Depression

The depression is a kind of illness which affects the body, mood, and mainly the thoughts. The survey says that there are two times as many women who suffer from depression as men. One can identify that he or she is depressed by seeing the following symptoms like they may feel hopeless, very sad, have no energy or interest in doing anything or feel worthless. Most of the people portray depression as sad feeling or they feel as empty that don’t go away from them. This type of depression which does not go away is termed as clinical depression. Depression is quite different from feeling blue or going down for a few hours or a couple of days.

There are many things that cause depression. Depression can come through or run in families or may be through the changes in your brain chemistry and/or living through painful and also the difficult events in one’s life can cause depression. Sometimes for people who take medications for cancer, heart problems, arthritis and also high blood pressure. Depression can also be caused by some illnesses like stroke, Parkinson's disease and hormonal problems.

It is proved that most of the people get better by taking proper treatment. The depression is a serious illness which needs to be treated immediately. It's not one’s fault that we are depressed, and we can always get better.

The Universe in a Year

The American astronomer Carl Sagan who lived during the period of 1934-96 was the first person who suggested a “cosmic calendar” as a way of helping people to understand the history of the Universe. He placed everything into the scale of a calendar year; the galaxies are formed over nine months and the Earth appears in September. All human history is crowded into the last five minutes of the last day of the year. Recent time has to be divided into seconds and fractions of a second. So everything that happened over the last 475 years place in less than the last second of the last minute of the year.

Iceberg Fact File

An Iceberg (below) is a large piece of ice that has broken away from a glacier or ice shell. Icebergs in the North Atlantic mostly come from glaciers on Greenland, and those in the South Atlantic from the Antarctic.

1. The word iceberg probably comes from the Dutch ijisberg, or ice hill.
2. Icebergs float because they are made of fresh water which is less dense than sea water.
3. Seven-eighths of an iceberg is below the surface of the sea, hence the expression “the tip of the iceberg”, which means that more is concealed than can be seen.
4. The tallest iceberg ever measured was 168m high. It was seen in 1958 off Greenland and was as tall as a 50-storey skyscraper.
5. Small icebergs those less than 1m high and 5m wide are known as growlers, because of the noise they make.
6. Iceberg larger than growlers is called berg bits; then they are graded small, medium, large or very large. Very large icebergs are those measuring more than 35m high and 213m wide.
7. One of the biggest icebergs of recent times, known as 8-15, broke away from the Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica, in March 2000. It had an average length of 29.5km and width of 37km, giving it a total area about the size of Jamaica!.
8. The air trapped in iceberg ice – which is “harvested” and sold for use in drinks – may be as much as 3000 years old.
9. At least 500 incidents have been recorded of ships striking icebergs. In 1875, the 82 crew members of the schooner Caledonia were rescued after their ship sank ad they spent a night sitting on an iceberg. The worst – ever disaster involving an iceberg happened when the Titanic struck an iceberg on 14 April 1912 and 1,503 lives were lost.
10. During World War II, Lord Mountbatten led a program devised by British inventor Geoffrey Pyke to build artificial iceberg to use as aircraft carriers, but the projects, codenamed Habbakuk, was abandoned.
11. About 10,000 to 15,000 new icebergs are formed every year. The process is called “calving”

Want to know about sleep

This is a small bit of note which I read very long back. Its an important part for our life. Every individual seeks, wants and even ready to pay as much as money as required. Ya it’s all about our sleep. Sleep is a temporary state of unconsciousness that restores the Neuro transmitters which are utilized in the course of the day. (Neuro transmitters are chemical messengers used in nervous system for its routine function). In addition, the non-stop organs such as heart and lungs relax during deep sleep and work with ease. That is why the heartbeat respiratory rate and B.P. come down during deep sleep.

Though it depends on the physical and mental activity, normally 6-8 hours of sleep is sufficient for an adult to replace Neuro transmitters.

There are two types of sleep. Deep sleep or dreamless sleep and superficial sleep or dreamful sleep.

In the course of the night, normally we start with deep sleep for about 90 minutes. And this is followed by 20 minutes of superficial sleep and once again there is a repetition of this cycle as long as we sleep. Deep sleep relaxes our body, reduces our basal metabolic rate and refreshes us. The deeper the sleep a person has in the night. The more refreshing he will be on waking up.

Superficial sleep is associated with dreams, rapid eye movement, increase in heart rate, irregular breathing and is not very refreshing.

It also leads to nightmares, teeth grinding and hallucination. A technique such as meditation is very good and exercises help to eliminate superficial sleep and induce deep sleep.

Do not sleep if you are really not sleepy, as superficial sleep has no positive effect on your body. But the most important thing is, we must feel fresh after getting up from sleep. Otherwise the real benefit of sleep is lost!