Most US women face stroke risk

Viewing disturbing news footage on television could intensify stress and trauma, according to a latest study.A month before the terrorist attacks on 9/11 in the US,sleep and memory researcher Ruth Propper, at Merrimack College in North Andover,Massachusetts,US,began teaching a class in which students had to record their dreams on the mornings that they remembered them.On the day after the attacks she distributed a questionnaire to the class asking them about their activities the day before,including how much television they watched.The researchers say their dream analysis shows that viewing television coverage of a traumatic event can intensify stress and trauma. Some psycholgists,however, object to this conclusion,contending that dreams do not necessarily reflect a person's mental state.

Sprucing up its famously plain web site, Google is offering a new option that plants its Internet search box in panoramic settings that change with the time of day and the outside weather. The colourful graphics represent the latest bit of pizazz to be served up on Google's home page as the company caters to the digerati who want to customise everything. While most of Google's users remain content seeing little more than the company logo and the search box, others have created log-ins that enable them to select from a variety of features that appear with each visit. These additional bells and whistles, introduced nearly two years ago, include stock quotes, local weather and news headlines.