always be calm

ANGER MANAGEMENT


“Anger is the key that opens the door to all kinds of vices” – Imam Hassan Askari (a.s)
A man came out of his home to admire his new car. To his horror his little son was happily hammering dents into the shiny paint. The man ran to his son, knocked him away, and hammered the little boy’s hand into pulp as punishment. When the father calmed down, he rushed his son to the hospital. Upon taking a closer look, the man saw that his little boy had etched the words, “I LOVE YOU DAD” on the car.
Although the doctor tried desperately to save the crushed bones, he finally had to amputate the fingers from both the boy’s hands. When the boy woke up from the surgery & saw his bandaged stubs, he innocently said “Dad, I’m sorry about your car.” Then he asked, “But when are my fingers going to grow back?’
Harmful effects of anger:
· Increases frustration
· Prevents one from finding a solution to the problem.
· Makes one physically sick
· It’s a cause for break in human relationships
· Anger is responsible for one of the most depraved human behavior – child & wife abuse.
Anger Management:
· "And if an evil suggestion comes to you from shaytan, then seek refuge in Allah, He is hearing and knowing." (Qur'an 7:200) Therefore when one is angry he should immediately say “`ûdhû billâhi min ash-shaytân ir rajîm”

· Do wudu The holy Prophet (s.a.w.w) has said "Anger from shaytan, shaytan from fire; fire is put out by water; so when angry do wudu"
· Change body position. Our Prophet (peace and blessings be unto him) said, "If one of you gets angry while standing, he should sit. If he is still angry, he should lie down."
· Divert attention away from the cause of anger and participate in strenuous physical activity aiming at letting steam out and relaxing muscles
· Be silent, don't speak. The Prophet (peace and blessings be unto him) said, "Teach, simplify, don't complicate and if you get angry be silent
· Try to pinpoint the exact reasons why you feel angry. Once you identified the problem, consider coming up with different strategies on how to remedy the situation.
· Forgive & forget. Remember the rewards and virtues of patience, mercy, and forgiveness. The Qur'an 42:47 speaks of forgiveness, "And those who avoid major sins and immoralities and when angry they forgive."

Hope is the key of success

(taken from the internet)
a Guy who got into Google



God has always been planning things for me'
July 28, 2008
Shobha Warrier

Naga Naresh Karutura has just passed out of IIT Madras in Computer Science and has joined Google in Bangalore.

You may ask, what's so special about this 21-year-old when there are hundreds of students passing out from various IITs and joining big companies like Google?

Naresh is special. His parents are illiterate. He has no legs and moves around in his powered wheel chair. (In fact, when I could not locate his lab, he told me over the mobile phone, 'I will come and pick you up'. And in no time, he was there to guide me)

Ever smiling, optimistic and full of spirit; that is Naresh. He says, "God has always been planning things for me. That is why I feel I am lucky."

Read why Naresh feels he is lucky.

Childhood in a village

I spent the first seven years of my life in Teeparru, a small village in Andhra Pradesh, on the banks of the river Godavari. My father Prasad was a lorry driver and my mother Kumari, a house wife. Though they were illiterate, my parents instilled in me and my elder sister (Sirisha) the importance of studying.

Looking back, one thing that surprises me now is the way my father taught me when I was in the 1st and 2nd standards. My father would ask me questions from the text book, and I would answer them. At that time, I didn't know he could not read or write but to make me happy, he helped me in my studies!

Another memory that doesn't go away is the floods in the village and how I was carried on top of a buffalo by my uncle. I also remember plucking fruits from a tree that was full of thorns.

I used to be very naughty, running around and playing all the time with my friends.. I used to get a lot of scolding for disturbing the elders who slept in the afternoon. The moment they started scolding, I would run away to the fields!

I also remember finishing my school work fast in class and sleeping on the teacher's lap!

January 11, 1993, the fateful day

On the January 11, 1993 when we had the sankranti holidays, my mother took my sister and me to a nearby village for a family function. From there we were to go with our grandmother to our native place. But my grandmother did not come there. As there were no buses that day, my mother took a lift in my father's friend's lorry. As there were many people in the lorry, he made me sit next to him, close to the door.

It was my fault; I fiddled with the door latch and it opened wide throwing me out. As I fell, my legs got cut by the iron rods protruding from the lorry. Nothing happened to me except scratches on my legs.

The accident had happened just in front of a big private hospital but they refused to treat me saying it was an accident case. Then a police constable who was passing by took us to a government hospital.

First I underwent an operation as my small intestine got twisted. The doctors also bandaged my legs. I was there for a week. When the doctors found that gangrene had developed and it had reached up to my knees, they asked my father to take me to a district hospital. There, the doctors scolded my parents a lot for neglecting the wounds and allowing the gangrene to develop. But what could my ignorant parents do?

In no time, both my legs were amputated up to the hips.

I remember waking up and asking my mother, where are my legs? I also remember that my mother cried when I asked the question. I was in the hospital for three months.

Life without legs

I don't think my life changed dramatically after I lost both my legs. Because all at home were doting on me, I was enjoying all the attention rather than pitying myself. I was happy that I got a lot of fruits and biscuits.



'I never wallowed in self-pity'
July 28, 2008

The day I reached my village, my house was flooded with curious people; all of them wanted to know how a boy without legs looked. But I was not bothered; I was happy to see so many of them coming to see me, especially my friends!
All my friends saw to it that I was part of all the games they played; they carried me everywhere.

God's hand

I believe in God. I believe in destiny. I feel he plans everything for you. If not for the accident, we would not have moved from the village to Tanuku, a town. There I joined a missionary school, and my father built a house next to the school. Till the tenth standard, I studied in that school.

If I had continued in Teeparu, I may not have studied after the 10th. I may have started working as a farmer or someone like that after my studies. I am sure God had other plans for me.

My sister, my friend

When the school was about to reopen, my parents moved from Teeparu to Tanuku, a town, and admitted both of us in a Missionary school. They decided to put my sister also in the same class though she is two years older. They thought she could take care of me if both of us were in the same class. My sister never complained.

She would be there for everything. Many of my friends used to tell me, you are so lucky to have such a loving sister. There are many who do not care for their siblings.

She carried me in the school for a few years and after a while, my friends took over the task. When I got the tricycle, my sister used to push me around in the school.

My life, I would say, was normal, as everyone treated me like a normal kid. I never wallowed in self-pity. I was a happy boy and competed with others to be on top and the others also looked at me as a competitor.

Inspiration

I was inspired by two people when in school; my Maths teacher Pramod Lal who encouraged me to participate in various local talent tests, and a brilliant boy called Chowdhary, who was my senior.

When I came to know that he had joined Gowtham Junior College to prepare for IIT-JEE, it became my dream too. I was school first in 10th scoring 542/600.

Because I topped in the state exams, Gowtham Junior College waived the fee for me. Pramod Sir's recommendation also helped. The fee was around Rs 50,000 per year, which my parents could never afford.

Moving to a residential school

Living in a residential school was a big change for me because till then my life centred around home and school and I had my parents and sister to take care of all my needs. It was the first time that I was interacting with society. It took one year for me to adjust to the new life.

There, my inspiration was a boy called K K S Bhaskar who was in the top 10 in IIT-JEE exams. He used to come to our school to encourage us. Though my parents didn't know anything about Gowtham Junior School or IIT, they always saw to it that I was encouraged in whatever I wanted to do.. If the results were good, they would praise me to the skies and if bad, they would try to see something good in that. They did not want me to feel bad.

They are such wonderful supportive parents.

Life at IIT- Madras

Though my overall rank in the IIT-JEE was not that great (992), I was 4th in the physically handicapped category. So, I joined IIT, Madras to study Computer Science.

Here, my role model was Karthik who was also my senior in school. I looked up to him during my years at IIT- Madras.

He had asked for attached bathrooms for those with special needs before I came here itself. So, when I came here, the room had attached bath. He used to help me and guide me a lot when I was here.

I evolved as a person in these four years, both academically and personally. It has been a great experience studying here. The people I was interacting with were so brilliant that I felt privileged to sit along with them in the class. Just by speaking to my lab mates, I gained a lot..

'There are more good people in society than bad ones'

July 28, 2008

Words are inadequate to express my gratitude to Prof Pandurangan and all my lab mates; all were simply great. I was sent to Boston along with four others for our internship by Prof Pandurangan. It was a great experience.

Joining Google R&D

I did not want to pursue PhD as I wanted my parents to take rest now.

Morgan Stanley selected me first but I preferred Google because I wanted to work in pure computer science, algorithms and game theory.

I am lucky

Do you know why I say I am lucky?

I get help from total strangers without me asking for it. Once after my second year at IIT, I with some of my friends was travelling in a train for a conference. We met a kind gentleman called Sundar in the train, and he has been taking care of my hostel fees from then on.

I have to mention about Jaipur foot. I had Jaipur foot when I was in 3rd standard. After two years, I stopped using them. As I had almost no stems on my legs, it was very tough to tie them to the body. I found walking with Jaipur foot very, very slow. Sitting also was a problem. I found my tricycle faster because I am one guy who wants to do things faster.

One great thing about the hospital is, they don't think their role ends by just fixing the Jaipur foot; they arrange for livelihood for all. They asked me what help I needed from them. I told them at that time, if I got into an IIT, I needed financial help from them. So, from the day I joined IIT, Madras, my fees were taken care of by them. So, my education at the IIT was never a burden on my parents and they could take care of my sister's Nursing studies.

Surprise awaited me at IIT

After my first year, when I went home, two things happened here at the Institute without my knowledge.

I got a letter from my department that they had arranged a lift and ramps at the department for me. It also said that if I came a bit early and checked whether it met with my requirements, it would be good.

Second surprise was, the Dean, Prof Idichandy and the Students General Secretary, Prasad had located a place that sold powered wheel chairs. The cost was Rs 55,000. What they did was, they did not buy the wheel chair; they gave me the money so that the wheel chair belonged to me and not the institute.

My life changed after that. I felt free and independent.

That's why I say I am lucky. God has planned things for me and takes care of me at every step.

The world is full of good people

I also feel if you are motivated and show some initiative, people around you will always help you. I also feel there are more good people in society than bad ones. I want all those who read this to feel that if Naresh can achieve something in life, you can too. (via : email)

brain port

How BrainPort Works
by Julia Layton

Browse the article How BrainPort WorksIntroduction to How the BrainPort Works



The BrainPort technology maniuplates the brain's sensory input and can allow the blind to see. See more BrainPort images.


A blind woman sits in a chair holding a video camera focused on a scientist sitting in front of her. She has a device in her mouth, touching her tongue, and there are wires running from that device to the video camera. The woman has been blind since birth and doesn't really know what a rubber ball looks like, but the scientist is holding one. And when he suddenly rolls it in her direction, she puts out a hand to stop it. The blind woman saw the ball. Through her tongue.
Well, not exactly through her tongue, but the device in her mouth sent visual input through her tongue in much the same way that seeing individuals receive visual input through the eyes. In both cases, the initial sensory input mechanism -- the tongue or the eyes -- sends the visual data to the brain, where that data is processed and interpreted to form images. What we're talking about here is electrotactile stimulation for sensory augmentation or substitution, an area of study that involves using encoded electric current to represent sensory information -- information that a person cannot receive through the traditional channel -- and applying that current to the skin, which sends the information to the brain. The brain then learns to interpret that sensory information as if it were being sent through the traditional channel for such data. In the 1960s and '70s, this process was the subject of ground-breaking research in sensory substitution at the Smith-Kettlewell Institute led by Paul Bach-y-Rita, MD, Professor of Orthopedics and Rehabilitation and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Now it's the basis for Wicab's BrainPort technology (Dr. Bach-y-Rita is also Chief Scientist and Chairman of the Board of Wicab).


Vibration
Electricity isn't the only type of stimulation used in high-tech sensory substitution devices. There are devices that use"vibrotactile" stimulation, among other means, to send information to the brain through an alternate sensory channel. In a vibrotactile stimulation device, encoded sensory signals are applied to the skin by one or more vibrating pins. Tactaid, an auditory substitution device, uses this type of technology.

Most of us are familiar with the augmentation or substitution of one sense for another. Eyeglasses are a typical example of sensory augmentation. Braille is a typical example of sensory substitution -- in this case, you're using one sense, touch, to take in information normally intended for another sense, vision. Electrotactile stimulation is a higher-tech method of receiving somewhat similar (although more surprising) results, and it's based on the idea that the brain can interpret sensory information even if it's not provided via the "natural" channel. Dr. Bach-y-Rita puts it this way:

... we do not see with the eyes; the optical image does not go beyond the retina where it is turned into spatio-temporal nerve patterns of [impulses] along the optic nerve fibers. The brain then recreates the images from analysis of the impulse patterns.
The multiple channels that carry sensory information to the brain, from the eyes, ears and skin, for instance, are set up in a similar manner to perform similar activities. All sensory information sent to the brain is carried by nerve fibers in the form of patterns of impulses, and the impulses end up in the different sensory centers of the brain for interpretation. To substitute one sensory input channel for another, you need to correctly encode the nerve signals for the sensory event and send them to the brain through the alternate channel. The brain appears to be flexible when it comes to interpreting sensory input. You can train it to read input from, say, the tactile channel, as visual or balance information, and to act on it accordingly. In JS Online's "Device may be new pathway to the brain," University of Wisconsin biomedical engineer and BrainPort technology co-inventor Mitch Tyler states, "It's a great mystery as to how that process takes place, but the brain can do it if you give it the right information."

In the next section, we'll look more closely at the concepts of electrotactile stimulation.



Concepts of Electrotactile Stimulation

The concepts at work behind electrotactile stimulation for sensory substitution are complex, and the mechanics of implementation are no less so. The idea is to communicate non-tactile information via electrical stimulation of the sense of touch. In practice, this typically means that an array of electrodes receiving input from a non-tactile information source (a camera, for instance) applies small, controlled, painless currents (some subjects report it feeling something like soda bubbles) to the skin at precise locations according to an encoded pattern. The encoding of the electrical pattern essentially attempts to mimic the input that would normally be received by the non-functioning sense. So patterns of light picked up by a camera to form an image, replacing the perception of the eyes, are converted into electrical pulses that represent those patterns of light. When the encoded pulses are applied to the skin, the skin is actually receiving image data. According to Dr. Kurt Kaczmarek, BrainPort technology co-inventor and Senior Scientist with the University of Wisconsin Department of Orthopedics and Rehabilitation Medicine, what happens next is that "the electric field thus generated in subcutaneous tissue directly excites the afferent nerve fibers responsible for normal, mechanical touch sensations." Those nerve fibers forward their image-encoded touch signals to the tactile-sensory area of the cerebral cortex, the parietal lobe.



Mouse-over the part labels of the brain to see where those parts are located.


Under normal circumstances, the parietal lobe receives touch information,
the temporal lobe receives auditory information, the occipital lobe receives
vision information and the cerebellum receives balance information.
(The frontal lobe is responsible for all sorts of higher brain functions,
and the brain stem connects the brain to the spinal cord.)



Within this system, arrays of electrodes can be used to communicate non-touch information through pathways to the brain normally used for touch-related impulses. It's a fairly popular area of study right now, and researchers are looking at endless ways to utilize the apparent willingness of the brain to adapt to cross-sensory input. Scientists are studying how to use electrotactile stimulation to provide sensory information to the vision impaired, the hearing impaired, the balance impaired and those who have lost the sense of touch in certain skin areas due to nerve damage. One particularly fascinating aspect of the research focuses on how to quantify certain sensory information in terms of electrical parameters -- in other words, how to convey "tactile red" using the characteristics of electricity.

This is a field of scientific study that has been around for nearly a century, but it has picked up steam in the last few decades. The miniaturization of electronics and increasingly powerful computers have made this type of system a marketable reality instead of just a really impressive laboratory demonstration. Enter BrainPort, a device that uses electrotactile stimulation to transmit non-tactile sensory information to the brain. BrainPort uses thetongue as a substitute sensory channel. In the next section, we'll get inside BrainPort.

BrainPort


Photo courtesy Wicab, Inc.
BrainPort balance device

Scientists have been studying electrotactile presentation of visual information since the early 1900s, at least. These research setups typically used a camera to set current levels for a matrix of electrodes that spatially corresponded to the camera's light sensors. The person touching the matrix could visually perceive the shape and spatial orientation of the object on which the camera was focused. BrainPort builds on this technology and is arguably more streamlined, controlled and sensitive than the systems that came before it.
For one thing, BrainPort uses the tongue instead of the fingertips, abdomen or back used by other systems. The tongue is more sensitive than other skin areas -- the nerve fibers are closer to the surface, there are more of them and there is no stratum corneum (an outer layer of dead skin cells) to act as an insulator. It requires less voltage to stimulate nerve fibers in the tongue -- 5 to 15 volts compared to 40 to 500 volts for areas like the fingertips or abdomen. Also, saliva contains electrolytes, free ions that act as electrical conductors, so it helps maintain the flow of current between the electrode and the skin tissue. And the area of the cerebral cortex that interprets touch data from the tongue is larger than the areas serving other body parts, so the tongue is a natural choice for conveying tactile-based data to the brain.

Wicab is currently seeking FDA approval for a balance-correction BrainPort application. A person whose vestibular system, the overall balance mechanism that begins in the inner ears, is damaged has little or no sense of balance -- in severe cases, he may have to grip the wall to make it down a hallway, or be unable to walk at all. Some inner-ear disorders include bilateral vestibular disorders (BVD), acoustic neuroma and Meniere's disease, and the sense of balance can also be affected by common conditions like migraines and strokes. The BrainPort balance device can help people with balance problems to retrain their brains to interpret balance information coming from their tongue instead of their inner ear.



Photo courtesy Wicab, Inc.
BrainPort balance components simplified


An accelerometer is a device that measures, among other things, tilt with respect to the pull of gravity. The accelerometer on the underside of the 10-by-10 electrode array transmits data about head position to the CPU through the communication circuitry. When the head tilts right, the CPU receives the "right" data and sends a signal telling the electrode array to provide current to the right side of the wearer's tongue. When the head tilts left, the device buzzes the left side of the tongue. When the head is level, BrainPort sends a pulse to the middle of the tongue. After multiple sessions with the device, the subject's brain starts to pick up on the signals as indicating head position -- balance information that normally comes from the inner ear -- instead of just tactile information.

Wicab conducted a clinical trial with the balance device in 2005 with 28 subjects suffering from bilateral vestibular disorders (BVD). After training on BrainPort, all of the subjects regained their sense of balance for a period of time, sometimes up to six hours after each 20-minute BrainPort session. They could control their body movements and walk steadily in a variety of environments with a normal gait and with fine-motor control. They experienced muscle relaxation, emotional calm, improved vision and depth perception and normalized sleep patterns.

In the next section we'll look at the BrainPort vision device.



The BrainPort Vision Device

Test results for the BrainPort vision device are no less encouraging, although Wicab has not yet performed formal clinical trials with the setup. According to the University of Washington Department of Ophthalmology, 100 million people in the United States alone suffer from visual impairment. This might be age-related, including cataracts, glaucoma and macular degeneration, from diseases like trachoma, diabetes or HIV, or the result of eye trauma from an accident. BrainPort could provide vision-impaired people with limited forms of sight.



Photo courtesy Wicab, Inc.
Prototype BrainPort vision components simplified


To produce tactile vision, BrainPort uses a camera to capture visual data. The optical information -- light that would normally hit the retina -- that the camera picks up is in digital form, and it uses radio signals to send the ones and zeroes to the CPU for encoding. Each set of pixels in the camera's light sensor corresponds to an electrode in the array. The CPU runs a program that turns the camera's electrical information into a spatially encoded signal. The encoded signal represents differences in pixel data as differences in pulse characteristics such as frequency, amplitude and duration. Multidimensional image information takes the form of variances in pulse current or voltage, pulse duration, intervals between pulses and the number of pulses in a burst, among other parameters. According to U.S. Patent 6,430,450, licensed to Wicab for the BrainPort application:

To the extent that a trained user may simultaneously distinguish between multiple of these characteristics of amplitude, width and frequency, the pulses may convey multidimensional information in much the same way that the eye perceives color from the independent stimulation of different color receptors.
The electrode array receives the resulting signal via the stimulation circuitry and applies it to the tongue. The brain eventually learns to interpret and use the information coming from the tongue as if it were coming from the eyes.
After training in laboratory tests, blind subjects were able to perceive visual traits like looming, depth, perspective, size and shape. The subjects could still feel the pulses on their tongue, but they could also perceive images generated from those pulses by their brain. The subjects perceived the objects as "out there" in front of them, separate from their own bodies. They could perceive and identify letters of the alphabet. In one case, when blind mountain climber Erik Weihenmayer was testing out the device, he was able to locate his wife in a forest. One of the most common questions at this point is, "Are they really seeing?" That all depends on how you define vision. If seeing means you can identify the letter "T" somewhere outside yourself, sense when that "T" is getting larger, smaller, changing orientation or moving farther away from your own body, then they're really seeing. One study that conducted PET brain scans of congenitally blind people while they were using the BrainPort vision device found that after several sessions with BrainPort, the vision centers of the subjects' brains lit up when visual information was sent to the brain through the tongue. If "seeing" means there's activity in the vision center of the cerebral cortex, then the blind subjects are really seeing.

The BrainPort test results are somewhat astonishing and lead many to wonder about the scope of applications for the technology. In the next section, we'll see which BrainPort applications Wicab is currently focusing on in clinical trials, what other applications it foresees for the technology and how close it is to commercially launching a consumer-friendly version of the device.

Current and Potential Applications


Photo courtesy Wicab, Inc.
BrainPort Balance Device

While the full spectrum of BrainPort applications has yet to realized, the device has the potential to lessen an array of sensory limitations and to alleviate the symptoms of a variety of disorders. Just a few of the current or foreseeable medical applications include:
providing elements of sight for the visually impaired
providing sensory-motor training for stroke patients
providing tactile information for a part of the body with nerve damage
alleviating balance problems, posture-stability problems and muscle rigidity in people with balance disorders and Parkinson's disease
enhancing the integration and interpretation of sensory information in autistic people
Beyond medical applications, Wicab has been exploring potential military uses with a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The company is looking into underwater applications that could provide the Navy SEALs with navigation information and orientation signals in dark, murky water (this type of setup could ultimately find a major commercial market with recreational SCUBA divers). The BrainPort electrodes would receive input from a sonar device to provide not only directional cues but also a visual sense of obstacles and terrain. Military-navigation applications could extend to soldiers in the field when radio communication is dangerous or impossible or when their eyes, ears and hands are needed to manage other things -- things that might blow up. BrainPort may also provide expanded information for military pilots, such as a pulse on the tongue to indicate approaching aircraft or to indicate that they must take immediate action. With training, that pulse on their tongue could elicit a faster reaction time than a visual cue from a light on the dashboard, since the visual cue must be processed by the retina before it's forwarded to the brain for interpretation.
Other potential BrainPort applications include robotic surgery. The surgeon would wear electrotactile gloves to receive tactile input from robotic probes inside someone's chest cavity. In this way, the surgeon could feel what he's doing as he controls the robotic equipment. Race car drivers might use a version of BrainPort to train their brains for faster reaction times, and gamers might use electrotactile feedback gloves or controllers to feel what they're doing in a video game. A gaming BrainPort could also use a tactile-vision process to let gamers perceive additional information that isn't displayed on the screen.

BrainPort is currently conducting a second round of clinical trials as it works its way through the FDA approval process for the balance device. The company estimates a commercial release in late 2006, with a roughly estimated selling price of $10,000 per unit.

Already more streamlined than any previous setup using electrotactile stimulation for sensory substitution, BrainPort envisions itself even smaller and less obtrusive in the future. In the case of the balance device, all of the electronics in the handheld part of the system might fit into a discreet mouthpiece. A dental-retainer-like unit would house a battery, the electrode array and all of the microelectronics necessary for signal encoding and transmitting. In the case of the BrainPort vision device, the electronics might be completely embedded in a pair of glasses along with a tiny camera and radio transmitter, and the mouthpiece would house a radio receiver to receive encoded signals from the glasses. It's not exactly a system on a chip, but give it 20 years -- we might be seeing a camera the size of a grain of rice embedded in people's foreheads by then.

For more information on BrainPort and related topics, check out the links on the next page.



Lots More Information

Related HowStuffWorks Articles


How the Brain Works
How Corrective Lenses Work
How Digital Cameras Work
How Light Works
How Vision Works
More Great Links


JS Online: Device may be new pathway to the brain
Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development: Form perception with a 49-point electrotactile stimulus array on the tongue: A technical note
Seeing with Sound: The vOICe
University of Wisconsin: Tongue Display Technology
U.S. Patent #6,430,450: Tongue placed tactile output device
Wicab, Inc.
Sources


Bach-y-Rita, Paul et al. "Form perception with a 49-point electrotactile stimulus array on the tongue: A technical note." Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development, 1998.
http://kaz.med.wisc.edu/Publications/1998-BachyRita-JRRD-Tongue.pdf
Blakeslee, Sandra. "New Tools to Help Patients Reclaim Damaged Senses." New York Times, Nov. 23, 2004.
http://www.goupstate.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041123/ZNYT05/411230391/1051/NEWS01
Kaczmarek, Kurt, Ph.D. "Tongue Display Technology." University of Wisconsin, Aug. 18, 2005.
http://kaz.med.wisc.edu/Publicity/Synopsis.html
Kupers, Ron et al. "Activation of visual cortex by electrotactile stimulation of the tongue in early-blind subjects." Human Brain Mapping 2003.
http://208.164.121.55/hbm2003/abstract/abstract1557.htm
Manning, Joe. "Device may be new pathway to the brain." JS Online, Dec. 7, 2004.
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=282145
Phone interview with Kurt Kaczmarek, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, University of Wisconsin Department of Orthopedics and Rehabilitation Medicine. July 7, 2006.
Ptito, Maurice et al. "Cross-modal plasticity revealed by electrotactile stimulation of the tongue in the congenitally blind." Brain, 2005.
http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/128/3/606
U.S. Patent #6,430,450. "Tongue placed tactile output device."
Wicab, Inc.
http://www.wicab.com/
"Wicab to present BrainPort at Boston conference." WTN News. Oct. 4, 2005.
http://wistechnology.com/printarticle.php?id=2319

proud to be a teacher!

WHAT DO TEACHERS MAKE....?

The dinner guests were sitting around the table discussing life.

One man, a CEO, decided to explain the problem with education. He argued, "What's a kid going to learn from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?"

To stress his point he said to another guest; "You're a teacher, Barbara. Be honest. What do you make?"

Barbara, who had a reputation for honesty and frankness replied, "You want to know what I make? (She paused for a second, and then began...)

"Well, I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.

I make a C+ feel like the Congressional Medal of Honor winner.

I make kids sit through 40 minutes of class time when their parents CAN'T make them sit for 5 without an I Pod, Game Cube or movie rental.

You want to know what I make? (She paused again and looked at each and every person at the table)

I make kids wonder.

I make them question.

I make them apologize and mean it.

I make them have respect and take responsibility for their actions.

I teach them to write and then I make them write. Keyboarding ISN'T EVERYTHING.

I make them read, read, read.

I make them show all their work in maths. They use their God given brain, not the man-made calculator.

I make my students from other countries learn everything they need to know about English while preserving their unique cultural identity.

I make my classroom a place where all my students feel safe.

Finally, I make them understand that if they use the gifts they were given, work hard, and follow their hearts, they can succeed in life (Barbara paused one last time and then continued.)

Then, when people try to judge me by what I make, with me knowing money isn't everything, I can hold my head up high and pay no attention because they are ignorant.

You want to know what I make?

I MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

What do you make Mr. CEO?

His jaw dropped, he went silent.




THIS IS WORTH SENDING TO EVERY TEACHER, EVERY CEO, AND EVERY PERSON YOU KNOW.

Even all your personal teachers like mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, coaches, and others.

A profound answer!!!