Showing posts with label Miscellenous. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Miscellenous. Show all posts
Monday, 13 June 2011
I am back !!!!
Hello blog.... I am back !!!!... for how long, I don't know... But hopefully, it will be better than last time.... :) :) ...
Friday, 1 May 2009
Fact file: Swine flu and safety measures
What is it? It is a virus that mutated from pigs and transmitted to some humans
Which places have been affected? Mexico City, California and Texas, so far
How many have been killed? 103 people in Mexico City
How many have been infected? Mexican authorities are investigating 1,614 suspected cases. The flu is spreading with 20 cases in the United States and four in Canada. New Zealand reported 15 new suspected cases.
Is there a cure? The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website states that there is no vaccine to specifically protect humans from swine flu, only to protect pigs. Although GlaxoSmithKline Plc's flu treatment Relenza and Roche Holding AG's Tamiflu appear effective against the strains of the virus the CDC has tested.
What are authorities doing to contain the virus? The World Health Organization went on high alert, dispatching top experts to the United States and Mexico. The CDC has also set up emergency operation centres.
Signs and symptoms
Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath
Pain or pressure in the chest or abdomen
Sudden dizziness
Confusion
Severe or persistent vomiting
Fever with a rash (among children)
Bluish skin color (among children)
Easy ways to protect against infection
Little can be done to prevent an outbreak of flu from spreading, health experts caution, but they say common sense measures can help individuals protect themselves. Practice the following:
- Wash your hands frequently
- Cover your cough or your sneeze
- Use alcohol-based gel or foam hand sanitizers
- If you have flu-like symptoms, stay away from work or public transportation
- Social distancing. Stay away from people who might be infected
What is Swine Influenza?
Swine Influenza (swine flu) is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type. Swine flu viruses cause high levels of illness and low death rates in pigs. Swine influenza viruses may circulate among swine throughout the year, but most outbreaks occur during the late fall and winter months similar to outbreaks in humans. The classical swine flu virus (an influenza type A H1N1 virus) was first isolated from a pig in 1930.
Can humans catch swine flu?
Swine flu viruses do not normally infect humans. However, sporadic human infections with swine flu have occurred. Most commonly, these cases occur in persons with direct exposure to pigs (e.g. children near pigs at a fair or workers in the swine industry). In addition, there have been documented cases of one person spreading swine flu to others. What are the symptoms of swine flu in humans? The symptoms of swine flu in people are expected to be similar to the symptoms of regular human seasonal influenza and include fever, lethargy, lack of appetite and coughing. Some people with swine flu also have reported runny nose, sore throat, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.
How does swine flu spread?
Influenza viruses can be directly transmitted from pigs to people and from people to pigs. Human infection with flu viruses from pigs are most likely to occur when people are in close proximity to infected pigs, such as in pig barns and livestock exhibits housing pigs at fairs.
People may become infected by touching something with flu viruses on it and then touching their mouth or nose.
Is there a vaccine for swine flu?
Vaccines are available to be given to pigs to prevent swine influenza. There is no vaccine to protect humans from swine flu. The seasonal influenza vaccine will likely help provide partial protection against swine H3N2, but not swine H1N1.
- Source: Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, United States.
Which places have been affected? Mexico City, California and Texas, so far
How many have been killed? 103 people in Mexico City
How many have been infected? Mexican authorities are investigating 1,614 suspected cases. The flu is spreading with 20 cases in the United States and four in Canada. New Zealand reported 15 new suspected cases.
Is there a cure? The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website states that there is no vaccine to specifically protect humans from swine flu, only to protect pigs. Although GlaxoSmithKline Plc's flu treatment Relenza and Roche Holding AG's Tamiflu appear effective against the strains of the virus the CDC has tested.
What are authorities doing to contain the virus? The World Health Organization went on high alert, dispatching top experts to the United States and Mexico. The CDC has also set up emergency operation centres.
Signs and symptoms
Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath
Pain or pressure in the chest or abdomen
Sudden dizziness
Confusion
Severe or persistent vomiting
Fever with a rash (among children)
Bluish skin color (among children)
Easy ways to protect against infection
Little can be done to prevent an outbreak of flu from spreading, health experts caution, but they say common sense measures can help individuals protect themselves. Practice the following:
- Wash your hands frequently
- Cover your cough or your sneeze
- Use alcohol-based gel or foam hand sanitizers
- If you have flu-like symptoms, stay away from work or public transportation
- Social distancing. Stay away from people who might be infected
What is Swine Influenza?
Swine Influenza (swine flu) is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type. Swine flu viruses cause high levels of illness and low death rates in pigs. Swine influenza viruses may circulate among swine throughout the year, but most outbreaks occur during the late fall and winter months similar to outbreaks in humans. The classical swine flu virus (an influenza type A H1N1 virus) was first isolated from a pig in 1930.
Can humans catch swine flu?
Swine flu viruses do not normally infect humans. However, sporadic human infections with swine flu have occurred. Most commonly, these cases occur in persons with direct exposure to pigs (e.g. children near pigs at a fair or workers in the swine industry). In addition, there have been documented cases of one person spreading swine flu to others. What are the symptoms of swine flu in humans? The symptoms of swine flu in people are expected to be similar to the symptoms of regular human seasonal influenza and include fever, lethargy, lack of appetite and coughing. Some people with swine flu also have reported runny nose, sore throat, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.
How does swine flu spread?
Influenza viruses can be directly transmitted from pigs to people and from people to pigs. Human infection with flu viruses from pigs are most likely to occur when people are in close proximity to infected pigs, such as in pig barns and livestock exhibits housing pigs at fairs.
People may become infected by touching something with flu viruses on it and then touching their mouth or nose.
Is there a vaccine for swine flu?
Vaccines are available to be given to pigs to prevent swine influenza. There is no vaccine to protect humans from swine flu. The seasonal influenza vaccine will likely help provide partial protection against swine H3N2, but not swine H1N1.
- Source: Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, United States.
Thursday, 19 March 2009
Why Your Boss Is Overpaid
It is a typical "Dilbert" strip. The boss announces, "Our CEO has voluntarily slashed his pay from $6 million per year to $4 million. In a written statement, he said he wants to 'share the pain.' Do you feel better now?" A downtrodden intern replies, "I make my underpants from sandwich bags."
But that's office life, is it not? Bosses make obscene sums of money, while downtrodden cubicle slaves toil almost without reward. It might seem insane, but economists have a surprise for us: The insanity reflects nothing more than cool economic logic. There is method in the madness.
The ugly truth is that your boss is probably overpaid--and it's for your benefit, not his. Why? It might be because he isn't being paid for the work he does but, rather, to inspire you. In other words, we work our socks off in underpaying jobs in the hope that one day we'll win the rat race and become overpaid fat cats ourselves. Economists call this "tournament theory."
After all, managers find it hard to spot an excellent performance. It is a rare job where workers can be fairly paid according to some objective criteria.
There are some exceptions, of course. Critics and audiences may disagree about the literary merits of Dan Brown's best seller, The Da Vinci Code. Yet from a business point of view, the success is easy to measure. He has sold about 40 million books and is rewarded with a payment for each one.
Another superstar, tennis champion Roger Federer, has qualities that cannot be so easily calibrated. So instead of trying to measure his performance in objective terms, as Dan Brown's is measured, we measure it in relative terms. If Federer beats Andy Roddick in the final of the U.S. Open, he has succeeded.
Federer is not paid to try hard, nor to produce objectively brilliant tennis. He is paid for beating other players. Yet that is enough to get the best out of him. It is likely that employers have long since noticed that paying for relative performance can be just as good as trying to pay for absolute performance.
The economists Edward Lazear (recently appointed to chair the Council of Economic Advisors) and the late Sherwin Rosen argued, in a hugely influential paper published 25 years ago, that tournaments are an integral and often invisible part of the workplace. Workers are frequently ranked relative to each other and promoted not for being good at their jobs but for being better than their rivals. It is a natural response to the difficulty of true performance pay.
Tournaments also help protect workers against risks they cannot control. Companies can be affected by recessions, unexpected competition and hurricanes. As long as every worker is equally affected, the incentives to try hard remain the same. Trying to encourage performance through, say, stock options would unnecessarily expose workers to risks without really encouraging them to work harder.
Promotion tournaments sound sensible: Good workers are promoted, less capable workers are not. Yet the widespread use of tournaments also goes a long way toward explaining the frustrations of office life.
First, one way for you to win is for your colleagues to lose. Companies that rely too heavily on competition to determine promotions may find that their employees discover that the most efficient way of winning a promotion is by sabotaging the efforts of their rivals. You don't need economic theory to spot that risk.
The second, and more counterintuitive, prediction of tournament theory is that the more luck is involved in work, the larger the pay gaps should be between the winners and the losers. If Jack's promotion is 90% luck and 10% effort, Jack may be inclined to goof off--unless, of course, the rewards for promotion are absolutely astronomical. And they sometimes are.
Tournaments also demand increasingly absurd pay packages as workers get higher up the hierarchy. At the lowest level, a promotion may not need to carry much of a pay increase, because it opens up the possibility of future, lucrative promotions. Nearer the end of your career, only a fat check is likely to spur you on.
Finally, tournament theory also helps to explain why insiders, not outsiders, get cushy jobs. You thought it was all about the old-boy network, but in fact, the logical reason for promoting insiders is clear: These jobs are designed to keep your workforce motivated.
Lazear and Rozen's tournament theory has stood the test of time and been supported by many subsequent pieces of empirical research. It also passes the smell test: The more grotesque your boss's pay and the less he has to do to earn it, the bigger the motivation for you to work for a promotion. As Lazear wrote in his book, Personnel Economics for Managers, "The salary of the vice president acts not so much as motivation for the vice president as it does as motivation for the assistant vice presidents."
Economists don't even pretend that your boss deserves his salary. Suddenly, everything is clear.
--Tim Harford, a columnist for the Financial Times, is author of The Undercover Economist.
But that's office life, is it not? Bosses make obscene sums of money, while downtrodden cubicle slaves toil almost without reward. It might seem insane, but economists have a surprise for us: The insanity reflects nothing more than cool economic logic. There is method in the madness.
The ugly truth is that your boss is probably overpaid--and it's for your benefit, not his. Why? It might be because he isn't being paid for the work he does but, rather, to inspire you. In other words, we work our socks off in underpaying jobs in the hope that one day we'll win the rat race and become overpaid fat cats ourselves. Economists call this "tournament theory."
After all, managers find it hard to spot an excellent performance. It is a rare job where workers can be fairly paid according to some objective criteria.
There are some exceptions, of course. Critics and audiences may disagree about the literary merits of Dan Brown's best seller, The Da Vinci Code. Yet from a business point of view, the success is easy to measure. He has sold about 40 million books and is rewarded with a payment for each one.
Another superstar, tennis champion Roger Federer, has qualities that cannot be so easily calibrated. So instead of trying to measure his performance in objective terms, as Dan Brown's is measured, we measure it in relative terms. If Federer beats Andy Roddick in the final of the U.S. Open, he has succeeded.
Federer is not paid to try hard, nor to produce objectively brilliant tennis. He is paid for beating other players. Yet that is enough to get the best out of him. It is likely that employers have long since noticed that paying for relative performance can be just as good as trying to pay for absolute performance.
The economists Edward Lazear (recently appointed to chair the Council of Economic Advisors) and the late Sherwin Rosen argued, in a hugely influential paper published 25 years ago, that tournaments are an integral and often invisible part of the workplace. Workers are frequently ranked relative to each other and promoted not for being good at their jobs but for being better than their rivals. It is a natural response to the difficulty of true performance pay.
Tournaments also help protect workers against risks they cannot control. Companies can be affected by recessions, unexpected competition and hurricanes. As long as every worker is equally affected, the incentives to try hard remain the same. Trying to encourage performance through, say, stock options would unnecessarily expose workers to risks without really encouraging them to work harder.
Promotion tournaments sound sensible: Good workers are promoted, less capable workers are not. Yet the widespread use of tournaments also goes a long way toward explaining the frustrations of office life.
First, one way for you to win is for your colleagues to lose. Companies that rely too heavily on competition to determine promotions may find that their employees discover that the most efficient way of winning a promotion is by sabotaging the efforts of their rivals. You don't need economic theory to spot that risk.
The second, and more counterintuitive, prediction of tournament theory is that the more luck is involved in work, the larger the pay gaps should be between the winners and the losers. If Jack's promotion is 90% luck and 10% effort, Jack may be inclined to goof off--unless, of course, the rewards for promotion are absolutely astronomical. And they sometimes are.
Tournaments also demand increasingly absurd pay packages as workers get higher up the hierarchy. At the lowest level, a promotion may not need to carry much of a pay increase, because it opens up the possibility of future, lucrative promotions. Nearer the end of your career, only a fat check is likely to spur you on.
Finally, tournament theory also helps to explain why insiders, not outsiders, get cushy jobs. You thought it was all about the old-boy network, but in fact, the logical reason for promoting insiders is clear: These jobs are designed to keep your workforce motivated.
Lazear and Rozen's tournament theory has stood the test of time and been supported by many subsequent pieces of empirical research. It also passes the smell test: The more grotesque your boss's pay and the less he has to do to earn it, the bigger the motivation for you to work for a promotion. As Lazear wrote in his book, Personnel Economics for Managers, "The salary of the vice president acts not so much as motivation for the vice president as it does as motivation for the assistant vice presidents."
Economists don't even pretend that your boss deserves his salary. Suddenly, everything is clear.
--Tim Harford, a columnist for the Financial Times, is author of The Undercover Economist.
Link to source site : <http://www.forbes.com/2006/05/20/executive-compensation-tournament_cx_th_06work_0523pay.html>
Tuesday, 4 November 2008
Meditation
Meditation is a mental discipline by which one attempts to get beyond the conditioned, "thinking" mind into a deeper state of relaxation or awareness. Meditation often involves turning attention to a single point of reference. It is recognized as a component of almost all religions, and has been practiced for over 5,000 years.It is also practiced outside religious traditions. Different meditative disciplines encompass a wide range of spiritual and/or psychophysical practices which may emphasize different goals -- from achievement of a higher state of consciousness, to greater focus, creativity or self-awareness, or simply a more relaxed and peaceful frame of mind.
Meditation has been defined as: "self regulation of attention, in the service of self-inquiry, in the here and now."[7] The various techniques of meditation can be classified according to their focus. Some focus on the field or background perception and experience, also called "mindfulness"; others focus on a preselected specific object, and are called "concentrative" meditation. There are also techniques that shift between the field and the object.
In mindfulness meditation, the meditator sits comfortably and silently, centering attention by focusing awareness on an object or process (such as the breath; a sound like a mantra, koan or riddle-like question; a visualisation; or an exercise). The meditator is usually encouraged to maintain an open focus:
... shifting freely from one perception to the next clear your mind of all that bothers you no thoughts that can distract you from reality or your personal being... No thought, image or sensation is considered an intrusion. The meditator, with a 'no effort' attitude, is asked to remain in the here and now. Using the focus as an 'anchor'... brings the subject constantly back to the present, avoiding cognitive analysis or fantasy regarding the contents of awareness, and increasing tolerance and relaxation of secondary thought processes.
Concentration meditation is used in many religions and spiritual practices. Whereas in mindfulness meditation there is an open focus, in concentration meditation the meditator holds attention on a particular object (e.g., a repetitive prayer) while minimizing distractions; bringing the mind back to concentrate on the chosen object. In some traditions, such as Vipassana, mindfulness and concentration are combined.
Meditation can be practiced while walking or doing simple repetitive tasks. Walking meditation helps to break down habitual automatic mental categories, "thus regaining the primary nature of perceptions and events, focusing attention on the process while disregarding its purpose or final outcome.[citation needed]" In a form of meditation using visualization, such as Chinese Qi Gong, the practitioner concentrates on flows of energy (Qi) in the body, starting in the abdomen and then circulating through the body, until dispersed.[8] Some meditative traditions, such as yoga or tantra, are common to several religions or occur outside religious contexts.
Excerpt from Wikipedia . Source : <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditation>
Meditation has been defined as: "self regulation of attention, in the service of self-inquiry, in the here and now."[7] The various techniques of meditation can be classified according to their focus. Some focus on the field or background perception and experience, also called "mindfulness"; others focus on a preselected specific object, and are called "concentrative" meditation. There are also techniques that shift between the field and the object.
In mindfulness meditation, the meditator sits comfortably and silently, centering attention by focusing awareness on an object or process (such as the breath; a sound like a mantra, koan or riddle-like question; a visualisation; or an exercise). The meditator is usually encouraged to maintain an open focus:
... shifting freely from one perception to the next clear your mind of all that bothers you no thoughts that can distract you from reality or your personal being... No thought, image or sensation is considered an intrusion. The meditator, with a 'no effort' attitude, is asked to remain in the here and now. Using the focus as an 'anchor'... brings the subject constantly back to the present, avoiding cognitive analysis or fantasy regarding the contents of awareness, and increasing tolerance and relaxation of secondary thought processes.
Concentration meditation is used in many religions and spiritual practices. Whereas in mindfulness meditation there is an open focus, in concentration meditation the meditator holds attention on a particular object (e.g., a repetitive prayer) while minimizing distractions; bringing the mind back to concentrate on the chosen object. In some traditions, such as Vipassana, mindfulness and concentration are combined.
Meditation can be practiced while walking or doing simple repetitive tasks. Walking meditation helps to break down habitual automatic mental categories, "thus regaining the primary nature of perceptions and events, focusing attention on the process while disregarding its purpose or final outcome.[citation needed]" In a form of meditation using visualization, such as Chinese Qi Gong, the practitioner concentrates on flows of energy (Qi) in the body, starting in the abdomen and then circulating through the body, until dispersed.[8] Some meditative traditions, such as yoga or tantra, are common to several religions or occur outside religious contexts.
Excerpt from Wikipedia . Source : <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditation>
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