Hey Indonesian universities, You MUST reject scholarships offered by cigarette companies

source : The Jakarta Globe

The Indonesian Consumer Protection Foundation (YLKI) has called on universities to reject scholarships offered by cigarette companies , saying it is part of their responsibility to curb Indonesia's smoking rate.

"As education institutions, universities should understand this and reject scholarships from cigarette firms," YLKI official Tulus Abadi told a discussion at the University of Indonesia (UI) campus in Jakarta on Wednesday.

He said the cigarette industry was among "harmful industries" that were not supposed to be allowed to do corporate social responsibility (CSR).

"As should other harmful industries, for example the weapons industry, [cigarette companies] don't have a right to perform CSR," Tulus said.

Cigarette companies in Indonesia commonly offer scholarships for students, especially the poor ones studying at state universities, aside from providing sponsorships for events organized by the universities or the students, including sports and entertainment events.

UI manager for students division, Komaruddin, however, said UI was among the only two universities in Indonesia that banned scholarships and sponsorships from cigarette companies.

He added that UI had even gone as far as to prohibit scholarships for students who smoked.

"We've asked the Education and Culture Minister to issue a ministerial regulation on this. So far only one university has supported us, namely Palembang's Sriwijaya University," Komaruddin said.

BeritaSatu/JG

Batu Empedu : Jangan makan lemak hewani

Batu Empedu

source: medicastore.com

DEFINISI Batu Empedu adalah timbunan kristal di dalam kandung empedu atau di dalam saluran empedu. Batu yang ditemukan di dalam kandung empedu disebut kolelitiasis, sedangkan batu di dalam saluran empedu disebut koledokolitiasis.

PENYEBAB Batu empedu lebih banyak ditemukan pada wanita dan faktor resikonya adalah : - usia lanjut - kegemukan (obesitas) - diet tinggi lemak - faktor keturunan. Komponen utama dari batu empedu adalah kolesterol, sebagian kecil lainnya terbentuk dari garam kalsium. Cairan empedu mengandung sejumlah besar kolesterol yang biasanya tetap berbentuk cairan. Jika cairan empedu menjadi jenuh karena kolesterol, maka kolesterol bisa menjadi tidak larut dan membentuk endapan diluar empedu. Sebagian besar batu empedu terbentuk di dalam kandung empedu dan sebagian besar batu di dalam saluran empedu berasal dari kandung empedu. Batu empedu bisa terbentuk di dalam saluran empedu jika empedu mengalami aliran balik karena adanya penyempitan saluran atau setelah dilakukan pengangkatan kandung empedu. Batu empedu di dalam saluran empedu bisa mengakibatkan infeksi hebat saluran empedu (kolangitis), infeksi pankreas (pankreatitis) atau infeksi hati. Jika saluran empedu tersumbat, maka bakteri akan tumbuh dan dengan segera menimbulkan infeksi di dalam saluran. Bakteri bisa menyebar melalui aliran darah dan menyebabkan infeksi di bagian tubuh lainnya.

GEJALA Sebagian besar batu empedu dalam jangka waktu yang lama tidak menimbulkan gejala, terutama bila batu menetap di kandung empedu. Kadang-kadang batu yang besar secara bertahap akan mengikis dinding kandung empedu dan masuk ke usus halus atau usus besar, dan menyebabkan penyumbatan usus (ileus batu empedu). Yang lebih sering terjadi adalah batu empedu keluar dari kandung empedu dan masuk ke dalam saluran empedu. Dari saluran empedu, batu empedu bisa masuk ke usus halus atau tetap berada di dalam saluran empedu tanpa menimbulkan gangguan aliran empedu maupun gejala. Jika batu empedu secara tiba-tiba menyumbat saluran empedu, maka penderita akan merasakan nyeri. Nyeri cenderung hilang-timbul dan dikenal sebagai nyeri kolik. Nyeri timbul secara perlahan dan mencapai puncaknya, kemudian berkurang secara bertahap. Nyeri bersifat tajam dan hilang-timbul, bisa berlangsung sampai beberapa jam. Lokasi nyeri berlainan, tetapi paling banyak dirasakan di perut atas sebelah kanan dan bisa menjalar ke bahu kanan. Penderita seringkali merasakan mual dan muntah. Jika terjadi infeksi bersamaan dengan penyumbatan saluran, maka akan timbul demam, menggigil dan sakit kuning (jaundice). Biasanya penyumbatan bersifat sementara dan jarang terjadi infeksi. Nyeri akibat penyumbatan saluran tidak dapat dibedakan dengan nyeri akibat penyumbatan kandung empedu. Penyumbatan menetap pada duktus sistikus menyebabkan terjadinya peradangan kandung empedu (kolesistitis akut). Batu empedu yang menyumbat duktus pankreatikus menyebabkan terjadinya peradangan pankreas (pankreatitis), nyeri, jaundice dan mungkin juga infeksi. Kadang nyeri yang hilang-timbul kambuh kembali setelah kandung empedu diangkat, nyeri ini mungkin disebabkan oleh adanya batu empedu di dalam saluran empedu utama.

DIAGNOSA Pemeriksaan terbaik untuk menemukan batu empedu adalah dengan pemeriksaan USG dan kolesistografi. Pada kolesistografi, foto rontgen akan menunjukkan jalur dari zat kontras radioopak yang telah ditelan, diserap di usus, dibuang ke dalam empedu dan disimpan di dalam kandung empedu. Jika kandung empedu tidak berfungsi, zat kontras tidak akan tampak di dalam kandung empedu. Jika kandung empedu berfungsi, maka batas luar dari kandung empedu akan tampak pada foto rontgen. Diagnosis batu di dalam saluran empedu ditegakkan berdasarkan adanya nyeri perut, jaundice, menggigil dan demam. Hasil pemeriksaan darah biasanya menunjukkan pola fungsi hati yang abnormal, yang menunjukkan adanya penyumbatan saluran empedu. Beberapa pemeriksaan lainnya yang bisa memberikan informasi tambahan untuk membuat diagnosis yang pasti adalah: - USG - CT scan - berbagai teknik foto rontgen yang menggunakan zat kontras radioopak untuk menggambarkan saluran empedu.

PENGOBATAN Jika tidak ditemukan gejala, maka tidak perlu dilakukan pengobatan. Nyeri yang hilang-timbul bisa dihindari atau dikurangi dengan menghindari atau mengurangi makanan berlemak. Batu Kandung Empedu Jika batu kandung emped menyebabkan serangan nyeri berulang meskipun telah dilakukan perubahan pola makan, maka dianjurkan untuk menjalani pengangkatan kandung empedu (kolesistektomi). Pengangkatan kandung empedu tidak menyebabkan kekurangan zat gizi dan setelah pembedahan tidak perlu dilakukan pembatasan makanan. Sekitar 1-5 orang dari setiap 1.000 orang yang menjalani kolesistektom meninggal. Kolesistektomi laparoskopik mulai diperkenalkan pada tahun 1990 dan sekarang ini sekitar 90% kolesistektomi dilakukan secara laparoskopi. Kandung empedu diangkat melalui selang yang dimasukkan lewat sayatan kecil di dinding perut. Jenis pembedahan ini memiliki keuntungan sebagai berikut: - mengurangi rasa tidak nyaman pasca pembedahan - memperpendek masa perawatan di rumah sakit. Teknik lainnya untuk menghilangkan batu kandung empedu adalah: - pelarutan dengan metil-butil-eter - pemecahan dengan gelombang suara (litotripsi) - pelarutan dengan terapi asam empedu menahun (asam kenodiol) Batu Saluran Empedu Batu saluran empedu bisa menyebabkan masalah yang serius, karena itu harus dikeluarkan baik melalui pembedahan perut maupun melalui suatu prosedur yang disebut endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP). Pada ERCP, suatu endoskop dimasukkan melalui mulut, kerongkongan, lambung dan ke dalam usus halus. Zat kontras radioopak masuk ke dalam saluran empedu melalui sebuah selang di dalam sfingter Oddi. Pada sfingterotomi, otot sfingter dibuka agak lebar sehingga batu empedu yang menyumbat saluran akan berpindah ke usus halus. ERCP dan sfingterotomi telah berhasil dilakukan pada 90% kasus. Kurang dari 4 dari setiap 1.000 penderita yang meninggal dan 3-7% mengalami komplikasi, sehingga prosedur ini lebih aman dibandingkan pembedahan perut. Komplikasi yang mungkin segera terjadi adalah: - perdarahan - peradangan pankreas (pankreatitis) - perforasi atau infeksi saluran empedu. Pada 2-6% penderita, saluran menciut kembali dan batu empedu muncul lagi. Batu kandung empedu tidak dapat diangkat melalui prosedur ERCP. ERCP saja biasanya efektif dilakukan pada penderita batu saluran empedu yang lebih tua, yang kandung empedunya telah diangkat.

PENCEGAHAN Karena komposisi terbesar batu empedu adalah kolesterol, sebaiknya menghindari makanan berkolesterol tinggi yang pada umumnya berasal dari lemak hewani. Dapat mengkonsumsi obat yang menekan sintesis dan sekresi kolesterol di hati. Obat yang sering digunakan tersebut adalah ursodiol.

Is working for a bank inherently evil? by Marina Keegan

November 9, 2011, 5:29 pm 
source : http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/another-view-the-science-and-strategy-of-college-recruiting/

Another View: The Science and Strategy of College Recruiting

By MARINA KEEGAN

Marina Keegan is a senior English major in the writing concentration at Yale University.

NEW HAVEN — Last May, one of the largest hedge funds in the world paid me $100 to eat gourmet popcorn and explain why I wasn't applying for one of its (lucrative!) jobs. As I sat in a hotel suite with six other Yale students – musicians, biologists, dramatists, other-ists – and answered questions about my future plans, I got this uneasy feeling that the man in the beautiful suit was going to take my Hopes and Dreams back to some lab to figure out the best way to crush them.

And indeed, they have it down to a science. Each fall, our country's top-tier banks and consulting firms cram New Haven's best hotels with the best and brightest to lure them with a series of superlatives: the greatest job, the most money, the easiest application, the fanciest popcorn.

They're good at it. They're unbelievably, remarkably, terrifyingly good at it. Every year around 25 percent of employed Yale graduates enter the consulting and finance industries. At Harvard and Stanford, the numbers are even higher.

When I arrived at Yale as an eager 18 year old, I had never even heard of consulting or I-banking. And to be honest, I still didn't totally understand the function of a hedge fund. But what I do understand is that students here have passion. Passion for public service and education policy and painting and engineering and entrepreneurialism. Standing outside a freshman dorm, I couldn't find a single student aspiring to be a banker – but at commencement this May, there's a 50 percent chance I'll be sitting next to one. This strikes me as incredibly sad.

So what happens? Sometime between freshman fall and senior spring, an insane number of students decide – one way or another – that entering the banking industry makes a whole lot of sense. A few weeks ago I interviewed over 20 Yalies to try to figure out why.

What I found was somewhat surprising: the clichéd pull of high salaries is only part of the problem. Few college seniors have any idea how to "get a job," let alone what that job would be. Representatives from the consulting and finance industries come to schools early and often – providing us with application timelines and inviting us to information sessions in individualized e-mails. We're made to feel special and desired and important.

Of course, none of us are actually special. The important thing is that we go to a top-tier school and they recruit at top-tier schools and their recruitment is pretty darn smart. They understand that it's no longer "cool" to explicitly seek wealth. Our generation inherited a kind of corporate hate from the '60s and '70s that dissuades most students at schools like Harvard and Yale from working for corporations after graduation. But we will work for banks and hedge funds because they're marketed to us (quite strategically) as something to merely do for a few years — as a perfect way to gain skills for a future career in somehow saving the world.

Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I think most young, ambitious people want to have a positive impact on the world. Whether it's through art or activism or advances in science, almost every student I spoke to had some kind of larger, altruistic goal in life. But what I heard again and again was that working at JPMorgan or Bain or Morgan Stanley was the best way to prepare oneself for a future doing public good.

Why do students believe this? Because the recruiters tell them it's true. Personally, I think it's ridiculous. Those skills can be gained elsewhere. I'm just not convinced that the most productive use of 25 percent of my graduating class's time is to spend two or three years pushing figures around spreadsheets to make more money for those with the most money.

And I'm not alone. The expansion of Occupy Everywhere has come hand in hand with a rise in college students looking critically at their schools' recruitment policies. A group of Stanford students are starting a national student organization called Stop the Brain Drain committed to empowering "more young people to solve America's greatest challenges" by combating Wall Street recruitment, and a series of op-eds have been popping up in campus papers across the country trying to do the same.

One of those articles was mine. Expecting to receive hate mail, I was shocked when I was instead bombarded by upward of 100 e-mails from peers across the country who sympathized with the idea that these statistics don't have to be inevitable.

Is working for a bank inherently evil? Probably not. But the fact that such a large percentage of students at top-tier schools enter an industry that isn't contributing, creating or improving much of anything saddens me.

Twenty-five percent is not a joke. That's a lot of people. That's a lot of talent and energy and potential that could be used somewhere other than crunching numbers to generate wealth. Perhaps there won't be fancy popcorn at some other job – but it's about time we started popping it for ourselves.

The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan

source: http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/may/27/keegan-opposite-loneliness/

The piece below was written by Marina Keegan '12 for a special edition of the News distributed at the class of 2012's commencement exercises last week. Keegan died in a car accident on Saturday. She was 22.

We don't have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that's what I want in life. What I'm grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I'm scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow and leave this place.

It's not quite love and it's not quite community; it's just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it's four a.m. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can't remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt. The hats.

Yale is full of tiny circles we pull around ourselves. A cappella groups, sports teams, houses, societies, clubs. These tiny groups that make us feel loved and safe and part of something even on our loneliest nights when we stumble home to our computers — partner-less, tired, awake. We won't have those next year. We won't live on the same block as all our friends. We won't have a bunch of group-texts.

This scares me. More than finding the right job or city or spouse – I'm scared of losing this web we're in. This elusive, indefinable, opposite of loneliness. This feeling I feel right now.

But let us get one thing straight: the best years of our lives are not behind us. They're part of us and they are set for repetition as we grow up and move to New York and away from New York and wish we did or didn't live in New York. I plan on having parties when I'm 30. I plan on having fun when I'm old. Any notion of THE BEST years comes from clichéd "should haves..." "if I'd..." "wish I'd..."

Of course, there are things we wished we did: our readings, that boy across the hall. We're our own hardest critics and it's easy to let ourselves down. Sleeping too late. Procrastinating. Cutting corners. More than once I've looked back on my High School self and thought: how did I do that? How did I work so hard? Our private insecurities follow us and will always follow us.

But the thing is, we're all like that. Nobody wakes up when they want to. Nobody did all of their reading (except maybe the crazy people who win the prizes…) We have these impossibly high standards and we'll probably never live up to our perfect fantasies of our future selves. But I feel like that's okay.

We're so young. We're so young. We're twenty-two years old. We have so much time. There's this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lay alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out – that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. That it's too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement.

When we came to Yale, there was this sense of possibility. This immense and indefinable potential energy – and it's easy to feel like that's slipped away. We never had to choose and suddenly we've had to. Some of us have focused ourselves. Some of us know exactly what we want and are on the path to get it; already going to med school, working at the perfect NGO, doing research. To you I say both congratulations and you suck.

For most of us, however, we're somewhat lost in this sea of liberal arts. Not quite sure what road we're on and whether we should have taken it. If only I had majored in biology…if only I'd gotten involved in journalism as a freshman…if only I'd thought to apply for this or for that…

What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. The notion that it's too late to do anything is comical. It's hilarious. We're graduating college. We're so young. We can't, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it's all we have.

In the heart of a winter Friday night my freshman year, I was dazed and confused when I got a call from my friends to meet them at EST EST EST. Dazedly and confusedly, I began trudging to SSS, probably the point on campus farthest away. Remarkably, it wasn't until I arrived at the door that I questioned how and why exactly my friends were partying in Yale's administrative building. Of course, they weren't. But it was cold and my ID somehow worked so I went inside SSS to pull out my phone. It was quiet, the old wood creaking and the snow barely visible outside the stained glass. And I sat down. And I looked up. At this giant room I was in. At this place where thousands of people had sat before me. And alone, at night, in the middle of a New Haven storm, I felt so remarkably, unbelievably safe.

We don't have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I'd say that's how I feel at Yale. How I feel right now. Here. With all of you. In love, impressed, humbled, scared. And we don't have to lose that.

We're in this together, 2012. Let's make something happen to this world.

Obama's Whac-A-Mole approach to counterterrorism

via Yahoo News

When it comes to the "secret kill list"—a regularly updated chart showing the world's most wanted terrorists—President Barack Obama is the "final moral calculation" in the kill or capture debate, according to the third in a series of New York Times articles assessing his record.

And despite his liberal background, Obama has taken an aggressive approach to counterterrorism.

The Times said it interviewed three dozen current and former advisers to Obama, who described his "evolution since taking on the role, without precedent in presidential history, of personally overseeing the shadow war with Al Qaeda":

They describe a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative deal-making required to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal action without hand-wringing. While he was adamant about narrowing the fight and improving relations with the Muslim world, he has followed the metastasizing enemy into new and dangerous lands. When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda—even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was "an easy one."

Part of Obama's "evolution" on terror apparently began early in his term, when a drone strike resulted in civilian casualties:

Just days after taking office, the president got word that the first strike under his administration had killed a number of innocent Pakistanis. "The president was very sharp on the thing, and said, 'I want to know how this happened,'" a top White House adviser recounted.

In response to his concern, the C.I.A. downsized its munitions for more pinpoint strikes. In addition, the president tightened standards, aides say: If the agency did not have a "near certainty" that a strike would result in zero civilian deaths, Mr. Obama wanted to decide personally whether to go ahead.

"The care that Mr. Obama and his counterterrorism chief take in choosing targets," the Times said, "and their reliance on a precision weapon, the drone, reflect his pledge at the outset of his presidency to reject what he called the Bush administration's 'false choice between our safety and our ideals.'"

[Related: Terror plans hidden in porn?]

And Obama's success limiting civilian deaths in drone strikes is, in part, due to "a disputed method for counting civilian casualties" embraced by Obama. According to the Times, the White House considers "all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants ... unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent."

Obama's personal involvement in counterterrorism operations can be seen in his study of the "baseball card"-like "kill list." For example, in January 2010, Obama questioned the ages of some of the al-Qaida suspects on it.

"How old are these people?" Obama asked during his regular Tuesday briefing with intelligence officials--dubbed the "Terror Tuesday" meeting—in the White House Situation Room. "If they are starting to use children, we are moving into a whole different phase."

[Related: Calif. 9/11 fund raided for deficit]

The White House has also struggled with the so-called "Whac-A-Mole" approach to counterterrorism—an al-Qaida leader killed in, say, a drone strike is simply replaced with another.

"One guy gets knocked off, and the guy's driver, who's No. 21, becomes 20?" William M. Daley, Obama's chief of staff in 2011, told the Times. "At what point are you just filling the bucket with numbers?"