07 June, 2009

New venture in an economic slowdown?


Afraid of starting a new venture in an economic slowdown? Don't be, say investors. War times, recession and economic slowdown give excellent opportunities to set up new businesses and gain competitive advantage.
Capital expenditure and wage costs cannot be any cheaper than in these times. From Hyatt and FedEx to GE and Hewlett-Packard to Indian firms like Mindtree and Wipro BPO all were born in a slowdown. To set up a new venture, a core marketing and operations talent is essential. Economic slowdown gives an excellent opportunity to attract such talent at low wage costs, and give them excellent equity rewards and challenging work in return.
Top talent is also liable to easily migrate if their growth is not taken care of (in terms of salary hikes or promotion), even though in a recession. Capital infrastructure businesses will also find the expenses cheaper than they would in boom times. Any product follows the normal PLM (product life cycle management) graph. It follows five stages of development, introduction, growth, maturity and decline. Most ventures start with a loss and achieve break even after six months to an year. And the curve can be timed in such a way that the growth period starts with the period when stock markets start picking up pace.
The ideal maturity period should end with another phase of boom and beginning of a slowdown . Though no business can achieve accurate timing, entrepreneurs can time their product launches gauging the trend of the curve. Raman Roy, founder of three BPO ventures and CEO of Quattro BPO says: that there's is no good or bad time to start. "If you start selling bullock carts in this age, it won't work even in a boom times. Even we started Spectramind in post dot com bust, and we did very well. If the idea is good it will sell. It should satisfy the needs of a market."Roy started Spectramind at the peak of the dot com bust in 2000, with funding from Chysalis Capital. In two years, the company ramped up to 9,000 employees. It was bought by Wipro for $175 million after which Roy founded Quattro BPO with his own capital.

The world's most powerful laser!


The world's most powerful laser, created to help keep tabs on the US nuclear weapons stockpile while also studying the heavens, has been unveiled. The super laser, known officially as the National Ignition Facility, was unveiled on Friday at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of San Francisco. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and US Sen. Dianne Feinstein were among thousands of people in attendance at the ceremony.
The NIF, which is the size of a football field, consists of 192 separate laser beams, each traveling 1,000 feet (304.8 meters) in one-thousandth of a second to converge simultaneously on a target the size of a pencil eraser. Federal officials said they planned to use it on a multifaceted assignment that would include ensuring aging nuclear weapons are functioning properly without resorting to underground testing. Other uses will include the study of astrophysics and experiments in developing green energy programs. Beginning next year, scientists also will use the laser for experiments aimed at creating controlled fusion reactions similar to those found in the sun. ``More energy will be produced by this ignition process than the amount of laser energy required to start it. This is the long-sought goal of energy gain that has been the goal of fusion researchers for more than half a century,'' said NIF director Edward Moses. The laser will be used in astrophysics, allowing scientists to mimic conditions inside planets and new solar systems, something the lab's officials said would allow for conducting experiments that could never be undertaken on Earth before.

Hotline for heart patients!


A support hotline for heart patients is of great benefit, a new study has found.Patients inhabiting Australia's hinterlands with access to the "Chronic Heart failure Assistance by Telephone" (CHAT) were one-third less likely to die or need hospital treatment.CHAT is an automated answering service supplemented by qualified cardiac nurses. Patients' medication, general health, day-to-day routines and their heart condition were regularly monitored. Patients were encouraged to undertake check-ups and self-assessment surveys.
One hundred and thirty six GPs were recruited to support the year-long study, involving more than 400 patients. The results were presented at the European Heart Failure Association meeting in Nice, France (May 30-June 2) by the principal study investigator, Henry Krum. Krum, who is a professor at Monash University, Melbourne, said the study showed that phone support for people living outside city areas was valuable for heart patients."The CHAT study demonstrated significant reductions in hospitalisation for any cause and a highly significant 35 percent reduction in death or hospitalisation," said Krum, according to a Monash release.

World- first breakthrough!


In what is claimed to a world- first breakthrough, scientists claim to have used stem cells cultured on contact lens to restore sight in the sufferers of blinding corneal disease.A team at the University of New South Wales harvested stem cells from patients' own eyes to rehabilitate the damaged cornea. The stem cells were cultured on a common therapeutic contact lens which was then placed onto the damaged cornea for 10 days, during which the cells were able to re-colonise the damaged eye surface.
While the novel procedure was used to rehabilitate damaged corneas, the researchers say it offers hope to people with a range of blinding eye conditions and could have applications in other organs, the 'Transplantation' journal reported in its latest edition.In fact, the trial was conducted on three patients -- two with extensive corneal damage resulting from multiple surgeries to remove ocular melanomas, and one with the genetic eye condition aniridia. Other causes of cornea damage can include chemical or thermal burns, bacterial infection and chemotherapy.

Now captured scents from cricket!


Move over floral, musky smells. Perfume makers have now captured scents from cricket grounds, including the changing rooms, cricket bats and kit, as well as from the cabins of ocean-going yachts."We are looking for modern smells that have never been used in fragrances before but which have strong associations with activities that people enjoy or respect," The Times quoted Will Andrews, a fragrance scientist at Procter & Gamble (P&G), which makes perfumes by Hugo Boss, Dolce & Gabbana and Lacoste, as saying.
Andrews' aim is to find "notes" within the odours found in such places that evoke positive emotions associated with sporty activities. These can then be used in conjunction with other odours to make new fragrances. "Smell is the most evocative of the senses. Just a faint whiff of a particular odour can conjure up memories and emotions in a way that no other sense can achieve," the expert said. A lecture on how researchers used a technique called "headspace analysis", in which a pump sucks air from a room or area deemed to have interesting smells, will be given by Andrews at the Royal Institution in London.
In the process, air is passed over polymer beads that trap the odour molecules and concentrate them. Back in the laboratory the beads are placed in a gas chromatograph where they are warmed up. The odour molecules evaporate from the beads and are sucked into the machine to be analysed. Once the structure of the molecules is known they can be duplicated artificially in the quantities needed for perfume.

Electronic memory chips!


The day is not far when electronic memory chips would gain the ability to be bended and twisted, for engineers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have found a way to build a flexible memory component out of inexpensive, readily available materials. Although the new device is not ready to debut in the market, but it holds promise not only because of its potential applications in medicine and other fields, but also because it has the characteristics of a memristor.
A memristor is a fundamentally new component for electronic circuits that industry scientists developed in 2008. Scientists seek electronic components that can flex without breaking for many reasons-for example they could be worn on the skin to monitor heart rate or blood sugar Although there exist some flexible components, the NIST researchers think that creating flexible memory is a technical barrier. Thus, while hunting for a solution, the researchers took polymer sheets-the sort that transparencies for overhead projectors are made from-and experimented with depositing a thin film of titanium dioxide, an ingredient in sunscreen, on their surfaces.
They deposited the material by a sol gel process, which consists of spinning the material in liquid form and letting it set, like making gelatin. They added electrical contacts and created a flexible memory switch that operates on less than 10 volts, maintains its memory when power is lost, and still functions after being flexed more than 4,000 times. In fact, the switch's performance strongly resembles to that of a memristor-a component theorized in 1971 as a fourth fundamental circuit element (along with the capacitor, resistor and inductor).A memristor is essentially a resistor that changes its resistance depending on the amount of current that is sent through it-and retains this resistance even after the power is turned off. The NIST component demonstrates similar electrical behaviour like a memristor, and is also flexible. And, thus, they can begin to explore the metrology that may be necessary to study the device's unique electrical behaviour. "We wanted to make a flexible memory component that would advance the development and metrology of flexible electronics, while being economical enough for widespread use. Because the active component of our device can be fabricated from a liquid, there is the potential that in the future we can print the entire memory device as simply and inexpensively as we now print a slide on an overhead transparency," said NIST researcher Nadine Gergel-Hackett. The findings of the study appear in an upcoming issue of IEEE Electron Device Letters.

You may soon feel others’ pain!


Well, you may soon feel others’ pain, thanks to scientists who have discovered what they claim is a way to measure a person’s suffering. Using brain scans, a team at the Oxford University has carried out a series of studies which have shown distinct differences between the brains of people in pain and others who are not.
“Pain seems to increase the blood flow to certain parts of the brain roughly in proportion to the amount of pain felt, and we can measure that activation in a brain scan,” the team’s leader Prof Irene Tracey said.What the scientists have found is that the brain possesses what they call a “pain matrix”, with such feelings typically activating more than a dozen parts of the brain, ‘The Sunday Times’ reported. This is in contrast to other senses such as vision or hearing, where stimuli are generally fed to just one part of the brain for interpretation.

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Women often felt blameworth!

A higher proportion of women feel that they do not meet their own high standards with family and workplace commitments, say US researchers.According to a study of 288 adults, when it comes to feelings of inadequacy at home and at workplace, ladies suffer more than men.Authors of the study, which has been published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, claim that such perfectionism can have a negative effect on the work-life balance.
The study’s volunteers had to work at least 20 hours a week and have family commitments, reports The BBC.Most people were married and 80 percent had at least one child living at home.Statements included in the questionnaire included: “the time I spend with my families interferes with my work responsibilities”; and “when I get home from work I am usually too frazzled to participate in family activities”.
In the study, respondents were categorised into those who set themselves very high standards but felt they did not meet them, those who set high personal standards and were happy with their performance, and non-perfectionists.At work, 38 percent of women did not feel they met the high standards they set themselves, compared with 24 percent of men, the study found.
When it came to home and family life, 30 percent of women felt they were failing to meet the standards they wanted to compared with 17 percent of men.
Study author Dr Jacqueline Mitchelson, assistant professor in psychology at Auburn University in Alabama, said: “None of the research I’ve seen which splits perfectionism into groups has found a gender difference so it was completely unexpected.”I’m not sure where it comes from, and we need more research.”Professor Cary Cooper, an expert in organisational psychology and health at Lancaster University, said women often felt blameworthy when juggling work and home commitments.
“They have what we call the double shift - trying to juggle working and competing at work and then carrying out duties at home with men only helping at the margins.”They then feel guilty that they’re not doing well at work because of home commitments and they’re not doing well at home because of work commitments.”He added: “Women suffer from perfectionism. They tend to be more conscientious, working to 100 percent.”

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Snoring linked with sleep apnoea!

While snoring has been linked to learning impairment, stroke and premature death, researchers at The University of New South Wales (UNSW) now say that snoring linked with sleep apnoea may impair brain function more than previously thought.
The research has shown that obstructive sleep apnoea sufferers experience similar changes in brain biochemistry to people who have had a severe stroke or who are dying.And the new study is the first to analyse-”in a second-by-second timeframe”-what is happening in the brains of sufferers as they sleep.Previous studies have focused on recreating oxygen impairment in awake patients.”It used to be thought that apnoeic snoring had absolutely no acute effects on brain function but this is plainly not true,” said New South Global Professor Caroline Rae, the lead author of the study.Severe form of Sleep apnoea is characterised by extended pauses in breathing, repetitive asphyxia, and sleep fragmentation.
Children with enlarged tonsils and adenoids are also affected, raising concerns of long-term cognitive damage.The researchers used magnetic resonance spectroscopy to study the brains of 13 men with severe, untreated, obstructive sleep apnoea.They found that even a moderate degree of oxygen desaturation during the patients” sleep had significant effects on the brain’’s bioenergetic status.
“The findings show that lack of oxygen while asleep may be far more detrimental than when awake, possibly because the normal compensatory mechanisms don’t work as well when you are asleep,” said Rae.She added: “This is happening in someone with sleep apnoea acutely and continually when they are asleep. It’s a completely different biochemical mechanism from anything we’ve seen before and is similar to what you see in somebody who has had a very severe stroke or is dying.”In her opinion, the findings suggested societal perceptions of snoring needed to change.
She said: “People look at people snoring and think it’s funny. That has to stop.”Rae said that they don’t known why the body responded to oxygen depletion in this way.”The brain could be basically resetting its bioenergetics to make itself more resistant to lack of oxygen. It may be a compensatory mechanism to keep you alive, we just don’t know, but even if it is it’s not likely to be doing you much good,” said Rae.

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Sleep disturbances increases with age!

Scientists from Lighting Research Centre (LRC) have developed a goggle-like device designed to deliver blue light directly to the eyes to improve sleep quality in older adults suffering from chronic sleep disturbances.Sleep disturbances increases with age. Researchers have long believed that the sleep disturbances common among the elderly often result from a disruption of the body’s circadian rhythms - biological cycles that repeat approximately every 24 hours.It has been shown that blue light is the most effective at stimulating the circadian system when combined with the appropriate light intensity, spatial distribution, timing, and duration.
“Light and dark patterns are the major synchronizer of circadian rhythms to the 24-hour solar day,” said Dr Mariana Figueiro, Lighting Research Center Light and Health Program director and principal investigator on the project.”Light stimulus travels through the retina, the light-sensitive nerve tissue lining the back wall of the eye, to reach the master clock in the brain,” the expert said.”However, a combination of age-related changes in the eye and a more sedentary lifestyle may reduce the amount of light stimulus reaching an older person’s retina, therefore reducing the amount of light for the circadian system,” she added.
The light-treatment prototype was developed by Topbulb.com, LLC, based on prior LRC light and health research.It offers an alternative approach using specially designed goggles that deliver blue light spectrally tuned for optimum circadian response.During the study, the device was worn by eleven subjects between the ages of 51 and 80 years of age, who were exposed to two levels of blue light for 90 minutes on two separate nights.The researchers collected the blood and saliva samples and assessed levels of nocturnal melatonin, a hormone used as a marker for the circadian clock, with high levels at night when a person is in a dark environment and low levels during the day.
After only one hour of light exposure, the light-induced nocturnal melatonin suppression level was about 35 percent for the low light level and about 60 percent for the high light level.In addition, the higher level of blue light suppressed nocturnal melatonin more quickly, to a greater extent over the course of the 90-minute exposure period, and was maintained after 60 minutes.The researchers believe that the device could be subsequently used to increase sleep consolidation and efficiency in older subjects when worn for a prescribed duration at an appropriate time.”The study suggests that the light goggles might be a practical, comfortable, and effective way to deliver light treatment to those suffering from circadian sleep disorders,” said Figueiro.The study appears in Chronobiology International.

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Why do you say we should learn to enjoy adversity?

When something is inevitable, when its occurrence cannot be prevented, it is better to go along with it rather than to resist it. The word enjoy here means, make the best out of something. Let me illustrate with an example: A person is walking along a mountain ridge. He stumbles and falls. As he tumbles down the cliff, he sees the branch of a tree projecting from the cliff-face. He catches hold of that branch. As he is hanging there precariously, he sees his Guru standing on the top of the mountain. He asks the guru what he should do. There is no way the guru can help him physically. Instead, he tells him, The left side of the valley below you is dry and thorny. The right side is lush and green. Look to the right and try to fall there. Now that the fall is inevitable, and you may be plunging to your death, enjoy the scenery during your last leap. Your assessment of any situation should be realistic. You must muster all your resources in protecting your interests. Understand the strengths and weaknesses of your adversary and be prepared to put up the stiffest resistance you can. At the same time, if you find yourself overpowered, try to work out the best bargain. In corporate parlance, for example, try your best to fend off a hostile takeover bid against your company. But if you see that it is unavoidable, try to get the best terms of a takeover.At least some kinds of enjoyment involve a willingness to suffer some unpleasantness. You go for an Ayurvedic or any other kind of massage. Massage is good for health. Sometimes the masseurs use foot massage, using their body weight to apply different degrees of pressure on your body. It might be uncomfortable or even painful, but later, you feel refreshed and rejuvenated. You are bearing the unpleasantness in anticipation of the joy.

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You don’t see Him because…

Where and how do we search for God? Remember that God is within you, but you don’t see Him because the one place you will never look is inside yourself. You will search everywhere, but never within yourself. Paradoxically, you lose sight of God because He is in you.
Now look at what God has given us. Our intelligence, buddhi , is a precious gift. Yet, are we loving and grateful enough to God who has given us all these?Do we have even a little of the gratitude a dog has towards its master? No! That is why Dattatreya considers the dog as one of his gurus. Dattatreya draws four lessons from the dog. A dog doesn’t count its misfortunes or grieve over them. A dog doesn’t live in the past. It doesn’t make long-term plans either. It doesn’t live in the future. It lives instinctively, from moment to moment.
A dogs life is one unbroken straight line marked by love, devotion and gratitude to the one who sustains it. Devotion is its defining property. Can we, like the dog, be always grateful to our Creator and Sustainer? Can we give up being miserable about our past misfortunes and mistakes? These are disciplines we impose on ourselves. When we reach this stage, we will have achieved a mental state that looks with equal ease at happiness and sorrow, at misery and luxury; in short, we will have seen God in ourselves. This is the essence of the Sanskrit saying, Tat Tvam Asi, You are That. That is, you are the object of your search. A spiritual journey is a discipline for reaching this stage of supreme self-realisation.

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