Houseplants add beauty to a home, but sometimes looks can be deceiving. One expert, Mussie Habteselassie, associate professor in the Crop and Soil Sciences Department at the University of Georgia, explains how a root can act as a colony for microorganisms and how an overwatered fern can be more than just an eyesore.
More than a plant
Your lovely ficus does more than add greenery to an enclosed space. It harbors a whole metropolis of bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms. “You are bringing lots of things into your home with a plant,” says Dr. Habteselassie, who specializes in soil microbiology.
In a healthy plant that gets lots of sunlight and the right amount of water, fungi help the root system extract more nutrients from its surroundings. But “if it is overwatered or is in a basement that has a moisture issue, the fungi will produce spores, and those spores can cause allergic reactions,” Dr. Habteselassie says.
For allergic people, symptoms are similar to those of hay fever. Spores can worsen asthma. Plants typically also carry bacteria, though “99% of bacteria in the roots system are beneficial,” the scientist says.
When a plant is under stress—whether from overwatering, underwatering, exposure to extreme temperatures or an assault by an unfriendly fungus, bacteria or insect—it will release chemicals in the form of a gas. “One analogy is when a skunk is attacked, it sprays to defend itself,” Dr. Habteselassie says. Humans are unable to detect the odorless gasses, though home-detection kits are available online.
So let's watch out on our indoor plants. @olalekanade's blog
It can be hard to know if someone is having an epileptic seizure. While some people have convulsions of their whole body, others simply stare blankly into space for a few seconds. The person may lose consciousness or seem unaware of what's going on, make involuntary motions (movements the person has no control over, such as jerking or thrashing one or more parts of the body), or experience unusual feelings or sensations (such as unexplained fear). After a seizure, he or she may feel tired, weak, or confused.
People have seizures when the electrical signals in the brain misfire. These overactive electrical discharges disrupt the brain's normal electrical activity and cause a temporary communication problem among nerve cells.
Having a seizure doesn't always mean that a person has epilepsy. Seizures can be triggered in anyone under certain conditions, such as life-threatening
dehydration or being severely overheated. But when a person experiences repeated seizures for no obvious reason, that person is said to have epilepsy.
Many people develop epilepsy as children or teens. Others develop it later in life. For some people with epilepsy (particularly kids), the seizures eventually become less frequent or disappear altogether.
What Causes Epilepsy?
This's no clear-cut answer to why people have epilepsy. Often doctors can't pinpoint the exact cause of a person's epilepsy. But scientists do know that some things can make a person more likely to develop epilepsy, including:
a brain injury, such as from a car crash or bike accident
an infection or illness that affected the developing brain of a fetus during pregnancy
lack of oxygen to an infant's brain during childbirth
meningitis, encephalitis, or any other type of infection that affects the brain
brain tumors or strokes
poisoning, such as drug abuse or lead or alcohol poisoning
Epilepsy is not contagious (you can't catch it from someone who has it). It's not passed down through families (inherited) in the same way that blue eyes or brown hair are. But someone who has a close relative with epilepsy has a slightly higher risk for it than somebody with no family history of seizures.
Understanding Seizures
Seizures may look frightening, but they're not painful. They affect different people in different ways. Epileptic seizures fall into two main categories: partial and generalized.
Partial seizures start in one part of the brain. The electrical disturbances may then move to other parts of the brain or they may stay in one area until the seizure is over.
Partial seizures can be either simple (where a person doesn't lose consciousness) or complex (where a person loses consciousness). There may be twitching of a finger or several fingers, a hand or arm, or a leg or foot. Certain facial muscles might twitch. Speech might become slurred, unclear, or unusual during the seizure. The person's vision might be affected temporarily. He or she might feel tingling throughout one side of the body. It all depends on where in the brain the abnormal electrical activity is taking place.
Generalized seizures involve electrical disturbances that occur all over the brain at the same time. These include several types of seizures including absence seizures (pronounced ab-SAHNTZ, also called petit mal), tonic-clonic seizures (also called grand mal), and myoclonic epilepsies.
Absence seizures are more common in girls than in boys. In this type of seizure, the person may appear to be daydreaming or may stare off into space. After the seizure, which may last about 15 seconds or less, the person returns to their normal level of activity.
During a tonic-clonic seizure, a person’s eyes may roll back, the muscles may stiffen, and the person might make sudden jerking motions, such as flinging the arms outward. He or she may suddenly go limp and slump down or fall over. The person could also lose control of the bowel or bladder.
Most seizures last only a few seconds or minutes. After a seizure is over, the person might feel sleepy or confused for a few minutes or even an hour or more. People who've had seizures may not remember the seizure or what happened immediately before the event. They may be alert and ready to resume whatever they were doing before the seizure happened. It varies from person to person.
Certain things can sometimes trigger seizures in people with epilepsy. They include:
flashing or bright lights
a lack of sleep
stress
overstimulation (like staring at a computer screen or playing video games for too long)
fever
certain medications
hyperventilation (breathing too fast or too deeply)
What Do Doctors Do?
Doctors who specialize in the brain and other parts of the nervous system are called neurologists (pronounced: nuh-RAH-luh-jists). If you think you might have had a seizure, it's important to tell your doctor about it. He or she will most likely refer you to a neurologist who will check for epilepsy or other conditions.
In addition to doing a physical examination, the neurologist will ask you about any concerns and symptoms you have, your past health, your family's health, any medications you're taking, any allergies you may have, and other issues. This is called the medical history . It's important to give the most accurate description possible of the seizure (or seizures). Identifying the type of seizure a person has helps the doctor decide how to treat it. Because people who've had seizures may not remember anything about them, it's a good idea to get a detailed description from someone who saw it and write it down afterward.
So next time you are privileged to meet an epileptic patient, please show them love and not ignore them as if they are aliens. A little bit holding of the legs,hands and fetching for water to clean them up could do a lot in there life. Is not as if they are cursed, is just a reaction from the brain. Let's help each other, let's show up some helping hands.
@olalekanade'sblog
Feelings of
emptiness—a lack of meaning or purpose—are experienced by most people at some point in life. However, chronic feelings of emptiness, feelings of emotional numbness or despair, and similar experiences may be symptomatic of other mental health concerns, such as depression, anhedonia, or schizophrenia. Emptiness can also be experienced as an aspect of bereavement following the death of a loved one. An individual who experiences consistent and severe feelings of emptiness may find it helpful to speak to a therapist, especially when it becomes difficult to focus on other aspects of life.
In this crazy commercial world we live in, there is a lot of pressure. The pressure to make a certain amount of money, to keep up with certain appearances..
When deep down, we are miserable and empty..
I’ve felt this same feeling and so I write this with an open heart, letting you know it can EASILY improve. But in order to improve you must focus on the problem.
solution.
The problem is you. You are missing something! A hobby, a project, a passion..
Our problem lies in filling this gap with someone or something else.
Think back to a time when we were just happy. Maybe it was with a partner, maybe it was alone, maybe it was with family or with a sports team.
There was once a time in your life when you were fulfilled! When you had drive, energy and passion in all areas of your life, because you had SOMETHING.
ONE or TWO things that kept the fire alive in you.
People find passion in team sports.
They find passion in hobbies, like sailing, tennis, knitting, painting, writing, swimming, surfing or playing games with their kids.
You may be doing it now, but have lost your edge. And the reason is, you no longer see the meaning in what you do. You no longer appreciate the time that you spend with your kids. We forget that quality is always better than quantity.
You may not have the time or the energy to keep up this fake smile on your face, to keep up with a hobby, a sport, a passion.
And when people tell me about lack of time. I ask them one thing. If someone important to you came to the airport tomorrow, your parents, your best friend, someone close (and I mean someone that you REALLY care about), who you haven’t seen in years came tomorrow, and asked to be picked up. In a busy day, could you MAKE TIME for them. Even if only an hour or two, WOULD YOU MAKE TIME FOR THEM?
Of course you would!
So what if you realised, that without your passion, your hobby in your life. You will feel empty! What if realising that without MAKING TIME for these things, the rest of your day seems miserable. Always looking for different ways to find fulfilment..
What if you started to focus on the problem. Seriously focus on the problem. Accept it is a problem and then make time to fix it.
@OlalekanAde's blog
Why did i always find myself into mess all the time? i warned Olajide that we should always use condom, but the condom we use last almost sell me to hell, cost me 15k to treat myself at the clinic. But am i doing the right thing presently, all this drugs just to wash a baby away. is better i kill it now that is still inside of me undeveloped, cause when is physical to people and i kill it, they will call me a murderer. But am SCARED, FATHER HAVE MERCY ON ME!!! This pregnancy is a disgrace to me, it will ruin my career like aunty Bimbo. ---------- FEW MONTHS LATER ------------ Miss Clara: what a beautiful baby, what gender is it? Nurse: a baby boy Miss Clara: brave boy, you cry too much. where is the mother? Nurse: That's she lying on the blue bed. Miss Clara: hello baby mama, congrat on your baby, seems to be your first time (she noded,Yes). i love your baby so much and i have an opinion to you, i don't know if your husband will allow or if you are still schooling, you can be allow to relocate? Omolara: to where ma? Miss Clara: U.K, just for the baby, i think he derserve a better enviroment that it present environment. Omolara: (stood up on bed), am ready if you are ready ma. the baby got no father, he paid me to abort this child, but i kept it bcos am scared of loosing my life. Miss Clara: in that case, i will need some of your information so i can process a passport for you and the baby before heading to the embassy. i think i need to see your parent too? Omolara: yes, they reside in Lagos at Fadeyi bus-stop around Yaba. Miss Clara: kk, give me your contact number and address? Omolara: 080946277-- (cut in) Bekky: (shouting)Omolara, wake up jare. what kind of sleep is this? you are sleeping and you are talking, and what are you doing with all this drugs? Omolara: yeah, so am dreaming.......... abortion lai lai, am not going to destroy my destiny with my own hands. She packed all the drugs and threw them all into the water closet (WC). so are you still going on with that abortion? the fact that you terminate it does not mean you are not a mother, but a mother of a dead child. why not keep it, i understand everything at stake. God always have is way in every of our circumstances, someone else failure cause her pain and regret, does not mean you will also experience such agony. learn from there pain and regret, but choose a better path. @OlalekanAde's blog.....
My grandmother used to say that to a man the loss of a job was tantamount to losing what made him a man. She told me a story about when my grandfather had lost his job in the 1940’s. He had been working for a railroad company and one Friday was given a pink slip in his pay envelope. He was devastated. How could he provide for his family?
Months of fruitless job-hunting followed and my grandfather became frustrated. My grandmother was still working and paid all the bills. She told my grandfather not to worry and always made sure to place “a few dollars” in his pocket believing that it made him feel better not have to ask her for money. It saved his dignity she said.
Losing a job is traumatic to both men and women but somehow men seem to take the “downsizing” or being laid off harder than women. Even in 2008 where we pride ourselves on both spouses working and helping in the house, men do badly when they no longer have a paying job. There are a number of reasons for this.
Men see a great deal of their own worth as a person through their jobs or professions. The ability to earn money reflects who they are in the world. Their self-esteem is unconsciously connected to their work. When they no longer have their work as a benchmark of who they are, they feel a sense of worthlessness in life.
It is the feeling that they are no longer wanted or needed by their employer. While most times the loss of a job has nothing to do with either being wanted or needed but is simply a cost saving measure on the part of the company, men see it as a personal insult. Here are some tips to help you and your spouse to cope with losing a job.
1. If your spouse is suddenly out of a job and you are able financially to do so, have them take some time off.
2. Unless it is absolutely necessary, don’t go from one job straight into another. You need time to collect thoughts about your needs and reinvent yourself if necessary.
3. If going back to school is an option, encourage them to do so. Maybe there is something they have always wanted to do and now is the time to consider it.
4. Be supportive and not just financially. It is easy to say be supportive but, remember, there will be mood swings, forms of despair, and angry words. The working spouse is out in the world while the non-worker feels stuck at home.
5. Have a sense of humor about the situation and what’s going on in your life. This helps tremendously. Remember that you love this person, grumpy or not, and he loves you too.
6. If a depression does occur don’t hesitate to seek professional help. It can save your sanity and your marriage.
Above all, think positively. Negativity begets negativity. Show support in all ways possible and slip some money into their wallets. Let them know that you’re in this together. Remember? For richer or poorer. That says it all. OlalekanAde'sblog
Soon after Steve Jobs returned to Apple as CEO in 1997, he decided that a shipping company wasn’t delivering spare parts fast enough. The shipper said it couldn’t do better, and it didn’t have to: Apple had signed a contract granting it the business at the current pace. As Walter Isaacson describes in his best-selling biography, Steve Jobs, the recently recrowned chief executive had a simple response: Break the contract. When an Apple manager warned him that this decision would probably mean a lawsuit, Jobs responded, “Just tell them if they fuck with us, they’ll never get another fucking dime from this company, ever.”
The shipper did sue. The manager quit Apple. (Jobs “would have fired me anyway,” he later told Isaacson.) The legal imbroglio took a year and presumably a significant amount of money to resolve. But meanwhile, Apple hired a new shipper that met the expectations of the company’s uncompromising CEO.
What lesson should we draw from this anecdote? After all, we turn to the lives of successful people for inspiration and instruction. But the lesson here might make us uncomfortable: Violate any norm of social or business interaction that stands between you and what you want. Jobs routinely told subordinates that they were assholes, that they never did anything right. According to Isaacson, even Jonathan Ive, Apple’s incomparable design chief, came in for rough treatment on occasion. Once, after checking into a five-star London hotel handpicked for him by Ive, Jobs called it “a piece of shit” and stormed out. “The normal rules of social engagement, he feels, don’t apply to him,” Ive explained to the biographer. Jobs’ flouting of those rules extended outside the office, to a family that rarely got to spend much time with him as well as to strangers (police officers, retail workers), who experienced the CEO’s verbal wrath whenever they displeased him.
Jobs has been dead for nearly a year, but the biography about him is still a best seller. Indeed, his life story has emerged as an odd sort of holy scripture for entrepreneurs—a gospel and an antigospel at the same time. To some, Jobs’ life has revealed the importance of sticking firmly to one’s vision and goals, no matter the psychic toll on employees or business associates. To others, Jobs serves as a cautionary tale, a man who changed the world but at the price of alienating almost everyone around him. The divergence in these reactions is a testament to the two deep and often contradictory hungers that drive so many of us today: We want to succeed in the world of work, but we also want satisfaction in the realm of home and family. For those who, like Jobs, have pledged to “put a dent in the universe,” his thorny life story has forced a reckoning. Is it really worth being like Steve?
In one camp are what you might call the acolytes. They’re businesspeople who have taken the life of Steve Jobs as license to become more aggressive as visionaries, as competitors, and above all as bosses. They’re giving themselves over to the thrill of being a general—and, at times, a dictator. Work was already the center of their lives, but Jobs’ story has made them resolve to double down on that choice.
Steve Davis, CEO of TwoFour, a software company that caters to financial institutions, was eager to talk about Jobs’ influence on his own life and career. But first he had to find a free half hour. When he finally did steal a few moments to speak, he explained that he had consciously set aside certain aspects of his family life, since he believes that startups fail when those involved aren’t committed to being available 24 hours a day. Luckily, Davis told me, he was blessed with a wife who picked up the slack.
Davis detailed these choices matter-of-factly, but his voice rose with fervor when he described the intensity and uncertainty of entrepreneurship. He loved every minute of it. He didn’t operate with a corporate safety net. His lawyer was calling him at that very moment with a contract question, and Davis needed to pick a direction and just go with it. What should he decide? He admitted he didn’t know. The thrill came from the possibility that he might be wrong. “Guys who start companies are different from other people,” he said. “We’re willing to fail. Look at Jobs. He got knocked down, and he kept going. He’s totally unconventional, driving on his particular path, and either you join him or get out of the way.”
Join or get out of the way—it’s a phrase that sums up what Jobs’ life has taught his admirers today. Andrew Hargadon, a professor at UC Davis and author of How Breakthroughs Happen: The Surprising Truth About How Companies Innovate, points out that Jobs’ brashness has helped inspire a larger reaction to several decades of conventional wisdom about the importance of worker empowerment and consensus decision- making. “Jobs is showing us the value in the old-school, autocratic way. We’ve gone so far toward the other extreme, toward a bovine sociology in which happy cows are supposed to produce more milk.” That is, it took a hippie-geek like Jobs to give other bosses permission to be aggressive and domineering again.
This isn’t aggression for its own sake but for the good of a company. Tristan O’Tierney, a Mac and iPhone software developer, helped Twitter creator Jack Dorsey found the credit-card-swiping startup Square three years ago. O’Tierney says that he now sees the value in bluntly telling people their work is crap. “You don’t make better products by saying everything is great,” he explains. “You make them better by forcing people to do work they didn’t know they had in them.”
Aaron Levie, a self-described Jobs “wantrepreneur,” started Box, which allows cloud-based file-sharing, in his USC dorm room in 2005. To new hires, he quotes Jobs—”Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected”—to make clear to them that Box is just such an environment. “My lesson from Jobs,” Levie says, “is that I can push my employees further than they thought possible, and I won’t rush any product out the door without it being perfect.” He adds: “That approach comes with collateral damage on the people side. Olalekanade'sblog
When malice is unleashed in a marriage, we are fools if we think we can contain it in a specific war with each other. Our kids will be casualties. Most of us have seen fathers and mothers use their children as weapons against each other. They not only attacked and successfully destroyed their kids’ home in their war with each other, but they then used the kids as weapons to attack the new homes. Why?
Malice is never satisfied, only stoked.
Relishing hatred, anger, bitterness, and resentment is like feeding an addiction more than satisfying a hunger. Every time you agree to mull over your hatred, it’s like taking another hit. You keep going until you all but devour each other.
Your spouse, or your former spouse, must never be seen as an enemy. Even if they try to turn you into an enemy find refuge in Jesus’ admonition to love your enemy and to pray for those who persecute you. You can’t satisfy hatred. Revenge never brings joy. If you harbor bitterness and resentment there will never be a time when you say to yourself, “Enough.” You’ll always go too far.
If you would have peace, if you would have joy, if you would know love, you would have to view malice itself rather than any person as your enemy. We have to avoid playing a game that is always fatal, that serves no one, that will eventually destroy everything we hold dear. Devouring each other won’t bring satisfaction; all it will do is set us up to devour someone else (beginning with our children) until the only one left, is us.
If you or someone you know is in this destructive cycle, ask yourself (or them) a few questions:
When will enough be enough?
If I get what I want will that really make things better for me, or is it really more about making him/her pay?
Will his/her increased misery really increase my happiness? And if so, isn’t that a sad commentary about me?
Do I really think it’s possible to hurt my spouse without my kids getting caught by the ricochet?
Do I want to make my happiness dependent on someone else’s downfall?
Is my response/attitude indicative of someone who has received grace and mercy from God?
Some blog posts are meant to challenge you; others are meant to be tools. Perhaps you know a couple who are turning on each other and their children in their war with each other. Consider passing this post on to them. And if you’ve received it, will you at least accept that this was shared as an act of love and concern, and pray about it?
