World`s Smallest Baby :))

SHE was 9in long when she was born and weighed under 8oz, about the weight of a fizzy drink can or a mobile phone.

A little girl who's believed to be the smallest surviving baby in the world has been sent home from the hospital.

Rumaisa Rahman was born in September weighing only 8.6 ounces. That's about the size of a cellphone.

She was discharged on Tuesday from Loyola University Medical Center in the Chicago suburb of Maywood. She currently weighs 5.5 pounds and is more than 16 inches longA Loyola doctor says Rumaisa's prognosis is very good and she's expected to develop normally.

Her fraternal twin sister, Hiba, was discharged on January 9. Hiba was only one pound, four ounces at birth but now weighs in at 8.5 pounds.

The babies' 23-year-old mother developed pre-eclampsia, a disorder characterized by high blood pressure, during pregnancy. The condition endangered Rumaisa and her mother, prompting a C-section at 26 weeks. Normal gestation is 40 weeks.

The twins were placed on ventilators for a few weeks and fed intravenously for a week or two until nurses could give them breast milk through feeding tubes. They were able to start drinking from bottles after about 10 weeksMadeline Mann, the previous record holder as smallest known surviving premature baby, returned to Loyola Hospital last year for a celebration. Now 15, she was described as a lively honor student, though small for her age, at 4 feet and 7 inches.

According to the hospital, more than 1,700 newborns weighing less than 2 pounds have been cared for there in the past 20 years.

Stephen Davidow, a hospital spokesman, said a routine delivery costs about $6,000, while caring for a premature baby costs about $5,000 a day. Rumaisa is covered by Medicaid, hospital officials said She made her parents cry, lying there all wrinkly, hooked up to the wires and the oxygen, dwarfed by her incubator and less than half the size of her twin.

But Rumaisa Rahman, born 14 weeks early, battled for life and claimed her place yesterday in the record books as the smallest baby known to survive. She and her sister, Hiba, who weighed just 1lb 4oz at birth but is now a healthy 5lb, were delivered on September 19 by Caesarean section near Chicago.

Doctors took the agonising decision to deliver them at just twenty-five weeks and six days because their mother was suffering from such high blood pressure that her life, and the life of the twins she was carrying, were at risk.

The gamble paid off. Rumaisa, who is now 2lb 10oz — a respectable weight for a premature baby — broke a 15-year-old record set by a baby at the same hospital whose birth weight was just under 10oz.

Officials at the Loyola University Medical Centre in Maywood, Illinois, say that the twins are doing very well. Hiba, whose name means “gift from God”, could be home by Christmas, and her sister, whose name means “white as milk”, will probably follow her in the new year.

It was a happy ending to a rollercoaster year for the first-time parents Mahajabeen Shaik, 23, and Mohammed Abdul Rahman, 32, who married in India in January and quickly learnt that they were expecting twins.

The parents, originally from Hyderabad, were first allowed to hold the babies during their second month of life. Until then, they had only been able to touch them. “It was such a great feeling, to be able to hold my babies, touch them and kiss them,” the mother said.

She recalled her first glimpse of them the day after they were born. ”I was crying because they were both so small,” she said. “I was not expecting them to be so small.”

In their American home in the village of Hanover Park, Illinois, the mother learnt that she had developed pre-eclampsia, a condition that typically sets in after 20 weeks of gestation and complicates up to 7 per cent of pregnancies. It can stunt foetal growth and cause kidney failure and a string of other potentially fatal conditions in the mother. It is the third leading cause of pregnancy-related death. The only reliable treatment is delivery, which carries its own pitfalls.

Doctors prefer not to carry out Caesarean sections in such pregnancies because the baby already has a fight on its hands and the operation can carry risks for the newborn.

But things turned out well for the twins, who have had minimal interventions since.

They had laser surgery to correct vision problems typical among premature babies, but they are said to be thriving. Having started life on a drip, they are being exclusively bottle-fed and receiving minimal oxygen to help their underdeveloped lungs.

all about catfish

"MONSTER" MYTHS

Catfish were introduced to British waters in the 1870's and 1880's from Germany. Some were sent by Lord Odo Russell to Frank Buckland, whose father has been a Professor at Oxford in the 1840's, and others were sent to England by Sir Stephen Lakeman from his Bucharest estates. Seventy were introduced to the Duke of Bedford's lakes at Woburn in 1880 after being presented to the British Ambassador in Berlin. Some are still there. They are also found in Claydon Lakes, Leighton Lakes, reservoirs at Tring, Herts and the River Wissey, and an increasing number of other locations in England.
It is believed that they do not breed until the water temperatures reach 20*C., but they can survive in much colder water. The Danube, where they are found, freezes annually. They are native to much of Europe, and are found as far north as Norway and Sweden, often in lakes with "monster" myths. They are voracious carnivores, mainly nocturnal, given to lurking in dark places under banks and overhangs. They can live for well over 100 years. They can attain 5lbs by the third year, 180 lb by 24 years and take another 60 years to reach 500 lb. So the 19th century Russian specimens of 15 ft and 750 lb would be substantially older.
If young specimens found their way into Loch Ness in the 1880's, they could have grown to a substantial size by the 1930's, and could conceivably still be alive today. Here is a plausible scenario.
The middle decades of the 19th century were a time when it was very fashionable for the aristocracy to acquire land in Scotland. Queen Victoria had bought Balmoral Estate, and her German husband, Prince Albert, was also at the fore-front of the craze for innovation, epitomised by the Great Exhibition. It is entirely possible that some of his aristocratic friends who had introduced the catfish, or sheet-fish as it was commonly known, to their English waters could have also attempted to introduce the commercially important species to their Highland estates as an "improvement". The reasons for introducing them to England were two-fold; firstly "acclimatisation" of alien species of plants and animals was a popular gentleman's pastime, and secondly, a source of cheap protein offered by the catfish was an attractive proposition for feeding the Victorian working class, on which their wealth depended. "The Times" newspaper in the 1860's hailed the new fish as "the most important animal introduction since the bringing of the turkey". The flesh was said to resemble "veal with a rich eel-like flavour, superior to salmon."

Pursuing this line of thought, two possibilities exist. One, that after introduction, the small catfish escaped the "estate" lochs and found their way downstream to Loch Ness, where they could eventually grow to prodigious size and age, and were at the same time reckoned to have perished at their original location; and two, that these young catfish lived to breeding age, unnoticed, in one or more peaty hill-lochs, where the dark water absorbed the sun's heat and reached a suitable temperature for breeding in the summer months. A proportion of the progeny would then be available to supply Loch Ness with a continuing supply of young catfish. In either event, a Victorian gentleman's experiment could have had significant long-term consequences for the area's economy.
Highland place-names give a clue to much earlier introductions, possibly from Roman, Viking or Norman times. "Loch na Beiste" - Loch of the Beast- is a not-uncommon name for hill-lochs, and might be associated with the catfish's mature size, voracious appetite for anything swimming in the water, and ability to travel overland for moderate distances.
Introductions from continental Europe could have given rise to the dragon myth in Wales and elsewhere in the UK, and stories like the "Lambton Worm" in Weardale, County Durham.

Different types of catfish :

• The Channel Catfish, a very popular sport and food fish, is harvested commercially in some areas. It is the principal catfish reared in aquaculture.
• White Catfish is an important sport fish throughout its native range and where introduced.

• brown bullheads usually spawn in the daytime. their courtship includes the male and female caressing each other with their barbels.

  
  

Addicted to Chocolates

Many find chocolate irresistible - including myself. We crave chocolate, we savor it, and we enjoy it. There comes the passion for chocolate - or rather the chocolate addiction.

What is the chemistry inherent in this passion or addiction? How does it make so many of us become addicted to chocolate?

The reason is simple: chocolate is an addicting drug. Scientists have found that naloxone, an opiate blocker, reduces chocolate addiction. This is strong evidence that chocolate is addictive, just like any other drug. However, chocolate is only a mild version of addicting drug - but enough to have the brain effect that creates the real, compulsive attraction.

In addition to caffeine (although not nearly as much as coffee), chocolate contains other chemicals, such as theobromine, phenylethylamine, that create marijuana-like effect on the brain. Such chemical effect of chocolate on the brain is significant and substantial, especially when the chocolate seduction is reinforced by the smell, taste, and texture of chocolate.

But the chocolate industry would like us to believe that chocolate is good for our health.

Chocolate is good for you because it comes from a fruit tree, which contains antioxidants with beneficial heart benefits, especially dark chocolate. According to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, chocolate reduces your body's absorption of fat. In addition, chocolate contains flavonoids more potent than vitamin C in reducing your bad cholesterol.

But, is chocolate really healthy for you?

The truth of the matter is that if you absolutely love chocolate, you would like to believe anything - especially what you want to believe.

Firstly, most scientific studies on the health of chocolate are funded by the industry - a valid reason to take every positive finding with a grain of salt.

Chocolate is made from cocoa beans from a fruit tree. Almost all plants contain antioxidants. If you really love antioxidants, then go for vegetables and fruits, not necessarily chocolate. The problem with chocolate is that coca beans are so bitter that loads of fat and sugar are added to make chocolate taste good and sweet. As a result, chocolate is loaded with calories, sixty percent of which come from fat, which contributes to cholesterol increase and weight gain. One ounce of chocolate contains as much as one-hundred-fifty calories with forty to fifty percent fat. M&M semisweet baking chocolate contains a whopping almost four hundred calories, over ten grams of saturated fat and more than forty grams of sugar! Do you honestly think these ingredients are healthy for you?

In addition, chocolate, which contains caffeine, not only irritates your kidneys and thins your blood, but also changes yourmood.

Chocolate is unhealthy due to its unhealthy ingredients, which may cause headaches, obesity, heartburn, and emotional problems. If you must eat chocolate occasionally, go for quality ones, not the cheap ones which are mostly sugar, trans fats, artificial colorings, flavorings, and preservatives. Read the label! Watch out for additives and added fats! Or simply resist the chocolate temptation, if you can!

Eat chocolate just because you like it, and not because it is healthy!

If chocolate does not make you any healthier, does it make you happier?

A study of self-confessed chocolate addicts found that chocolate could give them a sense of contentment. However, the pleasure was accompanied by a sense of guilt, which could trigger an eating disorder. Worse, chocolate cravings were not driven by hunger: they binged on chocolate even when they were full.

If you crave chocolate only occasionally, you need not be overtly concerned. However, if you binge on chocolate, it could spell trouble down the road. Chocolate can do a lot more than just packing on the pounds if the addiction intensifies. The addictive effects differ from one person to the next. So it is of paramount importance that you pay attention to how chocolate affects your mood.

Like with everything however, chocolate must be consumed in good measure. Chocolate increases caloric intake and energy level. This can be good, provided these calories are burned. We might even change the saying to "Some chocolate everyday keeps the doctor away!"

The rainbow actually consists of two rainbows, the primary and the secondary. Between the bows, the sky is darker than otherwise. This area is called Alexander's dark band after Alexander of Aphrodisias (A.D. 200), who was the first to describe the dark area.

The first to really try to describe the rainbow was Aristotle. He presumed that the rainbow was caused by reflection of sunlight in the clouds. The light was reflected at a certain angle. That means the rainbow consists of a cone of rays. Aristotle was thus the first to explain the rainbow's circular shape and that the rainbow is not located at a definite place on the sky, but is seen in a certain direction.

Roger Bacon measured the angle of the rainbow cone as 42° in 1266 (the secondary rainbow is 8° higher on the sky). In 1304 the German monk Theodoric of Freiberg proposed the hypothesis that each raindrop in the cloud makes its own rainbow. He verified his hypothesis by observing the diffraction of sunlight in a circular bottle. Notice that Aristotle believed that the rainbow originated from the entire cloud. Theodoric's results remained unknown for three centuries, until Descartes (in 1656) rediscovers diffraction in the drop. Both Theodoric and Descartes knew that the rainbow consisted of 2 bows. In the primary rainbow, the rays are reflected once within the drop, in the secondary rainbow, the rays are reflected twice within the drop. Furthermore, they noticed that only one color is seen when looking at the drop (the bottle) in a given direction. From this they concluded that the colors of the rainbow arrive (in the eye) from different drops in the cloud. Those were the principal ideas of the rainbow.

A more thorough study of the ray's traveling through the drop requires knowledge of the laws of reflection and refraction. The law of reflection is easy to »comprehend«, whereas the law of refraction takes knowledge of the velocity of light in different materials. The law of refraction is due to the Dutchman Willibrord Snell (1621).

The rainbow's most spectacular aspect is naturally its colors. They were explained by Newton. In 1666 Newton showed that white light being refracted in a prism is split up in colors. The color scattering results from the fact that the index of refraction is dependent on the wavelength (the color). Each color in the sunlight thus has its own rainbow. What we see is a collection of rainbows, each slightly displaced from to the rest. Newton worked out the angle of the red rainbow, 42° 2' and for the violet rainbow, 40° 17'. This gives a rainbow of 1° 45'. This would have been the width of the rainbow if the sunlight were parallel, but it isn't; the sun disk has a diameter of half a degree. Newton concluded that the width of the rainbow should be 2 degrees and 15 minutes (which agreed nicely with Newton's own measurements).

Notice that this does not mean that the colors of the rainbow are pure colors (spectral colors). They're actually not! Indeed, raindrops are not prism-shaped. The factual colors of the rainbow are a sum of colors (we will look at that in the program).

The rainbow even contains some supernumerary arcs (mainly red and green bands within the primary rainbow). Newton's theory could not explain these supernumerary arcs. In 1803, Thomas Young showed that the waves from two wave sources (e.g. two holes in a pier in a bowl of water) creates alternating light and darkness. In other words, in some directions the light interferes constructively, in other directions it interferes destructively. Young himself pointed out that the supernumerary arcs could be caused by constructive and destructive interference of sunrays which have traveled different ways through the raindrop, so the distances traveled can turn out to be an odd number of half wavelengths (darkness) or an even number of wavelengths (light).

Notice that the distance traveled by the light depends on the drop's size. Therefore, the drops must have the same size to make it possible to see the supernumerary arcs. Most commonly, this happens at the top of the rainbow. Raindrops commonly grow as they fall which results in drops of various sizes near the ground.

The light of the rainbow is almost 100% polarized which can be seen with a pair of polaroid glasses. The polarization is due to the fact that the angle of refraction in the drop is very close to Brewster's angle (David Brewster 1815). Therefore, most light of parallel polarization disappears out of the drop at the first reflection (and refraction) within the drop.

rainbow color meanings

GREEN- supports balance, harmony,love,communication, social, nature and acceptance.

BLUE-INDIGO-increases calmness, peace, love, honesty, kindness, truth, inner peace, emotional,depth, truth.

VIOLET-stimulates institution, imagination, universal flow,meditation, artistic qualities.

RED-increases physical energy, vitality, stamina, groundings, sponteinity and stability.

ORANGE-stimulates creativity, productivity,pleasure, optimism, enthusiasm, & emotional expression.

YELLOW- increases fun, humor, lightness,personal power, intellect, logic & creativity.

The Latest Teen Obsession: Are you a Cell Phone Junkie?

are you panic if you realize that you forgot your cell phone at home? are you moody and frustrated if you can't check your messages during dinner or a family outing? you may have a cell phone addiction.. !

With more than 225 million people carrying cell phones in the U.S. in 2007, up from 34 million in 2005, and nearly two-thirds (63%) of teens owning their own cell phone, many parents have noticed obsessive behaviors in their teens, often so extreme they resemble addiction. Most teens spend an average of one hour a day on their cell phones. Add in the extra time they spend e-mailing, IMing, talking in person, or communicating through MySpace or Facebook, and it's not surprising so many children are getting hooked on their high-tech gadgets.

Know the Warning Signs
Despite a number of maladaptive behaviors associated with teen cell phone use, most experts agree that this obsession doesn't qualify as a genuine addiction or mental disorder - at least not yet. Others argue that anything can become an addiction if a person becomes dependent to the detriment of other areas of their lives. Based on the sheer number of people affected, many believe cell phone addiction is well on its way to being classified as a disease similar to drug addiction, alcoholism, or gambling.

The symptoms of cell phone addiction are similar to the symptoms of other types of addictions, and may include the following:

• Feeling restless or uncomfortable when not using a cell phone;
• Having irrational reactions to being without a phone if it is lost or forgotten;
• Substantial increases in the amount of time spent talking on a cell phone;
• Mounting cell phone bills that cause financial distress;
• Problems at school and work from constant cell phone use;
• Interpersonal problems from constant cell phone use; or
• Taking unnecessary risks such as using a cell phone during inappropriate times (driving, etc.).

While some experts recommend waiting to buy children cell phones until 16 years of age, others advise parents to simply stay alert to teens using cell phones to avoid personal issues, schoolwork, or spending time with the family. If cell phones are having a negative impact on any area of a child's life, it's up to parents to set and enforce limits and seek help when necessary..

You can make affirmative steps to prevent cell phone addiction!

Fast Facts

1. Butterflies are insects, but large scaly wings set them apart…wings allow them to fly but only when their body temperature is above 86 degrees… fastest butterflies can fly up to 30 miles per hour. 2. Scientists estimate that there are 28,000 species of butterflies throughout the world. 3. Most are found in tropical rainforests, but they can live in all climates and altitudes of the world… butterflies do migrate to avoid cold weather. 4. Many believe butterflies got their name because they would fly around the buckets of milk on farms… while the milk was being churned into butter, many noticed these flying insects would appear and soon they were being called butterflies. 5. Butterflies have three body parts, like all other insects: the head, the thorax (chest), and the abdomen (bottom)…the butterfly's four wings and six legs are attached to the thorax. 6. Butterflies are colorful for many reasons…colors help them attract a mate and absorb heat… color also helps them blend in among the flowers when they are feeding. 7. Butterflies change four times during their lives… changes are called metamorphosis… born as an egg (stage 1)… turns into a caterpillar, or larvae (stage 2)… caterpillar will eat constantly… it loves leaves and flowers and will grow and grow through this stage of its life… as it grows, it skin will spilt and molt or shed its skin… when the caterpillar has grown several thousand times its original size, it goes into a resting stage… this is when the caterpillar becomes a pupa, or chrysalis (stage 3)… finally, the chrysalis breaks open and a butterfly comes out (stage 4)… the adult butterfly will begin the process all over again by laying eggs. 8. Most butterflies live on the nectar and pollen from flowers. 9. Butterflies have a long, flexible, tube-like tongue that goes down into the nectar of the flower… they suck the nectar up through this tongue. 10. Female butterflies are usually larger than males and they live longer… butterflies can live anywhere from 2 days to 11 months.