Day: 09/14/2013

Money Isn’t a Dirty Word: How to Use Money to Serve Your Purpose.

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“What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.” ~ Julia Cameron

So many of us cringe at the image of a person who loves money. We tend to think it’s tacky, greedy, and not noble to strive to be rich. And for those of us who want to do work that serves the world in a positive way, money can start to feel like a dirty word.

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And I’m here to change that.

I don’t believe money is the root of all evil. Nor do I believe money can buy happiness. But I do believe that when we can get rid of our hang-ups around money, it allows us to serve the world in a bigger way. Especially if your career is centered around doing good in the world, it’s important for you to embrace making money as a part of your making-a-difference strategy.

It’s time to stop shaming yourself for wanting to make money in your career or your passion-based business. You might think it’s noble to work for free or low cost and help the less fortunate, but there is nothing noble about not being able to pay your rent.

In order to do good in the world, you must be able to take care of yourself first. And when you do that, you stop playing small and you can fully step into what you were put here to do – fulfill your purpose through your work.

Here’s how you can start shifting your money mindset right now:

1. Acknowledge that what you do has value

And even more than that, acknowledge that who you are has value. All of us have our own unique gifts that we don’t think are that remarkable, when in fact, these are the very traits that others admire in us. The more you can play up who you are at your core, the more you will see the value that you bring to the world around you. And the more value you can find in your own self worth, just the way you are, the easier it is to see why people would pay you for these qualities. You are different and special, and you deserve to be paid well for doing that special thing that only you can do.

2. Start to love money

Like, really love it. Part of this practice is being grateful for all the things that money helps you do in your life. With money, you can buy yourself healthy organic food, you can support your local charities, you can give your kids an education. When you start to realize how the money you make is able to be filtered back into your life s a source of growth, you start to become grateful for every penny you earn, because you know it allows you to give back to yourself and your community.

3. Stop discounting money as something you don’t need

Stop discounting money as something you don’t need, and imagine a life where money flows freely. Recognize that you DO need money to live, and pay attention to how it would feel to no longer have to be penny pinching, or budgeting carefully every month. Imagine a life where you had all the money you wanted, more than you knew what to do with. How would you spend it? What would you do with it? Imagine the possibilities of how you could use that extra money as a force for good in the world, how many lives you could shape with it, how many of the world’s problems you could solve by re-investing it back into your community.  Start thinking of money as possibility instead of burden, and notice how much energy that brings to your purpose in the world. Money could help you build that school in Africa, or support your local animal shelter, or run the women’s group you volunteer at. Money is essential in helping support your purpose and passions.

When you stop fearing money and start allowing yourself to fall in love with it, doors open for you like you might never have imagined. Making money is not a sin and wanting money is not a sin. Money gives you the gift of taking care of yourself and those around you, which allows you to live a life that lets you help the world in a bigger way.

Money can be used as a force of good in the world. You just have to let it in.

Do you believe money is the root of all evil? What are some of the limiting beliefs you borrowed from others when it comes to money? Share your insights by joining the conversation in the comment section bellow.

Source:Purpose fairy

Voyager 1 just left the solar system using less computing power than your iPhone.

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Voyager I just became the first man-made object to reach interstellar space — and it’s running on technology that’s decades older, slower and less complex than whatever you’re using to read this page.

Launched in 1977, the Voyager’s computing power was impressive for its time. The spacecraft was designed to run most of its operations itself, since the billions of miles separating it and Earth make communication laggy. To accomplish that, Voyager has three interconnected computer systems: one to control the craft’s flight and altitude, another to control its instruments, and a third to manage the first two. The computers can process about 8,000 instructions per second — a fraction of the capability of your smartphone, which handles upwards of 14 billion each second. With memory measured in kilobytes, they can hold only hold a few thousand words worth of text.

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Since Voyager’s original mission involved documenting Jupiter and Saturn, it also has a range of scientific instruments and several cameras on board, including a narrow-angle television camera. NASA shut off the cameras in the early ’90s to conserve the craft’s dwindling power supply, and they couldn’t turn them back on if they wanted to. The camera is so antiquated, NASA says, that the agency no longer has the software or computers needed to analyze its images. So instead, Voyager focuses on measuring things like magnetic fields, plasma waves and cosmic rays.

As for that data, it gets stored on an 8-track digital tape recorder and played back every six months. Voyager transmits information back to Earth using a 23-watt signal. For comparison, my college radio station broadcast on a 20-watt signal and couldn’t be heard even a few blocks off campus. It is, per NPR, about eight times stronger than the average cellphone.

Undoubtedly the greatest piece of technology on-board the Voyager, however, is a legendary disc known as “The Golden Record” — quite literally a gold phonograph record packaged with a cartridge and needle and loaded with everything aliens might need to know about Earth. That includes 115 images of humans, animals and airports, spoken greetings in languages from Akkadian to Chinese, a message from President Carter and an “eclectic 90-minute selection of music.” Scientists also printed iconographic instructions on the record to clue extraterrestrials in to how they work.

Of course, as Carl Sagan pointed out at the time, Voyager is far from any actual planets — and only getting farther. It will be 40,000 years before the spacecraft encounters another planetary system. If phonographs and 8-tracks seem outdated now, just imagine how they’ll look then.

Microsoft’s Cortana shapes up to take on Siri, Google Now.

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A rival-in-waiting to personal assistant technology from Apple and Google, Cortana will be integrated into all flavors of Windows in the future.

Back in June, screen shots of an early Windows Phone operating system build leaked (via a Lumia phone allegedly purchased on eBay). At that time, next to no attention was paid to an app, listed as “zCortana,” that was on the phone.

But that Cortana app (with the “z” indicating it was a test build) is central to what Microsoft is doing to compete with Apple’s Siri and Google Now. And Cortana is back in the news this week with passing mentions by those tracking what’s happening with Windows Phone as itmoves toward the “Blue” release in the early part of 2014.

Cortana takes its codename from Cortana, an artifically intelligent character in Microsoft’s Halo series who can learn and adapt.

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Cortana, Microsoft’s assistant technology, likewise will be able to learn and adapt, relying on machine-learning technology and the “Satori” knowledge repository powering Bing.

Cortana will be more than just an app that lets users interact with their phones more naturally using voice commands. Cortana is core to the makeover of the entire “shell” — the core services and experience — of the future versions of Windows Phone, Windows and the Xbox One operating systems, from what I’ve heard from my contacts. 

In Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s strategy memo from July about Microsoft’s reorg, there were hints about Cortana. Ballmer mentioned that Microsoft will be working, going forward, on “a family of devices powered by a service-enabled shell.”

That “shell” is more than just the Metro/Modern/tiled interface. Ballmer continued:

“Our UI will be deeply personalized, based on the advanced, almost magical, intelligence in our cloud that learns more and more over time about people and the world. Our shell will natively support all of our essential services, and will be great at responding seamlessly to what people ask for, and even anticipating what they need before they ask for it.”

The coming shell won’t simply surface information stored on users’ phones, PCs and consoles like a search engine can do today. It also will “broker information among our services to bring them together on our devices in ways that will enable richer and deeper app experiences,” Ballmer said in his memo. (That “brokering” is handled by Bing’s Satori, which intelligently interconnects entities, i.e., information about people, places and things.)

Microsoft execs — especially Ballmer — have been talking up Microsoft’s plans to launch a new kind of personal assitant technology since 2011. At that time, Ballmer was touting publicly the idea that users would be able to tell their PCs to “print my boarding pass on Southwest” and have their systems automatically jump into action. The magic behind the scenes would be a combination of Microsoft Bing, Tellme speech technology and some natural-language-plus-social-graph concoction. (Microsoft moved its speech team into its Online Services unit, seemingly to facilitate work with the Bing team, at the very end of 2011.)

But other Microsoft execs said that this kind of assistant would be unlikely to appear until somewhere between 2014 and 2016. Earlier this summer, Bing officials told CNET that Microsoft had decided to wait until it had something revolutionary, instead of evolutionary, to debut this kind of new assistant technology.

Cortana is yet another reason why Microsoft is unlikely to sell off Bing. Bing is more than a Web search engine; it’s also the indexing and graphing technology that will be powering Microsoft’s operating systems, too.

 

 

Source: CNET

 

Scripps Research Institute Study Suggests Possibility of Selectively Erasing Unwanted Memories.

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The human brain is exquisitely adept at linking seemingly random details into a cohesive memory that can trigger myriad associations—some good, some not so good. For recovering addicts and individuals suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), unwanted memories can be devastating. Former meth addicts, for instance, report intense drug cravings triggered by associations with cigarettes, money, even gum (used to relieve dry mouth), pushing them back into the addiction they so desperately want to leave.

Now, for the first time, scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have been able to erase dangerous drug-associated memories in mice and rats without affecting other more benign memories.

The surprising discovery, published this week online ahead of print by the journal Biological Psychiatry, points to a clear and workable method to disrupt unwanted memories while leaving the rest intact.

“Our memories make us who we are, but some of these memories can make life very difficult,” said Courtney Miller, a TSRI assistant professor who led the research. “Not unlike in the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, we’re looking for strategies to selectively eliminate evidence of past experiences related to drug abuse or a traumatic event. Our study shows we can do just that in mice — wipe out deeply engrained drug-related memories without harming other memories.”

Changing the Structure of Memory

To produce a memory, a lot has to happen, including the alteration of the structure of nerve cells via changes in the dendritic spines—small bulb-like structures that receive electrochemical signals from other neurons. Normally, these structural changes occur via actin, the protein that makes up the infrastructure of all cells.

In the new study, the scientists inhibited actin polymerization—the creation of large chainlike molecules—by blocking a molecular motor called myosin II in the brains of mice and rats during the maintenance phase of methamphetamine-related memory formation.

Behavioral tests showed the animals immediately and persistently lost memories associated with methamphetamine—with no other memories affected.

In the tests, animals were trained to associate the rewarding effects of methamphetamine with a rich context of visual, tactile and scent cues. When injected with the inhibitor many days later in their home environment, they later showed a complete lack of interest when they encountered drug-associated cues. At the same time, the response to other memories, such as food rewards, was unaffected.

While the scientists are not yet sure why powerful methamphetamine-related memories are also so fragile, they think the provocative findings could be related to the role of dopamine, a neurotransmitter involved in reward and pleasure centers in the brain and known to modify dendritic spines. Previous studies had shown dopamine is released during both learning and drug withdrawal. Miller adds, “We are focused on understanding what makes these memories different. The hope is that our strategies may be applicable to other harmful memories, such as those that perpetuate smoking or PTSD.”

Source: http://www.scripps.edu

Selective, Retrieval-Independent Disruption of Methamphetamine-Associated Memory by Actin Depolymerization.

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Background

Memories associated with drugs of abuse, such as methamphetamine (METH), increase relapse vulnerability to substance use disorder. There is a growing consensus that memory is supported by structural and functional plasticity driven by F-actin polymerization in postsynaptic dendritic spines at excitatory synapses. However, the mechanisms responsible for the long-term maintenance of memories, after consolidation has occurred, are largely unknown.

Methods

Conditioned place preference (n = 112) and context-induced reinstatement of self-administration (n = 19) were used to assess the role of F-actin polymerization and myosin II, a molecular motor that drives memory-promoting dendritic spine actin polymerization, in the maintenance of METH-associated memories and related structural plasticity.

Results

Memories formed through association with METH but not associations with foot shock or food reward were disrupted by a highly-specific actin cycling inhibitor when infused into the amygdala during the postconsolidation maintenance phase. This selective effect of depolymerization on METH-associated memory was immediate, persistent, and did not depend upon retrieval or strength of the association. Inhibition of non-muscle myosin II also resulted in a disruption of METH-associated memory.

Conclusions

Thus, drug-associated memories seem to be actively maintained by a unique form of cycling F-actin driven by myosin II. This finding provides a potential therapeutic approach for the selective treatment of unwanted memories associated with psychiatric disorders that is both selective and does not rely on retrieval of the memory. The results further suggest that memory maintenance depends upon the preservation of polymerized actin.

 Source: http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com

Strain of HIV virus found in monkeys is cleared by vaccine.

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Vaccine could be used on humans in clinical trials within two years

A vaccine designed to tackle SIV, the monkey equivalent of HIV, may have successfully cleared the virus from infected animals, paving the way for research into a HIV vaccine for humans. 

It was previously thought that both the human and simian immunodeficiency viruses could be managed with antiretroviral therapies, but not eradicated.

However, a study published in the science journalNature showed that of 16 monkeys exposed to the virus who were injected with a vaccine, nine appeared to be able to clear their body of the disease.

US researchers from the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute at Oregon Health and Science University are now hoping to use a similar approach to test for a vaccine equivalent in humans.

The team examined a strain of the virus called SIVmac239, which is up to 100 times more deadly than HIV.

Researchers first inoculated monkeys with the vaccine and then exposed them to SIV. The virus did not spread in over half of the inoculated monkeys, which usually die within two years of being infected.

The vaccine used a modified version of the cytomegalvirus (CMV), which belongs to the herpes family, to sweep through the monkey body and encourage the immune system to fight off SIV.

After being exposed to the virus, some monkey bodies began to respond by searching out and destroying signs of SIV. They remained clear up to three years after first being inoculated.

Prof. Louis Picker told the BBC: “It’s always tough to claim eradication – there could always be a cell which we didn’t analyse that has the virus in it. But for the most part, with very stringent criteria… there was no virus left in the body of these monkeys.”

However, he said the team were still trying to determine why the vaccine was only successful in nine monkeys.

“It could be the fact that SIV is so pathogenic that this is the best you are ever going to get”, he explained.

“There is a battle going on, and half the time the vaccine wins and half the time it doesn’t.”

Now, the team want to examine if the same technique could be developed and made safe enough to be successful in humans. Clinical human trials could start within two years if the vaccine is approved and the team receive permission from regulatory bodies, Prof Picker added.

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk