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Meditation found to increase brain size

Meditation found to increase brain size
Mental calisthenics bulk up some layers By William J. Cromie Harvard News Office People who meditate grow bigger brains than those who don't. Researchers at Harvard, Yale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found the first evidence that meditation can alter the physical structure of our brains. In one area of gray matter, the thickening turns out to be more pronounced in older than in younger people. "Our data suggest that meditation practice can promote cortical plasticity in adults in areas important for cognitive and emotional processing and well-being," says Sara Lazar, leader of the study and a psychologist at Harvard Medical School. The researchers compared brain scans of 20 experienced meditators with those of 15 nonmeditators. Meditators did Buddhist "insight meditation," which focuses on whatever is there, like noise or body sensations. Study participants meditated an average of about 40 minutes a day. Controlling random thoughts Slowing aging?

Psychologists chase down sleep demons UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- What do Moby Dick, the Salem witch trials and alien abductions all have in common? They all circle back to sleep paralysis. Less than 8 percent of the general population experiences sleep paralysis, but it is more frequent in two groups -- students and psychiatric patients -- according to a new study by psychologists at Penn State and the University of Pennsylvania. Sleep paralysis is defined as "a discrete period of time during which voluntary muscle movement is inhibited, yet ocular and respiratory movements are intact," the researchers state in the current issue of Sleep Medicine Reviews. Alien abductions and incubi and succubi, as well as other demons that attack while people are asleep, are implicated as different cultural interpretations of sleep paralysis. Brian A. "I realized that there were no real sleep paralysis prevalence rates available that were based on large and diverse samples," Sharpless said. Also working on this research was Jacques P.

30 Habits that Will Change your Life Developing good habits is the basic of personal development and growth. Everything we do is the result of a habit that was previously taught to us. Unfortunately, not all the habits that we have are good, that’s why we are constantly trying to improve. The following is a list of 30 practical habits that can make a huge difference in your life. You should treat this list as a reference, and implement just one habit per month. This way you will have the time to fully absorb each of them, while still seeing significant improvements each month. Health habits Exercise 30 minutes every day. Productivity habits Use an inbox system. Personal Development habits Read 1 book per week. Career habits Start a blog. What do you think? Update: A reader put together a downloadable copy of all these habits.

Lincoln and the Civil War | Connections | The Metropolitan Museum of Art Harold Holzer1280852 Abraham Lincoln | 1863, printed 1901 | Alexander Gardner (American) | Gelatin silver print | Warner Communications Inc. Purchase Fund, 1976 (1976.627.1)8561024 Abraham Lincoln | 1863, printed 1901 | Alexander Gardner (American) | Gelatin silver print | Warner Communications Inc. Purchase Fund, 1976 (1976.627.1)1126820 Life Mask of Abraham Lincoln | 1860, cast 1886 | Leonard Wells Volk (American) and Augustus Saint-Gaudens (American) | Bronze | Purchase, Jonathan L. Harold Holzer1280852 I'm Harold Holzer, I'm the Senior Vice President for External Affairs at the Met, and I also write books about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War.

6 Questions That Will Make You Fee Peaceful and Complete “The best place to find a helping hand is at the end of your own arm.” ~Swedish Proverb When I was in my mid-twenties an unhealthy relationship with an unhealthy guy sent me packing off to the corner of New Mexico to find myself. In a new age, self-discovery kind of world—a hubbub of a town filled with people in transition—I was graced to meet many powerful healers, gurus, shamans, and teachers. I became a workshop junkie. I got rolfed, (and got more intense body-work by thick-boned Maoris) and rebirthed with conscious breath work. I went on vision quests in the desert, called leading psychics, mapped my astrological chart, figured out my Enneagram number, dreamed lucidly for nights in an upright chair, and drew down the moon in Wiccan circles. I know. I was a perpetual seeker. Even though my unhealthy relationship was dysfunctional, that man gave me a gift that I wouldn’t discover for years. Whether he meant it or not, he would say: What’s not to love about you? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Sleep-deprived people make risky decisions based on too much optimism | Scie... DURHAM, N.C., and SINGAPORE -- The powers that be in Las Vegas figured out something long before neuroscientists at two Duke University medical schools confirmed their ideas this week: Trying to make decisions while sleep-deprived can lead to a case of optimism. The scientists showed, using a functional MRI, that a night of sleep deprivation leads to increased brain activity in brain regions that assess positive outcomes, while at the same time this deprivation leads to decreased activation in the brain areas that process negative outcomes. Sleep-deprived individuals in the study tended to make choices that emphasized monetary gain, and were less likely to make choices that reduced loss. While this wasn't true for all of the subjects, the findings are worth heeding. This is the first study to show that sleep deprivation can change the way the brain assesses economic value, independent of its effects on vigilant attention. The study was published by the Journal of Neuroscience on March 8.

Strategies to Kill Cancer Arms and Armor—Common Misconceptions and Frequently Asked Questions | Thematic Essay Parrying dagger (pugnale bolognese), ca. 1550–75 Italian Partly gilt steel, brass, and wood; Wt. 15 oz. (425 g) Gift of Jean Jacques Reubell, in memory of his mother, Julia C. Coster, and of his wife, Adeline E. Post, both of New York City, 1926 (26.145.94) The field of arms and armor is beset with romantic legends, gory myths, and widely held misconceptions. Their origins usually are to be found in a lack of knowledge of, and experience with, genuine objects and their historical background. Most of them are utter nonsense, devoid of any historical base. Perhaps the most infamous example is the notion that "knights had to be hoisted into their saddles with a crane," which is as absurd as it is persistent even among many historians. The following text will attempt to correct some of the most popular misconceptions, and to answer some of the questions most frequently asked by the public during guided tours of the Museum's arms and armor galleries. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Bottle Drip Irrigation | I prefer to have the bottle standing right-way-up as I think it looks nicer and it keeps debris out of the bottle thus keeping the holes from blocking. The materials: * 2 litre plastic soft-drink bottle or water bottle * Sharp small screwdriver, pointed hole-maker or drill This can be used in container gardening, raised bed gardens and open vegetable gardens. Using your pocket knife, make 2 small slits in the bottom of your bottle. Dig a hole next to your tomato plant. This will slowly deep-water your tomato plants and most other vegetable plants. You can learn more about this on another website. Only two very small holes are needed at the lowest place on the bottle. I prefer to leave the lids off. Place bamboo stakes next to each bottle. Here I am making another hole slightly higher up the bottle. However, if I remove the lid, water will come out this hole as well as the holes in the base. You can make larger holes, and partly fill the bottle with coarse-sand or soil to slow the flow.

DNA seen through the eyes of a coder DNA seen through the eyes of a coder or If you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail This is just some rambling by a computer programmer about DNA. I'm not trying to force my view unto the DNA - each observation here is quite 'uncramped'. Quick links: The source code, Position Independent Code, Conditional compilation, Epigenetics, Dead code, bloat, comments ('junk dna'), fork() and fork bombs ('tumors'), Mirroring, failover, Cluttered APIs, dependency hell, Viruses, worms, Central Dogma, Binary patching aka 'Gene therapy', Bug Regression, Reed-Solomon codes: 'Forward Error Correction', Holy Code, Framing errors: start and stop bits, Massive multiprocessing: each cell is a universe, Self hosting & bootstrapping, The Makefile, Further reading. Updates 24th of February 2013: Added a bit on epigenetics, updated the font, small updates here and there. 23rd of September 2006: Small update on the number of genes. 16th of June 2002: Added tiny piece on the halting problem and cancer. Is here.

Best and worst style ETFs and mutual funds By David Trainer Figure 3 shows the best fund based on our portfolio management rating for each investment style as of April 23, 2012. Attractive-or-better-rated funds own high-quality stocks and hold very little of the fund's assets in cash. Investors looking to hold cash can do so themselves without paying management fees. Only 2% of funds receive our attractive or very attractive ratings, so investors need to be cautious when selecting a mutual fund or ETF — there are thousands of neutral-or-worse rated funds. Figure 3: Style funds with the highest quality holdings Source: New Constructs, LLC and company filings Figure 4 shows the worst fund based on our portfolio management rating for each investment style as of February 2, 2012. The worst fund for each investment style is an actively managed mutual fund; none of the worst investment style funds are passively managed ETFs. Figure 4: Style funds with the lowest quality holdings Figure 5: Style funds with the lowest costs Volume: 2,861

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