positive

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/पिंग

People with generally positive outlooks show greater resistance to developing colds than do individuals who rarely revel in upbeat feelings, a new investigation finds.

Frequently basking in positive emotions defends against colds regardless of how often one experiences negative emotions, say psychologist Sheldon Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and his colleagues। They suspect that positive emotions stimulate symptom-fighting substances. http://louis3j3sheehan.blogspot.com

"We need to take more seriously the possibility that a positive emotional style is a major player in disease risk," Cohen says.

In a study published in 2003, his group exposed 334 healthy adults to one of two rhinoviruses via nasal drops. Those who displayed generally positive outlooks, including feelings of liveliness, cheerfulness, and being at ease, were least likely to develop cold symptoms. Unlike the negatively inclined participants, they reported fewer cold symptoms than were detected in medical exams.

The new study, which appears in the November/December Psychosomatic Medicine, replicates those results and rules out the possibility that psychological traits related to a positive emotional style, rather than the emotions themselves, guard against cold symptoms. Those traits include high self-esteem, extroversion, optimism, and a feeling of mastery over one's life.

The latest data also show that among people with a consistently positive mood, well-being doesn't simply reflect physical vigor. All volunteers entered the study in comparably good health.

In that project, Cohen's team interviewed 193 healthy adults by phone each evening for 2 weeks। The participants reported their positive and negative emotions during that day. They then received nasal drops containing a rhinovirus or an influenza virus that causes a coldlike illness. http://louis3j3sheehan.blogspot.com

Each person was quarantined in a separate room and monitored for 5 or 6 days. Although a positive emotional style bore no relation to whether participants became infected, it protected against the emergence of cold symptoms. For instance, among people infected by the influenza virus, 14 of 50 (28 percent) who often reported positive emotions developed coughs, congestion, and other cold symptoms, as compared with 23 of 56 infected individuals (41 percent) who rarely reported positive emotions.

The extent of positive emotions, but not of negative ones, exerted a strong impact on the emergence of cold symptoms, Cohen says. His recent analysis of immune measures from volunteers in the 2003 study, published last March in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, points to enhanced regulation of an infection-fighting substance, interleukin-6, in people with positive emotional styles.

Cohen's current study offers "an interesting twist" on the relationship between feelings and health, remarks psychologist Janice K। Kiecolt-Glaser of Ohio State University in Columbus। Other research indicates that negative emotions influence immune function and illness development more powerfully than positive emotions do, Kiecolt-Glaser says. http://louis3j3sheehan.blogspot.com

However, psychologist Barbara L। Fredrickson of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill notes that the new data agree with her work showing that to a surprising degree, positive emotions can bolster the immune system to improve health। http://louis3j3sheehan.blogspot.com

Studies of the impact of mood on physical health need to account for both positive and negative emotions, Cohen holds. He points to preliminary data from other teams suggesting that among depressed people, a lack of positive emotions is a more accurate predictor of stroke than is the extent of their negative emotions.

irony

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/पिंग

Global warming may turn out to be more than just a pain in the neck: Rising average temperatures might trigger an increased prevalence of kidney stones। http://louisyjysheehan.blogspot.com

About 12 percent of men and 7 percent of women in the United States will be stricken during their lifetime with symptoms of a kidney stone, which forms when minerals dissolved in urine crystallize somewhere in the kidney or urinary tract.

One of the primary causes of these painful deposits is low urine volume, brought about either by low fluid intake or by increased fluid loss, says Margaret S. Pearle, a urologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

Although people in all parts of the nation can suffer kidney stones, the ailment is much more common in some regions than in others.

Prevalence of stones in the Southeast is as much as 50 percent higher than it is the Northwest, Pearle says. Urologists have long known of a “kidney stone belt,” which stretches from the Carolinas through Texas to southern and central California, she notes.

Overall, differences in average annual temperature among various U.S. regions account for about 70 percent of the variation in kidney stone prevalence. Dramatic increases in the ailment among soldiers deployed to arid regions, as well as seasonal variations in frequency of the malady, bolster the link between temperature and prevalence, the researchers propose.

Now, in the July 15 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Pearle and her colleagues estimate how the prevalence of kidney stones — and the costs needed to treat them — might increase as climate change boosts average temperatures.

In one climate change scenario —in which the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide rise to 850 parts per million by 2100, up from about 380 ppm today — average annual temperature in some parts of the United States would rise as much as 3।25 degrees Celsius, says Tom H। Brikowski, a hydrologist at the University of Texas at Dallas and coauthor of the paper.http://louisyjysheehan.blogspot.com

Under such a scenario, kidney stone prevalence will undoubtedly rise. However, Pearle notes, the specific relation between average annual temperature and prevalence isn’t clear. While some urologists suggest that an increase in temperature will lead to a proportional increase in kidney stone prevalence, others propose that above a certain temperature threshold — say, 15° C — the risk of developing stones doesn’t increase.

In the model where the risk of stones rises proportionally with an increase in average annual temperature, the largest bumps in kidney stone cases by the year 2050 are concentrated in California, Texas, Florida and the East Coast, the researchers report. Under the other model, the increase in kidney stone prevalence over that period would be largely confined to Northern California and a swath running from Kansas to Virginia, because the average annual temperature in much of the Southeast already sits above 15° C. In some regions, kidney stone prevalence could rise about 30 percent, the analysis suggests.

Between now and 2050, climate change could cause an additional 1.6 million to 2.2 million cases of kidney stones, the researchers speculate. At that time, annual medical costs for stone-related emergency room visits, out-patient appointments and surgery would run between 900 million and 1.3 billion year-2000 dollars, the researchers estimate.

“These costs are pretty staggering,” says Anthony Smith, a urologist at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque। He describes the new research as “a fascinating study … that indicates climate-related changes in the environment will have large economic and human costs।” http://louisyjysheehan.blogspot.com

The new research “is really a seminal piece of work,” says Mark S. Litwin, a urologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. Kidney stones are one of the largely unrecognized — and largely preventable — consequences of climate change, he adds.

More aggressive efforts to maximize hydration could result in a decreased incidence of stone problems, says Ira Sharlip, a urologist in San Francisco.

Litwin agrees: “The irony is, the cure is fairly simple,” he notes. “Just drink more water.”

bragg

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/पिंग

MAY 26TH—Sunshine and showers.

Senator Henry’s letter was referred to Gen. Bragg, who returned it to-day with the indorsement that the suggested movement had not escaped attention, and a good result might soon be looked for. And sure enough, a dispatch was received from Atlanta to-day, announcing the capture of some 250 of the enemy’s wagons laden with stores! http://louis0j0sheehan.blogspot.com

It is to be hoped that Gen। Lee has some scheme of a similar character, to relieve Grant of his supply trains. Troops are daily coming hither, infantry and cavalry, whence in one hour and a half the former reach Lee’s army. The great battle still hangs fire, but to be of greater magnitude when it does occur. http://louis0j0sheehan.blogspot.com

Gen. Bragg did a good thing yesterday, even while Senator Orr was denouncing him. He relieved Gen. Winder from duty here, and assigned him to Goldsborough, N. C. Now if the rogues and cut-throats he persisted in having about him be likewise dismissed, the Republic is safe! Gen. Ransom has now full charge of this department.

Mr. Secretary Seddon is sick, and Mr. Assistant Secretary Campbell is crabbed—Congress not having passed his Supreme Court bill. And if it were passed, the President would hardly appoint him judge.

It is said one of our iron-clads is out—the rest to follow immediately. Let Butler beware!

packard

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/पिंग

Michael R. Nash writes, in a july 2001 article for Scientific American titled "The Truth and the Hype of Hypnosis", "using hypnosis, scientists have temporarily created hallucinations, compulsions, certain types of memory loss, false memories, and delusions in the laboratory so that these phenomena can be studied in a controlled environment."http://louis1j1sheehan.us

In his book The Hidden Persuaders (1957) Vance Packard describes research involving the behavior of housewives in supermarkets in the 1950s. Cameras were hidden to measure a shopper's eye-blink rate as she compared items. http://louis1j1sheehan.usIt was assumed that her eye-blink rate would increase as she performed mental calculations to determine which product was the best value. In fact, the cameras recorded an eye-blink rate which indicated that the housewife was, according to Packard, usually in a hypnotic state while shopping. This led manufacturers to produce new brands of laundry detergent in competition with their own, existing brands, where the primary differences were in the product names, colors and shapes of designs on the packages, which were designed to appeal to women at different times of their menstrual cycles. The effects of this research can be noted today by visiting the laundry detergent section of any American supermarket.[

Hypnotism has also received publicity about its use in Forensics, Sports, Education, and physical therapy and rehabilitation.

solstice

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

Galileo was forced to recant his astronomical theories on the summer solstice of 1633.
by Dean Christopher

1 Summertime, and the tiltin’ is easy. Summers are hot not because Earth is closer to the sun, but because the tilt of the Earth’s axis lets rays of sunlight hit one hemisphere more directly. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz

2 During the Northern Hemisphere’s summer, we’re actually farthest from the sun, receiving 7 percent less sunlight than the Southern Hemisphere does during its summer.

3 The summer solstice—June 20 this year—is the Northern Hemisphere’s longest day, with 24 hours of unbroken sunlight north of the Arctic Circle.

4 For obsessive-compulsives: The site www.archaeoastronomy.com maintains a second-by-second countdown to each solstice.

5 Supporters of Seattle’s Solstice Parade, an annual fixture of the city’s artsy Fremont neighborhood, proclaim that it will “cast a spell of joy, hope, and rebirth that spreads from Fremont to the entire universe.”

6 Helping cast the spell are the Painted Cyclists, a clothing-optional group of bike riders who wear intense body makeup.

7 Watch out for those solstice rays: The Painted Cyclists’ organizers instruct participants to slather on the sunscreen, encouraging newbies to “ask Rob about his plaid sunburn from Solstice 2002.”

8 Modern-day druids, taking a more traditional approach, gather at England’s Stonehenge to mark the summer solstice. Many still don Celtic attire, even though a civilization known as the Beaker People finished Stonehenge a millennium before the Celts turned up.

9 The Tropic of Cancer—the latitude on Earth where the sun is directly overhead at noon on the summer solstice—got its name because when the ancients established it, the sun appeared in the constellation Cancer.

10 Oops. Due to subsequent shifting of Earth’s axis, the Tropic of Cancer is now misnamed. On the current June solstice, the sun actually appears in the constellation Taurus.http://louis-j-sheehan.biz

11 Worse than the full moon? On the solstice of June 20, 2001, Andrea Yates killed her five children. Three years before that (June 18, 1999—also near the solstice) she tried to kill herself with an overdose of pills.

12 Galileo was forced to recant his theory that Earth revolves around the sun on the summer solstice of 1633.

13 Other planets have solstices too. By cosmic coincidence, this year Mars and Earth have solstices that fall within a few days of each other, with the Martian solstice occurring on June 25.

14 Stock up on DVDs and fire up the sunlamp: Uranus’s axis of rotation is nearly aligned with the plane of its orbit, meaning that each pole on Uranus experiences a 42-year-long summer of steady sunshine—followed by a depressing 42 years of winter darkness.

15 At the other extreme, Venus’s and Jupiter’s poles are almost exactly perpendicular to their orbits. Because of that, their solstices—hence their seasons—are barely noticeable.http://louis-j-sheehan.biz

16 Then again, you would have difficulty noticing any kind of season on Venus because you would be simultaneously suffocated, crushed, and cooked at 870 degrees Fahrenheit. On Jupiter it would be worse: You would be killed by radiation long before you got close.

17 Even without seasons, changes in the sun affect the planets. Sunspots wax and wane on an 11-year cycle; at times of peak sunspot activity, such as the year 2000, the sun is 0.07 percent brighter than during periods of low activity.

18 And the sun keeps getting brighter. Models of stellar evolution estimate that the sun is about 40 percent more luminous today than it was when the Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago.

19 No more summer beach vacations. Some 1 billion to 3 billion years from now, the sun’s increasing intensity will boil away Earth’s oceans, turning our planet into an endless desert.

20 So maybe the ancient Greeks had the right idea, pulling out all the stops for the winter solstice instead. On the festival of Lenaea, according to legend, a band of women would seize a man representing Dionysus (the god of wine-fueled revelry), rip him to shreds, and eat him.

congo louis j sheehan esquire

(French: République du Congo; Kongo: Repubilika ya Kongo; Lingala: Republiki ya Kongó), also known as Congo-Brazzaville or the Congo, is a country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Gabon, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Angolan exclave province of Cabinda, and the Gulf of Guinea.
http://louis-j-sheehan.biz
The republic is a former French colony. Upon independence in 1960, the former French region of Middle Congo became the Republic of the Congo. After a quarter century of Marxism, Congo became a multi-party democracy in 1992. However, a brief civil war in 1997 ended in the restoration of former Marxist President Denis Sassou Nguesso to power.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 History
* 2 Government and politics
* 3 Regions and districts
* 4 Geography
* 5 Economy
* 6 Demographics
* 7 Weather and Climate
* 8 Culture
* 9 See also
* 10 References
* 11 Further reading
* 12 External links

[edit] History

Main article: History of the Republic of the Congo

The earliest inhabitants of the area were Pygmy peoples. They were largely replaced and absorbed by Bantu tribes during Bantu expansions. The Bakongo are Bantu groups that also occupied parts of present-day Angola, Gabon, and Democratic Republic of the Congo, forming the basis for ethnic affinities and rivalries among those countries. Several Bantu kingdoms—notably those of the Kongo, the Loango, and the Teke—built trade links leading into the Congo River basin. The first European contacts came in the late 15th century, and commercial relationships were quickly established with the kingdoms—trading for slaves captured in the interior. The coastal area was a major source for the transatlantic slave trade, and when that commerce ended in the early 19th century, the power of the Bantu kingdoms eroded.

Following independence as the Congo Republic on August 15, 1960, Fulbert Youlou ruled as the country's first president until labour elements and rival political parties instigated a three-day uprising that ousted him. The Congolese military took charge of the country briefly and installed a civilian provisional government headed by Alphonse Massamba-Débat. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz

Under the 1963 constitution, Massamba-Débat was elected President for a five-year term but it was ended abruptly with an August 1968 coup d'état. Capt. Marien Ngouabi, who had participated in the coup, assumed the presidency on December 31, 1968. One year later, President Ngouabi proclaimed Congo to be Africa's first "people's republic" and announced the decision of the National Revolutionary Movement to change its name to the Congolese Labour Party (PCT). On March 16, 1977, President Ngouabi was assassinated. An 11-member Military Committee of the Party (CMP) was named to head an interim government with Col. (later Gen.) Joachim Yhombi-Opango to serve as President of the Republic.

After decades of turbulent politics bolstered by Marxist-Leninist rhetoric, and with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Congo completed a transition to multi-party democracy with elections in August 1992. Denis Sassou Nguesso conceded defeat and Congo's new president, Prof. Pascal Lissouba, was inaugurated on August 31, 1992.

However, Congo's democratic progress was derailed in 1997. As presidential elections scheduled for July 1997 approached, tensions between the Lissouba and Sassou camps mounted. On June 5, President Lissouba's government forces surrounded Sassou's compound in Brazzaville and Sassou ordered members of his private militia (known as "Cobras") to resist. Thus began a four-month conflict that destroyed or damaged much of Brazzaville and caused tens of thousands of civilian deaths. In early October, Angolan troops invaded Congo on the side of Sassou and, in mid-October, the Lissouba government fell. Soon thereafter, Sassou declared himself President. The Congo Civil War continued for another year and a half until a peace deal was struck between the various factions in December 1999.http://louis-j-sheehan.biz

Sham elections in 2002 saw Sassou win with almost 10% of the vote cast. His two main rivals Lissouba and Bernard Kolelas were prevented from competing and the only remaining credible rival, Andre Milongo, advised his supporters to boycott the elections and then withdrew from the race. A new constitution, agreed upon by referendum in January 2002, granted the president new powers and also extended his term to seven years as well as introducing a new bicameral assembly. International observers took issue with the organization of the presidential election as well as the constitutional referendum, both of which were reminiscent in their organization of Congo's era of the single-party state.

Newton Louis J Sheehan, Esquire 73348

A BBC documentary uncovers, for the first time, the original manuscript where Newton forecast the date of the end of the world. http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de

Newton, the father of modern mathematics, dedicated a large part of his life to a quest to decode the Bible which he believed to be the word of God.

For over 50 years, he studied the Bible trying to unravel God's secret laws of the Universe. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com

He was fanatical in his quest to discover the date for the Second Coming of Christ and the end of the world.

Scholars have spent years trying to unravel Newton's writings on the Book of Revelation to establish when he thought the apocalypse was coming.

For the first time, Newton: The Dark Heretic reveals the date he forecast is within many people's lifetimes - 2060.

The BBC was given rare access to Newton's original manuscripts in the Hebrew National Library in Jerusalem. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com

Buried in his papers, Dr Stephen Snobelen, from the University of King's College in Nova Scotia, found the original document where Newton had written down his prediction.

In 2060, Newton believed the dramatic events forecast in the apocalyptic Book of Revelation would occur: massive plagues and fires; the terrible battle of Armageddon between good and evil and the destruction and eternal damnation of the wicked.

Producer Malcolm Neaum says: "Newton prayed daily for the end of the world which he believed would herald the Second Coming of Christ. This would usher in the 1000 year rule of the Saints and Newton believed he would then take his place as Chief Saint."