Volunteering and Youth Engagement Helps Elderly

Isolating oneself from life and social activities as you grow older is a common phenomenon worldwide. Due to various reason, as one gets older, they at times can draw away from family, friends, children, society, hobbies, happiness etc. and go into a mode of silence and thinking.

However, a recent study conducted by researchers at the prestigious John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, have proven that volunteering can help improve the aging process in a positive way. By using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) technology, researchers have found that when the elderly engage in more social activities like tutoring children, social get together, mentoring, social service programs, volunteering with kids, it helps keep the brain active, healthy and agile for a longer period as compared to those elderly that do not volunteer.

The study was conducted in association with Experience Corps on 17 women aged 65 or older. Experience Corps is a national volunteer service organization conducting regular programs to engage elder community to help urban children in their studies.

In the US, the population moving towards retirement age is roughly 78 million while the average life expectancy rate increasing.

Per the research, such activities engaging older adults with children or with people needing volunteer services increased older people cognitive and physical abilities. As per the statement given by the associate professor working in the department of Mental Health and Center on Aging and Health in Bloomberg School of Public Health, “We found that participating in Experience Corps resulted in improvements in cognitive functioning and this was associated with significant changes in brain activation patterns.”

Millions Of H1N1 Vaccines Lay Unused Worldwide

What do you do when, in a panicky state of mind, a warlike situation arises against a pandemic like H1N1? You might go overboard.

Huge amounts of money have been invested in creating a large dump of H1N1 vaccines without going into any depth about exactly how much was needed. Now that utilization has decreased, some countries such as Canada are deciding how to handle the huge stockpiles of H1N1 vaccines.

Maybe they should have assessed just how much should have been generated and stored for fighting against the disease. Countries like the United States have yet to take stock of the situation. Until last week there was some panic about a possible shortage, while later it was disclosed that due to loss of public interest and over-distribution, there's a surplus. Last month Canada sent some surplus to other countries simply because they couldn't store it themselves.

The good news is that planning is now required by all countries to manage this surplus quantity scattered around the globe rather than having it go to waste. 50 million doses were donated last month by the drug manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline to the World Health Organization, who in turn will distribute it to various H1N1-affected countries that need it the most.

Myanmar Opium Production Continues To Increase

What should be done with a country that, despite being intentionally watched for last decade or so, is increasingly becoming a global threat by producing killer addictive drugs? How do we plan to control the situation when the survey data clearly indicates the rising growth of opium cultivation?

This country is none other than Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. The land they use for growing opium has increased at a 50% rate since 2006. They profit more and more from these banned crops and during the 1990s they were the world’s largest opium producer, mainly because of the government being outsmarted by the militant groups who sell the opium to trade more for illegal arms and ammunition. Opium is converted to heroin which is in high demand in the U.S. and Europe, thus paying high returns.

The United Nations has all the data to confirm what is happening in Myanmar. The only thing left to do is issue a strict warning and apply some severe actions. By merely continuing to produce data, they will not put any pressure on Myanmar to control or stop the growth of opium. Despite of repeated assurance from the Myanmar government every year that they will curb this activity, the reality is it seems to be all talk.

2,600 Bodies Found in Kashmir Mass Graves

Kashmir – once known as the heaven on earth – is an integral part of India but always under dispute with its neighboring country Pakistan since independence.

At the time of independence Kashmir was divided in two parts – one with Pakistan is called PoK or Pakistan occupied Kashmir and the part with India is Kashmir. Last decade has witnessed the highest level of trouble and killings due to administrative powers getting weaker, militant powers getting stronger, high level of intervention by Pakistan and Indian Army given charge for providing stabilization in that area.

A recently concluded mission running for the last three years by the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and justice came out with a research report that around 2600 bodies have been found in unmarked graves in India-controlled Kashmir. If one starts investigations and identification of these bodies it may take a longer period than it took to find them out.

Moreover it took three years to find out these graves but someone (a group of militants or army or some administrative authority) knowingly was doing it, killing and dumping bodies in graves. As per the report, more than 8000 people are missing, indicating similar kind of findings in near future.

Where is Osama bin Laden? The Hunt Goes On

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, on his recent visit to Pakistan, clearly told Pakistan PM Yousuf Raza Gilani to take Osama "out". Gilani openly declined, stating that as per his intelligence of them is definitely right. But who? Only time will tell.

The question still remains – Where is Osama bin Laden? Is it possible for him to hide without the aid of local administration, the general public, or the government of whatever country in which he is hiding? The odds go more in favor of Osama hiding in Pakistan than in Afghanistan, with the reason being American troops have less accessibility there.

Is the U.S. government too ignorant to understand the dubious actions being taken by the Pakistani government in helping to find Osama? The ones in charge of that country for years now have just been a pack of placards in the hands of their army and terrorist groups.

After 2001 no exact location could be marked to assure that Osama is currently living there. But most of the indications go toward the extreme north of Pakistan, in tribal zones situated at Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Nothing is yet confirmed about his serious illnesses reported from time to time.

Logically, why can't the most suspected areas in Pakistan's frontier region be evacuated by local public via the administration there, and the area be bombed to finish the story once for all. Does it not show deep involvement of Pakistani support to Osama? And does it not prove the lack of proactive approach at Obama’s end?

Variety To Charge For Online Content

Variety, the Hollywood trade newspaper, has decided to provide their online contents only to paid subscribers. Though they have decided to do so in a phased manner, eventually all their content will be for paid subscribers only. This is in concert with recent News Corp and Microsoft attempts to take away free online stuff from Google's search engine, bring it to Bing only, and enable charging for the news online.

So far, the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times charge for their online contents while the New York Times still wants to take another shot at a TimesSelect-style paid model.

Sometimes it becomes frustrating to land on a page that shows a synopsis of the content you want, only to be told to pay for browsing through or downloading the complete information. These publications are gambling that people can’t live without the level of content they provide, and won't mind paying for it.

AT&T to Ditch Unlimited Data Plans for iPhones?

AT&T is the exclusive carrier for iPhone in the U.S. and is facing a tough task of bandwidth choking among its huge volume of iPhone users. The main reason of choking of bandwidth according to AT&T is heavy usage of video watching on iPhone that uses high bandwidth thereby resulting in poor response to other iPhone users trying to utilize the bandwidth.

Once a large chunk of people hook on to downloading or watching of high streaming videos on their iPhone, the other users start facing call failures, call dropping, connection delay, etc.

AT&T is not properly planned or equipped at the moment to handle these issues related to smart phone users. Neither had they planned so far to limit data usage on smart phones, nor have they provided their users with some kind of alert or information regarding high consumption of data.

All they say is that now after realization of such kind of flaws in their system they plan to take action in this regard in a phased manner, which might include charging for heavy data usage.

Space-Based Solar Plant Planned For California

Billed to be the first of its kind, a renewable energy contract on a space based solar project has been approved by the California Public Utilities Commission. This 15-year commercial contract has been awarded to California’s Solaren Corporation by Pacific Gas and Electric Company. In an effort to "go green" and by going in line with the executive order released by governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, which clearly outlines target of achieving 33 percent of their energy to be renewable, this seems to be a reasonably good move in that direction.

The contract, effective in 2016, will enable PG&E to produce around 1,700 gigawatt-hours of energy per annum. Though it is bound to face a considerable number of technological and regulatory issues, all involved are quite hopeful about the adherence of this plan for setting up the new plant and supply of energy in the next six to seven years.
We can see there is a worldwide effort to go as green as possible. First it was Japan's solar power station plans, and now this move in California clearly indicates a promising global pattern.