If you are devoted to excellence at your facility, you have some kind of reward system in place. But it’s in the very nature of a “system” to become expected and routine. Wouldn’t it be nice if your staff saw the “world” watching and cheering as your club reached new heights?

That’s what Fitness Management thought as it set up the nova7award program to recognize innovations, big and small, in fitness facilities, big and small. The end of this month is your last chance this year to enter for various levels of recognition for innovative excellence in * facility design, construction & decoration * exercise programming * wellness & health promotion * customer service * websites & new technology * promotion, sales & marketing * operations & finance (see page 74 for entry information).

Picture the pride of your staff in showing off a top national trophy, a plaque of excellence or a certificate of merit to your members. And enter today!

Analgesics may be successful and effective in curing many kinds of pain, such as back pain, pain from arthritis, earaches, pain after surgery. Medication for pain are medicines that you can purchase without a prescription.

Try this test. Hold a 10-pound plate between your thumb and forefinger. That’s not too hard, is it? OK, just rest your wrist on the edge of your desk and let the weight dangle over the edge. Still not hard; you have strength to spare. Now, while you’re still pinching that weight, do one of your routine administrative chores — e.g., analyze your financial statement, check your email or something. Oops, did I hear a crash? Or, did silence suffer on while you tried to remember what it was you had just read and why you are subjecting yourself to this pain? At some point, either the pain of ischemic muscles will challenge your concentration, or your perception of the amount of squeeze you are putting on the plate will remain the same while the actual pressure will lessen and “Bang!” you’ve dented your office floor without any warning or intent of giving up.

Consider a different outcome. Just as the pain is getting unbearable or the disk is starting to slip a bit, one of your staff looks in, then shouts out to the floor, “Hey, the boss is just about to break the record for the 10-pound plate isometric endurance pinch!” You were one second from dropping the weight, but concentration is renewed.

Most of mishaps happen at work or home so it’s extremely important to become ready and to care for your family, friends, children. Take appropriate, safe industrial first aid kits from a wide assortment of specialize first aid supplies.

Whooping cough, or pertussis, is a highly contagious respiratory illness caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis. This bacterium infects the nose and respiratory tract, producing a protein toxin that results in tremendous inflammation of the lining of the windpipe and bronchial tree that can last weeks or even months.

The illness begins very much like a cold, but the cough is more intense than with the usual cold and gets much worse, rather than better.

Children with pertussis may cough as infrequently as several times a day, or as frequently as several times an hour. The cough is very distinctive in infants and small children: It occurs in bursts, without warning, and can last for 10 to 20 seconds (or longer) without the child being able to take a breath.

During the cough, the child’s face will often become bright red or, occasionally, bluish. The child may appear anxious, as he seems to “strangle” on the mucus he coughs up. At the end of a long series of coughs, the child will take a very deep breath, which may be heard as a “whoop” — hence the name “whooping cough.”

The cough of pertussis usually lasts at least six weeks and perhaps as long as six months, with the time between coughing episodes gradually lengthening. Because the child does not initially seem very sick, whooping cough may not be diagnosed until the child has been coughing for more than two to four weeks. And although antibiotics (oral erythromycin or related antibiotics such as azithromycin) are prescribed to kill the bacteria and to reduce contagion, antibiotics have no effect against the toxin, which is what causes the prolonged cough.

Whooping cough was widespread before immunization was available in the late 1940s. At its peak in 1934, there were at least 260,000 cases of pertussis among children in the United States, with as many as 9,000 deaths in a year — most of them very young and weak infants.

Now, about 5,000 to 7,000 cases of pertussis are diagnosed each year in the United States, and many of these are preventable by immunization.

All children in the United States should be immunized against pertussis. The triple vaccine DTaP (diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis) is recommended and generally required for babies at 2, 4 and 6 months of age, with boosters at age 15 months to 18 months, and again when entering school (age 4 to 6 years). But pertussis vaccine produces only about 70 to 80 percent immunity against this bacterium, and the immunity from each shot lasts only about 5 years.

Who gets whooping cough? Infants younger than 2 months and older infants who have not received the entire series of DTaP immunizations are at the highest risk of whooping cough. Very young babies can become extremely ill with pertussis and may need to be hospitalized for respiratory and nutritional support.

But any age group is susceptible, especially adolescents and adults, whose immunity from the childhood vaccine wanes after about age 10. It is estimated that 25 percent of otherwise healthy adults who have a chronic cough actually have whooping cough, and these infected adults can pass the bacterium to unimmunized infants and children.

Your doctor can diagnose whooping cough by culturing the bacterium from mucus in the nose or back of the throat, by blood tests demonstrating high levels of antibody to pertussis, or by testing the mucus for pertussis antigens or DNA (PCR, or polymerase chain reaction). PCR testing is expensive but very accurate in detecting pertussis.

Antibiotics will be prescribed for the child and for others in the family, and your child will not be able to attend school or day care until he has taken the antibiotic for at least 5 days.

Whooping cough is a reportable disease, which means the doctor is required to report it to the state health department. In some situations, the health department will test or treat other children in the school or day care for pertussis, too.

Be sure your children have received all the immunizations that are recommended and consult your child’s doctor if your child has a persistent cough that you think may be whooping cough.

There are persistent situations, especially low-grade preinvasive disease where the human papilloma virus infection is difficult to handle. Treatment for one viral type does not protect against infection with another viral type. These can be quite long and chronic problems can develop.

The best data shows that approximately 80 percent to 90 percent of patients with stage I disease will be cured at the magic five-year benchmark. This optimism should be tempered with the knowledge that patients with larger, more advanced stage I disease, or patients with lymph node involvement, have a significantly less promising prognosis. Still, overall for stage I disease, the chances are more likely that the patient will be cured than not cured.

For advanced stage disease, approximately 60 percent of stage II patients, 30 percent of stage III patients and 10 percent of stage IV patients will be cured.

Thus, early diagnosis is essential to a better outcome. Patients who are treated successfully can live perfectly normal lives without handicap, with rare exceptions.

This could be “a boost to basic science coming up with a rational drug design,” Mak commented. “Also, the Hodgkin’s patients are often immunosuppressed and succumb to infections, so reversing IL-13 levels should bring back the immune functions to protect the patients.”

But “we are looking at two to three years before a (clinical) trial is underway,” he added.

Roughly 7,500 to 10,000 people are diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease in the US each year, the majority being young adults aged 15 to 34. This cancer of the immune system is usually treated with radiation therapy, chemotherapy, or both. These treatments have resulted in an almost 80% cure rate, but carry a risk of serious side effects and can lead to the development of infertility, heart disease, or another form of cancer later in life.

There is the best place to find top-quality medications and remedies at cheap prices. This online pharmacy no prescription recommends safe and affordable prescription drugs.

Researchers at the Ontario Cancer Institute, the University of Toronto, and the Amgen Research Institute discovered that Hodgkin and Reed-Sternberg (H/RS) cells, abnormal cells present in Hodgkin’s disease, produce the growth factor interleukin-13 (IL-13).

Interleukins are proteins that activate white blood cells, stimulating them to produce substances important to the body’s immune system. The study shows that IL-13 makes it possible for the H/RS cells to power their own multiplication and growth.

The research team made the discovery while investigating the expression of 950 genes in a sampling of Hodgkin’s disease cells. They found that IL-13 was consistently overexpressed by these cells. The findings, reported in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, were confirmed upon analyzing lymph node biopsies from four patients newly diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease.

“It is likely that IL-13 is found in a majority of Hodgkin’s patients,” senior researcher Dr. Tak W. Mak told Reuters Health.

“All Hodgkin’s-derived cell lines and four of four patients had a dramatically increased level of this growth factor,” added Mak, who is also director of the Amgen Research Institute and professor of medical biophysics and immunology at the University of Toronto.

Ordering discount prescription drugs from an online pharmacy not only saves time and money but moreover offers you the ease, convenience of purchasing medicines from home.

But not anymore.

Now there’s a computerized wand your dentist can use to inject anesthesia.

It numbs your gums before the needle ever goes in. The wand senses the resistance of your gum tissue and it keeps the flow of anesthesia constant.

Some dentists say it’s more precise than shots. That means they can target just the tooth that needs filling — without numbing your tongue and lips, too.

Molluscum contagiosum is caused by a poxvirus and is also spread by genital skin-to-skin contact. This virus causes small, smooth, rounded bumps on the penis, scrotum and pubic area. These bumps may go away without scarring. Or a doctor can remove them with various destructive methods, but these carry a risk of scarring.

Genital herpes is caused by herpes simplex virus and is spread by sexual contact with an infected partner. Herpes appears as one or more small blisters anywhere on the genital skin. The blisters can rupture to form very painful ulcers that heal on their own, but outbreaks tend to recur. Anti-viral medications can clear up the sores faster and cut down on the number of outbreaks.

Gonorrhea is caused by Neisseria gonorrhoeae and is spread by unprotected sex. It can cause painful urination, discharge from the urethra, and scrotal pain, swelling and tenderness. Gonorrhea may also have no symptoms at all. That means you may not even know you have it and can spread it to another partner. There are different tests for gonorrhea and treatment is with an antibiotic.

Chlamydia is caused by Chlamydia trachomatis and is also spread by unprotected sex. Chlamydia can cause the same symptoms as gonorrhea, including no symptoms at all. There are different tests for chlamydia and treatment is with an antibiotic.

Syphilis is caused by Treponema pallidum. It starts out as a firm, painless, genital skin sore called a chancre. The chancre heals without treatment, but if you are not treated for the infection it can go on to cause skin rashes and bumps, swollen glands and other serious complications. Blood tests and a special microscopic test of chancres material are used for diagnosis. It is treated with an antibiotic.

Trichomoniasis is caused by a protozoan called Trichomonas vaginalis. Most guys have no symptoms at all, but some may have pain with urination. Guys usually find out they have this infection when a female sexual partner finds out that she is infected. It is treated with an antibiotic.

Pubic lice can infect the pubic area and cause intense itching as well as a red rash. Treatment is with a medicated shampoo or rinse.

If you are sexually active, the best way to decrease your chances of getting an STD is to use a condom during sex. However, using a condom might not completely protect you from getting STDs such as genital warts, herpes, molluscum and pubic lice, since these infections can involve areas of skin the condom doesn’t cover.

As the early pioneer of push technology, PointCast quickly rose as one of the “It” startups for the Internet, along with sister media darling, Marimba. But after passing on a $450 million acquisition offer in 1997 from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., canceling plans for its IPO, failing to land a partnership with a major telco, and watching two CEOs come and go inside two years, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based PointCast has literally gone back to the drawing board.

After PointCast laid off a third of its 225 employees in April, Pasadena, Calif.-based investment banker/incubator idealab! snatched up the company for Internet chump change: a reported $7 million in cash and stock – a hard knock for a company that was valued at $256 million when it filed for its IPO in May 1998.

Two key reasons for its free fall: The service swamped networks with traffic, became crash-prone for dialup users, and its technology became so commonplace that everyone from Microsoft to small media upstarts developed their own “push” tools. Chris Hassett, who quit as CEO of PointCast in 1997 and co-founded the Internet startup PrizePoint Entertainment in 1998, believes the company’s undoing came from a case of software envy – insisting on building proprietary technology when it was probably cheaper, and fiscally healthier, just to go out and buy some.

Inside:
The Startup Economy
Building the Bulletproof Startup
Eating the Fortune 500 For Launch
Adam R. Dell: Fundamentals
Making Your Pitch
Tax Havens: Go For Broke
Esther Dyson: Market Madness
Lessons of the Lost
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Guy Kawasaki: Why Less Is More

Hassett rationalizes: “It was a different time, but it was probably better to stay closer to the Web and standard technologies than to stray so far away by building our own client server as separate and different than the browser. It was certainly successful – it caused Microsoft to put push on their browser. But it cost us a lot of money that we could have put into marketing or building traffic.”

So why didn’t Hassett reverse course when he had the chance? “That’s why I left,” he says. “The board and I had a disagreement on where it wanted to go. I was much more media-centric. The board wanted to focus on software.”

Memo to tech-minded entrepreneurs: “A lot of Internet founders have a tech background, so they like to develop something on their own. Plus, you rarely find something off the shelf exactly as you like it. Maybe it’s 98 percent right instead of 100. But by building it on your own, you spend a lot of a company’s resources. And if you’re spending money to build software that’s not part of your startup’s mission statement, it’s probably a bad idea.” – Lauren Barack

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Poison ivy is an extremely common plant in the United States. It may grow as a vine near trees, rocks or buildings, or it may grow as ground cover in open fields. Poison ivy has shiny green leaves that grow in groups of three. The plant contains a sap that, when released, causes the itchy rash we know as poison ivy.

If you have been exposed to poison ivy, wash the affected area with soap and cold water within 10 to 20 minutes after exposure.

Be sure to clean under your fingernails and to wash any clothes, shoes or tools that may have had contact with the poison ivy.

The key to remembering how to identify and avoid poison ivy: “Leaves of three? Let it be!”