Stay Bright Always

Want to boost your productivity at work? Try sitting at a desk next to the window. A team of scientists have found that exposure to daytime light can significantly increase your alertness. Using a series of brain scans they observed that light from a window caused several areas of the brain to become more active-including the posterior thalamus, part of the brain's central junction box. However, to stay alert you must stay in the light. The study found that when the light dimmed, the brain boost declines within minutes. Insight into brain areas that are affected by light may also help us to understand how light helps seasonal affective disorder and jet lag.

Meeting the Dalai Lama

From the ramp to religion. That seems what the glamorous French first lady Carla Bruni who was once a supermodel seems to be heading towards. She is now all set to adopt the role of 'queen of human rights' as she gets ready to meet the Dalai Lama, Tibetan spiritual leader, in Paris this week. Carla, the wife of French president Nicolas Sarkozy, has earlier expressed her desire to use her role as first lady to advance humanitarian causes world-wide. This meeting, which had been planned earlier on the wishes of the first Carla, is being interpreted as pointing to an expanding role for the former model on human rights issues. Though, Carla has been relatively inactive as first lady since her marriage, many interpret the meeting with the exiled leader as a sign that former Italian supermodel, who claimed to be a 'gut left-winger', may be a beginning to influence her radical conservative husband on human rights questions. She may now turn up more active into politics helping her husband along with following her causes.

Cutting out Pet Odour

We love our cats and dogs, but hate cleaning up after them. Here are a few tips taken from select places that try t make this ordeal simpler, with goods available at many pet stores.

• Number One. Act fast, before the smell and stain set in. Blot with a thick towel, then use an enzyme digester to eliminate, not mask, the odour. Skip ammonia-based cleansers, since they smell simialr to urine, and pets tend to "mark" the same spot again.
  
  
• Number Two. Just scoop it up and use a deodorizing cleanser.
  
  
• Freshen Up. To keep your home smelling fresh, look for a product containing zeolite, a mineral that absorbs pet odours. It's safe to use around pets, so sprinkle some on carpeting, in crates, even outdoors.
  

Money savers for your trip

It's hip to clip. Before you leave, surf for printable coupons for attractions, hotels and restaurants.

Take a pass. Destinations such as London, Venice and Paris offer fixed-price passes for museums and attractions, allowing you to access to as many as you'd like over a set period of time.

Be a guinea pig. Stay at a new resort sort and you may reap the benefits of special introductory rates. Check out the hotel's website for such offers.

Greet the street. How about a gratis tour guide? Certain may have greeter programs, where a streetwise local volunteer shows you round town. Your new best friend can even show how not to get lost riding the subway.

Shop stateside. When in the US compare airfares for flights departing from your nearest airport. The price difference may make border-hopping worth it.

War on Drugs!!!

To reduce the drug use. There has been a growing war on Drugs.It is good to see Mexico and the United States working together to battle the drug cartels that deliver hundreds of tons of illegal drugs to American consumers every year, killing more than 2,000 Mexicans annually along the way. Still, the Bush administration’s proposed $1.4 billion counternarcotics aid package falls far short of what is needed to confront the problem.If Washington is serious about stopping the northward flow of cocaine, heroin and other drugs, it must begin an aggressive campaign to stop the southward flow of money and high-powered weapons that finance and arm the cartels. And there must be a far more serious effort to curb Americans’ use of illicit drugs.Federal financing for drug prevention and treatment programs has been steadily declining since 2005. Yet so long as there is demand, the narcotics will always find a route, through Mexico or some other way.There is not a lot of talk these days about the war on drugs, but the traffickers are more than holding their own. The National Drug Intelligence Center estimates that Andean cocaine arriving in Mexico for transshipment north jumped from 220 tons in 2000 to 380 tons in 2006. Mexican heroin production for the United States market went from 9 to 19 tons in the same time. In Mexico, defeat is measured in bodies: more than 2,000 last year and 1,100 in the first six months of 2007, including drug dealers, police officers, journalists and bystanders.For the first time, Mexico is seriously turning to the United States for help, and Washington is eager to respond. Even then, the proposed aid package — starting with $500 million to help train and equip Mexican law enforcement tucked into the White House’s request for the Iraq war — looks shockingly inadequate when compared with what the drug dealers have at their command.According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, between $8 billion and $23 billion in proceeds from the drug trade flowed illegally across the border into Mexico in 2005. The cartels have used that enormous financial clout to corrupt Mexican law enforcement on an unparalleled scale. The traffickers’ firepower — likened to what American soldiers face in Afghanistan and Iraq — also eclipses the puny arsenal of Mexico’s police forces. Mexican officials estimate that 90 percent of the guns they confiscate are smuggled in from the United States.The good news is that Mexico and the United States finally recognize that they are on the same side in this battle. It is a vast improvement over Washington’s perennial finger-wagging. Mexico’s resolve to take on drug trafficking, rather than dismissing it as an unsolvable problem, is also welcome. But it is only a start.

Hearing pictures

We had problems with people who could not see, with ones who could not hear. Now there's a new condition to be feared. Imagine you start hearing sounds when actually you should see them. This condition where people can 'hear' what they see has been discovered by U.S. scientists. It's considered to be a rare form of synaesthesia, a case where senses intermingle. This was first brought to light after a student reported "hearing sounds" from a screen saver. It obviously would seem funny or even absurd at first, but it's true. After this first instance now researchers at California Institute of Technology then found three more people with the same condition. So in case you hear something when actually you should be viewing it contact the doctor. It's not hallucination, may actually be true.

Completely 'atrosius' spellings

Anyone embarrassed about their spellings? Especially by the fact that even after so many years of conversing in English you get confused as to how 'believe' and 'receive' are different in spelling? Never mind. Fed up with student's complete inability to spell common English correctly, a British academic suggested it may be time to accept 'variant spellings' as legitimate. Rather than grammarians getting in a huff about 'argument' being spelled as 'arguement' or 'opportunity' as 'opertunity', why not accept anything that is phonetically (Why not say fonetickly) correct as long as it can be understood. So instead of complaining about the state of education system correcting the same mistakes every year, the university staff have now decided to accept as variant spelling those words which students commonly misspell.

Iron Man

It was one of the most awaited movies of the year. And it dint fail to keep up its name. The first big blockbuster of 2008, "Iron Man" is flat-out fun. One of the biggest surprises for many people is that this fun does not come from the action scenes (they're fine, by the way). What really amazes in "Iron Man" is a tour de force from Robert Downey Jr. (they could've named it Downey Junior- The Movie) and a solid script that efficiently introduces us to the Iron Man history and proves to be a fascinating entry in a possible new franchise. The movie tells the story of Tony Stark, an inventor and a playboy that is captured by terrorists and forced to create WMDs. While on captivity, he creates a powerful armor and manages to escape. Returning to America, he begins a new life as superhero Iron Man.