Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Effects of Nicotine Addiction on Health

When persons take this nicotine then it causes some changes in the brain and then people want to use more and more because of the effects of this, it is called as nicotine addiction. Unpleasant withdrawal symptoms are caused by additive drugs. The nicotine addiction concludes that
  • Nicotine is the drug which causes addiction
  • Cigarettes and other forms of tobacco are addictive in nature.
Effects on health:
Within minutes, nicotine starts to change your body chemistry, hormones including adrenaline, flood the blood stream, after tobacco smoke is inhaled by you. The body's fight response is stimulated by the adrenaline by raising blood pressure, speeding up breathing, increasing heart rate. Blood pressure is raised by nicotine by causing the blood vessels walls constriction.

Circulation of blood vessels in the brain is limited by nicotine and those vessels are made more susceptible to clots or leaks then it leads to stroke.


The nicotine present in cigarette irritates blood vessels which leads to plaque production. This ultimately results in thickening of artery walls, this condition is called atherosclerosis. Growth of cancerous tumors may be accelerated by nicotine. Lung and breast cancers are results of cigarette smoking.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Know about Saliva Drug Testing for Opiates

There are different types of illegal drugs in the market. Many people are getting addicted to the drugs. So, the need of drug testing arose in order to prevent the addiction and also to safeguard the health. Out of these illegal drugs, the opiates cause adverse effects on the health.

By using the opiates initially, one may feel intense pleasure, calm, and feeling of drowsiness. Poppy plant is the raw material of opiate. Morphine which is present in the poppy plant is the chemical compound called opium, and this opium is used for preparing Opiate. The different types of opiates are heroin, morphine, codeine. The drugs which are also called as opiates will spoil the health of the abuser. The long term usage of the drugs will have many adverse health effects. Some of the health effects are the cellulitis, heart failure, collapsed veins, abnormal brain wave patterns.


So, in order to prevent the addiction to these illegal drug, different drug testing methods are used. Out of those because of the convenience, the saliva drug testing is used for the detecting the presence of the opiate.


Saliva drug testing is done using a scrub which is similar to the tooth brush, but instead of bristles of the brush, the swab is present. This swab is placed in between the lower cheek and gums. Until the swab gets wet i.e., about two minutes, it is kept in mouth. After that swab is sent to the laboratory to detect the presence of opiate.


For opiate metabolites the initial cutoff concentration level is 40 ng/ml. The confirmatory test levels are 40 ng/ml each and 4 ng/ml for morphine and codeine. One can get detect both morphine and heroin for about 1 to 2 days after the usage of the drug. And, one can detect the codeine for about 2 to 3 days after the usage of the drug.


Saliva drug testing gives the instantaneous results exactly after usage. So, this can be used for detecting the opiates usage.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

What are the Different Types of Health Insurance

Health insurance can be used by anyone for getting the medical help in case of ill health. Different companies are providing this insurance. Both the government organizations and the private organizations are providing this type of insurances. Firms and also the individuals can purchase this type of insurance. Several social welfare organizations are also providing this insurances.

There are two major categories in the health insurance. They are the traditional and the managed care insurances. Different plans are being included in this two types of insurances. Generally, four plans will come under this insurances. They are:
  • Traditional health insurance
  • Point of Service plans
  • Preferred Provider Organizations
  • Health Maintenance organizations
Depending upon the preferences and needs of health covers these plans are used.

Traditional Health Insurance: This type of insurance is being used from the past 30 years. This is also termed as the fee for service. Some deductible amount should be paid by the person then the majority of the amount will be paid by the insurance company. It is more expensive when compared to other types of plans. Out of pocket expenses i.e. Large medical bills can be reduced using this traditional health insurance. Because of the advances in the medical technologies the insurance companies are also changing their plans to manage care.

Managed Care: Most of the people, who use private health insurance are provided with different managed care plans. Although, different plans have their own importance, all of them will involve the same arrangement between the insurer and the network of health care providers. The managed care plans offer financial incentives to the police holder for using the health care providers.

Preferred provider organizations: It provides low fee for in-network health care providers. Financial incentives are given for the insured people who are within the network. But here the preventive care services are not being provided. For the in-network doctor the co-pay will be low for the in network person. But, for the out network provider the co-pay will be high. It is less flexible when compared with the traditional insurance and more flexible when compared with the HMO.

Health Maintenance Organization(HMO): Only small co-pay is required to be paid and there is no need of any deduction every year. This is least flexible plan, the medical expenses will be covered if you go to the provider in their organization. Before entering into the hospital for getting checked with the specialist, the primary physician will take care of you.

Point of service(POS): This insurance plan is just like the HMO. But here in this plan, you can see even the physicians which are not in the network, in turn you have to pay the some share of the charge which are deductible. There are some restrictions for the services of out network when we choose the POS plans like organ transplants, mental health etc.,

Apart from the other plans, there is one more plan which is same as the HMO and here unless it is an emergency, the expenses are covered within the network.

These are the different types of insurances and organizations that provide the insurances.

Monday, August 9, 2010

Credit Card is the Safest Way to Pay the money in Online Shopping

Credit-card is a safest way to shop on the internet. You are protected under the federal Fair Credit Billing Act, if sometimes the event goes wrong. In credit card purchase you have the right to dispute charges on your credit card, you can get back payments during the investigation of creditor. You are responsible for only first $50 in charges when it is determined that your credit was used by others with out authorization, this charge also you are asked to pay rarely.

There is dangerous bank fraud if you make e-commerce shopping by check. If you have problems with purchase then the protection is not given to you by sending money order or a cashier's check.

Ensure that your credit-card is true credit-card and not a check card, or an ATM card or debit card.
As with checks your bank account is exposed to thieves by a debit card. They can wipe out your checking account in minutes. Further Federal law does not protect the debit card and ATM cards to the extent that credit-cards are.

Many credit-card companies have $0 liability policies, this means you will not be responsible if there are any fraudulent purchases.


Perishable credit-cards are assigned for a specific credit-card number to each online purchase or to each online merchant for a specific period of time, it may be months, few weeks sometimes. So, the perishable credit-cards are better than standard credit-cards.


So, credit-card is the safest way to make purchases or do business in online shopping.

Monday, August 2, 2010

Application Of Barcodes In Postal Systems

The barcode technology has been widely used in the postal system because it improves handling of items (mail and parcels) and helps to reduce internal costs. The use of barcodes in the postal sector has been given more priority as it accelerates the sorting and delivery processes. Barcode labels are easily readable, efficient and highly precise.

Barcodes have been developing not only in the type of encoded data but also in the amount of data encoded. There are 3 types of barcodes. They are 1D, 2D and 3D barcode. 3D barcode is presently not utilized in the postal industry. Examples of 1D barcodes are the PosNet, which is employed by the United States Postal Service (USPS), and the 4 State Customer Code, which is employed by Royal Mail. This barcodes just consists of basic information about the destination address, generally the postal code. The development of new products and services, such as tracking and tracing, and the requirement to enhance the security of the postal items have been the motivation for innovative and new encoding methods in barcodes (like unique identification and 2D barcodes).

These techniques help in encoding of a huge amount of information in the postal franking system. Deutsche Post, for instance, utilizes the 1D Identcode. This code is different from other 1D barcodes, as it is mainly used to encode the number of the outgoing or leaving mail centre, the customer code, the delivery number and the check digit. These 11 digits together compose the tracking number which identifies the item in a unique or extraordinary way. United Parcel Service (UPS) employs the 2D Maxicode for high speed sorting or grouping and for accumulating nearly 93 data characters of information. Encoding a huge amount of meaningful information is actually becoming an important characteristic for offering best postal services.