Laughter is the Best Medicine

The Health Benefits of Humor and Laughter

Humor is infectious. The sound of roaring laughter is far more contagious than any cough, sniffle, or sneeze. When laughter is shared, it binds people together and increases happiness and intimacy. Laughter also triggers healthy physical changes in the body. Humor and laughter strengthen your immune system, boost your energy, diminish pain, and protect you from the damaging effects of stress. Best of all, this priceless medicine is fun, free, and easy to use
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Laughter is strong medicine for mind and body

“Your sense of humor is one of the most powerful tools you have to make certain that your daily mood and emotional state support good health.”
~ Paul E. McGhee, Ph.D.

Laughter is a powerful antidote to stress, pain, and conflict. Nothing works faster or more dependably to bring your mind and body back into balance than a good laugh. Humor lightens your burdens, inspires hopes, connects you to others, and keeps you grounded, focused, and alert.
With so much power to heal and renew, the ability to laugh easily and frequently is a tremendous resource for surmounting problems, enhancing your relationships, and supporting both physical and emotional health.

Laughter is good for your health

• Laughter relaxes the whole body. A good, hearty laugh relieves physical tension and stress, leaving your muscles relaxed for up to 45 minutes after.
• Laughter boosts the immune system. Laughter decreases stress hormones and increases immune cells and infection-fighting antibodies, thus improving your resistance to disease.
• Laughter triggers the release of endorphins, the body’s natural feel-good chemicals. Endorphins promote an overall sense of well-being and can even temporarily relieve pain.
• Laughter protects the heart. Laughter improves the function of blood vessels and increases blood flow, which can help protect you against a heart attack and other cardiovascular problems.

The Benefits of Laughter

Physical Health Benefits:

Boosts immunity Lowers stress hormones Decreases pain Relaxes your muscles Prevents heart disease

Mental Health Benefits:

Adds joy and zest to life Eases anxiety and fear Relieves stress Improves mood Enhances resilience

Social Benefits:

Strengthens relationships Attracts others to us Enhances teamwork Helps defuse conflict Promotes group bonding

Laughter and humor help you stay emotionally healthy

Laughter makes you feel good. And the good feeling that you get when you laugh remains with you even after the laughter subsides. Humor helps you keep a positive, optimistic outlook through difficult situations, disappointments, and loss.
More than just a respite from sadness and pain, laughter gives you the courage and strength to find new sources of meaning and hope. Even in the most difficult of times, a laugh–or even simply a smile–can go a long way toward making you feel better. And laughter really is contagious—just hearing laughter primes your brain and readies you to smile and join in the fun.

The link between laughter and mental health

• Laughter dissolves distressing emotions. You can’t feel anxious, angry, or sad when you’re laughing.
• Laughter helps you relax and recharge. It reduces stress and increases energy, enabling you to stay focused and accomplish more.
• Humor shifts perspective, allowing you to see situations in a more realistic, less threatening light. A humorous perspective creates psychological distance, which can help you avoid feeling overwhelmed.

The social benefits of humor and laughter

Humor and playful communication strengthen our relationships by triggering positive feelings and fostering emotional connection. When we laugh with one another, a positive bond is created. This bond acts as a strong buffer against stress, disagreements, and disappointment.

Laughing with others is more powerful than laughing alone

Creating opportunities to laugh

• Watch a funny movie or TV show.
• Go to a comedy club.
• Read the funny pages.
• Seek out funny people.
• Share a good joke or a funny story.
• Check out your bookstore’s humor section.
• Host game night with friends.
• Play with a pet.
• Go to a “laughter yoga” class.
• Goof around with children.
• Do something silly.
• Make time for fun activities (e.g. bowling, miniature golfing, karaoke).

Shared laughter is one of the most effective tools for keeping relationships fresh and exciting. All emotional sharing builds strong and lasting relationship bonds, but sharing laughter and play also adds joy, vitality, and resilience. And humor is a powerful and effective way to heal resentments, disagreements, and hurts. Laughter unites people during difficult times.
Incorporating more humor and play into your daily interactions can improve the quality of your love relationships— as well as your connections with co-workers, family members, and friends. Using humor and laughter in relationships allows you to:

• Be more spontaneous. Humor gets you out of your head and away from your troubles.
• Let go of defensiveness. Laughter helps you forget judgments, criticisms, and doubts.
• Release inhibitions. Your fear of holding back and holding on are set aside.
• Express your true feelings. Deeply felt emotions are allowed to rise to the surface.

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      Graphene and phosphorene upgrade                         sodium ion battery

A new material comprising interspersed layers of graphene and phosphorene has been shown by US researchers to be a more stable, more conductive and higher capacity anode for sodium ion batteries than previous materials. The researchers believe it could be industrially compatible, and potentially allow sodium ion batteries to become useful for large-scale energy storage.

Lithium-ion batteries have revolutionised portable electronics thanks to their high charge capacity, but the high cost and geopolitical insecurity of lithium supplies (most of the easily mined salts are in countries such as Chile and Bolivia) present a problem. Sodium-ion batteries present a potentially attractive alternative as sodium is 90% cheaper and widely found all over the world. The Na+ ion, however, intercalates less easily into anode materials. Lithium-ion batteries traditionally use graphite anodes, into which Li+ ions reversibly intercalate. The inter-planar distance in graphite is only 1.86Å, however, whereas the Na+ ion is 2.02Å, so graphite is electrochemically inactive in a sodium-ion solution. Possible alternatives have proved unsatisfactory.

One such alternative is black phosphorus, which has sufficient interlayer distance of 3.08Å and a high theoretical specific charge capacity of 2596mAhg-1 as it forms Na3P. But it rapidly decomposes when tested because of its large volume expansion when it takes up Na+ ions. In the new research, Yi Cui and colleagues at Stanford University in California have developed a nanostructured hybrid comprising interspersed phosphorene and graphene. The graphene layers provide an elastic buffer and function as an electrical highway, allowing charge to get in and out faster. The phosphorene and graphene were both produced by scalable liquid exfoliation, and the sandwich structure self-assembled when suspensions of the two components were mixed and the solvent was evaporated.

© NPG

The material had an initial specific capacity of 1178mAhg-1, 94% of its theoretical maximum capacity, and retained up to 83% of this after 100 charge/discharge cycles. Cui's group is now working to improve this further, and Cui says that, if it can increase the life to 3000 cycles, the technology could be ‘very attractive for large-scale stationary energy storage’ of electricity in the national grid.

Stefan Freunberger of the Technical University of Graz in Austria describes the research as ‘interesting’ but warns that the researchers will face a further obstacle to improving the cycling performance. All known electrolytes are thermodynamically unstable during intercalation in alkaline ion batteries, he says. Li-ion anodes rapidly form a 'passivation layer' that sticks to the anode and protects the electrolyte, but this partially breaks down in Na-ion batteries every time the battery is discharged. Therefore, he says, 'there is much more side reaction than in the case of the lithium'. The high surface area of graphene could even make the problem worse, he adds.

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7 Social Networking Apps for When Facebook Jumps the Shark

7 Social Networking Apps for When Facebook Jumps the Shark

ACCORDING TO A recent poll by the Associated Press and CNBC, 46 percent of respondents think Facebook will “fade away as new things come along.” That’s an ominous data point for a company whose IPO dominated the news cycle last week, and claims some 900 million worldwide users.

Facebook seems to be infiltrating every facet of our lives. “Like” buttons appear on every website. “Like us on Facebook!” shouts at us during TV commercials. And more and more apps rely on Facebook to simply log in. It’s starting to feel more than a little oppressive — it’s like we’re living in a blue-and-white-painted jail cell.

And all this IPO madness is just foul icing on the cake.

So where do you turn when the world’s been stricken with Facebook fever? We rounded up seven apps that could satisfy your social networking needs should Facebook go down the tubes — or you just can’t take it anymore.

GOOGLE+

As Facebook fervor dies down, Google’s social networking attempt could rise up to the occasion, and — dare we say it — eventually take its place.

The popularity of Google+ is definitely on the rise. A number of commenters pointed out in our hands-on with Google’s redesigned iOS app that they are fervent users of the network, finding it a great source for quality content minus the “moronic posts” that litter Facebook feeds.

Speaking of the redesign, Google+’s updated iPhone app (see photo above) features an attractive, almost post-modern aesthetic and a much-improved user experience. The Android version is set to get a facelift in the near future, too. Google+ is one of the few social networks that has both a robust mobile and web experience, making it a strong contender for those tired of that other social network.

VIDDY

For something a little different, how about a social network based entirely around sharing video? That’s Viddy.

You can take a video using the app’s camera, which has adjustable white balance, exposure, and focus settings. You can also grab a video already in your camera roll, and upload it to Viddy. From there, you can go hog-wild with Instagram-like creativity, adding one of a handful of different filters — Vintage, Black & White, and Crystal are default options, with more available as free in-app downloads. You can also add music, transitions, and other visual effects.

With one click you can share your videos to other platforms like Twitter or YouTube. Or you can just stay in the app and like, comment, and re-share others’ videos. The videos you can upload are bite-sized — 15 seconds max — so it’s easy and fun to hop from one video to the next.

Viddy launched in February this year, and now has 36 million monthly active users, or “Viddyographers

PATH

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The Path app is available for iPhone and Android. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired 

For an exclusively mobile social networking experience, Path could be your bag. It lets you share your life in the form of a “simple, private journal.” Because it has no web component, I find it’s much more of an “in the moment” kind of sharing than a platform for long status update tirades, or ubiquitous link-sharing.

The design is charming and intuitive, and is one of the main draws of the experience. Similar to Facebook, you get to set a background “cover” image for your profile, and choose a personal profile photo for yourself. Your postings as well as those of your friends (including status updates, photos, check-ins, and the music you’re currently listening to) are uploaded in a straightforward, reverse-chronological timeline, and you can react to posts with a heart, one of four different smiley faces, or with a comment.

It’s available on iOS and Android.

PAIR

If it’s just you and your significant other who you care about constantly connecting with, you don’t need a massive social network like Google+, or even Path. Instead, you need Pair.

Oleg Kostour, Pair cofounder and CEO, told Wired the app offers a more personal way to talk to someone significant in your life — and it’s entirely private.

The app centers around a conversation between you and your loved one, but besides SMS-style messaging, you can share photos, drawings, and video, as well as location check-ins. You can also collaborate on art (for a simultaneous game of tic-tac-toe for instance), or use the app’s trademark feature, the thumb kiss: You and your partner place your thumbs on your respective smartphone screens at the same time, and when they’re pressed against identical spots onscreen for a couple of seconds, the screen bursts and you’ve virtually “kissed.”

Since the app is designed to be used between only two people, it’s a bit of a small, nontraditional social network, if it can really even be classified as such.

INSTAGRAM

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Instagram is now available on both iOS and Android. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired 

Wait. Instagram is… part of Facebook now? F7U12.

Even so, Instagram is still our favorite way to share square-cropped photos colored by fun, often retro-inspired filters. The $1 billion photo-sharing community is rich and active, and most of all, incredibly addictive. Once you start using Instagram, you start seeing the world in a different way — as moments you’d like to capture and enhance with a filter effect to amplify a particular mood.

Because Instagram is more of a niche social network, it would never fully take the place of a larger network like that of Facebook or Google+. Nevertheless, it provides a fun, friendly way to see the world through smartphone lenses across the globe.

Instagram is now available on both iOS and Android.

EVERYME

EveryMe is both an amalgamation of your existing major social networks — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram — and a complete departure.

The app is all about circles of contacts, each of which is private. There’s no option for public sharing at all in this app. Because of this, you shouldn’t have to worry about privacy settings being changed on a whim, or private posts suddenly appearing to all of the interwebs.

Once you’ve synced with your favorite existing networks, the app automatically creates circles of contacts (pulled from your smartphone contacts). You can edit these so-called “Magic Circles,” or create your own. If you have people you want to stay in touch with who don’t have a social media presence, that’s OK too. You can add them with an e-mail address or a phone number so they can stay in the loop.

You can then interact with people in those circles, posting status updates, check-in information, and photographs. Anything you update to one circle is exclusive to that circle — so you don’t have to worry about grandma and grandpa stumbling upon those photos of you doing a kegstand from last weekend, unless you know, you post them in the wrong circle.

TWITTER

Wait, Facebook is, like, a “thing”? That’s funny, because at Gadget Lab, we gravitate to Twitter more often. We rely on it daily — hourly, really — for news alerts and socializing. Between the app, website, and the handful of very successful third-party clients, Twitter has solidified itself into an expedient, convenient social media mainstay that complements other more robust sharing services.

Sure, it’s more about news, and less about social networking, but it’s the one social network we’d be least inclined to ever give up.

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How Do Heat and Pressure Create Metamorphic Rocks?

Objective

By applying more and more pressure to a piece of aluminum foil “clay,” we can discover, stage by stage, how heat and pressure turn clay into slate, phyllite, and finally schist.

Introduction

Slate is a metamorphic rock that’s created when clay is subjected to a lot of pressure; keep adding pressure and the slate becomes phyllite, and add a lot more pressure and heat and you get schist.

Research Questions

• Since the “ingredients” of all these different rocks are the same, what’s the difference between them?

Terms to Know

• Metamorphic rock
• Alignment of minerals

Materials

• 4 pieces of aluminum foil, about 12”x12”
• 1 hammer
• 1 surface you can pound as hard as you like
• 1 pair of safety goggles
• 1 magnifying glass
• 1 sample of dried unfired clay or mudstone
• 1 sample of slate
• 1 sample of phyllite
• 1 sample of schist.   
•                       Experimental Procedure

1. Take a piece of aluminum foil and wad it loosely into a ball. Now look at it closely. You should notice that the surface of the foil has become a lot of little flat surfaces (some will be curved, that’s okay) that are all facing different directions. Now set it down next to your sample of clay or mudstone. The molecules in it are too small to see even with the magnifying glass, but if you looked at it under a microscope you’d see that it’s made of particles that are all facing different directions, just like surfaces in the ball of foil.
2. Wad the second piece of foil into a ball like the first one and put it down on your pounding surface. Press it down really hard and squash it as flat as you can with your hand. When you look at it closely this time—you might want your magnifying glass now—you’ll see that the little surfaces are still pointing in lots of different directions, but most of them are starting to point in the same direction. This is like slate; that’s clay that has been under so much pressure that it’s turned into rock, and the particles in it are more or less lined up, or aligned, along the same plane.
3. Create a third foil ball, squash it flat with your hand, and set it on the pounding surface. Put on your safety goggles and gently whack it with the hammer until it’s about half as thick as it was before. Now it’s most like phyllite, which you should also look at with the magnifying glass. Like the minerals in the phyllite sample, most of the surfaces in the foil are pretty well aligned with each other.
4. Make one last foil ball, squash it, and whack it like you did with the last one. But this time, keep it on the pounding surface and keep your goggles on. Now you want to pound the foil as hard as you can and smash it as close to completely flat as it’ll get. Some pieces might break off; that’s okay, that happens a lot to schist when it’s forming, too. When that happens it’s called shearing. When you’ve gotten all your aggression out on that piece of foil, take a good look at it with the magnifying glass. Now you’d have a hard time finding any surfaces that aren’t facing the same direction as all the others; like the minerals in schist, which you should also look at with the magnifying glass, they’re all lined up parallel with each other.

Bibliography

• Dig It!: Over 40 Experiments in Geology, by Lockwood DeWitt and B. K. Hixson, pp. 210-217 (Loose in the Lab Science Series, 2003).

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10 Study Tips to Improve your Learning

How to Study: 10 Study Tips to Improve your Learning

                                         Memorising textbooks is an outdated form of study. You could spend days on end trying to cram it all in but the results will not be very promising.

10 Study Tips to Improve Your Learning

Study Tip 1: Underlining

Underlining is one of the simplest and best known study tips. It’s easy to highlight the most significant parts of what you’re reading. Ideally you should do a comprehensive read of a text before you even consider underlining anything. Only on the second reading should you proceed to underline the most notable aspects.

The act of underlining something means you are engaging with certain key aspects of the text. There is no need to go crazy and highlight entire blocks of text. You should highlight one key sentence per paragraph and a few important phrases here and there. You can only retain a certain amount so it’s best to retain the most important information.

Study Tip 2: Make Your Own Study Notes

Taking Notes is one of the most widespread study skills out there. Essentially the aim of note-taking is to summarise lectures or articles in your own words so you can easily remember the ideas. In most cases, the key is to be able to summarise the content as quickly as possible while not leaving out any key info.

When creating Notes, you can do it the traditional way with the good ol’ pen and paper or you can utilise online tools, such as ExamTime’s Notes feature.

Study Tip 3: Mind Mapping

A good Mind Map can save you many hours of study and further consolidate your knowledge for your exams. Mind Maps are an extremely versatile tools. They can be used for brainstorming, outlining essays or study topics and for general exam preparation.

ExamTime offers the ability to create Mind Maps quickly and easily which makes them the ideal tool when it comes to exams.

Study Tip 4: Flashcards

Using Flashcards is a particularly effective method of learning when trying to assimilate different facts, dates, formulas or vocabulary. Subjects such as History, Physics, Maths, Chemistry, Geography or any language are made much easier if you incorporate Flashcards in to your study.

Using Flashcards for memorising can become a fun process unlike a lot of other study tools. On top of this, online Flashcards allow you to save a lot of work and time in actually creating your Flashcard decks.  What’s more is that they are always readily available online so you have access to them 24/7.

Study Tip 5: Case Studies

Sometimes it can be difficult to grasp the implications of some theories. This is where studying case studies can be a big help. Case studies can help you visualise a theory and place it in a more familiar and realistic context. This is especially useful in business or law subjects.

It’s always of great benefit to examine practical cases studies to accompany your study of pure theory. In this way you can better understand the application of the theory and what it’s thesis actually states.

Study Tip 6: Quizzes

Quizzes are an excellent way to review study notes in the weeks and days before an exam. Quizzes can show where your strengths and weaknesses are, so it allows you to focus your efforts more precisely. Moreover, if you share your Study Quiz with your classmates and test each other as much as possible you can discover even more details and areas you may have overlooked. So before any exam, make sure you create and share a bunch of different Quizzes with your Friends.

Study Tip 7: Brainstorming

This is another study technique that is ideal for studying with friends and/or classmates. Brainstorming is a great way to expand every possible idea out of any topic. Just get a bunch of friends together and shoot the breeze, there are no wrong answers when brainstorming – just talk and capture the ideas, you can review afterward.

Some ideas that sounded great before will be ruled out straight away afterwards while others that sounded crazy before will be seen to have great promise. Using Mind Maps is an ideal way of capturing all this info as it mirrors the explosive nature of your thought processes.

Study Tip 8: Mnemonic Rules

Mnemonics are especially useful when memorising lists and sets. Mnemonics rules basically work by associating certain concepts with other concepts that are more familiar to us. There are many different ways to make mnemonics and these can be individual to the person.

A classic example is ‘Richard of York Gave Battle In Vain’. This Mnemonic rule is for remember the primary colours : Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet.

Study Tip 9: Organising Your Study

One of the most effective study skills is also one of the most often overlooked; this is organising your study. Creating a study timetable gives you goals and a time in which to achieve them. Having a study timetable as you study is greatly motivational. ExamTime has a free Study Planner tool which makes organising your study extremely easy.

Study Tip 10: Drawing

Many people find it easier to recall images rather than text, that is why they are better able to memorise concepts if they associate them with pictures or drawings. That is why ExamTime’s tools allow you to add images. ExamTime’s tools are geared towards helping different types of learners as visual learning is often overlooked in classrooms, which are more text or aural based.

Many of these study tips & techniques are not new but are well known to students. However, what is new is the way in which you can now utilise them . Today new technologies have changed how we can interact with these study techniques. So it makes sense to reassess how you use these techniques and see what new tools and techniques you can incorporate into your study

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Does Chewing Gum Help You Concentrate?

Objective:

This project explores whether chewing gum can help a majority of people with focus and concentration.

Research Question:

• Does chewing gum increase people’s speed and accuracy on simple cognitive tasks?

Educators have found that chewing gum can help children struggling with problems related to ADD/ADHD (Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). Is it possible that chewing gum can help all of us with focus and concentration?

Materials:

• Computer, printer, and paper
• Pencils for test-taking
• Chewing gum
• Timer
• Test subjects
• Paper and pencil for recording and analyzing data
• Experimental Procedure
• 1. Write and print copies (one copy per test subject) of two simple subtraction worksheets.
  2. Have subjects do each of the two worksheets. Subjects should chew gum while doing ONE of the worksheets.
  3. Record how long it took each subject to complete each worksheet.
  4. Score the worksheets for number of problems correct.
  5. Analyze your results. Did chewing gum increase people’s speed and accuracy on subtraction tests?
  6. Try the experiment in different environments, with different test subjects, and under different circumstances, keeping in mind these questions and any others that come up in the course of your research:
     • Does chewing gum make more of a difference in certain environments (e.g. noisy, crowded, or otherwise distracting environments)?
     • Does chewing gum make more of a difference to people of certain ages or genders?
     • Does chewing gum make more of a difference at certain times of day (e.g. early morning or late afternoon)?
     • Does chewing gum make more of a difference before or after certain activities (e.g. just before lunchtime or after physical exercise)?

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Magnetic Linear Accelerator

Have you ever seen one of those roller coasters that shoots out of the station at an insanely high speed? These roller coasters don’t need to climb hills first to use gravitational potential energy—their power comes from magnetism and energy conservation.

A series of electromagnets (magnets made by pumping electrical current through coils of wire) alternately push and pull on the rollercoaster, pumping up its speed pretty quickly. Some engineers have imagined using the same idea to launch objects into space (from, say, a base on the Moon) without using rockets.

In this project, you’re going to build a very simple magnetic accelerator to launch steel balls at targets. What could possibly go wrong?

Problem

Build a simple magnetic linear accelerator.

Materials

• Wooden ruler with groove along the middle
• Four small, powerful magnets (e.g., neodymium magnets)
• Nine steel balls, roughly 5/8” in diameter
• Tape
• Hobby knife
• Safety Goggles

Procedure

1. Place the ruler (flat side down) on a table.

2. Lay one magnet in the ruler groove, about 2.5” from the ruler’s end. Use the tape to secure the magnet to the ruler and the knife to trim the tape to the size of the magnet.

3. Repeat step 2 with each of the remaining three magnets, placing each about 2.5” away from the preceding magnet.
4. To the right side of each magnet, place two steel balls in the groove.

5. Place a “target” a few inches to the right of the ruler. Your tape dispenser will work fine.

6. Place the ninth ball in the groove on the far left end of the ruler (opposite the target).

7. Put your safety goggles on.
8. Let the ball go and stand back!

Results

The ball will be attracted to the first magnet and set off a chain reaction of balls firing between the magnets until the last one flies off the ruler at high speed to strike its target.

Why?

What you just saw is a fantastic example of energy conservation. Energy from one ball gets transferred to the next, and then to the next, and so on. But where is all the energy in the last ball coming from if the first ball starts off from rest?

The answer is in the magnets.

Before the starting ball is released, there is potential energy stored up between the ball and the first magnet. The magnet and ball feel an attractive force, but your finger is preventing anything from happening. Once you let go of the ball, it gets drawn towards the magnet (which won’t move because it’s taped down). Potential energy gets converted to kinetic energy—the energy of motion. This is no different then holding a ball in the air and letting it go.

Eventually the ball strikes the magnet—but where does all that energy go? Well, it gets transferred to the balls on the other side of the magnet. The ball closest to the magnet is held pretty tight, but the second ball is farther away and doesn’t feel as strong an attraction to the magnet. This means there’s enough kinetic energy from the first ball to send this ball flying off with nearly the same amount of energy. (That’s why we need two balls stuck to the other side of the magnet: to lessen the attractive force a bit. Try getting it to work with only one ball loaded up next to each magnet and see what happens.)

This second ball is launched at roughly the same velocity as the first ball achieved. As this second ball gets drawn to the second magnet, the attractive force causes it to accelerate and hit the second magnet at a higher velocity than the first ball hit the first magnet. The third ball takes off with the highest velocity achieved by the second ball, and since it gets accelerated by the third magnet in turn, it strikes third magnet faster and harder than the first two balls struck their respective magnets.

Are you seeing a pattern begin to emerge? With each added magnet, more kinetic energy accumulates in each launched ball. The last ball takes off with the combined kinetic energies of all the balls that came before it!

In principle, you can add more rulers and magnets and get the final ball moving as fast as you like—up to a point. Eventually, the balls would be moving fast enough to break the magnets, a limit for which I’m sure your target is very thankful.

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