STRESS!!

What is stress? in a common dictionary we can find a definition like: "Tension caused by overwhelming situations that originate psychosomatic reactions or psychological troubles, sometimes serious."
I think that this definition is right, but is not complete yet. We can say to complete this definition, from a medical perspective, that the stress is a physiological reaction of human body with a lot of defense mechanisms to face a threatening situation.
In Chile we have highs levels of stress related work principally, because some people work about 12 hours daily for a littel money quantity, they don't have de necesary infrastructure or they don't like their work environment.

Many poeple who have been suffered stress in their lives for a long time, probably will develop serious diseases like cancer, irritable bowel, etc.

Some physiologycal symptoms are the release of catecholamines like adrenaline, release of cortisol and ekephalin.
Tachycardia and tachipnea(the increase of respiratory frequency) are more visibles symptoms.
In the short-term these symptoms increase the survival probabilities in dangerous situations, but in medium-term, they can provoke insomnia depression, muscle pain, anxiety, etc. But not all the people have the same symptoms

The stress for me, as a student, is very commonm, especially in testing periods. I feel very tired, i don't sleep a lot, I don't have hungry, I have headache, etc. But I just have to wait the weekend, receive a good massage, sleep all that i have to sleep, make a break in the studies and I am ready for te next week.

The toxic red river

In a metal plant of Ajka, a town in Hungary located 100 miles southwest of Budapest, a gigantic sludge reservoir bursted last Monday.
The red sludge started to move like a real river and arrived to little towns that were in his bed causing a big damage to the people, houses, cars, animals, plants, etc. that was there.
The original pH of the slurry was about 12, a very dangerous alkaline level that can provoke serious burns, but actually the pH is under 10 and a harmless level is between 6 and 8.
About four people have died by this mud, three are still missing and about one hundred people were injuried.
Now the principal problem is that the toxic red river has reached te Mosoni-Danube, a branch of the Danube river, the second longest in Europe, that border with Slovakia and Austria. And the principal efforts of the European Union are focus in stop the movement of this big mass of sludge, because can provoke a very serious damage in the environment if can reach the Danube, for all the underwater species that live there. Also if the mud can reach the Danube this disaster will affect at least half a dozen other countries.
Greenpeace said yesterday that the spill was one of the "top three environmental disasters in Europe in the last 20 or 30 years"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/07/hungary-sludge-spill-reaches-danube