Day: 09/25/2013

Jacob Barnett, 14-Year-Old With Asperger’s Syndrome, May Be Smarter Than Einstein.

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When Jacob Barnett was 2 years old, he was diagnosed with moderate to severe autism. Doctors told his parents that the boy would likely never talk or read and would probably be forever unable to independently manage basic daily activities like tying his shoe laces.

But they were sorely, extraordinarily mistaken.

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Today, Barnett — now 14 — is a Master’s student, on his way to earning a PhD in quantum physics. According to the BBC, the teen, who boasts an IQ of 170, has already been tipped to one day win the Nobel Prize.

Since enrolling at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) at the age of 10, Barnett has flourished — astounding his professors, peers and family with his spectacular intelligence.

The teen tutors other college students in subjects like calculus and is a published scientific researcher, with an IQ that is believed to be higher than that of Albert Einstein. In fact, according to a 2011 TIME report, Barnett, who frequently tops his college classes, has asserted that he may one day disprove Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. (Watch him explain his genius to 60 minutes’ Morley Safer in a 2012 interview in the video above.)

Outside of his rigorous university commitments, Barnett, who has Asperger’s Syndrome, is also an entrepreneur and aspiring author. 

The teen, who, with his family, runs a charity called Jacob’s Place for kids on the spectrum, has used his story to raise awareness and dispel myths about autism.

“I’m not supposed to be here at all,” he said last year during a TEDx Teen speech about “forgetting what you know” in New York City. “You know, I was told that I wouldn’t talk. There’s probably a therapist watching who is freaking out right now.”

 

Though he makes it all look so easy,his mother, Kristine Barnett, says that he has to work hard on a daily basis to handle his autism.

“He overcomes it every day. There are things he knows about himself that he regulates everyday,” his mother told the Indianapolis Star last month.

In April, Kristine Barnett’s memoir about her family’s experience with autism, “The Spark: A Mother’s Story of Nurturing Genius,” was released. A movie deal is said to be in the works.

“I hope it really inspires children to actually be doing something,” Barnett told the Star of his mom’s book and potential film. “[I hope it] encourages them to do what they like doing. I just hope it is inspirational.”

For more on Jacob Barnett, watch this March 2013 YouTube video of him working through what is described as “a simple quantum mechanics problem“:

 

Europeans consume far less sugar than Americans, and yet health officials there recognize a growing health epidemic.

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If you have ever visited Europe, then you may recall that most of the foods produced and sold there are generally far less sweet than foods produced and sold in the U.S. And yet, despite this difference, Van der Velpen still sees a major public health epidemic brewing in his country as a result of sugar consumption — how much worse must the situation be here in the U.S., where public health officials generally avoid tagging sugar as a major factor in declining public health?
“Sugar is actually a form of addiction,” adds Van der Velpen. “It’s just as hard to get rid of the urge for sweet foods as of smoking. Thereby diets only work temporarily. Addiction therapy is better … Health insurers should have to finance addiction therapy for their obese clients.”

It is important to note that Amsterdam has long tolerated the presence and use of other typically restricted substances such as cannabis, a plant that government authorities the world over have long referred to as a “drug,” within its borders. Cannabis, of course, does not harm the body and is not a public health threat, thus Amsterdam’s relaxed approach to its availability within the city. Sugar, on the other hand, is an actual threat, and Van der Velpen hopes others will learn this truth and take action.

Sources
http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Sugar named ‘most addictive and dangerous substance’ of our time, worse than cigarettes and alcohol.

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While the rest of the world is busy obsessing over the dangers of cigarettes and alcohol, the head of Amsterdam‘s health service in the Netherlands is trying to raise awareness about a much bigger and more pervasive health threat: sugar. According to Paul Van der Velpen, sugar is the most dangerous and addictive substance of modern times, and more needs to be done in the interests of public health to make people aware of the many harms caused by this ubiquitous drug.

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In a recent letter posted by GGD Nederland, an association of the country’s community health services, Van der Velpen discusses the issue of obesity, rates of which have risen dramatically in the Netherlands in recent years. Pointing out that obesity, which is linked to metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease and a host of other chronic ailments, saps the healthcare system of tens of millions of dollars annually, Van der Velpen emphasizes that exercise is simply not enough to reverse this growing trend.

Bravely defying processed food industry claims, which insist that sugar consumed “in moderation” is just fine, Van der Velpen delves into the actual science behind how the body responds to sugar as opposed to protein and fat. In his letter, Van der Velpen explains that sugar intensifies food cravings, for instance, and causes people to eat far more than they otherwise would without it. Additionally, he points out that sugar also disrupts normal food metabolism, eventually leading to addiction.

“Just like alcohol and tobacco, sugar is actually a drug,” writes Van der Velpen, in an English translation from the original Dutch. “This may seem exaggerated and far-fetched, but sugar is the most dangerous drug of the times and can still be easily acquired everywhere … The use of sugar should be discouraged. And users should be made aware of the dangers.”

Scientists create never-before-seen form of matter.

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Harvard and MIT scientists are challenging the conventional wisdom about light, and they didn’t need to go to a galaxy far, far away to do it.

Working with colleagues at the Harvard-MIT Center for Ultracold Atoms, a group led by Harvard Professor of Physics Mikhail Lukin and MIT Professor of Physics Vladan Vuletic have managed to coax photons into binding together to form molecules – a state of matter that, until recently, had been purely theoretical. The work is described in a September 25 paper in Nature.

The discovery, Lukin said, runs contrary to decades of accepted wisdom about the nature of light. Photons have long been described as massless particles which don’t interact with each other – shine two laser beams at each other, he said, and they simply pass through one another.

“Photonic molecules,” however, behave less like traditional lasers and more like something you might find in science fiction – the light saber.

“Most of the properties of light we know about originate from the fact that photons are massless, and that they do not interact with each other,” Lukin said. “What we have done is create a special type of medium in which photons interact with each other so strongly that they begin to act as though they have mass, and they bind together to form molecules. This type of photonic bound state has been discussed theoretically for quite a while, but until now it hadn’t been observed.

“It’s not an in-apt analogy to compare this to light sabers,” Lukin added. “When these photons interact with each other, they’re pushing against and deflect each other. The physics of what’s happening in these molecules is similar to what we see in the movies.”

To get the normally-massless photons to bind to each other, Lukin and colleagues, including Harvard post-doctoral fellow Ofer Fisterberg, former Harvard doctoral student Alexey Gorshkov and MIT graduate students Thibault Peyronel and Qiu Liang couldn’t rely on something like the Force – they instead turned to a set of more extreme conditions.

Researchers began by pumped rubidium atoms into a vacuum chamber, then used lasers to cool the cloud of atoms to just a few degrees above absolute zero. Using extremely weak laser pulses, they then fired single photons into the cloud of atoms.

As the photons enter the cloud of cold atoms, Lukin said, its energy excites atoms along its path, causing the photon to slow dramatically. As the photon moves through the cloud, that energy is handed off from atom to atom, and eventually exits the cloud with the photon.

“When the photon exits the medium, its identity is preserved,” Lukin said. “It’s the same effect we see with refraction of light in a water glass. The light enters the water, it hands off part of its energy to the medium, and inside it exists as light and matter coupled together, but when it exits, it’s still light. The process that takes place is the same it’s just a bit more extreme – the light is slowed considerably, and a lot more energy is given away than during refraction.”

When Lukin and colleagues fired two photons into the cloud, they were surprised to see them exit together, as a single molecule.

The reason they form the never-before-seen molecules?

An effect called a Rydberg blockade, Lukin said, which states that when an atom is excited, nearby atoms cannot be excited to the same degree. In practice, the effect means that as two photons enter the atomic cloud, the first excites an atom, but must move forward before the second photon can excite nearby atoms.

The result, he said, is that the two photons push and pull each other through the cloud as their energy is handed off from one atom to the next.

“It’s a photonic interaction that’s mediated by the atomic interaction,” Lukin said. “That makes these two photons behave like a molecule, and when they exit the medium they’re much more likely to do so together than as single photons.”

While the effect is unusual, it does have some practical applications as well.

“We do this for fun, and because we’re pushing the frontiers of science,” Lukin said. “But it feeds into the bigger picture of what we’re doing because photons remain the best possible means to carry quantum information. The handicap, though, has been that photons don’t interact with each other.”

To build a quantum computer, he explained, researchers need to build a system that can preserve quantum information, and process it using quantum logic operations. The challenge, however, is that quantum logic requires interactions between individual quanta so that quantum systems can be switched to perform information processing.

“What we demonstrate with this process allows us to do that,” Lukin said. “Before we make a useful, practical quantum switch or photonic logic gate we have to improve the performance, so it’s still at the proof-of-concept level, but this is an important step. The physical principles we’ve established here are important.”

The system could even be useful in classical computing, Lukin said, considering the power-dissipation challenges chip-makers now face. A number of companies – including IBM – have worked to develop systems that rely on optical routers that convert light signals into electrical signals, but those systems face their own hurdles.

Lukin also suggested that the system might one day even be used to create complex three-dimensional structures – such as crystals – wholly out of light.

“What it will be useful for we don’t know yet, but it’s a new state of matter, so we are hopeful that new applications may emerge as we continue to investigate these photonic molecules’ properties,” he said.

 

 Source:  Nature 

A first: Stanford engineers build computer using carbon nanotube technology.

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A team of Stanford engineers has built a basic computer using carbon nanotubes, a semiconductor material that has the potential to launch a new generation of electronic devices that run faster, while using less energy, than those made from silicon chips.

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This unprecedented feat culminates years of efforts by scientists around the world to harness this promising material.

The achievement is reported today in an article on the cover of Nature magazine written by Max Shulaker and other doctoral students in electrical engineering. The research was led by Stanford professors Subhasish Mitra and H.S. Philip Wong.

“People have been talking about a new era of carbon nanotube electronics moving beyond silicon,” said Mitra, an electrical engineer and computer scientist, and the Chambers Faculty Scholar of Engineering. “But there have been few demonstrations of complete digital systems using this exciting technology. Here is the proof.”

Experts say the Stanford achievement will galvanize efforts to find successors to silicon chips, which could soon encounter physical limits that might prevent them from delivering smaller, faster, cheaper electronic devices.

“Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have long been considered as a potential successor to the silicon transistor,” said Professor Jan Rabaey, a world expert on electronic circuits and systems at UC Berkeley.

But until now it hasn’t been clear that CNTs could fulfill those expectations.

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“There is no question that this will get the attention of researchers in the semiconductor community and entice them to explore how this technology can lead to smaller, more energy-efficient processors in the next decade,” Rabaey said.

Mihail Roco, senior advisor for Nanotechnology at the National Science Foundation, called the Stanford work “an important, scientific breakthrough.”

It was roughly 15 years ago that carbon nanotubes were first fashioned into transistors, the on-off switches at the heart of digital electronic systems.

But a bedeviling array of imperfections in these carbon nanotubes has long frustrated efforts to build complex circuits using CNTs. Professor Giovanni De Micheli, director of the Institute of Electrical Engineering at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, highlighted two key contributions the Stanford team has made to this worldwide effort.

“First, they put in place a process for fabricating CNT-based circuits,” De Micheli said. “Second, they built a simple but effective circuit that shows that computation is doable using CNTs.”

As Mitra said: “It’s not just about the CNT computer. It’s about a change in directions that shows you can build something real using nanotechnologies that move beyond silicon and its cousins.”

Why worry about a successor to silicon? Such concerns arise from the demands that designers place upon semiconductors and their fundamental workhorse unit, those on-off switches known as transistors

For decades, progress in electronics has meant shrinking the size of each transistor to pack more transistors on a chip. But as transistors become tinier they waste more power and generate more heat – all in a smaller and smaller space, as evidenced by the warmth emanating from the bottom of a laptop.

Many researchers believe that this power-wasting phenomenon could spell the end of Moore’s Law, named for Intel Corp. co-founder Gordon Moore, who predicted in 1965 that the density of transistors would double roughly every two years, leading to smaller, faster and, as it turned out, cheaper electronics.

But smaller, faster and cheaper has also meant smaller, faster and hotter.

“Energy dissipation of silicon-based systems has been a major concern,” said Anantha Chandrakasan, head of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and a world leader in chip research. He called the Stanford work “a major benchmark” in moving CNTs toward practical use. CNTs are long chains of carbon atoms that are extremely efficient at conducting and controlling electricity. They are so thin – thousands of CNTs could fit side by side in a human hair – that it takes very little energy to switch them off, according to Wong, co-author of the paper and the Williard R. and Inez Kerr Bell Professor at Stanford.

“Think of it as stepping on a garden hose,” Wong said. “The thinner the hose, the easier it is to shut off the flow.” In theory, this combination of efficient conductivity and low-power switching make carbon nanotubes excellent candidates to serve as electronic transistors.

“CNTs could take us at least an order of magnitude in performance beyond where you can project silicon could take us,” Wong said. But inherent imperfections have stood in the way of putting this promising material to practical use.

First, CNTs do not necessarily grow in neat parallel lines, as chipmakers would like.

Over time, researchers have devised tricks to grow 99.5 percent of CNTs in straight lines. But with billions of nanotubes on a chip, even a tiny degree of misaligned tubes could cause errors, so that problem remained.

A second type of imperfection has also stymied CNT technology.

Depending on how the CNTs grow, a fraction of these carbon nanotubes can end up behaving like metallic wires that always conduct electricity, instead of acting like semiconductors that can be switched off.

Since mass production is the eventual goal, researchers had to find ways to deal with misaligned and/or metallic CNTs without having to hunt for them like needles in a haystack.

“We needed a way to design circuits without having to look for imperfections or even know where they were,” Mitra said. The Stanford paper describes a two-pronged approach that the authors call an “imperfection-immune design.”

To eliminate the wire-like or metallic nanotubes, the Stanford team switched off all the good CNTs. Then they pumped the semiconductor circuit full of electricity. All of that electricity concentrated in the metallic nanotubes, which grew so hot that they burned up and literally vaporized into tiny puffs of carbon dioxide. This sophisticated technique was able to eliminate virtually all of the metallic CNTs in the circuit at once.

Bypassing the misaligned nanotubes required even greater subtlety.

So the Stanford researchers created a powerful algorithm that maps out a circuit layout that is guaranteed to work no matter whether or where CNTs might be askew.

“This ‘imperfections-immune design’ (technique) makes this discovery truly exemplary,” said Sankar Basu, a program director at the National Science Foundation.

The Stanford team used this imperfection-immune design to assemble a basic computer with 178 transistors, a limit imposed by the fact that they used the university’s chip-making facilities rather than an industrial fabrication process.

Their CNT computer performed tasks such as counting and number sorting. It runs a basic operating system that allows it to swap between these processes. In a demonstration of its potential, the researchers also showed that the CNT computer could run MIPS, a commercial instruction set developed in the early 1980s by then Stanford engineering professor and now university President John Hennessy.

Though it could take years to mature, the Stanford approach points toward the possibility of industrial-scale production of carbon nanotube semiconductors, according to Naresh Shanbhag, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and director of SONIC, a consortium of next-generation chip design research.

“The Wong/Mitra paper demonstrates the promise of CNTs in designing complex computing systems,” Shanbhag said, adding that this “will motivate researchers elsewhere” toward greater efforts in chip design beyond silicon.

“These are initial necessary steps in taking carbon nanotubes from the chemistry lab to a real environment,” said Supratik Guha, director of physical sciences for IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center and a world leader in CNT research.

Journal reference: Nature

 

Brain fertility control unraveled..

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In a landmark discovery, the final piece in the puzzle of understanding how the brain circuitry vital to normal fertility in humans and other mammals operates has been put together by University of Otago researchers.

Their new findings, which appear in the leading international journal Nature Communications, will be critical to enabling the design of novel therapies for infertile couples as well as new forms of contraception.

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The research team, led by Otago neuroscientist Professor Allan Herbison, has discovered the key cellular location of signalling between a small protein known as kisspeptin and its receptor, called Gpr54. Kisspeptin had earlier been found to be crucial for fertility in humans, and in a subsequent major breakthrough Professor Herbison showed that this molecule was also vital for ovulation to occur.

In the latest research, Professor Herbison and colleagues at Otago and Heidelberg University, Germany, provide conclusive evidence that the kisspeptin-Gpr54 signalling occurs in a small population of nerve cells in the brain called gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) neurons.

Using state-of-the-art techniques, the researchers studied mice that lacked Gpr54 receptors in only their GnRH neurons and found that these did not undergo puberty and were infertile. They then showed that infertile mice could be rescued back to completely normal fertility by inserting the Gpr54 gene into just the GnRH neurons.

Professor Herbison says the findings represent a substantial step forward in enabling new treatments for infertility and new classes of contraceptives to be developed.

“Infertility is a major issue affecting millions of people worldwide. It’s currently estimated that up to 20 per cent of New Zealand couples are infertile, and it is thought that up to one-third of all cases of infertility in women involve disorders in the area of brain circuitry we are studying.

“Our new understanding of the exact mechanism by which kisspeptin acts as a master controller of reproduction is an exciting breakthrough which opens up avenues for tackling what is often a very heart-breaking health issue. Through detailing this mechanism we now have a key chemical switch to which drugs can be precisely targeted,” Professor Herbison says.

As well as the findings’ benefits for advancing new therapies for infertility and approaches to controlling fertility, they suggest that targeting kisspeptin may be valuable in treating diseases such as prostate cancer that are influenced by sex steroid hormone levels in the blood, he says.

Professor Herbison noted that the research findings represent a long-standing collaborative effort with the laboratory of Professor Gunther Schutz at Heidelberg University, Germany.

The work was supported by the Health Research Council of New Zealand and the former Ministry of Science and Innovation.

Professor Herbison is Director of the University’s Centre for Neuroendocrinology, the world-leading research centre investigating how the brain controls fertility.

“We are delighted to have published this work in one of the top scientific journals and also to be able to maintain the leading role of New Zealand researchers in understanding fertility control,” he says.

 

Source: http://www.sciencealert.com.au

 

Scientists take big step towards universal flu vaccine

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Scientists say they have made a significant leap towards creating a vaccine that would protect against every form of flu.

The influenza virus is a constantly shifting target so seasonal flu vaccines rapidly become useless and new ones are needed each year.

A team at Imperial College London say they have made a “blueprint” for a universal flu vaccine.

Their discovery is published in the journal Nature Medicine.

Influenza is able to change the proteins that protrude from the surface of the virus as readily as people change outfits.

However, the material on the inside is common to many strains of flu. Vaccine researchers believe targeting the core of the virus may be the way to develop a universal vaccine.

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We have the know-how, we know what needs to be in the vaccine and we can just get on and do it”

Prof Ajit Lalvani Imperial College London

A specific part of the immune system, called T-cells, is thought to be able to recognise proteins in the core. A team at Imperial used the 2009 swine flu pandemic to test the theory.

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Milder symptoms

Swine flu was a new virus from a mix of bird and pig flu.

The outer shell should have been a completely new experience to the immune system, but the core may have been encountered before in other flu viruses.

The team compared levels of one kind of T-cells at the start of the pandemic with symptoms of flu in 342 staff and students at the university.

They showed that the higher the levels of the T-cells a patient had, the milder their symptoms were.

Researchers then teased out the specific part of the immune system that offered some pandemic flu protection and which part of the virus it was attacking.

Prof Ajit Lalvani, who led the study, told the BBC: “It’s a blueprint for a vaccine. We know the exact subgroup of the immune system and we’ve identified the key fragments in the internal core of the virus. These should be included in a vaccine.

“In truth, in this case it is about five years [away from a vaccine]. We have the know-how, we know what needs to be in the vaccine and we can just get on and do it.”

‘Long journey’

This would be a distinct approach compared with other forms of vaccination, such as the MMR jab. These trigger the immune system to produce antibodies that can attack an invader.

The prize could be huge. Seasonal flu kills between 250,000 and 500,000 people each year and new pandemics have the potential to take doctors by surprise and kill large numbers of people.

Yet the researchers admit it is “generally harder” to develop a T-cell vaccine than provoke an antibody response. The challenge will be to get a big enough T-cell response to offer protection and a response that will last.

Prof John Oxford, of Queen Mary University of London, said: “This sort of effect can’t be that powerful or we’d never have pandemics. It’s not going to solve all the problems of influenza, but could add to the range of vaccines.

“It’s going to be a long journey from this sort of paper to translating it into a vaccine that works.”

Prof Sarah Gilbert, who is developing a universal flu vaccine at the

Jenner Institute in Oxford, said: “Live attenuated influenza vaccines which are given by nasal spray and will be used in children in the UK from this autumn are much better at increasing the number of influenza-specific T cells, but these vaccines only work in young children who haven’t yet had much exposure to influenza virus, so we need an alternative approach for adults.

“The new publication contains information on the precise characteristics of the influenza-specific T cells which were protective, and this information will be useful in monitoring the immune response to vaccination when testing novel influenza vaccines which are designed to provide protection against pandemic as well as seasonal influenza viruses.”

15 Ways to Change Your Thoughts and Transform Your Life.

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“Change your thoughts and you change your world.” ~ Norman Vincent Peale

The nature of our thoughts determines the quality of our life-whether it is sad, happy and contented. Happy, optimistic, positive thoughts, emotions and feelings generate a zing in our system which makes the blood flow freely and heart beat joyously. They create a spring in our feet and spur us to action.  Let us remember the age-old saying that the mind- thoughts- can move the mountains. Pessimistic, sad and gloomy thoughts, on the other hand, create inertia and force us to stay bed-bound.

Our actions are the practical manifestations of our thoughts

It is quite clear, therefore, that we must bring about a change in the way we think in order to create happiness and sense of fulfilment in our life. A good thing about our brain is that it willingly adopts any changes that we bring about in our thinking patterns.

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Here is a list of 15 ways you can change your thoughts and give a positive direction to your life.

1. Create positive affirmations

Affirmations are not always positive.  They can be negative as well. The hexes created by the witches are negative affirmations.

The truth is that most people are given to making negative affirmations. When you think repeatedly that you are not going to succeed in a particular project, it is a negative affirmation. Affirmations, both negative and positive impact the neurological functioning of the brain.

Positive affirmations are like mantras. They have a sacred and spiritual force about them. Let us be clear about creating positive affirmations. They should not be normative or weak.

Thoughts such as I ‘should’, ‘ought to’ or’ abstain from’ are normative.

Examples of negative affirmations are:  ‘I can’t’ do this. It is ‘quite difficult’.  On the hand, affirmations should be forceful and determined such as ‘I can’, ‘I will’, or ‘I am going to’. As mentioned above, your brain is always adapting to your thought patterns and directs your organs to act accordingly.

 2. Learn to apply full stop

We keep mulling over our misfortunes, the perceived wrongs committed to us by those who we have loved and stood by so sincerely. We never stop cursing ourselves for the mistakes that we think we have committed. What would have happened if I had done this or that? What would happen if I do this or that in future?

This is not to suggest we should not learn from our past mistakes or plan our future intelligently. The only thing is we should stop thinking over and over once we have learnt from our past and decided about our future.

3. Let go of the need to be masochistic

Quite often we love to wallow in our misery. We enjoy creating self-punishing thoughts or being gloomy and pessimistic. Here is an example:

“If I start selling candles, the sun will stop setting,

If I start selling shrouds, people will stop dying.”

I was born unlucky. Nothing good will ever occur to me.

Such thoughts not only cause harmful impact on the mind, but they adversely affect your physical health as well.

4. Count your joys and blessings

Most people take their joys and blessings for granted and start grumbling about what they do not have; or, when they are faced with problems and troubles. Just think of those who are less fortunate than you. Or, think of situation that could have been worse than it is now. You are crying because have hurt your knee in an accident. What, if the leg itself had broken? See the filled half of the glass for satisfaction and the empty half with a resolve to fill it.

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.” ~ Melody Beattie

5. Appreciate and enjoy what you already have

This is not to suggest that you should not aspire for a still better life. Enjoy whatever amount of success you have achieved instead of feeling sad about what you have not been able to achieve. There is nothing wrong with always fixing higher benchmarks or goals, but failure to reach them should not spoil your enjoyment of what you already have.

“If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich.” ~ Lao Tzu

6. Savour the joys of your achievements

It is one thing to achieve your goal; it is another to enjoy it after you have achieved it. For example, you marry a woman of your dreams, but get bored with her soon thereafter and start looking for a new one. This is one of the most common causes of marital discords and break ups.

“There are two things to aim at in life:  first, to get what you want; and after that, to enjoy it.  Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.” ~ Logan Pearsall Smith

7. Stand erect and hold your head high in trying circumstances

We often tend to feel demoralized in adverse conditions. We stoop and feel low as if we are bending under their weight. This happens both literally and figuratively. You will, however, surely feel better if you try to lift your spirits and also your head like a person determined to take up the challenge. This is the best way to get out of the depression. Try it.

8. Allow yourself to be playful and childlike

Children are known for innocence and simplicity of mind. They soon forget their quarrels with their friends and start playing together once again. This is the reason that generally they are always happy and smiling. Translated into the language of the adults, we should learn to forget and forgive.

“The great man is he who does not lose his child’s-heart.” ~Mencius, Book IV

9. Seek happiness and contentment in the present

Do not associate happiness with future events. I will be happy when things happen this way. It is like postponing your happiness to an unsure future. The better alternative is to try to postpone your sorrow to some future moment as much as you can. The time to be happy is to-day, because yesterday has already passed and you cannot be sure that tomorrow will bring any happiness.

“How simple it is to see that we can only be happy now, and there will never be a time when it is not now.” ~ Gerald Jampolsky

10. Be a master  of your moods

Be a master rather than a servant of your own moods. You are the ruler of the kingdom of happiness. Do not allow other people or circumstances to make you happy or sad. Do not depend on material possessions to create happiness for you. It is for you to choose to be happy whatever the situation. Do not allow your heart to break up if your loved one has ditched you. If he/she can be happy without you so can you be.

11. Wake up with a resolve to stay happy during the day

Resolve the first thing as you wake up in the morning to remain happy throughout the day. Spend some time with the flowers and plants in your garden.  Listen to the songs of the birds in the trees or watch them flying high in the skies. Or, go out for a walk in the park nearby. Remember your resolve to remain calm as soon as you sense trouble coming. You owe yourself an ethical duty to remain happy.

12. Your body is your temple, honor it

Keep the temple of your body neat, clean and well-ventilated. Do not dump garbage of dirty, negative thoughts and toxic junk food in it. It is really difficult to remain happy when you are sick physically or mentally. There is a close relationship between the mind and the body. Take physical exercises regularly according to your constitutional needs. Subscribe to some inspiring- thought- for- the- day service to motivate you to stay happy during the day.

13. Meditate daily

Most yoga and meditation gurus have complicated the process of meditation by using incomprehensible jargon about its practice and goals. Consequently most people tend to doze off during the meditation sessions and stop practicing meditation altogether.

Also take a stock of your day in the evening. Remember the little good things that happened. You were not held up in traffic snarls. Your car ran smoothly. There was no problem with your boss and colleagues. You had a delicious lunch or coffee. Thank your stars for a nice and happy day. This will fill you with gratitude and make you a happier person.

“During meditation your metabolism and your breath rate go down to a level of rest, twice that of deep sleep.” ~ Mike Love

14. Focus on changing yourself instead of changing the world around you

It is impossible to change the world around you. So stop fretting when people do not come up to your expectations. The best course is to change yourself or at least adjust with the people or situations you do not like.

“Never underestimate your power to change yourself; never overestimate your power to change others.” ~ Wayne Dyer

15. Make the best of what you have

It is always better to make the best of what you have rather than pine for what you think is the best. A perfect state occurs only in Utopia and the world you live in is not that kind of ideal place. Do not be worried about the imperfections. The word ‘imperfection’ is derived from ‘perfection’. Even the most imperfect situation has some small element of perfection in it.

You change your life by changing your thoughts. If the thoughts you think are pure, your life will be pure.

Do you believe that thoughts have the power to transform your life? What do you believe stands between you and complete happiness? Is it your thoughts or something or somebody else? I really want to know what are your thoughts on this. change

·         ·         Source: Purpose fairy

10 Reasons Why Flu Shots Are More Dangerous Than a Flu.

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The verdict is out on flu shots. Many medical experts now agree it is more important to protect yourself and your family from the flu vaccine than the flu itself. Let’s take a look at the reasons behind this verdict:

1.) There is a total lack of real evidence that young children even benefit from flu shots. A systematic review of 51 studies involving 260,000 children age 6 to 23 months found no evidence that the flu vaccine is any more effective than a placebo. Also the shots are only able to protect against certain strains of the virus, which means that if you come into contact with a different strain of virus you will still get the flu.

2.) Medical journals have published thousands of articles revealing that injecting vaccines can actually lead to serious health problems including harmful immunological responses and a host of other infections. This further increases the body’s susceptibility to the diseases that the vaccine was supposed to protect against.

3.) Ever noticed how vaccinated children within days or few weeks develop runny noses, pneumonia, ear infections and bronchiolitis? The reason is the flu virus introduced in their bodies which creates these symptoms. It also indicates immuno-suppression i.e. lowering of the immunity. The flu vaccines actually do not immunize but sensitize the body against the virus.

4.) Its a known fact that Flu vaccines contain strains of the flu virus along with other ingredients. Now think about the impact such a vaccine can have over someone with a suppressed immune system? If you have a disease that is already lowering your body’s ability to fight a virus, taking the flu shot will put your body in danger of getting the full effects of the flu and make you more susceptible to pneumonia and other contagious diseases.

5.) The Flu vaccines contain mercury, a heavy metal known to be hazardous for human health. The amount of mercury contained in a multi-dose flu shot is much higher than the maximum allowable daily exposure limit. Mercury toxicity can cause memory loss, depression, ADD, oral health problems, digestive imbalances, respiratory problems, cardiovascular diseases and many more such serious health ailments.

And what about the elderly? Can the flu vaccine help them?

6.) There is mounting evidence that flu shots can cause Alzheimer’s disease. One report shows that people who received the flu vaccine each year for 3 to 5 years had a 10-fold greater chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease than people who did not have any flu shots. Also with age the immune system weakens, thus lowering your ability to fight off infections. Introducing the flu virus in the bodies of elderly could have dangerous consequences.

Can we trust the authorities who are promoting the wide-spread use of flu vaccines?

7.) The Center for Disease Control appoints a 15-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). This committee is responsible for deciding who should be vaccinated each year. Almost all the ACIP have a financial interest in immunizations. It’s all about the money and may have very little to do with your health and well being. The very people pushing these vaccines stand to make billions of dollars. This itself creates a doubt on how effective these flu vaccines really are?

8.) Research shows that over-use of the flu-vaccine and drugs like Tamiflu and Relenza can actually alter flu viruses and cause them to mutate into a more deadly strain. Couple this with drug resistant strains and you have virtually no benefits with much risk.

9.) There is enough evidence that shows that the ingredients present in the flu vaccinations can actually cause serious neurological disorders. In the 1976 swine flu outbreak, many who got the flu shots developed permanent nerve damage. Flu vaccines can contain many harmful materials including detergent, mercury, formaldehyde, and strains of live flu virus. Is this what you want to put in YOUR body?

10.) Trying to guess what strain to vaccinate against each season has proved to be no more effective than a guessing game. This has been very true in recent years with the H1N1 strain. Moreover getting multi-shots will only prove more dangerous as different strains of viruses and harmful ingredients are introduced into your body.

Flu shots are indeed more dangerous than you could think, and it is best to rely on natural ways to protect against the flu rather than getting yourself vaccinated.

Isn’t it interesting that the main stream public health officials never promote the various proven ways to avoid the flu other than through vaccination? How about spending some of the billions of advertising dollars teaching us natural ways to boost our immune systems and avoid the flu without harmful and sometimes deadly vaccinations.

Source: bewellbuzz.com

3 Steps to Effectively Express Your Love in Your Relationship.

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The word love gets tossed around a lot, particularly in the realm of relationships. We want to be in love, fall in love, feel loved, and we even want to love ourselves. We seek it, we covet it, and we despair when we don’t have it. The truth is that the idea of love preoccupies our minds almost 24 hours a day.

So why then, do we never ask ourselves the simple question of “how do I love thee?”

LOVE-RELL

There is a very important distinction between how you feel loved, and how your partner experiences the love you give. No two people experience love in exactly the same way, so you cannot presume the love you offer is in perfect alignment with what your partner needs.

The only way to really know how you can show your love in a way that it can pierce the heart of your lover is to ask him or her how they feel loved.

In his book “The Five Languages of Love”, Gary Chapman speaks directly to this issue. He distinctly writes about how every person feels love in their own unique way, and if we can’t decipher and honor what that type of love is, then we reduce our chances of being happy with that person.

The most common mistake you will make with regard to this issue is presuming that your partner feels loved in the same way you do. Even though you were taught to give love to receive it, no one ever informed you that every person feels loved in a different way.

For example, if you feel loved when your partner gives you a gift or tells you how much you are appreciated, turning around and offering those forms of love to him or her is simply a projection of your own needs.
I know you want to give and receive the love you deserve, so here are 3 steps to effectively express your love in your relationship:

1. Simply ask

It’s always very transformative when I have my couple clients ask each other the simple question, “how do you feel loved?” There is so much presumption when it comes to love in a relationship, so clarifying and getting the true story changes everything. It’s not only enlightening for the partner asking the question, but for the partner being asked as well. We don’t take pause to ask ourselves the question “How do I feel loved?”

2. Just do it

Even if the way your partner feels loved seems absolutely crazy to you, it’s essential that you meet that need anyway. It may be a big effort in memory or in action, but the extra work goes a long way. Many couples feel awkward expressing love in a way that is outside of how they feel it, but stretching outside of what feels comfortable is what makes relationships interesting and novel.

3. Be patient

People don’t change their ways easily, particularly when it’s in the interest of someone else’s happiness. Your partner might not “get it” immediately, but with gentle reminders they will slowly learn, and turn conscious effort into habit. Keep your expectations of yourself and your partner in check, and be grateful for any progress no matter how minimal.

Have you ever asked your partner how he or she feelS loved? How about yourself? Have you ever asked yourself this simple question: “how do I love thee?”

Source: Purpose fairy