Thursday, October 17, 2002
	9:37:22 AM   Cuddling a cat beats talking to spouse Study finds pets ease stress (with some exceptions) By ANDRé PICARD PUBLIC HEALTH REPORTER Tuesday, September 24, 2002 – Page A1 Spending a few minutes cuddling a pet can do more to relieve stress than trying to talk about problems with your spouse, a new study says. Researchers also found that having a pet present when you carry out unpleasant tasks is more effective than human support. "While the idea of a pet as social support may appear to some as a peculiar notion, our participants' responses to stress, combined with their descriptions of the meaning of pets in their lives, suggest to us that social support can indeed cross species," said Karen Allen, a psychologist at the State University of New York in Buffalo, and lead author of the research. To conduct the study, published in today's edition of the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, researchers turned to 240 married couples, half of whom had a cat or dog as a pet. Each participant underwent two "stress tasks": mental arithmetic problems and submerging one hand in ice water for two minutes. They conducted the tasks in the presence of, separately, spouse and pet, and their blood pressure and heart rate were monitored. Those who did arithmetic in the presence of a spouse made the most errors. When pets were present, participants not only did better at math, but were less stressed by the cold-water test and recovered more quickly. There was no difference in results between dog and cat owners. "The findings demonstrate that pets can buffer reactivity to acute stress as well as diminish perceptions of stress," Dr. Allen said. A second study, also published in Psychosomatic Medicine, found that arguing with your spouse is not only stressful; it can damage your heart. Laura Glynn, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, said an argument not only causes a person's blood pressure to rise, but ruminating about drives blood pressure up again in a way that physical stresses do not. "Exposure to emotional stress may be of greater potential harm to cardiovascular health than stresses that lack emotion, even though both types of stress may have been provoked by the same initial responses," she said. The study was conducted on 72 students who were given four tasks, two designed to induce an emotionally driven rise in blood pressure and two designed to provoke strictly a physical rise. Students who were left alone after the emotional task tended to ruminate over it and their blood pressure stayed high. But students who were distracted saw their blood pressure return quickly to normal. Chronic stress is considered an important factor in elevation of blood pressure, which is a major cause of cardiovascular disease. As many as 20 per cent of Canadians suffer from high blood pressure. Chronically high blood pressure can lead to heart attacks, atherosclerosis, strokes and hardening of the arteries. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in Canada. A recent poll conducted for The Globe and Mail and CTV News revealed that the greatest stressor in the life of Canadians is work. Forty-three per cent of respondents said work was the main cause of stress in their life; 39 per cent said finances; another 10 per cent pointed to children, and 7 per cent said it was their health.   9:34:00 AM   eBusiness Journal August 2002, Vol. 4 No. 8   Geeks: The true innovators by Dave Cosgrave It's fair to say that Web services have plenty of work to do before they even begin to live up to the hype. Instances of Web services in action — whether slashing costs, hoisting profits, or enabling the ultra-lean and super-nimble corporation — seem few and far between. Of the few, none really demonstrate the kinds of ingenuity or creativity that marked the early (and equally hyped) days of the Web. Most are straightforward enterprise application integration (EAI) projects. EAI may be interesting to some, but it just doesn't do it for me. To find truly innovative applications of Web services technology, you have to stop looking in corporate IT departments, and start paying attention to the geeks. The techno-blogs are buzzing these days with clever initiatives that utilize open APIs from Google, Amazon, eBay and growing list of others. Most of these cyber-contraptions are silly, even useless. None is even close to any sort of commercial application. But that's not the point. It took a critical mass of "outsiders," fiddling around with e-mail and HTML, to kick-start the Web. The same thing is happening with Web services, as the development community has begun using XML and SOAP (or its substitutes) to exploit IT and business processes in new and appealing ways. Google's API in particular is generating much of the activity. On the silly and useless side of things try Google Smackdown, where you can compare the relative popularity of two keywords in a single search. (Note: Google references to Dave still outnumber references to "Osama" by more than 10 to one.) You'll probably find the Googlematic a more useful tool. This handy little application lets you query Google, as well as receive a subset of the results, via MSN and AOL instant messenger. Just send an IM to Googlematic, and the rest is magic. The most interesting use of the Google API I have seen is the Touch Graph GoogleBrowser. It queries Google's similar pages database to visually represent complex linkages between Web pages. In other words, it helps you to "see" the Web. The GoogleBrowser has been heralded as a breakthrough in the presentation of associative information, and a social networking killer app. Other initiatives grabbing attention tap into the considerable IT power of Amazon. Delicious.org, for one, maps the live playlist of an independent Seattle radio station onto Amazon's CD catalogue, resulting in a new kind of retail organization. Bookwatch trolls the blog universe for Amazon references, which it then compiles in a linked Top 10 list. In a variation on the GoogleBrowser (which is open source), the Amazon Vista browser draws on Amazon's collaborative filtering application to graph associations between products, based on buying patterns of customers. Amazon, a persistent innovator in its own right, never thought of that. I expect the next wave of grassroots Web services innovation will see the development community experiment with combinations of these elemental Web Services. Think of it as open source — or maybe Lego — raised to the level of business design. With a little imagination, we can imagine snapping together processes from Google, Amazon and eBay into intriguing new structures. Not all of them will be useful or even stable at first. Evolutionary forces will sort the winners from the losers. I also expect to see more and more Web-based services, like MapQuest or ePinions.com, publish open APIs in order to capitalize on this eager and highly capable innovation engine. Among economists there is growing recognition of the crucial role users play in the supply of ingenuity, from the design of mountain bike components to modules in computer operating systems. The early users of the Web, the stereotypical computer geeks, drove its evolution through innovation. Now, they're interested in Web services. Best keep an eye on them. Dave Cosgrave works for Digital 4Sight (formerly The Alliance for Converging Technologies), an international consulting, research and education organization based in Toronto. He is also co-author of Chips & Pop: Decoding the Nexus Generation. He can be reached at dcosgrave@digital-4sight.com http://www.itbusiness.ca/index.asp?theaction=61&;sid=49470# Copyright © 2002 Transcontinental Media Inc. All rights reserved.   9:16:57 AM   A Blogger Code of UnProfessional Ethics My readers: ...know me. They will judge me according to context. ...are smart. They will not be misled by some stray comment I may happen to make. ...are kind. They make allowances and forgive me ahead of time. In return: I will speak my mind about what I care about. I will not revise too much or too carefully: Blogging about opera is still jazz. I will not anticipate and reply to every objection: Punctilliousness in pursuit of the appearance of propriety kills voice. If I apologize, it will be because I have actually betrayed my readers' trust, not because I may have, might have, or could be misread as having done so. I pledge to keep the reading of my weblog purely optional. I love you, Doc. JOHO the Blog Wednesday, October 16, 2002 A Blogger Code of UnProfessional Ethics Some mighty fine blogging on this topic going on over at AKMA's place. For example, he writes: "When we’ve been most effectively seduced, we’re not aware of it ourselves." As they say in churches around the land: Bingo! Also, I am reminded of Chris Pirillo's Blogger's Manifesto from February '02 (as well as my parody of it). 8:41 AM | PermaLink Full Disclosure Why I Can't Ever Tell the Truth about Microsoft, Ever To satisfy the requirements of the new Standards of Integrity and Professional Ethics for bloggers (for a discussion, see Dave, Doc and Mitch), I am hereby posting all the influences Microsoft has had on me, pro and con. I use and like many Microsoft products Microsoft products have been crashing on me regularly for over 15 years I got a reviewer's copy of XP for free I've bought thousands of dollars worth of Microsoft stuff, including upgrades that I felt had been forced on me I competed against them at three companies I cooperated with them at the same three companies The Microsoft Word product manager listed the product I was flogging on a slide at Documation 1992 as an excellent complement to Word Word eventually incorporated many of that product's best ideas. (You like them right mouse button menus? You're welcome.) I got a free beta of their Word-to-SGML software I couldn't get the free beta of their Word-to-SGML software to work When I was liaison to Microsoft for a company I worked for 1991-1993, the Microsoft manager I was working with paid for my lunch a couple of times in their cafeteria During all the time that I was liaison, they never once took me to a nice place for dinner I have routinely installed single-user Microsoft products on two or more household machines up until XP and Office 2002 Having to pay to multiply install software I've bought means this was my last upgrade, pal Every Microsoft engineer I have ever met has impressed me with his or her intelligence, customer focus, and integrity I routinely curse the stupidity of the assholes who design dumbass fucking Microsoft products. What are they, a bunch of morons? I hate Microsoft's de facto monopoly of office productivity software I am happy that everyone uses PowerPoint because it makes complex events so much simpler I am very glad I am not Bill Gates I am envious of Bill Gates (PS: When Dave asks, "It's a matter of what kind of blogging we want -- do we want it to be sloppy or crisp," my answer is an emphatic yes.) 8:20 PM | PermaLink JOHO the Blog Tuesday, October 15, 2002 Full Disclosure Why I Can't Ever Tell the Truth about Microsoft, Ever

© Copyright 2004 Eric Hartwell. Last update: 4/14/2004; 6:44:45 AM. This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.