Do you know the Lap Band system-answer to weight loss?

It seems I am becoming some kind of a medical consultant. (hahaha)

After my close encounters with rhinoplasty, liposuction and breast augmentation surgeries, now I am face to face with a totally unique kind of surgery (no need for all the usual surgical instruments) to reduce obesity.

I read somewhere that 50% of the Americans are concerned with over weight. (really?)
Over weight people all over the world might have tried just about everything in the medical history to address their worry.

Everyone knows the miracle pills that promise to make you shed excess weight in weeks, the wonder exercise machines that keep popping up in the market, the attractive of flyers of plastic surgeons and so on.

Now the inventors of surgical procedures have come up with an option called Lap Band system.

"The LAP-BAND® System is an adjustable gastric band designed to help you lose excess body weight, improve weight-related health conditions and enhance quality of life.

It reduces the stomach capacity and restricts the amount of food that can be consumed at one time. The LAP-BAND® System procedure does not require stomach cutting and stapling or gastrointestinal re-routing to bypass normal digestion.

The LAP-BAND® System is the only adjustable and reversible weight-loss surgery available in the United States and the only weight-loss surgery approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)."
Acknowledgement:lapband.com
While doing a research on this surgery, I also came to know about a controversy on this issue concerning Travis County Commissioners.

Thats enough of blood and tissues for me.
I hope to find something interesting about Halloween tomorrow.

Do you know Oxymoron?

I vaguely remember having heard that word before but I am absolutely unsure.

There I have uttered an oxymoron! (singular: oxymoron Plural:oxymora or oxymorons)

An Oxymoron is a combination of contradictory words like 'bad health', 'blank expression', 'growing small' and so on.

Oxymoron is a Greek term derived from oxy ("sharp") and moros ("dull"). The meaning is "that which is sharp and dull," thereby designating and also exhibiting an opposition between two adjectives which serve as predicates for one subject.

What distinguishes oxymoron from other paradoxes and contradictions is that they are used intentionally, for rhetorical effect, and the contradiction is only apparent, as the combination of terms provides a novel expression of some concept, such as "awfully pretty".

Oxymorons are not necessarily mistakes or errors. They make effective titles and appealing phrases, and some are meant to be humorous.

Courtesy: oxymorons.info and wikipedia.org

There I have hidden nothing! (smile)

Do you know MathML?

The interviewer shot this question at me during an online interview.
I had applied for the post of a virtual tutor in Capella University, an accredited online university.

Naturally I drew blank. Really I never even heard of that word.
He told me that e-learning students are really smart and it is better that I be prepared for such tough questions.

Since Capella University is committed to providing high-caliber academic excellence, their academic staff is selected very carefully.

Capella offers 76 graduate and undergraduate specializations and 16 certificate specializations. The online university currently serves 16,000 students from all 50 states and 63 countries.

I was given 30 minutes interval during which time I must gain some knowledge about MathML and resume the interview. He suggested wikipedia as an authentic source.

I was thankful for his guidance, consumed the full half an hour and came up with this:
‘Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) is an application of XML for representing mathematical symbols and formulae, aimed at integrating them into World Wide Web documents. It is a recommendation of the W3C math working group’.

‘MathML deals not only with the presentation but can optionally also include information about the meaning of formula components (the latter part of MathML is known as MathML-Content).

‘Web pages with MathML embedded in them can be viewed as normal web pages with many browsers but visually impaired users can also have the same MathML read to them through the use of screen readers (e.g. using the MathPlayer plugin for Internet Explorer)’.

The interviewing professor was impressed with my speed and asked me to await further communication.