists the body since they are required for all bodily functions.
Glycosides, which are natural sugars, are involved in the creation of energy within the body, can be found in bee pollen, as they promote better healing and coagulation and also control hypertension by regulating blood flow. Bee pollen contains plant hormones which activate and assist the body’s own endocrine glands, allowing them to function better, which can lead to an increased sperm count for men.
Hi…
. It has been found that certain types of cholesterol in our blood can eventually lead to a buildup of plaque in the arteries, which restricts the blood supply to the heart and sets us up for a potential heart attack.
These researchers found it ironic when looking at the Greenland Eskimo, whose diet is rich in animal fat, but who is almost entirely free from coronary artery disease. Studies have proved that high levels of DHA and EPA that are found in the fish, seal, and whale diet of the Eskimo is what protects them from the heart disease that many people in the United States battle.
In order to improve cardiovascular health, DHA must perform many tasks. Increased DHA and EPA levels have been shown to lower total serum cholesterol. It has also been shown to selectively lower LDL cholesterol while elevating protective HDL cholesterol. Additionally, DHA and EPA supplementation lowers triglycerides. In terms of heart health, these omega-3s also reduce the tendency of platelets to clump and adhere to blood vessels and the blood vessels themselves to constrict.
Although diets that are high in fat content are believed to be potential risk factors for the development of certain types of cancer, especially breast cancer, the rates for some common cancers are relatively low among the Eskimos of Greenland and Alaska even though they have a high fat intake. Studies preformed to look into this fact concluded that the type of fat consumed may be important in determining cancer incidence, rather than just the overall fat intake.
DHA and EPA consumption suppresses the formation of a lot of leukotrienes, which are compounds that affect many different body systems. These leukotrienes stimulate bronchial contraction and are strongly associated with asthma, as they stimulate the production of mucus, affect cerebral circulation, and are powerful pro-inflammatory agents. To sum it up, leukotrienes can contribute too several severe health conditions, so consuming DHA and other fatty acids, have shown to reduce the production of leukotrienes by as much as seventy-five percent. Also, supplementation causes immune and inflammatory responses to be greatly diminished, which is especially important for immune response disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disorder.
Fish oils that contain both DHA and EPA are now available in capsule form, which allows one to avoid the issue of taste. For those who prefer to have their supplements from a plant source, micro algae, the food source of fish, is a great source of DHA. This source can be used by both vegetarians and individuals on low-fat diets, both of whom are extremely vulnerable to having a lower dietary DHA level.
hai..
FOREST....A forest is an area with a high density of trees. There are many definitions of a forest, based on various criteria.[1] These plant communities cover approximately 9.4% of the Earth's surface (or 30% of total land area) and function as habitats for organisms, hydrologic flow modulators, and soil conservers, constituting one of the most important aspects of the Earth's biosphere. Historically, "forest" meant an uncultivated area legally set aside for hunting by feudal nobility, and these hunting forests were not necessarily wooded much if at all (see Royal Forest). However, as hunting forests did often include considerable areas of woodland, the word forest eventually came to mean wooded land more generally. A woodland is ecologically distinct from a forest
Forests can be found in all regions capable of sustaining tree growth, at altitudes up to the tree line, except where natural fire frequency or other disturbance is too high, or where the environment has been altered by human activity. As a general rule, forests dominated by angiosperms (broadleaf forests) are more species-rich than those dominated by gymnosperms (conifer, montane, or needleleaf forests), although exceptions exist. Forests sometimes contain many tree species within a small area (as in tropical rain and temperate deciduous forests), or relatively few species over large areas (e.g., taiga and arid montane coniferous forests). Forests are often home to many animal and plant species, and biomass per unit area is high compared to other vegetation communities. Much of this biomass occurs below ground in the root systems and as partially decomposed plant detritus. The woody component of a forest contains lignin, which is relatively slow to decompose compared with other organic materials such as cellulose or carbohydrate.
Forests are differentiated from woodlands by the extent of canopy coverage: in a forest the branches and the foliage of separate trees often meet or interlock, although there can be gaps of varying sizes within an area referred to as forest. A woodland has a more continuously open canopy, with trees spaced further apart, which allows more sunlight to penetrate to the ground between them (see also savanna).
Among the major forested biomes are:
rain forest (tropical and temperate)
taiga
temperate hardwood forest
tropical dry forest
Forests can be classified in different ways and to different degrees of specificity. One such way is in terms of the "biome" in which they exist, combined with leaf longevity of the dominant species (whether they are evergreen or deciduous). Another distinction is whether the forests composed predominantly of broadleaf trees, coniferous (needle-leaved) trees, or mixed.
Boreal forests occupy the subarctic zone and are generally evergreen and coniferous.
Temperate zones support both broadleaf deciduous forests (e.g., temperate deciduous forest) and evergreen coniferous forests (e.g., Temperate coniferous forests and Temperate rainforests). Warm temperate zones support broadleaf evergreen forests, including laurel forests.
Tropical and subtropical forests include tropical and subtropical moist forests, tropical and subtropical dry forests, and tropical and subtropical coniferous forests.
Physiognomy classifies forests based on their overall physical structure or developmental stage (e.g. old growth vs. second growth).
Forests can also be classified more specifically based on the climate and the dominant tree species present, resulting in numerous different forest types (e.g., ponderosa pine/Douglas-fir forest).
The scientific study of forest species and their interaction with the environment is referred to as forest ecology, while the management of forests is often referred to as forestry. Forest management has changed considerably over the last few centuries, with rapid changes from the 1980s onwards culminating in a practice now referred to as sustainable forest management. Forest ecologists concentrate on forest patterns and processes, usually with the aim of elucidating cause and effect relationships. Foresters who practice sustainable forest management focus on the integration of ecological, social and economic values, often in consultation with local communities and other stakeholders.
Anthropogenic factors that can affect forests include logging, human-caused forest fires, acid rain, and introduced species, among other things. There are also many natural factors that can cause changes in forests over time including forest fires, insects, diseases, weather, competition between species, etc. In 1997, the World Resources Institute recorded that only 20% of the world's original forests remained in large intact tracts of undisturbed forest [4]. More than 75% of these intact forests lie in three countries - the Boreal forests of Russia and Canada and the rainforest of Brazil. In 2006 this information on intact forests was updated using latest available satellite imagery.
Canada has about 4,020,000 km² of forest land. More than 90% of forest land is publicly owned and about 50% of the total forest area is allocated for harvesting. These allocated areas are managed using the principles of sustainable forest management, which includes extensive consultation with local stakeholders. About eight percent of Canada’s forest is legally protected from resource development (Global Forest Watch Canada)(Natural Resources Canada). Much more forest land — about 40 percent of the total forest land base — is subject to varying degrees of protection through processes such as integrated land-use planning or defined management areas such as certified forests (Natural Resources Canada). By December 2006, over 1,237,000 square kilometers of forest land in Canada (about half the global total) had been certified as being sustainably managed (Canadian Sustainable Forestry Certification Coalition). Clearcutting is usually the harvest method of choice and companies are required by law to ensure that harvested areas are adequately regenerated. Most Canadian provinces have regulations limiting the size of clearcuts, although some older clearcuts can range upwards of 110 km² (20,000 acres) in size which were cut over several years.
In the United States, most forests have historically been affected by humans to some degree, though in recent years improved forestry practices has helped regulate or moderate large scale or severe impacts. However the United States Forest Service estimates that every year about 6,000 km² (1.5 million acres) of the nation’s 3,000,000 km² (750 million acres) of forest land is lost to urban sprawl and development. It is expected that the South alone will lose 80,000 to 100,000 km² (20 to 25 million acres) to development. However, in many areas of the United States, the area of forest is stable or increasing, particularly in many northern states.
Globally two broad types of forests can be identified: natural and anthropogenic[citation needed].
Natural forests contain mainly natural patterns of biodiversity in established seral patterns, and they contain mainly species native to the region and habitat. The natural formations and processes have not been affected by humans with a frequency or intensity to change the natural structure and components of the habitat.
Anthropogenic forests have been created by humans or sufficiently affected by humans to change or remove natural seral patterns. They often contain significant elements of species which were originally from other regions or habitats
therefore save our forest
hai....i would like to share with you about endangered animals-extinction.Extinction is the disappearance, brought about by natural or unnatural means, of an entire species.
Some species of plants and animals die out naturally because newer species are more successful at competing for food and living space. Others have become extinct because of changes in the planet or because of natural disasters. Dinosaurs, for example, may have died out because the climate became cooler--maybe because an asteroid collided with the earth and caused a big cloud of dust that blocked out the sun.
In today's world, however, species mostly become extinct or are threatened with extinction because of humans. Humans hunt animals, destroy their habitats, and introduce other animals that prey upon the endangered animals or compete for their resources. Among these factors, the greatest threat to plants and animals is habitat destruction.
It is estimated that about 125 species of birds and 60 species of mammals have become extinct since 1600. Currently, there are approximately 1000-1100 species of birds and mammals that are facing extinction. If invertebrates and plants are included, the total number of species in imminent danger is around 20,000.
The Dodo (Raphus cucullatus) was a flightless bird that lived on the island of Mauritius. Related to pigeons and doves, it stood about a meter tall (three feet), lived on fruit and nested on the ground. The dodo has been extinct since the mid-to-late 17th century. It is commonly used as the archetype of an extinct species because its extinction occurred during recorded human history, and was directly attributable to human activity. The adjective phrase "as dead as a dodo" means undoubtedly and unquestionably dead. The verb phrase "to go the way of the dodo" means to become extinct or obsolete, to fall out of common usage or practice, or to become a thing of the past.
Plant and Animal Extinction, GlobalWarming Awareness2007 :
Scientists project that 25% of all plant and animal species on Earth are threatened with extinction by 2050 unless greenhouse gas emissions are dramatically reduced.
In a report published, a team of 19 scientists, lead by Prof Chris Thomas of Leeds University, studied six biodiversity-rich regions around the world representing 20% of the planet’s land area.
Using a range of climate change data supplied by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the study found that for the mid-range globalwarming scenarios, 15% to 37% of all species in the regions considered could be driven to extinction by 2050. When these projections were extrapolated globally, over a million species were threatened as a result of climate change.
Take awareness2007 for climate changes.
do no let more animal and plant became one of the most extinction one day
hai..have you even see this story
LOVERS IN PARIS.....
The story of �Lovers in Paris� is typical a romantic comedy, with a �Cinderella-like� fairy tale. But what gave this korean drama so much commercial success, besides the fairy-tale like story, is the outstanding job that SBS has done in casting and the wonderful packaging of the entire serial.
Tae-Young (Kim Jung-Eun) who used to help her father manage a small, run-down theater in the outskirts of Seoul, decides to leave for Paris to study after her father passes away. Although Tae-Young makes it to Paris, she finds that she cannot afford to even pay her rent unless she works part-time. One day, she gets a job as a cleaning lady at a beautiful mansion-style apartment�
Ki-Joo (Park Shin-Yang) was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. As the son of a multi-millionaire, Ki-Joo is a bright and sophisticated gentleman with a good sense of humor. Ki-Joo has only one fear in life: love. In the past, he went through a loveless marriage arranged by his parents that ultimately led to a divorce. Despite these factors, Ki-Joo soon finds himself helplessly falling for the unsophisticated, yet genuine charm of Tae-young.
Hi..
Big Pharma is teaming up with other anti-supplement cohorts to spearhead a petition urging the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to implement new limitations on manufacturers of weight-management supplements. It should come as no surprise that the large pharmaceutical corporation which helped launch the petition is the very same company that recently released the first-ever FDA-approved over-the-counter weight-loss drug. It is very evident that Big Pharma is after large amounts of money and will stop at nothing to eliminate its competition.
The pharmaceutical industry seems to have a lot riding on the over-the-counter weight-loss pills. Natural nutrition that works with the body to support healthy weight management is a huge threat to Big Pharma’s over-the-counter weight-loss drug profits. Consumers have become more and more aware of the fact that while nutrition supports health, just as nature intended, drugs can subject them to side effects that can even neutralize nutritional benefits. The over-the-counter weight-loss pill that has been recently approved acts on the body’s absorption of fats within the intestines, but meanwhile, stops the body’s ability to absorb important fat-soluble nutrients such as vitamins A, D, E, and K. As for the side effects associated with this weight loss drug, the drug’s manufacturer cautions that users may need to wear dark colored pants and bring a change of clothes to work.
As questionable as the drug is, it is the fact that the drug’s manufacturer is urging the FDA to crack down on the weight-management supplements that is most disturbing. The logic of this petition is that nutritional supplements should not be allowed to claim that they support healthy weight management, since being overweight should really be regarded as a state of disease. Only drugs may claim to have an effect on disease, according to this law. The real question is, when did being overweight, if only by a few pounds, categorized as a disease?
What’s even more absurd is the fact that the petition claims that since being overweight is associated with a diseased state, then supplements that support healthy weight management are claiming to have an impact on those diseases. It appears as if the writers of the petition are trying to create a link between weight management and disease claims that do not exist, which makes the petition appear desperate and nonsensical as a result.
Meanwhile, nutritional supplement manufacturers are currently marketing their products truthfully, with any quality supplement intended to support weight management being promoted in conjunction with a healthy diet and exercise. If a healthy diet, exercise, and natural nutrition is consistently chosen by Americans, not only will they lose weight, but they will also elevate their overall state of health.
hi...now i want to talk about 'How Smoking Affects Your Health'.
There are no physical reasons to start smoking. The body doesn't need tobacco the way it needs food, water, sleep, and exercise. In fact, many of the chemicals in cigarettes, like nicotine and cyanide, are actually poisons that can kill in high enough doses.
The body is smart. It goes on the defense when it's being poisoned. For this reason, many people find it takes several tries to get started smoking: First-time smokers often feel pain or burning in the throat and lungs, and some people feel sick or even throw up the first few times they try tobacco.
The consequences of this poisoning happen gradually. Over the long term, smoking leads people to develop health problems like cancer, emphysema (breakdown of lung tissue), organ damage, and heart disease. These diseases limit a person's ability to be normally active — and can be fatal. Each time a smoker lights up, that single cigarette takes about 5 to 20 minutes off the person's life.
Smokers not only develop wrinkles and yellow teeth, they also lose bone density, which increases their risk of osteoporosis (pronounced: ahs-tee-o-puh-row-sus), a condition that causes older people to become bent over and their bones to break more easily. Smokers also tend to be less active than nonsmokers because smoking affects lung power.
Smoking can also cause fertility problems and can impact sexual health in both men and women. Girls who are on the pill or other hormone-based methods of birth control (like the patch or the ring) increase their risk of serious health problems, such as heart attacks, if they smoke.
The consequences of smoking may seem very far off, but long-term health problems aren't the only hazard of smoking. Nicotine and the other toxins in cigarettes, cigars, and pipes can affect a person's body quickly, which means that teen smokers experience many of these problems:
• Bad skin. Because smoking restricts blood vessels, it can prevent oxygen and nutrients from getting to the skin — which is why smokers often appear pale and unhealthy. An Italian study also linked smoking to an increased risk of getting a type of skin rash called psoriasis.
• Bad breath. Cigarettes leave smokers with a condition called halitosis, or persistent bad breath.
• Bad-smelling clothes and hair. The smell of stale smoke tends to linger — not just on people's clothing, but on their hair, furniture, and cars. And it's often hard to get the smell of smoke out.
• Reduced athletic performance. People who smoke usually can't compete with nonsmoking peers because the physical effects of smoking (like rapid heartbeat, decreased circulation, and shortness of breath) impair sports performance.
• Greater risk of injury and slower healing time. Smoking affects the body's ability to produce collagen, so common sports injuries, such as damage to tendons and ligaments, will heal more slowly in smokers than nonsmokers.
• Increased risk of illness. Studies show that smokers get more colds, flu, bronchitis, and pneumonia than nonsmokers. And people with certain health conditions, like asthma, become more sick if they smoke (and often if they're just around people who smoke). Because teens who smoke as a way to manage weight often light up instead of eating, their bodies lack the nutrients they need to grow, develop, and fight off illness properly.
Food is any substance, usually composed primarily of carbohydrates, fats, water and/or proteins, that can be eaten or drunk by an animal or human for nutrition or pleasure. Items considered food may be sourced from plants, animals or other categories such as fungus or fermented products like alcohol. Although many human cultures sought food items through hunting and gathering, today most cultures use farming, ranching, and fishing, with hunting, foraging and other methods of a local nature included but playing a minor role.
Most traditions have a recognizable cuisine, a specific set of cooking traditions, preferences, and practices, the study of which is known as gastronomy. Many cultures have diversified their foods by means of preparation, cooking methods and manufacturing. This also includes a complex food trade which helps the cultures to economically survive by-way-of food, not just by consumption.
Many cultures study the dietary analysis of food habits. While humans are omnivores, religion and social constructs such as morality often affect which foods they will consume. Food safety is also a concern with foodborne illness claiming many lives each year. In many languages, food is often used metaphorically or figuratively, as in "food for thought".
hi...
Blood is a mixture of two components: cells and plasma. The heart pumps blood through the arteries, capillaries and veins to provide oxygen and nutrients to every cell of the body. The blood also carries away waste products.
The adult human body contains approximately 5 liters (5.3 quarts) of blood; it makes up 7 to 8 percent of a person's body weight. Approximately 2.75 to 3 liters of blood is plasma and the rest is the cellular portion.
Plasma is the liquid portion of the blood. Blood cells like red blood cells float in the plasma. Also dissolved in plasma are electrolytes, nutrients and vitamins (absorbed from the intestines or produced by the body), hormones, clotting factors, and proteins such as albumin and immunoglobulins (antibodies to fight infection). Plasma distributes the substances it contains as it circulates throughout the body.
The cellular portion of blood contains red blood cells (RBCs), white blood cells (WBCs) and platelets. The RBCs carry oxygen from the lungs; the WBCs help to fight infection; and platelets are parts of cells that the body uses for clotting. All blood cells are produced in the bone marrow. As children, most of our bones produce blood. As we age this gradually diminishes to just the bones of the spine (vertebrae), breastbone (sternum), ribs, pelvis and small parts of the upper arm and leg. Bone marrow that actively produces blood cells is called red marrow, and bone marrow that no longer produces blood cells is called yellow marrow. The process by which the body produces blood is called hematopoiesis. All blood cells (RBCs, WBCs and platelets) come from the same type of cell, called the pluripotential hematopoietic stem cell. This group of cells has the potential to form any of the different types of blood cells and also to reproduce itself. This cell then forms committed stem cells that will form specific types of blood cells
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HIV stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus. HIV is a virus that takes over certain immune system cells to make many copies of itself. HIV causes slow but constant damage to the immune system.
AIDS stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. AIDS is the condition diagnosed when there are a group of related symptoms that are caused by severe HIV infection. AIDS makes the body vulnerable to life-threatening illnesses called opportunistic infections.
Normally, the human immune system is the body’s protection against bacterias, viruses, etc.; it is like a coat of armor. When HIV enters the body, it starts poking holes in the armor. Eventually, the armor becomes very weak and unable to protect the body. Once the armor is very weak or is gone, the person is said to have AIDS. An AIDS diagnosis is generally made when either the body's protective T-cells drop below a certain level, or the HIV-positive individual begins to experience opportunistic infections. An opportunistic infection is an infection that would not normally affect an otherwise healthy person. Oftentimes, it's these infections that are the cause of illness or death in HIV-positive individuals - not the virus itself. If people do not get any treatment for HIV disease, it takes an average of 8-10 years to progress from HIV to AIDS.
HIV is transmitted through four body fluids: blood, semen, vaginal fluid, and breast milk. In order to pass HIV from one person to another, HIV-infected fluid from one person needs to get into the bloodstream of another person. HIV is usually transmitted through sharing needles, unprotected anal, vaginal, and sometimes oral sex, and from mother to infant before or during delivery or while breastfeeding.
Homosexuality refers to sexual behavior with or attraction to people of the same sex, or to a homosexual orientation. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "having sexual and romantic attraction primarily or exclusively to members of one’s own sex"; "it also refers to an individual’s sense of personal and social identity based on those attractions, behaviors expressing them, and membership in a community of others who share them."Homosexuality, bisexuality, and heterosexuality together make up the three main classifications of sexual orientation and are the factors in the Heterosexual-homosexual continuum. The exact proportion of the population that is homosexual is difficult to estimate reliably.However, according to a survey, 12% of Norwegians have had homosexual sex.
Sexual orientation is also distinguished from other aspects of sexuality, "including biological sex (the anatomical, physiological, and genetic characteristics associated with being male or female), gender identity (the psychological sense of being male, female or other), and social gender role (adherence to cultural norms defining feminine and masculine behavior)."
Etymologically, the word homosexual is a Greek and Latin hybrid with homos (sometimes confused with an unrelated Latin word for "man", as in Homo sapiens) deriving from the Greek word for same, thus connoting sexual acts and affections between members of the same sex, including lesbianism.The word gay generally refers to male homosexuality, but is sometimes used in a broader sense, especially in the media[citation needed], to refer to homosexuality in general. In the context of sexuality, the word lesbian always denotes female homosexuality.
There is much evidence of both acceptance and repression of homosexual behavior throughout recorded history. During the last several decades, there has been a trend towards increased visibility, recognition, and legal rights for homosexuals, including marriage and civil unions, parenting rights, and equal access to health care.
Hi…
Air is the ocean we breathe. Air supplies us with oxygen which is essential for our bodies to live. Air is 99.9% nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor and inert gases. Human activities can release substances into the air, some of which can cause problems for humans, plants, and animals.
There are several main types of pollution and well-known effects of pollution which are commonly discussed. These include smog, acid rain, the greenhouse effect, and "holes" in the ozone layer. Each of these problems has serious implications for our health and well-being as well as for the whole environment.
One type of air pollution is the release of particles into the air from burning fuel for energy. Diesel smoke is a good example of this particulate matter. The particles are very small pieces of matter measuring about 2.5 microns or about .0001 inches. This type of pollution is sometimes referred to as "black carbon" pollution. The exhaust from burning fuels in automobiles, homes, and industries is a major source of pollution in the air. Some authorities believe that even the burning of wood and charcoal in fireplaces and barbeques can release significant quantities of soot into the air.
Another type of pollution is the release of noxious gases, such as sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and chemical vapors. These can take part in further chemical reactions once they are in the atmosphere, forming smog and acid rain.
Pollution also needs to be considered inside our homes, offices, and schools. Some of these pollutants can be created by indoor activities such as smoking and cooking. In the United States, we spend about 80-90% of our time inside buildings, and so our exposure to harmful indoor pollutants can be serious. It is therefore important to consider both indoor and outdoor air pollution.
hi...
Love is any of a number of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection. The word love can refer to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes, ranging from generic pleasure ("I loved that meal") to intense interpersonal attraction ("I love my girlfriend"). This diversity of meanings, combined with the complexity of the feelings involved, makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, even compared to other emotional states.
As an abstract concept, love usually refers to a deep, ineffable feeling of tenderly caring for another person. Even this limited conception of love, however, encompasses a wealth of different feelings, from the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love to the nonsexual emotional closeness of familial and Platonic love to the profound oneness or devotion of religious love. Love in its various forms acts as a major facilitator of interpersonal relationships and, owing to its central psychological importance, is one of the most common themes in the creative arts.
FA08020
Ever heard of this story????
MONTERREY, Mexico – The world's heaviest man has tied the knot. Manuel Uribe, who hasn't left his bed in six years, married his longtime girlfriend Claudia Solis Sunday in northern Mexico.
Wearing a white silk shirt with a sheet wrapped around his legs, Uribe smiled as Solis, 38, walked down a flight of stairs wearing a strapless ivory dress, a tiara and hot-pink lipstick.
He later broke into tears as a notary declared the couple husband and wife in a civil ceremony attended by more than 400 guests. For the traditional first dance as newlyweds, Uribe and Solis held hands and swayed to a romantic ballad.
A popular local norteno band played accordion-heavy tunes at the reception, which featured a banquet of meat and buttered vegetables.
Uribe's mother, Orquedia Garza, said the groom steered clear of the five-tier wedding cake.
"He didn't break his diet," she told The Associated Press. "His doctors are here and they are watching him very closely."
The wedding, which was closed to most media, will be featured in an upcoming Discovery Channel documentary on Uribe, the 43-year-old former mechanic said.
"I have a wife and will form a new family and live a happy life," Uribe told hordes of reporters earlier as they followed him through the streets of Monterrey.
A flatbed truck was brought in to tow his custom-made bed decorated with a canopy, flowers and gold-trimmed bows to the wedding at a local event hall. Two police patrol cars escorted him ahead of a long line of traffic.
Uribe tipped the scales in 2006 at 1,230 pounds (560 kilograms), earning him the Guinness World Record as the world's heaviest man.
He has since shed about 550 pounds (250 kilograms) with the help of Solis, whom he met four years ago.
FA08020
PLEASANTON, Calif. – A medical device company has ordered the recall of certain batches of a small mechanical heart pump, saying five people have died while using the device.
Thoratec Corp. urged patients to have their implants checked after confirming 27 reports of cases in which wear and fatigue to an electrical wire required the devices to be replaced, the company said in a statement Friday.
The reports occurred over five years of clinical experience with 1,972 implants, the company said. In five cases, the device could not be replaced and the patients died.
The recall affects devices with catalog numbers 1355 and 102139, which have been distributed to 153 hospitals and distributors throughout the United States and other countries since the beginning of clinical studies in November 2003.
A Thoratec spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a call seeking additional comment Sunday.
The HeartMate II pump was approved in April as a temporary treatment for patients awaiting heart transplants, but analysts had said the larger market for the product is in "destination therapy," or patients with end-stage heart failure who are too ill for a transplant.
FA08020
LONDON (AFP) – Researchers at the University of Cambridge said Thursday they have found that a drug originally developed to treat leukaemia can halt and even reverse the debilitating effects of multiple sclerosis (MS).
In trials, alemtuzumab reduced the number of attacks in sufferers and also helped them recover lost functions, apparently allowing damaged brain tissue to repair so that individuals were less disabled than at the start of the study.
"The ability of an MS drug to promote brain repair is unprecedented," said Dr Alasdair Coles, a lecturer at Cambridge university's department of clinical neurosciences, who coordinated many aspects of the study.
"We are witnessing a drug which, if given early enough, might effectively stop the advancement of the disease and also restore lost function by promoting repair of the damaged brain tissue."
The MS Society, Britain's largest support charity for those affected by the condition, said it was "delighted" at the trial's results, which must be followed up with more research before the drug can be licensed.
"This is the first drug that has shown the potential to halt and even reverse the debilitating effects of MS and this news will rightly bring hope to people living with the condition day in, day out," said head of research Lee Dunster.
MS is an auto-immune disease that affects millions of people worldwide, including almost 100,000 in Britain and 400,000 in the United States.
It is caused by the body's immune system attacking nerve fibres in the central nervous system, and can lead to loss of sight and mobility, depression, fatigue and cognitive problems. There is no cure, and few effective treatments.
In the trial, 334 patients diagnosed with early-stage relapsing-remitting MS who had not previously been treated were given alemtuzumab or interferon beta-1a, one of the most effective licensed therapies for similar MS cases.
After three years, alemtuzumab was found to reduce the number of attacks the patients suffered by 74 percent over the other treatment, and reduce the risk of sustained accumulation of disability by 71 percent over interferon beta-1a.
Many individuals who took alemtuzumab also recovered some of their lost functions, becoming less disabled by the end, while the disabilities of the other patients worsened, the study in the New England Journal of Medicine said.
Alastair Compston, professor of neurology and head of the clinical neurosciences department at Cambridge, said alemtuzumab was the "most promising" experimental drug for the treatment of MS.
He expressed hope that further trials "will confirm that it can both stabilise and allow some recovery of what had previously been assumed to be irreversible disabilities".
Alemtuzumab was developed in Cambridge and has been licensed for the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.
Today I want to share about a Japanese manga called One Piece. It is a story of Monkey D. Luffy, a young boy that has supernatural abilities after eating a magic fruit which make his body become elastic and flexible just like rubber. Actually, One Piece is the name of the world's ultimate treasure. Luffy needs to obtain One Piece in order to become the next Pirate King. But to accomplish his ambition, he must go around the ocean and reach the Grand Line, the end of the most deadly and dangerous ocean. This place is surrounded by all the greatest pirates in the world. So it is not an easy task for Luffy. During his journey, he met his crews from a navigator, a sniper, a cook, a doctor, an archaeologist, a shipwright until even a musician. This story becomes more complicated when the World Government and the world's most powerful pirate crews take their parts.
assalamualaikum...
One of the sharpest and most telling differences on foreign policy between Barack Obama and John McCain is whether the United States should talk to difficult and disreputable leaders like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. In each of the three presidential debates, McCain belittled Obama as naive for arguing that America should be willing to negotiate with such adversaries. In the vice presidential debate, Sarah Palin went even further, accusing Obama of "bad judgment … that is dangerous," an ironic charge given her own very modest foreign-policy credentials.
Are McCain and Palin correct that America should stonewall its foes? I lived this issue for 27 years as a career diplomat, serving both Republican and Democratic administrations. Maybe that's why I've been struggling to find the real wisdom and logic in this Republican assault against Obama. I'll bet that a poll of senior diplomats who have served presidents from Carter to Bush would reveal an overwhelming majority who agree with the following position: of course we should talk to difficult adversaries—when it is in our interest and at a time of our choosing.
All of these cold-war presidents embraced a foreign-policy maxim memorialized by one of the toughest and most experienced leaders of our time, Israel's Yitzhak Rabin, who defended his discussions with Yasir Arafat by declaring, "You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with very unsavory enemies." Why should the United States approach the world any differently now? Especially now? As Americans learned all too dramatically on 9/11 and again during the financial crisis this autumn, we inhabit a rapidly integrating planet where dangers can strike at any time and from great distances. And when others—China, India, Brazil—are rising to share power in the world with us, America needs to spend more time, not less, talking and listening to friends and foes alike.
All of these cold-war presidents embraced a foreign-policy maxim memorialized by one of the toughest and most experienced leaders of our time, Israel's Yitzhak Rabin, who defended his discussions with Yasir Arafat by declaring, "You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with very unsavory enemies." Why should the United States approach the world any differently now? Especially now? As Americans learned all too dramatically on 9/11 and again during the financial crisis this autumn, we inhabit a rapidly integrating planet where dangers can strike at any time and from great distances. And when others—China, India, Brazil—are rising to share power in the world with us, America needs to spend more time, not less, talking and listening to friends and foes alike.
The real truth Americans need to embrace is that nearly all of the most urgent global challenges—the quaking financial markets, climate change, terrorism—cannot be resolved by America's acting alone in the world. Rather than retreat into isolationism, as we have often done in our history, or go it alone as the unilateralists advocated disastrously in the past decade, we need to commit ourselves to a national strategy of smart engagement with the rest of the world. Simply put, we need all the friends we can get. And we need to think more creatively about how to blunt the power of opponents through smart diplomacy, not just the force of arms.
Thank you..
http://www.newsweek.com/id/165650
List of things an airline can get rid of
by Jamie Rhein
Christopher Elliot of The Travel Critic recently wrote a tongue in cheek and halfway serious post about other ways airlines might save money.
The tenor of the piece, I think, reflects the sad state several airlines have stooped to in their penny pinching ways. Consider the latest Continental Airlines' venture that Jeffery posted about this past week. Personally, I think reducing the size of carry-on luggage is a crappy idea.
But, I'm one of those people who eyed with interest the cargo pants that Benny Lewis wore in his video on how to pack for a 5-day trip with only a carry-on bag. No, I'm not one of those people who take up more room than my fair share. Plus, I'm not that big, so why not let me have those 6-inches of carry-on space that Continental wants to take away?
But, back to Elliot's ideas. Here's what he suggests might be dumped.
The bathroom that doesn't work. As he's noticed, several planes that he has been on have at least one broken toilet. Get rid of that bathroom. Weight saved.
Duty free carts. Who needs to buy that stuff on board a flight anyway? But, as Elliot points out, the carts do make the airlines money.
Federal air marshals since they are not particularly cost effective at saving lives --and they fly for free
In-flight magazines. (No, no, no Elliot. I NEED in-flight magazines. I read them from cover to cover.)
A flight attendant. (Sorry, Heather)
A pilot. (Sorry, Ken)
XL passengers. Elliot is one of those. He points out that he's tall and lanky so he poses a bit of a problem when it comes to getting him to fit in the space that he is allotted.
Elliot is not totally serious about this list, but he does have a point about how annoyed a person can feel when, yet again, there's another change that may or may not make that much of a difference to airline economics. If people are disgruntled and unhappy consumers, that creates a problem, and he sees how flying is on its way to becoming a prison sentence.
For Elliot's reasons about why a pilot and a flight attendant could be dumped, check out his post.
If you look at René Ehrhardt photo, surely you can find something else to add to Elliot's list.
thank you
Bejeweled Creator Spills Secrets of Addictive Games
By David Kushner
Eight years ago, Jason Kapalka and a couple of friends devised a puzzle game they called Bejeweled. It was simple: A grid covered with lo-res gems, which players swapped around to match up the colors. Yeah, it sounds stupid, but once you start playing, it's like crack.
Since its debut, Bejeweled addicts have frittered away around $300 million—and more than 6 billion hours—on the game and its sequel, the provocatively titled Bejeweled 2. And PopCap, the company behind the blockbusters, has become a big player—it now has more than 200 employees in offices around the world.
But Kapalka and his team still preach the gospel of simplicity. They spent four years and $1 million to try to make sure that PopCap's latest release, Bejeweled Twist, would be at least as intuitive and habit-forming as the original. We asked Kapalka for his take on some of the most addictive puzzlers ever made and why we can't quit playing them.
http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/magazine/16-11/pl_games
Bleach? What is it? Bleach is also one of the Japanese manga series. This manga is among the best-selling manga properties in both Japan and America. This story basicaly is about a shinigami, a Japanese death personification similar to the Grim Reaper or God of Death. The main character is Kurosaki Ichigo, a normal man which accidentally obtains the power of shinigami from Kuchiki Rukia. With the abilities, he has to protect the people, his town and all his friends from evil spirits and guiding departed souls to the Soul Society. The story grows further when Ichigo and his friends have to save Rukia from the execution. All these scenes have been manipulated by
Aizen Sosuke, also a shinigami but with the captain level. He takes the chances to betray the Soul Society and join the hollows, forming his base called Las Noches. Then, the war has been declared between Ichigo and Soul Society with the Aizen and his comrades.
I want to give you all some information about oil. We are always used oil for so many applications such as cooking, fuel and other more. So, I think we should have at least few basic information about oil. It is better than nothing. Oil is actually a substance in viscous liquid state in a certain temperature. There are two basic types of oils which are mineral oil and organic oil. Oil has been used in such so many activities including food oils, fuel, heat transport, lubrication, painting and petrochemicals. Besides, it is also used for religious activities as religious medium. So, oil is not just strict to the fuel application only. That's why oil price has played a very important role in this world nowadays.
The Man Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Pyramid
A group of Bosnian hills might contain the world’s greatest pyramids—or its greatest pyramid scheme.Believers say it is a discovery that will rewrite the history of the world. The steep hills outside the small Bosnian city of Visoko have been climbed, poked, and scraped by a small army of both trained and amateur archaeologists for the past three years in a quest to reveal a 12,000-year-old secret. Each balmy summer brings a swarm of volunteers, many wearing identical yellow T-shirts, who strip away soil and vegetation from the hillside while throngs of tourists hover at the edges, eager for a glimpse of what is said to lie beneath the dirt: the world’s oldest and largest pyramids, more vast and ancient than those in Egypt, built by a mysterious and highly advanced civilization that has been long forgotten—until now.
At the center of it all stands Sam Osmanagich, the charismatic head of the Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun Foundation and the originator of this big dig. Widely popular among Bosnians, he even hosts his own television program—Search for the Lost Civilizations—about archaeological mysteries. He is openly backed by many at the highest levels of Bosnia’s political leadership, and promotional offices in such places as the United States, Germany, Norway, and Croatia publicize his campaign around the globe.
“The Bosnian pyramid valley is the most monumental construction complex ever built on the face of the planet,” Osmanagich declared on a YouTube video. “It was built by the unknown civilization so many thousands of years ago…12,000 years ago. It was a very developed civilization, even more advanced than we are.”At a time when Bosnia’s postwar morale is low, there is great appeal in Osmanagich’s message. According to his foundation’s Web site, 400,000 people visited the “pyramid valley” in 2007, although that figure is unverified. The pyramids provide the national myth that Bosnians have always lacked, plus an influx of money and an exciting new chapter in archaeology.
Except for one thing: Numerous top archaeologists and geologists point out that the pyramids are hills and nothing more.
Who is Sam Osmanagich, how has he become a national player in Bosnia’s heritage, and how have these pyramids—which so many experts believe are not pyramids at all—gained such a following?
Originally from Sarajevo, Osmanagich left Bosnia shortly before the 1992–1995 war in search of economic opportunities abroad. He ended up in Houston, changed his first name from Semir to Sam, and worked for a metal fabrication company, eventually becoming part owner.
A return visit to Bosnia in 2005 changed his life. Looking up at a hill that looms over the city of Visoko, Osmanagich recognized a shape he had seen many times while visiting Latin America. This was no natural formation, he thought, but a pyramid, exactly like the Mayan pyramids that had filled him with awe. Osmanagich, who says he has several degrees in economics and political science but lacks formal training as an archaeologist, concluded that this pyramid was so old it had become obscured by layers of soil and vegetation that had accumulated since the last Ice Age, 12,000 years ago. If he was right, it would be one of the oldest human-made structures in the world. It would also be one of the largest: At 720 feet, it is half again as tall as the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.
After his revelation, Osmanagich roped off sections of the hill and started digging. He assembled a team that included publicists and a Web site designer and courted top Bosnian business and political figures. He then introduced numerous international journalists to the pyramids, for there was not just one pyramid, he had discovered, but a “complex” of two (now four) connected by a network of underground tunnels.
News of the Bosnian pyramids began spreading in late 2005. A report by the BBC described Osmanagich as a Bosnian archaeologist who had studied the pyramids of Latin America and characterized his statements as being supported by substantial evidence. A few days later, an Associated Press story titled “Experts Find Evidence of Bosnia Pyramid” was picked up by CBS, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and other media outlets.
By December 2006 archaeologists and geologists around the world had begun weighing in. One group of archaeologists, led by Anthony Harding, president of the European Association of Archaeologists and a professor at the University of Exeter, wrote an open letter to the Bosnian government denouncing the pyramids as a “cruel hoax on an unsuspecting public.” A larger group comprising anthropologists, archaeologists, geologists, and historians sent a protest letter to United Nations officials who had been approached on Osmanagich’s behalf in hopes of declaring the Bosnian pyramids a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Osmanagich’s popularity and influence have continued to grow, and as they do, the most significant criticism now comes from a ring of anonymous bloggers who keep a meticulous record of the pyramid phenomenon. Each time the pyramid foundation publishes a claim, the bloggers weigh in with charges of inconsistency and falsification. They regularly send e-mail updates of their investigation to a small group of international scientists and journalists, and this writer is one of them. I have followed Osmanagich’s rise for the past two years. I have visited the “pyramids” in Visoko and attended his presentations in London and Vienna. Even so, Osmanagich is difficult to pin down.
Much of this difficulty comes from his adaptability and charisma, says Vuk Bacanovic´, a reporter with Dani magazine in Sarajevo and one of the few Bosnian journalists who openly criticize the pyramid movement. “Osmanagich wears a thousand faces,” he says. For the press “he plays the scientist.” For the politicians “he is the generous businessman who wants to help Bosnia develop.” And for a fast-growing number of his supporters, Bacanovic´ says, he is “something like a messiah figure.”
AirAsia gets nod to fly to India
KUALA LUMPUR: AirAsia has finally conquered its “last frontier” with the Indian Government giving the low-cost carrier approval to fly to India.
AirAsia chief executive officer Datuk Tony Fernandes said the airline would start selling tickets to Tiruchi in Tamil Nadu at midnight on Wednesday with the first flight to take off on Dec 1 at 7.40am.
“It will be a daily flight and we are looking at even adding a second flight now as the initial response has been tremendous,” he told reporters Monday during a press conference here.
Special promotional prices for the flight will cost RM49 one-way while the normal ticket price will cost about RM200 one-way.
Fernandes said plans are now in the works for the next one and a half years to fly to many more destinations in India including Madras, Madurai and Kochi with AirAsia.
“AirAsia-X meanwhile will fly to places like New Dehli, Bombay, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Calcutta,” he added.
He said AirAsia would initially invest between RM5mil to RM7mil to set up infrastructure in India and he is confident that it will do well.
“This is an exciting period for us and I’m looking at a high load factor of at least 90% for our first flight,” he said.
Fernandes said it had taken the airline seven years to reach this stage and with India now in its pocket, his mission as CEO is complete.
“I had said then that India would be the last place we need to get to. It is now over to AirAsia-X to grow the business to Japan, South Korea, Europe and the United States.”
Fernandes said he expects a huge growth in Indian tourism in Malaysia and that he is not worried about the global economic slowdown.
“I believe that you have to be innovative. While other airlines are cutting back we are expanding and can take up their slack.
“Maybe some of the population in India cannot afford to fly with us, but there are many more who can and this is the market we are after,” he said.
Fernandes also said, in response to recent Malaysia Airlines (MAS) advertisements, that his battle with MAS is over and that it is time to move on.
Bee swarm kills 3 dogs, injures woman in Florida
RIVIERA BEACH, Florida (AP): A 70-year-old woman is injured and three dogs are dead after a swarm of bees terrorized a neighborhood in South Florida.
Authorities say crews removed 50 pounds (22 kilograms) of honeycomb from the side of a home in Palm Beach County after Friday's attack. The hive has been contained.
The bees swarmed Nancy Hill and her two dogs. Hill was treated at a hospital, but the dogs died. The bees also attacked two other dogs in the neighborhood. One of those died and the other was injured.
Lab tests should determine whether the bees were Africanized bees, also known as killer bees. Their stings are no more potent than an ordinary bee's, but they are far more aggressive and attack in swarms.
Sabah proposes relocating Queen Elizabeth Hospital
KOTA KINABALU: Sabah is proposing the relocation of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital complex following the discovery that the facility’s main block is structurally unsafe.
Chief Minister Datuk Musa Aman said the Land and Survey Department had been directed to identify a tract of land in the city’s vicinity where the hospital could be relocated to.
“We feel the existing location of the hospital is too congested and hope the federal government could consider this matter,” he said Monday after attending the Sabah MIC Deepavali open house here.
Musa said the state cabinet would also discuss the relocation proposal at its next meeting, adding that the state government is giving the matter priority as medical facilities are crucial for the people.
“Our hope is that with a bigger piece of land, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital would become a better premier medical centre with even more facilities,” Musa added.
Last week, the Health Ministry disclosed that the hospital’s main tower block had been declared unsafe after a series of cracks were discovered in the structure.
The ministry said the structure of the hospital’s main tower block, the podium, the forensics block and the boiler room would be vacated and eventually demolished and the decision came following the latest engineering evaluation by Kumpulan Ikram Sdn Bhd and the Public Works Department (JKR) in Sabah.
The Ikram report also showed that the blocks could not last for long and were too uneconomical to repair.
The main tower block houses beds and the main health facilities such as eight operation theatres, forensics department, radiology, sterilisation supply centre, pharmacy and the ICU / CCU / VIP / surgery wards.
The hospital has taken measures to ensure that services continue to be delivered to patients, include placing patients at nearby government hospitals.
IMF pledges support for Ukraine and Hungary
WASHINGTON (AP): Seeking to combat a spreading global financial crisis, the International Monetary Fund said Sunday it had reached a tentative agreement to provide Ukraine with $16.5 billion in loans and announced that emergency assistance for Hungary had cleared a key hurdle.
The decisions were announced by IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who stressed that the 185-nation lending agency would act with speed to provide support for countries whose economies are being buffeted by the crisis.
Strauss-Kahn said the loan for Ukraine was designed to bolster confidence and noted that the assistance was sizable in relation to the country's borrowing rights with the IMF.
In a separate announcement, Strauss-Kahn said the IMF staff had reached broad agreement with Hungarian authorities on a reform package that the country will implement as a condition for getting its own emergency loans from the IMF. Agreement on reforms is a necessary first step in receiving IMF assistance.
Strauss-Kahn said the IMF was ready to approve a "substantial financing package'' for Hungary within the next few days after all the details of the reform program are put in final form.
He said the IMF's executive board would consider loans for Hungary under expedited procedures. He did not give a figure for how large the IMF loan to Hungary would be.
In his comments on Ukraine, Strauss-Kahn said in a statement, "The IMF is moving expeditiously to help Ukraine and this program is focused on the essential upfront measures needed to maintain confidence and economic and financial stability.''
The decision to aid Ukraine came two days after the IMF announced it was supplying a $2 billion loan package to Iceland, whose banking system has collapsed amid the global credit crunch.
Iceland, the first Western nation to receive IMF assistance in more than three decades, and Ukraine will both be given IMF loans in an effort to stabilize their economies.
The IMF's executive board is expected to consider in the coming week ways to streamline its emergency loan programs as it braces for a stream of petitions from countries seeking support.
President George W. Bush and other leaders of the Group of 20 major industrial and emerging market economies will meet in Washington next month to discuss ways to overhaul the global financial architecture to better cope with the financial crisis.
The ongoing global turmoil has resulted in the biggest upheavals on Wall Street in 70 years and prompted Congress on Oct. 3 to pass a $700 billion rescue package for the U.S. financial system. Britain and other European nations have put forward massive resources to stabilize their countries' banks.
Strauss-Kahn said the agreement with Ukraine would be sent to the IMF's 24-member executive board for approval once the country's legislature has made changes to improve the way the government handles bank failures. He praised the reform package that Ukraine had worked out with an IMF staff team.
"Ukraine has developed a comprehensive policy package designed to help the country meet the balance of payments needs created by the collapse of steel prices and the global financial turmoil and related difficulties in Ukraine's financial system,'' Strauss-Kahn said.
Ukraine's Finance Ministry and its central bank said the loan would help shore up the country's flagging economic situation.
"The support by the fund will promote an accelerated cooperation between Ukraine and other international financial organizations, ... strengthen the confidence of private investors and ensure stable operations of the banking system of Ukraine,'' the institutions said in a joint statement.
If approved, the loan would be a crucial lifeline for the former Soviet republic, which is struggling to keep its financial system afloat amid the global economic crisis.
A sharp decline in world prices for steel, Ukraine's main export, and a steep drop in the value of its currency, the hryvna, have left many analysts speculating that the country faces dire economic straits.
It comes on top of continuing political turmoil, with the country's leading politicians feuding ahead of new parliamentary elections scheduled for December.
The world financial crisis has put heavy pressure on European currencies in recent days, with the British pound and the euro sagging on worries over Europe's exposure to emerging markets -- particularly its crisis-stricken eastern neighbors.
Sunday's IMF announcement came just two days after the Ukraine's National Bank announced that it would allow the official exchange rate for the hryvna to move closer to the market's exchange rate, fulfilling a key IMF condition.
The hryvna has lost more than 20 percent in the financial crisis that has hit Ukraine hard. The currency fell to its historic low Thursday, trading at 6.01 per $1 on the foreign currency exchange. The fall was due to a shortage of foreign currency because of a 40 percent decline in exports and a run on banks that stripped the banking sector of $3.4 billion this month.
The IMF loan is expected to help stabilize the financial sector, but the deepening political crisis threatened to block the deal.
Allies of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko broke parliament's electronic voting system Friday as they protested President Viktor Yushchenko's order to hold early elections.
Tymoshenko and Yushchenko were allies during the tumultuous 2004 Orange Revolution mass protests that propelled Yushchenko to the presidency. But the two have turned into fierce rivals ahead of the scheduled 2010 presidential election.
Yushchenko ordered a new parliamentary vote in December, but Tymoshenko is fighting to avoid the vote and retain her job.
Next US president will have deep Asia ties
WASHINGTON (AP): For all their political differences, Barack Obama and John McCain share a life-changing, though sharply different, personal experience: They both spent long stretches of their early lives in Asia, Obama as a boy in Indonesia, McCain as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
Asian relations have not topped the presidential candidates' list of concerns, with Americans worried about wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a weakening economy. But the next U.S. president, whichever man wins, will have a perspective on a critical region unlike any of his predecessors.
"Most Americans don't know Asia,'' Jonathan Adelman, a professor of international studies at the University of Denver, said. "These people had intensive, multiyear experiences at important times in their younger life, when it would matter.''
It is difficult to predict how their Asia experiences might influence U.S. policies when either Obama, a Democrat who has a solid lead in most polls, or the Republican McCain takes office in January. "But there is clearly some empathy there,'' Adelman said. "They're not going to stereotype the other side after their very intense personal experiences.''
Other presidents have had ties to Asia. George H.W. Bush was the top U.S. envoy in Beijing in the 1970s for about a year, and he and John F. Kennedy both fought in the Pacific in World War II.
But either Obama or McCain would bring a unique, deeply personal Asia connection to a White House that will face a nuclear-armed, confrontational North Korea; a struggling Pakistan that terrorists are using as a haven to attack U.S. troops in Afghanistan; and an increasingly powerful China that can help or hinder American interests around the world.
For both, their experience in Asia began the same year: 1967.
McCain was 31 in October of that year and on his 23rd bombing mission when he was shot down. A mob dragged him from a Hanoi lake, his arms and a knee broken. They stabbed him with bayonets and took him to prison, where, he says, he was "dumped in a dark cell and left to die.''
McCain tried suicide twice, endured repeated beatings and refused offers of early release. Of his 5 1/2 years of confinement in North Vietnam, three were in solitary.
McCain, who spent years moving from place to place with his father, an eventual admiral, and during his own time in the Navy, once quipped early in his political career that "the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi.''
At the Republican National Convention in September, he spoke of how a prisoner in the next cell, after McCain had suffered a particularly bad beating, told him "to get back up and fight again for our country.''
He has made the experience a central part of his presidential campaign and is often praised for putting aside past anger to push for normalized U.S. relations with communist Vietnam, despite strong opposition.
Barbara True-Weber, a political science professor at Meredith College, said that McCain's "perspective has been shaped much more by his military background and his perceptions of threat to American goals.''
But, she said, his prison experience deepened his "characteristic defiance, insistence on duty and resistance to threatening pressure.''
During the campaign, Obama has played down his time in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, apparently for political reasons; some opponents have spread false rumors that Obama, a Christian, was educated in a radical Muslim school.
In his memoir, "Dreams from My Father,'' however, he writes vividly about leaving his birthplace in the U.S. state of Hawaii, a multicultural, Asia-oriented group of Pacific islands, as a 6-year-old to spend four years in Indonesia with his mother and Indonesian stepfather.
Obama recalls how it took him "less than six months to learn Indonesia's language, its customs and its legends,'' how he became friends with "the children of farmers, servants and low-level bureaucrats,'' and how he survived chicken pox, measles "and the sting of my teachers' bamboo switches.''
He also describes the desperation of farmers beset with drought and floods and how his stepfather taught him, after Obama got in a fight with an older boy, to box: "The world was violent, I was learning, unpredictable and often cruel.''
In 1971, when he was 10, Obama's mother sent him back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents.
Ralph A. Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum CSIS think tank, says that people in Southeast Asia see Obama as "one of us.'' But, he said, "expectations may be too high. When Obama, if elected, does the normal things U.S. presidents do to protect and promote U.S. interests, Asians may be more disappointed that he did not put them first.''
During the campaign, the candidates' rhetoric has provided glimpses at policies that could emerge during the next presidency. McCain has been skeptical of what critics call the George W. Bush administration's overeager pursuit of a nuclear deal with North Korea. It is Obama, not Bush's fellow Republican, McCain, who is likely to follow Bush's recent multilateral approach more closely.
McCain also has criticized Obama for saying that, as president, he would authorize unilateral military action if al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden were found in Pakistan and the Pakistani government refused to go after him.
Cossa said events and national interests drive policy decisions more than personal experiences. Both candidates, he said, "have more experience and association with Southeast Asia than any former U.S. president, but that will not make Southeast Asia a higher priority in Asia, much less in the world.''
Tips For Success -- The Interview
1. Do some research on the business before the interview. (See "How to Find a Job," "Research the Employer.")
2. Practice interviewing.
3. Go alone. Do not take children or friends.
4. Greet the employer with a handshake.
5. Make frequent eye contact.
6. Smile, be polite, and try to relax.
7. Listen carefully to the questions asked. Ask the interviewer to restate a question if you are confused.
8. Answer questions as directly as possible.
9. Be upbeat and make positive statements.
10. If you've worked before, talk about what you learned from it.
11. Use examples of how your skills and abilities would fit the job.
12. Bring your "Fact Sheet" with telephone numbers and addresses of your references and former employers, just in case you are asked to complete an application. (See "The Application," "Fact Sheet.")
As we all know, steel is one of the most used material in this world right now. Steel is mostly consisted of iron. In the iron, there is some mixture of carbon, the most cost-effective alloying material for iron. Actually, carbon and other elements are hardening agent, which function to prevent dislocation in the iron atom crystal lattice from sliding past one another. Steel can be classified into different quality according to its hardness, ductility and tensile strength. More carbon content in the steel will make it stronger but also more brittle. Steel is widely used around the world such as in the construction of roads, railways, infrastructure and buildings. As we could see, most of the stadiums now are supported by steel skeletons. This type of steel can withstand for a big tension and high force. People also like to use stainless steel products because they could stay longer. So, steel has played a major part in the industry and give lots of income.
Now, I want to talk about cancer anyway. It is known as one of the most dangerous disease. Most people who suffered cancer would end by death. In medical term, it is known as malignant neoplasm. The risk of having this disease is increased with the age. Cancer is generally classified according to the tissue from which the cancerous cells originate, the primary tumor, as well as the normal cell type they most resemble. There are so many symptoms and signs which can be divided into three groups. For local symptoms, compression of surrounding tissues may cause symptoms such as jaundice (yellowing the eyes and skin).while for the symptoms of metastasis, enlarged lymph nodes, cough and hemoptysis, hepatomegaly (enlarged liver), bone pain, fracture of affected bones and neurological symptoms may lead to the cancer. And for the last group, it is about systemic symptoms including weight loss, poor appetite, fatigue and cachexia (wasting), excessive sweating (night sweats), anemia and specific paraneoplastic phenomena. With all the modern advanced technologies, there has been so many treatments provided in other to prevent this disease. There are immunotherapy, hormonal therapy, angiogenesis inhibitors, surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy and many more. So, we do not have to worry about it. But prevention is better than cure. Give priority for your body and have a healthy life.
Here I want to share one new fact. Do you know epilepsy drug can treat Alzheimer's? Scientists have discovered that a common epilepsy drug can reverse the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. The drug, valproic acid (VPA), blocks production of a neurotoxic protein linked to Alzheimer's called beta amyloid. Deposits or "plaques" made from beta amyloid build up in the brains of Alzheimer's patients damaging their nerve cells and fibres, or "axons". The best thing also is the drug also improved performance in memory tests.
Do you know what is the most dangerous food? It is fugu. It is a name given to prepared blowfish which sometimes known as puffer fish. The ovaries, roe and liver of the blowfish all contain a certain toxin which can be quite lethal. Just consuming a tiny drop of this toxin pretty much guarantees some kind of paralysis and, in extreme cases, can leave you pushing up daisies.The really scary part is that all it takes is one tiny little slip of the knife during preparation to get that toxin into the parts you eat.
All people want to have a perfect body figure. So, they keep doing exercises without knowing the correct way. Here are some exercises you should not do if you are going to lose some weight. First, do not work out without any intervals in between. Our body would need proper rest after some workouts or you might only get extra strain but did not see the result as you want. Not having a good set of exercises also is useless. You must have a proper set of exercises by selecting a high intensity exercise which would guarantee the type of results you are looking for instead of just doing what everyone else does. Finally, do not try to rush through it all. Slow controlled motions always end up getting better results than fast uncontrolled movements.
Here are some tips on how to quit smoking. Identify the times you are most likely to smoke.Keep a diary to help you determine such risky times. Record each time you have a cigarette, including time of day and what you are doing. Make a plan about what you will do instead of smoking at those times when you are most likely to smoke. Furthermore, you should enroll in a smoking cessation program, ask your health care provider for advice, including whether prescription medications, try hypnosis and have exercises to relieve urges to smoke. You also can find out about nicotine patches, gum, and sprays.
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China egg firm says sorry for melamine
HONG KONG (Reuters) - An egg supplier in northeastern China has apologised after tests in Hong Kong detected high levels of melamine in a batch of products exported to the city, local media reported on Tuesday.
Tens of thousands of Chinese infants have fallen ill with kidney problems after consuming milk that had been mixed with melamine, an industrial compound used to cheat quality tests. At least four children have died.
Chicken eggs from China are shown at a market in Hong Kong November 23, 2006. (REUTERS/Paul Yeung/Files)
Tests found melamine in a variety of Chinese-made products from milk and chocolate bars to yoghurt exported around the world, including egg products in South Korea, leading to items being pulled from shop shelves.
"We solemnly apologise to consumers and distributors. We solemnly state here that my company had never purchased melamine or added melamine to feeds or products," Han Wei, of the egg supplier Hanwei Group in Dalian province, said.
Han's remarks were carried by Hong Kong's TVB station.
Han said his company discovered the chemical in chicken feed in September and had immediately stopped using it. He did not say where the feed originated.
It has since emerged that cyromazine, a derivative of melamine, is widely used in pesticides and animal feed in China, and experts say it is absorbed in plants as melamine and that it is already in the human food chain.
No one knows how much melamine is absorbed into raw foods like meat and vegetables, although animal tests in the United States concluded in 2007 that consuming "pork, chicken, fish and eggs from animals that had inadvertently been fed animal feed contaminated with melamine ... was very unlikely to pose a human health risk".
Hong Kong, a former British colony which returned to Chinese rule in 1997, promised last week to expand its melamine tests to cover vegetables and meat, and experts hope that these analyses will shed some light.
China has been swept by a series of food- and product-safety scandals involving goods as diverse as toys, tyres, toothpaste, pet food, fish, beans, dumplings and dimsum
MONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters Life!) - Mexico's Manuel Uribe, once the world's most obese man, has married his girlfriend, arriving at the wedding on a truck.
Uribe, 43, who once weighed as much as a small truck at more than half a tonne, married Claudia Solis on Sunday after being
Manuel Uribe puts the wedding ring on a finger of his fiancee Claudia Solis at his home in the suburb of San Nicolas de los Garza, Monterrey October 24, 2008. (REUTERS/Tomas Bravo)
hoisted onto a flat bed truck and taken to the wedding.
Uribe has been confined to a reinforced bed for the past six years because he is so heavy and this was only the third time he has left his house.
"I'm very happy. This is a really special day for me. God has permitted this day to arrive and for a beautiful woman like Claudia to marry me. We will start a new adventure together," he told reporters in Spanish.
Uribe once tipped the scales at 560 kg after spending the 1990s eating pizzas and burgers in the United States where he worked as a computer repairman then moving back to Mexico and bingeing on greasy tacos.
His bulk made him the world's heaviest man and won him a place in the Guinness World Records' 2008 edition.
But abandoned by his first wife, his health failing and with no income, Uribe pleaded for help on Mexican television, stirring up intense international interest.
Uribe, cared for by his mother Otilia, turned down offers of a gastric bypass surgery in Italy and took free medical help from U.S. doctor Barry Sears and lost weight following the Zone Diet, which is high in protein and low in carbohydrates.
He has now trimmed down to 326 kg -- the size of three hefty men -- but is still unable to move his swollen legs.
Uribe relies on his family's small wholesale clothes business
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LOS ANGELES (AP) - After more than two years as Microsoft's low-profile chief software architect, Ray Ozzie finally has something to say: Windows Azure.
The man who replaced Bill Gates as Microsoft Corp.'s top technical thinker said Monday that Microsoft will compete with Amazon.com Inc., IBM Corp. and other rivals in selling information storage space and computing power "in the cloud,'' distributed across massive data centers worldwide.
The system, Windows Azure, will let companies and hobbyists alike build Web-based programs without having to invest in their own server farms.
Ozzie's remarks at a Los Angeles conference for software developers indicated that after several years of disparate experiments, Microsoft is closer to a companywide strategy for coping with an upheaval in the software industry - the shift from powerful desktop programs to more lightweight, inexpensive ones that run over the Internet.
Nimbler Web companies like Google Inc. have moved quickly to make programs that do much of the work of Microsoft's cash-cow Office suite _ but they do it over the Internet at little or no cost to the user, and can be updated frequently with new features and bug fixes.
Microsoft has largely fumbled this transition.
In its "cloud'' products before now, Microsoft has offered some of its business server software on a subscription basis and has cobbled together consumer Web services like e-mail and messaging under the "Live'' brand.
Windows Azure is meant to be a broader "platform'' for the cloud, much like Vista for PCs and Windows Mobile for phones and other devices.
Microsoft's own programs will run on it, as will those made by outside companies.
Ozzie said Microsoft has learned enough managing its own Web sites and programs, anticipating Web traffic spikes and lulls and ramping up or dialing down capacity, that it's ready to market this expertise to others.
From the perspective of an average computer user, Ozzie said in an interview, Azure is another step toward solving the modern headache of accessing files from many different devices - for instance, home, work and portable computers and mobile phones.
Microsoft is letting software developers test Azure, but Ozzie emphasized that the system will change as more people kick the tires through 2009.
He did not say when Microsoft will start selling access to Azure or how much it will cost.
Ozzie, 52, came on board in 2005 as a chief technical officer when Microsoft bought his collaboration software company, Groove Networks.
Already respected for his work with Web computing, Ozzie was asked to figure out how Microsoft could survive the sea change toward software being delivered online.
In the 1980s, Ozzie worked at Lotus Development Corp., where he led work on Lotus Symphony, a precursor to Microsoft's Office package, and Lotus Notes, which let people form groups to share documents and e-mail.
Notes' success prompted IBM to buy Lotus for $3.5 billion in 1995.
Ozzie then started Groove to refine his idea of "groupware'' that lets multiple people collaborate.
Groove made it possible for people work together on the same virtual sketchpad, view the same video or edit documents simultaneously, all while chatting by text or voice.
This expertise made Ozzie a natural replacement for Gates as the mastermind of Microsoft's broad software strategy.
Shortly after joining the company in 2005, Ozzie wrote an influential memo advocating a shift away from some of Microsoft's traditional reliance on selling desktop software and toward Web-based and sometimes ad-supported software.
He urged Microsoft's product groups to make software that can run on a computer desktop, in a Web browser, on mobile devices and in game consoles, and to give users "seamless'' access to their files no matter where they log on.
But while Microsoft watchers have clamored for a concrete plan from Ozzie, Microsoft's efforts have come off as scattered.
Ray Valdes, an analyst at the research group Gartner Inc., said Monday that Microsoft's Web services strategy still isn't cohesive.
Microsoft is "taking every major asset of intellectual property and cloud-enabling it to some degree,'' the analyst said.
Web startups have flocked to Amazon Web Services, but few big corporations have taken the plunge. Azure is "a defensive maneuver'' to make sure those corporations that already rely on Microsoft's servers and other technology don't defect to Amazon or others, Valdes said.
Monday's announcement was aimed at programmers who wanted to know that their software skills will still be relevant as Microsoft shifts into this new phase.
On Tuesday, the company is set to discuss changes for average PC users, with top Office and Windows executives slated to speak.
Latest business news from AP-Wire
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JAKARTA: Korean food and Padang (Indonesian) food have at least three things in common: They are multifarious, served cold and are spicy.
Both types of cuisine are generally served with a whole assortment of dishes offered on individual plates. The larger the table, the more plates used to serve the dishes. No space on the table is left empty.
In one of the royal traditional Korean meals I sampled, there was one small pan divided into nine parts with a small sample of each dish served in each part. The portions were small, but the quantity — in terms of the number of choices — was just enough for a party.
Most of the dishes are served cold because, basically, they are fast food: The cooks have gone and the waiters are in charge of putting the pre-prepared dishes in separate plates. The rice and soup, however, must be kept warm. And most of these dishes are spicy.
Korea’s red, hot salad, kimchi, can match the bite of Padang’s (Indonesian) chilli pepper sambal (a mix of chillies and tomatoes).
Just like sambal, which sometimes becomes a yardstick for diners to judge the expertise of the cooks, many Koreans use the taste of kimchi to assess how good the cook is.
“We just know which kimchi is good, which kimchi is not, by experience (of tasting different kinds of kimchi),” said a Seoul resident, Changjun Park.
A senior Seoul citizen, Kwang Yung Choo, joked that kimchi is so popular that there is an old Korean saying that the wife who cooks the best kimchi will be loved by her husband.
With kimchi, diners have to eat really fast to beat the bite and must keep a napkin handy.
That takes a local Indonesian joke — that most Indonesians sweat when they eat rather than when they work — regional. Koreans sweat, too, when they eat their hot kimchi.
As in most Indonesian cuisine, rice reigns. People can take it in double or triple helpings and all the side dishes — rendang, vegetables, fish heads, cow’s brains — just help energise people to eat more rice.
Similarly, Korean traditional cuisine positions rice in the centre, too. Rice is like a king with its many subjects surrounding it.
Even when only the simplest and fewest dishes are served, a bowl of rice is placed in the centre with a spoon, fork and chopsticks by its side. A bowl of kimchi, seaweed soup and meat with several sauces surround it, ready to add flavour to the rice. - The Jakarta Post
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Rising food prices will push the number of hungry people in the world over one billion next year, a U.N. expert said Monday.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reported in September that at least 925 million people are hungry in the world today, compared with 848 million between 2003 and 2005, said Olivier De Schutter, the U.N. Human Rights Council's independent expert on the right to food.
"But the data relates to the beginning of 2008, and since then the estimate is that at least 44 million more people have become hungry,'' he said. "So we are now closer to the billion _ and with a bit more efforts we'll arrive at the billion by next year.''
De Schutter told reporters after briefing the U.N. General Assembly's human rights committee that rising prices and increasing hunger are driving the world "far away'' from achieving the U.N. goal of reducing extreme poverty by half by 2015.
"The situation of hunger in the world is alarming,'' said de Schutter, a law professor at the University of Louvain in Belgium and currently a visiting professor at Columbia University's Law School in New York.
"The prices of food commodities on international markets have been going down since they reached a peak in June 2008, when the level of real food prices was 64 percent above their levels of 2002,'' he said. "But prices on domestic markets remain at historically high levels.''
In many countries, especially developing nations that import food, he said, "the brutal increase in prices in 2007 and the first half of 2008 has left severe marks on the poorest households.''
Families have reduced the quantity of food they eat and switched to poorer diets, and they have cut back on health care and schooling, "leading to irreparable damage to the health and education of millions of children,'' de Schutter said.
But he said the food crisis has also provided governments and international agencies with the opportunity to help those who spend the largest proportion of their family budgets on food and are most in need _ small farmers, landless laborers, herdsmen, fishermen and the urban poor.
The real challenge, de Schutter said, is ensuring that increased production will raise the incomes of the poorest "rather than simply increase the quantity of agricultural commodities available for those who can pay.''
Small farmers should be helped to produce more while being protected from the consequences of volatile international prices and the risks of unfair competition from agricultural producers in industrialized countries who are massively subsidized, de Schutter said.
"The urban poor should be helped by social safety nets, and cash-for-work or food-for-work programs, which increase their purchasing power and help them to cope with periods of higher prices,'' he said. - AP
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MALACCA: Datuk Dr S.H. Foo who rescued tiger cub Nicky from the cooking pot three years ago is now a “double Datuk”.
But the second title, self-bestowed to the former Malaysian trade commissioner to Papua New Guinea, is that of a “grandfather” — to Nicky’s newborn cubs.
Foo, a businessman now, visited the Malacca Zoo with his family and several friends on Sunday to see Nicky and her two surviving cubs.
“I am very happy for Nicky. It was only three years ago that I helped rescue her from becoming somebody’s meal. Now, my friends tease me, saying that I am a datuk to the cubs,” he said at the zoo’s animal clinic and quarantine centre.
Moved at the sight of the cubs, Foo donated RM5,000 to buy goat’s milk for the male and female named Chiko and Chiki.
Kindred spirits: Foo and his wife Datin Tham Foong Ying feeding Chiko and Chiki at the Malacca Zoo on Sunday. With them are family members and friends.
Nicky, who was paired with a five-year-old tiger named Dido under the zoo’s breeding programme in May 2006, delivered a litter of four cubs on Oct 15.
Two died shortly after birth as Nicky could not nurse them, forcing zookeepers to hand-raise the surviving cubs.
Three years ago, Nicky was saved by Foo, who had heard from friends that the then three-month-old cub was caught by villagers in Rompin, Pahang, and sold to a restaurant in Kuala Lumpur.
Foo, through a contact, bought the cub for RM10,000 from the restaurant and handed it over to the Wildlife Department.
Nicky joined the Malacca Zoo under its captive breeding programme and became an instant attraction. She was adopted by Star Publications (M) Bhd at a cost of RM15,000 for three years.
Zoo director Mohd Nawayai Yasak said the stress during delivery was among factors that could have caused Nicky not to care for them.
“We are hand-feeding the cubs. They will take milk for about four months before we put them on solid food,” he said.
Mohd Nawayai lamented that the cost of goat’s milk had gone up from RM6.50 to RM8.50 for a 230ml bottle, with the cubs requiring between two and three bottles each day.
Chiko and Chiki, he said, were healthy and stood a good chance of survival.
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Carbon dioxide isn't the only greenhouse gas that worries climate scientists. Airborne levels of two other potent gases - one from ancient plants, the other from flat-panel screen technology - are on the rise, too. And that's got scientists concerned about accelerated global warming.
The gases are methane and nitrogen trifluoride. Both pale in comparison to the global warming effects of carbon dioxide, produced by the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels. In the past couple of years, however, these other two gases have been on the rise, according to two new studies. The increase is not accounted for in predictions for future global warming and comes as a nasty surprise to climate watchers.
Methane is by far the bigger worry. It is considered the No. 2 greenhouse gas based on the amount of warming it causes and the amount in the atmosphere. The total effect of methane on global warming is about one-third that of man-made carbon dioxide.
Methane comes from landfills, natural gas, coal mining, animal waste, and decaying plants. But it's the decaying plants that worry scientists most. That's because thousands of years ago billions of tons of methane were created by decaying Arctic plants. It lies frozen in permafrost wetlands and trapped in the ocean floor. As the Arctic warms, the concern is this methane will be freed and worsen warming. Scientists have been trying to figure out how they would know if this process is starting.
It's still early and the data are far from conclusive, but scientists say they are concerned that what they are seeing could be the start of the release of the Arctic methane.
After almost eight years of stability, atmospheric methane levels - measured every 40 minutes by monitors near remote coastal cliffs - suddenly started rising in 2006. The amount of methane in the air has jumped by nearly 28 million tons from June 2006 to October 2007. There is now more than 5.6 billion tons of methane in the air.
"If it's sustained, it's bad news," said MIT atmospheric scientist Ron Prinn, lead author of the methane study, which will be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters Oct. 31. "This is a heads up. We're seeing smoke. It remains to be seen whether this is the fire we're really worried about.
"Whenever methane increases, you are accelerating climate change," he said.
By contrast, nitrogen trifluoride has been considered such a small problem that it's generally been ignored. The gas is used as a cleaning agent during the manufacture of liquid crystal display television and computer monitors and for thin-film solar panels.
Earlier efforts to determine how much nitrogen trifluoride is in the air dramatically underestimated the amounts, said Ray Weiss, a geochemistry professor with Scripps Institution of Oceanography and lead author on a nitrogen trifluoride paper. It is set to be published in Geophysical Letters in November.
Nitrogen trifluoride levels in the air - measured in parts per trillion - have quadrupled in the last decade and increased 30-fold since 1978, according to Weiss, who is also a co-author of the methane paper.
It contributes only 0.04 percent of the total global warming effect that man-made carbon dioxide does from the burning of fossil fuels.
But nitrogen trifluoride is one of the more potent gases, thousands of times stronger at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Methane is more than 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide on a per molecule basis. Carbon dioxide remains the most important gas because of its huge levels and rapid growth.
Still, methane and the potential of future increases is a worry, Weiss and others say.
Its recent increase coincides with anecdotal evidence of more methane being released in the shallow parts of the Arctic Ocean. A scientific survey in late summer found methane levels in the east Siberian Sea up to 10,000 times higher than normal, said Orjan Gustafsson, an environmental scientist at Stockholm University who has just returned from the six-week survey.
Prinn's data are consistent with the early results of "whole fields of methane bubbles" that Gustafsson said he found last month.
The highest methane level increases were seen in monitoring stations in Alert, Canada, which with recent anecdotal evidence points to plants in permafrost thawing and decaying.
Stanford University environmental scientist Stephen Schneider cautioned that the recent increase is new and that "it is pretty hard to be very confident of any trend or big story yet on methane."
Methane levels have kept scientists guessing for the past decade. They were on the rise until about 1997, then soared in 1998 and then leveled off until jumping again in 2006.
The Immigration Department has seemingly achieved the impossible in its recent recruitment drive.
It has managed to attract slightly more than 30% non-Malays in its latest recruitment drive.
Out of the 940 new personnel recruited, slightly more than 30% are Chinese, Indians and other ethnic minorities from Sabah and Sarawak.
With the new intake, it would boost the numbers at the department to 11,000 personnel, which would help to enhance enforcement and control the 22 million tourists and 2.4 million foreign workers in the country.
FA08020
Have you guys ever heard myths??Can those myths be trusted??How about eggs??
LONDON: Eggs have long been demonized as being bad for the heart. Yet new research suggests that this is not only untrue, but that eggs could even be considered a "superfood".
Eggs could actually protect against heart disease, breast cancer and eye problems and even help you to lose weight.
For years people assumed eggs were bad for cholesterol levels. But a review just published in the British Nutrition Foundation's Nutrition Bulletin found they "have no clinically significant impact" on heart disease or cholesterol levels.
Dr Bruce Griffin of the University of Surrey's school of biomedical and molecular science analyzed 30 egg studies, among them one from Harvard University which showed people who consumed one or more eggs a day were at no more risk of suffering from cardiovascular disease than non-egg eaters.
Egg yolks contain cholesterol, but nutritionists now know it is the saturated fats in food, not dietary cholesterol, that raises blood cholesterol levels, a risk factor for heart attacks.
"To view eggs solely in terms of their dietary cholesterol content is to ignore the potential benefits of eggs on coronary risk factors, including obesity and diabetes", Dr Griffin says.
"Eggs are actually good for you. They are rich in nutrients", says Joanne Lunn, nutrition scientist at the British Nutrition Foundation. One egg provides 13 essential nutrients, all in the yolk (egg whites contain albumen, an important source of protein, and no fat).
Lunn says eggs are an excellent source of B vitamins, which are needed for vital functions in the body, and also provide good quantities of vitamin A, essential for normal growth and development.
An egg's vitamin E content protects against heart disease and some cancers; there's also vitamin D, which promotes mineral absorption and good bone health.
Eggs are rich in iodine, for making thyroid hormones, and phosphorus, essential for healthy bones and teeth.
Teenage girls who eat an egg a day may give themselves additional protection against breast cancer in later life, according to a study in the journal Breast Cancer Research.
It is the essential nutrients in eggs, such as amino acids, vitamins and minerals, that may be responsible for this protection.
Egg yolks contain the nutrients lutein and zeaxanthin, which could help to prevent or even reverse the age-related eye problem macular degeneration (MD). This is one of the leading causes of blindness and occurs as a consequence of getting older --- however, low lutein intake is implicated as a risk factor.
Eggs are also low in calories --- a large egg contains only 75 calories and five grams of fat --- and other research suggests they can help you lose weight. A study published last year in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition looked at the breakfast habits of obese women.
Scientists from the Wayne State University in Detroit found that when the women were given either an egg or bagel breakfast, each providing the same number of calories, the women eating the eggs felt fuller and consumed fewer calories overall in the following 24 hours.
Health experts used to recommend a maximum egg consumption of three a week to avoid a rise in blood cholesterol levels. But with evidence that it is saturated fat intake that affects cholesterol, advice has changed. Foods Standards Agency says there is no limit as long as they form part of a healthy, balanced diet.
http://www.jphpk.gov.my/breaking?20themyth/eggs
FA08020
Trap-jaw ants bite with a force of over 300 times their own bodyweight, new high-speed digital images have shown.
Their jaws spring shut at more than 100 km/h (66mph)- the fastest recorded speed at which an animal can move its body parts.
The pictures also reveal these tiny creatures, native to Central and South America, do more with their vicious jaws than simply giving a nasty nip.
By biting the ground, the ants hurl themselves upwards when danger looms.
A frosty reception
Uninvited visitors to a nest of trap-jaw ants can expect a vicious response.
The ants are named after their characteristically long jaws, which they use to hurl unfamiliar neighbours from their nests, cripple prey, or deliver a brutal bite to anything they consider a threat.
Employing the same high-speed imaging methods as those used to film flying bullets, an American research team now show that the jaws can move at exceptional speeds.
"This is really by far and away the fastest recorded animal limb movement" said lead researcher Sheila Patek, of the University of California, Berkeley, who worked with ants from Costa Rica.
"The ants' jaws are relatively short, but they deliver such a powerful bite because they can accelerate so quickly. It's simple physics."
Airborne antics
The new findings, reported this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also explain why the ants sometimes bounce into the air when they bite.
"If they bite something which is too hard to be crushed or thrown back by their jaws, the impact tosses them upwards" said Dr Andy Suarez of the University of Illinois, a co-author in the study.
This recoil effect propels the biter onto a brief, haphazard flight which ends in a crash landing several centimetres away.
Such a chaotic journey might seem uncomfortable, but the ants are simply too light to be injured by their misadventures. In fact, Dr Patek and her team have now shown that the ants sometimes perform the flights voluntarily.
A new way to move
By biting the hard ground, rather than another animal, the ants can propel themselves skyward whenever the need arises.
The impact throws their tiny bodies upwards. In effect, the ants are using their enormous bite force as a means to suddenly take off.
This novel way to move may help them to escape predators such as lizards, which attack very quickly and would not be discouraged by a simple bite.
The popcorn-effect of many ants jumping at once might also serve to confuse attackers.
"The results show us the surprising and interesting ways in which a single mechanical system can be co-opted for such different behaviours," says Dr Patek.
FA08020
TULSA, Okla. - After growing up on a cattle ranch, John Hassell became an electrical engineer specializing in wireless technology. So he feels doubly qualified to offer this warning about the system taking shape to track cattle across America: It won't work.
To be sure, he doesn't quibble with the logic of the system. It stems from the Bush administration's plan to give agriculture inspectors the ability to pinpoint the origins of mad cow and other diseases within 48 hours. Livestock facilities and individual animals will get identifying numbers, which owners will use to document the beasts' movements in industry databases.
The system isn't expected to be fully online until 2009, but already it's clear that in the sprawling U.S. beef and dairy industries — home to 100 million cattle — many producers will automate data gathering with radio-frequency chips attached to cattle ears.
And that's what has Hassell worried. He contends most of the radio-frequency chips making their way onto cattle ears are a terrible fit.
Those chips — based on the same radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology being integrated for inventory control by large retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. — are known as "passive" tags that broadcast identifying numbers for only a short range, generally just a few feet.
While cattle may be considered docile creatures, they are a lot more mobile and skittish than cases and pallets in Wal-Mart warehouses. Hassell believes only "active" tags, which broadcast identification data for up to 300 feet, will consistently work for the multiple owners and many environments that cattle pass through, from pastures to stockyards, feed lots and slaughterhouses.
Hassell is so convinced that he's launched his own company, ZigBeef Inc., to sell long-range tags. The name is a play on the "ZigBee" wireless standard employed by his tags.
"I really don't think ... on a mass scale that short-range, passive devices are going to be practical," he said. "The Betamax of the industry is the short-range tags."
That makes Hassell sound like many other startup technologists — pooh-poohing a rival standard at the expense of his own. But something makes this situation a bit unusual: Even beef producers who are using the passive flavor of RFID don't seem thrilled with it either.
The Joplin Regional Stockyards in Carthage, Mo., began using passive RFID to identify some cattle in 2001. But co-owner Steve Owens believes the technology "hinders the speed of commerce."
That's because the thousands of cattle that go through his facility wouldn't always naturally line up and orderly proceed past devices that can read electronic ID tags at short range. Most often, cattle quickly move through his yard in groups.
And if a cow has lost a tag or comes to him without one, "you've got to catch that animal in a head chute and hold it still so you can put the tag in an ear," he said. That can take 30 seconds each — which adds up when you've got thousands of mooing creatures to deal with.
These factors are big because human contact and other stresses can hurt a cow's ability to gain or maintain weight. That's costly because beef is, after all, sold by the pound — and generally with slim profit margins.
"I'm sure hoping and open to other technologies that might be able to solve some of our problems," Owens said.
Even so, he and other people in the industry figure that passive tags will carry the day.
For one thing, passive tags are cheaper, about $2 each versus roughly $10. Passive tags don't require batteries, because they get their power by induction from the electromagnetic energy sent by the reader.
And perhaps most importantly, most of the estimated 5 percent of cattle owners who are using RFID have passive tags. Changing that would be hard, since it's important for all players along the complex chain of cattle ownership to be on the same technical page.
"Despite its warts, I think (passive tagging) is the technology that's going to be brought to play initially," said Dale Blasi, a Kansas State University professor researching the challenges of RFID in cattle. "We're innovative, we'll learn how to work around these issues."
Still, Hassell holds out hope for ZigBeef. While he's not the first to suggest active tags for livestock, he's encouraged that the U.S.
Department of Agriculture has funded the company with an $80,000 grant. Soon he will be eligible for a $300,000-plus extension.
That makes this a crucial year. He has to attract potential customers while still fine-tuning his system. Part of his pitch is that while active tags cost more, their readers can run as low as $50, instead of hundreds or even thousands of dollars for passive RFID. The active readers' range could be dialed up or down to register multiple cows or just one at a time.
Hassell says his tags' batteries can last five to seven years, well beyond the 15-month life of typical beef cattle. And he asserts that most of the cost of the tags comes from their plastic housing, not their circuitry — so ZigBeef tags could easily include both passive and active chips, soothing producers' fears about choosing the wrong technology.
There are still other methods for recording that an animal crossed a certain link in the food chain, including retinal scans for identifying cattle. And there are a spate of old-school record-keeping practices, which often rely on brands, veterinary papers or visually spotting numbers on plastic ear tags and writing them down.
Many producers would love to stay that course, fearing the added cost of more detailed tracking. Some also fear that new databases would reveal private business information to rivals, regulators or animal-rights activists.
Meanwhile, pork and poultry producers tend not to have such worries. Pigs are unlikely to need RFID because the nation's 60 million hogs generally remain in large, easily identifiable lots, said Bobby Acord, a former USDA administrator who chairs the Swine Identification Implementation Task Force. Chickens follow a similar pattern — and are too numerous to tally individually, anyway, with 9 billion in the U.S. alone.
Early adopters of RFID in cattle have done so largely to better track sick animals and to document organic, grass-fed or other high-value beef and dairy. But holdouts note that premiums for RFID-equipped cattle would likely vanish as more cows get the tags.
Because of such hesitation, the cattle industry widely expects that the database system — which is technically voluntary for now — will become mandatory to ensure widespread participation.
Once that happens, old methods simply could become too difficult, said Allen Bright, animal ID coordinator for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. For example, he notes that people are prone to error as they write down ear-tag numbers. It's not exactly easy in auctions teeming with 10,000 head of cattle.
"Just from a practicality standpoint, you need to automate those tags," said Bright, who owns a feed lot in Nebraska.
Kevin McGrath, chief executive of Digital Angel Corp., which has sold 6 million passive RFID tags for livestock in North America, contends that the U.S. beef industry has lost more than $3 billion because Japan and other Asian markets have been closed since the nation's first mad cow scare in 2003. If an automated ID system can persuade officials in those markets to resume accepting American beef, the technology would more than pay for itself, he argues.
Even so, McGrath says he understands the skepticism. Consequently, Digital Angel plans to test other tag frequencies in hopes of making the chips easier to read on moving animals.
"I think we still have to convince the industry that this is the right solution," McGrath said. When it was suggested to him that cattle RFID seems an experiment in progress, he agreed. "And it will be for a long period of time."
http://www.jphpk.gov.my/radio.htm
FA08020
Experiments conducted by Russian scientists show that survival of a living being is possible
People used to make fun of anabiosis in the past. There were quite a few trashy "sci-fi" books and films about freezing people and bringing them back to life in the future. There were only two people who did not use corny jokes while writing about anabiosis in the 1960s. Robert Attinger was one of them. He published a book titled "The Prospects of Immortality" in 1964. The famous Soviet surgeon Nikolai Amosov was the other one. Both of the above wrote about a distant future when scientists come up with ways of freezing the human body and warm it up without causing irreparable damage to its tissues. However, those two men were not the only scientists who were racking their brains over the problem. The Dutch self-taught scientist Anthony Van Levenguk was the one who showed original interest in what later became anabiosis.
More than 300 years ago, on September 1, 1701, Van Levenguk spotted a phenomenon eventually called a "paradox of hidden life." The scientist was looking at microorganisms as they lay under the lens of his microscope. The microorganisms, red wheel animalcules, would come back to life soon after some water was poured over the dry sand they lay in. They would look dead and listless once water began to dry out. They would be resuscitated by a drop of water over and over again.
Many a scientist conducted successful cold anabiosis experiments involving plants and simple life forms. But nobody ever succeeded experimenting with warm-blooded creatures. Let us carry out a couple of simple experiments to find out why all experiments with warm-blooded creatures always ended in failure.
Let us place a plastic bottle filled with water into a freezer. Then we will examine the contents of the bottle. We will see numerous large and small cracks running through ice. Size and shape of the cracks vary due to temperature fluctuations during the freezing and defrosting of water.
Now let us put an egg, a living object, into a freezer. A closer look at the thawed out egg will show the eggshell will be cracked all over and the contents of the egg will be damaged too. The egg will be irretrievably spoiled.
Things that happen to living cells during their freezing and defrosting resemble a horror movie. Ice crystals mangle the cell membranes, all inner structures are crushed and pierced through. That is why cryogenics never took off as a practical branch of science . A lack of rational idea entails a lack of funds. Science fiction technology does not entail financing.
Years ago a team of Soviet scientists headed by Academician Vladimir Kovanov carried out a series of spectacular experiments involving hypothermia of the warm-blooded animals. Drawing from the results of the experiments, the researchers came up with a theory of anabiosis for large living organisms.
The research was eventually terminated due to lack of financing after the collapse of the Soviet Union . Vladimir Kovanov passed away. The team broke up. The buzz stirred in the scientific world by the findings of the team died away.
"We were the first ones who could reach the bottom level of hypothermia for the warm-blooded organism at zero degrees Celsius. We were able to bring back to life 100% of animals subjected to freezing. The temperature was lowered to the freezing point of water. Then the temperature was raised to regular body temperature level. The minimum of zero degrees Celsius was maintained for 95 minutes. During that period of time animals were kept in a state of clinical death. The cardiac activity was reported to have stopped at three degrees Celsius.
"The results of the experiments show that a guinea pig will die if thawed at 0.6 degrees per minute after an abrupt freezing to 0 degrees Celsius. Thawing out the lab animal at 0.2 degrees per minute will kill it too. However, there is a 'window' of opportunity somewhere in between. All the laboratory animals survive if thawed at 0.4 degrees Celsius. All their vital functions get back to normal."
"It sounds like a scientific sensation."
"It certainly does. Our foreign colleagues all over the world regarded it as a remarkable discovery. For example, we received two letters from Dr. Ferrera, head of the laboratory of thermoregulation studies at the Claude Bernar University in France. He actually requested details of our findings because he doubted the media reports on our success in hypothermia experiments with the warm-blooded animals. Our work made headlines at the international media. Alas, scientists in this country gave us the cold shoulder."
"We had to deal with yet another setback. I mean the so-called 'anabiotic hole.' Its minimum can reach the absolute temperature zero level, minus 237 degrees Celsius. It is more difficult to get out of the hole than dive in it. But a living organism can survive even under such harsh conditions. The experiments showed that survival was possible. We put hearts, blood and semen of the lab animals into an anabiotic capsule designed and built by our team. We used liquid nitrogen for freezing the specimens at minus 196 degrees Celsius. Then we brought them back to life by defrosting. Unfortunately, our research program came to a halt following the breakup of the Soviet Union."
"Mr. Sherbakov, it seems that the findings and discoveries made by you research team have been in a lengthy state of anabiosis. What should be done to make them thaw?
"The answer is simple - money. But there is no point in looking for sponsors in the usual places. They would not allocate funds for projects that still look like science fiction."
"Maybe you had better look for some moneybags who can pay for preserving their bodies until better times?"
"Maybe you are right, the idea is worth thinking over. I know that there are four cryonic companies operating in the U.S. They freeze the terminally ill at the request and expense of customers. Given the methods and lousy cryonic protectors used by those companies, they look like some weird funeral homes, as far as I am concerned. I wish we could set up a joint venture and use our super cryonic protector and their financial potential."
FA08020
Deer shed their antlers in spring. Stem cells play a key role in the deer's remarkable ability to grow new antlers, according to research. The deer is unique among mammals in being able to regenerate a complete body part - in this case a set of bone antlers covered in velvety skin.
Experts at the Royal Veterinary College hope the work could one day lead to new ways to repair damaged human tissues.
Details are outlined in an edition of the BBC TV programme "Super Vets" to be screened on 12 January.
Professor Joanna Price of the Royal Veterinary College said: "The regeneration of antlers remains one of the mysteries of biology but we are moving some way to understanding the mechanisms involved.
"Antlers provide us with a unique natural model that can help us understand the basic process of regeneration although we are still a long way from being able to apply this work to humans."
Mating game
Antlers are large structures made from bone that annually grow, die, are shed and then regenerate.
They grow in three to four months, making them one of the fastest growing living tissues.
After the antlers have reached their maximum size, the bone hardens and the velvety outer covering of skin peels off.
Once the velvet is gone, only the bare bone remains - a formidable weapon for fighting.
At the end of the mating season, the deer sheds its antlers to conserve energy. Next spring, a new pair grows out of a bony protuberance of tissue at the front of the animal's head.
Hormone link
The research suggests that stem cells - the master cells of the body, with the ability to develop into many specialised cell types - underpin this process.
It is mediated by some sort of signalling pathway, probably regulated by hormones such as oestrogen and testosterone.
The long-term goal of the work is to better understand the chemical signalling pathway behind the process of regeneration, in the hope that it can be harnessed by human medicine to develop novel treatments for diseases such as Parkinson's.
"If we know why this animal can do it whereas other mammals can't, we can start to say: 'Can we make this signal come on again if we have an injured or severed (human) tissue?'" Professor Price told the BBC News website.
FA08020
Faux" meat biologically identical to real tissue but grown in the lab is something of a staple in science fiction. In January, researchers at the University of Manchester, UK, came up with a method of using ink-jet printer technology to build animal tissue structures, including differentiated skin, bones and organs. I referred to them as "meat-jet" printers, and argued that they could be the harbinger of the future emergence a new kind of cuisine: cruelty-free, waste-free, prion-free meats grown in the lab. Little did I know how rapidly this scenario might come about.
In the June 29 issue of Tissue Engineering, researchers describe methods of mass-producing "cultured" meats: muscle tissues with the same taste, nutrients and texture of "real" meat, grown under controlled conditions in the lab. This wouldn't be fake meat made from processed vegetables, it would be cellularly identical to the flesh from livestock -- but no animal would be killed for its production. (The article itself is under a subscription barrier The article is now available online, and a detailed summary is available here.)
The researchers -- from the US and the Netherlands -- aren't just talking about theory. They've started a non-profit company called New Harvest to develop cultured meat.
The production of such "cultured meat" begins by taking a number of cells from a farm animal and proliferating them in a nutrient—rich medium. Cells are capable of multiplying so many times in culture that, in theory, a single cell could be used to produce enough meat to feed the global population for a year. After the cells are multiplied, they are attached to a sponge-like "scaffold" and soaked with nutrients. They may also be mechanically stretched to increase their size and protein content. The resulting cells can then be harvested, seasoned, cooked, and consumed as a boneless, processed meat, such as sausage, hamburger, or chicken nuggets. Setting aside the vaguely-discomfiting visuals of growing hamburger in vats, cultured meat actually has some distinct advantages.
"There would be a lot of benefits from cultured meat," [project leader University of Maryland doctoral student Jason] Matheny said in a statement. "For one thing, you could control the nutrients." Meat is high in omega-6 fatty acid, which is desirable, but not in large amounts. Healthful omega-3 fatty acids, such as those found in walnuts and fish oils, could be substituted.
"Cultured meat could also reduce the pollution that results from raising livestock, and you wouldn't need the drugs that are used on animals raised for meat," Matheny said.
Raising livestock requires million of gallons of water and hundreds of acres of land. Meat grown from tissue would bypass those requirements.
But perhaps most important would be the significant reduction in greenhouse gases that would result from moving away from livestock-based food production. In this month's Physics World, Dr. Alan Calverd argues that over 20% of human-caused CO2 comes from livestock farming. (This figure doesn't include the methane production from livestock, which also contributes to greenhouse gas buildup.) He suggests a global move to vegetarianism as a way to combat global warming. For those who can't give up their burgers and chicken, cultured meat would be a nearly-as-climate-conscious alternative.
New Harvest is still studying cultured meat's nutritional and production issues. It may take a few
years before they have something they can bring to market (or at least make available for testing), but in terms of the technology, there's every reason to think that tasty, indistinguishable-from-"real" cultured meat will be possible to make. The question is, will people buy it?
I think so. Many (most?) of us already experience meat only in the cleaned, sliced and packaged format, where it looks nothing like the animal from which it came. Cultured meats would (presumably) be no different in appearance than other processed meats, and would have distinct health and safety advantages. And, eventually, even a cost advantage: the factories to grow cultured meats would take up far less space and far fewer resources than livestock ranches, and traditional ranching is likely to come under increasing economic pressure due to the effects of climate disruption.
Cultured meat is one of those developments that seems almost too bizarre to be real, but could have significant world changing implications. Will we embrace its advantages? With New Harvest on the job, we may soon find out.
FA08020
Every year, Americans spend four billion dollars for cat food which is one billion dollars more than they usually spend on baby food!
The pattern on a cat's nose is as unique as a human fingerprint. There are over 500 million of domestic cats in the world, they subdivide into 33 major breeds. The University of Lyons informs there are about 400 million of domestic cats in the world. In Australia, there are nine domestic cats per ten citizens. In Indonesia there are over 30 million of domestic cats; in France - 8 million domestic cats, the biggest amount in Europe. However, there are some countries such as Peru and Gabon where domestic cats are infrequent.
Cat's heartbeats are twice as faster as human ones and make up from 110 to 140 beats per minute.
It is known that 25 percent of cat owners blow-dry their cats after bathing.
Domestic cats are the only variety of the cats family that have their tails vertical when walking while others wild cats walk with their tails horizontal or between legs. This is astonishing but cats never employ meowing to communicate with each other. This sound is meant for establishing contacts with humans only.
Cats usually give birth to 1-8 kittens at a time and on average have 2-3 broods a year. A cat may give birth to over 100 kittens within its life.
The cat's skeleton consists of 290 bones and has 517 muscles. Cat's ears may do 180-degree turns. A cat has 32 muscles in every ear, it employs twelve or more muscles to move the ears.
Domestic cats may live 15 years on average while wild cats live only 3-5 years. If a cat is 3 years old its age corresponds to the human age of 21 years. When a cat turns 8 it will be as mature as a human at the age of 40. Cat Puss from England was the oldest cat ever living on the planet. It died in 1939 a day after its 36th birthday.
As it turned out, a cat may catch 28,899 mice. Scottish cat Towser caught 28,899 mice within the 21 year of his life which means approximately four mice a day.
The first cat exhibition was held in New York's Madison Square Garden in 1895.
Cats detest the smell of lemon or orange, so experts recommend scenting furniture with lemon or orange aroma in case your cat scratches it.
The Guinness Book of Records registered a couple of cats in the early 1960s after they inherited $415,000 as the richest cats. The richest lonely cat ever registered inherited $250,000.
It is believed that seeing a white cat on the threshold before marriage symbolizes luck. In Russia, many people believe that black cats protect the home from thieves.
Cats need just one sixth of the daylight necessary for people to see. Cats' night vision is astonishing! In darkness, cat's eyes use even the light reflected by retina. Cats may see at a distance of up to 60 meters and their periphery vision makes up approximately 285 degrees. Kittens may have their eyes color changed as time goes by. When born, kittens cannot see or hear. They open the eyes only in 7-10 days after their birth; the eyesight and hearing develop at the age of two weeks.
Cats are the laziest mammals; they sleep 16 hours a day. When not asleep, cats devote 30 percent of their time to care of themselves. Opinion polls reveal that 95 percent of cat owners talk to their pets.
In 1986, the Guinness Book of Records registered the heaviest cat Himmy from Australia who weight 21 kg, the biggest result ever fixed in the world. The cat's waist made up 84 cm. The previous record was fixed in 1977 by cat Spice from Connecticut who weight 20 kg when died.
It is known that cats are more aggressive when not sterilized. Twenty one percent of American families have domestic cats.
An adult cat has 32 teeth.
People can predict weather by watching the behavior of their cats. When one sees his cat sleeps with four feet under the body it indicates the weather will be cold.
Every year, Americans spend four billion dollars for cat food. It is one billion dollars more than Americans usually spend on baby food!
In Ancient Egypt, people used to shave off their brows when mourning for their favorite domestic cats.
Cats' sense of smell is 14 times stronger than that of humans. Besides the nose, cats may smell with the so-called Jacobson tube that cats have on the upper palate behind the front cutting teeth. Cats employ these tubes when they concentrate on some particular scent. They draw the air in with the upper lip and the nose slightly raised.
Cats can produce about 100 of various sounds. Just compare with dogs that produce just about ten sounds.
FA08020
Scientists have long been trying to find out how the amphibians e.g. tritons and salamanders can regenerate their shed or torn tails and broken jaws. Moreover, some animals can also regenerate their damaged hearts, eye tissues and spinal cords. Scientists finally understood the way used by the amphibians for self-repairs. As it turned out, the cells of a future organism are immature at the early stage of development, and therefore subject to potential changes.
Experiments involving the frog embryos produced evidence to back the above conclusions. A piece of tissue of the future skin can be cut out of an embryo comprising just a few hundred cells. The piece is then inserted into the brain area. Eventually, the piece will be part of the brain. On the other hand, the skin cells will develop into the skin right in the center of the brain if a more mature embryo is used for the experiment. The destiny of the cells has been already decided.
The cells of amphibians can turn back time and return to the moment where their destiny could have been altered. Bone cells, skin cells, and blood cells of a damaged area (a salamander's paw has been turn off) in the body of a amphibian will become the cells lacking any distinguishing characteristics. All the mass of "newly born" cells will start dividing in an active manner. The cells will turn into the bone, blood, and skin cells as required. Finally, the cells will make a new paw.
Dr. Haber-Katz examined the ears of the mice two weeks later and saw no punctures in them. Needless to say, the researcher told off her technician despite his explanations and did the puncturing herself. Several weeks later the researchers were amazed to find no traces of any punctures on the ears of the mice.
The strange event prompted Dr. Harber-Katz to put forth an incredible theory about the mice who simply regenerated the tissues and cartilages for filling the holes they did not need in any way. A closer examination reveled the presence of blastema in the damaged areas of the ears. Blastema is any zone of embryonic tissue that is still differentiating and growing into a particular organ like in the case of amphibians. But mice are the mammals that are not supposed to have such abilities.
Dr. Harber-Katz believes that living organisms had originally used both the immune system and regeneration for recovering from wounds. Yet the two methods proved to be incompatible during the evolution and regeneration was eventually deleted. On the face of it, regeneration seems a better choice. However, T-cells (cells of the immune system) are more efficient and vital for us humans. They are the main weapon to combat malignancies.
What is the point of growing a new arm while cancer cells are developing by leaps and bounds in the body? It seems that the immune system acts as a suppressant to our ability for self-repair while protecting us against infections and cancer.
Doros Platica, the head of Boston-based company Ontogeny, is confident that
we will be able to start up the process of regeneration one of these days, even though some of its components will remain a mystery to us. Our cells keep an innate ability to grow new body parts, the way they did during the fetus development. Our every cell's DNA bears recorded instructions on the growing of new organs. We just need to make the cells "to switch on" their abilities, and the process will take care of itself.
Specialists at Ontogeny are working on medicines to activate regeneration. One medicine is already ready and will be probable approved for sales at retail in Europe, the United States, and Australia. The medicine is dubbed OP1, it is a growth factor that stimulates the growth of new bone tissue. The medicine will help to treat complicated fractures involving two parts of a broken bone, which can not knit together due to a huge gap between the two parts. OP1 can give a boost to the bone tissue growth so that the tissue will eventually fill the gap between the two parts in the course of growing.
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New research ties eating tart cherries to lowering cholesterol, reducing inflammation and cutting one's body weight and fat -- all major risk factors for heart disease.
This latest study, scheduled to be presented by University of Michigan researchers at the American Dietetic Association annual meeting, in Chicago, reached these conclusions after feeding whole tart cherry powder to obese rats.
After 12 weeks, the rats had 14 percent less body fat while maintaining lean muscle mass, compared to other rats who ate the same foods minus the cherry powder. The rats eating cherries also lost significant amounts of body weight -- notably a loss of "belly" fat, a known risk for heart disease, according to the American Heart Association.
The rats eating a cherry-enriched diet also dropped their total cholesterol levels by about 11 percent. Levels of two known markers of inflammation linked to increased risk for heart disease also dropped by 31 percent to 40 percent.
"Heart disease is the number one killer of Americans today, so it's important we continue researching ways people can improve their diet to help reduce key risk factors," study co-author Dr. Steven F. Bolling, a cardiac surgeon at the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center, said in a news release from the study's sponsor, the Cherry Marketing Institute. "We know excess body fat increases the risk for heart disease. This research gives us one more support point suggesting that diet changes, such as including cherries, could potentially lower heart disease risk."
Researchers said the animal study is encouraging and will lead to further clinical studies in humans to explore the link between diet, weight, inflammation and lowering heart disease risk.
Tart cherries, often sold as dried, frozen or juice, contain powerful antioxidants known as anthocyanins. In addition to providing the fruit with its rich red color, studies suggest these plant compounds may be responsible for the fruit's health benefits.
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FRIDAY, Oct. 24 (HealthDay News) -- A molecule called CCR10 plays an important role in a mother's ability to pass along immunity to intestinal infections to her baby through breast-feeding, according to a U.S. study involving mice.
The team from Brigham Young, Harvard and Stanford universities found that normal lactating mice had hundreds of thousands of antibody-producing cells in their mammary glands, while mice without CCR10 had 70 times fewer such cells. The absence of CCR10 was the reason for that deficiency.
The study was published in the Nov. 1 issue of The Journal of Immunology.
"Everybody hears that breast-feeding is good for the baby," study author Eric Wilson, an assistant professor of microbiology at Brigham Young, said in a university news release. "But why is it good? One of the reasons is that mothers' milk carries protective antibodies which shield the newborn from infection, and this study demonstrates the molecular mechanisms used by the mother's body to get these antibody-producing cells where they need to be."
Learning more about CCR10 may prove valuable in future efforts to help mothers better protect their babies.
"This [study] tells us that this molecule is extremely important, so if we want to design a vaccine for the mother so she could effectively pass protective antibodies to the child, it would be absolutely essential to induce high levels of CCR10," Wilson said.
"The molecular basis for this redistribution [of the mother's antibody-producing cells] has not been well-characterized, but Dr. Wilson's work has begun to crack that code and define the molecules responsible for this cellular redistribution and passive immunity," Daniel Campbell, a researcher at the Benaroya Research Institute in Seattle, a nonprofit organization that specializes in the immune system, said in the news release.
"It is important work that fundamentally enhances our understanding of how immunity is provided to the [baby] via the milk. Dr. Wilson's study will certainly form the basis for many other studies aimed at uncovering how the immune system is organized, particularly at mucosal surfaces
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Spices may do more than flavor your food: New research suggests a shake of this and a pinch of that could also boost the health of diabetics.
Researchers bought 24 herbs and spices and found that many appear to have the power to inhibit tissue damage and inflammation brought on by high blood-sugar levels in the body.
The study didn't examine the direct effects of spices on diabetics. Also, spices are typically used in small amounts, making it unclear if those who eat them would get much benefit.
Still, "this gives people a tool to work with in terms of keeping their health as they want it to be," said study co-author James Hargrove, an associate professor at the University of Georgia.
Hargrove and his colleagues were intrigued by spices because they're rich in antioxidants, which are thought to protect cells from damage. "One can put a lot of antioxidant power into meals by using spices" without making people fatter, he said. "Because of the way they're prepared, herbs and spices tend to have low calorie contents."
In addition, spices are cheaper than many other food products, he said.
The researchers decided to look into the anti-inflammatory properties of spices. "We said, 'Let's just go to Wal-Mart, get all the McCormick brand spices we can find, and check those. That was as complicated as our study design was."
The findings appear in a recent issue of the Journal of Medicinal Food.
In laboratory tests, the researchers found that many of the spices and extracts appeared to inhibit a process known as glycation, which has been linked to inflammation and tissue damage in diabetics.
The spices that seemed most likely to help diabetics included cloves, cinnamon (previously pegged as a possible blood-sugar reducer), allspice, apple pie spice and pumpkin pie spice, Hargrove said. Top herbs included marjoram, sage and thyme.
Other spices and herbs were "still rich compared to other foods" when it comes to the effect, he said.
Lona Sandon, national spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, said that while research does suggest that spices are high in antioxidants and may reduce blood-sugar levels, it's difficult to make recommendations about how much to use.
Even so, "I say add as much herbs and spices as your taste buds and tummy can take," she said. "They add flavor and fun to foods without adding calories or fat. Their potential for promoting health outweighs any risks, unless, of course, you have an allergy to a particular spice."
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Some children who have fallen ill in China after being fed milk formula that had been contaminated with melamine have developed "crystals" in their kidneys, a WHO food safety expert said on Tuesday.
"Our understanding is that these are not normal kidney stones because they are not being detected via all of the tools that one uses to detect kidney stones, so some are not showing up on x-rays," said Anthony Hazzard, regional advisor for food safety at the World Health Organization.
"We believe at this stage that it's really the complex of melamine and cyanuric acid forming what you call crystals ... they can form in the small tubules (in the kidneys) and they get bigger and can block the tubules," he said in a telephone interview from Manila.
Cyanuric acid is chemically similar to melamine - a plastic-making industrial compound that was added to milk powder to cheat quality tests.
Tens of thousands of Chinese children have fallen ill with kidney stones and other kidney problems after consuming the contaminated milk, and at least four children have died.
It is not clear how cyanuric acid found its way into the children. Experts say it could have been added along with melamine into milk, also to cheat quality tests, or it may have been formed when the body tried processing the melamine, which is indigestible.
Experts said earlier that crystals may be even more troublesome than stones. They can potentially impair kidney function especially when large numbers of them suddenly form at the same time, blocking tubules in the kidneys.
Hazzard said the children were mainly treated in three ways.
"Depending on how severe the situation, they can either pass these crystals in urine or they need hospitalization and treatment with fluids that will allow these crystals or stones to better pass, or in some cases, they may need surgery," he said.
This latest China food scandal has sparked tests for melamine in a variety of Chinese-made products from milk and chocolate bars to yoghurt exported around the world, including products in South Korea, leading to items being pulled from shop shelves.
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What do you guys think abou answering machine?
Sometimes I think that the answering machine is both the world’s greatest and most annoying invention rolled into one. When I am out and about and missing calls, the answering machine is my friend. When I am trying to reach someone and have to subject myself over and over again to hearing, “at the tone…” it is the world’s worst invention. I have to admit, the thing I hate most is answering machine messages that think they are funny when in truth they aren’t.
When I was in college I spent some time cold calling customers for a firm of stock brokers. During this time, I was subjected to a myriad of answering machine messages. One day I listened as the line clicked signaling someone had picked up the phone. I heard a female voice cheerfully say, “Hello?” and I started in on my spiel.
I was a good way into it when the voice began to mock me. “You actually thought I was home, but you are really talking to my answering machine. Leave a message.” I know that this person probably thought that they were extremely clever, but it took everything in me to leave a nice and professional message on their answering machine.
Another day I was subjected to an answering machine message that included at least ten minutes of introductions to every member in the family. What happened to the days of simple answering machine messages that informed a caller they had reached the Smiths, but the Smiths are not home?
Some people think that they need to spice things up on their answering machine messages. For some reason they must think that callers are so bored that they need a little fun added to their day. While this might be true in theory, most people have messages on their answering machine that no one else finds funny. Like the family that had their preschooler rap out an answering machine greeting. The first line was moderately funny, but six minutes into the answering machine greeting, things were a bit tedious.
The longer I worked cold calling clients, the more sure I was that I would stick to a generic greeting on my own answering machine. I did change my mind on my last day of work, when I called a family and heard the following message:
We are the Smiths and we are either not home, in the shower, or we are screening our calls because we don’t want to talk to you. So at the tone you can leave a message and we will decide if we really want to call you back. Thanks!”
I guess this is a family that really does believe that honesty is the best policy.
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Inorganic Mineral from the Earth + Photosynthesis = Organic Minerals from
Plants which provide Protein and Enzymes for animals and humans.
The animal kingdom does not possess the ability to perform photosynthesis,
therefore must rely on the plant kingdom to prepare its food.
Any form of processing nature's foods (such as pasteurization, cooking, adding
preservatives, etc.) breaks the bonds between the food components and their
attached enzymes as well as destroys the enzyme. The result is inorganic or
denatured food components and thus inorganic food.
The enzyme must be alive and attached to the mineral or food component in
order for the body to utilize it. The enzyme acts as a "passport" to get the mineral
into the cell of the body and aids in the cell's utilization of that mineral. Raw foods
are living and thus produce life in the body; because they have intact enzymes
they are organic. Enzymes are catalysts - substances which help the body work
more efficiently in utilizing food for life maintaining purposes.
An example of an inorganic substance is table salt . It is simply sodium and
chloride. No enzymes, thus it is dead and the body cannot use it. Our bodies
cannot attach an enzyme to inorganic substances, except at great cost. It is only the
plant kingdom, through the process of photosynthesis, that can attach enzymes to
inorganics and make them living or organic.
The more we process a food, the less nutrient value it retains. This is because living foods are organic foods. Processed foods, to various degrees, are inorganic
or "dead" foods.
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Do you guys ever notice that there is a hidden meaning in the word DISEASE???
Disease or "dis-ease" is defined as a lack of health. Disease results when any
cell is not functioning 100% of its designed duty whether due to trauma, toxicity,
lack of communication or a combination thereof. Disease is due to stress.
Whether due to ignorance or laziness, exposing the body to stress will produce
a diseased state of the body. Stress is the only means of tearing down health
resulting in disease, our bodies paying the price for violating the laws of nature
(our wrong doings). We do not "catch" a disease or illness, we earn it.
We must "work" for disease.
Disease is nothing more than the body responding to the wrong we have done
to it. It is the body's attempt at keeping us alive in response to the wrongs we
have inflicted on our bodies.
Pathological changes are the cell's response to stress. These changes or
compensations allow the body to survive - maintain homeostasis - as long as
the stress continues. These tissue changes which result in disease, are the
outward manifestation of internal compensation to stress. Until the cause is
removed, the condition will remain in one form or another.
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The glutamate industry and companies, including pharmaceutical firms, that wish to use processed free glutamic acid (MSG) in their products, improperly claim that the term "MSG" only applies to the food ingredient "monosodium glutamate."
They pretend not to realize that "monosodium glutamate" is nothing more than glutamic acid that has been freed from protein through a manufacturing process (processed free glutamic acid), salt (sodium), and moisture. It is the processed free glutamic acid that MSG-sensitive people react to, providing that they ingest amounts that exceed their tolerances for the substance.
Consumers may react to processed free glutamic acid that is contained in any food ingredient or product, including AuxiGro, regardless of the name of the ingredient or product.
Because MSG-sensitive people may react to all ingredients and products that contain processed free glutamic acid, they refer to such ingredients and products as containing "MSG."
In August, 1995, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) noted in a document entitled the "FDA Backgrounder" that consumers frequently refer to all [free] glutamic acid as "MSG." The "FDA Backgrounder" is still in use by the FDA and can likely be found on their Web site.
Based on peer reviewed studies, there is no question that glutamic acid is neurotoxic. This can be easily confirmed by accessing MEDLINE retrieval service for studies dating from 1966 to the present, using the words "glutamic acid" in combination with the words "brain lesions" and then "neurotoxicity." I would also suggest that you look up the words besity," " and "seizures" combination with the words "glutamic acid."
There is also no question that the young are most at risk from MSG. To confirm this, you might start by reviewing the work of John W. Olney, MD and look up the words "glutamic acid" in combination with the words "blood brain barrier" and "placental barrier."
You will learn that the blood brain barrier is not fully developed in the young to protect against toxins that enter the blood, and that glutamic acid can also penetrate the placental barrier.
Disregarding the blood brain barrier and the placental barrier issues, the literature clearly indicates that, based on the amount of MSG used in the 1970s, over 25% of the population react to MSG.
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Bacteria that live in the intestine play an essential role in the development of blood vessels in the gut, Missouri researchers report. When researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis raised mice in a bacteria-free environment, blood vessels in the gut did not develop until the mice were exposed to bacteria.
In an interview with Reuters Health, senior author Dr. Jeffrey I. Gordon said, "Developmental processes, such as those that we have studied, are not the exclusive responsibility of the host," for example the mouse or human body. "Environmental factors, such as gut bacteria, play an important role," he said.
That the body contains bacteria, or flora, that are helpful is not a new idea, according to Gordon.
"We have this vast community of microbes that colonize from the moment of our birth," he said. Gordon added that these microbes "bring to us a great bunch of metabolic traits that we haven't developed."
Until this latest research, led by first author Dr. Thaddeus S. Stappenbeck, it was not known that bacteria were essential for forming blood vessels in the gut. The investigators made this discovery when they compared blood vessel growth in normal mice and mice that grew up without any bacteria in the small intestine.
The growth of blood vessels in the gut was not nearly as extensive in germ-free mice as in normal mice, the researchers report in the online early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. But normal vessel development was restored 10 days after the researchers colonized the germ-free mice with bacteria called Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron.
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Tony was recently evaluated by his family physician and found that his cholesterol was 327. Concerned that this might be an early warning sign for a pending heart attack, he asked his physician what he should do. Obviously the recommendations were right out of a television commercial. Lipitor was prescribed. Tony was also told to follow a low-cholesterol, low fat diet and check with his physician in three months to have his cholesterol rechecked.
With a family history of heart disease, Tony was determined to do whatever it took to lower his cholesterol. For three months Tony was on a mission: No fat. No meat. No cholesterol!! His diet consisted of bagels with margarine, fruit, pasta, vegetables and all the non-fat foods he could get his hands on. He began taking 10 mgs of Lipitor and worked his way to 40 mgs per day. He followed his physician's recommendations to the letter. His three month cholesterol follow-up was ordered and to Tony's surprise and disappointment his cholesterol had improved, but only by 15 points. A 312 cholesterol was not what he expected! His physician explained that it may take time and that Tony needed to continue with his medication and strict no fat/no cholesterol diet. In fact, his physician recommended that he increase the Lipitor to 80 mg.. the maximum dose allowed.
Again, Tony "pulled his straps up" and gathered his strength and began another three-month course of lowering his cholesterol. With added determination, Tony was confident he would not fall victim to the #1 killer in the country.. heart disease. His thought of his father lying in the hospital after his triple bypass was enough to keep Tony from going off course. The day of recognition was quickly approaching.. his cholesterol was to be checked in two days!! With a slight degree of apprehension, Tony had his blood drawn and had to wait five days before he received the call from his physician's nurse. "Tony, I wanted to call and tell you that your cholesterol results have come in. I don't want you to be too concerned, but your cholesterol has increased to 357." Your physician has scheduled you to see a cardiologist. Tony just knew that he was doomed. At 42 years old, Tony thought, "How could this be? I did everything right. I followed the program to the "T".
Tony is just one of the millions of people who suffer from a resistant high cholesterol. Health food stores are filled with people looking for a natural alternative to lowering their cholesterol. The consumption of garlic by health food zealots is enough to knock you out cold.
May 13, 2002 -- Still not drinking the recommended eight glasses of water a day? Here's one more healthy reason to start. Staying hydrated may protect your heart and reduce the risk of heart attack.
A new study shows people who drank more than five glasses of water each day were less likely to die from a heart attack than those who drank fewer than two glasses a day.
Researchers at Loma Linda University in California studied more than 20,000 healthy men and women aged 38 to 100 for six years. The study appears in the May 1 American Journal of Epidemiology.
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Want a healthy heart??Try drinking WATER!
They found women who drank more than five glasses of water a day were 41% less likely to die from a heart attack during the study period than those who drank less than two glasses. The protective effect of water was even greater in men. Men who drank more water had a 54% lower risk of a fatal heart attack.
But not all liquids were equal. When researchers included the consumption of other liquids such as coffee, tea, juice, milk, and alcohol, the risk of heart attack increased. Women who drank large amounts of liquids other than water were more than twice as likely to die of a heart attack, and non-water drinking men had a 46% increase in risk.
Researchers say when people drink water it is absorbed quickly and easily into the bloodstream and thins the blood -- helping to prevent artery-clogging clots. But other liquids require digestion, which may require fluids to move from the blood into the gut -- creating a blood-thickening effect.
© 2002 WebMD Inc. All rights reserved.
Reprinted from:
http://my.webmd.com/content/article/1685.53179
People who eat several servings of fish each week may lower their risk of heart disease and death, two national studies report.
In one study, men without heart disease were 81% less likely to experience sudden death when their blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids were high regardless of their age, smoking habits, or the amount of other types of fatty acids in their blood.
Omega-3 fatty acids, which are found in fatty fish such as salmon and mackerel, may lower the risk of developing an irregular heart rhythm and reduce blood cholesterol and clotting -- all risk factors for heart disease.
The findings point to a way for individuals to lower their risk of sudden death from heart attack.
The results suggest that increasing intake of omega-3 fatty acids by either supplements or by diet may substantially reduce the risk of sudden death, even among those without a history of heart disease.
More than 50% of people who die suddenly of cardiac causes have no signs or symptoms of heart disease.
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In the first study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine researchers looked at the experience of about 22,000 male doctors who enrolled in the Physicians' Health Study in 1982. They were all free of heart disease at the time, and about 15,000 volunteered a blood sample.
http://mercola.com/2002/apr/24/fish_oil.htm
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content.health.msn.com/content/article/1689.5282
Hospitals are still making too many mistakes when giving medicine to patients, a new report shows. Relatively few of these blunders hurt anybody. But when they do, they can be deadly.
The findings come from the second annual medication-errors report from MedMARx, an anonymous program that keeps track of this kind of mistake.
The most common errors were not giving the right drug, giving the wrong dose of a drug, or giving an unauthorized drug. The drugs most often involved are insulin (a diabetes medicine), heparin (a blood thinner), and morphine (a potent painkiller).
"These recurring trends indicate that while progress in reporting errors is being made, the same types of errors are occurring again and again," Diane D. Cousins, RPh, says in a news release. "This tells us that there are deeper, more systemic causes for these errors. These systems need to change in order to reduce errors." Cousins is a MedMARx vice president.
The current report covers the year 2000. Among the 184 participating healthcare facilities, there were 37,999 definite errors and 3,297 possible errors.
Only 3% of the definite errors actually hurt patients -- but that figure represents 1,233 injured people. Three of them died.
Distractions, too much work, and inexperienced staff remain the most common reasons for medication error.
Fewer hospitals participated in the 1999 report, so the 2000 report isn't directly comparable. Still, there were about 111 error reports per hospital in 1999 and about 224 error reports per hospital this year. MedMARx suggests that much of the increase is due to better error reporting.
The scope of medical errors came to light in 1999 when the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences published a report titled To Err Is Human. The scientists estimated that as many as 98,000 hospital patients die every year as a result of preventable errors, including medication mistakes.
Since that time, everyone from the U.S. president to doctors to entrepreneurs have called for an array of systems and technologies designed to prevent errors or catch them before they can harm the patient.
Cousins thinks all the attention to medical errors has resulted in some noticeable changes: "This second MedMARx report provides a strong indication that health care professionals and institutions are more willing to report errors and to understand that they can learn from the mistakes of others," she says in a news release. "We hope that this trend continues and that these entities get support -- both legislatively and professionally -- for the important work they are doing in reporting medication errors."
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Vitamin A earned its name from the fact that it was the first vitamin discovered. Researchers in the 1930s described vitamin A as the "anti-infective vitamin" as it is intimately involved in the health of the mucous membranes and in fighting off infections.
Since its discovery, vitamin A has been shown to be pivotal in several bodily functions: formation of "visual purple" which allows us to see partially in low light; maintenance of healthy vision and proper eye function; repair and maintenance of epithelial tissues, especially those of the skin and mucous membranes; maintenance of the endocrine system, espeically the thyroid gland; proper utilization of dietary proteins; and stimulation of the thymus gland, a major part of the immune system.
Supplementation, then, of vitamin A could be of great help to someone who is facing vision problems, poor thyroid function, weakened immunity, and assorted infections, particularly those of the respiratory and urinary tract (these areas are lined with mucous membranes). When approaching supplementation, a couple of things need to be kept in mind:
1. Supplements of beta-carotene (or foods containing it such as orange and yellow plant foods) are NOT the same as those with vitamin A. Beta-carotene is the metabolic precursor of vitamin A; it must be converted into real vitamin A in the intestines along with the help of bile salts, thyroid hormone, and dietary fat. Infants, and those with diabetes, alcoholism, hypothyroidism, and/or liver or gall bladder problems cannot make this conversion. Additionally, the body's conversion of beta-carotene to active vitamin A is very poor: it takes roughly 6 units of beta-carotene to make just one unit of vitamin A. Be sure, then, that you pruchase supplements that very clearly state that they are REAL vitamin A and not beta-carotene.
2. Consumers are often warned that vitamin A can be toxic if taken to excess. Pregnant women are also warned that too much vitamin A can cause birth defects. Such warnings are overblown. Though vitamin A can produce toxicity symptoms if taken to excess, it takes a huge and massive amount to generate them. There have been studies done of people who have taken 300,000 units of vitamin A a day for over a year with NO adverse effects. One has little to fear of overdosing on this nutrient. Additionally, the toxicity symptoms of excess vitamin A disappear quickly once supplementation is stopped.Studies done on pregnant women with vitamin A were actually done with an acne medicine made from a synthetic derivative of synthetic vitamin A -- in other words, a drug, not real vitamin A.
Native peoples the world over take special care to feed vitamin A-rich foods to pregnant women: liver, fish roe, eggs, butter, and cream. One does not see birth defects in these people. As far as the amount to take, this is a matter of debate. Obviously, children need to take less than adults. Also, the right amount for one person may not be the same as another. Consulting with a clinical nutritionist or orthomolecular physician would be a wise choice in determining the right amount for you.
A safe amount I've used with my adult HIV/AIDS clients is 25,000 IU's a day. In case of respiratory or urinary infections, I'll increase it to as much as 200,000 IU's a day for 5-10 days (along with other substances needed by the body to oversome the infection). Supplementing with vitamin A could be a wise choice for those facing immune system weakness, in combination with a nutrient-dense diet that eliminates refined sugars, vegetable oils, processed foods, and drugs.
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The huge transnational companies that produce toxic chemicals found in pesticides, herbicides and industrial and household products profit not only from the sale of these products, but also from the symptoms and chronic illnesses that they can trigger.
The vast majority of chemicals found in pesticides and other products, undergo little or no testing for chronic, low level exposures and for chronic health effects.
The same chemical companies that produce toxic chemicals also produce prescription drugs, veterinary medicines, a wide array of medical products and imaging technologies, hold cancer treatment and medical device patents, and a produce a staggering assortment of over-the-counter palliatives.
Families with toxin induced illnesses often spend large sums for drugs and medical treatment.
This circle of profit is not conspiracy theory, but an easily provable fact.
Below are chem/pharm web sites for the largest companies in the world. There you can see quickly and clearly that these companies profit from all sides of the picture.
Aventis was launched in December 1999 through the merger of Hoechst AG of Germany and Rhône-Poulenc SA of France. Main Home Page for Aventis--go to top right and click on "Aventis Worldwide" to see medical, agrochemical and pharmaceutical categories of business.
http://www.aventis.com/main/0,1003,EN-XX-100---,FF.html
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Have you guys ever feel fear when you heard of CHOLESTEROL??
1)Cholesterol is not a deadly poison, but a substance vital to the cells of all mammals. There are no such things as good or bad cholesterol, but mental stress, physical activity and change of body weight may influence the level of blood cholesterol. A high cholesterol is not dangerous by itself, but may reflect an unhealthy condition, or it may be totally innocent.
2) A high blood cholesterol is said to promote atherosclerosis and thus also coronary heart disease. But many studies have shown that people whose blood cholesterol is low become just as atherosclerotic as people whose cholesterol is high.
3) Your body produces three to four times more cholesterol than you eat. The production of cholesterol increases when you eat little cholesterol and decreases when you eat much. This explains why the ”prudent” diet cannot lower cholesterol more than on average a few per cent.
4) There is no evidence that too much animal fat and cholesterol in the diet promotes atherosclerosis or heart attacks. For instance, more than twenty studies have shown that people who have had a heart attack haven't eaten more fat of any kind than other people, and degree of atherosclerosis at autopsy is unrelated with the diet.
5) The only effective way to lower cholesterol is with drugs, but neither heart mortality or total mortality have been improved with drugs the effect of which is cholesterol-lowering only. On the contrary, these drugs are dangerous to your health and may shorten your life.
6) The new cholesterol-lowering drugs, the statins, do prevent cardio-vascular disease, but this is due to other mechanisms than cholesterol-lowering. Unfortunately, they also stimulate cancer in rodents.
7) Many of these facts have been presented in scientific journals and books for decades but are rarely told to the public by the proponents of the diet-heart idea.
8)The reason why laymen, doctors and most scientists have been misled is because opposing and disagreeing results are systematically ignored or misquoted in the scientific press.
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Can LEECHES act as HEALERS?????????????
A new study on osteoarthritis of the knee shows that leeches could possibly return as a popular treatment to relieve pain and inflammation. The study is reported in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.
The study focused on 16 patients whose average age was 68, all of whom had persistent knee pain for more than six months. None had sustained knee injuries and all had x-ray evidence of osteoarthritis. Exercises, physiotherapy, relaxation techniques, and dietary changes were already part of their treatment program.
Ten patients took part in leech therapy, eight of whom were women. Six others were given conventional treatment for pain. The leech group had four leeches applied to the painful knee and left in place for one hour and 20 minutes. Pain measures were recorded three days before the start of the treatment and 28 days afterwards. The leech treatment produced rapid pain relief after three days, with the greatest effects coming 24 hours after treatment. The effects were sustained four weeks later. No side effects or infections were reported, although patients described the initial leech bite as somewhat painful. Pain relief was not evident in those receiving conventional treatment.
The authors state that leech therapy was once used to relieve pain and inflammation, but fell out of favor last century. They added that there are plausible explanations for the effectiveness of leech therapy, since leech saliva contains various analgesic, anesthetic, and histamine-like compounds. The authors admit that the study is small, but the results warrant further research with a larger number of patients.
http://www.cosmiverse.com/science09180104.html
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