Beyond Beat Friday, July 8, 2011
NEVERTHELESS, THEY
FIGHT FOR A CAUSE Bangalore Beat Bureau
t is a campaign of a humongous scale, engaging six lakh school and college students along with corporate employees, managements and local communities. The goal is to create awareness and sensitise people about inclusion of persons with disability in their immediate environments. The campaign, termed ‘Never-the-less’, ran across 6,000 government, aided and private schools in urban and rural Bangalore, Dharwad, Gadag and Haveri today. It is the initiative of Fourth Wave Foundation in partnership with Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. Over 200 colleges across Bangalore will conduct the campaign on July 15. The programme kicked off with art activity involving students across the state. Those between fifth and eighth standards were asked to depict ‘inclusion’ and ‘diversity’ and interaction with persons with disabilities. The art work, a sketch, painting etc, on an A4 sheet. The physical art works would be collected and displayed in Bangalore. Some of the companies have also come forward to digitize these works and put them on the web. The campaign is also supported by the department for the empowerment of the differently abled and senior citizens; Christ University; office of the state commissioner for persons with disabilities; Bangalore University; Nasscom and is driven by over 1,500 volunteers, supported by 50 NGOs. Diana Vincent Joseph, director of Fourthwave Foundation, said: “A small change of perception can make a big difference in the life of persons with special needs and disabilities. If we could walk hand-in-hand, provide the same opportunities and conveniences, it can make life less of a battle and more of a healthy challenge for all. In addition to physical infrastructure for the disabled, the cornerstone of this idea is for inclusion of you and me. It is up to us to open our minds to people with disability and understand them for what they are. Never-the-less is a movement to make us look beyond their disability and the see them for what they are capable of.” The campaign on Saturday will involve volutneers giving away handouts to people at public places, like railway stations, bus-stands and malls. These handouts contain information on how to include disabled in the mainstreatm. The handouts and posters will ask people to take part in an SMS campaign by sending in their suggestion on inclusion of the disabled. “More than 800 volunteers will join the movement tomorrow. These volunteers have been made to go through an orientation course about a week ago. Some of the volunteers from corporate houses were taken through the steps over mail, as it was impossible to gather up all those working professionals and ask them to be physically present for the orientation programme,” she said. Mphasis, IBM and other corporate houses, through Nasscom, have extended their help for the programme. Over the next three weeks, volunteers will conduct programmes stressing the necessity of bringing the disabled to the mainstream. At Christ Collge, one of the prominent promoters of the campaign, students will hold activities that highlight the difficulties
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Eating less salt wonʼt prevent strokes, heart attacks
London: There’s bad news for those who have cut back on salt due to health concerns. A study says eating less salt will not stave off heart attacks, strokes or early death. Research involving nearly 6,500 people concluded that there was “no strong evidence” that lowering levels of salt in the diet reduced the risk of heart disease or premature death. These findings contradict all official recommendations and medical profession urging the public to reduce the amount of salt they consume, reports the journal Cochrane Review. In fact, it found that cutting back on salt actually raises the likelihood of death in some patients with heart problems, according to the Daily Mail. Researchers from Exeter University say that the benefits of cutting back on salt may have been “overestimated”. They looked at seven published studies involving 6,489 people. Some had high blood pressure, others had normal blood pressure and they had all been put on salt-reduction diets. But the authors found that there was no evidence that cutting down reduced deaths or heart disease in either group. And they found that patients with heart failure who cut back on salt were actually at higher risk of death – possibly because the change in diet is such a shock to the body. Lead researcher Rod Taylor, from Exeter, said: “Perhaps surprisingly, we didn’t find any statistically significant reduction in death or cardiovascular events such as heart attacks and strokes.” IANS
Casting vote causes stress hormone levels to shoot up
Washington: Voting in elections is stressful, even to a point of causing hormonal changes among voters. The level of cortisol – a hormone released when a person is under pressure and which helps the body cope with threats – immediately prior to casting a vote was significantly higher than when the same individuals were in non-voting conditions. “It is important to understand that emotions can affect biological processes, which in turn can influence our decision-making processes,” said Israel Waismel-Manor of the School of Political Science, University of Haifa, who led the study. The main hormone is cortisol, also known as the “stress hormone”. The present study set out to determine whether voting in elections is a stressful experience, the journal European Neuropsychopharmacology reports. The survey was conducted on the day of Israel’s 2009 national elections. One hundred and thirteen voters just about to enter the ballot booth were asked to provide a saliva sample to be examined for cortisol levels, according to a Haifa statement. The results show that the level of cortisol in individuals immediately before voting was almost three times higher than in the following day. The study also found that voters who said they would vote for a party which polls predicted will lose seats, had higher levels of cortisol than those who intended to vote for a party which polls predicted were to gain seats. IANS
A campaign involving more than six lakh students across the state on the inclusion of the disabled in the mainstream kicked off today. The drive, over the next three weeks, will highlight the difficulties faced by the differently abled and invites suggestions on how to be “inclusive”
A college student addresses a session as Fourth Wave Foundation director Diana Joseph, second from left, looks on. The foundation has been working on the inclusion of the disabled in the mainstream and has started a massive campaign across the state today. faced by the disabled. Some of the students would be made to sit on the wheelchair atnd asked to maneuvre it, others would be blindfolded and asked to read texts through braille. The campaign covering Banga-
lore Urban and Rural areas would be held on July 15. Diana Vincent Joseph said it is also an opportunity for many corporate houses, schools, colleges and other institutions to
come forward and present as to how they have adopted inclusive policies within their organisations. The campaign, culiminating in a half day Conference of various stakeholders on
July 22 at Christ University will showcase individual and institutional success stories and set a five year agenda to promote inclusion of persons with disabilities in mainstream society.
Broader faces likely to cheat Want a baby? Take for financial gain, says study care of your gums
Washington: A man’s face might hint if he is bad to the bone, as a new study has found that people with wider faces tend to be more devious and more willing to cheat. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the US found that men with broader faces were approximately three times as likely to lie in negotiations than their narrower-faced peers to gain more financial benefit. For their study, the researchers carried out several experiments to analyse if men’s facial structure has anything to do with their personality traits, LiveScience reported. In one experiment, the researchers measured the facial width-to-height ratio of 192 students, 115 of whom were men, and randomly assigned them to play either buyers or sellers role in negotiations over emails as part of a classroom exercise. It was found men with broader faces were approximately three times as likely to lie in the negotiation than narrower-faced men. Facial width was not linked to either deception or trustworthiness in women. In another experiment, the researchers analysed how willing volunteers were to cheat. They had 103 students, 50 of whom were men, and asked them to roll a pair of dice to see how many times they would be entered into a lottery. All the participants had the chance to lie about their dice roll to increase their chances of winning. Men with broader faces overstated their dice rolls by an estimated 18.6 per cent, while narrow-faced men overstat-
ed their rolls by less than 2 per cent, Michael Haselhuhn, who led the research, said. “We demonstrate that men with wider faces feel more powerful, and these feelings of power lead directly to less ethical behaviour, including lying and cheating. Perhaps some men truly are bad to the bone,” he said. However, the researchers cautioned the public not to take their findings to extremes. “While our findings provide compelling evidence that men’s facial structure is a reliable physical cue of the likelihood of engaging in ethically questionable behaviour, we stress that it is but
one of many factors that affect unethical judgement and action,” Haselhuhn said. The researchers also noted that men with broad faces are not all bad. “In other research, we have found that the facial structure of Fortune 500 CEOs predicts firm financial performance, such that CEOs with relatively wider faces achieve greater financial success for their firm,” Haselhuhn noted. “We believe that men’s facial structure should be used as one important cue in detecting liars and cheaters, but caution should be taken in automatically labelling relatively wide-faced men as bad seeds.” PTI
Washington: Want to be a mother? Then be sure that your oral hygiene is well maintained, as for the first time scientists have found that women with gum disease take an average of two months longer to conceive. Periodontal disease, also known as gum disease, is a chronic infectious illness that occurs when the bacteria in one’s mouth creates inflammation around a tooth and can spread into the circulatory system. Previous studies have linked gum disease with type 2 diabetes, heart disease, respiratory and kidney disease, and problems in pregnancy such as miscarriage and premature birth. This is the first time, researcher from the University of Western Australia have found that gum disease affects the time it takes women to become pregnant, LiveScience reported. For their study, the researchers monitored a group of 3,416 pregnant women and analysed their pregnancy planning and outcome information. The findings, presented at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, showed that women with gum disease took an average of just over seven months to become pregnant, which was two months longer than the average of five months it took women without gum disease to conceive. The researchers also found that non-Caucasian women with gum disease were more likely to take more than a year to become pregnant compared to those without gum disease. This may be because the non-Caucasian women appeared to have a higher level of inflammatory response to gum disease, said Roger Hart, who led the study. “Our data suggest that the presence of periodontal disease is a modifiable risk factor,
which can increase a woman’s time to conception, particularly for non-Caucasians. “It exerts a negative influence on fertility that is of the same order of magnitude as obesity.” The researchers recommend that women who are planning to becoming pregnant should consult with their dentist to make sure that they do not have any gum disease. PTI