Thursday, November 17, 2011
Sri Lanka - The opening of the Southern Expressway 27-11-2011
It's only 10 days more for the opening of the Southern Expressway. It marks another milestone of a new era in Lankan road development.The Express Highway is considered as one of the revolutions that are taking place in the country. The people yearned for several years of traveling on such a Highway. The new Express Highway has been completed from Kottawa up to Pinnaduwa. The distance is 95 kilometres. The President is scheduled to declare open the road on the 27th of this month. The Government is prepared to give the people an opportunity to walk and have a glimpse of the highway.
Study IDs new genetic links to impulsivity, alcohol problems in men
Being impulsive can lead us to say things we regret, buy things we really don’t need, engage in behaviors that are risky and even develop troublesome addictions. But are different kinds of hastiness and rashness embedded in our DNA?
A new study suggests the answer is yes — especially if you’re a man.
The research, led by University of Nebraska-Lincoln assistant professor of psychology Scott Stoltenberg, found links between impulsivity and a rarely researched gene called NRXN3. The gene plays an important role in brain development and in how neurons function.
The newly discovered connection, which was more prevalent among men than women in the study, may help explain certain inclinations toward alcohol or drug dependence, Stoltenberg said.
“Impulsivity is an important underlying mechanism in addiction,” he said. “Our finding that NRXN3 is part of the causal pathway toward addiction is an important step in identifying the underlying genetic architecture of this key personality trait.”
For the study, researchers measured impulsivity levels in nearly 450 participants — 65 percent women, 35 percent men — via a wide range of tests. Then, they compared those results with DNA samples from each participant. They found that impulsivity was significantly higher in those who regularly used tobacco or who had alcohol or drug problems.
The results, interestingly, also came down along gender lines. In men, two connections clearly emerged; first, between a particular form of the NRXN3 gene and attentional impulsivity, and second, between another NRXN3 variant and alcohol problems. The connections for women, meanwhile, were much weaker.
Stoltenberg said the gender-specific results are a rich area for further study.
“We can’t really say what causes these patterns of association to be different in men and women. But our findings will be critical as we continue to improve our understanding of the pathways from specific genes to health-risk behaviors,” he said.
The researchers were interested in impulsivity because the trait can predispose people to any number of behavioral problems — addictions, behavior control, failing to plan ahead or think through consequences of actions — and settled on the role of NXRN3 from previous, recent studies.
While the results add important new evidence to the genetic role in impulsivity and, in turn, its role in substance abuse, researchers were careful to not claim a perfect cause-and-effect relationship. Impulsivity may interact with sensitivity to alcohol, for one example, or anxiety, for another, to create complex pathways to substance use problems in both men and women.
“If you’re working to explain how genes are associated with something like (substance) dependence, you have to connect a lot of dots,” Stoltenberg said. “There’s a big gap between genes and a substance use disorder. Impulsivity is one factor to such problems — not the only factor.”
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The study, which appears in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, was authored by UNL’s Stoltenberg; Melissa Lehmann of Black Hills State (S.D.) University; Christa C. Christ of UNL; and Samantha Hersrud and Gareth Davies of the University of South Dakota School of Medicine.
TOP TEN NETWORKING TIPS
Dale Carnegie’s book How To Win Friends And Influence People has a lot of valuable advice. These tips are incredibly important to succeeding in the business world. Get all the information you need to know about networking here!
Success Begins Today shares…
- When you meet someone, make eye contact and smile. A great way to do this is to make a mental note of their eye color.
- Wherever you are, act like you are the host. Initiate the conversation. Be the first to say hello.
- Use simple memorization techniques to remember people’s names or write them down on a small card. As Dale Carnegie says, “The sweetest sound to a person is their name.”
- Make others feel important by giving them your full attention. Help them feel like they are the only person in the room and that you are enjoying your conversation with them. Refrain from yawning or looking at your watch.
- Show curiosity and interest in others. Ask them open-ended questions and listen to their answers. You will become more likeable, and really start to understand the person’s wants, needs, and desires.
- Be enthusiastic about your life. People gravitate to optimistic, positive and cheerful people.
- Be able to speak on a variety of subjects. Keep abreast of current events and read timely books and magazines. Be able to tell people what you do in a few short sentences. Speak concisely.
- Invite people to join you for other activities such as lunch or an informal meeting.
- Be sincere and compliment others about what they are wearing, doing, or saying.
- Give people more than they expect. Don’t promise things you can’t deliver.
Get more information from Success Begins Today!
FIVE NECESSARY TO-DO’S BEFORE STARTING A BUSINESS
Starting a business is hard work. Before you begin such a large undertaking, make sure you are fully prepared! Here are some quick to-do’s that you must read before you begin your business venture!
Business Pundit suggests…
Meet the people.
If you equate business ownership with solitude and freedom from annoying coworkers or managers, you’re in for a surprise. Entrepreneurs spend most of their time dealing with people — investors, professionals such as lawyers and accountants, suppliers, and customers.
If you equate business ownership with solitude and freedom from annoying coworkers or managers, you’re in for a surprise. Entrepreneurs spend most of their time dealing with people — investors, professionals such as lawyers and accountants, suppliers, and customers.
Prepare yourself.
Ever managed employees and vendors? Do you know your industry inside and out, including aspects such as accounting and marketing? If you don’t have all the entrepreneurial skills you need, acquire them before starting your business. Spend time working in a similar company, shadow a business in your industry, or accept an internship.
Ever managed employees and vendors? Do you know your industry inside and out, including aspects such as accounting and marketing? If you don’t have all the entrepreneurial skills you need, acquire them before starting your business. Spend time working in a similar company, shadow a business in your industry, or accept an internship.
Check your checkbook.
Be honest about your relationship with money. Do you have money to invest? Are you able to lose it all? Will you rely on others? Do you avoid financial risk at all costs? Are you “good” with money? How you handle money now will influence the type of financial manager you’ll be.
Be honest about your relationship with money. Do you have money to invest? Are you able to lose it all? Will you rely on others? Do you avoid financial risk at all costs? Are you “good” with money? How you handle money now will influence the type of financial manager you’ll be.
Know your competition.
Is your market saturated with successful businesses? Is your industry littered with bad businesses? Is anyone doing what you want to do? If not, why not? To brand your business and woo investors, you’ll need to understand why and how you can outshine competitors.
Is your market saturated with successful businesses? Is your industry littered with bad businesses? Is anyone doing what you want to do? If not, why not? To brand your business and woo investors, you’ll need to understand why and how you can outshine competitors.
Test your scalability.
Successful businesses rely on automation and delegation. Will you be able to teach other employees to do your work? If your business relies on your brain and skills alone, you might have a successful job, but not a successful business.
Successful businesses rely on automation and delegation. Will you be able to teach other employees to do your work? If your business relies on your brain and skills alone, you might have a successful job, but not a successful business.
Get more tips at Business Pundit!
Tunnel Vision
“He who meditates on the Supreme Personality of Godhead, his mind constantly engaged in remembering Me, undeviated from the path, he, O Partha [Arjuna], is sure to reach Me.” (Lord Krishna, Bhagavad-gita, 8.8)
The purpose of maintaining a “tunnel vision” in terms of thought processes is to stay focused on the task at hand. From the practice’s effectiveness we see that one should limit their distractions if they are to complete their assigned duties properly. For instance, if our job is to drive an automobile to a certain destination, it is advisable to keep the eyes fixed on the road, the hands on the wheel, and the ears open to external sounds. If any of the necessary senses should be diverted elsewhere, the effectiveness in executing the primary tasks gets hampered. The more one can focus, the greater the chances of following the intended action. In the larger picture, meeting the ultimate aim of human life involves a sort of tunnel vision focused on one person, about whom when more is known, the best opportunity for feeling unmatched bliss can be found. In this endeavor, the more distractions that occur, the less likely it will be to find that eternal felicity.
What sorts of distractions can arise? Moreover, how do we know that focusing on this person brings us to the ultimate destination? How can any person say that with full certainty? “One person may claim that the human beings evolved from monkeys while another says that God created everything, but in the end there is no way to tell for sure who is correct.” While this viewpoint, which is rooted in skepticism, seems logical enough, there is still the issue of trust. We know that man has the propensity to cheat, to commit mistakes, to be easily illusioned, and to be affected by his imperfect senses. Any of these defects can crop up at any second.
Based on the deficiencies, should we just sit in a corner of an isolated room twenty four hours a day? Should we not eat anything because it might be contaminated? Should we not believe anything anyone tells us because they might be lying? Should we not trust the documented sense perceptions found in books, newspapers and journals? In reality, we already invest so much faith in others, trusting that what they tell us is true. If the information turns out to be invalid, then at least we think that the person espousing the beliefs has faith in them.
Authority in this sense is established by the results that follow from extending faith. For instance, if the weatherman on television says that it is going to rain tomorrow, we may or may not believe him. He will show us his computer model, his extended forecast, and data from previous weather events as support for his assertion. If we trust him and it does happen to rain on the following day, we can increase our faith in him the next time he gives a weather forecast. We actually do this instinctively with so many things, from the insignificant to the very important. The emergency room doctors and nurses provide powerful drugs to curb our pain, but there is no telling that what they give is going to help in the end. The trust is put into the hospital and its staff based on the accreditations they received from licensing boards.
For deciphering the ultimate aim in life, the same faith needs to be extended. The reason there is such difficulty in this area is that there are competing visions, isolated roadmaps leading to different destinations. Especially when the champions of each faith rely on dogmatic insistence and fear as their primary preaching tools, it becomes difficult to apply faith wholeheartedly. For instance, if someone tells us that we should worship a specific personality or be doomed to hell in the next life, how can we ever tell if their statements are correct? The afterlife is a foggy concept, of which nothing will be concretely known until life actually ends. And if said people turn out to be incorrect, then the valuable human birth goes to waste.
The proper way to confidently follow a path in life that fulfills the ultimate mission is to find that set of procedures which gives benefits both in the current life and the next. In this regard, the Vedas, the ancient scriptures of India, provide the most detailed and useful information. Though Lord Krishna
How does this work exactly? For starters, from Vedic information the picture of the afterlife is cleared up a bit. The next life is similar to the current one. Indeed, the current life is the afterlife of a previous existence. So from applying a little intelligence, we see that there’s nothing really special about the future. Lest we think this is just a dogmatic belief exclusive to the Hindus, we can tell from our own experiences that the future ended up being the past at some point. For example, during our youth we may have looked forward to starting high school, the upper classes of the educational system. High school, at one time, represented the future. In old age, however, high school turns into the past, a time long ago when the individual was much younger.
The concept of the future turning into the past extends beyond the current life. This is how karma works. Every action taken which carries a commensurate reaction falls under the jurisdiction of karma, or fruitive activity. Do something today and see the reaction tomorrow. The reactions sometimes aren’t visible nor must they remain manifest for long. When we exhale, the result is the release of carbon dioxide into the air. This happens so often during the day that the releases aren’t even noticed. In colder weather, we may be able to see the vapor, but this doesn’t mean that the vapor isn’t there every other time we exhale.
Sometimes the results arrive long after we have forgotten about the original work. As a simple example, when a person votes by absentee ballot in an election, their ballot may not be received until after election day. The vote was actually cast prior to the election, but it is not noted until after everyone else has voted. Just as the prior act of voting has consequences that extend past the day of election, the actions undertaken during one lifetime carry consequences into the next life. A lifetime is thus just a relative measurement of time, with the essence of individuality remaining the same throughout.
If the principles of Vedic teachings are taken to heart, not only will there be benefits found in the next life, but even the current life becomes easier to handle. Revisiting the issue of taking on tasks, we know that if there are fewer distractions, there is a better chance of reaching the objective. With knowledge of both reincarnation
“For the soul there is never birth nor death. Nor, having once been, does he ever cease to be. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain.” (Lord Krishna, Bhagavad-gita, 2.20)
That position is one of purity. The purest form of anything is the state when the object assumes its natural qualities to the fullest degree. For instance, the constitutional position of fire is when it burns and effuses light. If the fire is covered up, doused with water, or contained, its constitutional position remains hidden. The original position of the spirit soul is to be a lover, to be engaged in service. This propensity actually never leaves the soul, but when the individual gets covered up by material elements, the service gets misdirected. Think of holding a fire extinguisher and pointing it in every direction except to where the fire is. Obviously the extinguishing capabilities will still be used, but the necessary target will not be reached. Hence the fire extinguisher will not be properly used.
With life in the material world, the engagements adopted in the 8,400,000 unique body types all involve service that hovers around the ideal beneficiary. Some engagements are closer to the soul’s essential characteristic, or dharma, than others. The animal species has virtually no chance of reassuming their dharma, as they don’t have the ability to accept education and follow the principles necessary for reaching a better end. The human being, on the other hand, is blessed with potential, the chance to develop a higher intellect. When knowledge of self-realization and the concepts of dharma are well established within the mind of the sober individual, the potential for service which exists within the soul can be directed at the matching beneficiary.
Not surprisingly, that ideal beneficiary is God. Ironically enough, knowing that He is God, or just addressing Him through His feature of all-pervasiveness, doesn’t exactly release the soul into bhava, or the state of transcendental ecstasy. Knowing that God exists and recognizing His supremacy represent the initial stages of self-realization, wherein one gets awfully close to meeting the ideal target of work.
The true potential for service is released when the Supreme Lord is recognized for His spiritual attributes, which include attractiveness. Since no one is more attractive than God, He is addressed by the name “Krishna” in the Vedic tradition. Since this beautiful form provides supreme transcendental delight to those who connect with Him in full intimacy, another name for God is Rama. These names form the cornerstone of the sacred formula used for addressing the Lord in a loving way, “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare
How do we know that Krishna is God? Isn’t this assertion just like the ones coming from every other preacher? Skepticism can be used to debunk any assertion and thus give the skeptical individual the cover they need to avoid extending faith. Nevertheless, there will be some faith applied somewhere. Might as well put that faith in Krishna then, for that trust will be validated with the results that follow. How can we say this with full certainty? Krishna is the reservoir of pleasure, the one person who can accept an unlimited amount of love offered to Him by an unlimited number of people. Since He is the greatest enjoyer, His happiness is shared with those who offer their service.
The benefits are not exclusive to the afterlife, though Krishna promises in the Bhagavad-gita, the most concise and complete treatise on spirituality ever to be revealed to the fallen souls of the material world, that anyone who thinks of Him at the time of death never has to suffer through reincarnation again. The departing soul that is Krishna conscious is welcomed by the sweet vision of Shri Krishna in the spiritual world, Shyamasundara
“Those who worship the demigods will take birth among the demigods; those who worship ghosts and spirits will take birth among such beings; those who worship ancestors go to the ancestors; and those who worship Me will live with Me.” (Lord Krishna, Bg. 9.25)
The benefits of serving Krishna are also seen in the present life, as the source of all distresses is the forgetfulness of God and His personal feature. Look at everything that causes unhappiness and you will see that the pain is rooted in attachment to the senses which are tied to the temporary body. We know that the body is ever-changing and subject to destruction, so anyone who gets distracted by its accompanying temporary pains and pleasures remains forgetful of their constitutional position. If I get sad every time one of my shirts gets a hole in it or when my shoes start to wear out, the emotion is not warranted. We can always get a new shirt or pair of shoes, so what need is there to feel sad over a temporary loss? As soon as the shirt was accepted, there had to come a time when it would be rejected. A wise person is always cognizant of this, so they don’t overly lament misfortune or overly rejoice temporary happiness.
The attachment to the body serves as the strongest deterrent to enlightenment, the most effective distraction. The primary aim of life is established through Vedic teachings: think of God always and offer Him your undivided service. This doesn’t mean that you have to quit everything and take up the life of a mendicant. If this is what you are inclined to do then great, but service can be offered by any person at any stage in life simply through chanting
The mission in life is to stay God conscious, and success in that task is aided by limiting distractions. While eliminating inhibiting behaviors like meat-eating, gambling
In Closing:
Be benefitted by thinking of Krishna always,
Follow what the Supreme Lord in Gita says.
Distractions hinder success, know it for a fact,
To keep a tunnel-vision on end-goal is proper tact.
Why should not this be the pathway towards ultimate success,
To find company of the best person and forgo all the rest?
Trust in others you already do invest,
The results that follow are the defining test.
Trust in Krishna and in this life benefits you will see,
Endeared to Shyamasundara and His devotees you will be.
In the afterlife waiting for you is Krishna’s embrace,
And vision of His most beautiful, sweet smiling face.
New study finds that even the cleanest wastewater contributes to more ‘super bacteria’
A new University of Minnesota study reveals that the release of treated municipal wastewater – even wastewater treated by the highest-quality treatment technology – can have a significant effect on the quantities of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, often referred to as “superbacteria,” in surface waters.
The study also suggests that wastewater treated using standard technologies probably contains far greater quantities of antibiotic-resistant genes, but this likely goes unnoticed because background levels of bacteria are normally much higher than the water studied in this research.
The new study is led by civil engineering associate professor Timothy LaPara in the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities College of Science and Engineering. The study is published in the most recent issue of “Environmental Science and Technology,” a journal of the American Chemical Society. The research was part of a unique class project in a graduate-level civil engineering class at the University of Minnesota focused on environmental microbiology.
Antibiotics are used to treat numerous bacterial infections, but the ever-increasing presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria has raised substantial concern about the future effectiveness of antibiotics. In response, there has been increasing focus on environmental reservoirs of antibiotic resistance over the past several years. Antibiotic use in agriculture has been heavily scrutinized, while the role of treated municipal wastewater has received little attention as a reservoir of resistance.
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria develop in the gastrointestinal tracts of people taking antibiotics. These bacteria are then shed during defecation, which is collected by the existing sewer infrastructure and passed through a municipal wastewater treatment facility.
In this study, the Ph.D. students and professor examined the impact of municipal wastewater in Duluth, Minn., on pristine surface waters by gathering water samples from the St. Louis River, Duluth-Superior Harbor, and Lake Superior in northeastern Minnesota. The treatment facility in Duluth is considered one of the best. After solids and biological matter are removed, the Duluth wastewater treatment is one of only a few in the country that filter water a third time through a mixed media filter to remove additional particles of bacteria and nutrients. Standard wastewater treatment treats water twice to remove solids and biological matter.
“This was a unique and ideal location for this study because of the exemplary wastewater treatment mixed with surprisingly pristine surface waters with very low background levels of bacteria that wouldn’t mask our results,” LaPara said. “Previous studies in which treated municipal wastewater was implicated as a source of antibiotic resistance were more convoluted because multiple sources of antibiotic resistance genes existed, such as agricultural activity and industrial wastewater discharges.”
While the levels of overall bacteria were still relatively low in the surface water samples, researchers in the University of Minnesota study found that the quantities of antibiotic-resistant genes and human-specific bacteria were typically 20-fold higher at the site where treated wastewater was released into the Duluth-Superior Harbor compared to nearby surface water samples.
“Current wastewater treatment removes a very large fraction of the antibiotic resistance genes,” LaPara said. “But this study shows that wastewater treatment operations need to be carefully considered and more fully studied as an important factor in the global ecology of antibiotic resistance.”
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In addition to LaPara, researchers involved in the study include civil engineering Ph.D. students Tucker Burch, Patrick McNamara, David Tan; and bioproducts and biosystems engineering Ph.D. student Mi Yan, with help from soil, water and climate Ph.D. student Jessica Eichmiller.
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