Mind-Control Microbe
A bug in your body can give you schizophrenia, make you have a car crash, or determine the sex of your child.

Five years ago, Oxford University zoologists showed that the parasite Toxoplasma gondii alters the brain chemistry of rats so that they are more likely to seek out cats. Infection thus makes a rat more likely to be killed and the parasite more likely to end up in a cat—the only host in which it can complete the reproductive step of its life cycle. The parasite also lives in the brain cells of thousands of species, including about 60 million supposedly symptom-free Americans. Studies over the past few years have suggested that toxoplasmosis infections in humans, too, may cause behavioral changes—from subtle shifts to outright schizophrenia. Two studies this year add even weirder twists.

U.S. Geological Survey biologist Kevin Lafferty has linked high rates of toxoplasmosis infection in 39 countries with elevated incidences of neuroticism, suggesting the mind-altering organism may be affecting the cultures of nations.

Stranger still, parasitologist Jaroslav Flegr of Charles University in Prague thinks T. gondii could also be skewing our sex ratios. When he looked at the clinical records of more than 1,800 babies born from 1996 to 2004, he noted a distinct trend: The normal sex ratio is 104 boys born for every 100 girls, but in women with high levels of antibodies against the parasite, the ratio was 260 boys for every 100 girls. Exactly how the parasite might be tipping the odds in favor of males isn't understood, but Flegr points out that it is known to suppress the immune system of its hosts, and because the maternal immune system sometimes attacks male fetuses in very early pregnancy, the parasite's ability to inhibit the immune response might protect future boys as well as itself.

"Our present study was rejected by eight journals, usually without any formal review," says Flegr, who had the same problem publishing an earlier one showing that infection more than doubles the odds of a person having a traffic accident. "People don't like the possibility that their behavior and life are manipulated by a parasite," he says.

If altering our culture and causing car crashes weren't bad enough, toxoplasma may actually wheedle their genes into our genomes.

There are plenty of other theories about what affects the reproductive sex ratio. Some of them are actually true.

==================================================================

A Lovely Lesson for Life

A student asks a teacher: What is love?
The teacher said: in order to answer your question, go to the paddy field and choose the biggest paddy and come back.

But the rule is: you can go through them only once and cannot turn back to pick.

The student went to the field, go thru first row,he
saw one big paddy,but he wonders....may be there is a bigger one later.Then he saw
another bigger one... but may be there is an even bigger one waiting for him
Later, when he finished more than half of the paddy field, he start to realize that the paddy is not as big as the previous one he saw, he
know he has missed the biggest one, and he regretted. So, he ended up went
back to the teacher with empty hand.

The teacher told him, this is love... you keep looking for a better
one,but when later you realize, you have already miss the person.


The student asked: What is marriage then?
The teacher said: In order to answer your question, go to the corn
fieldand choose the biggest corn and come back.

But the rule is: you can go through them only once and cannot turn back to pick.

The student went to the corn field, this time he is careful not to repeat the previous mistake, when he reach the middle of the field, he has picked one medium corn that he feel satisfied, and came back to the teacher.

The teacher told him, this time you bring back a corn.... you look for one that is just nice, and you have faith and believe this is the best one you get.... this is marriage.

==========================================================

Study: Napping Might Help Heart

Study: Napping Might Help Heart
Feb 12 11:01 AM US/Eastern
By LINDSEY TANNER
AP Medical Writer
CHICAGO (AP) -- New research on napping provides the perfect excuse for office slackers, finding that a little midday snooze seems to reduce risks for fatal heart problems, especially among men.
In the largest study to date on the health effects of napping, researchers tracked 23,681 healthy Greek adults for an average of about six years. Those who napped at least three times weekly for about half an hour had a 37 percent lower risk of dying from heart attacks or other heart problems than those who did not nap.
Most participants were in their 50s, and the strongest evidence was in working men, according to the study, which appears in Monday's issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.
The researchers said naps might benefit the heart by reducing stress, and jobs are a common source of stress.
It's likely that women reap similar benefits from napping, but not enough of them died during the study to be sure, said Dr. Dimitrios Trichopoulos, the study's senior author and a researcher at Harvard University and the University of Athens Medical School.

Heart problems killed 48 women who were studied, six of them working women, compared with 85 men, including 28 working men.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CRAZY PHOTOGRAPHER

Much has been written about how to obtain success in life, but little has been written about the behaviors that pose a threat to obtaining success. While success principles are very important, we should not ignore those behaviors which will prevent success from happening in our lives. By recognizing these behaviors, we can effectively eliminate them from our lives and focus on those behaviors which will ensure success.

1. The Desire for Instant Gratification

Those who fail to get what they want out of life are most often short-term thinkers, meaning that they base all of their decisions on what they want now, versus what they want in the future. Why do you think that lottery and gambling industries flourish? It's because they prey on our desire for instant gratification—that of becoming rich overnight. When making a decision, focus on how that decision will impact your life in the long run, rather than focusing on the short-term benefits of that decision.

2. Greed

Greed is a dangerous behavior because it fulfills your desires, but at a cost to the lives of those people around you. The behavior of greed can be described as wanting something from others without the intention of exchanging something of like value in return. And while greed might get you what you want in the short run, it causes an imbalance of social karma within your relationships with other people and eventually that imbalance will have to be corrected and this is usually in the form of a crushing life crisis. The root cause behind greed is a grossly underdeveloped level of self-esteem, which always urns to possess and to control because it is uncomfortable accepting its own self. Combat the behavior of greed by instead trying to help others with their lives. You will find that positive things will come your way when you provide value for others instead of trying to deprive others of their value.

3. Lack of Confidence

People who lack confidence in their abilities simply get by life without ever engaging life with all their capacities. They neither take a stand, nor do they show any courage in the face of adversity. They conform to what everyone else is doing in order to be accepted by their peers. Those who do not possess the confidence to take a stand are like cows in a herd being led off to the slaughterhouse. Realize that whatever stand you take throughout your life, there will always be people who support your views and there will be people who oppose your views. You can't please everyone in life, so please the one person who is the most important in your life—yourself.

4. Not Willing to Pay the Price

Success in life not only requires that you know what you want, but perhaps even more so, it requires that you know the sacrifices you have to make in order to reach that success. Success in any aspect of our lives comes at a price and we must pay this price in order to achieve that success. Unwillingness to pay the full price of the success that you want will assuredly prevent you from obtaining that success. In the grand scope of things, you can't cheat your way to the top. You can't take shortcuts and expect to create any long-term success. If you want to be an Olympic athlete, you have to do the time—you have to have the dedication and the perseverance and the drive to win. No amount of intention-manifestation will enable you to get what you want unless you are willing to give up the things that are necessary for you to obtain it.

5. Lack of Persistence

Lack of persistence is a big distinguishing behavior between those who consistently achieve success in areas of their life versus people who often fail to realize their goals. When pressure builds and problems seem to stack on top of each other, quitting is the easy way out. There is a big distinction we must make however between quitting and failing. Failing in life is a perfectly acceptable thing. We all fail at some point in our lives and chances are that we will fail yet again. But if we try our best and fail, then that is courageous and there are no regrets because we have the peace of mind of knowing that we did everything in our power to try to reach that goal. Failing is part of the journey towards success. Quitting on the other hand is much worst than failing. Quitting is not using your fullest potential to reach those goals. This is very disempowering because not only will you not reach your success, but always in the back of your mind, you will wonder if that success could have been possible had you given it one-hundred percent. As my former gymnastics mentor and 1984 Olympic gold medalist, Peter Vidmar, once said, "Getting to the Olympics was simple. I just trained when I felt like it and I trained when I didn't."

6. Unwillingness to Take Risks

Getting ahead in life and reaching success involves taking calculated risks. That does not mean you have to be irresponsible however. Risk taking, as it applies to success, means that you have to be willing to step outside your comfort zone so that you can effectively expand your box and grow. When I was competing as a gymnast, I used to perform acrobatic stunts that had the potential of seriously injuring myself or even killing me. But I never considered those stunts to be irresponsible risks because my knowledge, training, and competency gave me the confidence to push myself further and try things that I knew I had the ability to do. I believe that great opportunities come into our lives daily, but it's our indecision or fear that prevents us from taking hold of those opportunities. Be willing to step outside your comfort zone and seize those opportunities when they appear.

7. Procrastination

Waiting for the perfect moment is a big killer of success in our lives. If we don't have to do it, then chances are we won't do it, but it's this lack of action which erodes our chances of success early on. Realize that there will never be a perfect time to implement an action and the longer we wait to act, the less likely we are to do it. We all know how to fill up our time with busywork, but not all of us know how to prioritize those tasks that are important. The Pareto Principle states that 80% of our results will come from only 20% of the actions that we do. People who procrastinate instead focus on the other tasks that are of little importance, while delaying their action on those high-value tasks that will produce the most change in their lives. Remember the adage, "Don't wait for tomorrow what you can do today."

8. Unwillingness to Learn from Past Mistakes

Failures and mistakes are a natural part of the learning process and a crucial part in building any real success for yourself, but you must be willing to extract the lessons from each failure and apply it towards your future in order for it to be effective. Those people who ignore the lessons to be learned in their failures are doomed to fail again, and again, and again throughout their lives. Successful people, on the other hand, not only learn from their own mistakes, but they seek out other people and learn from their mistakes as well. They use history as a powerful leverage tool for their success so that they don't have to recreate the wheel.

9. Feeding Yourself Negative Affirmations

The law of attraction states that we attract to ourselves that which mirrors our mental attitude. Negative thinkers attract negative people, things, and events into their lives. That is why negative self-talk is so dangerous and detrimental towards any success in your life. Conversely, positive thinkers attract successful people and events into their lives. Make a conscious decision to eliminate negative self-talk from your daily life and replace it with rich, positive affirmations.

Wish u all the best

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A new large-scale study has shown that long-term users of mobile phones are much more likely to develop a certain type of brain tumor on the side of the head where they hold their handsets.

Those who regularly used mobiles for longer than 10 years were almost 40 percent more likely to develop nervous system tumors called gliomas. This is the second study to suggest an increased brain tumor risk associated with mobile phones.
The study examined more than 1,500 people with gliomas, and an additional 3,300 people who did not suffer from the cancers. Scientists at first found no link between cellular phones and tumors, until they specifically reviewed the medical histories of patients who had been using mobiles for at least a decade.

I suspect this study will help to dispel much of the skepticism about the real dangers of cellular phone use. It makes sense that they needed to look at long-term users, researchers say, because tumors take a long time to develop.

Unfortunately, for many of you, the cellular phone has evolved into an essential tool in your daily lives, so giving it up isn't possible. Your first best solution: Ensure your mobile has a speakerphone function and don't hold it near you at all while talking. Again, due to privacy concerns, that too may be a problem.

If so, you may want to consider using a headset. There are many of them out there that you can use. However, I did quite a bit of investigation to find the absolute safest one. Some may feel it self-serving, but I feel it is my responsibility to identify inexpensive resources that could possibly save you from a brain tumor.

I was able to find an inexpensive supply from China that uses a blue Air Tube and ferrite bead that blocks your exposure to electromagnetic fields that is completely different from most headsets.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

PIN NUMBER REVERSAL

The email forward included below claims that if criminals forced you to withdraw money from an ATM, entering your PIN in reverse will automatically alert police.

The technology that makes this possible does exist. However, so far, banks have not implemented it. Thus, if you are forced to withdraw money against your will, the chance that the ATM will have the reverse pin technology installed is exceptionally slim.

Back in 1994, Joseph Zingher from Chicago began developing ATM software that would silently call police (http://www.msnbc. msn.com/id/ 4086277/) if a PIN was entered in reverse. Since then, Zingher has spent years trying to sell the idea to banks in the United States without success. Several US states have explored the idea, but it is yet to be implemented. In 2004, the US state of Illinois passed legislation requesting that banks install reverse-pin safety technology in their ATMs. However, banks were not legally required to do so, and have so far displayed little interest in using the system.

Zingher and others continue to push for the implementation of reverse pin or similar consumer safety systems at ATMs. The concept is sound, and such technology could certainly increase ATM security, discourage forced withdrawal crime and possibly even save lives, if it was widely used. In an increasingly security conscious consumer market, it may not be too long before banks decide that such technology is financially viable or legislation forces them to act.

Until then however, forwarding this message is ill advised. Since it is extremely unlikely to work, the "advice" in this message could actually be dangerous. Forcing a victim to withdraw money from an ATM is a high-risk, violent crime. If a victim enters a reverse pin at an ATM that does not have the safety pin system installed, he or she will receive an error message and no money will be dispensed. This delay could antagonize the criminal and increase the risk of violent retaliation.

Moreover, if banks were to install a safety PIN system, they would provide information to their customers explaining the new system and how to use it. The message claims that the system is seldom used because "people don't know it exists". However, it is absurd to suggest that a bank would go to the considerable expense of implementing a safety PIN system and then not bother to tell their customers about it.

The message mentions a "broadcast" as the source of the information. This may refer to a September 2006 WOAI San Antonio News story on the subject. The video cites the case of a San Antonio man who was forced to withdraw money from several ATMs and explains the concept of reverse-pin technology as a means of countering such crimes. However, the story very clearly states that such technology is not yet being used.

Thus, this message contains dangerous misinformation and it should not be forwarded. If and when banks begin to install reverse pin technology at ATMs it is sure to be well publicized. If your own bank begins using such a system, it will almost certainly let you know about it directly.

You know you've found that something
When it seems its all you have
What you breathe, taste, think of
And all the things in between.

Somehow you just know
All the things love really means.

When its hard to walk away
After a day together to say goodbye
You know they hold a piece of your heart
And it connects the two through night.

Somehow you both realize
What your heart said was right.

You know you've found that something
When there is nothing else to find
Its better than you expected
They are your dream come true.

Somehow it all seems complete
You found that someone to love you.


____________________________________________________________

MY WARM REGARDS TO FOLLWOING ILAND FRIENDS FOR THIER WISHES ON THE OCCASION OF ME BEING ON HOMEPAGE OF REDIFF:
RICHA BHAGAWAT
KEYA JI
CHAITALI RAI
A J
STYLISH GAL
SIDDHARTH - THE CORSICAN
DRACO DRAIN
AMOL PRABHUDEASI

Our Love Is Unconditional

If time could stand still, I'd freeze it here,
So you'd always hold me, close and near.
In your arms, where I'm meant to be,
Filled with the perfect love you've given me.

A bond so strong, a hold so tight,
To know you're the one; my 'Mr Right'.
A blessing sent from heaven above,
In you I've found my one true love.

I love the way you smile
it makes my heart feel glad
I love you with a courage
I did not know I had.

I love the thought of you holding me
its like nothing Ive ever known
I love when you stand beside me
so I know I am not alone.

I love the way your eyes steal
the brilliance from the sun.
I love doing everything with you
because the dreary becomes fun.

I love the thought of you touching me
I love thoughts of our passionate kiss
Your wishes are my command
because I cannot resist.

Our Passions become one
and you fill me with desire
You gently whisper your love
for me and it sets my soul
on Fire

I dream of watching sunsets with you,
throughout the years of holding each
other, through the hard times, and
kissing away each other's tears

I love the way you laugh
I love how you make me smile.
I love the thought
of us walking on a moonlit beach
together for miles and miles.

I dare to dream of forever
in your warm embrace. I hope
that years from now
I can still bring a smile
to your handsome face

If God has heard my prayer
then I'll be yours, and you'll
be mine. We'll face all challenges
together and be in love till
the end of time.

Forevermore

No one else has ever touched me
the way you did.
No one else, in all the seasons that I knew
...in all the joys
...in all the sorrows
...in everything in between
ever came close to making my dreams come true
the way you did when I first met you.

No one else discovered the way
to all the love hidden within me.
No one else ever occupied
...my dreams
...my fantasies
...my aspirations.
Yet you seemed to know from the start
how to claim the warmth in my heart.

No one else ever changed my life
and made me into the man I longed to be.
No one else ever found the key
...to mold me
...to shape me
...to recreate me
into the man I am today
and now I need you to stay.

I love you so dearly because
of all you are to me.
You make me
...sing and dance
...smile and celebrate
...hope and believe.
With you I have every reason for living.
Without you, there'd be no reason for giving.

So I thank you, Sweetheart,
for what you mean to me
...for being my baby and my Angel
...for being my best friend and confidant
...for being my one and only Soulmate.
For all this and so much more
I will love you always - FOREVERMORE!