Less teeth Brushing higher heart trouble
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People who don’t brush their teeth PRADA Handbags twice a day have a higher risk of developing heart disease, according to research based on Scottish data.
Those who do not brush their teeth as often have a 70 per cent extra risk of heart disease than those who brushed them twice a day, although the overall risk remained quite low, researchers say.
The findings could mean that asking people how often they brush their teeth could help doctors determine who is at risk of future cardiovascular disease, the researchers say.
It has already been established that inflammation in the body, including the mouth and gums, plays an important role in the build up of clogged arteries and, over the last two decades, there has been increased interest in links between heart problems and gum disease.
But this research, published on bmj.com today, is the first to investigate whether the number of times that people brush their teeth has any bearing on the risk of developing heart disease, the authors say.
The study, led by Professor Richard Watt from University College London, analysed information from more than 11,000 adults who took part in the Scottish Health Survey.
The data analysed covered lifestyle behaviours, such as smoking, exercise and oral health routines.
Oral health was generally good, with around 62 per cent of participants reporting regular (at least every six months) visits to the dentist, and 71 per cent reporting good oral hygiene (brushing teeth twice a day).
Participants who brushed their teeth less often were slightly older, more likely to be men and of lower socioeconomic status, and had a high prevalence of risk factors, including smoking, physical inactivity, obesity, hypertension and diabetes.
On a separate visit, nurses collected information on medical history and family history of heart disease, blood pressure and blood samples – these enabled the researchers to determine the levels of inflammation present in the body.
The information gathered from the interviews was then linked to hospital admissions and deaths in Scotland until December 2007.
Once the data were adjusted to take into account other risk factors for heart disease, such as family history, social class, obesity and smoking, the researchers found that participants who reported less frequent toothbrushing had a 70 per cent extra risk of heart disease compared to those who brushed their teeth twice per day.
People who Hermes Wallets had poor oral hygiene also tested positively for inflammatory “markers” in the body such as C-reactive protein and fibrinogen.
Prof Watt said that more work would need to be done to confirm whether poor oral health was a marker for cardiovascular disease, or whether it actually caused it. But he said: “Our results confirmed and further strengthened the suggested association between oral hygiene and the risk of cardiovascular disease – furthermore inflammatory markers were significantly associated with a very simple measure of poor oral health behaviour.”
But he says that a “simple self-report measure of toothbrushing” could give a good idea of a person’s future risk of cardiovascular disease.
“Given the high prevalence of oral infections in the population, doctors should be alert to the possible oral source of an increased inflammatory burden.
“In addition, educating patients in improving personal oral hygiene is beneficial to their oral health regardless of the relation with systemic disease.”
Skype now Supports 3G iPhone Calling
There’s good news and bad news. The good: Skype 2.0 for iPhone [iTunes link] lets you make calls over 3G. The bad: After August, you’ll need to pay for the feature.
That’s right: The most yearned-for feature of Skype (Skype) for iPhone, making calls over 3G, is finally here. The new app just landed in the app store, and by all accounts the 3G calls hold up fairly well.
Here’s the catch: After August 2010, Skype will start charging a “small monthly fee” for use of the 3G calling feature. You heard that right — even though you’re already paying AT&T (in the U.S., at least) for your data plan, Skype is throwing in Designer Replica Handbags an extra fee. At this point we’re not sure if the move is Skype’s own doing, or if the network operators had a hand in trying to make the Skype app a less desirable option.
How We Think Before We Speak: Making Sense Of Sent
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We engage in numerous discussions throughout the day, about a variety of topics, from work assignments to the Super Bowl to what we PRADA Handbags are having for dinner that evening. We effortlessly move from conversation to conversation, probably not thinking twice about our brain's ability to understand everything that is being said to us. How does the brain turn seemingly random sounds and letters into sentences with clear meaning?
In a new report in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological science, psychologist Jos J.A. Van Berkum from the Max Planck Institute in The Netherlands describes recent experiments using brain waves to understand how we are able to make sense of sentences.
In these experiments, Van Berkum and his colleagues examined Event Related Potentials (or ERPs) as people read or heard critical sentences as part of a longer text, or placed in some other type of context. ERPs are changes in brain activity that occur when we hear a certain stimulus, such as a tone or a word. Due to their speed, ERPs are useful for detecting the incredibly fast processes involved in understanding language.
Analysis of the ERPs has consistently indicated just how quickly the brain is able to relate unfolding sentences to earlier ones. For example, Van Berkum and colleagues have shown that listeners only need a fraction of a second to determine that a word is out of place, given what the wider story is about. As soon as listeners hear an unexpected word, their brain generates a specific ERP, the N400 effect (so named because it is a negative deflection peaking around 400 milliseconds). And even more interesting, this ERP will usually occur before the word is even finished being spoken.
In addition to the words themselves, the person speaking them is a crucial component in understanding what is being said. Van Berkum also saw an N400 effect occurring very rapidly when the content of a statement being spoken did not match with the voice of the speaker (e.g. "I have a large tattoo on my back" in an upper-class accent or "I like olives" in a young child's voice). These findings suggest that the brain very quickly Hermes Wallets classifies someone based on what their voice sounds like and also makes use of social stereotypes to interpret the meaning of what is being said. Van Berkum speculates that "the linguistic brain seems much more 'messy' and opportunistic than originally believed, taking any partial cue that seems to bear on interpretation into account as soon as it can."
But how does the language brain act so fast? Recent findings suggest that, as we read or have a conversation, our brains are continuously trying to predict upcoming information. Van Berkum suggests that this anticipation is a combination of a detailed analysis about what has been said before with taking 'quick-and-dirty' shortcuts to figure out what, most likely, the next bit of information will be.
One important element in keeping up with a conversation is knowing what or whom speakers are actually referring to. For example, when we hear the statement, "David praised Linda because. . .," we expect to find out more about Linda, not David. Van Berkum and colleagues showed that when listeners heard "David praised Linda because he. . .," there was a very strong ERP effect occurring with the word "he," of the type that is also elicited by grammatical errors. Although the pronoun is grammatically correct in this statement, the ERP occurred because the brain was just not expecting it. This suggests that the brain will sometimes ignore the rules of grammar when trying to comprehend sentences.
These findings reveal that, as we make sense of an unfolding sentence, our brains very rapidly draw upon a wide range of Designer Replica Handbags information, including what was stated previously and who the speaker is, in helping us understand what is being said to us. Sentence understanding is not just about diligently combining stored word meanings. The brain rapidly
Most People Believe Dreams Are Meaningful
Dreams might mean nothing, but many people take them seriously nonetheless, as Sigmund Freud did, new research finds.
People in at least three countries, including the United States, believe dreams contain important hidden truths, said researcher Carey Morewedge, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
In six different studies, Morewedge and his colleagues surveyed nearly 1,100 people about their dreams. The results are detailed in the February issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
"Psychologists' interpretations of the meaning of dreams vary widely," Morewedge said. "But our research shows that people believe their dreams provide meaningful insight into themselves and their world."
In one study that surveyed general beliefs about dreams, Morewedge and co-author Michael Norton, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, surveyed 149 university students in the United States, India and South Korea. The researchers asked the students to rate different theories about dreams.
Across all three cultures, an overwhelming majority of the students endorsed the theory that dreams reveal hidden truths about Gucci bags themselves and the world, a belief also endorsed by a nationally representative sample of Americans, Morewedge said.
In another study, Morewedge and his colleagues wanted to explore how dreams might influence people's waking behavior. A total of 182 commuters at a Boston train station were asked to imagine that one of four possible scenarios had happened the night before a scheduled airline trip: The national threat level was raised to orange, indicating a high risk of terrorist attack; they consciously thought about their plane crashing; they dreamed about a plane crash; or a real plane crash occurred on the route they planned to take.
A dream of a plane crash was more likely to affect travel plans than either thinking about a crash or a government warning, and the dream of a plane crash produced a similar level of anxiety as did an actual crash, Morewedge found.
Finally, Morewedge wanted to find out whether people perceive all dreams as equally meaningful, or whether their interpretations were influenced by their waking beliefs and desires. So, in another study, 270 men and women from across the United States took a short online survey in which they were asked to remember a dream they had had about a person they knew. People ascribed more importance to pleasant dreams about a person they liked as compared to a person they did not like, while they were more likely to consider an unpleasant dream more meaningful if it was about a person they disliked.
"In other words, people attribute meaning to dreams when it corresponds with their pre-existing beliefs and desires," Morewedge said. "This was also the case in another experiment which demonstrated that people who believe in God were likely to consider any dream in which God spoke to them to be meaningful; agnostics, however, considered dreams in which God spoke to be more meaningful when God commanded them to take a pleasant vacation than when God commanded them to engage in self-sacrifice."
More Prada Scarf research is needed to explore fully how people interpret their dreams, and in what cases dreams may actually reveal hidden information, Morewedge said.
"Most people understand that dreams are unlikely to predict the future but that doesn't prevent them from finding meaning in their dreams, whether their contents are mundane or bizarre," he said.
How to Becoming Your Best Self
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If I asked you were it possible for you to get into the best shape of your life, we could agree that it is. If I asked you were it possible for you PRADA Handbags to become smarter than you’ve ever been, I think we could agree that you could work hard, study, learn, and practice more than you ever had. But strangely, the idea of becoming the “perfect version” of ourselves seems so unobtainable. It seems impossible.
But it isn’t. It just requires you to work harder and more diligently than you ever have before. Is it worth it? Just ask yourself this. Would you like to be the smartest, best looking, fittest, funniest, best dressed, most compassionate, loving person you’ve ever been? Would you like to be your own definition of the perfect person?
If, like me, you answered yes, then you’ve taken the first step to becoming your best self. The journey is long, the obstacles hard. The plan, though, is simple. Define, plan, execute, redefine, plan again, execute again, etc. Let’s go over the plan in a little more detail.
Plan – think about your perfect self. What does he or she look like? How does he speak? How does he think? How does he eat? How does he interact with others? What do people think of him? What is he capable of, that you aren’t? Define your perfect self in adjectives that are measurable and obtainable. Things like “he is lean and strong, with a low body fat percentage and a good amount of visible muscle,” or “she speaks well, avoids idle conversation, and is listened to and respected by all of those that she communicates with.”
Take those descriptions and plan out how long it would take for you to achieve each and every one of them. For instance “if I am at 17% body fat, and I can lose 1 lb per week, it will take me 20 weeks to get to my goal body fat percentage,” or “I speak often without thinking about what I’m saying. This lends to people not caring about my thoughts or respecting my opinions. I need to spend the next 3 months focusing on my idle talk.”
Health Top Tips Nutrition Love Lifestyle Happiness Weight Loss Then implement a “snowball method” towards becoming your perfect self. Start with the shortest timed goals. “I will floss every day” will only take about a week or two to perfect, whereas “I will be able to run a marathon” might take much longer. As soon as you’ve made a description habit, move to the next one (while continuing the first, of course). With each habit you introduce into your newly constructed lifestyle, you will be 1 step closer to your perfect self. You will also gain momentum with each goal, which will motivate you towards the next goal. By the time you reach the goals that could take months or even years to implement, you’ll be so full of new skills and motivation that you’ll tackle them with no problem.
Remember that each of your goals should have purpose. You may found as I have that a couple of months (or years) down the line that a certain goal of yours no longer suits your best interest. Maybe there is no good purpose for being 10% body fat, but instead you find it important to have functional strength and cardiovascular stamina. In this case you would align your plan to fit your new goals. Instead of focusing on body fat percentage, you would plan workouts that focused on increasing strength and stamina. With the victory of each goal implemented into your lifestyle you’ll be one step closer to becoming your vision of your perfect self. Each victory will mark a decision you made and plan that you carried out, work that you did to make yourself better. You’ll feel better about yourself with each victory, and with the learning of each new skill or the discipline of each new focus, you’ll find it that much easier to move to the next goal.
It’s a long journey to Hermes Wallets the top of the mountain, but it’s completely obtainable, and totally worth the effort. Start climbing today, and you’ll be well on your way before you even start feeling the pain. Good luck, and I’ll see you at the top!
5 Things to Know About Personal Finance
Oh money. It makes the world go ’round. It’s one of the biggest reasons for divorce. It either frees us or enslaves us. It is the commodity of all commodities. And yet, as much as many of us make, most of us know so little about how it works. I blame our parents. They should have known. They should have taught us. Well, either way, I’m about to give you a quick crash course in cash money 101, and how personal finances should work. Buckle up and enjoy the ride. Hopefully you’ll be enlightened.
1. How a credit card works
Credit cards are an interesting commodity. They can either work for you or against you, depending on how much you know about them and how smart you are with them. The biggest problem with credit cards, though, is that we gain access to them before we know enough about them. Your parents should have taught you how they work, but sadly, many adults don’t even know exactly how they work. This article should help. Read it. Then read it again.
2. How to create a budget
Budgeting is something that people either love or hate to do. Personally I hate it. But I keep a general budget because it’s important to know where my money is going. A friend of mine knows where every dollar he spends goes. I’d rather divide my money into 2 different accounts, business and pleasure. I give myself an “allowance” to do whatever I want with monthly, and the rest stays in my “business” account for bills and other living expenses. Need a crash course on building a budget? Check this out.
3. The time value of money
The time value of money is a simple principal to understand: basically it states that any amount of money is worth more today than the same amount of money in the future due to it’s earning potential. This means that if you have $100 to invest today, it’s worth more than $100 a year from now, because it could be gaining value through investments for a year. Let’s assume you average 9% on your investments… Your $100 today will be worth $109 in a year, whereas getting $100 a year from now is only worth about $91, due to the value of money lost in the year.
This is very important when you consider the next point…
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4. Start investing early
Take a look at this chart. Basically what it states is that when Saver B starts investing earlier on in life, the time value of his money allows for gaining potential so much greater that even though Saver A invested more than 4 times the amount of Saver B, Saver B has gained more than $400k more than Saver A by retirement.
Moral of the story? If you start investing now, you’ll have much more than if you wait till you make more money, even if you invested more in the years to come.
5. Let your money work for you
We were all taught that it is important to gain a good education and to learn valuable skills to enter the job force and start a good career. But here’s what few of us have learned: more important than having a good job is learning how to make your money Designer Replica Handbags work for you. Consider this: if you can save $500k, and you average 10% on your investment portfolio, you will gain $50k annually without doing anything other than having the money. $2 million will earn you $200k per year (earning 10%). $10 million will earn $1 million per year. The more you invest, the more you’ll make, without lifting a finger (well, other than managing your money, of course).
Sure it’s important to have a good job. But it’s even more important to be investing your money, no matter how much you’re making. If the goal is financial security and freedom, it doesn’t take rocket science; just a little discipline and sacrifice early on. And what you’ll gain is so much more than what you could buy today.
One last note: $1 at age 18 can’t get you more than a coke, or maybe a dollar menu burger. But $1 at age 18 is worth $54 at age 60 (assuming 10% again). Keep that in mind the next time you stop at Starbucks. Your cup of joe is actually taking more than $150 out of your retirement fund.
Spend wisely.
Why don’t I spy on my husband?
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Tiger Woods's, pictured with wife Elin Nordegren, multiple infidelities were revealed by over a dozen women
Now, I am not a woman who spies. I know this is an odd admission, but I have met so many women who do spy on their partners that it seems almost PRADA Handbags natural to assume we all do.
Just look at the selection of love rats - Ronan Keating (who would have thought it!), Ashley Cole (everyone thought it), Vernon Kay (but only of the text messaging type). Even that lovely Mark Owen from Take That has had a series of affairs.
Women have become so paranoid they spend their lives electronically checking up on their husbands. They hack into their emails, scroll through their iPhones and constantly sneak peeks at their BlackBerrys.
This seems crazy, but when I ask my friends why they do this checking up, all of them say they believe all men would have an affair given the opportunity.
And that opportunity has come everyone's way thanks to the internet, Facebook, Friends Reunited and text messaging ... on and on it goes.
I have never suspected my husband of anything. I have never had any reason to. He has three phones. I don't access any of them. I would feel it was an invasion of his privacy - I also don't know how to access his phones as I am a technophobe. I don't even know how to turn on an iPhone, let alone find incriminating evidence on it.
I don't check his mobile phone bill, re-dial numbers he has called or do any of the stuff that so many women do.
Women faint when I tell them this. They think I have gone mad. 'HE HAS THREE PHONES!' they shout. 'WHY DON'T YOU CHECK UP ON HIM?'
I then reveal that, half the time, I don't even know where he is. That makes them nearly tear their hair out in frustration.
But, I say, there are many reasons why I don't. For a start, our relationship is hardly going to work if I trust him so little. How can I expect us to function if I am constantly demanding to read his text messages and hacking into his Facebook account? Also, maybe I don't want to know if he is having an affair (which I am sure he is not).
This is a concept most women struggle with. Yet why would I want to know? What effect would it have on my family and I? It would turn me into a screaming harpy, demanding to know where he was every second of the day and becoming rigid with paranoia like most other women I meet.
It would make me feel undermined, lied to and unloved. I trust my husband, so I have decided maybe it's better to leave it at that and not go digging around in order to unearth something that might tip our world upside down.
In order for us to continue our harmonious life, maybe it's better not to know.
I want to tell so many of my friends this. I have seen them destroyed by what they discover. Yet what good has it done them?
Yes, their husbands may be having affairs but, if this isn't impinging on their marital lives, as long as their husbands are loving towards them, make them happy and play a supportive role in their lives, what is the point of tracking down a hunch? Yet, as I said, other women think I am mad. They check on their husbands constantly because they absolutely have to know.
It has all got so complicated! In my mother's day, men only really had affairs with either someone in the office or someone they met on a business trip.
Illicit communication was conducted through letters or phone calls, with the mistress hanging up when the wife answered. Nowadays, a man can be having an affair and it's almost impossible to find out.
This is why Hermes Wallets women have turned into detectives. I have one friend who, out of the blue, decided to open her husband's emails. She had never done this before. She told me she probably knew he was having an affair but had made the decision she didn't want to know.
But then, one day as, yet again, her husband was mysteriously 'late home from work', she opened his account and there were endless messages from his mistress.
'It was devastating,' she told me. 'Not just that he was having an affair but because of the things he'd written about me. He'd called me fat and boring. He said he didn't love me. It was excruciating.'
She and her husband split up and she is dating someone new - and she watches him like a hawk.
'I demand to know his passwords to everything.' she says. 'I scan his computer, pore over his text messages and missed calls.'
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She told me that he changed the password to his mobile phone the other day, saying he thought he was being hacked into. She told him she would ask him to leave if he didn't give her access to his phone right then and there.
But does her new partner do the same to her? Of course not. In fact, men generally don't. I can leave my mobile phone lying around and my husband would never dream of looking at it.
I think there are many reasons for this - women are far more suspicious about their men than men are about their women, which is odd because if men are having affairs they are (usually) having them with other women and not all of them can be single.
Yet the fact of an affair seems to obsess women. I was talking about this with a friend today. She found out her husband of ten years was being unfaithful.
She told me she never checked his emails, mobile or Facebook and then, one day, she found a receipt for a dinner for two in London. It was for a restaurant she had never been to with her husband.
She checked the date - he had told her he was out with 'a few work colleagues'.
Then she went online and found he had been seeing someone for the past year - his calls were logged on his account on the internet.
The problem is that you may find out things you don't want to know. You may find out your husband is cheating on you, that he has lied to you - and it's possible to find out things even worse than that.
One friend of mine found a cache of intimate pictures his mistress had taken of herself. It made her feel so sick she walked out of the door and never went back. I agreed that it was a humiliation too far.
But let's say it's not as bad as that. What if it's a few flirtatious text messages? An over-emotional email to an ex-girlfriend?
What do you do? Make a fuss and demand constant honesty? Think again. Even if your husband vows to end it, who's to say it really is over?
Men can be devious. They just find new passwords for their accounts and get a new telephone.
Short of stalking them every single minute of the day, what more can you do?
In fact, I know some women who are so obsessed with the idea that their husband might be having an affair that they go to all sorts of electronic shenanigans trying to find out - they lie to mobile phone companies to get past records, they go online and Designer Replica Handbags set up 'honeytraps' for their husbands.
I, for one, have no time for this. Our electronic suspicions are killing our marriages. It is time to leave those mobile phones where they are and learn to trust again.
You Should Teach Your Kids About Money
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Up until a couple of years ago, being financially literate was a skill needed for “later in life.” Nowadays, things have drastically changed. The PRADA Handbags number of financial literacy classes is multiplying and money management classes are taught to students as early as grammar school.
“It’s never too early to learn about money” seems to be the consensus. An early start to understanding how to manage your assets means an early start towards a financially successful life.
Mint recently conducted an online survey aimed at better understanding what users’ approach was to money as kids and how they are teaching their own children. Nearly half of the survey respondents stated that they earned money before or in elementary school. Mowing lawns and babysitting were the most frequently held jobs and almost nine in 10 respondents had paying jobs in high school. High school jobs were mainly in retail stores, baby-sitting, restaurants and, again, mowing lawns. The survey indicated that earnings in high school were mostly used for entertainment, eating out or car related expenses.
Most importantly, however, the majority of survey respondents said they were not very prepared to manage money after high school.
Despite that fact, most users indicated that they were responsible for paying their way through college: a large majority contributed 50% or more towards college expenses.
Less than half of users said that they felt they were very prepared to manage money or to save after college, and one in three users ran into early credit card problems.
That is probably what is encouraging more open conversations about money in these families now. Over half of users with children between the ages of four and 18 indicated that they talk a lot about the value of money, living within their means, saving to buy toys and helping those who are less fortunate. Yet, the majority of users said they felt schools do a better job teaching about anti-drug programs than about financial responsibility.
Realizing that children need to become educated about money, more schools are implementing programs of study through the school curriculum and after-school programs.
Also, many organizations are developing online games that focus on money management. Online games have become one of the best ways to get kids interested in managing their money. The Great Piggy Bank Adventure, offered by the investment firm T. Rowe Price and Disney, is an online virtual board game that introduces kids ages eight to 14 to financial concepts and topics such as saving and Hermes Wallets spending wisely and how to use different investment strategies for growing assets. The game also teaches kids how to achieve goals. There is also a theme park dedicated to helping kids and families learn about financial planning. T. Rowe Price sponsors the Great Piggy Bank Adventure at Innoventions at Walt Disney World? Resort’s Epcot theme park. It combines physical and virtual elements to create engaging learning challenges for families.
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The United States government has also taken a stance on financial literacy. In 2002, the Treasury established the Office of Financial Education in an effort to promote access to tools that help Americans make educated choices in personal finance topics such as saving, credit management, home ownership and retirement planning. Among the programs initiated by the Department is the National Financial Capability Challenge, a non-monetary award designed to increase the financial knowledge and capability of high-school aged youth across the United States. The idea behind this program is to teach children how to take control of their financial future as part of a school’s curriculum. Within the program, students learn about personal finance topics and take a voluntary online exam to demonstrate what they’ve learned. The top scoring students receive awards and the outstanding schools and educators are recognized. To learn more about the program, visit the National Financial Capability Challenge website.
The Washington Department of Financial Institutions also has a list of games that help teach kids about money, from a variety of sources including the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA), the U.S. Mint, the Department of Treasury, the Federal Reserve Bank and the National Council of Economic Education.
If you want your children to Designer Replica Handbags grow up to be financially responsible adults, the key is to start their education early on and make learning a fun, engaging activity. Their school, after-school programs and online games can help you do that, but ultimately, nothing is more important than making open money conversations a regular part of their upbringing.
Olympic English article
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Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen:
Bidding for PRADA Handbags the Olympic Games, in a way, an image-creating undertaking. The first and foremost thing is to let people fall in love with the city at first sight, attracting them by its unipue image. What image does Beijing intend to create for itself once it has the opportunity to host the 2008 Olympics?
It is known to all that the Beijing Municipal Government has already set the theme for the future games: New Beijing, Great Olympics. For me, the 2008 Olympics will be a great green Olympics illuminated with two more special colors, yellow and red.
First, yellow is a meaningful color. The Yellow River is China's Mother River and the descendants of the Yellow Emperor. This color has a special origin and great significance for the Chinese people. Beijing is the capital of New China and previously the capital for nine dynasties in Chinese history. So, yellow will naturally add splendor to the 2008 Games.
Secondly, the 2008 Olympics will be a red pageant.Red is another traditionally cherished color for the whole country. We adore red. On big occasions, we like to decorate our homes in red. It is the color of double happiness, representing joyous moments, auspiciousness, enthusiasm and prosperity. Red is one of the most suitable colors to describe the future of Beijing . Beijing , together with the whole country, is becoming more and more prosperous in the process of modernization. Should the 2008 Olympics be held in Beijing, the whole city will be a sea of red : the red torch,red flags, red flowers, and the radiant faces of millions of joyful people.
Above all, the 2008 Olympics will be a green Olympics. Adding a green ingredient is essential in creating an appealing image, as we can't deny the fact that Beijing, at the moment, is not as green a city as what we like it to be. Striving for an environmentally appealing city has become a central task for all the citizens of Beijing. Big efforts have been made in pollution control, replanting and beautification of the city. According to a project entitled" The Green Olympic Action Plan", between 1998 and 2007, Beijing, we have invested 100 billion RMB in preserving and protecting the environment. Some 12.5 million trees and over 1 million acres of grass will be planted along the Fourth Ring Road. By then, the city's green area will make up 40% of its total. The city will also dredge its reservoirs used as a water supply to Beijing residents, controlling industrial pollution and moving out the 200 factories presently located within the city proper.
Certainly, all of this is no easy task. But I am sure that all of us have confidence that we will realize these green goals. For now we have the full support and participation of the environmentally conscious citizens. Each citizen is showing great concern for every one of the steps the city government takes. As the saying goes, United, we stand, and agreen Beijing will be achieved.
When our Hermes Wallets aspiration becomes a reality, it will be a unique Olympics." New Beijing, Great Olympics"; will be weaved of these three superb colors: yellow, red and green.
Let us welcome it and look forward to it! Thank you!
Spanking Kids Leads to More Aggressive Behavior
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Disciplining young children is one of the key jobs of any parent — most people would have no trouble agreeing with that. But whether or not that discipline Designer Replica Handbags should include spanking or other forms of corporal punishment is a far trickier issue.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) does not endorse spanking for any reason, citing its lack of long-term effectiveness as a behavior-changing tactic. Instead the AAP supports strategies such as time-outs when children misbehave, which focus on getting kids to reflect on their behavior and the consequences of their actions. Still, as many parents can attest, few responses bring about the immediate interruption of a full-blown tantrum like a swift whack to the bottom.
Now researchers at Tulane University provide the strongest evidence yet against the use of spanking: of the nearly 2,500 youngsters in the study, those who were spanked more frequently at age 3 were more likely to be aggressive by age 5. The research supports earlier work on the pitfalls of corporal punishment, including a study by Duke University researchers that revealed that infants who were spanked at 12 months scored lower on cognitive tests at age 3.
"I'm excited by the idea that there is now some nice hard data that can back up clinicians when they share their caution with parents against using corporal punishment," says Dr. Jayne Singer, clinical director of the child and parent program at Children's Hospital Boston, who was not involved in the study.
Led by Catherine Taylor, the Tulane study was the first to control simultaneously for variables that are most likely to confound the association between Hermes Wallets spanking and later aggressive behavior. The researchers accounted for factors such as acts of neglect by the mother, violence or aggression between the parents, maternal stress and depression, the mother's use of alcohol and drugs, and even whether the mother considered abortion while pregnant with the child.
Each of these factors contributed to children's aggressive behavior at age 5, but they could not explain all of the violent tendencies at that age. Further, the positive connection between spanking and aggression remained strong, even after these factors had been accounted for.
"The odds of a child being more aggressive at age 5 if he had been spanked more than twice in the month before the study began increased by 50%," says Taylor. And because her group also accounted for varying levels of natural aggression in children, the researchers are confident that "it's not just that children who are more aggressive are more likely to be spanked."
What the study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, shows is that outside of the most obvious factors that may influence violent behavior in children, spanking remains a strong predictor. "This study controls for the most common risk factors that people tend to think of as being associated with aggression," says Singer. "This adds more credence, more data and more strength to the argument against using corporal punishment."
Among the mothers who were studied, nearly half (45.6%) reported no spanking in the previous month, 27.9% reported spanking once or twice and 26.5% reported spanking more than twice. Compared with children who were not hit, those who were spanked were more likely to be defiant, demand immediate satisfaction of their wants and needs, get frustrated easily, have temper tantrums and lash out physically against others.
The reason for that, says Singer, may be that spanking instills fear rather than understanding. Even if a child were to stop his screaming PRADA Handbags tantrum when spanked, that doesn't mean he understands why he shouldn't be acting up in the first place. What's more, spanking models aggressive behavior as a solution to problems.
For children to understand what and why they have done something wrong, it may take repeated efforts on the parent's part, using time-outs — a strategy that typically involves denying the child any attention, praise or interaction with parents for a specified period of time (that is, the parents ignore the child). These quiet times force children to calm down and learn to think about their emotions, rather than acting out on them blindly.
Spanking may stop a child from misbehaving in the short term, but it becomes less and less effective with repeated use, according to the AAP; it also makes discipline more difficult as the child gets older and outgrows spanking. As the latest study shows, investing the time early on to teach a child why his behavior is wrong may translate to a more self-aware and in-control youngster in the long run.
Are you living consciously in an unconscious world?
gemahrv0505
You may have noticed that our PRADA Handbags world is something of a chaotic place lately. Loud. Noisy. Frantic. Angry. Violent. Fearful. Just watch the news. Actually, don’t. And by ‘world’, I mean the physical world we inhabit, not the self-created one inside our head. Although that can be a pretty awful place too. When we let it be.
A Personal Search
For me, a large part of the last decade has been something of a personal expedition beyond the world of logic, academia, business, conventional thinking, religion and even (the traditional approach to) personal development. While all of those things serve a purpose and have value (of course), I wanted to see what lives beyond them. After all, sometimes terms like ‘logic’ and ‘common sense’ are just euphemisms for fear and not-knowing-any-different. And, to be completely honest, sometimes success doesn’t feel very, er, successful. If you know what I mean.
A Realisation
I arrived at a point in my life where I had an overwhelming sense that, despite my reasonable education, mildly successful career and alleged knowledge and intelligence, I was missing out on something that could be fundamental to my existence, my future and to my potential growth. I wanted to see what Hermes Wallets existed beyond my programming. Beyond my (then) ‘current world view’. My social conditioning. My default setting. My comfort zone. My formal education. My self-limiting beliefs. My expectations. My fears. And my prejudices.
I considered the notion that maybe my concept of how the world and all its intricacies ‘worked’ (life, death, people, relationships, spirituality, wealth, happiness, misery, success, failure, fear, destiny, etc.) was the very thing which held me back. I also considered the notion that perhaps my over-thinking mind was, ironically, my barrier to learning, understanding and enjoying a new way of being. I wanted to learn more about my non-cerebral self.
Could it be that in some ways, with some issues, I was missing the point? Could my mind possibly be a handicap (with some things)? Could it be that I’ve been taught things – perhaps many things – which simply aren’t true? Or maybe, not true for me. But surely if enough people believe the same thing, it must be true?
Much of the information (teaching) you and I receive (from about kindergarten onwards) tells us that success, and therefore happiness, is largely about what we can accumulate, do, achieve, control, own and look like. I decided to explore what success might look like working from the inside-out and not the other way around (the conventional model).
A Glimpse of What Might Be
Have you ever had an experience, perhaps a brief moment in time, when a door to a different world was opened for you? Perhaps a moment when you got a glimpse of something more than your current perception of reality? A time when you secretly (or maybe openly) questioned everything you’ve ever thought, believed and known? A time when you realised that maybe there is a different way to ‘do’ life? A different way to experience, think (or not think), feel and be?
For me, there came a stage when I realised that the way I saw the world was just that: the way I saw it. My version of reality. And that in itself can be a Designer Replica Handbags limitation. Doesn’t have to be, but can be. This realisation, this awakening, was the beginning of my journey towards consciousness. Or, should I say, a more conscious version of me. I committed to becoming more aware, more open and less ‘right’. Damn that need to be right.
I determined to stop thinking that I knew so much, to stop assuming and to stop finding comfort and safety in the familiar and the cerebral. And no, I didn’t have any plans to become some kind of soft-speaking, all-knowing, sandal-wearing mystical, magical, enlightened guru living in a cave and writing sacred texts on parchment (although, I don’t mind a good sandal and I do like a nice piece of parchment) but rather, just a simple and hopeful desire to become a more conscious, aware and humble person. A Parable
Imagine you’ve spent your entire life in a medium-sized town (probably not a stretch for some of you). And living in that medium-sized town, your parents have always warned you, no, they have ordered you, not to venture down certain streets or to go into certain areas. For your own good. You’re told not to go down those streets because it’s dangerous. Unsafe. You might get hurt. Bad things happen there. Since you were a kid, you were taught that all you ever needed for happiness and security existed in ‘your part’ of town.
Strangely, nobody in your part of town ever seemed to be particularly happy.
Then one day you’re an adult and you make a bold decision to talk to your parents about life beyond the safe-zone. You’ve been curious for a long time but nobody ever discusses it. Ever. You wonder why. You feel you’re now old enough to know exactly what lies beyond those safe and familiar (and let’s be honest, boring) streets. You want to know more. To have some insight into a world beyond the only one you’ve ever experienced.
You muster up the courage to ask your father exactly what it’s like down those forbidden streets. You want details. You tell him it’s time. You ask the question and he stares at you blankly. He says nothing. He looks a little guilty and sheepish; two looks you’ve never seen before. You ask again. More silence. Your stomach sinks a little as you begin to realise something. Something big. You look to your mother. She shrugs her shoulders and looks to the ground. Your stomach churns. You realise they’ve never been there. They have no answers for you. Only fear. Fear of the unknown.
They’ve trained you to be terrified of something they know nothing about. Just as they themselves were trained.
In desperation, you run to Gucci bags the phone and dial your grandfather: the wise old family patriarch. He will know. He knows everything. Two minutes later you put down the phone. Shattered and disillusioned, you walk slowly to the window. You feel physically ill. You stare out and wonder what lies beyond your familiar surroundings. All of a sudden, those streets you know so well have come to represent something else. In a heartbeat you make a decision to take a trip. You tell your concerned parents you’re going on a journey. They panic. They protest. Scared of the unknown.
They have built their own prison. And you decide you’ve been an inmate for too long.
You fill a backpack with some supplies and prepare yourself mentally. You’re not really sure what to pack because you don’t know where you’re going, what you’ll find or when you’ll return. Or even, if you’ll return. You walk out of the house and, as you do, you close the door on a lifetime of fear, control, pointless repetition, repression and self-limiting beliefs. You love your parents and they love you but, despite your respect for them and appreciation of them, you don’t want to become them.
As you begin your walk, your heart is filled with hope and possibilities. In a moment of clarity and insight, a small voice tells you that an important part of the journey ahead is really about what you’re leaving behind: insecurity, fear, self-doubt, self-limiting thinking, crazy rules and destructive beliefs.
As you reach the outer limits of the ‘safe-zone’ your irrational (but understandable) childhood fears have been replaced with curiosity and excitement. Before long, you have travelled further than ever before and to your surprise and delight, the new place is not terrifying at all. In fact, it’s beautiful. And magical. Even though you’ve never been there, you feel like you’ve come home. For the first time ever, you feel like you belong.
Knowledge Beyond Education
It’s my belief that in the process of life we often allow ourselves to become disconnected from our inner intelligence. From the ‘knowing’ we have beyond our experiences. Beyond our education. Beyond logic. Beyond what we’ve been told to believe and trained to do. I believe we’re all born with an intelligence and a consciousness that’s hard-wired into our DNA. There are things we ‘just know’ without ever having been taught them. In animals we call this instinct.
We humans have no problem believing in the ability of animals to just know certain things. However, when it comes to us very educated, intellectual and Prada Scarf over-thinking humans, we often find ways to discount things such as inbuilt knowledge. Or human instinct. Some call it genetic intelligence. And sadly, for many of us, if we can’t see it, touch it, measure it, graph it or explain it, we won’t believe in it. Or even consider it.
Sometimes science is a limitation. As is knowledge.
Being a fundamentally flawed (but eternally curious) alpha-male, I’m still using my training wheels to explore the realms of consciousness and enlightenment. My ‘L’ plate is firmly fastened around my neck as I learn, grow and continue to ask questions. I know next-to-nothing but what I do know, excites me. The ideas of ‘tuning in to’ my genetic intelligence and becoming a more conscious being are things that simply feel right for me.Overdue even.
Choosing to live consciously in an unconscious world presents many challenges, opportunities and lessons. It also presents me with a chance to experience life beyond those old familiar streets of my own medium-sized town.
Making Passion More Passionate
gemahrv0504
Somewhere between the first kiss and growing old together, many couples experience dormant growth phases during their relationship, leaving one, if not both PRADA Handbags partners with a need for greater input, emotionally and/or physically.
The process of emotional growth is both independent, and uncomfortable. To ideally maintain and promote harmony, each partner must be willing to flex with the growth needs of the other, while also contributing to the growth of the relationship.
A long-lasting relationship is founded on compassion, respect, and genuine love for your partner. These qualities can - and should - be frequently expressed in a number of ways, to reaffirm the value of the relationship. Continuously seeking to re-invent the relationship by expressing appreciation for your partner will solidify the connection between you.
To nudge your relationship out of the proverbial emotional drought, here is a list of suggestions for adding more passion into your relationship:
1. Reality check Hermes Wallets your partner. Before doing anything to encourage the relationship, ask yourself if your partner is good for you, and why. Know the basic answers like the back of your hand. If you find yourself unable or unwilling to admit value in your partner, you may be in the wrong relationship.
2. Acknowledge the uniqueness of the relationship through your partner. There is potential in every moment to experience the greatest point of your relationship. Showing appreciation for your partner's uniqueness further defines the relationship based on a broader attraction. Communicate the acknowledgement of individuality of your partner frequently, both emotionally and physically.
3. Make love right now. Allow the sexual aspect of your relationship to evolve into an activity of ultimate fulfillment, reserved only for your partner. Instead of making love for your satisfaction, make love for your partner, and allow them to do the same for you.
4. Be friends, too. Would you be friends with your partner, outside of the relationship? If you find the answer is "no," don't worry - there's always time to make new friends. Identify activities you and your partner can do and enjoy together. Participate in a third-party project, such as charity work. Activities beyond intimacy will broaden, and therefore strengthen, the foundation of your relationship.
5. Be what you want to see. Demand no more out of your partner than what you are willing to make out of life yourself. If you are capable of Designer Replica Handbags great things - and you are - then get to work. Be certain to test all seemingly realistic requirements on yourself, before seeking to ask them of your partner.
6. Form a pact to achieve excellence in some way. Whether it be a physical health regimen, a bowling tournament, doing the taxes, or managing a business together, forming a pact to achieve excellence in a specific, tangible way will build trust between partners. Commitment to a short-term goal is the best exercise a relationship can get.
7. Love with your whole heart. All too many times, past relationships keep us from loving with our whole heart. If your relationship reality check is solid, ask yourself how you've been holding back on your partner, and why. Do you expect criticism, instead of acceptance? Recognize the boundaries of your love, and identify positive ways to expand them daily.
8. Improving yourself improves the relationship. Self enrichment is an effective, important means of perpetual contribution to your relationship. Expanding your Gucci bags personal knowledge and interests will keep conversations interesting and generate new ideas for growing together, through new activities and experiences shared between partners.
Remember, there's nothing wrong with taking care of you. The more you have to give, the more there will be to share with your significant other.
9. Explore diversity in faith, culture, or politics. Diversity - and its acceptance - serve as a cornerstone of any fulfilling, long-lasting relationship. Your partner is likely to embrace at least some perspectives different than your own with regard to religion, culture, or political affiliation. Look to explore your partner's diversity, and openly accept the differences that make you both unique.
10. Don't go to bed mad. Make it a point to resolve differences before going to bed. Allowing arguments or heated discussions to fester overnight can solidify emotions, while leaving the real issues behind. In addition to promoting communication and relationship stability, addressing differences before bed reduces stress and promotes better sleep.
A meaningful, fulfilling relationship is perhaps the greatest investment you can make in both yourself, and your partner. As your relationship grows, look Prada Scarf for new ways to interact with each other as you haven't before. Each human represents a vast Universe of knowledge and emotion waiting for exploration by just one individual with the unwavering desire, patience, and capacity to know them.
Jim D. Ray is a parapsychologist with a diverse background in multiple subject concentrations, including business, psychology and parapsychology, criminal justice, philosophy, education, internet technology, physics, and vocal performance arts. Jim can be reached by e-mail at: jray@web-presence.net.
Making Passion More Passionate
gemahrv0504
Somewhere between the first kiss and growing old together, many couples experience dormant growth phases during their relationship, leaving one, if not both PRADA Handbags partners with a need for greater input, emotionally and/or physically.
The process of emotional growth is both independent, and uncomfortable. To ideally maintain and promote harmony, each partner must be willing to flex with the growth needs of the other, while also contributing to the growth of the relationship.
A long-lasting relationship is founded on compassion, respect, and genuine love for your partner. These qualities can - and should - be frequently expressed in a number of ways, to reaffirm the value of the relationship. Continuously seeking to re-invent the relationship by expressing appreciation for your partner will solidify the connection between you.
To nudge your relationship out of the proverbial emotional drought, here is a list of suggestions for adding more passion into your relationship:
1. Reality check Hermes Wallets your partner. Before doing anything to encourage the relationship, ask yourself if your partner is good for you, and why. Know the basic answers like the back of your hand. If you find yourself unable or unwilling to admit value in your partner, you may be in the wrong relationship.
2. Acknowledge the uniqueness of the relationship through your partner. There is potential in every moment to experience the greatest point of your relationship. Showing appreciation for your partner's uniqueness further defines the relationship based on a broader attraction. Communicate the acknowledgement of individuality of your partner frequently, both emotionally and physically.
3. Make love right now. Allow the sexual aspect of your relationship to evolve into an activity of ultimate fulfillment, reserved only for your partner. Instead of making love for your satisfaction, make love for your partner, and allow them to do the same for you.
4. Be friends, too. Would you be friends with your partner, outside of the relationship? If you find the answer is "no," don't worry - there's always time to make new friends. Identify activities you and your partner can do and enjoy together. Participate in a third-party project, such as charity work. Activities beyond intimacy will broaden, and therefore strengthen, the foundation of your relationship.
5. Be what you want to see. Demand no more out of your partner than what you are willing to make out of life yourself. If you are capable of Designer Replica Handbags great things - and you are - then get to work. Be certain to test all seemingly realistic requirements on yourself, before seeking to ask them of your partner.
6. Form a pact to achieve excellence in some way. Whether it be a physical health regimen, a bowling tournament, doing the taxes, or managing a business together, forming a pact to achieve excellence in a specific, tangible way will build trust between partners. Commitment to a short-term goal is the best exercise a relationship can get.
7. Love with your whole heart. All too many times, past relationships keep us from loving with our whole heart. If your relationship reality check is solid, ask yourself how you've been holding back on your partner, and why. Do you expect criticism, instead of acceptance? Recognize the boundaries of your love, and identify positive ways to expand them daily.
8. Improving yourself improves the relationship. Self enrichment is an effective, important means of perpetual contribution to your relationship. Expanding your Gucci bags personal knowledge and interests will keep conversations interesting and generate new ideas for growing together, through new activities and experiences shared between partners.
Remember, there's nothing wrong with taking care of you. The more you have to give, the more there will be to share with your significant other.
9. Explore diversity in faith, culture, or politics. Diversity - and its acceptance - serve as a cornerstone of any fulfilling, long-lasting relationship. Your partner is likely to embrace at least some perspectives different than your own with regard to religion, culture, or political affiliation. Look to explore your partner's diversity, and openly accept the differences that make you both unique.
10. Don't go to bed mad. Make it a point to resolve differences before going to bed. Allowing arguments or heated discussions to fester overnight can solidify emotions, while leaving the real issues behind. In addition to promoting communication and relationship stability, addressing differences before bed reduces stress and promotes better sleep.
A meaningful, fulfilling relationship is perhaps the greatest investment you can make in both yourself, and your partner. As your relationship grows, look Prada Scarf for new ways to interact with each other as you haven't before. Each human represents a vast Universe of knowledge and emotion waiting for exploration by just one individual with the unwavering desire, patience, and capacity to know them.
Jim D. Ray is a parapsychologist with a diverse background in multiple subject concentrations, including business, psychology and parapsychology, criminal justice, philosophy, education, internet technology, physics, and vocal performance arts. Jim can be reached by e-mail at: jray@web-presence.net.