Saturday, September 29, 2007

Little known Phone Sticker Squeals On Water Damage And Voids Warranty

If you take a look inside the case of your cell phone, you should see a round white sticker placed somewhere on the device. What is it? This is called a water damage sticker and if your phone is exposed to moisture that makes its way inside the phone, this can be used to completely void your warranty, no matter the reason your phone may stop working. It does not seem to take much, either; a simple drop of water placed onto this sticker is enough to change its color and void the warranty on your cell phone. For honest consumers who accidentally get a small bit of water on their phone and then 5 or 6 months later, suddenly notice that the phone is having problems, knowing about this sticker is quite useful.

What exactly can you do to stop this little devil from voiding the warranty on your phone should is accidentally get a little damp? The best thing that you can do is to take a piece of satin finished scotch tape and put it over the sticker to keep the color from changing if it gets wet. If you drop your phone into the toilet or the bathtub, this probably isn’t going to be that effective, but if you are just worried about general moisture problems or an accidental quick spill of something on the phone, this should work just fine. If your phone stops working for some other reason, remove the tape and take it back to the manufacturer for repairs or a replacement.

It is was not exactly a bad idea for these stickers to be put on the inside of phones, though; a lot of phones get returned that are supposedly not water damaged, but are. At the same time, though, it is bad for the consumer because having such a sticker can completely void the warranty regardless of whether the liquid was the reason the phone stopped working or not. The phone could have just been a defective model and it would make no difference.

Hopefully people will use the information presented here honestly and not try to defraud the phone company into giving them a new item after their phone was irreparably damaged by having a hot cup of coffee spilled onto it or something like that. For honest consumers just having a bit of bad luck, it is great to know these kinds of things about our electronics just in case. Unfortunately, there are those that will attempt to misuse this information.

Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
South Carolina Water Damage Restoration and and other states such as
Chicago Water Damage Restoration companies across the united states.

Moldy Rice Is A Favorite In Asia

A food called red yeast rice in English has been a favorite dish in Asian countries for a long time and is a traditional part of Peking duck. Traditional Chinese medicine has used the dish for over 1,000 years in order to help the body keep up a good circulatory system and heart. In China, its use has been noted as far back as the Tang Dynasty of China back in 800 A.D. There might be a good reason for this use, since recent research has shown that red yeast rice is quite good at assisting in lowering a person’s cholesterol. Just what is red yeast rice?

Red yeast rice is made by fermenting a mold called monascus purpureus on top of rice. There is a unique process that is used to separate the naturally occurring ingredient called mevinolin and this somewhat similar to other drugs that doctors give their patients to fight high cholesterol like Lipitor and Zocor. While everyone needs cholesterol in order to have a healthy life, having too much of it as most people know can lead to problems. Our livers produce about eighty percent of the cholesterol that the body needs and the other twenty percent comes from the food that we eat. What the red yeast rice does when you eat it is block the enzyme that exists in the liver to induce the production of cholesterol. Unsaturated fatty acids in the red yeast rice could also possibly add to the beneficial attributes of it.

The possibility of its medical uses has only recently been noticed in western countries, even though it has been used in Asia for centuries. An extract of one of its natural ingredients, mevinolin, is often sold over the counter as a dietary supplement of sorts to be used for controlling cholesterol. You do not need a prescription for this supplement and some people are taking advantage of this.

It is not recommended to eat red yeast rice or take the dietary supplement of mevinolin if you have already been prescribed a drug for high cholesterol such as Lipitor or Zocor.

What about the mold that is used to make the dish? Monascus purpureus is a purplish-red mold in the family Monascaceae and it is used mainly in Asian dishes for color, however it can also impart a pleasant flavor to the food, as well.


Jim Corkern is a writer and respected contributor to the Water damage restoration and mold remediation Industry. Visit his sites for more information.
http://www.localrestoration.com and
http://www.moldrestorationusa.com

Sake Is Not Possible Without Mold

In Japan, koji has been used to make sake for hundreds of years and what might be the surprising thing is that it is actually a kind of mold. The scientific name for the mold is Aspergillus Oryzae and it creates a few different enzymes as it reproduces and these are what cause the starches in the rice to turn into sugars that feed the yeast cells that produce both alcohol and carbon dioxide. Without the addition of the koji, the Japanese alcoholic beverage of sake cannot exist. There are other beverages in Asia that have been known to use koji, but the ways they are brewed are very different.

Sake is produced differently than a beverage such as wine, so it might be useful to explain just how different the production methods are. Wine is created from fermented grapes that already have sugar (or glucose) in them and sugar is what yeast has to eat. Even though there are other kinds of sugars in existence, the yeast cannot metabolize them and so when wine is made, the yeast is put into a liquid that already has sugar in it.

Sake is brewed somewhat similar to beer, but it is not malted. It is made from steamed rice that has had its husk removed and the rice is milled in order to remove the outer covering. It is not uncommon for a rice to be washed down to 50 percent or even less of its former weight in order to get to the innermost part of the rice, which does not contain all of the proteins, amino acids, and fats that can give the sake an unwanted flavor or smell.

Aspergillus oryzae has a very powerful affect on the final product and its cultivation is taken very seriously. It is produced in a different room in the brewery that is known as the koji-muro. When it is ready, it is added to more steamed rice. Later on in the batch, it is put into a large tank where the rice, yeast, water, and koji will continue to ferment. One account says that a brewer presented a bottle of sake with an apology, saying that they had rebuilt their koji-muro the year before and that the cedar wood used in the walls was not as ready as they had thought. The cedar could be tasted and smelled in the sake.

Koji is what gives the rice its unique flavors depending upon what kind of rice it is cultivated on, the pH level of the water, the mineral content of it, and many other things are what make koji one of the most important ingredients of sake.


Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
water damage restoration companies and
mold remediation companies across the united states.