The Perfect Level of Stress

A little stress may help you make good decisions.

By Carlin Flora, PsychologyToday.com

Anxious people, it turns out, may make better decisions. Gregory Samanez-Larkin, a graduate student in psychology at Stanford University, scanned the brains of healthy people (none of them had anxiety disorders) and found that a particular region, the anterior insula, lit up when the subjects anticipated losing money. But those who were more anxious showed even more activity in the anterior insula.

Later he brought the same group back to the lab to play a computer game for real cash. Those with greater insular activity—the more anxious ones—were better at learning how to avoid losing money in subsequent games. “Their anxiety over losing money perhaps led them to be more precise in the way they played the game,” Samanez-Larkin says.

Anxiety isn’t the same as stress per se, but if your body is in a stressful state and you don’t feel happy about it, (as you would when keyed up for an exciting or fun event), then you will likely feel anxious.

Martin Paulus, professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Diego, studies anxiety’s effects on decision-making. “Under certain circumstances anxious people are more sensitive in detecting potentially bad outcomes associated with choices. They do avoid harm, so, as a consequence, it may be useful to be anxious,” he says.

But those who are too sensitive to threats in their midst will make decisions that err on the side of caution. “Highly anxious people may decide not go to a mall, for example, because they feel extremely uncomfortable. Over time they may avoid engaging in interactions with other people, and this could hurt them,” Paulus says.

Paulus and his team have found that anxious people tend to take a “bottom-up” approach to life—their emotional reactions to events are stronger, while their ability to reason and intellectually interpret events is weaker. “Chronically anxious peoples’ brains experience everything as aversive,” he says. Less anxious people, in contrast, take more of a “top-down” approach—the rational parts of their brain take over when they experience something potentially anxiety inducing, and they essentially talk themselves into not getting worked up.

Paulus hopes to eventually identify a specific therapy that would employ, say, meditative exercises to calm anxious people’s emotional reactions (possibly in tandem with anti-anxiety medication) and also cognitive-behavioral therapy to help them think in ways that would also help them interpret situations as not dangerous.

Since a little stress is good for you and a lot is bad, how do you know if you are in the “just right” zone? Depending on what state you are in, Paulus says, you respond differently to touch and to temperature. Physiological tests built around these insights could eventually help tell us if we’re stressed out a good amount or not. In the meantime, just relax and rely on your own intuition.

Source: MSN

Recursive / hierarchical queries in SQL Server

Hello friends J

We all know how difficult it is handling recursive functions in any programming language; it is even more difficult to write recursive queries in SQL Server earlier versions like SQL 7.0 or 2000.

SQL Server 2005 has introduced a new feature called common table expression, which made our job so easy when working with hierarchical data like organization levels in a company or file storage system or component based storage etc.

Even though it was introduced with SQL Server 2005, now only I got the chance to look at it and found interesting. I hope you find this article useful J

WITH Specifies a temporary named result set, known as a common table expression (CTE). This is derived from a simple query and defined within the execution scope of a SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE statement. A common table expression can include references to itself. This is referred to as a recursive common table expression.

Syntax

[ WITH <common_table_expression> [ ,...n ] ]   <common_table_expression>::=         expression_name [ ( column_name [ ,...n ] ) ]     AS         ( CTE_query_definition )

Arguments

expression_name

Is a valid identifier for the common table expression. expression_name must be different from the name of any other common table expression defined in the same WITH <common_table_expression> clause

column_name

Specifies a column name in the common table expression

CTE_query_definition

Specifies a SELECT statement whose result set populates the common table expression.

Example:-Click here to download the script

CREATE TABLE Dept( Dept_id INT PRIMARY KEY, DeptName VARCHAR(100), Loc VARCHAR(100))

GO

 

INSERT INTO Dept VALUES(101,‘Admin’,‘Chennai’)

INSERT INTO Dept VALUES(102,‘Sales’,‘Hyderabad’)

INSERT INTO Dept VALUES(103,‘Operations’,‘Delhi’)

INSERT INTO Dept VALUES(104,‘IT’,‘Banglore’)

 

GO

CREATE TABLE Employee(Emp_id INT PRIMARY KEY, EmpName VARCHAR(100),DOJ DATETIME, Salary MONEY, Dept_id INT REFERENCES Dept(Dept_id))

 

GO

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES (101,‘Shivan’,’01-Jan-2005′,20000,101,NULL)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES (102,‘Ram’,’01-Dec-2006′,15000,103,101)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES (103,‘Kokila’,’11-Feb-2006′,15000,103,101)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES (104,‘Jagan’,’21-Aug-2007′,10000,104,102)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES (105,‘Ela’,’18-Mar-2007′,10000,104,102)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES (106,‘Kannan’,’16-Jun-2007′,10000,104,103)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES (107,‘Zerold’,’29-Nov-2007′,10000,104,103)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES (108,‘Remya’,’23-Apr-2008′,5000,102,104)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES (109,‘Seetha’,’29-Dec-2008′,5000,102,104)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES (110,‘Ramanath’,’14-Sep-2008′,5000,102,105)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES (111,‘Betsy’,’25-Oct-2008′,5000,102,105)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES (112,‘Sanga’,’07-Mar-2008′,5000,102,106)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES (113,‘Abhi’,’20-Jan-2008′,5000,102,106)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES (114,‘Chandra’,’21-Feb-2008′,5000,102,107)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES (115,‘Vvs’,’11-May-2008′,5000,102,107)

GO

 

WITH EmpParent(Emp_Id, EmpName, Manager_id, EmpLevel) AS

(

          SELECT Emp_id, EmpName, Manager_id, 1 AS EmpLevel

          FROM Employee

          WHERE Manager_id IS NULL

          UNION ALL

          SELECT e.Emp_id, e.EmpName, e.Manager_id, EmpLevel + 1

          FROM Employee e

          INNER JOIN EmpParent p

          ON e.Manager_Id = p.Emp_id

)

SELECT * FROM EmpParent ORDER BY EmpLevel,Manager_id

 

Output:

Emp_Id	EmpName	Manager_Id	EmpLevel
101	Shivan	NULL	1
102	Ram	101	2
103	Kokila	101	2
104	Jagan	102	3
105	Ela	102	3
106	Kannan	103	3
107	Zerold	103	3
108	Remya	104	4
109	Seetha	104	4
110	Ramanath	105	4
111	Betsy	105	4
112	Sanga	106	4
113	Abhi	106	4
114	Chandra	107	4
115	Vvs	107	4

 

 

GO

 

WITH EmpParent AS

(

          SELECT Emp_id, EmpName, Manager_id, 1 AS EmpLevel, (CONVERT(VARCHAR(255), REPLICATE(‘****’, 1)) + EmpName) AS EmpName

          FROM Employee

          WHERE Manager_id IS NULL

          UNION ALL

          SELECT e.Emp_id, e.EmpName, e.Manager_id, EmpLevel + 1, (CONVERT(VARCHAR(255), REPLICATE(‘****’, EmpLevel + 1 )) + e.EmpName) AS EmpName

          FROM Employee e

          INNER JOIN EmpParent p

          ON e.Manager_Id = p.Emp_id

)

SELECT * FROM EmpParent  ORDER BY EmpLevel,Manager_id

 

Output:

Emp_Id	Manager_Id	EmpLevel	EmpName
101	NULL	1	****Shivan
102	101	2	********Ram
103	101	2	********Kokila
104	102	3	************Jagan
105	102	3	************Ela
106	103	3	************Kannan
107	103	3	************Zerold
108	104	4	****************Remya
109	104	4	****************Seetha
110	105	4	****************Ramanath
111	105	4	****************Betsy
112	106	4	****************Sanga
113	106	4	****************Abhi
114	107	4	****************Chandra
115	107	4	****************Vvs

 

Source :- MSDN J J J

 

Using Top clause for Selecting, Inserting, Updating and deleting records in SQL Server

Hello friendsJ,

 

Most of us might have worked with TOP clause very frequently to get only the specific first set of rows but I have never used it with the combination of INSERT or DELETE or UPDATE.

 

So I just want to share what I have learned today and I hope you find it usefulJ

 

TOP clause specifies that only the first set of rows will be returned from the query result. The set of rows can be either a number or a percent of the rows. It can be used in SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements.

Syntax:-

 

[

     TOP (expression) [PERCENT]

     [WITH TIES]

]

Arguments:-

Expression

Is the numeric expression that specifies the number of rows to be returned. Expression is implicitly converted to a float value if PERCENT is specified; otherwise, it is converted to bigint.

Parentheses that delimit expression in TOP is required in INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements. For backward compatibility, TOP expression without parentheses in SELECT statements is supported, but we do not recommend this.

If the query includes an ORDER BY clause, the first expression rows, or expression percent of rows, ordered by the ORDER BY clause are returned. If the query has no ORDER BY clause, the order of the rows is arbitrary.

PERCENT

Indicates that the query returns only the first expression percent of rows from the result set.

WITH TIES

Specifies that additional rows be returned from the base result set with the same value in the ORDER BY columns appearing as the last of the TOP n (PERCENT) rows. TOP …WITH TIES can be specified only in SELECT statements, and only if an ORDER BY clause is specified.

Example:- Click here to download the script

CREATE TABLE Dept( Dept_id INT PRIMARY KEY, DeptName VARCHAR(100), Loc VARCHAR(100))

GO

 

INSERT INTO Dept VALUES(101,‘Admin’,‘Chennai’)

INSERT INTO Dept VALUES(102,‘Sales’,‘Hyderabad’)

INSERT INTO Dept VALUES(103,‘Operations’,‘Delhi’)

INSERT INTO Dept VALUES(104,‘IT’,‘Banglore’)

 

GO

CREATE TABLE Employee(Emp_id INT PRIMARY KEY, EmpName VARCHAR(100),DOJ DATETIME, Salary MONEY, Dept_id INT REFERENCES Dept(Dept_id))

 

GO

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES(1001,‘Chandra’,’15-Dec-2004′,10000,104)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES(1002,‘VVS’,’01-Jan-2005′,30000,104)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES(1003,‘Pagalavan’,’15-Oct-2005′,40000,104)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES(1004,‘ASN’,’10-Feb-2006′,20000,104)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES(1005,‘Sathish’,’19-Dec-2005′,10000,104)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES(1006,‘Sri’,’06-Sep-2007′,50000,104)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES(1007,‘Sangeetha’,’10-Nov-2007′,15000,104)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES(1008,‘Manick’,’25-Jan-2006′,20000,104)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES(1009,‘Kanchana’,’15-Feb-2005′,19000,104)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES(1010,‘Arun’,’15-Mar-2005′,12000,103)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES(1011,‘Zahed’,’05-Apr-2004′,11000,103)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES(1012,‘Rajesh’,’14-May-2005′,60000,103)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES(1013,‘Ila’,’15-Jun-2006′,80000,102)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES(1014,‘Remya’,’15-Jul-2006′,40000,102)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES(1015,‘Tito’,’15-Aug-2008′,70000,102)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES(1016,‘RP’,’11-Sep-2007′,30000,102)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES(1017,‘Khiroj’,’18-Oct-2008′,40000,102)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES(1018,‘Gopi’,’20-Nov-2005′,60000,101)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES(1019,‘Venkat’,’12-Dec-2007′,10000,101)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES(1020,‘JJR’,’12-Jan-2006′,15000,101)

INSERT INTO Employee VALUES(1021,‘Shivan’,’15-Feb-2008′,25000,101)

GO

 

Using TOP with variables

 

          DECLARE @P INT

          SET @P = 10

          SELECT TOP (@P) * FROM Employee

 

Using TOP with PERCENT and WITH TIES

 

The following example obtains the top 10 percent of all employees with the highest salary and returns them in descending order according to salary base rate. Specifying WITH TIES makes sure that any employees with salaries equal to the lowest salary returned are also included in the result set, even if doing this exceeds 10 percent of employees.

 

Excluding “WITH TIES”

 

Select TOP (10) PERCENT

Emp_id,Empname,Salary

From Employee

order by salary desc

 

Output:-

Emp_id	Empname	Salary
1013	Ila	80000
1015	Tito	70000
1012	Rajesh	60000

 

Including “WITH TIES” – It returns extra rows which matches the least salary in the above output

 

Select TOP (10) PERCENT WITH TIES

Emp_id,Empname,Salary

From Employee

order by salary desc

 

Output:-

Emp_id	Empname	Salary
1013	Ila	80000
1015	Tito	70000
1012	Rajesh	60000
1018	Gopi	60000

 

 

Using TOP with INSERT

 

SELECT * INTO #x FROM Employee Where Emp_id = -1

 

/*The previous query creates a temp table with the structure of Employee table*/

 

INSERT TOP (2) INTO #x

     SELECT * FROM Employee

     ORDER BY Salary desc

Go

Select * From #x

 

Output:-

Emp_id	EmpName	DOJ	Salary	Dept_id
1001	Chandra	00:00.0	10000	104
1002	VVS	00:00.0	30000	104

 

The ORDER BY clause in the previous query references only the rows returned by the nested SELECT statement. The INSERT statement chooses any two rows returned by the SELECT statement by default in the sorting order of primary key column and it doesn’t consider the order by column given in the SELECT statement.

 

To make sure that the top two rows from the SELECT sub query are inserted, rewrite the query as follows.

 

INSERT  INTO #x

     SELECT TOP (2) * FROM Employee

     ORDER BY Salary desc

Go

Select * From #x

 

Output:-

Emp_id	EmpName	DOJ	Salary	Dept_id
1013	Ila	00:00.0	80000	102
1015	Tito	00:00.0	70000	102

 

 

Using TOP with UPDATE

 

UPDATE TOP (2) Employee

SET Salary = 10000

 

Using TOP with DELETE

 

DELETE TOP (2) Employee

 

Source :- MSDN J J J

SEO Techniques

So you want Your website to be on the first page of every Search Engine – SEO Techniques will help You get there! The Techniques on this page will enpower You with the information that will move You towards that goal. Set Your aim high, the sky is the limit! Others have done it, so why can’t You — Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) is really quite simple!

If You have been putting off optimizing Your website for a higher Search Engine results position, today is a good day to make Your start. SEO Techniques will make it much easier that You expected!

The following list of SEO Techniques will help you optimize your website so you will get a higher Search Engine Results Position (SERP). Some of the items can be done quickly — others will take a bit of time.

If you complete all the items on the following list of SEO Techniques, give the Search Engines some time to send out their bots to deep crawl your website, your site traffic will increase. Make sure you are ready for it!

Search Engine Optimization — What is it?

Optimizing your website so you will obtain a high search engine results position is what SEO Techniques is all about. It is reported that 65% of all websites visited start with a search from a search engine.

For people to find your site via a search engine, the site will require a high Search Engine Results Position (SERP). This means when they search keywords phrases like SEO techniques, they will find you site page on the first page of the search engine results. Ending up on the 10 page of the search engines results will not get you any traffic.

Getting a high SERP is a combination of a number of things. Leaving out any of the items on the following list of SEO Techniques can result in your page not getting as high a search engine results position as it could.

The SEO List

There are no tricks here, just a bit of work and some time. So let’s get started by reading the following list of SEO Techniques!

1. Domain & File Names:
   Choose your site domain name that contains words from your primary keyword phrase. Your domain name should also be easy to spell and easy to remember. You keyword phrase also should in many cases go in your file name. Read this thread Keywords in the URL from SEO Chat Forum.
   For example I use the file name seo-techniques.html for this page.
2. Keyword Phrases:
   1. Use keywords that are being searched for. You can check your keyword phrases with either the Search Term Suggestion Tool or the Overture Keyword Popularity Tool to find out how often they are being searched. You can also look at Google AdWords Keyword Suggestions for suggestions for different keyword phrases.
   2. Add keyword synonyms to your content.
   3. Put the keyword phrases in the <title>keyword phrase</title> .
   4. Insert the keyword phrases in a <h1>keyword phrase</h1> tag at the beginning of your page. Keyword synonyms should be put in your h2 & h3 tags. The h1, h2, h3 tags are used for titles and subtitles in articles.
   5. Make sure you use your keyword phrases from the page you are linking to, in your anchor text on the site map. i.e. SEO Techniques.
3. Keyword Density:
   Keyword density is a very important part of search engine optimization. Keyword density is the percent that your keyword or keyword phrase are of your web page text. You may want to look that your competition to see what keyword density they are using. To high a keyword density will be considered search engine spam and can get you blacklisted.
   Your keywords should be toward the top of your page and your keyword phrase be in either every paragraph or every second paragraph depending on your paragraph length.
4. Bad Techniques:
   Bad search engine optimization techniques can get you blacklisted from a search engine. Some techniques that are considered spam are cloaking, invisible text, tiny text, identical pages, doorway pages, refresh tags, link farms, filling comment tags with keyword phrases only, keyword phrases in the author tag, keyword density to high, mirror pages and mirror sites.
   While these techniques might work to give you a higher ranking for short time in the long run they will hurt you.
   Google has a good article on Google information for webmasters that is very imformative if you are considering Getting a SEO Company to so work on your website.
5. Title & Meta Description Tag:
   Construction of your title tag is one of the most important things you need to do. Each page should have a different title with 2 or 3 of your keyword phrases at the beginning. When search engine results are displayed the title is the first thing people see.
   Below the title is a description which will be either be taken from your meta name description content=”Description phrase” or from the first sentence on at page. You description should also have 2 or 3 of your keyword phrases at the beginning as so should your first sentence. You should have a different title, description and first sentence on each page. You many also what to try shorter titles with only one keyword or keyword phrase as this will raise you keyword relevance. Also you can consider putting your domain name at the very end of the title.
6. Meta Keywords Tag:
   The meta keywords tag is not as relevant as it used to be and some say Google doesn’t ever look at it anymore, but put it in anyway. It is as follows, <meta name=”keywords” content=”keywords,go,here” /> and put in it all your keywords and keyword phrases. This tag should be different for each page.
7. Author & Robots Tags:
   The Author Tag should contain the name of the company that owns the site. This tag will help you get a #1 position for your company’s name.
   <meta name=”author” content=”Solutions with Service” />
   Use a generic Robots Tag on all pages that you want indexed. This instructs the robots to crawl the page. The following is the generic robots tag.
   <meta name=”robots” content=”index, follow” />
8. Quality Content:
   Quality content will bring people back and as people always want to tell others about a good thing it will get you forward links from other sites. Your content should be written with your keyword phrases in mind
9. Quantity Content:
   The more the better. Just remember your content will need to be both quantity and quality.
10. Changing Content:
    You can do this by hand or with a script. For example you can have a php script that draws five paragraphs from a pool of twenty paragraphs when the content is different each time the php page is accessed.
    www.carsinlondon.com/used-cars-london-ontario.php shows a sample of php script that will do this.
11. Avoid Dynamic URLs:
    Are you pages via php, asp, or cf? Some search engines may have a problem indexing them. Create static pages whenever possible. Avoid symbols in your URLs like the “?” that you will often find in php, asp or cf pages.
    Static pages are the best but if you have a db driven site, make sure the menu and site map like go to inventory.cfm not inventory.cfm?vn=0 .
12. Frames:
    Many search engines can’t follow frame links. Make sure you provide an alternative method for the search engines to enter and index your site. For more information read Search Engines and Frames.
13. Site Map:
    A good menu system is really a site map. A well constructed menu system that is on each page and contains a link to very page on the website is all you need.
14. Site Themes:
    All of the top 3 search engines look for site themes or a common topic when they crawl a website. If your site is about one specific topic you will rank better than if you have more than one theme or topic on your site. By using similar keyword phrases in each page the search engines will detect a theme this will be to your advantage.
15. Site Design:
    You may think, what does site design have to with search engine optimization. Well if your website has a bad color scheme that is hard to read, is not organized, is a cheesy looking site, then all your site optimization has been a waste of time. Make your site attractive to the viewer, make things easy to find, have you graphic header and menu bar the same place on each page.
    These things will keep your visitors on the site and bring them back. A well optimized site with a high search engine results position that is ugly and is hard find information on, will not keep the visitors your optimization has brought to the site.
    Use W3C Link Checker to make sure all your page links are good. If you have broken links on your site this can effect the ranking you are given.
    Put a proper doctype on each page. If you don’t have a proper doctype on each page Internet Exployer will go into quirks mode and display it different.
    Use The W3C Markup Validate Service to verify that your pages are Validate HTML or XHTML code. The W3C validation will verify that your HTML or XHTML is not broken. This validation show you any broken code that could cause your webpages from displaying properly in all the different browsers and browser versions.
16. Separate Content & Presentation:
    Put all your presentation code into Cascading Styles Sheets (CSS). This separates the presentation from the content and makes your html files up to 50% smaller. It is reported that the search engine bots prefer this and the more content you have compared to presentation in your file, the better you get rated. Read why tables for markup are stupid for an overview.
17. Robots.txt File:
    While this file is not really required it should be included so that the search engine bots don’t get 404 errors when they look for it. Just include the following 2 lines and drop it in the root.
    User-agent: *
    Disallow:

June 29th 2004 All rights reserved.

Source: – http://seocompany.ca/seo/seo-techniques.html

 

Romantic Ideas for Everyday

20 romantic ways to show your sweetie you care no matter what the occasion.

By The Nest

Valentine’s Day, First-Date Anniversary, Tuesday — when you’re in love, just about any day is a perfect excuse for sparking romance. Any time you feel the need to connect with your sweetheart, these ideas are perfect — no holiday necessary.

More from The Nest

• Try a sensual massage
• A DIY spa for two
• Play some sexy games

1. Stuff a little love note in your sweetie’s pocket, sock, or shoe. For maximum impact, try email.

2. Secretly load a photo of the two of you as the desktop wallpaper on your honey’s computer.

3. Burn a CD with tunes from your dating days and include your first dance (or favorite) song.

4. Buy a heart-shaped cookie-cutter and use it to make toast the next morning.

5. Look up the date of the next full moon and celebrate with a champagne toast.

6. Learn to ice skate or in-line skate together. This works best when both of you are beginners — the more clinging to each other, the better.

7. Hate basketball and your main squeeze is addicted to it? Get tickets to a game. Despise musicals? Surprise your sweetie with tickets to a show. Go against the grain, and endure with grace and cheer.

8. Spend the day at a museum, holding hands.

9. Forget breakfast in bed. Have dinner in bed (and don’t worry about the crumbs).

10. Go to bed early. No books, no magazines, no remote control.

11. Tell a secret — it’ll bring you closer.

12. Create your own cocktail together. Then make up a name for it by combining your two names.

13. Write “I Love You” on the steamy mirror while your beloved is in the shower.

14. Go to a bookstore or music store together, then split up. Your mission: Buy something you know your sweetie will love. Then, wrap and exchange.

15. Have a picnic. It doesn’t have to be outdoors, it can be on your living room floor.

16. Absence is an aphrodisiac. Spend a weekend without each other (substitute your best pal, your sister, your old college roommate) and plan to meet back at your place after 48 hours apart.

17. Teach each other about something the other knows nothing about. He can teach her all the rules of chess, or how to make a perfect omelet. She can teach him ten phrases in French and how to use the digital camera.

18. Get away from it all close to home — spend a night in a very luxurious hotel or cozy bed-and-breakfast in your own city.

19. Get dressed together — choose each other’s attire (for work, for dinner out, whatever). Then, later, get undressed together.

20. Find your sweetie’s car in the parking lot and tuck a love note under the windshield wiper.

Photo: Veer

© 2008 The Knot Inc. All rights reserved.