HEARD IT AND READ IT

Prepared by Bassam Mechammil 

October 2010 

For comments; please email Mechammil@aol.com

 

 

 

 

 

GREATEST AMERICANS

THAT EVER LIVED

This survey was done by the Discovery Channel with the help of CNN

 

1. Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States, 1981-1989.

2. Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, 1861-1865; served during the American Civil War; issued the Emancipation Proclamation; assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.

3. Martin Luther King, Jr., a civil rights activist who promoted non-violent activism and equality.

4. George Washington, First President of the United States under the nation's second constitution; the only president elected unanimously by the Electoral College; historically regarded by Americans as the "Father of Our Country".

5. Benjamin Franklin, author, inventor, statesman, scientist especially famous for his discoveries regarding electricity; only founding father who was a signatory to all founding documents of the United States except the Articles of Confederation - namely, the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Alliance with France, the Treaty of Paris, and the United States Constitution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Most Livable Countries

 

 

 

Could an October Surprise Lift Stocks?

 

It's no secret stocks have been languishing for months. The market suffered its worst August since 2005, leaving the S&P 500 ($INX) off 5% on the year. It's also no secret the November mid-term elections are likely to be especially bitter, given that unemployment remains persistently and perniciously high.

But it just so happens that stocks have a history of posting impressive gains in the fourth quarter of a mid-term election year, notes Jeffrey Kleintop, chief market strategist at LPL Financial. Furthermore, Kleintop sees a number of potential catalysts tied to the mid-terms that could boost shares. From an October Surprise to gridlock in Washington, D.C., there's a host of outcomes that could cause equity investors to celebrate.

Among the more interesting potential catalysts related to the mid-term elections is the possibility of a so-called October Surprise unveiled by the Democratic party in order to save incumbent seats on Nov. 2. As Kleintop told clients in a report this week: "Incumbents are in trouble according to state and regional polling data. In seeking to turn the tide of voter sentiment, [Democrats] may talk about tax cuts or other issues favorable to stock market investors."

Then there's the very real possibility that the mid-terms will end with neither party having enough votes in congress to get anything of substance done quickly -- if at all, Kleintop writes.

"The balance of power is likely to shift between political parties following the elections," says Kleintop. "This may lead to more of a political balance in Washington and slow the pace of legislative change resulting in the 'gridlock' the market has historically favored."

Another mid-term election effect that really stands out the market's historical pattern. Stocks have actually tracked a typical pattern for equities in a mid-term election year, Kleintop notes, albeit with more volatility than usual. That bodes well because the market has averaged a gain of nearly 8% during the fourth quarter of mid-elections years going back to 1950.

If past results are indeed indicative of future returns, stocks would reverse course in the next couple of months to end the year with single-digit-percentage gains, Kleintop says. For a look at the S&P 500's fourth-quarter performance in mid-term election years, see the chart below, courtesy of LPL Financial and Bloomberg.

Oxygen Therapy Might Ease Pain Of Migraine, Cluster Headaches

ScienceDaily (July 17, 2008) — Two types of oxygen therapy could offer some relief to adults who suffer from disabling migraine and cluster headaches, according to a new research review from Australia.

Migraine headaches are severely painful and usually occur with other symptoms such as nausea, vomiting and painful sensitivity to light. Cluster headaches cause sharp, burning pain on one side of the head.

Physicians commonly rely on a number of drug therapies to both treat and prevent migraine and cluster headaches, but some also prescribe oxygen therapy. The aim of the systematic review -- comprising nine small studies involving 201 participants -- was to determine whether inhaling oxygen actually helps.

"We wanted to locate and assess any evidence from randomized trials that oxygen administration was a safe and effective treatment for migraine or cluster headaches," said lead reviewer Michael Bennett, of Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine at Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney. "We hoped this would assist physicians to make effective treatment decisions in this area."

The review appears in the current issue of The Cochrane Library, a publication of The Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates research in all aspects of health care. Systematic reviews draw evidence-based conclusions about medical practice after considering both the content and quality of existing trials on a topic.

The Cochrane reviewers examined studies that evaluated normobaric oxygen therapy and hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Normobaric therapy consists of patients inhaling pure oxygen at normal room pressure, and hyperbaric therapy involves patients breathing oxygen at higher pressure in a specially designed chamber.

Five studies compared hyperbaric versus sham (placebo) therapy for migraine; two compared hyperbaric versus sham therapy for cluster headache; and two investigated the use of normobaric therapy for cluster headache. Length of treatment varied with each study.

Three studies reported the number of patients who had significant relief from their migraines within 40 to 45 minutes of hyperbaric therapy. Although the studies did not specify each patients' response to treatment, they reported a significant increase in the proportion of patients who had relief with hyperbaric oxygen compared to sham therapy.

For cluster headaches, two studies (69 patients) found a significantly greater proportion of patients had relief of their headaches after 15 minutes of normobaric compared to sham therapy.

The reviewers concluded that hyperbaric treatment might give some relief for migraine headache and that normobaric therapy might provide similar relief for cluster headache, but there is no evidence that these therapies will prevent future attacks.

"We believe that hyperbaric oxygen is also a reasonable measure for migraineurs who have not responded to other measures to treat an acute attack," Bennett said. "However, the poor availability of hyperbaric chambers makes this an option only in a minority of health facilities. Most physicians treating headaches will continue to rely on established and emerging pharmacological options for treating and preventing acute attacks."

Estimates indicate that 6 percent to 7 percent of men and 15 percent to 18 percent of women suffer from severe migraine headaches, and cluster headaches effect about 0.2 percent of the population.

John Kirchner, M.D., of the Kirchner Headache Clinic in Omaha, Neb., has treated thousands of patients suffering from a variety of headaches, including migraine and cluster, and said he does not include oxygen therapy in his patients' treatment plans.

"This [oxygen therapy] would not be practical as the headache comes on fast and does not last long," he said. "So there would not be time to get the patient to the chamber."

Kirchner's treatment for migraine includes avoiding triggers, taking preventive and symptomatic medications and undergoing behavior modification.

 

 

Heart Attack: Could Giving Oxygen Be Doing More Harm Than Good?

ScienceDaily (June 16, 2010) — There is no evidence that the common practice of giving patients oxygen to inhale during a heart attack is beneficial, according to a new Cochrane Systematic Review. Until further research is carried out, the researchers say the possibility that giving oxygen may actually increase a patient's risk of dying cannot be ruled out.

Globally, more than 30 million people have heart attacks every year, according to the World Health Organisation. Heart attacks occur when the flow of oxygenated blood to the heart is interrupted. Heart attack patients are often given oxygen to try to improve oxygenation of the heart tissue. However, there is little evidence that this intervention improves outcomes for heart patients and some evidence even suggests it may cause further damage.

The researchers included data from three trials in their studies. Patients were either given pure oxygen or air to inhale in the 24 hours following the onset of heart attack symptoms. Of the 387 patients involved in the studies only 14 died, but of these, almost three times as many had inhaled oxygen as opposed to air.

Although the results appear to suggest giving oxygen could do more harm than good, the researchers say there is not yet enough data to be certain. "This result does not necessarily mean that giving oxygen increases the risk of dying from a heart attack," said Dr Amanda Burls of the Department of Primary Health Care at the University of Oxford in Oxford, UK. "The numbers are so small that this may just have been due to chance."

However, said Prof Tom Quinn, another of the researchers based at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at the University of Surrey in Guildford, UK, it is important to resolve the uncertainty. "Given the fact that this is such a widely used treatment, we think it is important that a large trial is conducted as soon as possible to make sure that giving oxygen is not causing any harm."

Another member of the team, Dr. Juan Cabello of the Alicante General University Hospital in Alicante, Spain, added, "It is truly amazing how we, as cardiologists, have been employing this treatment without solid evidence."

 

 

Eating Berries May Help Aging Brain Stay Healthy

 

 

Blueberries and strawberries may serve as a detox elixir for the brain and can help your aging mind stay sharp, new research shows.

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture say they've discovered the first solid evidence that the popular fruits, along with acai berries and walnuts, essentially cleanse the brain, activating what's known as its "housekeeper" function and ridding it of toxic proteins.

Those proteins are the culprits to blame for age-related memory loss and other mental deterioration.

Study author Shibu Poulouse, who works for the USDA's Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging in Boston, said the body's ability to ward off inflammation and oxidative damage declines with age, which can lead to brain disorders, heart disease and cancer, among other degenerative conditions.

"The good news is that natural compounds called polyphenolics found in fruits, vegetables and nuts have an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effect that may protect against age-associated decline," Poulouse told a conference of the American Chemical Society.

Poulouse and study co-author James Joseph, who died in June, looked at certain cells in the brain known as microglia -- which eliminate and recycle toxins that can cause the mind to malfunction. That detoxification is called autophagy.

As people age, the cleaning cells stop working properly and the biochemical debris accumulates, according to Poulouse. The microglia can also become hyperactive and harm healthy brain cells.

"Our research suggests that the polyphenolics in berries have a rescuing effect," said Poulouse, in a statement from the American Chemical Society. "They seem to restore the normal housekeeping function."

The scientists used cultures of the brain cells of mice and saw that berry extracts blocked certain proteins from shutting down the autophagy process.

But Dr. Douglas Husbands, a nutritionist with a practice in northern California, warned against giving the findings too much weight.

"You can't make a generalization from that study," Husbands told AOL Health. "Where were the berries from? Were they organic, or did they contain pesticides? The devil is in the details."

And experiments using extracts and animals, rather than actual fruits and humans, don't tell the whole story, he said.

"You cannot extrapolate that the extracts are doing the same thing as all the molecules in the food would do," Husbands said. "You have to look at all the ingredients."

The authors' prior research has shown antioxidants in fruits and nuts may prevent the decline in cognitive abilities that accompanies aging.

In one study, old rats were fed antioxidant-rich strawberry, blackberry and blueberry extract for two months. The diet
reversed the age-related degeneration of the rodents' nerve function and memory skills.

 

 

 

Best Foods for Eye Health

 

Eating chicken over beef isn’t just heart-healthy. It may also be the better choice for lower risk of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of vision loss in people over age 60.

After tracking the dietary and lifestyle habits of 6,700 Australians, ages 58 to 69, for four years and evaluating them for AMD 13 years later, researchers found that eating 10 or more servings of red meat per week raised the risk of AMD by 50 percent compared with having five or fewer servings weekly. However, eating chicken at least three times weekly was associated with a 50 percent reduced risk.

That’s not to say that chicken necessarily protects against the vision-robbing condition, says lead researcher Elaine Chong, M.D., of the Centre for Eye Research Australia at the University of Melbourne. Instead, her research—published April 1 in the American Journal of Epidemiology—provides more evidence that excessive consumption of red meat can raise AMD risk, while being the first to indicate that white meat does not.

Why? Red meat is rich in an iron compound, and other substances released during cooking, that may increase oxidative stress to the eyes, which causes the same free-radical damage that is linked to other serious diseases, Chong tells the Bulletin Today.

“From a nutritional standpoint, chicken is considered a healthier meat—and there is good evidence that a diet for heart health is also good for your eyes as well as other diseases of aging,” says ophthalmologist Paul Bernstein, M.D, of the John A. Moran Eye Center at the University of Utah. He’s a longtime researcher on how nutrition affects age-related eye diseases, and was not involved in Chong’s study.

“That means eating plenty of colorful, whole fruits and vegetables, fish rich in omega-3s and avoiding excessive amounts of meat,” Bernstein says. “Ten servings a week is a lot of beef—especially when you consider half of these [study participants] reported having five or fewer servings of vegetables a week.”

More new research adds weight to Bernstein’s recommendations: Another Australian study published in the May issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology found that regularly eating fish, nuts, olive oil and other foods high in omega-3 fatty acids appears to lower risk for AMD. And a study published this month in the journal Ophthalmology found that people who ate low-glycemic diets (i.e. low amounts of white bread, white rice and sweets) had lower risk of AMD as well. Despite the adage that carrots help vision, the researchers didn’t find that beta carotene lowered AMD risk.

 

 

 

Chinese Traffic Jam Stretches 60 Miles, Ten Days

 

Traffic jams are common in China, but one that began earlier this month has been going on for nine days .

Did you have a bad commute today? How long did you sit in traffic — an hour, maybe two? Thousands of motorists in China have been stuck for ten days in a jam that goes on for more than 60 miles.

Road construction started the jam August 14 in China’s Heibei Province on a major highway headed toward Beijing. The snarl got worse as some vehicles collided and others broke down. Officials say the backup could continue for a month because the road project is expected to last about that long.

The stretch of highway is a vital route for produce, coal and other supplies shipped to Beijing. It has become increasingly prone to big jams as the capital (home to more than 20 million people) consumes more and more goods. Growing numbers of heavy trucks hauling the freight cause damage to the roads which in turn need more traffic-slowing maintenance.

China has pushed hard in recent years to expand its road network. In many cases, though, traffic has grown a lot faster that the roads’ ability to carry it. Heavy traffic is common around many Chinese cities but the ten-day jam is outside the norm. The extreme congestion reportedly has developed its own economy as merchants sell food, water and other essentials to stranded drivers at inflated prices.

 

 

-رمضان عفو وعافية-

12/8/2010
ما أحلى وأجمل أيام وليالي رمضان المبارك ،تعطرنا بشذا نفحاتها الإيمانية ،ويدخل الإيمان في قلوبنا السكينة والاطمئنان وسط عالم وحياة مغرقين في المادية

هذا الشهر الكريم يفيض بنفحاته حيث تحث النفوس الخطى وتسعى القلوب المؤمنة إلى إغتنام فرصة مضاعفة الثواب لأعمال الخير في شهر الخير والبركة ،حيث تنشط الهمم في اعمال الخير رجاءً في مضاعفة اكتساب الحسنات0 ما أحوج حياتنا اليوم إلى مثل هذه الأجواء ففي رمضان تصفو لنا لحظات التجلي الإيماني بوحدة المشاعر بين أبناء الأمة،فمن خلال تلك المشاعر ،تغيب كل الفوارق بحيث تصبح الألفة الإيمانية بين الأخوة في القصيدة هي السائدة ان المغزى من صيام الشهر الكريم ليس مجرد التذكير بالمحتاجين من الفقراء وغيرهم وحسب ،بل الصيام في حقيقته جهاد للنفس ،وكبح جماح شهواتها وتعويدها على الطاعة والإنقياد للسلوك القويم وما يجنيه الصائم من ثمرات صيامه هو الثواب العظيم من الخالق تبارك وتعالى ،الى جانب ما يكسبه الإنسان من فوائد كثيرة من الصيام تتمثل في المنافع الصحية ،الذي تتراكم عليه العلل الكثيرة جراء تناوله للأطعمة الزائدة طوال العام ،ويأتي رمضان ليخفف من تلك النسب العالية في تناول الأطعمة ،غير أن الكثير منا لا يتبعون التوازن في متطلبات الروح والجسد التي يحث عليها الشهر الكريم ،فترى أغلب الناس الآن تزيد مصروفاتهم في رمضان أكثر من اللازم مما يعتبر هدراً للمال واسرافا في الملذات يخالف المقصد الشرعي من الصيام 0 وبجانب تلك السلوكيات الخاطئة في مصروفات الأطعمة الزائدة هناك سلوكيات وظواهر أخرى خاطئة ،وذلك فيما يتبعه البعض من تعطيل قدراته والاسترخاء الزائد خلال الشهر الكريم ،فترى السهر أمام محطات التلفاز التي لا طائل منها ولا فائدة سوى العبث بوقت الناس الذي كان من المفترض أن يستفيدوا منه في الذكر والعبادة ،فهذا الشهر هو شهر العبادة لا شهر للهو والعبث بعقول الناس *بسام الصباغ‏

  

 

من صدد أم السريان إلى أهلنا في الجولان

 

10-8-2010
لم يكن اختيار شعار مهرجان صدد عبثياً عندما تم اختياره شعاراً لدورة هذا العام

“ من صدد أم السريان إلى أهلنا في الجولان “‏

بل حمل بعداً حقيقياً يعبر عن تصميم وثقة بعودة الأرض المحتلة إلى الوطن الأم سورية بقيادة السيد الرئيس بشار الأسد‏

وقد دعت إدارة المهرجان وفداً رسمياً وشعبناً من أبناء الجولان للحضور إلى صدد ومتابعة فعاليات هذه الدورة 00‏

“ العروبة “ التقت رئيس مكتب الإعداد والثقافة والإعلام بفرع حزب البعث العربي الاشتراكي بالقنيطرة الذي عبر عن سعادته بالحضور والمشاركة واعتبر أن نشوة عامرة في قلوب الوفد المرافق من فعاليات رسمية ووجوه في المجتمع الأهلي أسس لها هذا الشعار 000‏

وقال بثقة :‏

إن شاء الله سوف يتحرر الجولان كاملاً في العام المقبل على يد السيد الرئيس بشار الأسد ليتحول شعار مهرجان صدد القادم من صدد أم السريان إلى أهلنا في القدس وعسقلان‏