Overdiagnosis poses significant threat to human health

Overdiagnosis poses a significant threat to human health by labeling healthy people as sick and wasting resources on unnecessary care, warns Ray Moynihan, Senior Research Fellow at Bond University in Australia, in a feature published on BMJtoday.

The feature comes as an international conference 'Preventing Overdiagnosis' is announced for Sept. 10-12, 2013, in the United States, hosted by The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, in partnership with the BMJ, the leading consumer organization Consumer Reports and Bond University, Australia.

The conference is timely, says Moynihan because "as evidence mounts that we're harming the healthy, concern about overdiagnosis is giving way to concerted action on how to prevent it."

"The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice has long been a leader in understanding and communicating the problems of overdiagnosis," say Drs. Steven Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz, professors of medicine at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. "We are extremely excited to host this international conference to advance the science and develop concrete proposals to reduce overdiagnosis and its associated harms."

Overdiagnosis occurs when people are diagnosed and treated for conditions that will never cause them harm and there's growing evidence that this occurs for a wide range of conditions.

For example, a large Canadian study finds that almost a third of people diagnosed with asthma may not have the condition; a systematic review suggests up to one in three breast cancers detected through screenings may be overdiagnosed; and some researchers argue osteoporosis treatments may do more harm than good for women at very low risk of future fracture.

Many factors are driving overdiagnosis, including commercial and professional vested interests, legal incentives and cultural issues, say Moynihan and co-authors, Professors Jenny Doust and David Henry. Ever-more sensitive tests are detecting tiny "abnormalities" that will never progress, while widening disease definitions and lowering treatment thresholds mean people at ever lower risks receive permanent medical labels and life-long therapies that will fail to benefit many of them.

Added to this, is the cost of wasted resources that could be better used to prevent and treat genuine illness.

But Moynihan argues that the main problem of overdiagnosis lies in a strong cultural belief in early detection, fed by deep faith in medical technology. "Increasingly we've come to regard simply being 'at risk' of future disease as being a disease in its own right," he says.

"It took many years for doctors to accept that bacteria caused peptic ulcers," says co-author of the BMJ feature, Dr. David Henry, chief executive officer of the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, and professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto, Canada. "Likewise, it will be hard for doctors and the public to recognize that the earliest detection of disease is not always in the best interests of patients."

So what can we do about overdiagnosis?

The 2013 conference will provide a forum for learning more, increasing awareness, and developing ways to prevent the problem. At a policy level, there is a clear need for more independent disease definition processes free from financial conflicts of interest, and a change from the incentives that tend to reward overdiagnosis.

A leading global authority on evidence-based practice, Professor Paul Glasziou from Bond University in Australia says: "As a side effect of our improving diagnostic technology, overdiagnosis is a rapidly growing problem; we must take it seriously now or suffer the consequences of overtreatment and rising health care waste."

As Moynihan and colleagues write in their BMJ feature, concern about overdiagnosis in no way precludes awareness that many people miss out on much needed healthcare. On the contrary, resources wasted on unnecessary care can be much better spent treating and preventing genuine illness, not pseudo-disease. "The challenge is to work out which is which, and to produce and disseminate evidence to help us all make more informed decisions about when a diagnosis might do us more harm than good," they conclude.

Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of the BMJ, said: "The harm of overdiagnosis to individuals and the cost to health systems is becoming ever clearer. Far less clear is what we should do about it. Next year's conference is an important step towards some evidence based solutions."

More information: http://www.bmj.com … 36/bmj.e3502

Provided by Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center

"Overdiagnosis poses significant threat to human health." May 30th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-overdiagnosis-poses-significant-threat-human.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Handful of genetic changes led to huge changes to human brain

Changes to just three genetic letters among billions led to evolution and development of the mammalian motor sensory network, and laid the groundwork for the defining characteristics of the human brain, Yale University researchers report.

This networks provides the direct synaptic connections between the multi-layered neocortex in the human brain responsible for emotions, perception, and cognition and the neural centers of the brain that make fine motor skills possible.

A description of how a few simple changes during the early development of mammals led to the creation of complex structures such as the human brain was published May 31 in the journal Nature.

"What we found are the genetic zip codes that direct cells to form the motorsensory network of the neocortex," said Nenad Sestan, associate professor of neurobiology, a researcher for the Kavli Institute for Neuroscience, and senior author of the paper

The paper investigated the genetic changes that occur during the early stages of development of an embryo and that direct cells to take on specific functions. Bits of DNA that do not code for proteins, called cis-regulatory elements, have been previously identified as critical drivers of evolution. These elements control the activation of genes that carry out the formation of the basic body plans of all organisms.

Sungbo Shim, the first author, and other members of Sestan's lab identified one such regulatory DNA region, which they named E4, that specifically enhances development of the corticospinal system. E4 is conserved in all mammals, indicating its importance to survival, the scientists explain. The lab also discovered how SOX4, SOX11, and SOX5 – sections of DNA called transcription factors — control the expression of genes and operate cooperatively to shape this network in the developing embryo. The changes in the genetic alphabet needed to trigger these evolutionary changes were tiny, note the researchers.

By manipulating only three genetic letters, scientists were able to functionally "jumpstart" regulatory activity in a zebrafish.

The authors also show that SOX4 and SOX11 are important for the layering of the neocortex, an essential change that led to increased complexity of the brain organization in mammals, including humans.

"Together, our fine motor skills that allow us to manipulate tools, walk, speak, and write, as well as our cognitive and emotional abilities that allow us to think, love, and plan all derive from these changes," Sestan said.

Sestan's lab is also investigating whether other types of changes in these genes and regulatory elements early in development might lead to intellectual disability and autism.

Provided by Yale University

"Handful of genetic changes led to huge changes to human brain." May 30th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-genetic-huge-human-brain.html

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Study finds TV can decrease self-esteem in children, except white boys

If you are a white girl, a black girl or a black boy, exposure to today's electronic media in the long run tends to make you feel worse about yourself. If you're a white boy, you'll feel better, according to a new study led by an Indiana University professor.

Nicole Martins, an assistant professor of telecommunications in the IU College of Arts and Sciences, and Kristen Harrison, professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan, also found that black children in their study spent, on average, an extra 10 hours a week watching television.

"We can't deny the fact that media has an influence when they're spending most of their time -- when they're not in school -- with the television," Martins said.

Harrison added, "Children who are not doing other things besides watching television cannot help but compare themselves to what they see on the screen."

Their paper has been published in Communication Research. Martins and Harrison surveyed a group of about 400 black and white preadolescent students in communities in the Midwest over a yearlong period. Rather than look at the impact of particular shows or genres, they focused on the correlation between the time in front of the TV and the impact on their self-esteem.

"Regardless of what show you're watching, if you're a white male, things in life are pretty good for you," Martins said of characters on TV. "You tend to be in positions of power, you have prestigious occupations, high education, glamorous houses, a beautiful wife, with very little portrayals of how hard you worked to get there.

"If you are a girl or a woman, what you see is that women on television are not given a variety of roles," she added. "The roles that they see are pretty simplistic; they're almost always one-dimensional and focused on the success they have because of how they look, not what they do or what they think or how they got there.

"This sexualization of women presumably leads to this negative impact on girls."

With regard to black boys, they are often criminalized in many programs, shown as hoodlums and buffoons, and without much variety in the kinds of roles they occupy.

"Young black boys are getting the opposite message: that there is not lots of good things that you can aspire to," Martins said. "If we think about those kinds of messages, that's what's responsible for the impact.

"If we think just about the sheer amount of time they're spending, and not the messages, these kids are spending so much time with the media that they're not given a chance to explore other things they're good at, that could boost their self-esteem."

Martins said their study counters claims by producers that programs have been progressive in their depictions of under-represented populations. An earlier study co-authored by her and Harrison suggests that video games "are the worst offenders when it comes to representation of ethnicity and gender."

Other research is starting to show the impacts of other kinds of entertainment sources, such as video games and hand-held devices. It indicates that young people are becoming creative at "media multitasking."

"Even though these new technologies are becoming more available, kids still spend more time with TV than anything else," Martins said.

Interestingly, the young people were asked about their consumption of print media, but the results were not statistically significant.

Martins conducted the research while she was completing her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois, as part of a larger longitudinal study done with her co-author, Harrison. They sought out certain school districts in Illinois because of their diversity, but African-Americans were the predominant minority group.

Provided by Indiana University

"Study finds TV can decrease self-esteem in children, except white boys." May 30th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-tv-decrease-self-esteem-children-white.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Introduction to SHIRDI SAI BABA

The Divine Wonders of Shirdi Sai Baba

Physical sciences illuminate neurodegenerative diseases

Dementia. Credit: ©freshidea Fotolia

What do physicists, chemists, mathematicians and biologists have in common? One of the answers at Cambridge is a shared interest in unravelling the processes behind neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Motor Neurone Disease.

As more people live to a ripe old age, an increasing number of us will develop neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Despite the escalating economic costs and human misery associated with these diseases, we still know relatively little about how they develop or how best to tackle them.

Alzheimer’s is the most common neurodegenerative disease. “It’s an enormous problem and we’re not doing very well at the moment in slowing the disease or treating its symptoms effectively,” says Professor Peter St George-Hyslop.

Neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s are difficult to study for several reasons. “One is that it’s not easy to get pieces of living brain,” he explains. “It’s also a disease where patients become unable to speak for themselves, so unlike people with AIDS or breast cancer they aren’t demonstrating outside the houses of Parliament demanding funding.”

Although charities and campaigners are doing sterling work raising the profile of Alzheimer’s, until recently attitudes to neurodegenerative disease had much in common with the way we viewed cancer 50 years ago.

“We are, for Alzheimer’s, like where we were for cancer in the 1950s, when people didn’t like to talk about it, were frightened or ashamed of it. And therapeutically we are in the same place; although we are beginning to learn about these diseases we don’t yet have much in the way of effective therapies,” Professor St George-Hyslop says.

One crucial discovery is that proteins misfolding in the brain form clumps or aggregates and these play a major role in causing neurodegenerative diseases. When these proteins misfold they take on certain characteristics that become noxious to cells, but what we need to know now is why these proteins misfold, which aggregates do the damage, and how that damage occurs. Which is where physics, chemistry and mathematics enter the biological picture.

Professor St George-Hyslop leads a group of experts from disparate disciplines, each bringing different tools and different ways of working to the study of neurodegenerative diseases.

What began in late 2008 as a series of meetings has now developed into a 12-strong group funded by a £5.3 million Strategic Award from the Wellcome Trust and Medical Research Council. “It’s a very interesting group of people who came together because they wanted to come together. They each knew they had something to contribute but also that they needed something else – some skills, some knowledge, some point of view – from another member of the group,” he says.

“The biologists among us knew there were techniques that the physicists and chemists had that could help us. They in turn knew we had some biological knowledge that would help them apply, in a sensible way, their very good and insightful physical and chemical tools.”

Among the group is Professor David Klenerman from the Department of Chemistry. One of the inventors of rapid, high-throughput DNA sequencing, he is now applying this knowledge to protein misfolding. From the same department comes Professor Michele Vendruscolo, a theoretical physicist working on the mechanics and thermodynamics of protein misfolding. Professor Chris Dobson, who is also from the Department of Chemistry works on protein misfolding in neurodegenerative diseases, while from the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology Dr. Clemens Kaminski brings modern laser spectroscopy tools that allow you to watch these proteins misfold inside living cells in real time.

The group has applied these physical tools to study nematode worms in which a mutation produces the same protein misfolding that causes disease in humans. “That ability to see these things as they happen in a living model give us a much greater understanding compared with previous techniques, which essentially involved grinding up biological samples and examining them after these processes had occurred,” Professor St George-Hyslop explains.

“What’s important is the marriage of the physical tool with the biological question,” he says. And he hopes that by revealing where these misfolded proteins act, these new tools could help researchers develop ways of blocking the damage they cause in both Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.

“The primary goal is to understand what the beginning and the middle parts of the process are. We know what the end is – the cell dies and you get a disease – but if you know why the cells get sick and what the mechanisms are then you have a better chance of preventing or halting it,” says Professor St George- Hyslop. “Our goal is to provide that fundamental knowledge of cause and mechanism. Hopefully from that will come some idea of which parts of those pathways you can monitor as a diagnostic and which parts you can block or change as a treatment.”

More recently, the group has been enlarged by a £4.5 million grant from the National Institute of Health Research to support an extension of the Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre via the creation of a Biomedical Research Unit in Dementia for translational research. This has allowed the inclusion of researchers in immunology and in brain imaging from the Department of Medicine and the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre.

Provided by University of Cambridge

"Physical sciences illuminate neurodegenerative diseases." May 29th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-physical-sciences-illuminate-neurodegenerative-diseases.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

OUP research reveals children's imaginative language use

The OUP research shows that children are extremely inventive in their storytelling and language use.

Innovative use of language, a firm grasp of technology, and a thirst for unusual words are just some of the findings revealed about how children use language according to new Oxford University Press (OUP) research.

The research was compiled by lexicographers in OUP's Children’s Dictionaries team based on an analysis of thousands of short stories sent into a BBC radio competition for children in the UK. 

A summary of the report has been released, revealing a wealth of information about children's patterns in language, grammatical structures, and vocabulary use.

The results show that children are extremely inventive in their storytelling and language use, with many stories focusing on genetic experiments, espionage, and futuristic gadgets. Favorites of the researchers included the 'fingerlaser,' a planet-shrinking 'zaporator' and the 'electrostone', a device that can disable electrical circuits. Robotic hybrids such as the 'dog-bot', 'robo-dog', and 'teacherbot' grabbed adults' attention in equal measure.

Technology was also a theme in many stories. The terms 'google' and 'app' occur many times: 'googling' is a way to follow clues in a mystery;  and 'apps' can be downloaded for use as a prop, avatar, or weapon.

Contrary to concerns that increasing use and popularity of 'txtspk' will ruin children's vocabularies, youngsters demonstrated that they know when it is not appropriate, only including it in their stories when transcribing an imagined text message.

The research also found that many of the words contained in children’s stories are repeated from celebrated writers – suggesting a continued love of reading. Words included creatures such as J.K. Rowling's basilisk and hippogriff, J.R.R. Tolkien's orcs, and Lewis Carroll's bandersnatch.

Some children have some difficulties using punctuation correctly, and the misuse of the apostrophe was found to be a common problem. One of the most popular pieces of punctuation was the exclamation mark, which was used 351,731 times.

The results were based on the analysis of 74,075 stories submitted to the 2012 Chris Evans Show BBC Radio 2 '500 Words' short story competition. Lexicographers at OUP analysed the entries using the Oxford Children's Corpus – a large electronic database of real and authentic children's language.

The findings provide never-before-seen insights into English use among young people, offering invaluable resources for both language researchers and OUP's ongoing dictionaries program.

Samantha Armstrong, Senior Project Editor for OUP's Children's Dictionaries, said: "OUP uses powerful technology to track and analyze children's language and the message we are getting from the BBC "500 Words" stories is a powerful one – language is evolving and children are real language innovators. Perhaps we are catching a glimpse of the language of the future."

OUP publishes more than 500 dictionaries, thesauruses, and language reference titles in more than 40 languages, and in a variety of print and electronic formats.

Provided by Oxford University

"OUP research reveals children's imaginative language use." May 29th, 2012. http://phys.org/news/2012-05-oup-reveals-children-language.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Some Gems

Next Generation: The Brain Bot

A 30-year-old technique to record the electrical activity of neurons gets a robotic makeover.

By Megan Scudellari | 

 

Whole-cell patch clamping involves bringing a hollow glass pipette in contact with the cell membrane of a neuronSputnik Animation and MIT McGovern Institute

THE DEVICE: Whole-cell patch clamping, a Nobel Prize-winning technique to record the electrical activity of neurons, has never looked so good. A shoebox-sized robot lowers a thin glass pipette, its tip sharpened to 1 micrometer in diameter, into the brain of an anesthetized mouse. The robot moves the pipette around inside the brain, almost imperceptibly, hunting for neurons. When the glass tip bumps into a neuron, the robot arm instantly halts and applies suction through the pipette to form a seal with the cell membrane. Once attached, the pipette tears a small hole in the membrane and records the cell’s internal electrical activity.

The automated process performs in vivo patch clamping faster and more accurately than manual patch clamping, which involves the physical manipulation of a glass pipette by a researcher, according to the robot’s inventors, who published their design earlier this month (May 6) inNature Methods.

The whole-cell patch clamping robotCourtesy of Craig Forest, Georgia Tech

“By adding in a robot, this will make [in vivo patch-clamping] much more accessible to someone who might not have considered it before,” said Derek Bowie, who studies neuronal receptors at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and was not involved in the research.

WHAT’S NEW: The idea is simple: record the electrical activity of a single neuron in a living brain. The execution is not: it takes researchers months to learn the technique, and even an experienced patch clamper records only 2-4 successful readings per day. The process is so laborious, in fact, that only around 30 labs in the world perform whole-cell patch clamping in vivo (though others do it in a dish). But researchers have continued to use the technique for over 30 years because of its value. “This is a really powerful technique for identifying the type of neuron you’re looking for, determining the electrophysiology of a diseased neuron, or figuring out how a drug affects the firing of a neuron,” said coauthor Craig Forest, director of the Precision Biosystems Laboratory at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “But it’s really, really hard.”

The new patch-clamping robot makes an in vivo recording in just 3 to 5 minutes, detects cells with 90 percent accuracy, and achieves a successful seal with the cell membrane about 40 percent of the time. Overall, the machine, produced in collaboration with researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is about 50 percent more successful than an individual manually attempting to make a recording, said Forest.

IMPORTANCE: Robotics has made a major impact on many fields of biology, but it has rarely been applied in neuroscience, said Forest. “We’re excited to bring robotics into the living brain,” he said. The team has already begun to use the robot in collaboration with the Seattle-based Allen Institute for a 10-year project to catalog all the types of neurons in the mouse brain.

The robot design is freely available at autopatcher.org, or an assembled robot can be purchased through a spin-off company, Neuromatic Devices. The robot can be set-up and used in a single day, said Forest—a dramatic difference from the 6 months typically required to train a graduate student or postdoc how to do the technique by hand. “I guess postdocs can now just sit at home or on a beach somewhere,” said Bowie with a laugh.

MIT researcher Ed Boyden (left) and Georgia Tech researchers Suhasa Kodandaramaiah (seated) and Craig Forest Courtesy of MIT

NEEDS IMPROVEMENT: The technique could be made even more useful if combined with another new tool called shadow patching, said Bowie. Shadow patching, developed in 2008 by Michael Häusser and colleagues at University College London, involves spraying the extracellular space around a neuron with a fluorescent dye in order to visualize the shape of the cell.

The MIT/Georgia Tech team has already modified the robot to perform a similar technique: rather than injecting dye into the extracellular space, the robot injects the die into the neuron itself to visualize its shape, said Forest. The set-up can also be tweaked to extract DNA to sequence a cell’s genome. Now, the researchers are working on increasing the number of electrodes operated by a single robot so as to record from multiple neurons at the same time, and trying to streamline the process so that a single operator can control multiple robots simultaneously. “We’re open to collaborating with folks who want to take this in new directions,” said Forest.

S. B. Kodandaramaiah, et al., “Automated whole-cell patch-clamp electrophysiology of neurons in vivo,” Nature Methods, doi:10.1038/nmeth.1993, 2012.

Source: TheScientist
http://the-scientist.com/2012/05/29/next-generation-the-brain-bot/

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Animated Photo Images

11 Things Dirtier Than Toilet Seats ....IMPORTANT from a Hygiene/Health point

I THINK FROM NOW ON WE SHOULD ALL WASH OUR HANDS, OFTEN.

                                                              

                                                                              

11 Things Germier Than Toilet Seats

People are understandably squeamish about public restrooms. But the same people are probably regularly interacting with surfaces that have far more germs and overall icky-ness than your average public toilet seat. For example:

1. Hotel/Motel Bedspread

Unlike the sheets, hotels and motels do not change or launder the bedspreads on a daily basis. It's actually more of an annual thing. And if you don't think there are various bodily fluids lingering in those coverings, let us remind you that when the bedspread from an internationally ranked five-star hotel was introduced as evidence in boxer Mike Tyson's rape trial, investigators found it coated with the DNA of so many different men that it took some significant time to finally isolate traces of Tyson's contribution.

 

2. Purse Bottoms

Many women who fear the germs of public toilet seats don't think twice about placing their purses down on the floor of the bathroom stall. Not only that, they also set them on the floor while riding the bus, or while dining at a restaurant, or while dancing at a nightclub, or on the bedspread at a hotel (see above). And then, when they get home, they set that same purse on the kitchen counter or the dining room table while they rifle through the daily mail or check their phone messages.

Nelson Laboratories of Salt Lake City tested a random selection of ladies' purses: those belonging to moms, executive types, and swinging singles. What did they find? Pseudomonas, staphylococcus aurous, salmonella, and e-coli. Many of the handbags had fecal contamination, and those belonging to the women that frequented dance clubs also had traces of vomit. In layman's terms, the pocketbooks were infested with harmful bacteria, the types that can cause all sorts of infections.

 

3. ATM Keypad

Studies have shown that the various keys on your average ATM serve as a cozy nesting place for Bacillus Cereus, a bacterium that can cause symptoms in humans similar to those of food poisoning. Yet folks casually punch those buttons and then go about their business without a second thought, touching their eye area to assuage an itch or holding the Egg McMuffin that they're munching during their morning commute.

 

4. Office Telephone

Have you ever used a corporate telephone other than the one on your desk? Who knows what evils lurk on that communal device - other than the 25,127 germs found in a square inch on the average telephone receiver as discovered in a 2004 University of Arizona study. Think about it - the person who used that phone before you might not have the same fastidious hand-washing habits as you, and he/she may have answered a call immediately upon exiting the bathroom!

 

5. Restaurant Menu

Servers barely have enough time to take an order from table 11 and then rush to tables 14 and 17 to deliver that extra side of Ranch dressing and a round of beverages, respectively. Do we really expect them to wipe down the restaurant's oft-handled menus with anti-bacterial wipes in their "spare" time? The Journal of Medical Virology has reported that flu viruses can survive on a hard surface for as long as 18 hours. Think of how many hands have touched that bill of fare before you browsed over it and then immediately used your fingers to transport dinner rolls or breadsticks directly to your mouth.

 

6. Condiment Containers

Speaking of restaurants and germs living on hard surfaces, how many of you disinfect your hands in between handling the ketchup bottle or salt/pepper shakers and your food?

 

7. Grocery / Airport Baggage Carts

So you're afraid to set your naked hindquarters on a toilet seat that is routinely cleaned with bleach-infused products, but you push a grocery cart through your local supermarket bare-handed? The handle of which has been touched by folks who've coughed or sneezed into their hands and have also handled packages of raw meat? And those of you who place items in the fold-out children's seat - does it not occur to you that many a child's diapered bottom has previously occupied that space? A four-year study conducted by the University of Arizona at supermarkets in Tucson, San Francisco, Chicago, and Tampa revealed that shopping buggies were rife with such bacteria and viruses as E. Coli, salmonella, and Staphylococcus.

 

8. Steering Wheel

As mentioned above, public toilet seats are washed on a regular basis, but when is the last time you scrubbed down the steering wheel of your vehicle? During a typical day you might touch things such as a gas pump dispenser, cash from the bank drive-thru window, and your crying child's runny nose in the back seat, and then use those same hands to grip the steering wheel after every transaction without any disinfecting in between. Oh, did I mention that some of us also eat food and apply eye makeup while driving with those same hands that are gripping the germ-laden (mainly with bacillus cereus and arthrobacter) steering wheel?

 

9. Kitchen Faucet Handle(s)

Dr. Charles Gerba, an environmental biologist at the University of Arizona, once declared that if an alien from another planet landed in an average Earth household, he would determine (after a careful bacterial count) that he should wash his hands in the toilet and use the kitchen sink as a commode. Yep, our kitchen sponges and faucet handles are that contaminated with nasties, mainly because we tend to touch these items many times in the midst of handling raw meat, eggs, and poultry while preparing a meal.

 

10. Gym Equipment

How many of you who work out regularly at a gym grip the handrails on the treadmill or the handlebars on the stationary bike without a second thought? Or perhaps you grasp a series of different free weights during your strength-building workout. Odds are that at sometime during your workout you'll swipe a sweaty fist across your eyes or scratch an itch some place on your person (an innocent, unconscious activity that might break the skin and unintentionally place a virtual welcome mat inviting infection). You might be interested to know that the nasty "superbug"methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (better known as MRSA), which can survive on non-host surfaces for up to a month, has been found on various gym machines in studies done across the U.S. That's in addition to the sarcinia, candida specie, and staphylococcus epi that was also harvested from the various standard gym apparatus. And don't get us started on what was found on the floors of the showers!

 

11. Swings and Monkey Bars and Such

OK, this particular hotbed of germs might affect your offspring more than you, but it's certainly worth a mention, especially if you allow your child to munch on snacks while they romp. If your child ever frolics on the monkey bars, jungle gym, swings, ball pit, etc., of a communal play area, then his hands are a virtual Petri dish of disgustingness after each and every play date. Besides the traces of human fecal material found on such equipment in many studies, there is also the fact that kids with runny noses tend to use their hands as handkerchiefs while playing, and various birds in the area use playground equipment as their personal comfort station.

Amazing: Richat Structure: Eye Of The Sahara

The Richat Structure, also known as the Eye of the Sahara, is a prominent circular feature in the Sahara desert of west central Mauritania near Ouadane. Surrounded by thousands of square miles of nearly featureless desert, this 40-50 km in diameter series of concentric circles is readily visible from space. This prominent circular feature in the Sahara desert has attracted attention since the earliest space missions because it looks like a gigantic bull�s-eye.

Richat Structure is not the site of an ancient meteor crater, as many people originally postulated. These concentric circles are actually alternating layers of sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous rocks that were pushed upward in a symmetrical anticline, geologic dome, from below due to a small incursion of magma. The structure is a deeply eroded. The sedimentary rock exposed in this dome range in age from Late Proterozoic (2.5 billion years) within the center of the dome to Ordovician (480 million years) sandstone around its edges.

Initially interpreted as an asteroid impact structure because of its high degree of circularity, it is now argued to be a highly symmetrical and deeply eroded geologic dome. Despite extensive field and laboratory studies, geologists have found a lack of any credible evidence for shock metamorphism or any type of deformation indicative of an extraterrestrial impact.

The annular depression that characterize large extraterrestrial impact structures of this size. Also, it is quite different from large extraterrestrial impact structures in that the sedimentary strata comprising this structure is remarkably intact and "orderly" and lacking in overturned, steeply dipping strata or disoriented blocks. A more recent multianalytical study on the Richat megabreccias concluded that carbonates within the silica-rich megabreccias were created by low-temperature hydrothermal waters, and that the structure requires special protection and further investigation of its origin.

தென் இந்திய தமிழ் சினிமாவில் ஈழத்தின் முதல் பெண் பாடலாசிரியர்(Interview with Music Director ravi priyan)

தென் இந்திய தமிழ் சினிமாவில் முதல் பெண் பாடலாசிரியராக தாமரை "இனியவளே" திரைப்படத்தின் மூலம் தமிழ்த் திரையுலகில் முதல் பெண் பாடலாசிரியராக அறிமுகமானார்.

தற்ப்போது ஈழத்தின் தென்மராட்சி சாவகச்சேரியை பிறப்பிடமாகவும் புலம்பெயர்ந்து சுவிஸ்லாந்தில் வசிக்கும் கவிக்குயில் "பாமினி "அவர்கள் தென் இந்திய தமிழ் சினிமாவில் ஈழத்தின் முதல் பெண்பாடலாசிரியராக இசையமைப்பாளர் ரவிப்பிரியன் இசையில் வெளிவர இருக்கும் "சதா" திரைப்படத்தின் மூலம் அறிமுகமாகின்றார்.

பாமினி அவர்களுக்கு தமிழிதழ் இணையம் சார்ப்பாக வாழ்த்துக்களையும் பாராட்டுக்களையும் தெரிவித்துக்கொள்கின்றோம்.

அடுத்த திரைப்படமாக டெல்லி கணேஸ் இன் மகன் அறிமுகமாகும் " சிந்தை மயங்குதடி "என்ற திரைப்படத்தில் இவரது பாடல்கள் இடம்பெறுவதற்க்கான பேச்சு வார்த்தை இடம்பெற்றுக் கொண்டு இருக்கிறது. அதே நேரம் இவரது பாடல் வரிகளிலும் இசையமைப்பாளர் ரவிப்பிரியன் இசையிலும் திப்பு, ஹரிச்சரண், சிறினீவாஸ் , பிரியா, சுவேதா மோகன் ,சத்யன், ஹரிணி ,மது பாலகிருஸ்னன், உசாராஜ், முகேஸ்.ஆகியோர் குரலிலும் மிகப் பிரமாண்டமான வெளியீடாக யூன் மாதம் வெளிவர இருக்கின்றது என் காதல் நீ என்ற இசைப் பேழை

பல இசைப்பேழைகளையும், இணையத் தளங்கள் ஊடகவும் கவிதைகள் மூலம் பிரபலமடைந்த எஸ்வீஆர் பாமினி அவரது தென் இந்திய தமிழ் சினிமாவின் வருகைக்கு இணையத்தளங்களும் அவரது திறமையும் காரணம் என தென் இந்திய இசையமைப்பாளர் ரவிப்பிரியன் தெரிவித்துள்ளார்

ஒத்திப் போடும் பழக்கத்தை ஒரேடியாக ஒத்தி போடுங்கள்.

செய்ய வேண்டிய கடமைகளையும், வேலைகளையும் ஒத்தி போடுவதும் தேவையில்லாத பொழுது போக்கு விஷயங்களை செவ்வனே செய்வதும் நம் அன்றாட வேலைகளில் ஒன்றாகி விட்டது. இதற்கு காரணத்தை ஒரே வார்த்தையில் சொல்லி விடலாம். - விருப்பம். ஆமாம். நம் மனம் விரும்பும் செயல்களை உடனே செய்யும். விரும்பாத, கடினமாக உணரும் செயல்களை ஒத்திப் போட விரும்பும். நாம் நம் மனதை பற்றி ஏதாவது தப்பாக நினைத்து விடக் கூடாது என்பதற்காக பெரிய மனது பண்ணி அந்த வேலையை நாளைக்கு செய்யாலாம் என்று சொல்லும். ஆனால் நாளைக்கும் அதே மனம் தானே நம்மிடம் உள்ளது? ஆகவே மறுபடியும் ஒத்திப் போட முனையும். இந்த மாதிரியான நண்பர்களை ஆங்கிலத்தில் procrastinator என்று அழைக்கிறார்கள். முறை 1: நம் மனம் விரும்பாத விஷயங்களை மனதில் வைத்துக் கொள்ளாது. வசதியாக மறந்து விடும். ஆகவே நாம் செய்ய வேண்டியது என்னவென்றால் உடனேஅருகிலுள்ள பெட்டிக் கடைக்கு சென்று ஒரு குயர் நோட் ஒன்றை வாங்கி நாம் செய்ய வேண்டிய வேலைகளை அட்டவணை படுத்த வேண்டும். அடுத்தது அந்த வேலைகளின் முக்கியத்துவத்திற்கேற்ப அவற்றை வரிசை படுத்த வேண்டும். வெறுமென வேலைகளை எழுதி வரிசை படுத்தினால் மட்டும் நாம் செய்து விடுவோமா என்ன? ஆகவே அவ்வேலைகளை முடிக்க ஒரு கால நிர்ணயம் செய்து குறித்துக் கொள்ள வேண்டும். இந்த முறையின் மூலம் சில எளிய வேலைகளை குறிப்பிட்ட காலத்துக்குள் முடித்து விடுவோம். இந்த முறையை பின்பற்றினாலும் நான் வேலைகளை செய்ய மாட்டேன் என்று அடம் பிடிப்பவர்களுக்கு இருக்கிறது அடுத்த முறை. முறை 2: நாம் பிடித்த செயலை மட்டும் நேரம் காலம் பார்க்காமல் செய்வோம். ஆனால் பிடிக்காத சில குறிப்பிட்ட வேலைகளை கட்டி வைத்து அடித்தாலும் செய்ய மாட்டோம். காரணம் என்னவென்றால் அந்த வேலைகளை பற்றி நினைக்கும் போதே நம் மனம் உருவாக்கும் எதிர்மறை உணர்வு தான்! அந்த எதிர் மறை உணர்வை நீங்கள் போக்கி கொண்டால் நீங்கள் வெறுக்கும் செயலும் உங்களுக்கு பிடித்த செயலாகி விடும். அப்புறம் என்ன? அந்த வேலையை விரும்பி செய்து பட்டையை கிளப்புவீர்கள். சரி அந்த எதிர் மறை உணர்வை போக்குவது எப்படி? மிக மிக எளிது..! உண்மையாக அந்த செயலை எப்படி செய்வீர்களோ அதே போல் மனதில் நன்கு உணர்ந்து செய்யுங்கள். அப்படி செய்யும் போது உங்கள் எதிர் மறை உணர்வு சமப்படுத்த பட்டு விடும். ஒத்திப் போடும் பழக்கத்தை ஒரேடியாக ஒத்தி போடுங்கள்.
 thanks
Narumugai Devi 

எத்தனையோ ஆயிரம் ஆண்டுகளுக்கு முன்பு சீனாவில் எங்கள் தமிழ் இருந்துள்ளது.

எத்தனையோ ஆயிரம் ஆண்டுகளுக்கு முன்பு சீனாவில் எங்கள் தமிழ் இருந்துள்ளது.அதுவும் அங்கே முதல் மொழியாக இருந்துள்ளது என்பதை இந்த கல்வெட்டு உறுதிப்படுத்துகின்றது.இது சீனாவில் உள்ள canton என்கிற நகரத்தின் வடபகுதியிலிருந்து 500 மைல் தூரத்தில் கண்டெடுக்கப்பட்டுள்ளது.அந்த இடத்தின் பெயர் Chuaan Chou என அழைக்கப்படுகிறது.இது ஒரு துறைமுக நகரம் ஆகும்.பழைய காலங்களிலும் இது முக்கிய துறைமுக நகரமாக இருந்து வந்துள்ளது என்பது குறிப்பிடத் தக்கது.எம் அன்பான தமிழர்களே ஆண்ட தமிழினம் காலம் காலமாக அழித்து ஒடுக்கப்பட்டுள்ளது.எந்த நாடுகளில் நாம் இருந்தோமோ அந்தந்த நாடுகளில் நாங்கள் வாழ்ந்த வரலாறுகள் தடயமின்றி அழிக்கப்பட்டுள்ளது.இது தெளிவான உண்மையாகும் .



This Tamil Language inscription was found in China. It was found about 500 miles north of Canton, in a place called Chuan Chou. This is a port city. It was an important port city in the ancient times also.


son inscription langue tamoule a été découvert en Chine. Il a été trouvé environ 500 miles au nord de Canton, dans un endroit appelé Chuan Chou. Il s'agit d'une ville portuaire. Il était une importante ville portuaire dans les temps anciens aussi.