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If you access web-based services such as social networking websites, message forums, or online banking applications, you’ve probably had to register for a user account. This sometimes drawn-out process required you to enter a login name as well as a password (or get one assigned to you), providing some sense of security when accessing the service.

Since good passwords (not the words ‘computer’ nor ’secret’) can be almost impossible to remember (such as a ten character combination of letters, numbers, and punctuation), many services now use a “security question” you can answer in case you forget your username and/or password and need to retrieve or reset them. By offering a security question, these services can help ensure it is really you when a request is made for your login information.

Some websites may even require answering this security question as well as your password every time you use their services, offering a supposed second level of account security.

Security questions are normally facts that supposedly only you can recall, information that should not change. Several common examples are listed below:

* First School Attended
* Mother’s Maiden Name
* Name of First Pet
* Where a Spouse was First Met

Some websites force you into answering a predefined question, a popular one being your mother’s maiden name. Others offer a list of questions from which you may choose, but some may allow you to type your own questions and answers. This allows you to enter private information such as the name of your favorite musical group, the name you gave a pet rock, or the celebrity poster you placed on your wall as a kid.

Unfortunately, the answers to some security questions are well-known, easy guessed, can be obtained online, or can be found via public records or a private investigator (and if someone truly wants access to your account they may go through a lot of trouble). Thus, these questions, while provided to either offer a second level of security or remove the need for customer service representatives to otherwise verify identity when you request a new password, can cause all sorts of trouble.

Especially if only a security question is required to obtain or reset a password, or even a combination of a security question and other pieces of personal information, if someone can guess or obtain the answers to your questions, it is open season on your account!

This type of secret question and answer hacking can and has affected many individuals, including famous people. As an example, according to reports, 2008 Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin had her e-mail account breached when someone allegedly answered a few questions during a password reset request. The questions were her birthday, zip code, and where she met her spouse (Wasilla High), information available on the web or easily guessed.

Now that you know how easy it may be for others to access your account via a security question, what can you do to help protect yourself?

* If offered the choice, pick the most obscure security question offered or type your own question and answer if this feature is available. Pick something you and only you may know – something you are positive is not available in public records, your Facebook page, or elsewhere online. Never use your mother’s maiden name, social security number, or birthplace, as these can either be found or cause other security and privacy problems if someone does hack the account and read the answers to your security questions.

* Use different security questions for each and every service. No matter how secure you make your account, it can get hacked due to lackluster security procedures of the web service provider or even due to an inside job. Someone could read the answers to your security questions and use these to gain access to your accounts on other websites!

* Consider treating your security question’s answer as a second password. You can either encrypt the answer by replacing the letter ‘O’ with a number 0, the letter ‘l’ with a number 1, the letter ‘a’ with the @ symbol, etc., though as dictionary attacks become more advanced this may become less effective. Or “go crazy” and create nonsensical answers just like your passwords as a combination of letters, numbers, and punctuation symbols.

The downside to this method is that your answer may be impossible to remember so you’ll have to store it somewhere. And if you do forget your security question answer or cannot find it, you may never be able to reset your password! As a best case scenario you might be able to call customer service or send a copy of your ID to prove your identity. These processes could take a long time, problematic if, for example, you need to use an online banking service to pay your utilities bill today. And remember that some sites may require you to answer your security question every time you login, not just if you forget your password.

While website user account security used to revolve around just a login ID and a password, security questions have become very commonplace, especially as user verification when retrieving a lost password. If you are forced to answer such a question, try to pick the most obscure information possible so it is not easily guessed or found. Use different security questions on each and every website in case your account does get hacked and your answers read. Finally, consider treating your security question as a second password, making it cryptic thus difficult to hack. Security questions have become a modern fact of life on the Internet, so learn how to use them to your advantage.

Copyright 2009 Andrew Malek.

Read more on Why Security Questions Can Be Bad News…

The best “treatment” for cancer is to prevent it from occurring. Research is ongoing to evaluate environmental and lifestyle factors that may be associated with an increased incidence of cancer. Identifying such risk factors may allow individuals to modify lifestyle choices in order to reduce their risk of developing cancer.

Read more on Terramed Alliance News Moderate Alcohol Consumption Increases Risk of Cancer in Women…

Your desktop news ticker automatically makes your computer desktop feel like Times Square. As silly as it may sound, but as a decision-making who is in charge of a large department in a rather successful corporation, I find that I like to keep up on in current events. The only problem is that I often do not have the time to read the newspaper. Oh sure, I get to listen to morning radio, and I do that every morning, but I’ve always been driven to success. A half an hour of radio news on the way to work might be enough for some people to feel connected to the world, but for me it barely even begins to make me feel in touch. For me, if I am not aware of all of the important things that are going on in every part of the world all day, right from the handiness of my computer desktop, I might as well be in the middle of nowhere without even wireless internet. And that is where my Fox desktop news ticker comes into the picture!

For sure, you can tell right off the bat that it is going to give you all the news that you need to feel in tune with what is going on around you, even if you only read the headlines on the desktop news ticker. Why else would they call it “fair and impartial” reporting if it was not just that? And the headlines on the desktop news ticker are usually graphic enough so that, if you are extremely busy as I am, you can get by without reading the articles at all, and still know what is happening around you. But if you don’t want to read what is going on, no problem. Just click the headline as it scrolls by on the trusty desktop news ticker, and it will pop right up for you. No joking. It is some brilliant innovation, I must say.

Even though if you are not a fan of Fox News, for instance if you are a Communist or something, and still happen to be smart enough to read, you can get a desktop news ticker for many other publications. In fact, there are some desktop news tickers that allow you to select from between many different news sites, so that you can vary them according to your mood, or according to whether you would prefer to hear fair and balanced reporting, or not that day.

Read more on Desktop News Ticker – Things You Ought-To-Know Guide….

Every health and lifestyle magazine contains articles claiming stress is bad for us. They list dozens of ways to relieve stress, from exercise to eating healthy foods. A wide range of relaxation techniques have also been proven to help manage stress in our crazy-busy world, especially for people who take care of others and tend to neglect themselves.

But stress is not always as bad as these cautionary articles insist. In fact, some stress is actually necessary to keep us going and growing.

Our individual responses to different types and levels of stress can either drain or energize us. It is how we perceive and process both ongoing and unexpected stressors that intensifies or reduces their impact on our bodies, minds and emotions.

The term “stress” was first used in the mid-1950s by endocrinologist Dr. Hans Selye in his book “The Stress of Life.” In his research experiments, Selye discovered that we experience stress not only when we hear bad news but also when we receive good news. He differentiated these two types of stressors by calling negative stress “distress” and positive stress “eustress” (the Greek prefix “eu” means well or good).

The idea that we naturally feel stressed by positive experiences — like getting married, having a baby, graduations, promotions, winning awards or races — is echoed in the Social Readjustment Ratings Scale. Devised by University of Washington medical researchers Holmes and Rahe, the SRRS ranks the impact of good stress-events as well as bad stressors like death, divorce or losing a job.

They discovered it is the accumulation of minor plus major changes over a period of time that increases one’s chances of developing stress-related ailments like heart disease, cancer or a weakened immune system. Stress effects also intensify when several changes occur without enough time between them to recharge our physical and mental resources.

When dealing with normal life changes, Holmes and Rahe also concluded that a single event is rarely stressful enough to cause significant illness if we have some control over the situation and are able to view it as a challenge or opportunity instead of a threat.

So stress is not always bad or unhealthy. It can actually keep us from becoming complacent or staying too long in jobs, relationships or environments which are not good for us. When bad stress builds to the “breaking point,” it usually forces us to make choices and change our behavior or environment with positive and healthier results.

Stress is also necessary to keep us moving forward while working toward a goal — like a creative or business project — or training for athletic events like championship games or marathons. This type of eustress prevents us from slowing down or giving up too soon and helps us build momentum in the early stages to empower us to reach the “finish line.”

So positive stress management can actually give us a Competitive Edge via increased focus and drive. As we move forward on what researchers call the Performance Stress Curve, eustress helps us make choices, take actions and communicate more clearly.

When it comes to managing stress, there are two basic approaches: Defensive or Offensive. If we take a Defensive approach, we subconsciously distort reality by hoping the situation will change without having to do anything about it. But this keeps us in a state of denial and often amplifies the internal impact of distress, contributing to disease or depression.

Taking an Offensive approach, however, enables us to manage stress by using it to our advantage. By consciously changing or adapting, we adjust to life-changes organically and can view things in perspective that at first feel like problems. Then we can reframe these “problems” as opportunities or challenges and take appropriate action.

Offensive ways to manage stress include:
1.Changing our situation whenever possible
2.Increasing our ability to cope with the situation as it is
3.Changing our perception so the situation looks and feels different
4.Changing our behavior, as this is truly where we have the most control

Whenever we feel stressed, it can be useful to first determine whether it’s Distress or Eustress. Then we can decide whether to become Offensive by utilizing or adjusting it, or remain Defensive and wait to see if the situation changes on its own. Sometimes choosing to live with stress is appropriate, like when it energizes our Competitive Edge.

We can also balance our stress levels to avoid being thrown off-center too easily or often. Ongoing stress management techniques for creating balance include sleeping well, eating healthy foods, exercising, meditating &/or focusing on the positive things in our lives. These are simple and inexpensive ways to relieve pressure, especially when we’re faced with unexpected events or must manage stress over a long period of time.

While the bad news is that it’s nearly impossible to avoid stress in our crazy-busy world, the good news is that using stress management techniques and being mindful can actually make stress empowering instead of draining. This puts us in control of the stressors in our lives so they can’t stop us from continuing to go forward and grow more joyfully empowered every day.

Read more on The Good News About Stress Management: How “good” Stress Keeps Us Going & Growing…

Every health and lifestyle magazine contains articles claiming stress is bad for us. They list dozens of ways to relieve stress, from exercise to eating healthy foods. A wide range of relaxation techniques have also been proven to help manage stress in our crazy-busy world, especially for people who take care of others and tend to neglect themselves.

But stress is not always as bad as these cautionary articles insist. In fact, some stress is actually necessary to keep us going and growing.

Our individual responses to different types and levels of stress can either drain or energize us. It is how we perceive and process both ongoing and unexpected stressors that intensifies or reduces their impact on our bodies, minds and emotions.

The term “stress” was first used in the mid-1950s by endocrinologist Dr. Hans Selye in his book “The Stress of Life.” In his research experiments, Selye discovered that we experience stress not only when we hear bad news but also when we receive good news. He differentiated these two types of stressors by calling negative stress “distress” and positive stress “eustress” (the Greek prefix “eu” means well or good).

The idea that we naturally feel stressed by positive experiences — like getting married, having a baby, graduations, promotions, winning awards or races — is echoed in the Social Readjustment Ratings Scale. Devised by University of Washington medical researchers Holmes and Rahe, the SRRS ranks the impact of good stress-events as well as bad stressors like death, divorce or losing a job.

They discovered it is the accumulation of minor plus major changes over a period of time that increases one’s chances of developing stress-related ailments like heart disease, cancer or a weakened immune system. Stress effects also intensify when several changes occur without enough time between them to recharge our physical and mental resources.

When dealing with normal life changes, Holmes and Rahe also concluded that a single event is rarely stressful enough to cause significant illness if we have some control over the situation and are able to view it as a challenge or opportunity instead of a threat.

So stress is not always bad or unhealthy. It can actually keep us from becoming complacent or staying too long in jobs, relationships or environments which are not good for us. When bad stress builds to the “breaking point,” it usually forces us to make choices and change our behavior or environment with positive and healthier results.

Stress is also necessary to keep us moving forward while working toward a goal — like a creative or business project — or training for athletic events like championship games or marathons. This type of eustress prevents us from slowing down or giving up too soon and helps us build momentum in the early stages to empower us to reach the “finish line.”

So positive stress management can actually give us a Competitive Edge via increased focus and drive. As we move forward on what researchers call the Performance Stress Curve, eustress helps us make choices, take actions and communicate more clearly.

When it comes to managing stress, there are two basic approaches: Defensive or Offensive. If we take a Defensive approach, we subconsciously distort reality by hoping the situation will change without having to do anything about it. But this keeps us in a state of denial and often amplifies the internal impact of distress, contributing to disease or depression.

Taking an Offensive approach, however, enables us to manage stress by using it to our advantage. By consciously changing or adapting, we adjust to life-changes organically and can view things in perspective that at first feel like problems. Then we can reframe these “problems” as opportunities or challenges and take appropriate action.

Offensive ways to manage stress include:
1.Changing our situation whenever possible
2.Increasing our ability to cope with the situation as it is
3.Changing our perception so the situation looks and feels different
4.Changing our behavior, as this is truly where we have the most control

Whenever we feel stressed, it can be useful to first determine whether it’s Distress or Eustress. Then we can decide whether to become Offensive by utilizing or adjusting it, or remain Defensive and wait to see if the situation changes on its own. Sometimes choosing to live with stress is appropriate, like when it energizes our Competitive Edge.

We can also balance our stress levels to avoid being thrown off-center too easily or often. Ongoing stress management techniques for creating balance include sleeping well, eating healthy foods, exercising, meditating &/or focusing on the positive things in our lives. These are simple and inexpensive ways to relieve pressure, especially when we’re faced with unexpected events or must manage stress over a long period of time.

While the bad news is that it’s nearly impossible to avoid stress in our crazy-busy world, the good news is that using stress management techniques and being mindful can actually make stress empowering instead of draining. This puts us in control of the stressors in our lives so they can’t stop us from continuing to go forward and grow more joyfully empowered every day.

Read more on The Good News About Stress Management: How “good” Stress Keeps Us Going & Growing…

Every health and lifestyle magazine contains articles claiming stress is bad for us. They list dozens of ways to relieve stress, from exercise to eating healthy foods. A wide range of relaxation techniques have also been proven to help manage stress in our crazy-busy world, especially for people who take care of others and tend to neglect themselves.

But stress is not always as bad as these cautionary articles insist. In fact, some stress is actually necessary to keep us going and growing.

Our individual responses to different types and levels of stress can either drain or energize us. It is how we perceive and process both ongoing and unexpected stressors that intensifies or reduces their impact on our bodies, minds and emotions.

The term “stress” was first used in the mid-1950s by endocrinologist Dr. Hans Selye in his book “The Stress of Life.” In his research experiments, Selye discovered that we experience stress not only when we hear bad news but also when we receive good news. He differentiated these two types of stressors by calling negative stress “distress” and positive stress “eustress” (the Greek prefix “eu” means well or good).

The idea that we naturally feel stressed by positive experiences — like getting married, having a baby, graduations, promotions, winning awards or races — is echoed in the Social Readjustment Ratings Scale. Devised by University of Washington medical researchers Holmes and Rahe, the SRRS ranks the impact of good stress-events as well as bad stressors like death, divorce or losing a job.

They discovered it is the accumulation of minor plus major changes over a period of time that increases one’s chances of developing stress-related ailments like heart disease, cancer or a weakened immune system. Stress effects also intensify when several changes occur without enough time between them to recharge our physical and mental resources.

When dealing with normal life changes, Holmes and Rahe also concluded that a single event is rarely stressful enough to cause significant illness if we have some control over the situation and are able to view it as a challenge or opportunity instead of a threat.

So stress is not always bad or unhealthy. It can actually keep us from becoming complacent or staying too long in jobs, relationships or environments which are not good for us. When bad stress builds to the “breaking point,” it usually forces us to make choices and change our behavior or environment with positive and healthier results.

Stress is also necessary to keep us moving forward while working toward a goal — like a creative or business project — or training for athletic events like championship games or marathons. This type of eustress prevents us from slowing down or giving up too soon and helps us build momentum in the early stages to empower us to reach the “finish line.”

So positive stress management can actually give us a Competitive Edge via increased focus and drive. As we move forward on what researchers call the Performance Stress Curve, eustress helps us make choices, take actions and communicate more clearly.

When it comes to managing stress, there are two basic approaches: Defensive or Offensive. If we take a Defensive approach, we subconsciously distort reality by hoping the situation will change without having to do anything about it. But this keeps us in a state of denial and often amplifies the internal impact of distress, contributing to disease or depression.

Taking an Offensive approach, however, enables us to manage stress by using it to our advantage. By consciously changing or adapting, we adjust to life-changes organically and can view things in perspective that at first feel like problems. Then we can reframe these “problems” as opportunities or challenges and take appropriate action.

Offensive ways to manage stress include:
1.Changing our situation whenever possible
2.Increasing our ability to cope with the situation as it is
3.Changing our perception so the situation looks and feels different
4.Changing our behavior, as this is truly where we have the most control

Whenever we feel stressed, it can be useful to first determine whether it’s Distress or Eustress. Then we can decide whether to become Offensive by utilizing or adjusting it, or remain Defensive and wait to see if the situation changes on its own. Sometimes choosing to live with stress is appropriate, like when it energizes our Competitive Edge.

We can also balance our stress levels to avoid being thrown off-center too easily or often. Ongoing stress management techniques for creating balance include sleeping well, eating healthy foods, exercising, meditating &/or focusing on the positive things in our lives. These are simple and inexpensive ways to relieve pressure, especially when we’re faced with unexpected events or must manage stress over a long period of time.

While the bad news is that it’s nearly impossible to avoid stress in our crazy-busy world, the good news is that using stress management techniques and being mindful can actually make stress empowering instead of draining. This puts us in control of the stressors in our lives so they can’t stop us from continuing to go forward and grow more joyfully empowered every day.

Read more on The Good News About Stress Management: How “good” Stress Keeps Us Going & Growing…

In this highly competitive world, one has to keep in pace with the advancing technology and everything that goes around in one’s country and around the world. Be it through newspapers, television, radio or the latest news hub, the internet, one should always follow the current news. Latest in politics, sports, entertainment world, crime, everything constitutes a perfect daily doze of current news. Most of the people remain content by following up all the regular dailies concentrating on the top bollywood news or stick to those news channels which broadcast nothing but entertainment. And the fact is that many news channels have swarmed up. Petty bollywood issues constitute the top news India. Latest in India news is abuzz that the entire world has applauded India for having made great scientific discovery of water on the moon. This also highlights the fact that slowly and steadily, India is strengthening its hold in every sector be it science, technology, information, sports or anything else.  

Moving on towards the sports desk, India’s win in the World Wrestling Championship in Herning by the wrestler Ramesh Kumar has taken the entire country by surprise and awe. The bronze has marked yet another beginning in the wrestling world after India won its first medal after a long gap of 32 years. The business world is slowly recovering its usual glitter and pace; however, inflation further rose to 0.37 per cent owing to increase in the prices of prominent food items. Food products like mutton, spices, wheat, maize, sugar, mustard oil and gur got costlier in the receding week. What has fetched relief to the common people in this disastrous phase of turbulent economy is that Housing Development Company Ltd has ventured into affordable housing segment. The announcement to begin a novel project New Haven, a national brand, has brought smiles on a millions of faces. Following its footsteps, Tata Housing has also marked its entry into the low budget housing segment through Shubh Griha. Overall, the top news India remains a mixed bouquet of everything that is good and bad too, nonetheless is current news.

Read more on Top News India – Catching a Glimpse of Current Events…

Terramed Alliance News Researchers at Rush University Medical Center and Argonne National Laboratory are collaborating on a study to determine if an imaging technique used by NASA to inspect the space shuttle can be used to predict tissue damage often experienced by breast cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy. The study is examining the utility of three-dimensional thermal tomography in radiation oncology.

Preliminary results from the study are being displayed during the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual Meeting in Chicago, being held from November 1 – 5, 2009.

Approximately 80 percent of breast cancer patients undergoing radiation treatment develop acute skin reactions that range in severity. The more severe reactions cause discomfort and distress to the patient, and sometimes result in treatment interruptions. The severity is quite variable among patients and difficult to predict.

“Because reactions usually occur from 10 to 14 days after the beginning of therapy, if we could predict skin reactions sooner we may be able to offer preventative treatment to maximize effectiveness and minimize interruption of radiation treatment,” said Dr. Katherine Griem, professor of radiation oncology at Rush.

Terramed Alliance News : Researchers at Rush and Argonne are studying if three-dimensional thermal tomography (3DTT) can detect the earliest changes that may trigger a skin reaction. 3DTT is a relatively new thermal imaging process that is currently being used as a noninvasive away to detect defects in composite materials. The basic idea of thermal imaging is to apply heat or cold to a material and observing the resulting temperature change with an infrared camera to learn about its composition.

Unlike most thermal imaging studies which have quantitative limitations, 3DTT measures the thermal effusivity of skin tissue. Thermal effusivity is a measure of a material’s ability to exchange heat with its surroundings.

In this study, a flash of light is used to heat up the skin. An infrared camera captures a series of images over time that display the temperature of the skin, represented by colors. An algorithm developed by Argonne is used to calculate the temperature change and determine the thermal effusivity of different areas of the skin.

“How quickly the skin cools is related to the structure underneath. Damaged skin cells have different effusivity values compared to that of healthy skin, said James Chu, PhD, chairperson of the section of medical physics at Rush. “By identifying the earliest changes in damaged tissue, we may be able to predict acute skin toxicities.”

Terramed Alliance News: Preliminary data from the study show that marked decreases in thermal effusivity of irradiated skin occur well in advance of the development of high grade skin reactions.

“Our initial data with radiation induced skin changes are quite encouraging,” said Dr. Alan Coon, chief resident of radiation oncology at Rush and primary author on the study. “In addition to finding decreases in effusivity of the treated areas many days before the development of skin reactions, we have also seen that the magnitude of these decreases varies with the grade of the reactions. This exciting result bodes well for the clinical utility of this technique in predicting the severity of a skin reaction before it occurs.”

In addition, researchers note that 3DTT techniques can be used to measure these tissue property changes noninvasively with no interruption of therapy and the technique allowed for rapid feedback.

“3DTT may also be used to detect other skin diseases such as skin cancer and measure skin damage caused by electricity or lightening. Such applications require the determinations of tissue conditions below the skin that is normally not visible but can be measured by 3DTT,” said J.G. Sun, a mechanical engineer at Argonne.

Researchers plan to perform additional studies to confirm the preliminary results and hope to soon begin studying 3DTT in breast cancer patients.

The investigators on the project include Dr. Katherine Griem, James Chu, PhD; Dr. Alan Coon; Damian Bernard, PhD; Riu Yao and Alistair Templeton, all from Rush University Medical Center and J.G. Sun from Argonne National Laboratory. Source: Kim Waterman Rush University Medical Center

Read more on Terramed Alliance News Treating Breast Cancer With Adapted Space-Industry Technology…

Gone are the regular phone sets! With the busy lifestyle and the need to be always abreast with everything, the consideration of initiating a cheaper but reliable communication access is most possible these days. With the advent of Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP made communication, both long distance and local calls feasible, cheaper and faster. Interested to know more about the details how VoIP works? Then, make sure to read the latest VoIP news over the net including the available VoIP reviews via the sites that offer objectives reviews in the field of technology.

Read more on Probe the VoIP News and Check the VoIP Reviews…

Gone are the regular phone sets! With the busy lifestyle and the need to be always abreast with everything, the consideration of initiating a cheaper but reliable communication access is most possible these days. With the advent of Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP made communication, both long distance and local calls feasible, cheaper and faster. Interested to know more about the details how VoIP works? Then, make sure to read the latest VoIP news over the net including the available VoIP reviews via the sites that offer objectives reviews in the field of technology.

Read more on Probe the VoIP News and Check the VoIP Reviews…