Friday, December 11, 2009

Beautifull Lovely Bird















Autism is a lifelong neurodevelopmental disorder that can cause significant communication, social and behavioral challenges. For years autism was rare, occurring in just 5 children per 10,000 live births. But since the early 1990s, that rate has increased exponentially and today it is reported to affect an average of 1 in 100 children in the United States. There was also a time when autism was thought to be a fate that simply had to be accepted, but we now know that many of the debilitating symptoms of autism can be prevented or reduced with early diagnosis and intervention. A notable treatment approach for older preschool-aged children is applied behavior analysis (ABA), a structured method used in many schools and treatment clinics to teach new skills while encouraging positive behaviors and discouraging negative ones. And a new study has found that a novel intervention called the Early Start Denver Model (ESDM) is effective for improving IQ, language ability, and social interaction for very young children with autism—some as young as 18 months.

ESDM was developed by Dr. Geraldine Dawson, a University of North Carolina psychologist and chief science officer of the patient-advocacy group Autism Speaks, and Sally Rogers, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and a researcher at the UC Davis MIND Institute in California. The intervention, tailored for toddlers as young as 12 months old, is delivered by trained therapists and parents, who receive instruction and training, in the child’s natural environment. “It’s a very pleasing kind of therapy, kids are happy,” Rogers explains. “It is play, and it can happen everywhere.” Dawson adds that this type of intervention builds on a fun, positive relationship with the therapist

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Beautiful Snow Animals

Least weasel lives wherever it can make a den to raise its young and store its food. The den is in a pile of rocks or loose earth. When lemmings are plentiful, so are weasels. Although they depend mostly on lemmings for food, they are not afraid to attack an Arctic hare. The adult male is about 30 cm. ( 12 in.) long including the tail. The female is smaller. This animal is slim so it can go into lemmings’ tunnels. The winter coats are white, and summer coats are brown. Ermine are fast, very brave and always hungry. When the ermine kills an animal it takes the food home. The weasel can be found almost anywhere in Canada (the coast, the mountains, the prairies and the far north). The weasel will move into a den of an animal that it has killed.

The Arctic hare is the largest hare in North America. Its fur is grayish brown in the summer. It has short ears with black tips. In the winter it has white fur, except for the black tips on its ears. Its white fur helps camouflage it from predators in the winter. In the northernmost parts of its range, it is always white. The Arctic hare has long claws, especially on its hind legs. It uses the claws to dig in packed snow. They can hop on their hind legs like kangaroos at speeds of up to 30 miles an hour. The Arctic hare also has incisors that are longer and straighter than most hares. It uses them to pull plants out from rocky crevices.


Polar bears have a thick oily fur coat and a layer of blubber under their skin. They spend most of their time on the pack ice or in the water, where they can hunt their favorite food – the ringed seal. The white fur helps the bear sneak up on seals that are laying on the ice. In the summer it is harder to catch seals, so before summer arrives, the bears eat as much as they can to fatten up, then live off the fat in their bodies. The females digs a den in the snow to hibernate during the worst part of the winter. The cubs are born in the den. The polar bear is a bear native largely within the Arctic circle encompassing the Arctic Ocean, its surrounding seas and surrounding land masses. It is the world’s largest carnivore species found on land.


The Harp Seal is a marine mammal that spends most of its life in the sea, but also goes onto ice floes. It is a pinniped that lives along shorelines in the North Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean, ranging from Russia to Greenland to Canada. The Harp Seal has short, thick white fur with black patches and a black face. The young are all white. These seals grow to be up to 5.5 feet (1.7 m) long and can weigh up to 285 pounds (130 kg); females are a bit smaller. The whiskers contribute to the seal’s sense of touch. The nostrils are closed in the resting state. Harp Seals are carnivores. They eat mostly fish and crustaceans. Seals don’t chew their food; they swallow it in large chunks. They can crush the shells of crustaceans with their flat back teeth. Harp seals are hunted by killer whales, polar bears, and people.


Deer Rangifer tarandus of Arctic and subarctic regions, common to North America and Eurasia. About 1.2 m/4 ft at the shoulder, it has a thick, brownish coat and broad hooves well adapted to travel over snow. It is the only deer in which both sexes have antlers; these can grow to 1.5 m/5 ft long, and are shed in winter. The Old World reindeer have been domesticated by the Lapps of Scandinavia for centuries. There are two types of North American caribou: the large woodland caribou of the more southerly regions, and the barren-ground caribou of the far north. Reindeer migrate south in winter, moving in large herds. They eat grass, small plants, and lichens.


Thursday, November 19, 2009

Two Headed Snake

This is a rare two headed snake found by a farmer in a village in Alicante, Spain.The chances of a two headed snake surviving in the wild is very slim as both would often fight over which head will swallow the prey as well as difficulty in deciding which direction to go.




Meditation is an intensely personal and spiritual experience. The desired purpose of each meditation technique is to channel normal waking consciousness into a more positive direction by totally transforming one`s state of mind. To meditate is to turn inwards, to concentrate on the inner self.

The entire process of meditation usually entails the three stages of concentration, meditation and enlightenment or absorption. The meditator starts off by concentrating on a certain point. Once attention gets engaged, concentration turns into meditation. And through continuous meditation, the meditator merges with the object of concentration, which might either be the present moment or the Divine Entity.

In some branches of Indian philosopohy, direct perception from the inner self (mana) together with perception that is filtered through the five senses (pancha indriya) form a part of their valid epistemology (pratyaksha jnana). And this self-realization or self-awareness (as popularized by yogananda/paramahansa- yogananda.asp' class='article'> Paramahansa Yogananda), is nothing but the knowledge of the "pure being"—the Self.

Humanity is increasingly turning towards various meditative techniques in order to cope with the increasing stress of modern-day lifestyles. Unable to locate stability in the outside world, people have directed their gaze inwards in a bid to attain peace of mind. Modern psychotherapists have begun to discover various therapeutic benefits of meditation practices. The state of relaxation and the altered state of consciousness—both induced by meditation—are especially effective in psychotherapy.

But more than anything else, meditation is being used as a personal growth device these days—for inculcating a more positive attitude towards life at large.
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