Air Attack - Breathing Lessons

City people everywhere have been warned of health hazards on days when pollution is especially bad. In summer it comes in the form of azone, acid aerosols and particulates – known as “the summer haze effect.”

In winter, exhaust and smoke are the bigger problems, fouling the air with nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide. Based on the limited research available so far, the impact appears to be quite modest in both seasons, though slightly longer-lasting in winter.

Conditions can get nastier in Indonesia and Australia, where air quality deteriorates at certain times of the year because of smoke and ash from forest fires, which then drift to Singapore and Malaysia. The island republic and parts of Malaysia, including Kuala Lumpur, were under a pall of bad air again.

What to do ? Medical experts offer some advice. People who suffer from asthma need to be warned in advance of episodes of aor pollution. Those who inhale preventive medication should double the daily dose. It may be best to add a dose at midday, when ozone is most concentrated. Patients who don’t normally take asthma drugs should use anti-inflammatory remedies prescribed for colds.

Naturally they should also avoid exerting themselves on the smoggy streets.

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image source:matanews.com

A Universal Ideal of Beauty

Chances are the beauty of a young woman’s face would be as recognizable in London as in Tokyo. Compared to her peers, she would have larger eyes relative to the rest of her face, higher cheekbones, a more delicate lower jaw, fuller lips and shorter distances between both nose and mouth and mouth and chin. These are universal characteristics of a beautiful female face, according to an article published in nature.

Researchers in Japan and Britain made three composite faces (based on 224 facial features) from a group of 60 photographs: a whole group average, an average of attractive faces and an exaggeration of the beautiful average. The third composite accentuated the features that distinguished the second face from the first.

In both the Japanese and British studies, viewers preferred the third face to the second, and the first face least of all.

The study also challenges the prevalent theory (first mooted in the last century) that an “average” face is considered more attractive than one with slight distortions from the norm.

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image sources: topbeautyfashion.co.cc

Medicinal Properties of Insects

Eating bugs is nothing new. Ento-enthusiasts have long extolled the virtues of insect cuisine, bugs being cheap, high in protein and readily available. Now they’re also raving about its medicinal properties. The Imperial Herbal Restaurant in Singapore offers dishes featuring scorpions and ants, both of which are high in nutriens.

Although there is no conclusive evidence, both reputedly combat illness as well. According to the restaurant’s proprietor, Mrs. Wang-Lee Tee Eng, scorpion’s poison soothes nerves and eases migraine headaches, while ants cure rheumatism, a condition which causes inflammation of the joints, muscles or ligaments.

The Bangkok Post reports that the Division of Medical Entomology is compiling a list of insect products that have medicinal properties. Among them: dried grubs which relieve pain and increase heart-rate after poisonous bites; cicada larvae which relieve gas, cold sores and measles; and dried hornet’s nest, which kills parasites and relieves gastrointestinal pain. Royal Jelly bee’s pollen is also believed to lower blood pressure and improve skin quality.

Those searching for a tasty meal made of bugs, however, might need to look elsewhere. Scorpions have a chewy texture, while ants have a sour tang like vinegar. It’s an acquired taste.

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image source: free-gourmet-recipes.com

Discovering an Indigenous Architecture (2)

Even more fascinating is the richness of the skill displayed in these apparently simple architectural elements made by people whose primitive lifestyle does not demand of them any form of sophistication. Here is a demonstration of the power of aesthetics in its simple, original form.

Items such as woven rattan mats, bamboo floors and thatched roofs so often found in hotels have their humble beginnings in these rural villages, where the handicraft skills are traditionally a means of survival.

The most prominent feature in the Lomboknese architecture is the curved thatched rice-barn called a “lumbung”. Contructed simply in wood framing, bamboo and rattan floors and walls, this “symbol” of Lombok has been thoroughly exploited as an element of “pastiche” in the design of new resort hotels, although the scale at which the “lumbung” is recreated is completely out of synch with the original form.

Some houses still have their floors built up of dried buffalo dung. The appeal of the Sasak architecture is not attributed to any single feature but the perfect combination of everything manmade and the natural surroundings which in unison paint a landscape that is unpretentiously rich.

The distinctive bell-shaped roof covered in rice thatch from a previous season and the use of the “lumbung” for storage of rice illustrate the harmony of recycling. It is also a rather beautiful and almost sacred depiction of the South-east Asian relationship between man and rice.

There are, indeed signs of “modernization” taking place. Driving along the very narrow, hardly accessible roads and trying to avoid horse-drawn carts (the chief means of public transport, cidomo), one can observe the numerous handicraft and souvenir shops alongside paddy fields or concentrated at village centres. A unique form of interactive theatre is constantly taking place, where visitors from all over the world haggle over the prices of hand-made artifacts while the local people gather to witness this phenomenon of tourist invasion.

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image sources: SilkWinds Magazine
techno code: H4FSG7XWBG8Q

Shopping: Relaxing & Entertaining

Very common in modern society, family become very busy with work and daily routine and sometimes need relaxing activities to balance their routine. To relax by shopping or try to find entertainment have become more and more inadequate.

We can imagine of how many times and energies are wasted by doing the traditional shopping, coming to store and/or hypermarket and got lost in the hundreds of giants shelves, especially when the items we are looking for is very specific and not very common, it will be a major effort to find one. Similar with entertainment, it will be very disappointing to go to club or cinema only to find that the places are not representative and the entertainment is not up to our expectation.

Alternatively, we can turn our choice to online shop which are designed to responds to that kind of requirements, they will provide us with complete information of kind of goods, detailed product specification, info abt shop or manufacturer of the products, and store chain which members are numbered in tenth of thousand of quality shops.

Admittedly, not many online shop can provide such a complete criterias. One of the best online shop is Shopwiki which have more than 30,000 stores chain. This sites provide guidance to shop in many countries and is one that regarded the best.

For specifics products such as LCD TV and Home theater for examples, Shopwikis not only provide us with products picture and prices as in others online shop.

Shopwiki also give us much more choice by categorizing products base on products quality, and also provide us with information regarding the best and worst of one product, such info are very usefull specially if you want to buy LCD TV, HD TV, Home Theater, Blu-Ray and AV Receivers.

It seem that these kind of new shopping ways will become more common in modern society to obtain the products with good quality and correct specifications. The traditional catalogue books, or conventional online shop that only provides picture, prices and basic information only will not adequate in the future. The new concept will provide consumer not only with pics and prices, but also functioning as guidance, information sources, references and encyclopedia, just like Shopwiki !