Atrophic Rhinitis

What is atrophic rhinitis? Atrophic rhinitis is a chronic nasal condition that is characterised by the formation of thick dry crusts in the nasal cavity. It results from progressive wasting away or decreasing in size (atrophy) of the mucous nasal lining (mucosa) and its underlying bone. It also affects the glands and turbinate bones. Special forms of chronic atrophic rhinitis are rhinitis sicca anterior and ozaena. Etiology • Hereditary factors • Endocrinal imbalance - the disease tends to start at puberty and mostly involves females • Racial factors - whites are more susceptible than natives of equatorial Africa • Nutritional deficiency in vitamins A , D or iron • Autoimmune factors - viral infection may trigger antigenicity of the nasal mucosa Symptoms • Most commonly seen in females • Reported among patients from lower socioeconomic groups • The nasal cavities become roomy and are filled with foul smelling crusts which are black or dark green and dry, making expiration painful and difficult. • Microorganisms are known to multiply and produce a foul smell from the nose, though the patients may not be aware of this, because their elements (responsible for the perception of smell) have become atrophied. This is called merciful anosmia. • Patients usually complain of nasal obstruction despite the roomy nasal cavity, which can be caused either by the obstruction produced by the discharge in the nose, or as a result of sensory loss due to atrophy of nerves in the nose, so the patient is unaware of the air flow. • Bleeding from the nose, also called epistaxis, may occur when the dried discharge (crusts) are removed. • Septal perforation and dermatitis of nasal vestibule can occur. The nose may show a saddle-nose deformity. Management Treatment of atrophic rhinitis can be either medical or surgical. Medical measures include: • Nasal irrigation using normal saline • Removal of crusts using alkaline nasal solutions prepared by dissolving a spoonful of powder containing one part sodium bicarbonate, one part sodium biborate and two part sodium chloride. • 25% glucose in glycerine can be applied to the nasal mucosa to inhibit the growth of proteolytic organisms which produce foul smell • Local antibiotics, such as chloromycetine • Vitamin D(Kemicetine) • Systemic streptomycin (1g/day) against Klebsiella organisms. Surgical interventions include: • Modified Young's operation • Narrowing of nasal cavities, sub-mucosal injection of Teflon paste, section and medial displacement of the lateral wall of the nose • Transposition of parotid duct to maxillary sinus or nasal mucosa

Content Writing Still Rules the Web

There is no denying the fact that content writing still rules the web. The search engines will just not recognize your website and attach any value to it if it does not have any content of worth. If you take a close look at what kind of websites are sitting perched at the top of the search engine rankings, you will find all of them with strong unique content and keyword density that has an impact on the presentation. So, how do you go about with your content strategy? Your strategy has to be backed up with good research and planning. It has to contain enthusiastic and creative objectives. If you want to promote your business as unique in today’s competitive world, you have to provide content writing that is engaging enough to take a position of authority. Content strategy is all about where, when and how you will project your content and what type of content you will present for the kinds of audience you have kept in your mind. You are very well aware that Google comes out with an update to its algorithm every now and then and that it is rather severe on sites that have thin or duplicate kind of content. The consumer behavior patterns are changing and social media is hogging most of the new search engine optimization strategies. It is your content that makes you an expert in the field and also generates links at the same time. You can keep these five things in your mind when planning your content strategy: • What is the message going to be? What do you want out of your web page? Are you simply going to sell your products or make the people subscribe to your blogs and consider you as an industry expert? • Be clear about your audience. Then, you can work out strategies on where you can find most of your audience. You have to do a little research on your audience before you take steps on your content writing plan. • You have to locate your audience. You can create one of the best informational graphic presentations in the world, but if you are not sure of where and when to present it, you will not be getting anywhere. • Information can help in the creation of a good and imaginative content strategy. Social Mention and Icerocket.com could be useful tools as they can locate networks and blogs for accessing your brand and key phrases. Google’s Insight Tools and Keyword Selection will also help. • A good content strategy that throws pointers back to your website is crucial in search engine marketing. The stronger the content quality of your web pages, the higher authority Google will extend to your website. You cannot do everything by yourself. Get services of a good article writer who can cover different niches with an expertise in doing press releases. Writing blog should come naturally to that writer. The article writer has to write keyword focused articles that are factual and full of valuable information.

Honey: The Elixir of Life

Honey is recognized as a delicious food supplement that is used on the dining table for eating with porridge or cereals and as an ingredient to make the tea taste nice. Not many people are aware of the benefits of honey; not only as a food ingredient but as a healthcare product. Eyebrows are raised when there are suggestions to use honey on our hair or skin. People are ignorant and detached on the benefits provided by honey through the ages towards maintenance of healthy skin and hair. Amazing Ingredients of Honey Honey has never been dependent on additives to prevent it from getting spoilt. This must have been a real blessing during the ages where there was no refrigerator. Modern scientists have discovered at a later stage that honey had powerful antioxidant properties, giving us a strong source of enzymes, minerals, amino acids and vitamins. These ingredients help us in reducing the inflammation in cells and in promoting cellular regeneration. This is the secret behind keeping the skin fresh and youthful. Today, honey has become a frequent ingredient in several cosmetic products and thousands of commercial beauty products are being made with honey and its ingredients. Properties of Honey It contains high quantities of monosaccharide, fructose and glucose. Its sweet taste comes from its sugar content of almost seventy per cent. Minerals and water build up the remaining part of its composition. Honey also has antibacterial and antiseptic properties, as we learn from http://honeyfanatic.com. Modern science has taught us the benefits of honey in its useful applications in wound management. It may come as a surprise to the modern scientists that honey was used to treat wounds as far back as pre-ancient Egyptian days. Honey and its usefulness through the Ages Historical records point out to Cleopatra, hailed as one of the most beautiful women in the world, applying a honey mask to her face each morning. She is also known to have taken honey and milk baths to keep her skin smooth and healthy. Honey is also the secret behind a youthful look even in middle age. In the Ming Dynasty too in China, women at the court of the emperor applied honey with ground orange to keep their hair and skin beautiful and renewed. More than four thousand years ago, honey was used as a conventional Ayurvedic medicine in India and it was thought to be useful to treat imbalances in our body. Ancient Greeks thought that eating honey would help them live longer. There is not a civilization that has not praised the qualities of honey. In the Arabian world, it was considered as a great healing food. The benefits of honey have even been lauded in the Holy Quran which mentions in one of its chapters on how the Almighty Creator taught the bee to build its cells in hills, in trees and in the habitations of men. It talks about how men have been guided to drink the product from within the bodies of the bees to be healed. This is a food for thought.

Santali Language

Santali is a language in the sub family of Austro-Asiatic languages. It is spoken by about ten million people in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. Most of its speakers are Indian. It is spoken in the States of Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Tripura, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal. It belongs to the language family of Munda, Kherwari and Santhali. Santali was included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution through the Ninety Second Constitutional Amendment in 2003. This language has been there in India since ages. It has its rich traditional literature and cultural value. Santali language is distantly related to Khmer and Vietnamese languages. Santali is mostly spoken by the Santhal tribe. The Santali speakers are spread over three thousand miles from the river Ganges in the north to the river Baitami in the south. Santali is the only Mundu offshoot language that has been recognised by the Indian government as an official language. As a result of the tribal migration during the nineteenth century, Santali is also found across the entire country as far as Assam in the northeast and even the Andaman and the Nicobar Islands. Origin It is estimated that the Santali language is older than the Aryan languages. The history of Santali and the Santhals tribe can be found in folklore and songs of the tribe itself. Fa-Hien, the Chinese traveller, was the first to describe about the Santhal tribe. After him, historians have come from different regions and wrote different things about them. One thing that is established is that the Santhals were there since the pre-Aryan period. The Santhals fought with Aryans, both Vedic and non Vedic and later made peace with them. Many of them remained uninfluenced by the Aryan culture and languages for some time. The Santali language can be classified as part Dravidian, part Austric and part Munda. The Kissam Koya and the Oraon tribes that come from the Dravidian language speaking clans along with the Santhals were the main tribes. The Santali language has existed for over thousands of years mainly through oral communication. Santali is quite diverse in terms of language, economic status and caste. Grammar, Dialect and Script The major Santali dialect is Mahali. Santali is spoken by Santhals and other tribes such as Mahali and the Pahadis. The script is Ol Chiki. It means the `writing symbol’. It used to be Latin during the British rule. Sadhu Ramchand Murmu used the modern Kherwal script known as `Muj Bandhi’ for the development of Santali language, literature and socio-religious cultural identity in the early part of the twentieth century. Then, the modern Ol Chiki script was developed later in 1925 by Pandit Raghunath Murmu. Ol Chiki has its own alphabet. It is a unique modern developed Indic script which uses both capital and small letters together. The short hand concept was composed by Pruthunath Murmu to solidify the Ol Chiki script. The formative style of the script proves its natural shape. The modern Ol Chiki script has six basic vowels a, aa, i, u, e and o and three additional vowels. Santali uses a number of affixes, tense and moods. It has got its own pronouns, numerical and syntactical structure as a fully fledged language. The Santali alphabet is an indigenous alphabet which is based on traditional symbols as well as pictographs. It is also known as Ol Cemet or `language of writing’. In the earlier days, Santali was written with the Bengali alphabet and sometimes with the Latin alphabet. Santali is not an Indo-European language like most other languages of northern India. The Indic script did not have letters for all the phonemes of Santali, particularly its stop consonants and vowels. This made it difficult for writing the language accurately in an unmodified Indic script. The Christian missionaries brought the Latin alphabet into India. Latin was helpful at representing some of Santali’s stops but the vowels still created problems. Unlike most Indic scripts that are derived from Brahmi, Santali’s Ol Chiki is not an abugida but a true alphabet as the vowels are given equal representation with the consonants. One letter was also assigned to each phoneme as the letters were designed specifically for the language. Santali has thirty letters. The forms of these letters represent natural shapes. The shapes of these letters reflect the names for the letters and the words are normally the names of objects or actions that represent traditional form in the pictorial shape of the characters. Santali is written from left to right. Speech perception in Santali is of simple phonetic contrast of syllables. The Santali Latin alphabet was invented in the eighteen nineties by the Norwegian missionary, Reverend Paul Olaf Bodding. He was one of the most influential missionaries to have come to India. Santali uses thirty letters and five basic diacritics. It does not share any of the syllabic properties of the other scripts like Devanagari. Santali did not have a written language until the twentieth century and used the Latin script until then. Literature Santali is a language with its own distinct characteristics and has a literature that goes back to the beginning of the fifteenth century. The development of traditional Santali language and literature commenced during the British rule around 1870 by literary loving British people. They built a printing press at Benares for popularising the Santali works over the north eastern region. Many dictionaries, dramas and folk tales were written during this period. Santali literature is now widespread in West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar and Assam. Pandit Raghunath Murmu of the Rairangpur District is the father of Ol Chiki script. He brought about somewhat of a renaissance in 1925 by inventing this script. Pandit Murmu enriched the Santali literature by writing dramas, poems and children’s stories. He did a lot for Santali grammar and wrote many books on mathematics too. The book, `Bakhera’, written by him reflects the Santhal tribal religion. The book contains tribal verses and hymns. Pandit Murmu is popularly known as Guru Gomke among the Santhals. This title was conferred on him by the Mayurbhanj Adibasi Mahasabha. Pandit Murmu’s philosophy was that modern Santali language and literature should point towards the principle of the identity of self rather than imitation. He felt that the Santhali society can be developed only when education was imposed in its mother tongue and that the cultural identity can only be established when its literature became developed with its own script. This historical path breaking philosophy not only gave the Santhals confidence for the development of modern Santali language and literature but also enabled proper expression of their language. Santali and the Santhal Culture The major economic occupation of the Santhals was agriculture, collection of forest produce and cultivation. Their life revolved around the forests. They made mats, baskets and musical equipment from the plants they collected. Literacy rate is very low among people speaking Santali. It is between ten and thirty per cent. The initial attempt to study the Santali culture was done by the Moghals followed by the Christian missionaries. Many scholars and anthropologists have been attracted for decades to the Santali culture. In 1933, Dr. Byomkas Chakrabarti, a Bengali research worker on ethnic languages, found out the basic relationship between the Santali and the Bengali languages. He was a poet and a renowned educationist. He showed how the Bengali language has got some distinct characteristics under the influence of Santali language. The reason for doing so was because of the similarities in the use of phonetics. His contribution was vital in the development of Bengali and Santali languages and it offered scope for further research in the field of linguistics. The Santhals are known for preserving their native language unlike many other tribal groups of India. They were able to preserve the language despite invasions and migrations from the Moghals and the Europeans. Santali culture is shown in the art works on the walls of the houses of the Santhals. The Santhals love music and dance. The first Santali feature film was `Pilchu Haram Pilchu Buddhi’. Though Santali has been recognised as an official language in India, it is not much in use these days. Some Santhals who are educated still use it to write books and other literary works. During the British rule, the language was written in the Latin script. Development of Santali When the Jharkhand State was created, the Santhal tribes of eastern India demanded the recognition of Ol Chiki as the Santali script. This movement was spearheaded by the Kolkata based All India Santhal Council and the Santali Bhasha Morcha. These cultural associations were responsible for getting Santali included in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. Many literary and cultural societies have been established to promote art, literature and culture through Santali all over the country. This language has now got a private academy and many printing presses and publishers. The Paschim Bangla Santali Academy was created to promote, advance and develop the study of Santali language and literature. The academy also encourages the translation and publication of scholarly, historical and literary works into the Santali language. A library has been set up and archives have been built for the purpose of carrying on research work and to gather manuscripts and other articles of reputed scholars in Santali literature and language. Santali has found a place in the mass communications media. The All India Radio has recognised this language. The transmission of Santali programs has been there from various centres. Santali is now being taught from the school to the university levels in Jharkhand and Bihar. The University Grants Commission is also providing fellowship for higher studies in Santali language and literature. There are currently more than five hundred writers who are promoting this language. The installation of the Doordarshan Santali Television satellite channel has also given the chance for the language to grow. Now, the Santali speaking people can be in touch with both local and international news and other information regarding politics and economy of the world from all over the globe in their own language.

Tashkent

Tashkent was built around 190 B.C. It has grown from a small ancient settlement to become one of the largest metropolitan areas in Central Asia. The freedom loving population of Uzbekistan has fought for its independence continuously against all foreign invasions throughout the centuries. It emerged as an important trading center after the campaigns of Alexander the Great as it was located on the crossroads of the Great Silk Route. The earliest known people who settled down in Tashkent were the Indo-Iranians. Buddhism had also reached and made its mark in the middle ages but after the Arab campaigns of the eighth century, Islam replaced Buddhism as the dominant religion. By the tenth century, Tashkent had become an important center in the Muslim world. In the fourteenth century, Timur Lang created a vast empire around Tashkent. After his death, Shahbani Khan took over and the rule of the Uzbeks started until the Russians dominated in the middle of the nineteenth century. It has now gone back to the Uzbeks after a long struggle. The Indian Prime Minister, Mr. Lal Bahadur Shastri, died here while visiting for a conference in January 1966.

Assessment of Hearing - Otolaryngology

What are the three types of hearing loss? 1. Conductive hearing loss – It is caused by any disease process that interferes with the conduction of sound from external ear to the stapediovestibular joint. The cause may lie in the external ear or the Eustachian tube in the form of obstructions or in the tympanic membrane in the form of perforation or in the middle ear in the form of fluids or in the ossicles in the form of fixation or disruption. 2. Sensorineural hearing loss - This is caused by lesions of the sensory type of the cochlea or of the cranial nerve 8 and its central connections of the neural type. When the hearing loss is due to lesions of cranial nerve 8, it is known as retrocochlear and when it is because of the lesions of the central auditory connections, it is referred to as central deafness. 3. Mixed hearing loss – In this kind of hearing loss, both sensorineural and conductive elements of deafness are present in the same ear. There is an air-bone gap that indicates the conductive element and impairment of bone conduction that triggers sensorineural loss. Mixed hearing loss is found in cases of chronic suppurative otitis media and otosclerosis. What four factors are important while assessing the auditory functions? 1. Type of hearing loss – whether it is conductive, sensorineural or mixed. 2. Cause of hearing loss – it may be congenital or traumatic or it could be infection or an auto-immune process. 3. Degree of hearing loss – It could be mild or moderate or it could be severe or total. 4. Site of the lesion – If it is conductive hearing loss, the lesion may be at the external ear or the tympanic membrane or it could be at the middle ear or the Eustachian tube. Tympanometry is helpful in finding the site of lesions. If it is a sensorineural loss, it is to be determined whether the lesion is cochlear or central or retrocochlear. Often special tests of hearing are needed to differentiate the types of these lesions. How is hearing tested? It is done through clinical or audiometric tests. What are the four major clinical tests of hearing? 1. Finger Friction Test – It is a quick method of screening and it involves rubbing and snapping the thumb and a finger by positioning them close to the ear of the patient. 2. Watch Test – A watch that clicks is brought close to the ear of the patient and the distance at which it is heard is measured. 3. Speech or Voice Tests – For the purpose of the test, the patient has to hear a conversation at a distance of forty feet in quiet surroundings. Its disadvantage is the lack of standardisation in intensity. 4. Tuning Fork Tests – They are done with tuning forks of different frequencies. The average frequency is 512 Hz. The tuning fork is activated by striking it gently against the examiner’s elbow or heel of hand. Tuning forks of lower frequencies than 512 Hz produce sense of bone vibration. A vibrating fork is placed vertically in line with the meatus to test air conduction and it is kept about two centimetres away from the opening of the external auditory canal. The sound waves are transmitted through the tympanic membrane. Middle ear and the ossicles to the inner ear. In order to test bone conduction, the foot plate of the vibrating tuning fork is placed on the mastoid bone. Cochlea is stimulated directly by the vibrations conducted through the skull bones. What are some of the important and clinically useful tuning fork tests? 1. Rinne – Air conduction of the ear is compared with its bone conduction. A vibrating tuning fork is placed on the patient’s mastoid and when hearing stops, it is brought besides the meatus. If he still hears, air conduction is more than bone conduction. Rinne’s test can be concluded as false negative in severe unilateral sensorineural hearing loss. The patient does not hear any sound of the tuning fork by air conduction but responds to bone conduction. 2. Weber’s – A vibrating tuning fork is placed in the middle of the forehead and the patient is asked in which ear he or she can hear the sound. Normally, it is heard equally in both ears. It is lateralized to the worse ear in conductive deafness and to the better ear in sensorineural deafness. 3. Gelle’s – It is a test of bone conduction and examines the effect of increased air pressure in ear canal on hearing. It is performed by placing a vibrating tuning fork on the mastoid while changes in air pressure in ear canal are brought about by Siegel’s speculum. What are the four types of audiometry tests and explain briefly, giving details about tympanometry as part of impedance test 1. Pure Tone Audiometry- Audiometer is used to produce pure tones, Their intensity can be increased or decreased by 5 dB steps and the amount of intensity that has to be raised above the normal level is a measure of the degree of hearing impairment at that frequency. It is charted in the form of a graph called audiogram. It is used to measure the degree and type of hearing loss, prescription of hearing aid and degree of handicap for medico-legal purposes 2. Speech Audiometry- The patient’s ability to hear and understand speech is measured. The two parameters used are speech reception threshold and discrimination score. 3. Bekesy Audiometry- It is a self-recording audiometry where various pure tone frequencies automatically move from low to high while the patient controls the intensity through a device that indicates Type 1 – Type V degree. 4. Impedance Audiometry- There are two tests that make up this category. They are tympanometry and acoustic reflex measurements. Tympanometry is based on a simple principle that dwells on when a sound strikes the tympanic membrane; some of its energy is absorbed while the remainder is reflected. It helps in finding the degree of compliance or stiffness of the tympanic membrane to show the health of the middle ear. Five types of tympanograms are Type A, Type As, Type AD, Type B and Type C with the range being Type A as normal and Type C as maximum compliance.

Attain a High Google Page Rank with Quality Backlinks

If you have the right strategy and the right tools, you can get your website on the first page of Google. It will all start with link building. Website backlinks are essential to get your hold on search engine rankings. It is worth it even if you have to pay thousands of dollars a year to the webmasters for their links. Posting on forums and blogs have to take secondary importance to the creation of a quality backlink. There are options available to you in the shape of back link and SEO services for a monthly charge to use their links. Setting up a blog is going to be important. Even if you have a website, an incorporated blog will enhance the presence of your website online. Each time Google changes its algorithms with an update related to website backlinks, there will be a buzz from many webmasters suggesting dead links. It is time to accept the fact that social links are replacing backlinks as the main metric index for website authority. There are five important things to consider before embarking on a link building exercise. 1. It starts with great and purposeful content. You need to think out good content. You require smart promotional strategies to get backlinks and achieve success. 2. You have to try and establish yourself as an authority by creating a blog. It is easy to create a blog but it is not easy to assert authority. You can achieve this by packing powerful biographical information on your blog sidebar or at the end of the blog posts. Targeting blogs is an easy way to get backlinks. 3. Doing original research is a good way to attract links. You can create a newsletter through email and use that to attract traffic to your new and original content. 4. Use video links on your website to share information and advice with the users of your website. 5. You can use a tutorial approach to guide visitors to your site one step at a time to do something and they will be impressed by that. You can use link building service to build back link assets that can work as promotional mediums. These can be linkable assets that can work within an image or a widget to make them more visible. There will a high likelihood of these links being clicked on. Informational graphics can serve powerfully with their size and they carry a big potential of virality as they capture the attention of the viewer instantly. A backlink from another site that points to your website is a mighty good vote of confidence. Use link building service to choose the same platform on the social media network that most of your prospects use. Remember that a loyal base of social media users will set up a great platform to promote the content on your web pages and will put you firmly on the path to attain a high page rank on the Google search engine.