How to Detect if Someone's Stealing Your WiFi

It may be hard to imagine, but just a mere 20 years ago, the Internet was nothing more than a novelty -- a way for incredibly smart college professors and researchers to share information, and for a few people to network across the newly developed World Wide Web. E-mail was nothing like it is today. The primitive e-mail systems found at universities or even through accounts offered with the first Internet service providers (ISPs) such as Prodigy and America Online were often difficult to use.
Fast forward to the 2010s and things have changed significantly. Where wired Internet once kept us tethered to a desk, today's laptops and mobile devices give us access to friends and endless entertainment practically anywhere via WiFi, 3G and 4G technologies.
While we use 3G and 4G data on our smartphones as we're out and about in the world, WiFi still dominates in the home. And in coffee shops. And libraries. And airports. Thanks to the ubiquity of wireless routers and hotspots, just about any plain old wired Internet connection -- faster and cheaper and without the limiting bandwidth caps of cellular data -- can be turned into a convenient WiFi zone.
Whether we install them ourselves or get them from our Internet providers, most of us have WiFi routers in our homes these days. That can cause a couple of problems: When wireless signals are operating on the same frequency, they can cause interference, especially if you're living in an apartment building. And without the proper security, someone could easily hop onto your wireless network.
Chances are you're reading this article because you suspect someone is piggybacking or using your WiFi without your permission. When wireless squatters steal your WiFi, they eat up your bandwidth. In extreme cases, they may even steal information off your computer or infect machines on your network with a virus. But fear not: It's easy to fight back. Let's start with a basic overview of managing a wireless network, which is the first step towards keeping your WiFi setup nice and secure.

How the Gospel Creates Ethics

You love the gospel. Great! But a question beckons, one that must be answered: what, exactly, does the gospel now do in your life?
The message of Christ crucified for us is no minimalistic phenomenon. You cannot box it up. You cannot rein it in. If you believe it, it will conquer and consume you. Plant it in fertile soil, and you will reap a harvest of spiritual transformation and ethical conviction. You are saved for intimate fellowship with Christ; you are saved to boldly—publicly—testify to his glory.
But how does this work? How can ordinary Christians be public witnesses for Jesus?
I want to offer an answer by tracing how one Christian leader, a born-again ex-con named Chuck Colson, arrived at his own response to this vexing question.

Colson and Wilberforce: Convictional Activists

Charles Wendell “Chuck” Colson (1931–2012) was a kid from hardscrabble Boston made good. He won entrance to Harvard but turned it down to go to Brown. In a meteoric rise, he won political campaigns for patrician senators, built a booming law practice, and eventually wound up working for the most powerful man in the world, President Richard Nixon, from 1969 to 1973.

But it all came crashing down when Colson was implicated in the corruption of the Nixon administration in 1973. Facing a staggering personal crisis, Colson heard about the redeeming blood of Christ from a friend and, minutes later, came to faith. He went to prison in 1974, was released in 1975, and found himself with a desire to minister grace to prisoners, many of whom were in desperate straits—as he now knew firsthand. He didn’t know exactly what to do, or whom to be, however.
As Colson mused on his plans, his research assistant Michael Cromartie presented him with materials on William Wilberforce (1759–1833). In Wilberforce, Colson found the ethical activist he longed to become. Wilberforce was a longtime member of British Parliament (1780–1825). The cosmopolitan evangelical took on the single most noxious element of British society, the slave trade, and during the course of his five-decade career vanquished it. Wilberforce was an activist driven by principle. This appealed at an existential level to Colson; this was who Colson was.

Wilberforce Against the World

Because of his conviction that slavery was wrong—a conviction grounded in Christian theology—Wilberforce agitated and spoke and voted to outlaw the slave trade. He knew how to roll up his sleeves and make things happen. “Almighty God has set before me two great objectives,” he wrote in 1787, “the abolition of the slave trade and the reformation of manners.” To accomplish these objectives, Wilberforce tapped his network, called the Clapham Sect, and went to work with fellow elites like William Pitt (1759–1806) and Granville Sharp (1735–1813) to form, advocate for, and pass the legislation that would erode the slave trade, bill by bill. This was an early Downton Abbey—but with an abolitionist Parliamentarian stalking the hallowed country estate.
Wilberforce championed his cause while moving in the circles of influence that made Britain go. All his glad-handing was driven by a conscience that burned with a hatred of evil and injustice. John Wesley (1703–1791), alongside John Newton (1725–1807) and John Venn (1834–1923), helped fan this conscience into flame. In later years, Colson frequently quoted Wesley’s parting charge to Wilberforce:

Unless the Divine Power has raised you up to be as Athanasius, contra mundum, I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable villainy which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils, but if God be for you, who can be against you? . . . Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery, the vilest that ever saw the sun, shall vanish away before it.

Behind Wesley’s plea to Wilberforce was unshakeable confidence in the Almighty. When Colson read Wesley’s charge in the mid-1970s, he resonated at a core level with these striking words. He felt called to stand contra mundum, “against the world,” as one who was “for the world” (an addition suggested by Richard John Neuhaus). Colson lived out this creed through his ministry, Prison Fellowship, and his public-square witness, work that my new book The Colson Way: Loving Your Neighbor and Living with Faith in a Hostile World substantiates.

The Gospel Changes Everything

In the story of Colson discovering Wilberforce, we find the thread that connects Christ and our witness. We can put it this plainly: the gospel creates ethics. When Jesus saves you, you love the unborn (Ps. 139). You are given a great love for the natural family, which owes to God’s intelligent design (Gen. 2:14–25). You seek to advocate for religious freedom because you recognize that without it, people will wither and suffer (Matt. 22:21).
The message of Christ creates in the redeemed a thirst for racial unity and a hatred for racism (Eph. 2:15). It overcomes tension between the sexes (Gal. 3:27–28). It removes barriers between social classes (Philem. 1:16). It gives us a hunger to work in a thousand God-glorifying vocations (Col. 3:23). It makes us weep for every image-bearer who suffers under the curse and causes us to want to do good to everyone (Gal. 6:10). It awakens us to the duties of citizenship and the need to pray for political righteousness (Rom. 13; 1 Tim. 2:2). In sum, the gospel causes us to want to be salt and light in a darkened world in every possible way (Matt. 5:13–16).
Faith in Christ bestows on us a convictional inheritance. We don’t fashion our own understanding of righteousness, justice, fairness, and mercy as believers. Though some issues loom larger than others, we recognize that our ethics and convictions are God’s. This witness will influence others. Our belief in human dignity, our pursuit of our neighbor’s good, and our desire to live a holy life will speak a powerful word to our non-Christian friends. As they see us living virtuously, exhibiting genuine care for the weak and the suffering, they will witness apologetics made flesh.

Our Call 

The Scripture shows us that there is no hostility between private Christianity and public Christianity. Ethics and moral convictions do not get in the way of gospel preaching. As Colson found, our ethics, moral convictions, and righteous actions are nothing other than holiness in practice, Christianity made unstoppably public. You can no more tame the gospel than you can extinguish the blazing sun.
In the end, the same gospel that saves us is the message that calls us, as Wesley said to Wilberforce, to “Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might.” Until evils vanish and the glory of God covers the face of the earth, this is our call.

Will the Internet of Things change hospital technology?

You may have heard of the Internet of Things, the buzzword for a future in which sensors and devices are embedded in a wide range of physical objects -- from refrigerators to cars -- and linked through wired and wireless networks to the Internet. Those networks of machines won't be posting funny cat videos to Facebook, either -- they'll be churning out enormous volumes of data, which will then flow to powerful computers to analyze and communicate back to the machines.
Inanimate objects become tools for monitoring their environments, understanding trends and responding to them with incredible speed. It's a future that's already arriving. In Japan, for example, billboards look at people as they pass by, assess how they fit consumer profiles, and then change their messages to suit [source: Katz]. Precision combines link wirelessly to satellites and use their observations to alter the way that they till a particular field [source: Cibils].
But some of the most transformative effects of the Internet of Things will be felt in health care. Patients being treated for a chronic illness, for example, may be outfitted with sensors that allow doctors to monitor their vital signs continuously, both in and out of the hospital. That might enable doctors to spot when someone's health is starting to flag or when they are having an adverse reaction to medications, reducing emergency hospitalizations and preventable deaths [sources: RTI.com, Chui]. In the process, they could also gather huge quantities of data, from which patterns might emerge that could lead to a new treatment [sources: Niewolny, Jasper].
"If you've got chronic blood pressure issues, maybe there is blood pressure sensor in your seat belt in your car," Ed Price, a researcher at Georgia Tech's Institute for People and Technology, told Marketplace in 2013. "Obviously there is no time for a human to analyze all that data, but an algorithm in a computer can look at all your data for your blood pressure and trigger when there is an event that needs to be noticed by care providers" [source: Brancaccio].
Continuous network monitoring could also allow manufacturers to keep an eye on the performance of medical equipment, from MRI machines to pacemakers, make adjustments and repairs remotely, and reduce the possibility of breakdowns or performance lags [sources: Chui, Isaacs]. Varian Devices, a company that already monitors hospital equipment online, reports that the Internet of Things is able to reduce the amount of time needed to repair devices by 50 percent, with an average savings of $2,000 for devices that it's able to repair remotely

3 False Stories that Hinder Discipleship

Western culture is writing a new narrative with what seems like every page turn. Whether it’s the false narrative of the American dream telling us that personal success is the purpose of life, or an Enlightenment mindset telling us to shed the superstitions of the past and embrace the advancements of the future, or the sexual revolution telling us the key to flourishing is sexual self-expression, these narratives run counter to the story of redemption we find in God’s Word. Moreover, they seep their way into our own consciousness as Christians, subtly influencing our thinking and living.
Why should Christians care about these competing narratives? How should we speak as we encounter them with our neighbors and coworkers? What does the storyline of Scripture have to do with the storyline of our culture? How can church leaders help their congregations engage these false narratives thoughtfully and biblically? In this seven-minute video, TGC’s Mark Mellinger sits down with Trevin Wax, managing editor of The Gospel Project, to consider these questions and more.
Wax shows us how steeping ourselves in the biblical storyline helps us distinguish the real thing from false things—and how to speak truthfully into the stories others are telling themselves. God has called Christians to have a “missionary encounter” with the world. He has not placed us in this context on accident. We must confront the false narratives confronting us and driving our culture with the story of Scripture and the truth of the gospel. This conversation teaches us how.

10 Foods You Should Never Eat Raw

Raw foods get a lot of hype for their nutritional power, and it's deserved in many cases. While a 100 percent raw diet's health value is questionable, cooking or overcooking does destroy some of the vitamin content in certain foods [source: Furhman].
For a person eating the standard American diet heavy on meat, dairy, and overcooked vegetables, adding more raw fruits and veggies will certainly do more good than harm. But don't raid the farm just yet – some foods should never be eaten raw.
Many of the compounds that make plants on this list too toxic to eat raw are part of their defense mechanisms. Toxins like deadly ricin in castor beans or hydrogen cyanide in almonds are designed to deter pests. To plants just trying to survive, we come across as much of a pest as slugs or aphids do.
Some of the foods that you should never eat raw are on this list because they're poisonous without cooking. Not all of the toxic foods here will kill the average healthy adult. Some will just give you a wretched belly ache or other mild to moderate symptoms. And one of these foods isn't unsafe, but it needs to be treated to keep it from tasting terrible. Read on, and while you're at it, go ahead and put that water on to boil.

3 Things to Look for in a Youth Minister

I have been in or around youth ministry for 25 years, including more weekend youth conferences than I can possibly count. I have now served in full-time ordained capacities for nine years, and in the churches I’ve served during that time I’ve always supervised or worked closely with the youth staff.
Needless to say, in all this time spent around the church, I’ve seen a heaping ton of youth ministers. Some have had wonderful, fruitful ministries, while others have crumbled faster than an overcooked oatmeal cookie. If I were hiring a youth leader today, I’d want to avoid the oatmeal cookie.

Three Irreducible Traits

I would be looking for three things:
One who loves God and his Word. This seems so basic one might wonder why it’s not just a given. Trust me, it’s not. I have seen many youth ministers whose relationship with the Lord was exposed as flimsy (at best) under the pressures of ministry. Typically these individuals have found their youth group to be a place of affirmation and acceptance, but not of theological substance. They’ve found a fun job as a youth minister in hopes of continuing to gain affirmation and acceptance.
If I’m hiring a youth worker, I want someone who has made the saving jump from experiencing acceptance in the church community to resting personally and substantively in the gracious acceptance given by God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Qualified candidates must be prepared to be blown off and unappreciated by careless kids and under-discipled parents. The youth minister will need to possess the spiritual maturity to believe fully that:

• All the acceptance and affirmation they will ever need they already have in Jesus Christ.
• The Bible is a fountain of life, full of God’s true and living riches, attesting to his infinite grace, and authoritative for faith and life.
• God and his Word are what students need more than anything else.
• The youth minister’s personal time spent with God and his Word is the fuel for his ministry.

One who loves God’s people. Again basic, right? Not so fast. Ministry requires humility, and if you don’t already have it, youth ministry will either develop it in you or drive you away. Both can be painful. Because the fruitful youth minister is personally rooted in God’s love and saturated with his Word, he is already humbled before the Lord. Therefore, his main concern isn’t being liked, but that students hear the gospel of God’s grace over and over again.
“Young adult” is not a requirement, nor is “wildly entertaining.” I’m not looking for someone who has a huge bag of tricks, unless they are particularly skilled in using those tricks to teach students about God’s grace. While the effective youth minister will have people skills broad enough to speak intelligibly to both youth and adults, I want someone who desires to make themselves available to students and their families, who can listen, who can teach the Bible in a compelling way, and who can teach others to do the same. I don’t want someone who just likes going to high school football games, but one who goes to high school football games intent on building relationships with students to the end that these relationships might lead students to know King Jesus.
In short, I don’t want a youth minister who expects a fun job and a prolonged adolescence; I want someone who comes to the position with a robust theology of Christian ministry.
One who is professionally aware. I once worked with a youth minister who, despite having a lot of talent, was perpetually frustrated at the lack of respect he got from parents and fellow church staff. “How much of your own money would you be willing to pay towards gaining the respect you desire?” I asked him. “I don’t know, $1,000?” he answered. “Then take that $1,000 and buy yourself some professional clothing.” He never did. He continued to wear flip-flops and torn-up shorts to staff meetings and parent gatherings, and, despite having a wife and child, he was never viewed as an adult.

It may be entirely appropriate to act, dress, and talk like the lead student around students, but the qualified youth ministry candidate understands that adults need to see and feel the children are being led by a responsible adult. Part of being a responsible adult means dressing professionally in a professional setting. The expectation will of course vary by congregation, but in ministry situations the youth minister shouldn’t dress much differently than the pastor or the parents. Here are a few other things that will go a long way toward winning the trust and loyalty of parents and staff:

• Be on time. Punctuality is important. Call ahead if it looks like you’ll be late. Though everyone will get caught in traffic occasionally, make sure you don’t create a reputation for tardiness. As one coach used to tell his players, “If you can’t be on time, be early.”
• Return phone calls and e-mails promptly. If you receive a contentious e-mail, for example, then pray, make sure you’re calm, and return it with a phone call. 
• Do what you say you’re going to do, and don’t make promises you likely won’t keep. Your calendar and to-do list aren’t just important for you; as one of whom much action and communication is required, how you keep track of where you’re supposed to be and what needs to be done is vital for the credibility of your ministry. If you’re not particularly organized or gifted at planning details, make sure you have someone around you who is.

Focus on the Essentials

Oatmeal cookies may be sweet, but they tend to get eaten up pretty quickly. The next time I’m looking for a youth minister, then, I’d be asking detailed questions about how strongly they love the Lord, how deeply they trust his Word, how compassionately they love his people, and how appropriately they will navigate their context.

When we lose weight, where does the lost weight go?

After weeks of trimming a few calories here, exercising a little more there, you put on a pair of jeans, and like magic, the waist has grown. You button them up to behold a welcome space between your belly and the fabric. How did that happen?
With 66 percent of the adult American population either overweight or obese [source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], a lot of people are trying to drop some pounds. Through dieting, exercise, surgery or a host of other alternatives, they hope to reach the goal of a smaller body. But to where does that weight disappear when the hard work pays off?
The short answer is that our bodies convert molecules in fat cells to usable forms of energy, thus shrinking the cells. But getting this to happen isn't just about sweat bands and short shorts. Understanding how our bodies perform this tummy-trimming trick requires a little more detail.
We know that weight loss hinges on burning calories. Calories measure the potential energy in food you eat in the form of fats, proteins and carbohydrates.
If our bodies were cars, energy would be the gas to keep everything running. Lounging in front of the television is like cruising the strip, while sprinting around a track is more like drag racing at maximum speeds. In short, more work means more energy.
The body uses some of those calories to digest food. Once the food is broken down into its respective parts of carbohydrates, fats and proteins, it either uses the remaining energy or converts it to fat for storage in fat cells. Fat cells live in adipose tissue, which basically acts like an internal gas station, storing away fuel reserves.
To lose weight, you must burn more calories, or energy, than you consume to start using up that fuel reserve. Essentially, you're not ingesting enough calories to fuel your additional exercise, so your body must pull from fat stores.
How? Go to the next page to get the skinny on the fat-burning process.

Knowledge and Christian Belief

One of the most common objections to belief in Christianity—and to belief in God in general—is that such a belief is irrational because little (or no) evidence supports it. This is often called the “evidentialist objection,” and it’s probably the most common and influential argument against God since the Enlightenment.
A decade and a half ago, however, Alvin Plantinga’s magnum opus Warranted Christian Belief performed a top-to-bottom dismantling of the objection. It’s an absolutely wonderful work—perhaps the most important ever written on religious epistemology.
It’s also the most important book on religious epistemology no one will ever read.
At 500 densely-packed pages and with two font sizes—the smaller identifying the really dense material—it’s downright intimidating.
Fortunately, Plantinga—emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame—has now made the main ideas of Warranted Christian Belief more accessible in his latest book. And even though Knowledge and Christian Belief is user-friendly and much shorter, it is anything but fluff—and its impact-to-size ratio promises to surpass its heftier predecessor.

Faith Is Knowledge

Plantinga’s central idea in Knowledge and Christian Belief is that the main tenets of Christianity—including, obviously enough, belief in God—don’t require evidence or supporting arguments in order to be rational, despite what evidentialists suggest. Indeed, belief in the “great things of the gospel” (as Jonathan Edwards calls them) can amount to full-blown knowledge—that is, we can know these wonderful truths.
Plantinga’s overall strategy for arguing this crucial point is refreshing, innovative, and sometimes a bit surprising, even though its same tenor is found in both Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin.
Let’s keep in mind the big picture of Knowledge and Christian Belief. The evidentialist objection says Christian belief is irrational because it lacks sufficient evidence. But, Plantinga asks, why think that? After all, couldn’t God have created humans with a natural tendency to believe he exists, à la Romans 1—what Calvin called the sensus divinitatis or sense of divinity? And if so, might not this built-in belief-forming mechanism simply trigger belief in God without inference or argument on our part? It seems perfectly reasonable to think God could do this.
And what if we go even further, asks Plantinga, and assume that the main tenets of Christianity are true? Why then not think the Holy Spirit could—again without any argument or inference—produce in us genuine knowledge of the “great things of the gospel”? Isn’t it possible, upon our hearing that God is reconciling us to himself through Christ, that the Spirit “quickens our hearts” and causes us to believe and accept—indeed know—the truth of such grand news?
Though we typically refer to knowledge of the gospel as “faith,” there’s no inconsistency in saying that faith is rational and even a matter of knowledge. Again, this is in line with Calvin, who defined faith as a “firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded on the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed on our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (48).

The Big “If”

Therefore, there’s no reason to think God couldn’t work this way if he wanted. If Christianity and something like the foregoing Christian epistemic story are true, then Christian belief is rational and can even amount to knowledge without relying on argument or inference.
Of course, that’s if it’s true. And this is one of Plantinga’s main points: the rationality of Christian belief hangs almost entirely on whether it’s in fact true. If it is, then it’s probably rational; if it’s false, then it’s probably not.
But this conclusion might seem a bit disappointing. After all, isn’t the real question whether Christianity is true? If it’s true, then it could obviously be rational. Who could argue with that?
Actually, lots of people, replies Plantinga. Here’s the kind of rejection he’s responding to:

Well, I don’t know whether Christian belief is true or false—who could know a thing like that?—but I do know that Christian belief is irrational, or unjustified, or not sensible, or not worthy of a thinking person. (ix)

Notice the issue here. According to the objection, it’s the rationality of Christian belief, not whether it’s true or false. This is the kind of claim Plantinga says is associated with evidentialist-style arguments against Christianity.
It’s here we come to one of Plantinga’s chief insights in Knowledge and Christian Belief: most complaints about the irrationality of Christian belief assume from the start that Christianity is false. For example, Plantinga contends Sigmund Freud’s well-known claim that Christian belief is mere “wish fulfillment” only has force if Freud takes for granted that Christianity is in fact false.

Putting Philosophy in Its Place

We can agree with Freud that if there’s no God, then Christian belief just might be mere wish fulfillment and perhaps irrational. That is, to say it again, it’s plausible to think Christianity is only rational if it’s true.
“But,” Plantinga asks, “is it true” (126)?
Plantinga doesn’t venture to address this, though. This is because he doesn’t think philosophy is up to the task of answering whether Christianity—or even merely belief in God—is true:

And here we pass beyond the competence of philosophy. In my opinion no argument with premises accepted by everyone or nearly everyone is strong enough to support full-blown Christian belief, even if such belief is, as I think it is, more probable than not with respect to premises of that kind. Speaking for myself and not in the name of philosophy, I can say only that it does, indeed, seem to me to be true, and to be the maximally important truth. (126)

Plantinga’s stance on what philosophy can do—and what it can’t—is one of the most important overall insights of his career. Philosophy can’t produce faith. It can’t teach us that God exists or that the main tenets of Christianity are true.
This doesn’t mean philosophy can’t be helpful and even important. We can use it to clear away some of the very real obstacles surrounding Christian belief and to lend support to God-given faith. In fact, philosophy has helped me in just these ways. But I’m also aware that philosophical arguments aren’t enough to generate the kind of faith God has vouchsafed in me.

What We Finally Need

So, even at its best, philosophy can only do so much, and usually much less than we realize or care to admit. But when we recognize its limits, we’re in a better position to reliably employ its strengths.
And this is what Plantinga has so ably done over his career, and it’s one of the things he does extremely well in Knowledge and Christian Belief. Moreover, he shows us we don’t need arguments to know the “great things of the gospel.” What we finally need is faith—genuine and saving knowledge in God’s glorious plan of salvation through Jesus Christ. And faith is a gift, that no one may boast.

Can a baby have three biological parents?

In West Bloomfield, Michigan, Alana Saarinen is, by all accounts, a normal healthy teenage girl who enjoys playing the piano and reading books. But there's one big difference between her and most people, because each one of her body's cells contains DNA from three different people [sources: Weintraub, Pritchard].
Alana was conceived in 2000 through a special type of in vitro fertilization (IVF) called cytoplasmic transfer, which was developed to enhance fertility in women who had been unsuccessful at conceiving through IVF. Her parents Sharon and Paul Saarinen contributed the egg and sperm. But in addition, doctors inserted a small amount of cytoplasm, a gel-like cellular material from a third woman's egg as well. That process also passed along some of the donor's mitochondrial DNA, which helped to fix genetic problems that can prevent a pregnancy [sources: Shoot, FDA, Weintraub].
Alana isn't the only child born through three-parent IVF. After cytoplasmic transfer was pioneered by Dr. Jacques Cohen, a New Jersey-based fertility specialist, by various accounts between 30 and 100 children were born as a result of the procedure [sources: Weintraub, Levy et al.]. But in 2001 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which feared that altering the genetic makeup of children might be too risky, told clinics that they couldn't perform the procedure anymore without undergoing elaborate regulatory requirements [source: FDA]. Some critics also argued that mixing the DNA from two different women was unethical [source: Weintraub]. All of the clinics stopped performing three-parent IVF (alternately called three-person IVF).
But in recent years, there's been a resurgence of interest in cytoplasmic transfers and other forms of three-parent IVF. As the examples of Alana and other healthy children have shown, having three biological parents doesn't seem to have the sort of scary risks that naysayers feared. And as proponents point out, the mitochondrial type of DNA from donors doesn't play any part in determining what we usually think of as a person's inherited traits like appearance and abilities [source: Malik].
And besides helping with conception, the donor mitochondrial DNA, whose function is to help cells run properly, has another potentially valuable attribute. It can help prevent more than 50 different genetic diseases, all of which would be otherwise incurable. Some of these conditions can cause problems such as muscle weakness, seizures, blindness, deafness, organ failure and even death [sources: Malik, Lupkin].
For those reasons, Great Britain became the first nation in the world to officially legalize three-parent IVF in early 2015 [source: Malik]. And in the U.S., government regulators are taking another look at three-parent IVF's potential for preventing serious diseases in children [source: CGS]. So there's an increasing possibility that in the near future, more children will be born who technically do have three parents.

Best Advice for Dating Couples

As a recent newlywed, I can attest to fact that dating can be an awkward and immensely rewarding stage of life—full of joys, challenges, temptations, and blessings. Recently J. D. Greear, Jen Wilkin, and Derek Rishmawy discussed what pieces of advice they’d give to couples in the dating stage.
Rishmawy, who previously served as director of college and young adult ministries at Trinity United Presbyterian Church in Orange County, California, offers “one general piece” of advice for couples desiring a God-honoring relationship: be committed to the local church. This, he says, is a key marker of a healthy Christian relationship: “The biggest job is encouraging the other person to be in the church, plugged in, butt in the pew, listening to preaching, [and] in godly relationships with other people.” Failure in this doesn’t bode well, Greear adds. According to Rishmawy the greatest danger isn’t sexual immorality but turning the other person or the relationship into an idol since other sins flow from this source.
Wilkin offers a warning for those who who gladly affirm biblical gender roles. Wilkin, who writes, speaks, and teaches women the Bible, enourages women to be sure that a man celebrates her strengths and doesn’t feel threatened by them. “Your strengths matter for your marriage,” she says. “A potential husband should celebrate your strengths and want you to flourish in things you’re good at and to gently help you in your weaknesses.” She adds: “You should never have to dumb yourself down to be appealing to a spouse. That seems like a bad recipe for dating.”
Greear underscores that physical attraction can be intoxicating and misleading. He quotes Proverbs 11:22: “Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman without discretion.” Again, the church is important here, since others around the couple see beyond the beauty (or the lack thereof) and can see character. The pastor of The Summit Church in North Carolina wraps up by encouraging couples to “delay and diminish the physical component of their relationship.”

HIV flushed out by cancer drug

HIV can be flushed out of its hiding places in the body using a cancer drug, researchers show.

The cornerstone of treatment, anti-retroviral therapy, kills the virus in the bloodstream but leaves "HIV reservoirs" untouched.
The study, published in PLoS Pathogens, showed the drug was "highly potent" at reactivating hidden HIV.
Experts said the findings were interesting, but it was important to know if the drug was safe in patients.
The power of the HIV reservoir was shown with the case of the Mississippi baby.
She was given antiretroviral drugs at birth. Despite appearing to be free of HIV for nearly two years after stopping treatment, she was found to be harbouring the virus.

'Kick and kill'

A strategy known as "kick and kill" is thought to be key to curing HIV - the kick would wake up the dormant HIV allowing the drugs to kill it.
The team at the UC Davis School of Medicine investigated PEP005 - one of the ingredients in a treatment to prevent cancer in sun-damaged skin.
They tested the drug in cells grown in the laboratory and in parts of the immune system taken from 13 people with HIV.
The report said "PEP005 is highly potent in reactivating latent HIV" and that the chemical represents "a new group of lead compounds for combating HIV".
One of the researchers, Dr Satya Dandekar, said: "We are excited to have identified an outstanding candidate for HIV reactivation and eradication that is already approved and is being used in patients.
"This molecule has great potential to advance into translational and clinical studies."
However, the drug has still not been tested in people who are HIV-positive.
Prof Sharon Lewin, from the University of Melbourne, said the results were "interesting" and marked an "important advance in finding new compounds that can activate latent HIV".
She told the BBC: "This study adds another family of drugs to test to potentially eliminate long-lived forms of HIV although much more work needs to be done to see if this works in patients.
"Although PEP005 is part of an FDA approved drug, it will first take some time to work out if it is safe to use in the setting of HIV."

The secrets of smelly feet

Renate Smallegange is something of a connoisseur of smelly feet – and she goes to surprising lengths to study their odours. Sometimes she’ll collect worn nylon socks that have become imbued with the fragrance. If that’s not good enough, she asks people to rub their feet on glass beads and wipe their sweaty skin on the surface. When she’s being really picky, she’ll trap the feet in a plastic bag, allowing her to draw up the aroma in gusts of air.
Of all the jobs in the world, it’s certainly not the most pleasant, but Smallegange is mostly unperturbed by the occasional whiff of cheese. “It’s not a big deal,” she tells me. “Of course some people do smell nicer than others – from my personal point of view.”
Not everyone finds the stink so discomforting. While a strong stench may cause Smallegange to politely hold her nose, however, it happens to be a real turn-on for the other objects of her study: malaria-carrying mosquitoes. For this reason, Smallegange has been trying to find the unique recipe that gives our feet their odour, in a quest to help stem the spread of that deadly disease.
No matter how clean you are, a slight odour is almost inevitable, given the anatomy of our feet. The average foot contains 600 sweat glands per square centimetre – hundreds more than the armpits. They secrete a nutritious soup of salts, glucose, vitamins, and amino acids that provides the perfect diet for a colony of bacteria. In return for the free lunch, the bacteria leave us with a cocktail of fatty acids that together give rise to the signature musk.
There are so many bacteria living on our feet that microbiologists have had a hard time finding exactly which species cause the stench, and where they live on the foot. Showing remarkably little vanity, James Reynolds at Loughborough University and colleagues recently attempted to answer this question by mapping out the populations on their own feet.
Five groups stood out: Corynebacteria, Micrococci, Propionibacteria, Betaproteobacteria and Brevibacteria – but the biggest offender appeared to be Staphylococci. Tellingly, it always seemed to coincide with a particularly potent chemical, called isovaleric acid. “If you imagine a well-aged stilton – that’s the smell you get if you open a bottle of the stuff,” Reynolds says. “If you spill a drop in the lab you’ll smell it all afternoon – it’s horrible.” What’s more, they were most common on the sole, rather than the top – with particular high numbers around the ball of the foot – perhaps explaining why these are the smelliest areas. The comparison to cheese is appropriate. Many cheeses contain a similar mix of volatile chemicals, with Limburger cheese apparently offering the closest comparison.
Eventually, these findings may pave the road to a more fragrant future. “If we know what these compounds are and the species that produce them, we could make clothing that absorbs the smell or neutralises it,” says Reynolds. It could also lead to better deodorants. The task will be tricky – alongside the smelly bacteria, our feet harbour some potentially friendly organisms that act as gatekeepers against infection. But nature may already have some answers. A recent Japanese study found that three chemicals commonly found in citrus fruits can help target the Staphylococcus bacteria without harming its neighbours.
In some situations, foot odour is much more serious than slight embarrassment, however – it might be a matter of life or death. Dutch scientist Bart Knols was one of the first to notice that certain species of malaria-carrying mosquitoes are attracted to the smells wafting from our feet. His work has since inspired many of Smallegange’s latest studies at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.
She has found, for instance, that the malaria parasite seems to alter the mosquitoes’ sense of smell so that they are even more attracted to smellier feet, swarming to worn socks like bees to a flower bed. “There is some evidence that some proteins in the head of the mosquito change somehow, and they have a role in the olfactory response of mosquitoes,” says Smallegange. It’s a devious mechanism that leads the malaria’s host to home in on potential victims, so that it can continue its life cycle in a human body. “It’s why the mosquito is such a good vector of malaria.”
There are many ways this knowledge could help the fight against malaria. Smallegange has also examined whether the particular combination of smell-producing bacteria on feet can alter your chances of being bitten; as you might expect, those hosting more Staphylococcus tend to be more attractive. Attempts to combat those bacteria could therefore offer some protection against the deadly disease.
Alternatively, the siren call of the odour could be used to bait mosquito traps. One idea has been to bait traps with used socks; they seem to maintain their allure for at least 8 days after wear. If that seems like a waste of good underwear, Knols has also found that Limburger cheese seems to do the trick. Smallegange, meanwhile, is hoping to bottle the smell – using isovaleric acid and other components to produce her own, synthetic odour. (You could call it “eau de pied”.)  “The combination is very important,” she says. “In general, a blend is more attractive than a single component.” It’s possible that you will need to use different recipes for different species of mosquito, though – each may have their own particular tastes.
It’s unclear exactly how effective these measures will be for protection. A small trial in Rusinga Island, Kenya is currently investigating whether the traps can kill or distract enough mosquitoes to reduce the overall number of bites and infections. At the very least, they could be used for an early warning – to detect whether malaria-carrying mosquitoes are already breeding nearby.
For most of us, cheesy feet are no more than an inconvenience which can be temporarily fixed with a shower. But Smallegange’s pursuits are worth bearing in mind, whenever you catch a whiff of your under-soles. With her collection of smelly socks, skin swabs and “eau de pied”, she is doing a job that few of us could stomach, all in the hope of saving lives. And that’s a mission that’s not to be sniffed at.

The Fake Honey is Everywhere Around Us – 10 Tricks to Find Out if Your Honey is Natural

You need an expert and detailed analysis to confirm that the honey is natural and to list all of the ingredients. But if you want to know if you purchased the real honey that is really natural, a couple of tricks for testing will be enough.

1. Natural honey isn’t sticky

A great test will be if you take a little honey and rub the honey between the fingers. The real honey is absorbed into the skin very easily. If the honey remains sticky, that means that it contains artificial sweeteners or sugar.

2. Read the contents

This is the first thing that you have to do because it will help you to find the perfect ingredients to choose good honey that doesn’t contains additives. Every producer must appoint the contents and the percentage by a certain amount.

3. Caramelizing

Put a few teaspoons of the honey into a bowl, and then heat it in a microwave to a high temperature. The real honey gets caramelized, while the false honey becomes full of bubbles or foamy.

4. The trick with the bees

The ants pass by the real honey, which is produced by the bees. Try to put some honey in a corner. If the ants don’t touch the honey that means that the honey is natural.

5. Paper

Put a few drops on a paper of the honey. If it doesn’t break the paper after some time, it is a natural honey. Otherwise, that one that contains water in its composition, will break the paper in just few seconds.

6. Water with honey

This is probably the easiest indicator of the right composition of honey. When you put the pure honey in water, it will make lumps and falls to the bottom of the cup, while the false will melt.

7. Honey on bread

Put some honey on a bread. If the bread becomes hard, the honey is natural. If it just dampens the surface of the breads, it is not real, and that is because of the big content of water in it.

8. Tingling in your mouth

The natural honey causes mild inflammation and tingling of the tongue, while the false honey has not that effect on the palate.

9. Crystallization

The pure honey crystallizes as the time passes, while the not real honey keeps its liquid composition, even after a long period, in the form of syrup.

10. Egg yolks

You should mix 1 egg yolk with a little honey. The yolk will look like cooked if the honey is natural.

Interesting Facts About the Pineapple That You Have Never Heard Before

The pineapple is rich in many nutrients that protect our organism and protect us from many health diseases. The pineapple has a sweet taste and it is rich in vitamin A, vitamin C, potassium, fiber, calcium, and phosphorus.

1. Protects us from many types of cancer

The pineapple contains antioxidants that prevent the damage to cells and fight against the free radicals. It helps in the fight against many diseases like heart diseases, atherosclerosis, arthritis and many types of cancer.

2. Strengthens the bones

The pineapple contains a high percentage of the manganese that strengthens the bones and also the binding tissue. Just one cup of its juice has 73 percent of the daily needs of this powerful mineral.

3. Protects against infections and inflammation

This fruit is rich in bromelain and vitamin C, enzymes that protect against bacterial infections and break down proteins. Successfully treat coughs and colds.

4. Protects the heart

The pineapple contains antioxidants that reduce the levels of bad cholesterol and protect against free radicals. If you consume the pineapple regularly, you will be able to decrease the risk of heart disease and strengthen the heart muscle.

5. Protects eyes

The sight weakens over the years, and the beta carotene from the pineapple is very important for the eye health. This is the reason why you should consume pineapple regularly.

6. Protects against hypertension

If you have high blood pressure, you should include the pineapple in your diet because the sodium and potassium from the pineapple will help you to balance your blood pressure.

7. Improves the process of digestion

Vitamin C, bromelain and fiber from the pineapples improve the process of digestion.

8. It fights against acne

The pineapple is rich in vitamin C and it is amazing when it comes to remove the gray complexion and dark spots. It boosts the production of collagen and fights against acne. It helps the skin to look more elastic and tighter and reduces the redness.

Don’t Buy Butter, Make it With Just Two Ingredients

The butter is a very popular ingredient in every household, but the conventional butters can be so bad for the health, so you may want to make it your own very easily?
The butter that you purchase at the grocery store is packed with pasteurized milk, which is pumped full of chemicals and hormones and also trans-fats that are terrible for your health. The conventionally raised cows are usually fed GMO soy and corn, and the feed is fortified with CLA and additional protein from GMO rapeseed.
But what about the massive amounts of herbicides that are sprayed on the GMO crops? They have been shown to harm the environment, harm the bodies and increase the cancer rates?

So, make it your own butter!

Ingredients:

• 3 cups organic heavy cream
• Sea salt

Method:

Pour the heavy cream into the food processor and process the cream for about 10 minutes. The cream will turn into a thick whipped cream at the beginning. Continue with the processing until it begins to separate and gets grainy. Then, drain the butter from the buttermilk, scrape it from the sides and put it into a bowl that is clean. Rinse the butter with cold water, turn it while the cold water runs over the spoon. Rinse it until the water runs so clear. Then, squeeze the liquids from the butter with wooden spoons or paddles to smash the butter and then pour off the liquid.

You Will Never Again Eat Instant Noodles After Reading This

The instant noodles are very popular among the people who lack time and money. It is really true that they are cheap, convenient and tasty when they are served hot, but the question now is how healthy they are?
If the instant noodles are one of your favorite meals, you really need to remove them from your diet. If you think that even though they are not the healthiest choice, they are not worse than the fast food, you are really wrong.
Dr. Braden Kuo of the Massachusetts General conducted an experiment, which proved to be really concerning. By using a camera that was placed in the digestive tract, he wanted to take a look of what happens in the digestive tract when you consume instant and processed noodles.
The homemade ramen noodles were used like a comparison and after 2 hours the instant noodles remain intact, much more than the homemade noodles. The results are concerning and disturbing for many reasons like the following:
The digestive system is obligated to work for hours to break down the processed food and it also undergoes a heavy strain. Most of the processed foods generally break down so fast and interferes with the blood sugar levels and insulin release.
When the food stays for a long period in the digestive tract, it impacts the absorption of the nutrients, but there is not much nutrition with the processed ramen noodles. There are so many additives instead, like the toxic preservative TBHQ tertiary-butyl hydroquinone. This additive stays in the digestive tract as well as the noodles and it is really a mystery how this can affect the health.
We really hope that now you will reconsider the consumption of the instant noodles and remove them from your diet because the results are frightening and concerning.

Maximize Your Company's Internet Marketing Through These Tips

For many people starting a new business or seeking to advertise their existing business, internet marketing is the most efficient and cost effective method to pursue your goals. However, finding a reputable consultant and becoming well versed enough in the industry to understand what you are looking for is often cumbersome. This article seeks to provide you with the requisite information you need to market your business on the internet.
A great way to connect people to your site is by including keywords in your URLs. Some URLs contain number and symbols instead of words, which does nothing to help humans or search engines categorize your site. If necessary, get rid of the non-descript numbers, and change your URL format so that it uses two or three keywords.
Try starting a podcast or blog. A good podcast will keep customers coming back to your site on a regular basis to check out the new content. With a podcast, you allow people to multitask while still hearing about your new products or reviews. This will translate into sales if you can keep them returning.
Bring your customer to you. Use your website to post events happening in your store, be they workshops, training, or just store-only sales. Getting a customer into your store makes them much more likely to buy from you, and providing this information on your site can increase the amount of people in attendance.
Take a careful look at your competition. Making sure that you have a good knowledge of your competitors is important. Visit their websites. Take a look at the keywords that they are using. Take a look at your own keywords and compare them. Improve upon your keyword usage until you find yourself featuring more prominently in search results.
Try not to fall in love with your own website. You probably put a lot of time and effort into your website. You might think of it as dearly as a child. You are just plain proud of it. Don't be. Try your best to look at your website objectively. Try your hardest to spot all the potential faults in it.
To get really good at Internet marketing, never stop learning. No one knows everything there is to know about successful marketing, so there's always more you can learn. Also, since no one is perfect, there will always be marketing skills you personally can improve. If you put sincere effort into improvement, you'll definitely improve -- and naturally, the better you are at Internet marketing, the more money you'll be able to make from it.
Let your customers know how to get in contact with you. Place your contact information on every page, even if it is just at the bottom. Doing this, not only increases customer confidence, but it also allows a search engine to bring up your website if anyone searches for part of your contact information.
Research what kind of content your competitors are providing and improve upon it. If you know what you are up against you know what areas you need to focus on. Do your competitors have the info but it's boring? Or is it all flash but no substance? Make sure you do better in the areas that they lack.
No matter what the demographics of your business, internet marketing provides you with a great way to, easily and inexpensively, reach more customers. Using the internet for marketing does not have to be confusing or overwhelming. Follow the tips in this article and find the perfect internet marketing techniques that work for your business, as well as, your long-term plans.

Internet Marketing Tips And Tricks For You

Internet Marketing can be a great way to earn a substantial income. But unless you know how to be successful at internet marketing, you may be missing out on an even bigger income. What you are going to read in the following article will help you have a successful career in the internet marketing field.
Include a guest book on your website for people to sign at the bottom of your homepage. If a customer comes on your site and signs a guest book, it makes them feel like they have a stake with your company. Improving the personalization standards on your website is important to hold onto customers.
Take the necessary time to learn about web design. There's plenty of information online about CSS or HTML that will help you in web design. Take 30 minutes out of the day to work on your site and you will gain knowledge.
Make use of all of the social media sites for your internet marketing campaigns. Create a like button for Facebook, a share button to Twitter and a Google+ button, as well. These buttons should be on all of your product pages! This will help to spread the word of the products and services that you are marketing.
Facebook is a free way to enhance your Internet marketing. Since Facebook is so widely used and massively customizable, you can reach out to a much broader audience while maintaining the personality of your business. This also makes it easier for people on the go to find vital information about your business.
Youtube is quickly becoming one of the fastest ways to provide ads to the public for your internet marketing. The user generated network allows for you to create your ad that is thrown onto a YouTube video only if it has reached a certain demographic and level of popularity
A great tip for Internet marketing is to incorporate chat into your web site. Chatting is a great way to connect with people and resolve problems in real time. All you have to do is select a chat program, put a button on your web site, and train someone to use it.
Take advantage of the search engines, in order to find out who is linking to you. Many search engines have special codes that you can type before the website, which will give you different information. For example, typing "link:" before including your URL, will give you a list of all of the websites that are linking to yours.
When marketing a product or business online, make good use of logos and branding. Having an easily remembered and distinguishable logo will help people remember your business and help them connect your products to your company. People tend to remember pictorial logos better than the name of the company alone.
In important tip regarding internet marketing is to attempt to use pay-per-click programs. This is a good thing to try because it is the fastest way to improve your company's search engine results. There are multiple programs that you can sign up for that include pay-per-click advertising. Be sure to do your research. You'll be sure to find the one that best suits your company.
For products that do not sell or for ones that are harder to sell, try setting up a bartering system with your customers. Allow them to set the price of what they'd pay for these items using e-mail or a web form, and see if it's to your liking so that you can finally sell these kinds of items.
There's no question that internet marketing can make you a ton of money. The overload of information out there can make it seem like a difficult, overwhelming process. Internet marketing is just like the sales process in the bricks-and-mortar world. Find a few reputable sources of guidance, focus your efforts, and you will be well on your way to success.
When you loved this information and you would like to receive more details regarding bit.ly, source web page, assure visit the web-site.

IT Jobs: A promising Future

Information technology has entered almost in all sphere of our life. From electricity bill payment to shopping all are related and effected by IT in some way to other. Industries are automating their task to cut down manual labor cost. Home appliances, industrial machines, watch, automobiles are using software to enhance the quality of products. As a result demand of IT professionals is high in market.

IT jobs are promising, it offers hefty salary package with immense opportunity to grow and expand your career. If you are expert in your field and have good knowledge on your subject then you can easily get handsome salary package. All you need to have to build your career in It industry is right degree and skill, it is the only qualification you need to make your career in IT industry. If your are fresher and looking for primary level IT jobs then internet could help you in finding your avenue but for specialist level and higher standard IT jobs you have to rely on your professional contact as most of the organizations did not disclose higher level job opening at job portals.

You can start your IT career as a software engineer, web developer, database manager and IT Hardware professional. To accelerate your IT career it is important to update your skill from time to time. Learn industry level skill and enhance your capability. Course offered by SAP and Oracle are very promising though it is not easy to clear these exams but once you become SAP or Oracle certified professional you value will increase in the industry.

Searching IT Jobs is not a tough job there are various online portals and IT recruitment companies dealing in IT jobs. Job portals are more useful as there you can see different openings posted by numbers of IT companies. IT jobs are promising; it is one of the well-paid industries with fast growth rate. Start hunting for your dream IT job with online portals and give right shape to your career.

�Send your resume to online job portals for IT job and get hired by best IT companies.�

8 Ways to Sing Better Now

    1.  Open your mouth when you’re singing!  Singers who keep their mouths mostly closed are likely tense in the tongue and are far from achieving maximum quality of tone. I like the two finger rule. If you can fit two fingers between your teeth while singing (esp on open vowels like “ah” and “oh”), then you’re good. If not, open your mouth more.

    2.  Relax the tongue.  After years of giving voice lessons, I’m convinced that 65% – 85% of all vocal problems involve tension in the tongue. Worst part is most people aren’t even aware of it. Look in a mirror while singing. If the tip of your tongue isn’t dominantly resting on your bottom front teeth then you’ve got problems. Relaxing the tongue more forward in the mouth will help.

  3.  Don’t take in too much air.  If you breathe in too much air, then you create pressure under the folds that can easily hinder you ability to sing freely. It can prevent you from singing high notes and it almost always causes tension in your neck. To fix it, become aware of just how little is involved in regular breathing and try to mimic that sensation when singing.

4.  Keep the larynx steady.  If you don’t know what the larynx is, it’s where your adam’s apple is (or where it would be ladies). If this area of your neck is raising or lowering while singing, then you’re throwing off your whole vocal mechanism leading to many different complications. Rest your hand on your larynx while singing and make sure it stays steady.

5.  Open and relax the back of the mouth.  This is equally as important as allowing the front of the mouth to be open, if not more. If the back of the mouth is closed off, then the quality of the sound is shot (and I guarantee you’re tense). To get a feel for it, hold the “ng” sound of hung and feel how closed that is. Now say “ah” like you’re in a doctor’s office… that’s more open. Leaving the back of the mouth open like the “ah” sound can help create a beautiful resonance in the voice.

6.  Sing with ENERGY.  I can’t express this enough. Singing is a very physical activity. You must be energized and excited about what you’re doing or else it lacks passion (and it’s flat!). Singing with energy helps you hit higher notes and helps keep the sound out of the throat. Allow yourself to get excited before singing… do some jumping jacks or walk around a bit before getting started and realize just how much it helps.

7.  Believe what you’re singing.  I once read a quote that has stuck with me for years. It was something along the lines of, “that which comes closest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” Music is a form of expression. It’s alive and has a great ability to influence listeners. But that’s only true when you believe what you’re singing. Try to connect to the song through some personal life experience and see how alive the music you’re singing becomes.

8.  Get out of your own way.  Singing should feel like speaking. There should be no pressing, tension, straining, reaching, or grabbing when vocally active. These sensations usually happen when we try to force the sound out of us. If you’re not able to sing something, try to bring it back to speech first. You’d be surprised how easy that high “C” can be when you speak it.

It’s important to mention that focusing on all of these tips at once isn’t going to be overly effective because our brains can only process so much at a time. Therefore, I suggest practicing one of these tips for a few days, then move on to another. What we do when we sing is largely based on habit, so be sure to practice consistently.

Top 10 Tips for Choristers

Singing in a choir can be one of life’s most rewarding experiences, but one you will enjoy more if you know a few ground rules before jumping in. Today I want to share with you ten pieces of advice that every amateur and professional chorister should know and follow.
1. Try your best to not listen to those around you. Unless they are perfectly trained professionals, listening to them will cause you to pick up their bad habits.
2. Balance is all about variety. If the person next to you is singing softly, then increase your dynamic. If they are singing a bright “a” vowel, then make sure you darken yours.
3. It’s important, for reasons of vocal health, to always be able to hear yourself. Thus, rather than to sing during the dramatic, emotional moments of a song, drop out completely.
4. Accuracy is very important in choral singing. When singing, and especially during performing, keep your eyes fixed on the music in front of you. Only look up when you absolutely have to, such as when walking off the stage.
5. If you hear anyone, in any part, sing something that is incorrect, especially when sight-reading, make sure you point it out immediately to the conductor. Don’t wait for the right moment. The right moment is now.
6. When the conductor gives the starting pitch, hum it until the song begins. That way you can make the pitch your own.
7. In your spare time, listen to as many different versions of the music you are singing as possible. That way, you can inquire (politely, but firmly) why your conductor is not doing it like Choir X.
8. Remember that, while you may be singing in a choir, you are above all a soloist. If your friends in the audience can’t hear you individually, then you must work harder to project your voice.
9. Humility is important in a choral setting. If you don’t have the right sheet music, rather than making a big deal out of it before the rehearsal, wait until the choir is about 10 minutes into rehearsing the song, and then quietly ask everyone around you for extra copies.
10. At the end of the day, choir is all about having fun. If you’re not having fun, maybe you need to change seats. Maybe the air con is not quite right, or the repertoire does not suit your voice. Don’t be afraid to let your conductor and fellow choir members know about these things.
Whether you choose to sing solo, or become one of the many soloists that make up a choir, with these rules may you enjoy many fruitful and glorious years in the spotlight, where you belong!

Do you know that drinking too much water can cause death: New guidelines on healthy water drinking notifies against the incorrect amount

Drinking enough water is really important for the human body to function, but drinking too much water can be dangerous just like drinking too little. One group of 17 experts from around the world together wrote guidelines presenting the safest way to drink the water without going extreme.
The new guidelines were followed by warnings, and they were announced at the International Exercise-Associated Hyponatremia Consensus Development Conference, published in the Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine.
The lead author of the guideline and an exercise science professor at the Oakland University, Dr. Tamara Hew-Butler, said in a statement that their major goal was to re-educate the public on the dangers of drinking beyond thirst during the exercise.
Every single EAH death is preventable and tragic, if we listen to our bodies and let go of the extensive advice that if a little is just good, then more must be better.
Athletes are especially at risk. 14 deaths of football players, marathon runners, and other athletes have already been associated with drinking too much sports drinks and water during a physical activity, according to the experts.
This condition is known like exercise-associated hyponatremia or EAH, in which the kidneys of the body become overwhelmed by the big quantity of liquid it is obligated to process. The natural occurring sodium of the body can’t keep up with the huge amount of water, and that leads to swelling in the cells and also in severe cases to death.
The team of experts recommends preventing the hyponatremia by being harmony with your body and drinking water when you are thirsty – no less and no more.
According to the guidelines that is published in the Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine, using the native thirst mechanism to guide fluid consumption is an action that should limit the drinking in excess and also getting hyponatremia while giving enough fluid to prevent the excessive dehydration.
Watch for signs of exercise-associated hyponatremia by knowing typical symptoms, which include dizziness, lightheadedness, nausea, weight gain, or puffiness during a physical activity.
In many cases, headaches, vomiting, agitation, confusion, seizures, delirium, and comas might happen, which can become life-threatening.
EAH has been known to hit people who are in some physically challenging athletic events, like triathlons, marathons, hiking, military exercises, yoga, football, and calisthenics during fraternity hazing.
Water is a key chemical of our bodies, which is why it is important to stay within a healthy range in order to balance the body. According to the Mayo clinic, our bodies lose water every day through sweating, breathing, urinating, and having a bowel movement.
To replenish your body with enough water without overwhelming the cells in the body, the Institute of Medicine regulated the ideal amount is about 16 8 ounce cups or 3.7 liters for men, and 11 8 ounce cups or 2.7 liters for women.
For athletes or anyone engaged in a physical activity that will make you sweat, drink 1.5 – 2.5 additional cups of water to compensate for the loss of fluid. The sodium is lost through sweat perspiration, and because of that, drinking a sports drink, which contains sodium, will help balance out and replace the increased water intake while decreasing the chances of getting hyponatremia.

What Happens When you Drink Warm Water Every Morning?

Generally Japanese people drink water in the mornings. Many studies have shown the benefits of this morning habit. This routine provides positive results and has a healing effect on the body.
There is a proof that if you drink water at the morning on an empty stomach, that can be very helpful in treating many diseases, including: pain in any part of the body, headache, tachycardia, cardiovascular disorders and diseases, bronchitis, epilepsy, meningitis, increased blood fat levels, kidney diseases, gastritis, urinary tract diseases, tuberculosis, asthma, diarrhea, vomiting, diabetes, hemorrhoids, gastritis, eye and vision problems, constipation, menstrual problems, uterine diseases, conditions and diseases affecting the nose, ear and throat.

Treatment Methods

1. In the morning when you wake up, before you brush your teeth, drink 640 ml of warm water.
2. Then brush your teeth, and don’t eat and drink anything in the following 45 minutes.
3. After 45 minutes you can eat your breakfast.
4. After your meals, breakfast, lunch or dinner, don’t drink or eat anything in the following two hours.
5. Sick and older people who can’t drink 4 glasses of water, should start with that amount that their body can accept, and then they will get used with the recommended amount. They should increase the amount of water until they get to 640 ml.
6. This method is great and it will help you to treat any health condition that you have, and also if you are healthy, you would enjoy the energy that this method provides.

How many days should this treatment take?

1. Gastritis – 10 days
2. High Blood Pressure – 30 days
3. Constipation – 10 days
4. Diabetes – 30 days
5. Tuberculosis – 90 days
6. Cancer – 180 days

The best thing that you can do, is to keep drinking that amount of water every day if it is possible.
The people that have arthritis should use this method in the first 3 days of the week only. Then they have to make a break for a week, and then to start again, but this time every day. This method of drinking water will not have any unwanted side effects, except that you will urinate frequently.
Drink water and stay active. Japanese and Chinese people drink hot tea while eating their meals, not cold water. Maybe we should try this.
It is good to drink cold beverage after the meal, but the cold beverage will fix the fat that you have consumed. When those constructions react with the acid, the intestine will absorb them very faster than the solid food. That could cause cancer. So, it is good to drink hot soup or hot water after the meal.
Important note for the heart attacks: you should know that not always the symptom of pain in the left hand means heart attack. You should take into account the intense pain in your denture. Intensive sweating and sickness are also usual symptoms. 60% of the people that have a heart attack while sleeping, didn’t wake up. The pain in the denture could wake you up. Be very careful with that.

Here are other 7 reasons why you should drink a glass of warm water

1. Drinking one glass of warm water every day will clean your skin, and it is recommended to those who have problems with dry skin and acnes.
2. Warm water relaxes the muscle, so it is good if you have menstrual pain.
3. In the mornings before your breakfast and 30 minutes after the meal, drink one glass of warm water to get rid of the bloating.
4. Drinking warm water helps to eliminate the urinary tract infection and relieve the heartburn.
5. Regularly drinking of warm water will improve your circulation, sweating and toxin removal from the body.
6. If you drink one glass of warm water one hour after the meal, you will boost your metabolism and you will burn calories.
7. If you regularly drink warm water, that can help if you have asthma or if you hiccup, and will give you additional power if you have a cold or cough.