Mix up your choices for a healthy life

Focus on fruits. Eat a variety of fruits—whether fresh, frozen, canned, or dried—rather than fruit juice for most of your fruit choices. For a 2,000-calorie diet, you will need 2 cups of fruit each day (for example, 1 small banana, 1 large orange, and 1/4 cup of dried apricots or peaches).

Vary your veggies. Eat more dark green veggies, such as broccoli, kale, and other dark leafy greens; orange veggies, such as carrots, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, and winter squash; and beans and peas, such as pinto beans, kidney beans, black beans, garbanzo beans, split peas, and lentils.

Get your calcium-rich foods. Get 3 cups of low-fat or fat-free milk—or an equivalent amount of low-fat yogurt and/or low-fat cheese (1½ ounces of cheese equals 1 cup of milk)—every day. For kids aged 2 to 8, it's 2 cups of milk. If you don't or can't consume milk, choose lactose-free milk products and/or calcium-fortified foods and beverages.

Make half your grains whole. Eat at least 3 ounces of whole-grain cereals, breads, crackers, rice, or pasta every day. One ounce is about 1 slice of bread, 1 cup of breakfast cereal, or ½ cup of cooked rice or pasta. Look to see that grains such as wheat, rice, oats, or corn are referred to as "whole" in the list of ingredients.
Go lean with protein. Choose lean meats and poultry. Bake it, broil it, or grill it. And vary your protein choices—with more fish, beans, peas, nuts, and seeds.

Know the limits on fats, salt, and sugars. Read the Nutrition Facts label on foods. Look for foods low in saturated fats and trans fats. Choose and prepare foods and beverages with little salt (sodium) and/or added sugars (caloric sweeteners).

The Risk of underage drinking

If you’re under 21
—or if you drink too much at any age—alcohol
can be especially risky.

Just a few of the dangers of underage drinking:

Death
Each year, an estimated 5,000 people under the age of 21 dies from alcohol related injuries. Alcohol is a factor in about 4 out of every 10 deaths from car crashes, drownings, burns, falls and other unintentional injuries.
Addiction
The younger you are when you start drinking, the greater your chance of becoming addicted to alcohol at some point in your life. More than 4 in 10 people who begin drinking before age 15 eventually become alcoholic.

Thinking Problems
Your brain is still developing throughout the teen years. New research on teens with alcohol disorders shows that heavy drinking in the teen years can cause long-lasting harm to thinking abilities.

Arrest
Drinking under age 21 is against the law. Penalties can include not getting a drivers license on time, having the license removed for driving with any trace of alcohol in the body, losing a job, and losing a college scholarship.

Drinking too soon or too much:
Can affect your mood and your thinking.
Can hurt others, get you in legal trouble, and damage your relationships.
Can harm your body now and when you grow up.
Can get you hooked.

Three common sleep disorders and health problems related to it

We need a good sleep to get rid of the previous day's mental stress and for a good mood and concentration for the next day.

Most need 7 or 8 hours a night.
Some need less, others more.

There are three common sleep disorders:

• Sleep apnea: the person stops breathing, sometimes hundreds of times a night.
• Sleep deprivation (sleep debt): not getting enough sleep night after night.
• Insomnia: trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. Insomnia can be either temporary or long-term.

Sleep disorders can cause or worsen many problems:

• Feeling sleepy or tired all day.
• Falling asleep when driving or operating machinery.
• Poor memory, concentration and learning.
• Irritability and mood swings.
• More colds and other infections.
• Over the long-term: overweight, high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease.

Tips to help you

If you can’t fall asleep within 20 minutes try on of them…
• Get up and do something relaxing. Try reading some books or magazine in dim light.
Or sit quietly in the dark until you start to feel sleepy.
• Don’t turn on bright lights, because this tells your body to wake up.
Develop sleep rituals.
• Tell your body that it’s time to sleep by doing the same things every night just before bed.
• Listen to relaxing music, read something light, do few relaxation exercises or take a hot bath.

Don’t watch TV or work in bed.
• Make “Going to bed mean going to sleep.”
• Don’t watch TV in bed (unless it helps you fall asleep in 10 or 15 minutes).
Don’t play video games, make phone calls, answer e-mails, or pay bills in bed.
• You’ll fall asleep faster if you use your bed only for rest, sleep, and intimacy.

Avoid Caffeine and Alcohol hours before going to bed

Benefits of Wine Tourism in Australia

One of the world's fastest growing industries is 'Wine Tourism'. What is it? How can we best benefit from it?

Firstly, let's keep it simple. If tourism is simply the provision of goods and services that attract tourists, then 'wine tourism' is the same but has the added influence of wine. Wine tourism is not only associated with cellar door wineries, rather all business that are involved in the wine, tourism and associated industries with the wine region. This includes accommodation houses, tour operators, gift shops, national parks etc.

If the desired outcome of 'wine tourism' is attracting more tourists then the real secret to success is having a clear understanding of the needs of your potential customers. Once this is clear you can focus on attracting tourists to our wine regions, improve business and target specific customers to your region.

Queensland has the advantage of already having an established tourism industry. Many wineries don't appreciate how involved they are in the tourism industry. An area that most regions have identified as important to meeting customer expectations is the need to integrate wine with quality food. There is no question that food plays an important part in adding to a region's ambience and unique character.

To obtain long-term success, each region needs to focus on really defining their point of differences, rather than trying to out perform another region. Identifying and consistently delivering a unique wine experience is what each region must strive to achieve. This fits well into both Tourism Queensland's and the Department's strategy to promote regional tourism. Global trends indicate that tourism is one of the most dynamic growth sectors and the demand for a quality experience is rising rapidly.

Irrespective of the way tourism is formally defined, it is first and foremost a 'people industry' involving the development and supply of a range of facilities, services and experiences to meet the needs, aspirations and expectations of visitors. Tourism is complex and diverse, involving many different forms of commerce. Most tourism businesses are part of the much larger services industry. At the local and regional level, the industry comprises tourism operators, businesses not directly involved in tourism, local and regional tourism organisations, community groups, residents and local government. By working together destinations have the capacity to attract visitors, satisfy their leisure needs and expectations, and generate economic and other benefits for the whole community.

In Queensland more people are employed in tourism than in agriculture, forestry, fishing and mining combined. Queensland Treasury estimates that close to 10 % of the workforce, or 135,000 people, are working in tourism. And the outlook is bright: international visitor numbers are expected to double over the next eight years (Tourism Forecasting Council, 1999). Latest figures also show that domestic visitor nights in Queensland have increased by more than 20% over the year to June 1999 (Bureau of Tourism Research, June Quarter 1999). Treasury recognises the importance of the industry to Queensland?s economy. The strength of the State?s services sector continues to be underpinned by tourism and related services which have contributed 7.9% of Gross State Product in 1998-99 (Queensland Treasury, Annual Economic Report 1998-99).

Changing diet in penguins

By studying the tissue remains of penguins in Antarctica, scientists are not only learning more about the modern diet of the continent’s iconic seabird but also what was on the menu thousands of years ago. And that information can provide insight into past climate and penguin behavior, as well as how the species could respond to future climate changes.

Much of their work involves collecting tissue samples, such as eggshells and feathers, from existing penguin colonies and long-extinct ones around the Antarctic Peninsula and the Ross Sea regions. Then they analyze the samples in the lab, looking at the ratios of carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes, which can provide important clues to what’s been on the dinner plate throughout the year.

Now the scientists are testing the idea by looking at gentoos, another Pygoscelis penguin, a mostly subantarctic bird that is pushing its way across the northern end of the Antarctic Peninsula as the climate there warms and the Adélie population declines.

Fun & Interesting Facts About planet Pluto

• Pluto is only about half the width of the United States. Charon is about half the size of Pluto. Charon is the largest moon compared to the body it orbits (whether planet or dwarf planet) of any moon in the solar system.

• Almost all the planets travel around the Sun in nearly perfect circles. But Pluto does not. It takes an oval-shaped path with the Sun nowhere near its center. What's more, its path is quite tilted from the nice, orderly plane where all the other planets orbit. (Mercury has a slightly lop-sided orbit, although not nearly so much as Pluto's.)

• If you lived on Pluto, you'd have to live 248 Earth years to celebrate your first birthday in Pluto-years.

• If you lived on Pluto, you would see Charon from only one side of the planet. Charon's orbit around Pluto takes about six and one-half Earth days. Pluto's day (that is, one complete rotation) takes exactly the same amount of time. So, Charon always "hovers" over the same spot on Pluto's surface, and the same side of Charon always faces Pluto.

• At Pluto's current distance from the Sun, the temperature on its surface is about 400 degrees below zero Fahrenheit! It will get even colder as it moves farther from the Sun. From Pluto, the Sun looks like just a bright dot in the sky, the brightest star visible. The light from the Sun is as bright on Pluto as the light from the full Moon is on Earth.

• If you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, you would weigh only 7 pounds on Pluto!

• Pluto orbits in a far-out region of the solar system called the Kuiper (rhymes with viper) Belt. There are lots of icy, rocky objects out there. But they are so far from the Sun they are really hard to see, even with powerful telescopes.

A Message for Men about Health

Men may be catching up to women in lifespan. The life-expectancy gap between men and women has shrunk to 5.2 years, the narrowest since 1946. But men still need to pay more attention to their health. Why?

Compared to women, men are more likely to:

• Smoke and drink more, and generally lead less healthy lifestyles
• Put off routine checkups and even ignore symptoms of a health problem
• Join in fearless, risky, and dangerous behaviors

Working-aged men also are less likely than women to have a regular doctor.
The good news is that many of the diseases and health conditions that men face can be prevented — or treated if they are found early. To start taking better care of your health, learn about your risk factors. Risk factors are things in your life that increase your chances of getting a certain disease. Some risk factors you cannot change, such as your age or family history. But many are in your control. Find out what you can do to lower your risk factors and improve your overall health. Next, find out how often you should see a doctor for routine checkups and what screenings, tests, and vaccines you might need. By taking these steps, you will feel good knowing you are doing all you can to take charge of your health.

Small Technology to Clean Up Big Pollution Problems

EPA scientists are exploring ways to use some very small materials to clean up some very big environmental troubles. Research chemist Dr. Souhail Al-Abed and his colleagues have synthesized stimulated carbon with nanoparticles of iron/palladium bimetallic to construct a new nano-scale treatment to clean up pollutants. The new, tiny technology is offering promise where unadventurous technologies have been limited in detecting, treating, removing, and preventing environmental contaminants.

The research is proving particularly useful in dealing with PCBs, a family of persistent organic chemicals that have been linked to a host of dangerous health effects, including cancer. Dr. Al-Abed and his research group found that infusing the carbon with nanoparticles not only made it more effective at adsorbing contaminants, but also degraded the PCBs to less dangerous compounds.

Antarctica, Greenland helps scientists to understand past climate

Ice cores from Antarctica, Greenland and elsewhere in the world serve as a way for scientists to travel back in time to understand past climate. They analyze such things as the trapped bubbles of gas, chemicals, insoluble dust and trace metals found in the ice to reconstruct the cycles of glacial advance and retreat, the waxing and waning of temperature, the sudden appearance of droughts and volcanic eruptions.

But those long, skinny cylinders of ice can only tell so much of the story, according to Ryan Bay, a research physicist at the University of California Berkley. Bay and colleagues use an instrument they developed called an optical dust logger to measure the dust and particulates, or bits of matter, not captured by the original ice core.

Bay and team member Delia Tosi will take the latest and greatest version of their optical dust logger to Antarctica this coming field season. They’ll send the instrument down the deepest hole ever drilled in the ice sheet, where European scientists recovered the oldest ice to date from a high-altitude spot on the polar plateau called Dome C in East Antarctica.

The 3,270-meter-long ice core drilled by the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) reaches back at least 800,000 years. Bay said he is particularly interested in the last 100,000 years of climate history and finding signatures of volcanic eruptions and impacts from comets or asteroids that may have caused abrupt climate changes.

For instance, a major volcanic eruption can send a great amount of sulfate particles into the atmosphere. The sulfate aerosols reflect sunlight, effectively shielding the lower atmosphere of the planet and cooling it near the surface. Bay said this abrupt cooling event could then affect the succeeding climate for millennia.

Nokia Booklet 3G

A new portable device from Nokia, Nokia Booklet 3G is a small laptop PC witness the company step foot on computers.
Features:
Display: 10.1-inch HD display
Screen: 720p HD screen
Battery life: 12 hours
HDMI port for HD video out
Aluminium shell which measures in at just 2cm thin and tips the scales at around a kilogram to ensure it’s extremely portable.

Discovery’s next launch on Friday at 12:22 a.m

Teams at Kennedy Space Center have completed a portion of the testing of a liquid hydrogen fill and drain valve in space shuttle Discovery’s main propulsion system. The valve opened and closed when commanded five different times with no issues. This “cycle testing” of Discovery began at 6:28 p.m. EDT and finished at 6:59 p.m.

Teams are now performing a pressure test of the propulsion system, and recording the leak rate of small amounts of liquid hydrogen. Data from tonight’s tests will be brought to tomorrow’s mission management team for evaluation at the noon meeting.

NASA is targeting Discovery’s next launch attempt for no earlier than Friday, Aug. 28 at 12:22 a.m., depending on the results of the testing and a review of the data by the mission management team.

Discovery’s countdown is expected to resume at the T-11 hour point at 8:57 a.m. tomorrow.

Temporary tattoos and Henna can cause skin problems

Temporary tattoos, such as those applied to the skin with a moistened wad of cotton, fade several days after application. Many contain color additives approved for cosmetic use on the skin. However, FDA has received reports of allergic reactions to some temporary tattoos.

An Import Alert is in effect for several foreign-made temporary tattoos. According to Consumer Safety Officer Allen Halper of FDA's Office of Cosmetics and Colors, the temporary tattoos subject to the import alert are not allowed into the United States because they don't have the required ingredient declaration on the label or they contain colors not permitted for use in cosmetics applied to the skin.

Henna, a coloring made from a plant, is approved only for use as a hair dye, not for direct application to the skin, as in the body-decorating process known as mehndi. This unapproved use of a color additive makes these products adulterated and therefore illegal. An import alert is in effect for henna intended for use on the skin. FDA has received reports of injuries to the skin from products marketed as henna.

Since henna typically produces a brown, orange-brown, or reddish-brown tint, other ingredients must be added to produce other colors, such as those marketed as "black henna" and "blue henna." So-called "black henna" may contain the "coal tar" color p-phenylenediamine, also known as PPD. This ingredient may cause allergic reactions in some individuals. The only legal use of PPD in cosmetics is as a hair dye. It is not approved for direct application to the skin. Even brown shades of products marketed as henna may contain other ingredients intended to make them darker or make the stain last longer.

In addition to color additives, these skin-decorating products may contain other ingredients, such as solvents.

cholecystokinin plays an important role in the control of blood sugar.

A gut hormone called cholecystokinin (CCK) plays an important role in the control of blood sugar production in the liver, according to Canadian researchers.

"We show for the first time that CCK from the gut activates receptors to regulate glucose levels. It does so via a gut-brain-liver neuronal axis," Tony Lam of the University of Toronto said in a news release.CCK binds to local receptors on nerves of the small intestine, triggering a message to the brain which, in turn, tells the liver to stop producing glucose.

Lam and colleagues also found that rats fed a high-fat diet for a few days became resistant to CCK.
They said their findings suggest that CCK resistance, like insulin resistance, may be a major contributor to high blood sugar often seen in people with a high-fat diet. The results also suggest that drugs that target CCK receptors may help fight diabetes.

Biodefense and Bioterrorism

Terrorism refers to the use or threat of force or violence against people or property. A bioterrorist attack releases viruses, bacteria, or other germs to cause illness or death. These biological agents are typically found in nature. But they can sometimes be made more harmful by increasing their ability to cause or spread disease, or to resist medical treatment.

Biological agents spread through the air, water or in food. They can be very hard to detect, and they don't cause illness for several hours or days. Some agents can also be spread from person to person. Scientists worry that anthrax, botulism, hemorrhagic fever viruses such as Ebola, plague, or smallpox could be used as biological agents.

Biodefense involves medical measures to protect people against biological agents. This means medicines and vaccinations. It also means medical research and preparations to defend against bioterrorist attacks.

This Weekend Events in New York City

There are lots of events to enjoy this weekend in NYC, including the Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival in Queens, Summer Streets in Manhattan, the Metropolitan Opera Summer Recital Series: Tappen Park on Staten Island, Black Gold - Bronx River Art, and the Three Kings Day Parade in Brooklyn.

Dragon Boat Festival, which features paddlers of all ages racing in 40+ foot long dragon boats.

The Met’s annual concerts in New York City parks are one of the most beloved summer traditions in the city. This year, the company will present a six-performance series of recitals in the parks of all five boroughs. All performances in the Summer Recital Series are free and no tickets are required, except for the concert at Central Park.

Tattfoo Tan, Tea-Pi, is an interactive space constructed from unsold painting, tea, sandwiches and recorded audio conversations. Abigail DeVille, Original Ganstas, 2008, is a mixed media collage, 12 x 20 feet. Gallery hours are Mondays to Fridays 3-6.30PM and Saturdays 12-5PM. Free.

Scientific reasons to study climatic change at high latitudes are listed below:

Ice (including snow) is the predominant form of condensed water most of the year, both in the air and on the surface. Ice and snow scatter, transmit, and absorb sunlight and radiant heat much differently than water.

There is very little water vapor in the atmosphere, changing the impact of the atmosphere on the propagation of radiant energy, particularly radiant energy propagating upwards from the surface, and on the performance of some atmospheric remote sensing instruments.

The major "pumps" for the global ocean currents are at high latitudes, and there is good reason to believe that those pumps will be affected by climate-related changes in the atmosphere.

High latitude atmospheric processes over both land and sea must be characterized for incorporation into global climate models.

Longest solar eclipse

Millions of people across Asia will observe the longest solar eclipse that will take place on 22nd of July, most parts of India and China, the whole city of Shanghai and southern Japanese islands are pushed into darkness on Wednesday for about five minutes.

Stargazers in huge number and scientists around the world are traveling long distances to view the once-in-a-lifetime happening.

Astronomers expect the eclipse will release signs about the sun, while an astrologer in Myanmar predicts it could guide in confusion. A few in India are giving an opinion to pregnant relatives to stay indoors to follow a centuries-old tradition of keeping away from the sun's invisible rays.

For astronomers, it will be a possibility for a prolonged observation of the sun's corona, a white ring 1 million kilometers from the sun's surface. The earlier total eclipse, in August 2008, was two minutes and 27 seconds. This one will last 6 minutes and 39 seconds at its maximum point.

NASA to Offer Education Funding

NASA has announced a competitive funding opportunity for informal education that could result in the award of grants or cooperative agreements to several of the nation's science centers, museums and planetariums. Approximately $6 million is available for new awards.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which leads the Museum Alliance, will conduct an external peer review process for the proposals. Final award selection rests with the Office of Education at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Proposals for the Competitive Program for Science Museums and Planetariums are expected to use NASA resources to enhance informal education programs related to space exploration, aeronautics, space science, Earth science or microgravity. Full proposals are due Sept. 10, 2009.

Google Chrome Operating System

Google Inc is get readying to launch an operating system for personal computers next year.Called the Google Chrome Operating System, the new software will be targeted at netbook computers and be fast and lightweight, allow users to access the Web in a few seconds, Google said in a statement on Tuesday.

Netbooks running the new operating system - based on open-source Linux code - will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010, Google saidGoogle also said Google Chrome OS was a latest project, does nothing with Android mobile operating software found in smart phones.

"All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies," Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management at Google, said in the Google blog.

Google also gave information about how it works -Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

Source:googleblog
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html

Latest Nanotechnology news –“dry granular materials such as sands, seeds and grains have properties similar to liquid”

University of Chicago researchers recently showed that dry granular materials such as sands, seeds and grains have properties similar to liquid, forming water-like droplets when poured from a given source. The finding could be important to a wide range of industries that use "fluidized" dry particles for oil refining, plastics manufacturing and pharmaceutical production.

Researchers previously thought dry particles lacked sufficient surface tension to form droplets like ordinary liquids. But, in a first-time accomplishment, physicists from the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at the University of Chicago, led by Professor Heinrich M. Jaeger, used high-speed photography to measure minute levels of surface tension and detect droplet formation in flows of dry granular materials.

The science journal Nature reports the finding in its June 25 issue. The materials research center at the University of Chicago is supported by the National Science Foundation.
Until recently, studies of so-called "free falling granular streams" tracked shape changes in flows of dry materials, but were unable to observe the full evolution of the forming droplets or the clustering mechanisms involved.

"Previous studies of granular streams were able to detect clustering by performing experiments in vacuum and were able to establish that the clustering was not caused by the drag from the ambient air," said Jaeger. "However, the cause of the clustering remained a mystery."

Source: National Science Foundation. http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=114907&org=NSF&from=news