Stimulate brain, problem solved

THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

More than 40% of the people in the research were able to solve the nine dots problem after receiving 10 minutes of safe, non-invasive brain stimulation. Image: Henrik5000iStockphoto Brain stimulation can markedly improve people's ability to solve highly complex problems, a recent University of Sydney study suggests. The findings by Professor Allan Snyder and Richard Chi, from the University of Sydney, are published in Neuroscience Letters. "The results suggest non-invasive brain stimulation could assist people in solving tasks that appear straightforward but are inherently difficult," said Professor Snyder. Our minds have evolved to solve certain problems effortlessly, yet we struggle to solve others that appear simple but require us to apply an unfamiliar paradigm, to 'think outside the box'. "As an example we have taken the famous nine dots problem, where you are asked to join all the dots with four straight lines without taking the pen off the page," Professor Snyder said. "Surprisingly, investigations over the last century show that almost no one can do this." Now the researchers have shown that more than 40% of the people they tested were able to solve the nine dots problem after receiving 10 minutes of safe, non-invasive brain stimulation. Specifically the left anterior temporal lobe of the brain is inhibited while simultaneously the right anterior temporal lobe is excited, employing a technique known as transcranial direct current stimulation. Using the same procedure the researchers have previously reported success in amplifying insight and memory. Chi and Snyder suggest that their unique brain stimulation protocol could ultimately enable people to "escape the tricks our minds impose on us," as Professor Snyder describes it, and solve tasks that appear deceptively simple. Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.

Public is less willing to pay to avoid mental illness than general medical illnes

People are less willing to pay to avoid mental illness than medical illness, even though they recognize that severe mental illnesses can dramatically lower quality of life, according to new research published in the April issue of Psychiatric Services, a journal of the American Psychiatric Association.

Researchers provided a nationally representative sample of 710 adults with descriptions of two mental illnesses (depression and schizophrenia) and three general medical illnesses (diabetes, belowthe-knee amputation, and partial blindness). Participants were asked their willingness to pay to avoid each illness: “Suppose a pill existed that would allow you to permanently and completely avoid ever having [health condition]. . . . Please estimate the maximum dollar amount you would be willing and able to pay monthly for this treatment?” Participants were only asked to make decisions for themselves, not for others or the public. Respondents were also asked to rate the “burdensomeness” of each condition.

The researchers found that even though respondents rated the two mental illnesses as relatively more burdensome than the other conditions, the amount they were willing to pay to avoid them was 40% lower. Depression received a higher burden value than diabetes or amputation and a value nearly equal to partial blindness. Despite this rating, depression received the lowest willingness-topay value. Even when researchers eliminated responses of those who had experienced any of the health conditions, none of the findings were substantially altered.

While the study had a number of limitations, it did demonstrate that people were willing to pay significantly less to avoid mental illnesses than they were to avoid other medical illnesses and that this was not the result of minimizing the burden and impact of mental illness. The results suggest, according to the authors, led by Dylan M. Smith, Ph.D., with Stony Brook University, that efforts to “eliminate the gap between mental health conditions and general health conditions will likely require targeting specific beliefs that people have about mental illnesses and the value of treatments for mental illness.” The authors conclude that “public attitudes likely influence how much payers for health care are willing to spend to treat mental illness and how likely federal agencies are to invest in research.”

Provided by American Psychiatric Association

"Public is less willing to pay to avoid mental illness than general medical illnes." March 30th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-mental-illness-medical-illnes.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Earth make-up differs from Sun

For a century, scientists have assumed that the Earth has the same chemical makeup as the Sun. However, scientists at The Australian National University have challenged this belief. Professors Ian Campbell and Hugh O’Neill from the Research School of Earth Sciences at ANU said their research shakes up our understanding of the Earth’s chemistry – right to the core. “For decades, it has been assumed that the Earth had the same composition as the Sun, as long as the most volatile elements, such as hydrogen, were excluded. This theory is based on the idea that everything in the solar system generally has the same composition. Since the Sun comprises 99 per cent of the solar system, this composition is essentially that of the Sun,” Professor O’Neill said. As it is easier to measure the chemical makeup of chondritic meteorites, planetary geologists have long used these to more precisely determine the Sun’s composition – and, therefore, the composition of the Earth. From this, scientists have concluded that the Earth has a ‘chondritic’ composition. Professor Campbell said this thesis has been challenged again and again. “Recent discoveries have shown that the ratio of two rare earth elements in Earth’s volcanic rocks is higher than in chondritic meteorites. Many scientists have explained this by arguing that these elements must have a hidden reservoir near the Earth's centre to balance this ratio out. This reservoir would also be enriched in the heat-producing elements uranium, thorium and potassium,” he said. Professor Campbell spent twenty years researching mantle plumes – columns of hot rock that rise from the boundary of the Earth’s core and are the mechanism that removes heat from the Earth’s centre. “The problem with the idea of a hidden reservoir is that although these elements could be hidden, we would be able to detect the heat they produce,” he said. “However, mantle plumes simply don’t release enough heat for these reservoirs to exist. Consequently, the Earth is not the same composition as chondrites or the Sun.” Professor O’Neill has developed an explanation as to why the Earth’s composition may differ from chondrites. “The Earth is thought to have formed by collision of planetary bodies of increasing size. In our research, we suggest that by the time these planetary bodies had reached a moderate size, they developed an outer shell that contained a significant amount of heat-producing elements,” he said. “During the final stages of the Earth’s formation, this outer shell was lost by a process called ‘collisional erosion’. This produced an Earth that has fewer heat-producing elements than chondritic meteorites, which explains why the Earth doesn’t have the same chemical composition as chondritic meteorites.” The research has been published in Nature. A copy is available from the ANU media office. Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.

One Drug to Shrink All Tumors

by Sarah C. P. Williams 

Survivor. When mice with human tumors received doses of anti-CD47, which sets the immune system against tumor cells, the cancers shrank and disappeared.

Credit: Fotosearch

A single drug can shrink or cure human breast, ovary, colon, bladder, brain, liver, and prostate tumors that have been transplanted into mice, researchers have found. The treatment, an antibody that blocks a "do not eat" signal normally displayed on tumor cells, coaxes the immune system to destroy the cancer cells.

A decade ago, biologist Irving Weissman of the Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California, discovered that leukemia cells produce higher levels of a protein called CD47 than do healthy cells. CD47, he and other scientists found, is also displayed on healthy blood cells; it's a marker that blocks the immune system from destroying them as they circulate. Cancers take advantage of this flag to trick the immune system into ignoring them. In the past few years, Weissman's lab showed that blocking CD47 with an antibody cured some cases of lymphomas and leukemias in mice by stimulating the immune system to recognize the cancer cells as invaders. Now, he and colleagues have shown that the CD47-blocking antibody may have a far wider impact than just blood cancers.

"What we've shown is that CD47 isn't just important on leukemias and lymphomas," says Weissman. "It's on every single human primary tumor that we tested." Moreover, Weissman's lab found that cancer cells always had higher levels of CD47 than did healthy cells. How much CD47 a tumor made could predict the survival odds of a patient.

To determine whether blocking CD47 was beneficial, the scientists exposed tumor cells to macrophages, a type of immune cell, and anti-CD47 molecules in petri dishes. Without the drug, the macrophages ignored the cancerous cells. But when the CD47 was present, the macrophages engulfed and destroyed cancer cells from all tumor types.

Next, the team transplanted human tumors into the feet of mice, where tumors can be easily monitored. When they treated the rodents with anti-CD47, the tumors shrank and did not spread to the rest of the body. In mice given human bladder cancer tumors, for example, 10 of 10 untreated mice had cancer that spread to their lymph nodes. Only one of 10 mice treated with anti-CD47 had a lymph node with signs of cancer. Moreover, the implanted tumor often got smaller after treatment -- colon cancers transplanted into the mice shrank to less than one-third of their original size, on average. And in five mice with breast cancer tumors, anti-CD47 eliminated all signs of the cancer cells, and the animals remained cancer-free 4 months after the treatment stopped.

"We showed that even after the tumor has taken hold, the antibody can either cure the tumor or slow its growth and prevent metastasis," says Weissman.

Although macrophages also attacked blood cells expressing CD47 when mice were given the antibody, the researchers found that the decrease in blood cells was short-lived; the animals turned up production of new blood cells to replace those they lost from the treatment, the team reports online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Cancer researcher Tyler Jacks of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge says that although the new study is promising, more research is needed to see whether the results hold true in humans. "The microenvironment of a real tumor is quite a bit more complicated than the microenvironment of a transplanted tumor," he notes, "and it's possible that a real tumor has additional immune suppressing effects."

Another important question, Jacks says, is how CD47 antibodies would complement existing treatments. "In what ways might they work together and in what ways might they be antagonistic?" Using anti-CD47 in addition to chemotherapy, for example, could be counterproductive if the stress from chemotherapy causes normal cells to produce more CD47 than usual.

Weissman's team has received a $20 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to move the findings from mouse studies to human safety tests. "We have enough data already," says Weissman, "that I can say I'm confident that this will move to phase I human trials."

Source: ScienceNow
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/03/one-drug-to-shrink-all-tumors.html?ref=em

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

THE LIFESTYLE CALCULATOR: HOW MUCH DO YOU SPEND?

M.A.S.H Calculator: How Much Will My Lifestyle Cost?

When it comes down to it, the way we spend our money is really about the kind of lifestyle we want.

Some people, if they had an extra $1,000, would put it toward a future home, others a dream vacation, others charity, and still others a well-made handbag.

The way we normally approach our money is to think about how much we have first and then decide how to spend it. But it helps to do the reverse: think about how we want to spend our money, determine how much that will cost, and then figure out how much money we’ll need.

While people often do this for individual items–i.e. their dream home or their next car–we’ve put together a calculator that will do that for your whole life. It’s like the M.A.S.H game from your childhood–but instead of writing down the name of the boy you want to someday marry, you’re telling us if you want a second home, how many kids you plan on having and what kind of vacations you dream of.

Of course, the calculator can only give you a ballpark estimate. After all, you may end up with more kids than you had planned for, or when you retire, you may decide you miss working and want to go back part-time. But it’s useful for testing your expectations. If you’re working a low-paying job but still expect to someday have a beachfront home, it’s better to find out now that you’ll need to make some extra income or nab that promotion in order to make that happen. On the other side of the coin, it’s a relief to see that you can achieve your ideal lifestyle on your current career track or that you have money to spare and can retire earlier or increase your charitable giving.

You can take the M.A.S.H. quiz as many times as you need, tweaking the numbers, to see how different lifestyle choices make your number go up or down. And, if no matter how you slice it, you’re not on track to make enough, then start that side job you’ve been considering, find out if grad school will get your salary up to the level you need, or sign up for our Build Your Career bootcamp, which gives tips on negotiating yourself a raise or switching jobs to boost your salary.

Calculate the cost of your lifestyle at Learnvest.com after the break!

 

So You Think About Dance?

Spectators experience some of the same brain impulses as the dancers they’re watching.

By Edyta Zielinska |

Watching a beautiful ballet can move viewers in more ways than one, according to a recent study inPLoS One.  When spectators watched the dance, especially a type with which they were familiar, they put themselves in the place of the dancer, their brains showing activity similar to what researchers would expect to see in dancers.

In general, empathy is considered critical for a deeper appreciation of art. But it is unclear whether this kind of empathy said first author Corinne Jola, a research fellow from the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom, actually indicates a viewer’s level of enjoyment.

Earlier studies had suggested that spectators only mimicked movements they saw if they had been physically trained to perform those movements themselves. “Even without the physical expertise,” said Jola, a dancer and researcher, “viewers’ brains were automatically active, as if they were replicating the movement.”

Researchers showed study participants two roughly 4-minute long dance performances—one classical Indian and one ballet—and an acted skit, as their neural responses were recorded. (Performances used in the experiment can be viewed here.) Jola and her team recorded the viewer’s intentions to move with an indirect measure of brain activity. They placed a rubber swim cap on the viewers’ head, which they used to mark the placement of a magnetic coil.  The coil helped researchers amplify the signal that the brain sent to the arm muscles, which is where the researchers would record the intention to move. Jola and her colleagues could record the viewers’ response to the movements they watched by recording the impulses in the spectator’s arm.

Viewers who had watched ballet or Indian dance many times before had higher responses to that dance form. Those spectators who were naturally more empathic—a characteristic measured by their responses to questions such as, “When I am reading a book, I become completely immersed in the story and forget what is happening around me?”—also had higher responses.

The viewers’ mirroring of the performance wasn’t perfect, however.  If a dancer lifted her arm, the spectators might respond by triggering arm muscles responsible for lifting. But the dancer would have used many other muscle groups, such as those of the back, to send her arm upwards. “When I’m learning a dance, I don’t only see the end result of the movement, I can see the initiation of it as well,” said Madelyn Ho, a dancer with the Taylor 2, a Paul Taylor dance company in New York, who was not involved in the study.

When she watches dance, “I can almost feel myself experiencing the movement,” said Ho. But she switches between three mind sets. “I visualize someone else doing it, I can visualize myself doing it, and I can also visualize what the movement feels like without carrying out the movement,” she said. While that level of perception is unlikely to occur in a casual ballet-goer, the researchers showed that the response does exist, without any dance training.

It’s tempting to assume that those who watch dance regularly and mimic the movement they observe in their minds, might learn dance moves with more facility — a secret fantasy of many a spectator. But Jola says that her study did not look at learning specifically, though it is a question she’s interested in pursuing.

Source: TheScientist
http://the-scientist.com/2012/03/30/so-you-think-about-dance/

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

3 TIPS FOR MAINTAINING GOOD CREDIT

If you have credit, you should learn to manage it effectively. This way, you will have a chance to pay off debt and accrue wealth over time. Get the best tips for credit management here!

Sallie Mae suggests…

1. Live within your means (to keep your debt level low)

Let’s start by answering the first question regarding smart credit management. What do you owe, and to whom do you owe it?

Simply put, to avoid running into credit problems, don’t spend more than you can afford. But it’s often easier said than done, especially at this stage of your life. That’s why you need to develop . . . and stick with . . . a budget.

But let’s face it. Mention that word to many people and they immediately think of some restrictive, penny-pinching plan that keeps you on a steady diet of macaroni-and-cheese and watered-down soup. But believe us, budget is not a dirty word.

Instead, think of it as a personal spending plan. It’s simply a way for you to understand where your money goes, make any necessary changes to fill in the “gaps,” and be prepared for both predictable and not-so-predictable expenses.

2. Borrow only what you can afford

The concept is simple: Don’t borrow more than you need. But how can you know how much is “too much”? Calculate your debt-to-income ratio.

Your debt-to-income ratio compares what you owe and what you earn (every month), and it’s a key number lenders use to determine your capacity to borrow additional funds. It’s usually a principal component in determining whether a loan application is approved.

How much is too much? Figure your debt-to-income ratio

Your debt-to-income ratio is one way to get a snapshot of your fiscal health. The formula is easy:

Divide
your monthly minimum debt payments
(including mortgage or rent)
by
your monthly gross income

Example: You earn $5,000 each month in gross income, and a yearly bonus nets you $500 a month. Your total monthly income is $5,500.

You pay $200 a month in student loans, $500 in rent, $150 on a car payment, and $150 on your credit cards and other expenses. Your total monthly debt payments are $1,000.

$1,000 (debt) divided by $5,500 (income) = a ratio of18.2%.

3. Maintain a Good Credit Score

Your credit score can affect many aspects of your life. Whether you need a loan to buy a home or if you apply for a credit card, your credit score is used to judge your reliability and risk.

Your credit score helps determine the terms of your loans and if you’ll even be approved.

The pros to having a good credit score

A good credit score means lower interest rates. It shows that you have a responsible credit history and are a low-risk borrower less likely to default on your loans. When you apply for a mortgage or auto loan, a lower interest rate saves you hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in interest costs.

A good credit score also lets you be more selective when choosing your lender. The better your score, the more leverage you may have in getting good terms on your loans. Shop around: Having lenders compete against each other can mean you get a more competitive interest rate and ensures that you know that you explored a wide range of lenders before you committed to one.

The cons to having a poor credit score

Lenders use your credit score to judge how likely you are to repay a loan. A poor credit score may mean your loan application is rejected. But that’s just the start.

Your credit score is not only checked by lenders — it can be used when you make other financial arrangements, such as renting an apartment or signing up for utilities. In cities where rental companies can be selective about tenants, a bad credit history can make you an unappealing candidate. Bad credit can get you denied for basic services, such as electricity or a cell phone if your credit report shows you tend to pay late.

A poor credit score can even cost you a job! Prospective employers may check your credit rating to judge your degree of responsibility.

Many lenders charge different interest rates, depending on the applicant’s credit score, so even though you might get approved with a so-so credit score, you may pay a higher interest rate than someone with a better credit score.

What about needing a credit history?

Sometimes having no credit can be just as much of a problem as having bad credit.

If you have no credit history, lenders have no record to assess your borrowing behaviour. In this case, you need to establish some form of credit and use it responsibly to build up your credit rating.

Ways to improve your credit score

Your score continually changes, depending on how well — or poorly — you manage your credit.

These are some ways to build and maintain a high credit score:

• Pay your bills on time.
• Apply for credit only when necessary. Opening too many credit cards in a short time can be harmful to your credit score.
• The longer your credit history, the better. Cancelling an old credit card could hurt your credit score because it may shorten the length of your credit history.
• Keep credit card balances to less than 50% of the credit limit on the credit card.
• Make more than the minimum payment on credit cards.
• Have a mix of credit account types, such as revolving (varied monthly payments, such as credit cards) and instalment (regular monthly payments, like you make on a student loan).
• Check for errors on your credit report periodically, and ensure you have not become the victim of identity theft.

Ways to hurt your credit score

There are some sure-fire ways to get a low score:

• Exceed your credit limit on your credit cards.
• Open and close too many credit accounts in a short period.
• Make payments past due date or, even worse, default on a loan.
• Write bad checks.
• Declare bankruptcy.

Get the entire article at Sallie Mae!

 

TEN WAYS TO SAVE MONEY BY GOING GREEN

10 Ways to Green Your Retail Store

Going green can help small retailers stand out from competitors, but few seem to be focusing on becoming more environmentally friendly.

An MIT Sloan Management Review study released last year found that while most big retail chains already have green initiatives in place, only 9 percent of businesses with fewer than 1,000 employees have embraced sustainability as a core value.

That small percentage may reflect two of the major challenges small retailers face: their landlord and their budget. When you don’t own your store and don’t have a lot to spend, it’s hard to make expensive changes that could bring big energy savings, such as adding insulation or installing skylights.

But going green doesn’t necessarily have to be costly. Here are 12 easy steps you can take to reduce your carbon footprint and cut waste:

1. Switch to energy-efficient lighting. You may be able to reap some cost savings and reduce energy use by trading incandescent or older fluorescent light bulbs for newer light-emitting diode (LED) or compact fluorescent (CFL) lights, says Chris Lynch, director of the Business Environmental Program at the University of Nevada-Reno. “If you have five years left on your lease, the savings could pay for the project before the lease ends.”

Be on the lookout for grant programs that might help with the initial costs. At Mugshots Coffeehouse & Café in Philadelphia, owner Angela Vendetti applied for a 2010 energy-reduction grant through the U.S. Department of Commerce, which covered half the $4,176 bill for energy-efficient lighting in two of her three shops. She estimates energy cost savings will let her break even on her share of the lighting costs within two years.

2. Clean greener. If you purchase your store’s cleaning supplies, it shouldn’t cost much to simply switch to less-toxic products as you run out of current stocks, Lynch notes. Or you can make your own. Simply using a combination of water and distilled vinegar can give you a home-made cleaning spray in no time.

3. Buy used fixtures. A great way to both recycle and save money is to scavenge for salvagedfixtures — ideally ones made of natural materials — rather than spend big for new shelving made from metal or petroleum-based plastics, says Julie Gabrielli, owner of the green-business consulting and architectural firm GOfor Change. Where Gabrielli lives in Baltimore, she points to men’s apparel store Sixteen Tons, which uses antique wood cabinets and shelves throughout its store.

4. Create a living wall. Improve air quality with a wall full of indoor plants placed under air-conditioning vents, recommends Gabrielli. This is an especially good move at indoor malls, where air can be recirculated and stale.

Related: Green-Business Experiment: Crowdsourcing an Energy Upgrade

5. Make bags and receipts optional. Gabrielli recommends getting rid of plastic bags and substituting reusable or recycled paper bags. Then, ask customers if they need a bag at all. Also, ask them if you can save a tree and email the receipt. The bonus: You capture emails for future marketing.

6. Buy energy-efficient equipment. If you're purchasing a new fax machine, computer, printer or other equipment, compare Energy Star ratings and buy the most efficient item, advises Jennifer Kaplan, author of Greening Your Small Business and owner of the consulting firmGreenhance. She also notes that countertop point-of-sale machines use a lot of electricity, but you could reduce energy consumption by switching to mobile payments on smartphones or tablets paired with a device such as Square.

7. Turn it off. Many businesses leave cash registers, computers and other devices on day and night. Instead, shut everything off each night, says Kaplan, to avoid sucking "vampire power" to dormant equipment.

8. Turn it down. Put timers on lights in sporadically used areas such as bathrooms, says Kaplan. Also, see if you can use less overhead lighting during the day, at least in parts of the store near windows.

9. Stock green. Examine the materials lists on the merchandise you sell for petroleum byproducts, metals and other nonreplenishable materials, says Kaplan. Investigate whether similar products made from renewable resources are available. Take a look at where goods are made, too. If possible, switch to products made closer to your store to reduce the environmental costs of transportation.

10. Cut packaging. Encourage existing vendors to ship products in less elaborate packaging and consider switching to suppliers that are less wasteful, Kaplan says. For the waste you do receive, try to expand your recycling efforts and compost if you have a restaurant. 

The critical final step for any green initiative is training, says GoforChange's Gabrielli. Make sure workers understand your policies for reducing and managing waste and cutting electricity use, and put it in writing. Get staffers' ideas and incorporate them into the plan, too. "Ultimately, there need to be a set of guidelines," Gabrielli says. 

 

ஜிமெயில் மூலம் இலவசமாக SMS அனுப்பும் புதிய வசதி

இணைய பயனர்களில் பெரும்பாலானவர்களால் உபயோகப்படுத்தப்படும் கூகுளின் சிறந்த சேவை ஜிமெயில் எனப்படும் இலவச மெயில் சேவையாகும். நாளுக்கு நாள் பல்வேறு புதிய வசதிகளை ஜிமெயிலில் புகுத்து வாசகர்களை கவர்கிறது கூகுள் நிறுவனம்.  இப்பொழுது மேலும் ஒரு பயனுள்ள வசதியை வாசகர்களுக்கு வழங்கி உள்ளது. ஜிமெயில் மூலம் SMS அனுப்பும் வசதி. இந்த வசதியை சமீபத்தில் வெளியிட்டு இருந்தது கூகுள் நிறுவனம் ஆனால் இந்திய மொபைல்கள் மொபைல் நெட்வொர்க் கம்பெனிகள் சப்போர்ட் செய்யாமல் இருந்தது. இப்பொழுது இந்திய மொபைல்களும் SMS வசதிக்கு சப்போர்ட் செய்கிறது. இலவசமாக SMS அனுப்புவது எப்படி: முதலில் உங்கள் ஜிமெயில் கணக்கில் நுழைந்து Chat பகுதியில் நீங்கள் SMS அனுப்ப விரும்பும் நண்பரின் பெயரை டைப் செய்யவும். உங்களுக்கு ஒரு சிறிய மெனு வரும் அதில் Send SMSஎன்ற வசதியை தேர்வு செய்யுங்கள். அடுத்து இன்னொரு விண்டோ ஓபன் ஆகும் அதில் உங்கள் நண்பரின் மொபைல் எண்ணை கொடுத்து SAVE பட்டனை அழுத்தவும். இப்பொழுது உங்கள் நண்பரின் மொபைல் விவரம் Contact List-ல் சேர்ந்து விடும். அடுத்து அந்த நண்பருக்கு SMS அனுப்ப விரும்பினால் அவரின் பெயரை கிளிக் செய்தால் Chat Windowஓபன் ஆகும். அதில் Send SMS கிளிக் செய்து உங்கள் நண்பர்களுக்கு இலவசமாக SMS அனுப்பலாம்.  அதிகபட்சமாக ஒரு நாளைக்கு 50 SMS அனுப்ப முடியும். இந்தியாவில் தற்பொழுது Aircel, Loop Mobile, Reliance, Tata DoCoMo, Tata indicom ஆகிய நிறுவனங்களின் மொபைல்களுக்கு SMS அனுப்ப முடியும்.

The Benefits of Meditation

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It calms our mind and body. In these fast and frenetic times, it has the most important ability to replenish mental and emotional energy.

Meditation enables you to create new attitudes and responses to life, giving you a clear spiritual understanding of yourself.

Meditation is the process of re-discovering, enjoying and using the positive qualities latent within you. Like any skill, meditation requires practice to achieve positive and satisfying results. By doing a little every day, it soon becomes a natural and easy habit, which generously rewards you for the little effort it involves.

What Does Meditation Do?
Meditation energizes your awareness bringing both peace and wisdom to a busy mind. It expands your capacity to love and heals broken hearts. Also it dissolves many fears replacing them with lightness and freedom from anxiety.

The Power To Pack-Up
With the ability to go within, one can learn how to pack up all wasteful thinking in a second, so that there is lightness and freedom from burdens and worries, though there may be many responsibilities. One�s mind is scattered over the wide world and so much drawn out to men and matters that he is unable to sleep or to detach himself at his will. With the practice of meditation, one can wind up one�s thoughts at one�s own will.

Power To Tolerate
A person tolerates all attacks on him and does good even to those who offer brickbats at him. In the light frame of mind, one will be able to tolerate all types of situations and people to the extent that there is no sense at all of having to tolerate something or someone. With the understanding that each one is simply playing their role in this immense world-drama, impatience, irritation and annoyance disappear like mists before a bright sunlight.


The Power To Accommodate
Just as the ocean accepts different rivers that flow into it, whether polluted or clean, one will be able to adjust to all that is happening around him, so will a yogi be able to accommodate others with him. It power makes one broadminded. One will be able to adjust into all the happenings around him. Even when the atmosphere is charged with negativity or impurity, one remains unaffected.

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The Power Of Judgment
One will learn to take correct and quick decisions. One will get the ability to accurately assess any situation with clarity and confidence. In a detached, impartial state of mind, one can judge one�s own thoughts, words and actions to see if they are beneficial. One will become a judge of the self and not of others.
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The Power Of Discrimination
Just as an expert jeweler can easily distinguish between the false and the pure diamonds (or gems), one will acquire the power to distinguish between right and wrong or good and bad. One can accurately discriminate between real truth and the apparent truth, between things of temporary value and those of eternal value and between superficial and the subtle. The power helps in recognizing illusions even when they are sweetly decorated and enticing.


The Power To Face
Meditation develops the power to endure hardships. Adversities like death of those on whom one depends may come and high storms may rage strongly, yet his flame of equanimity does not get extinguished. Having confidence in one�s spiritual state brings the courage to face any type of situation.

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The Power To Co-Operate
The natural result of all the powers is that I am able to share with others the tasks and qualities that my Father has given to me. There is no feeling of competition, so I can give as well as accept suggestion as to how to proceed with the task of world upliftment. By learning meditation, one will develop the spirit of co-operation. This is a great achievement because if everyone gives his little finger, the society could lift great mountains.
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The Power to Withdraw
With full awareness that I (soul) am is an entity different from the body, one can withdraw from the senses and become a point. In the same way that a tortoise retreats into it�s shell in a moment of danger, or just to rest, a person would be able to retract himself from� any situation and remain protected.�

Shirdi Ke Sai Baba Hai [Full Song] I Sai Tum Mere Ho