Madurai (Madhura Meenakshi Sundareswara Temple) Visit

Damage from Exposure to Sound of Audio Players ........ Certain

Just one hour's listening to an MP3 player/ Audio Player can damage hearing. It causes temporary changes in hearing sensitivity which may lead to long-term harm, say scientists.

A new study reveals that over-stimulation of hair cells within the ear occurs even at varying volume levels for short periods of time. Listening to music at high volume causes temporary changes in hearing sensitivity which may lead to long-term harm, reports dailymail.co.uk.

The new study follows previous warnings from doctors that using MP3 players at high volumes with earphones that fit into the ear canal could lead to loss of hearing.

The new study was conducted by researchers of Ghent University, Belgium. The volunteers were divided in two groups -- one group consisted of 21 people aged 19 to 28 years and they were exposed to pop and rock music using MP3 players at varying volumes for one hour.

The second group of 28 men and women were a control group who were not exposed to MP3 music.

Hearing tests were carried out before and after the exposure, which found significant threshold or emission shifts were observed between almost every session of the noise exposure group compared with the control group.

"It is well known that excessive occupational noise exposure can lead to noise-induced hearing loss. Excessive noise exposure can lead to metabolic and mechanical effects resulting in alterations of the structural elements of the inner ear that contains auditory sensory cells or hair cells," said lead researcher Hannah Kempler.

"The primary damage is concentrated on the outer hair cells, which are more vulnerable to acoustic over-stimulation than inner hair cells. Considering the reduction in hearing sensitivity after listening to a portable media player, these devices are potentially harmful," she added.

Emma Harrison, director of Royal National Institute for the Deaf (RNID), Britain, says that long term exposure to loud music can cause permanent deafness.

"RNID research shows that 66 percent of personal music player users are listening to music at louder than 85 decibels, which according to the World Health Organisation, can cause permanent hearing damage over time," Harrison said.

The European Commission has warned up to 10 percent of 30-year-olds would have to wear a hearing device within the next decade because they listen to music too loudly through headphones.

Surveys showed that more than 90 percent of young people in Europe and the US used MP3 players, often for several hours a day at maximum volume.

"Many people regularly use personal music players and are often not aware that they could be putting their hearing at risk. It is crucial that manufacturers and legislators are supportive of these plans and work together to protect the hearing of a generation of music lovers," she said.

The study was published in the Archives of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery journal.

Car Hygiene is Very Important for your health

 Dirty cars can pose serious threat to your health in warmer weather, reveals a new study.

The findings revealed that motorists are at danger from germs like Bacillus cereus and Staphylococcus "each time they enter their car".

Bugs linked with food poisoning, vomiting and skin infections were all discovered inside a "random" car when it was subjected to a range of tests.

During the study, scientists analysed swabs taken from the car used by a couple and their two children and found Bacillus cereus and Staphylococcus bacteria inside, including on the steering wheel, gear-stick and door handles.

Staphylococcal infections are contagious and can be transmitted from person to person. They can lead to skin infections and food poisoning.

Bacillus cereus, a bacteria which forms spores that lie dormant until ideal conditions arise - such as warmth and a source of nutrition - can also be responsible for food poisoning. It can cause severe nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea.

"Although many strains of bacteria are harmless, some can cause unpleasant illnesses," telegraph.co.uk quoted Anthony Hilton, reader in microbiology at Aston University, as saying.

"People would be horrified at the prospect of eating from a toilet seat; however they ought to be aware that eating from a contaminated dashboard may represent the same health hazards.

"It is important, particularly now the weather is becoming warmer, for people to ensure they do not leave food debris in their cars as bacteria can thrive on even tiny crumbs. Also if you have animals in your car they can contribute to the presence of harmful micro-organisms," Hilton added.

"Those who eat in their car should treat it as an extension of their home and maintain the same levels of hygiene as they would in their dining room," he said.

Good News for Diabetics (Insulin Users) ... in offing

Here's some good news for diabetics! Scientists have created an insulin which they claim can survive warmth and doesn't require to be kept in fridge.

Normally, insulin starts to go bad above 4 degrees centigrade -- making insulin supply very difficult in areas that don't have refrigeration.

Now, an international team, led by Monash University, has successfully strengthened the insulin's chemical structure without affecting its activity and this new insulin doesn't at all require refrigeration.

At the same time, the team's using their new knowledge to develop a form of insulin that could be delivered by pill. "Like milk, insulin formulations need to be kept cold. At temperatures above 4 ºC, insulin starts to degrade and it eventually becomes inactive. So supplying insulin in areas where fridges are scarce or difficult to maintain presents a real challenge.

"The instability of insulin is closely related to its chemical structure. Insulin is constructed from two different protein chains which are joined together by unstable disulfide bonds. Using a series of chemical reactions, we have been able to replace unstable bonds with stronger carbon-based bridges. "This replacement does not change the natural activity of insulin, but it does appear to significantly enhance its stability.

These so-called 'dicarba insulins' are stable at room temperature. And, storage at higher temperatures for years had not resulted in degradation or loss of activity," said team leader Bianca van Lierop.

According to the scientists, the new insulins may also provide much-needed insight into how the molecule works. "Insulin acts like a key in a lock at its receptor. When insulin binds to the receptor the lock opens and allows sugar to be taken up into cells from the blood. But insulin is known to change shape inside the 'lock' (the receptor), and its final shape is currently unknown.

"If we had that information, we might be able to design smaller, less complex, non-protein mimics of insulin," he said, adding that such molecules could one day become the basis of treatments taken in pill form, eliminating the need for injections.

What is the motivation for Better Work Results at Organisations???

 What is the motivation for Better Work at Organisation???
Owners and Managers often think about this>>>

Some of the studies suggest the following>>
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It is true that Financial Compensation is the motivation for hard physical (repetitive) work, required in most of the organisations.
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Where as
Self Directed Autonomy (Able to do things, their own way)
Mastery (Of Subject, Development of Domain Expertise)
Purpose (Of Achievement/ Help/ Satisfaction)
>>>>>>
Are the motivators for rudimentary cognitive Jobs (Where more brain power, creative skills are required), among High Skill Group.

Apache, wiki, skype are current day examples.
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This type of services are offered for little cost or rather often free of cost.  (Whereas some of the paid services could be appalling) Amazing?

Relaxation Quickens Healing

Be cool. A new study has claimed that people who are relaxed can heal up to twice as quickly as those who are very stressed. 

Researchers, led by Prof. John Weinman of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London, have carried out the study and found that being relaxed could be the key to healing quickly. For their study, the researchers inflicted small "punch" wounds on healthy volunteers whose levels of life stress were assessed using a standard questionnaire. 

Changes in levels of the stress hormone cortisol reflected the differences in healing speed. A similar pattern emerged from an analysis of pooled data from 22 studies by different research groups examining stress and wound healing, 'The Daily Telegraph' reported. 

Previously, the scientists showed that wound healing can be enhanced by psychological help aimed at addressing emotional stress. Prof. Weinman said: "My overall research interests are focused on investigating and assessing how patients perceive illness and treatment, and how this affects the way they respond to and recover from a range of physical health problems. 

"These studies focus specifically on how the life stresses people experience can impact on their ability to recover from different types of wound, such as those caused by surgical procedures and by different medical conditions, including venous leg ulcers. "I hope that these findings can now be used to identify psychological interventions to help speed up the recovery and healing process."

Windows 7 - Some Working Tips

Windows 7 has been a good OS for many of us to work with.  (It has all the goodies of Vista and is not all  those burdens/ bugs are not included hopefully).

 Some tips to make it even more friendlier.

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With applications and icons scattered all over the place, constant pop-up notifications, and programmes hidden deep within the Start menu, you might feel like Microsoft has done its best to hinder your productivity rather than enhance it. But with a little know-how and a few free tools, you can take charge of your desktop like never before.

• Use your Windows computer long enough, and sometime during the day you'll find you have a plethora of open applications. Getting back to a clean desktop within nothing running can involve dozens of clicks - and lots of wasted time. There has to be a better way, right?

There is, but Microsoft didn't provide it. Ntwind Software's free tool CloseAll does pretty much what its name implies: with one click, it closes every application running on your desktop. The tool requires no installation.
Just download it, unzip it in a folder of your choice, and then create a shortcut to the exe file on your desktop. You can also pin it to your taskbar for even easier access. Its icon - a big red X - makes its intent obvious. It's one of those little tools that you'll wonder how Microsoft forgot.

• When you're trying to concentrate on an urgent report or presentation, the last thing you need from your Windows desktop is a distracting pop-up from the system tray, telling you of some software update that can certainly wait.

You can get rid of those pop-ups for good in Windows 7, or you can customise the desktop to show only those pop-ups that you deem worthy.
First, visit the Action Centre by opening the Start menu and typing "Action". Click the first entry that appears, which should be Action Centre.
From the left-hand panel of the Action Centre, click "Change Action Centre settings", and you'll be taken to a dialog box in which you can deselect a number of types of system messages, including Windows Update notices, backup reminders, or internet security settings.
Turn them all off if you want to be left in peace. Click OK to make your selections stick.
That will take care of notifications from Windows, but to control notifications from installed applications, you'll need to open the Start menu and type "Notifications". Click the resulting Notification Area Icons entry, which will open a dialog box of the same name.

• There, you can see and control the "behaviours" of each of the system tray icons currently installed on your PC. Use the Behaviours drop-down to tell Windows whether to hide or show notifications from each icon, and click OK when you're done.

Window 7 comes with dozens of keyboard shortcuts that let you take control of your desktop quickly. Many of these keyboard shortcuts use the Windows key - which has a Windows logo on it along with the word Start on some keyboards. We'll abbreviate that key simply with the designation "Win".
Win+D, for example - which means holding down the Windows key and tapping the letter D - will quickly minimise all open applications, leaving an empty desktop.

• Pressing Win+D again will reopen the applications to the state they were in before. Win+T cycles through the thumbnails in your Windows taskbar. It's the same as rolling your mouse cursor over the icons in the taskbar.

Hold down the Windows key and tap the plus key on your number pad to magnify the open documents on your desktop. This is a great trick for reading fine print. The Windows key plus the minus key on your keypad zooms you back out.

• Sometimes controlling your desktop is about finding ways to call up applications quickly or power through ones that are already running. For these jobs, it's tough to find better tools than Hotkeyz and Switcher.

 Hotkeyz lets you start an application or execute a series of commands with a key combination of your choice. Switcher displays large thumbnails of all of your running applications across your entire desktop, making it easy to find just the programme you're looking for from among the many that might be running on your PC.

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Happy Working>>

Info about Drum - Stick Leaves మునగ ఆకు - An age old panacea for Health

Drum - Stick Leaves మునగ ఆకు - An age old panacea for Health

Morning Coffee ... Useful?? Or Hype??

Coffee Guzzlers ......... Read for a minute

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London: Does the morning cup of coffee help you kick start the day? Not really, it's all your mind, say scientists.
Researchers at the Bristol University found that the effect of caffeine, which has been believed to be an energy booster, does not actually increase people's alertness and it may rather raise the risk of anxiety and high blood pressure.
Lead researcher, Mr Peter Rogers, said their findings suggest that coffee drinkers may actually be better off without their habitual morning mug.
"Our study shows that we don't gain an advantage from consuming caffeine although we feel alerted by it, this is caffeine just bringing us back to normal," Mr Rogers was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail.
"On the other hand, while caffeine can increase anxiety, tolerance means that for most caffeine consumers this effect is negligible."
For the study, the researchers recruited 379 people who abstained from caffeine for 16 hours before drinking either caffeine or a placebo (dummy drink) and then were tested for a range of responses.
All were asked to rate their levels of anxiety and alertness and whether they had a headache before and after being given the caffeine or the placebo.
They were also asked to carry out a series of computer tasks to test their levels of memory, attentiveness and vigilance.
Those who received the dummy drink reported a fall in alertness and an increase in headaches, neither of which were reported by those who received caffeine.
However, it was found that their post-caffeine levels of alertness were no higher than those of no or low-level consumers who received a placebo.
This suggests caffeine only brings coffee drinkers back up to 'normal', the researchers said, adding that the findings could also apply to those who say they rely on a morning cup of tea to get their brains going.
They also found a genetic predisposition to anxiety did not deter people from drinking coffee.
In fact, those with the gene variant associated with anxiety tended to consume slightly larger amounts of coffee than those without the variant, suggesting a mild increase in anxiety may be a part of the pleasant buzz caused by caffeine.