Sunscreen is more than SPF

When you read a sunscreen label, don't skip the fine print — and don't forget to read between the lines.

Consumers who want to save their skin this summer need to be vigilant, sun protection experts say, because confusing, sometimes misleading labels still line drugstore shelves nearly two years after the Food and Drug Administration proposed new labeling rules. Companies that make the products say they comply with current rules.

The new rules could be finalized by September, says FDA spokeswoman Rita Chapelle. Companies will then have up to 18 months to comply, she says.

In the meantime, consumers are stuck with current labels, which usually emphasize, in big letters, just one fact about a product: its SPF, or sun protection factor. That fact is good to know. Link

Experimental Lymphoma Cancer Vaccine: Promising Results

A vaccine that uses cancer cells against themselves significantly slows the progress of a deadly form of blood cancer, a researcher said at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).

In patients with follicular non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, the vaccine -- dubbed BiovaxID -- nearly doubled the time before the disease recurred, compared with a control drug, according to Dr. Stephen Schuster of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia. Link

Stomach & Breast Cancer Drugs: Promising Result

The breast cancer drug Herceptin may now have a role in treating stomach cancer as well, according to study results announced here on Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

Scientists also announced that a new class of drugs called PARP inhibitors has shown promise against hard-to-treat forms of breast cancer and that a cancer vaccine for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma that struck out twice might have succeeded on a third try. Link

Pregnancy weight gain: guidelines from Govt

More than 60 percent of U.S. women of childbearing age are overweight or obese -- a significant increase from 20 years ago. And recent studies strongly suggest that either too much or too little nutrition in utero can increase a fetus' chance of becoming an overweight child and overweight adult.

Such data on the increasing girth of pregnant women and the growing rates of obesity in children led to pressure on the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies to revise 1990 guidelines that were written primarily to prevent the birth of excessively small infants. Link

What exactly is coding? Basic Principle of coding

Coding is converting the software design into programs (executable instructions) for the computer involve several steps such as : define the problem, identify input, output, design algorithm, develop flowchart, pseudo code, code the program, test the program, debug the program and document the program. An algorithm is a formula or set of steps for solving a particular problem. To be an algorithm, a set of rules must be unambiguous and have a clear stopping point. Algorithms can be expressed in any language, from natural languages like English or French to programming languages like QBASIC. We use algorithms every day. For example, a recipe for baking a cake is an algorithm. Pseudo-code is a cryptic English-like narrative of the program logic. It is an outline of a program or algorithm, written in a form that can easily be converted into real programming statements - yet is not written in programming statements. A flow chart is defined as a pictorial representation describing a procedure. Flow charts provide people with a common language or reference point.

But programming cannot be entirely learnt from books. Only experience can teach programming, says Vijay Mukhi, IT trainer. Hence when choosing a team for a project, it is advisable to choose programmers who have sufficient experience in that programming language. Ravindra Bhagwat, delivery owner, Patni Computer Systems says that while coding it is important to keep in mind the maintainability of the code. Hence documentation, naming conventions, not using hard coded values are important. It is important to reuse components that have been created. Convert your programs into objects. Bhagwat says that programming should be modular and there needs to be a flow of statements with similar statements grouped together. It is a good idea to share debugging errors as this prevents defects points out Bhagawat.

It is important to follow the guidelines of the parent organisation and/or client, says Sanjay Patil, deputy general manager, Syntel India. It is important to review the code and share the results with team members for maximum benefit. It is a good idea to use tools for coding and review. The best practices guidelines must be used for creating a well structured code.

Coding should normally be split into more than one part or modules and the link between the modules can be derived after performing “normalisation” which is a part of System Analysis & Design, advises Jitendra Nair, VP, Karrox Technologies. Each module must be supported by reference details like programmer’s name, data, name of module, referred links to other modules or the names of calling objects. The entire coding must follow the standard methods to declare and call the variables.

Each control statement and other parts of codes must be commented by the way they are called, brief on what those objects perform etc. This makes the debugging, error trapping possible and makes it easier if the programmer for a module is replaced the another who can understand the code soon.

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What is nanometer scale design?

Nanometer scale design is complex hierarchical design, which begins at 130 nanometer process. Simply put, it is design on silicon with wires the width of a single hair.

In order to achieve effective and reliable IC implementation for the 90nanometer process and beyond, it is essential to ensure the efficiency of the wires that connect the multiple gates on the board. Implementing nanometer-scale IC design begins and ends with the wires. So dominant a role do wires play that little is known of design performance or manufacturability without them.

Nanometer strategies not clearly focused on rapid wire creation, optimisation and analysis, are destined to fail. Continuous convergence methodology has proven highly valuable at 130 nanometers, and will be absolutely necessary at 90 nanometers.

In addition to dominating the overall delay on the IC, nanometer design worsens certain physical effects such as, signal integrity and voltage drop, introducing further delays. The effects can be considerable, as timing analysis tools miss a number of signal integrity and voltage drop-based defects. These effects are increasingly difficult to predict.

Design teams continue to use very simple delay calculations resulting in reduced performance due to high margins and excessive, time-consuming design iterations. At 90 nanometers, timing analysis that excludes signal integrity and voltage drop effects is meaningless.

Continuous convergence meets the requirements of successful nanometer design methodologies to minimise time to-wire and full-chip iteration time. Tams using continuous convergence often standardize on a single day turnaround, essentially performing a virtual tapeout every day. With this, the team sees a measurable and systematic progress toward the silicon closure and final tapeout.

Nanometer tools will also need to have enormous performance and capacity compared to current standards. Continuous convergence is a proven methodology that minimises both time-towires and full chip iterations. With nanometer design placing extraordinary demands on design teams, use of continuous convergence will ensure a predictable success of the team.

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Can Service oriented architecture in office work like web?

How nice it would be if office systems would function like the web — ask for something, and there is the information, in multimedia, from across the globe. Analysts say there’s a near-possibility of that with service-oriented architecture. And that banks will lead the way in embracing it.

As organizations grow, acquire other business or discard some, as they consolidate operations, they are finding themselves weighed down by a multitude of applications — legacy and otherwise — that don’t integrate well nor lend themselves easily to marketplace innovations. Integration itself has become a huge challenge and a business opportunity for IT services companies or consultants.

However, there’s a buzzword that’s promising to bring about a new understanding between divisions, a new communication between departments and a new level of communication between businesses. It’s a three-letter acronym that’s been around for some years but not used in a widespread manner because vendors of solutions were so proprietorial in their approach. Service-oriented architecture (SOA), according to Gartner, will be a prevailing software engineering practice by 2008, ending the 40-year domination of monolithic software architecture. “Through 2008, SOA and web services will be implemented together in more than 75% of new SOA or Web services projects,” predicts Gartner.

According to Don Free, principal analyst at Gartner, SOA does not depend upon web services to exist, but since web services are based on accepted standards, they will drive SOA to the mainstream.

“SOAs make it easier to integrate the everything but the kitchen sink IT environments found in most companies. The big value of an SOA is that it works very well in heterogeneous environments. Developers don’t have to spend an inordinate amount of time writing new lines of code to connect applications. Instead, they can use standard protocols, such as Web services,” says Free. Large chunks of SOA code are reusable, reducing development costs.

Yefim Natis, also of Gartner, sums it up: “Essentially, SOA is a software architecture that builds a topology of interfaces, interface implementations and interface calls. SOA is a relationship of services and service consumers, both software modules large enough to represent a complete business function.” So, SOA is about reuse, encapsulation, interfaces and, ultimately, agility.

Several IT product companies are in the process of rejigging their products to fit the new cut. According to Henning Kagermann, CEO of the ERP giant SAP, “Companies are spending billions of dollars on IT - and most have packaged IT systems. Service-oriented architectures enhance enterprise agility. We have embraced SOA with NetWeaver, offering new peoplecentric solutions, new composite end-to-end business processes.”

In India, companies like Polaris Software, which has a financial services enterprise suite called Orbi One, is propounding SOA. “The Orbi One suite of products is built on a flexible, open architecture platform that can smoothly interface with existing back office and satellite systems.A key feature of Orbi One is its flexible integration layer that seamlessly integrates enterprise wide processes, users and data thereby providing real time analysis and insights to the business while giving a single `relationship’ view to customers,” says a company official.

The new architecture allows a bank to buy the modules it needs now, but Polaris promises that later purchases of other modules will allow seamless integration with other systems, old as well as new.

Says Koen Van Den Brande, president, product group at Polaris Software Lab, “Banks have for many years a challenge - how to hedge existing system and add new business lines. Systems are not integrated, and neither customers nor the staff get a unified view of the transaction or the business. In enterprises too there’s an integration problem. SOA is starting to emerge as a new way of addressing this problem.”

According to him, now the giants like IBM and Microsoft have agreed to the new standards for web services, it will help businesses transact with each other. Similarly, in banks, if say a customer applies for a credit card, the bank can directly check with a central credit bureau about the individual’s creditworthiness. Or if an existing customer applies for a home loan, his repayment ability should be verifiable through the banking system via web services.

Van Den Brande says that even the “best of breed solutions” approach does not work because this perpetuates the differences in the systems already existing within the bank.

SOA is starting to look at this problem in a different way. “What if we look at the common information. For instance, there might be valuable customer information available on various sites, and for CRM purposes you may need to put this information together but also perhaps out of the system, but accessible by each department. The link from outside to inside is what the web services contribute,” explains Van Den Brande.

“SOA has been gaining traction as CIOs begin to think seriously about web services,” says Free of Gartner.

In a perfect SOA world, companies improve their ability to adapt to changing business requirements and shifting market conditions.

Security may end up being a big issue because it’s always easier to secure a closed system than an open architecture. Another issue is network monitoring. When a transaction goes awry on a serviceoriented network, which could involve multiple service providers, finding out what went wrong or where the transaction dropped or whether someone put bad information in the network can be a challenge.

“Spending on SOA infrastructure is particularly important, especially for banks, as a means of realising increased operational efficiency and reduced time to market. Service-oriented core banking architecture will be a key success factor for banks, since this will enable them to bring specialised niche product and service offerings to market, quickly and inexpensively, and will enable them to be highly competitive, even with much larger institutions,” says Free.

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Anger Management: If Naomi Campbel and Mike Tyson can take classes, so also we

Uncontrolled anger is more injurious than smoking,” says Dr Parikh, a noted guru from the field. It can do more harm to the person afflicted by it than the one on whom it’s targeted.

“It leads to pschosomatic illnesses too,” he says. According to Dr Shetty, it throws the entire biochemistry of the body out of gear.

“The adrenaline increases pulse rate leading to a rise in blood pressure. Excess glucose is broken down by the lever and breathing becomes frequent, thus destroying the biochemistry. Nerve transmitters get disturbed, inducing fear, agitation, sadness, lack of sleep, acidity, loss of appetite for food and sex, acidity and irregular menstrual cycle in In the movie Anger Management running for the third week in the city, an otherwise mild-mannered Adam Sandler gets into a spat aboard an airplane, and the judge promptly sends him to an anger management therapist (Jack Nicholson).

In the real world, celebs notorious for their temper tantrums and aggressive behaviours, like Naomi Campbel and Mark Tyson have undergone therapies to get a handle on their erratic mood. In the recent times, the city has witnessed some ugly displays of rage. Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson So, is it time for Mumbaiites to go Anger Management for some anger management?
“But it’s mostly a Western concept,” says psychiatrist Harish Shetty. “There they work on symptoms. Anger is a symptom, it’s not an ailment. Their philosophy of treatment is reductionist, where as ours is holistic. So, it may not work here.”
Concurs Dr Rajesh Parikh, Honorary Neuropsychiatrist, Jaslok Hospital & Research Centre. “Anger management frequently forms an integral part of stress management, because one of the commonest causative factors in the genesis of stress is inappropriate handling of anger.” However, they both agree, there is a need to manage anger in a holistic way as it has complex effects on the mind and body. “For the heart, it can be even more dangerous women,” explains Dr Shetty.
Dr Parikh believes that learning how to manage anger is necessary not just for social reasons but also for health reasons. “Children should be taught in school how to manage anger effectively. When our three children were studying in Boston, they had regular classes in anger management and conflict resolution.” Dr Shetty however feels that anger management sans holistic management is all bunkum. “Since anger is just a symptom, we first have to treat the cause. A change in lifestyle is a must. All forms of meditation methods, deep breathing, pranayama, shavasana, music can help soothe tempers. These are, however, not antidotes.”

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A mole on nose helped police catch a murderer

They say truth is stranger than fiction. And this one no less than an eventful Shakespearean one. Read on. I got the story in Mumbai Mirror.

A mole on the nose of the key accused in the murder of 70-year-old Neeruben Patel in Juhu last Sunday was all the information the Mumbai police had when they set out to nab him. But the tiny detail was more that enough for the Central Intelligence Unit of the crime branch who nabbed Sanjay Mirdha alias Sanju on Wednesday while he was on his way to his hometown in UP on the Mumbai-Howrah Express.

In fact, when the police had fanned out in search of Sanju, the only information they had on hand was that he was headed for his native village near Parasnath in UP and that he could be identified by a prominent black mole on the right side of his nose. The police had gathered this information while interrogating the three other accused. The police neither knew his full name nor his address. So they decided that the only way to catch him was while he tried to leave for Parasnath.

The police found out that the Mumbai-Howrah Express, which leaves Mumbai every evening also goes to Parasnath via Allahabad. However, by the time the police got this information the May 4 Mumbai-Howrah Express had already left. The team led by sub-inspector Ajay Sawant then decided to fly to Allahabad and intercept the train there the next day.

The team accordingly reached Allahabad station and started checking its general category bogies. Sawant said, "I had an inkling that he would not take a sleeper class ticket considering his background. So we started checking all general compartments for a man with a black spot on his nose."

When their search yielded nothing, the team waited for the Tuesday and Wednesday trains. They hit pay dirt on Wednesday when Sawant spotted a man with a black spot on his nose. However, Sawant was not sure if he had got his man. So he walked into the compartment and shouted, “Sanju!” The accused immediately looked up. "As soon as he responded to the call, I knew it was him," Sawant said. The police immediately caught him and alighted at the next station. When the police interrogated him, he confessed and was arrested immediately.


THE MURDER


Seventy-year-old Neeruben Patel was strangled to death by four men who ransacked her house in Dev Park Society in Juhu on May 4. Three of the four accused were Patel's servants. As the Patels had never furnished any details of their servants to the police, the police had no leads in the case. Thankfully, the police got sketchy details of the other accused from the servant Sameer. The other two accused are identified as Ramprakash Yadav, caught from Navjivan Society in Mumbai Central and Kushal Arya, caught from Rajasthan.

The Crime Branch team goes to Allahabad in UP and searches all the Mumbai-Howrah Express trains coming in. They know the accused, Sanjay Mirdha, would be taking the train to escape to his hometown in Parasnath in UP

After thoroughly searching all the Mumbai-Howrah trains over two days, on Wednesday the cops finally find a person with a mole on the right side of his nose

However, the cops were not sure they had the right man so they went into the compartment and shouted out the name of the accused. When he turned around at the sound of his name, the police knew they had their man