I happened to be channel surfing last night -while waiting for Death on Nile a Movie adaptation of Agatha Christie's book ' and the programme "My Brilliant Brain" on Nat Geo just jumped out of the telly and grabbed my attention. It was about the cognitive functioning of the human brain!! Watch the program its really good!

I learned (again) that in normal human adults, each hemisphere of the brain, working in concert with the other, performs certain types of functions more efficiently than the other. While the left-brain hemisphere is dominant in the areas of language and logic, the right-brain hemisphere is the center of nonverbal, intuitive, holistic modes of thinking.

Each hemisphere mostly receives perceptions from and controls the activities of the opposite side of the body. Scientists have been aware of the specialized functioning of the hemispheres-also known as lateralization-for over one hundred years, having discovered that language skills are controlled by the left side of the brain in approximately 95 percent of right-handed people and about two thirds of left-handed individuals. In the nineteenth century, however, this discovery led to the assumption that all higher reasoning ability resided in the left-brain hemisphere, which was thus regarded as dominant overall. The right brain hemisphere was thought to possess only lower-level capabilities and was considered subordinate to the left.

Research conducted in the 1950s and 1960s established that the two hemispheres of a normally functioning brain-connected by the corpus callosum, a thick cable of nerves-operate in a complementary fashion with both hemispheres involved in higher cognitive functioning. The primary difference between them was found to involve the mode rather than the level of thinking.

Research on both split-brain and normal subjects since the 1960s has confirmed that both hemispheres of the brain use high-level cognitive modes. That of the left brain is verbal and analytic, while right brain thought processes are rapid, complex, whole-pattern, spatial, and specialized for visual imagery and musical ability. The right temporal lobe, in particular, governs visual and auditory imagery. People in whom this area is damaged have difficulty recognizing familiar melodies, faces, and pictures, and learning to identify new ones. The right brain hemisphere also appears to have special links to emotion. Right-brain damage interferes with both the ability to produce and interpret expressions of emotion. Damage to the front part of the right-brain hemisphere renders people unable to act on or express strong emotions. If the damage is further back in the brain, the person can express emotion but not recognize it in other people or in pictures.

THE crusade to fight global warming with tough reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions has entered its war-room phase. Multi-million dollar PR campaign with lavish cover stories in Time magazine (”Be Worried, Be Very Worried”), Vanity Fair, and Wired; multiple global-warming scare specials on STAR, HBO, and the network news; and, finally, the imminent release of Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Even Ads are being aired on TV pulling on the usual heartstrings: We have to stop global warming for the children!

Unfortunately, the green warriors substitute propaganda for persuasion, insist that there is no debate about the science of climate change, and demonize any scientist who dares dissent from their views. They advocate putting the U.S. and the world on an energy starvation diet, to the exclusion of a wider and more moderate range of precautions that might be taken against global warming.

Underlying this effort is a sense of panic over two things: the collapse of the Kyoto Protocol [ref: http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/2830.php and http://www.istl.org/01-fall/internet.html], and frequent polls showing that Americans aren’t buying into global-warming alarmism. The latest Gallup poll on environmental issues found that only 36 percent of Americans say they “worry a great deal about global warming”–a number that has hardly budged in years. Even among those who tell pollsters that the environment is their main public-policy concern (who are usually less than 5 percent of all Americans), global warming ranks lower than air and water quality, toxic waste, and land conservation.

There is no conspiracy behind the global-warming-awareness campaign; in fact, the environment lobby is quite open about what it’s up to. The Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies recently published a plan to elevate climate change to the top tier of the political agenda. This report, Americans and Climate Change, grew out of a summit meeting of environmental leaders held last year in–naturally–Aspen. On October 4th, 2007 local governments across the United States convened non-partisan local dialogues to drew attention to and build local support for solutions to global warming. Website: www.climateconversation.org. It lists 39 recommendations for raising the percentage of the public that is alarmed by global warming from the anemic mid-30s to over 50 percent. Tactics include everything from manipulating public-school curricula to reaching out to NASCAR’s fan base to seizing events like Hurricane Katrina as “teachable moments.”

The Yale report also does us the favor of making its authors’ desire to politicize climate change explicit. One faction of environmentalists openly argues that “the only way to proceed is to exercise raw political power, wake up the public about the urgent nature of the issue, create a major public demand for action comparable to that which stimulated major environmental legislation in the 1970s, pursue outright victory at the polls.” In other words, they need to boot out those evil Republicans.

The “consensus” that human activities are playing a role in the earth’s so-far mild warming trend is misrepresented as agreement that we are headed toward catastrophic results that can be prevented only by immediate and drastic action.

In fact, many scientists don’t believe the catastrophe scenarios. But those who dissent from the politicization of climate science face withering ad hominem attacks.

The climate-action caucus clearly feels no shame about employing smear tactics. One might even go so far as to accuse it of scientific McCarthyism.

But try as it might, this caucus cannot change two facts that have been evident since climate change first came to the fore in the late 1980s. First, even though the leading scientific journals are thoroughly imbued with environmental correctness and reject out of hand many articles that don’t conform to the party line, a study that confounds the conventional wisdom is published almost every week. Sometimes these studies even find their way into Science and Nature. Most recently my friends sent me an article of the April 20 issue of Nature which carried a study that casts serious doubt on the high-temperature forecasts of computer climate models. And it also referenced that last fall, Science published a study finding that the Greenland ice sheet, whose perimeter melting is presented as a sign of imminent sea-level rise (never mind that the Vikings observed similar melting 1,000 years ago), is gaining ice mass in the interior. (The oddest aspect of the Greenland story is that average temperatures in southern Greenland appear to have fallen during the 20th century; ice-mass changes probably have more to do with regular variation in Atlantic Ocean currents–a natural phenomenon known as Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation [Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Multidecadal_Oscillation ) Why then does the media tend to ignore such research while giving disproportionate coverage to the latest news about melting glaciers or expiring frogs?!

We should consider strategies of adaptation to a changing climate. A rise in the sea level need not be the end of the world, as the Dutch have taught us. Developing countries with vulnerable coastlines will be better able to adapt if their economic growth is not constrained by severe energy limits.

We should consider climate modification. If humanity is powerful enough to disrupt the climate negatively, we might also be able to change it for the better. On a theoretical level, doing so is relatively simple: We need to reduce the earth's absorption of solar radiation. A few scientists have suggested we could accomplish this by using orbiting mirrors to rebalance the amounts of solar radiation different parts of the earth receive.

A relentless campaign to extend political control over the world's energy use is likely to fail, in part because, even if severe climate change is in our future, most people intuitively recognize that rhetoric about "the end of civilization as we know it" is inconsistent with human experience. Our distant ancestors survived an ice age with little more than animal skins, crude tools, and open fire pits. For all the talk of science and progress, the global-warming alarmists betray an astonishing lack of confidence in human creativity and resiliency. It's almost as if the scientific community had abandoned the idea of evolution.

[To know more I suggest you read Leading Environmental Indicators By Mr. Hayward - who is a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute.]

Pranic healing encompasses a broad array of therapeutic approaches, both ancient and modern, based on the notion that illnesses of body or mind involve an imbalance and/or blockage in the flow of vital life energy. In ancient India, this energy was known as prana, as it still is in the contemporary practice of yoga and Ayurvedic medicine . Traditional Chinese medicine uses the term qi to describe this vital energy. Pranic healing seeks, by widely varying means, to strengthen and equalize the pranic flow. And, as the number of alternative therapies has mushroomed during the last several decades, the concept of prana/qi has become almost a common denominator among approaches that may otherwise seem wildly diverse.

Preparations for the various types of pranic healing range from wearing comfortable non-binding clothing for bodywork to fasting and spiritual preparation for certain forms of meditation. Students of yoga are advised not to eat a full meal for two to three hours prior to a yoga class because some of the postures are uncomfortable on a full stomach.

Chakras, also known as whirling energy centers are among the most vital parts of the energy body. The human body contains eleven major chakras. Chakras are basically of three types-major, minor and mini. The major chakras are whirling energy centers, which in general are about three to four inches in diameter. They control and energize the vital organs of the visible physical body, and work like power stations to supply life energy to them.

When the power station malfunctions, the vital organs become sick or diseased, because they lack the enough life energy to operate properly. Minor chakras are about one to two inches in diameter and the mini chakras are even smaller. Both the minor and mini chakras control and energize the less important parts of the visible physical body. In general, the chakras interpenetrate and extend beyond the visible physical body.

The Basic Chakra is located at the base of the spine or the coccyx area. This controls, energizes and strengths the whole visible physical body, especially the spine, the production and the quality of blood produced, the adrenal glands, the tissues of the body, the internal and sexual organs. People with highly activated basic Chakra are usually healthy.

The Sex Chakra is located on the pubic area. It controls and energizes the sexual organs and the bladder.

The Meng Mein Chakra is located at the back of the navel. It serves as a ‘pumping station’ in the spine and is responsible for the upward flow of subtle pranic energies coming from the basic Chakra. To avoid adverse effects, the meng mein Chakra of infants, children, pregnant women and very old people should not be energized.

The Navel Chakra is located on the navel and it affects the general vitality of a person. Malfunctioning of the naval Chakra results in constipation, appendicitis and difficulty in giving birth, low vitality and other intestine related diseases.

The Front Spleen Chakra is located on the left part of the abdomen between the front solar plexus Chakra and the naval Chakra. The front and back spleen chakras control and energize the spleen. The spleen purifies the blood of disease-causing germs. It also destroys worn-out blood cells.

A human body contains two Solar Plexus chakras?the one located at the solar plexus area and the other in the back. Both controls and energizes the diaphragm, pancreas, liver, stomach and to a certain extent energizes the large and small intestines, appendix, lungs, heart and other parts of the body. The solar plexus Chakra is also referred to as the ‘energy clearing house center’, mainly because the subtle energies from the lower chakras and from the higher chakras pass through it. The whole body can be energized through the solar plexus Chakra. Malfunctioning of this may cause diabetes, ulcer, hepatitis, heart ailments and other illness related to the organs mentioned above.

Like the solar plexus, the human body contains Two Heart chakras, one located at the center of the chest, called front heart Chakra, and the other located at the back of the heart, referred to as back heart Chakra. The front heart Chakra energizes and controls the heart, the thymus gland and the circulatory system. Malfunctioning of the front heart Chakra manifests as heart and circulatory ailments. The back heart Chakra primarily controls and energizes the lungs and, to a lesser degree, the heart and the thymus gland. Malfunctioning of the back heart Chakra is marked as lung problems such as asthma, tuberculosis, and others.

The Throat Chakra is located at the center of the throat. It controls and energizes the throat, the thyroid glands, parathyroid glands, and lymphatic system and to a certain degree, also influences the sex chakar.

Also known as Master Chakra, the Aajna Chakra is located at the area between the eyebrows. It controls and energizes the pituitary gland, the endocrine glands and energizes the brain to a certain extent.

The Forehead Chakra is located at the center of the forehead. It controls and energizes the pineal gland and the nervous system. Malfunctioning of the forehead Chakra may result in the loss of memory, paralysis and epilepsy.

The Crown Chakra is located at the crown of the head. It controls and energizes the pineal gland, the brain and the entire body. It is also one of the major entry points of prana into the body