Scared of aging?

Then just gorge on blueberries. Termed as 'anti-aging superstars' they are also low on calories. So a dual benefit :D So says this article.

So why empty your pockets on those exorbitantly priced anti-aging creams when you have the natural method right in front of you. How I wish we could get these blueberries in India too.

The article also talks about how the antioxidant benefits of fruits and veggie is destroyed if consumed along with milk. It is an interesting article. So go ahead and read on.

Amusing, funny or stupid?

Just read this article on The Guardian where it says Indian Railways has employed a man to pretend to be a monkey to scare of other monkeys. And its been working so far. I would certainly be amused if I was to come across such a sight. But then when I read the article I started thinking on what these poor people have to do to make ends meet. He does it to earn money. To provide for food and living for himself and family. Somehow I felt it can be quite humiliating for a person. Or probably not. Like they say it all depends on the outlook. He definitely sounds quite proud of himself. So as they say it all depends on the outlook.


I've extracted the article here. There is one video also available if you go to the article page.

Indian railway employs 'monkey-man' to protect passengers

42-year-old man walks around on all fours to prevent animals snatching food from travellers

James Sturcke, guardian.co.uk, Wednesday October 01 2008 15:56 BST

Walking round on all fours, with a tail sticking out of his red shorts and a brown face mask, Acchan Miyan scares the monkeys at Lucknow station, northern India.

Railway bosses insist their "monkey-man" is an effective way to protect their passengers from the mischievous animals, which are prone to snatch food from travellers and tear seat covers from trains.

The 42-year-old says he has been driven to the unusual profession by poverty, but is convinced that his efforts are helping passengers.

But it is hard to tell who is the more bemused, the passengers, or the remaining monkeys sitting around on roof rafters, munching on bunches of bananas, watching the show below.

Our life and our attitude

I was forwarded this article by a friend and I was speechless by the time I had moved on to the 4th paragraph of the article. I was in total awe of this young lad, Naga Naresh Karuturi, and so overwhelmed reading what he had gone through. And I felt so petty about myself thinking how much complaining I do for little little things. And here was this 21 year old who is so happy, so content and so thankful to God for planning out everything for him.

I'm sure 99% of us would have been complaining and cribbing and cursing God if any of us would have gone through what this guy did.

What to do you feel when you see this pic?

I stared at it for god knows how long. And my emotions changed from being shocked to being sympathetic to total admiration for this young chap.

Can you see that smile on his face? Can you see that confidence in himself? Can you feel the contentment? For a moment I had felt sympathetic towards Naresh but within moments I realized that I would be demeaning him and his attitude if I sympathize with him. When he never sympathized with himself how can I?

Once you have read the article and seen all the pictures you will also probably feel what I felt at the end of it.

Its all in the attitude! In the outlook you decide to take for anything in life. Someone would have taken such an accident as a curse and done nothing and be living on peoples pity and sympathy. So it depends totally on us how we want to be and how we want others to feel about us. I know it requires lot of will and I'm not sure if I would have had it if I had myself been in his shoes.

And he is not the only one who has risen above such circumstances and created a place for himself in this world. And every time I read about such people I wonder about us lucky people. Yeah. I think we are just plain lucky. But its people like Naresh who actually build their life from scratch. And then I wonder what have I actually done to deserve such a good life that I've? And do we ever feel thankful to God about it? Or do we take it for granted?

My answer definitely would be a yes for the second question. Yes I've never treasured what I've or been thankful for it. Yes I've taken almost everything for granted. And I need to change my attitude towards life. For sure.

Mobile phone and its risk to pregnant women

I came across this article totally and it kind of left me zapped. If its really true, its something that we should not only ponder but do something about it.

The article said, after a study made on more than 13000 children, it was found that if the mothers used mobile phones during pregnancy - more than 3-4 times a day, their kids were 54% more likely to be hyperactive and have behavioral problems than those who did not use the mobiles as much.

During my pregnancy I had used the mobile definitely much more than the said 3-4 times in a day. And I wonder if after knowing this we will be able to restrict the usage. Its the amongst the most used things in the everyday life of us.

Here is the article copied and pasted from the source:

Warning: Using a mobile phone while pregnant can seriously damage your baby

Study of 13,000 children exposes link between use of handsets and later behavioural problems

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Sunday, 18 May 2008

Women who use mobile phones when pregnant are more likely to give birth to children with behavioural problems, according to authoritative research.

A giant study, which surveyed more than 13,000 children, found that using the handsets just two or three times a day was enough to raise the risk of their babies developing hyperactivity and difficulties with conduct, emotions and relationships by the time they reached school age. And it adds that the likelihood is even greater if the children themselves used the phones before the age of seven.

The results of the study, the first of its kind, have taken the top scientists who conducted it by surprise. But they follow warnings against both pregnant women and children using mobiles by the official Russian radiation watchdog body, which believes that the peril they pose "is not much lower than the risk to children's health from tobacco or alcohol".

The research – at the universities of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Aarhus, Denmark – is to be published in the July issue of the journal Epidemiology and will carry particular weight because one of its authors has been sceptical that mobile phones pose a risk to health.

UCLA's Professor Leeka Kheifets – who serves on a key committee of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection, the body that sets the guidelines for exposure to mobile phones – wrote three and a half years ago that the results of studies on people who used them "to date give no consistent evidence of a causal relationship between exposure to radiofrequency fields and any adverse health effect".

The scientists questioned the mothers of 13,159 children born in Denmark in the late 1990s about their use of the phones in pregnancy, and their children's use of them and behaviour up to the age of seven. As they gave birth before mobiles became universal, about half of the mothers had used them infrequently or not at all, enabling comparisons to be made.

They found that mothers who did use the handsets were 54 per cent more likely to have children with behavioural problems and that the likelihood increased with the amount of potential exposure to the radiation. And when the children also later used the phones they were, overall, 80 per cent more likely to suffer from difficulties with behaviour. They were 25 per cent more at risk from emotional problems, 34 per cent more likely to suffer from difficulties relating to their peers, 35 per cent more likely to be hyperactive, and 49 per cent more prone to problems with conduct.

The scientists say that the results were "unexpected", and that they knew of no biological mechanisms that could cause them. But when they tried to explain them by accounting for other possible causes – such as smoking during pregnancy, family psychiatric history or socio-economic status – they found that, far from disappearing, the association with mobile phone use got even stronger.

They add that there might be other possible explanations that they did not examine – such as that mothers who used the phones frequently might pay less attention to their children – and stress that the results "should be interpreted with caution" and checked by further studies. But they conclude that "if they are real they would have major public health implications".

Professor Sam Milham, of the blue-chip Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, and the University of Washington School of Public Health – one of the pioneers of research in the field – said last week that he had no doubt that the results were real. He pointed out that recent Canadian research on pregnant rats exposed to similar radiation had found structural changes in their offspring's brains.

The Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection says that use of the phones by both pregnant women and children should be "limited". It concludes that children who talk on the handsets are likely to suffer from "disruption of memory, decline of attention, diminishing learning and cognitive abilities, increased irritability" in the short term, and that longer-term hazards include "depressive syndrome" and "degeneration of the nervous structures of the brain".

Regrowing limbs using 'pixie dust'??

I had seen these sci-fi movies where the character in the movie could grow back the damaged or broken limb/body part during the fights with other characters. But how would you feel if you came to know that it can ACTUALLY happen now? I'm sure as shocked as I was when I read it with my jaw dropped till the floor!

Read about it here in this article which says a 69 yr old guy, who had lost half inch of his finger could grow back his entire finger, as good as new after using the so called 'pixie dust'.

Here is the article reproduced from the original location:

In every town in every part of this sprawling country you can find a faceless sprawling strip mall in which to do the shopping.

Rarely though would you expect to find a medical miracle working behind the counter of the mall's hobby shop.

That however is what Lee Spievak considers himself to be.

"I put my finger in," Mr Spievak says, pointing towards the propeller of a model airplane, "and that's when I sliced my finger off."

It took the end right off, down to the bone, about half an inch.

"We don't know where the piece went."

The photos of his severed finger tip are pretty graphic. You can understand why doctors said he'd lost it for good.

Today though, you wouldn't know it. Mr Spievak, who is 69 years old, shows off his finger, and it's all there, tissue, nerves, nail, skin, even his finger print.

'Pixie dust'

How? Well that's the truly remarkable part. It wasn't a transplant. Mr Spievak re-grew his finger tip. He used a powder - or pixie dust as he sometimes refers to it while telling his story.

Mr Speivak's brother Alan - who was working in the field of regenerative medicine - sent him the powder.

For ten days Mr Spievak put a little on his finger.

"The second time I put it on I already could see growth. Each day it was up further. Finally it closed up and was a finger.

"It took about four weeks before it was sealed."

Now he says he has "complete feeling, complete movement."

The "pixie dust" comes from the University of Pittsburgh, though in the lab Dr Stephen Badylak prefers to call it extra cellular matrix.

Pig's bladder

The process he has been pioneering over the last few years involves scraping the cells from the lining of a pig's bladder.

The remaining tissue is then placed into acid, "cleaned" of all cells, and dried out.

It can be turned into sheets, or a powder.

It looks like a simple process, but of course the science is complex.

"There are all sorts of signals in the body," explains Dr Badylak.

"We have got signals that are good for forming scar, and others that are good for regenerating tissues.

"One way to think about these matrices is that we have taken out many of the stimuli for scar tissue formation and left those signals that were always there anyway for constructive remodelling."

In other words when the extra cellular matrix is put on a wound, scientists believe it stimulates cells in the tissue to grow rather than scar.

If they can perfect the technique, it might mean one day they could repair not just a severed finger, but severely burnt skin, or even damaged organs.

Clinical trial

They hope soon to start a clinical trial in Buenos Aires on a woman who has cancer of the oesophagus.

The normal procedure in such cases is often deadly. Doctors remove the cancerous portion and try to stretch the stomach lining up to meet the shortened oesophagus.

In the trial they will place the extra cellular matrix inside the body from where the portion of oesophagus has been removed, and hope to stimulate the cells around it to re-grow the missing portion.

So could limbs be re-grown? Dr Badylak is cautious, but believes the technology is potentially revolutionary.

"I think that within ten years that we will have strategies that will re-grow the bones, and promote the growth of functional tissue around those bones. And that is a major step towards eventually doing the entire limb."

That kind of talk has got the US military interested.

They are just about to start trials to re-grow parts of the fingers of injured soldiers.

Skin burns

They also hope the matrix might help veterans like Robert Henline re-grow burnt skin.

He was almost killed in an explosion while serving in Iraq. His four colleagues travelling with him in the army Humvee were all killed.

He suffered 35% burns to his head and upper body. His ears are almost totally gone, the skin on his head has been burnt to the bone, his face is a swollen raw mess.

So far he has undergone surgery 25 times. He reckons he has got another 30 to go.

Anything that could be done in terms of regeneration would be great he says.

"Life changing! I think I'm more scared of hospitals than I am of going back to Iraq again."

Like any developing technology there are many unknowns. There are worries about encouraging cancerous growths by using the matrix.

Doctors though believe that within the so called pixie dust lies an amazing medical discovery.

Horrifying story of polygamist sect!

This is the most horrifying story I have heard of in todays world. We keep hearing of harassment of women in India but this far exceeds any kind of harassment that I've ever come across. Its not just harassment...its pure cold blooded torture in my eyes!! And it still hasn't sunk in that this was for real! Read about it here.

I just cannot get myself to believe that such people still exist in todays world who are much worse than those cannibals. I am so filled with rage and shock. My head is spinning after reading the article and I just can't write anymore about it.

Man, who was a woman, gets pregnant!

Just read this article which says a man, who went through a sex change operation is now pregnant!! When I read this I first thought it was a fake news just like the male pregnancy website. But then if Times Online is carrying the news I wonder.

Either read it at its source URL or read it below where I've copied and pasted the article here.

Thomas Beatie, a married man who used to be a woman, is pregnant with a baby girl

James Bone in New York

A married man who used to be a woman says that he is pregnant and will give birth to a baby girl in July.

“How does it feel to be a pregnant man? Incredible,” wrote Thomas Beatie, 34, from the Pacific North West of the United States, in the latest issue of the gay magazine The Advocate.

“Despite the fact that my belly is growing with a new life inside me, I am stable and confident being the man that I am.”

Mr Beatie was born female, named Tracy Lagondino, but had gender reassignment surgery and is now legally male and married to a woman.

He decided to carry a baby for his wife, Nancy, because she had a hysterectomy years ago. He was able to get pregnant because he kept his female organs when he switched genders.

“Sterilisation is not a requirement for sex reassignment, so I decided to have chest reconstruction and testosterone therapy but kept my reproductive rights,” he writes. “Wanting to have a biological child is neither a male nor female desire but a human desire.” The couple, who have been together for ten years, run a custom screenprinting business in Bend, Oregon, where neighbours do not know that Mr Beatie was once a woman.

“Our desire to work hard, buy our first home and start a family was nothing out of the ordinary. That is, until we decided that I would carry our child,” he wrote.

Before becoming pregnant, Mr Beatie stopped the testosterone injections he was receiving as part of his gender reassignment. “It had been roughly eight years since I had my last menstrual cycle so this wasn’t a decision that I took lightly. My body regulated itself after about four months and I didn’t have to take any exogenous oestrogen, progesterone or fertility drugs to aid my pregnancy,” he wrote.

The couple bought donor vials from a cryogenic sperm bank and, facing resistance and prejudice from doctors, resorted to home insemination. “Doctors have discriminated against us, turning us away due to their religious beliefs. Healthcare professionals have refused to call me by a male pronoun or recognise Nancy as my wife. Receptionists have laughed at us. Friends and family have been unsupportive; most of Nancy’s family doesn’t even know I’m transgender,” he said.

Mr Beatie’s first successful insemination ended in a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy with triplets that required surgery, resulting in the loss of all his embryos and his right Fallopian tube. “When my brother found out about my loss, he said, ‘It’s a good thing that happened. Who knows what kind of monster it would have been?’,” he wrote.

The second pregnancy resulted in a baby girl who is due to be born on July 3. “I will be my daughter’s father, and Nancy will be her mother. We will be a family,” he wrote.

Mr Beatie would not be the first transgender man to give birth, according to Lisa Masterson, an obstetrician at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles.

“A transgender man can be pregnant because he has the same organs as a woman,” Dr Masterson said on the ABC Good Morning America show.

Dr Masterson said, however, that transgendered men face special health risks resulting from their sex change. “It’s really important that he doesn’t take any testosterone early on in the pregnancy and later on,” she said. “That can cause male-type characteristics in the female baby.”

Some of the Beaties’ neighbours in Bend voiced scepticism about the pregnancy claim. One resident, Josh Love, told ABC: “I couldn’t say that he looks pregnant. I can stick my stomach out and almost make it look like that. I think it’s kind of bizarre. I don’t know if I believe it or not.”

The Advocate said it had confirmed the story with Mr Beatie’s doctor.

I have mixed feelings towards this whole thing. I am not sure if I should clap at this miracle of medical science or feel funny about the whole thing. I don't know why but I found the picture of the pregnant male guy little disgusting.

Food and Human Anatomy!

I recently got a mail from a friend which interested me quite a bit. Its like, it has been there right there...all the time..but you go "Arre haan!" when you read it. So read on the very interesting correlations between foods and human anatomy!

~~~~~~~~~

A sliced Carrot looks like the human eye The pupil, iris and radiating lines look just like the human eye...and YES science now shows that carrots greatly enhance blood flow to and function of the eyes.

A Tomato has four chambers and is red. The heart is red and has four chambers. All of the research shows tomatoes are indeed pure heart and blood food.

Grapes hang in a cluster that has the shape of the heart. Each grape looks like a blood cell and all of the research today shows that grapes are also profound heart and blood vitalizing food.

A Walnut looks like a little brain, a left and right hemisphere, upper cerebrums and lower cerebellums. Even the wrinkles or folds are on the nut just like the neo-cortex. We now know that walnuts help develop over 3 dozen neuron-transmitters for brain function.

Kidney Beans actually heal and help maintain kidney function and yes, they look exactly like the human kidneys. Celery, Bok Choy, Rhubarb and more look just like bones. These foods specifically target bone strength. Bones are 23% sodium and these foods are 23% sodium. If you don't have enough sodium in your diet the body pulls it from the bones, making them weak. These foods replenish the skeletal needs of the body .

Egg plant, Avocado and Pears target the health and function of the womb and cervix of the female - they look just like these organs. Today's research shows that when a woman eats 1 avocado a week, it balances hormones, sheds unwanted birth weight and prevents cervical cancers. And how profound is this? .... It takes exactly 9 months to grow an avocado from blossom to ripened fruit There are over 14,000 photolytic chemical constituents of nutrition in each one of these foods (modern science has only studied and named about 141 of them).

Figs are full of seeds and hang in twos when they grow. Figs increase the motility of male sperm and increase the numbers of Sperm as well too overcome male sterility.

Sweet Potatoes look like the pancreas and actually balance the glycemic index of diabetics.

Olives assist the health and function of the ovaries Grapefruits, Oranges, and Other Citrus fruits look just like the mammary glands of the female and actually assist the health of the breasts and the movement of lymph in and out of the breasts.

Onions look like body cells. Today's research shows that onions help clear waste materials from all of the body cells They even produce tears which wash the epithelial layers of the eyes.

Just one color??

How can someone do it?? Just saw this article on New York Magazine which talks about 5 New Yorkers who dress only in ONE color. When I say one I mean EXCLUSIVELY in ONE color!

I was quite surprised and taken aback to see such people really exist. I mean how can one just dress up in just one color??


I definitely love colors! And there's no way I can ever stick to just one color all my life! NO WAY!!

Just gave me an idea! If you were to choose one color to dress up all your life in, what color will you choose? And please don't give multiple color choices just ONE. ONE and ONLY ONE!!

I think I will choose..............ummm...............................hmmmm................ .........*screwing my nose*............................*Scratching my head*....................................*wincing my eyes*..............ummm.....................I guess blue. :D

Meera Didi se Poocho

The National Commission for Women brought out a booklet 'Meera Didi Se Poocho' on February 13 2008, Wednesday, to create awareness about women's rights in India. The booklet also contains details of legal options and the steps to be taken by women under distress.

Download it here : http://ncw.nic.in/Meera%20Didi%20Se%20Poccho.pdf
If you wish to offer suggestions to NCW, mail them to : ncw@nic.in

School admissions and the total chaos there of

I was out on the roads yesterday most of the morning doing rounds of various schools for Betu's Pre-Primary (a new word for what was earlier called as Kindergarten of KG in short) admissions. Out of5 schools I went to, only 2 were going to open out forms for KG admissions. The rest are not going to have any this year. Reason? They are already all full with no vacancies.

I really wonder what was the objective behind this Ganguly committee being set up. Was it to smooth things out or to create even more chaos? Whatever the aim was but the way they have worked and made rules and changed them and changed them again have done nothing but created utter confusion.

Last year the rule was min age of 3.5 yrs by March 2007 to get admissions in the nursery for the session of 2007-2008. Fine. Anirudh didn't fit because he was going to turn 3 in March end.

2 weeks ago they have suddenly change back the age to 3 yrs by March end to be eligible for Nursery admissions and 4yrs for pre-primary. So this means he needs to go to KG now. But how is the question when all the schools say they have no vacancies because all the nursery students are getting promoted to KG.

So to summarize if he doesn't get through in KG he will have to take admission in Nursery and be one year older to the other kids in the class. I wonder what effect that will have on his psyche and on younger kids too. Either he will be frustrated since the mental level of younger kids will not match up to him. One year is a big difference at the age he is in. Or the other thing that might happen is that he will bully around the younger kids which he did in his current school till he was promoted to a higher class. Neither of which is something I want to happen.

And today TOI-New Delhi edition echoed my feelings exactly. The turmoil, the confusion that we have been going through.

Its just a wait and watch and then act game for us. All the schools are coming out with forms on Dec 15 so until then we can do nothing but just sit around anxiously for the date.

Cutlery made out of Potato

I chanced upon an article which talked about cutlery being made out of potato starch and soy oil making it not only 100% Eco-friendly but also biodegradable. Isn't this something so interesting and awe inspiring? :D Take a look!


When I looked at this picture first it looked too good to be true. In fact I thought its a fake. But I found it interesting enough to share with all. Here's the extract from the article -

"Say goodbye to plastic cutlery and hello to SpudWare—cutlery made from 80% potato starch and 20% soy oil that’s just as heat resistant and every bit as strong as plastic cutlery. The kicker? It biodegrades in just 180 days! SpudWare can even be washed and reused, so you can eat your potatoes with potatoes for months to come."

Ig Nobel Awards : Vanilla Fragrance from cow dung?

Ewww...this is the first word that came to my mind when I read this news article. Extracting vanilla essence and flavour from cow dung..ugghh....who would even thinking of trying to research on something like this? Oh well someone did and actually won an Ig Nobel award for it too! Geez..don't people have anything interesting to do?

Just an hour ago I read Swati's post on food with lovely picture of an ice cream sundae and was drooling all over it. And now I get to read this article on this stupid, idiotic discovery by some Japanese person..

On 4^th October the Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize was awarded to Mayu Yamamoto, a former researcher at the International Medical Centre of Japan. Yamamoto earned herself the prestigious prize by developing a way to extract a vanilla fragrance and flavour from cow dung – a creation she named vanillin. As a bonus to the prize, Toscanini’s Ice Cream, based in Massachusetts, invented a new flavour to honour her – Yum-A-Moto Vanilla Twist.

Yikes! I will definitely never eat an ice cream in Japan. I know there's simply no chance of me ever going but still writing it out will make the ugghness out of my mind go away to some extent. I just hope no one gets adventurous in India and starts making this so called vanilla essence here knowing the free availability of cow dung from our very own "Gau maata!"

Internet addiction more serious than OCD

I happened to chance upon this article which says Internet addiction is more serious than OCD. And it made me wonder and I started to relate it to self after I had read the article completely.

I think I can also call myself an Internet addict. I have a feeling of incompleteness, some void when I am not able to spend any time on the Internet. I'm sure it could be called a false feeling but I get a feeling of being 'connected' when I have ready access to the Internet. If there's no Internet connection I feel as if one lifeline is dead.

Even if it means just getting online for 5 minutes to check my email. Be it at work or at home. There HAS to be Internet connectivity available! And I feel the article aptly said, "Internet addiction is not manifesting itself as an 'urge.' It's more than that. It's a deep 'craving."

But I never paid so much though to my behaviour until I read this article and it make me wonder if I should do something about it.

Any of you have any thoughts on this?

Having their 17th child and still raring to go?

I read this article about a couple who recently had their 17th child and they still want more!! I literally fell of my chair when I read just the title. 17th child!!! Oh my god! I mean there's nothing wrong with having 17 or 20 or for that matter any number of children but can you ever imagine yourself giving birth to even 5 children? I just can't! Positive. Never ever! Just 2 and that's it. I don't think I will survive the third!

Even more interesting was that have named all their children with the alphabet J.

I just shudder thinking about my not so easy pregnancy when nausea and throwing up worked overtime beyond the usual 3 months and extended till the end of 7th month. And the delivery? How can I ever forget it? With the OBG trying out 2 different sizes of vacuum and then finally using forceps to pull out Anirudh. And that was not it, they took full one hour to stitch me up. I had cried up so much that all my tears were dried up by that time.

Ohh boy! 17th child??? I don't even know if I should say "Hats off" or treat this as a kind of an effort to try and break or make some world record? How can anyone do justice to each child by giving them enough attention and time which each child needs? How? How? How?

I guess I should stop thinking about it before I lose my mind.