WELLynx at Lesley University

yay! caffeine! nevver: The Multiple Personalities of Coffee...

Tue, 21 May 2013 14:56:45 -0400

yay! caffeine!

The Multiple Personalities of Coffee (larger)

jtotheizzoe: Should You Use The SNOOZE Button? My mind says...

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 16:48:10 -0400

Should You Use The SNOOZE Button?

My mind says yes, but AsapSCIENCE says no. Waking up is all about our body clock’s natural tendency to come out of the deep sleep cycle we’ve been in all night, slowly bringing our systems online. If our alarm interrupts that boot-up process, grogginess ensues.

So you hit that snooze button, clinging to slumber in 9-minute increments for the next … oh crap, you’re late! Thing is, you probably don’t gain any advantage from the snooze button. It can even propel you into even more exhausting sleep patterns!

I’ll try to listen to science starting tomorrow morning, but first … just a few more minutes.

Find Volunteer Opportunities Near You

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 10:47:50 -0400

Find Volunteer Opportunities Near You:

usagov:

Volunteering is a great way to become involved in your community. Find opportunities near you.

explore-blog: NPR shows you how to avoid getting ripped off at...

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 23:04:29 -0400

explore-blog:

NPR shows you how to avoid getting ripped off at the ATM.

Dr. Cranquis' Mumbled Gripes: Teeth Tips for Non-Dentists: "So your tooth got knocked out..."

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:49:05 -0400

Dr. Cranquis' Mumbled Gripes: Teeth Tips for Non-Dentists: "So your tooth got knocked out...":

cranquis:

If a tooth is completely knocked out of the mouth:

This is a true “dental emergency” — see a dentist or an ER ASAP.

If the tooth is found, DO rinse it with saline or tap water — but DO NOT TOUCH THE ROOTS OR SCRUB THE TOOTH — before putting it back into the dental socket.

If you’re worried…

good: Max Schorr posted in Living, Design and HomeGraham Hill’s...

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:46:29 -0400

good:

Max Schorr posted in Living, Design and Home
Graham Hill’s personal account of learning to live with less and finding more happiness.

-

Living with less, a lot less

We live in a world of surfeit stuff, of big-box stores and 24-hour online shopping opportunities. Members of every socioeconomic bracket can and do deluge themselves with products.

There isn’t any indication that any of these things makes anyone any happier; in fact it seems the reverse may be true.

For me, it took 15 years, a great love and a lot of travel to get rid of all the inessential things I had collected and live a bigger, better, richer life with less.

Illustration by Maxwell Holyoke-Hirsch for nytimes.com

hyperallergic: How Long Does It Really Take? View Post

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 13:00:59 -0500

hyperallergic:

How Long Does It Really Take?

View Post

fastcompany: 7 Ways New Managers Can Shine It’s no secret that...

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 13:00:47 -0500

fastcompany:

7 Ways New Managers Can Shine

It’s no secret that those who find themselves tossed into management with little more than a hope and a prayer aren’t ready to fully engage in all that is required of more experienced managers. But there is certainly something about you that indicated you were right for this job. Your job is to build on these strengths, while you try and master the other skills necessary to be a successful leader. Here are seven ways you can shine from day one:

1. Manage those above you. Some of you may be thinking, “How the heck am I going to manage people above me when I haven’t even figured out how to do my job?” Trust me. I can tell you from personal experience that if you don’t begin with managing up, you won’t have to worry about managing down. It is critical to learn how to manage these relationships effectively so that you can secure the resources you need to be successful in any situation. Observe how others successfully gain resources in the organization and follow suit when their approach aligns with your values.

2. Decode your boss. I can’t recall a time when I’ve seen a boss adjust their management style to that of an employee’s. This means you will be the one who will be doing the adjusting. Begin by observing how your manager uses authority, the way she relates to others, and her communication style as a leader. Most bosses typically fall into one of the following categories: dictatorial, laissez-faire, bureaucratic, consultative. Once you determine the type of manager you’ve been handed, you can then study ways to work most effectively with this type of leader.

3. Become a master player of office politics. You are in the game, so deal with it. In every organization, there are unwritten rules. We call this office politics. The sooner you understand these rules, the better. Politics in the workplace isn’t just about manipulation. It’s about using power effectively to get what you need. People who are masters at this game follow unwritten rules that allow them to maneuver swiftly through the organization to obtain scarce resources, approval of prized projects, and promotions. Can you see now why it’s important to pay attention to this?

4. Toot your own horn. For years we’ve been taught that it’s not polite to brag. But if we don’t do so, how will others know about our contributions? I can assure you when companies are putting together lay-off lists they aren’t including those whose contributions are well known throughout the organization. You may be the best singer in the room, but no one will know this if you never open your mouth.

5. Manage performance. No one likes to tell an employee they are not meeting expectations, but how can they improve without feedback? Clearly define your expectations and communicate regularly so employees know exactly where they stand all year long. Provide timely well-thought-out performance reviews that are specific in nature so employees know exactly the type of behavior you would like to see repeated.

6. Be respectful. Be mindful of your tone. It’s easy to bark orders and have others respond out of fear. But eventually you’ll gain a reputation that will be difficult to shake. Effective leaders do not yell at their employees nor do they chew them out in front of customers or other employees. They speak to them like they matter.

7. Hire the best. At first it may be a bit intimidating hiring people who are smarter than you. You will shine the most when those around you are beaming. Hire bright people who will step things up in your workgroup and do whatever it takes to see that they are promoted.

fastcodesign: The Perfect Hire Starts With The Perfect Job...

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 13:00:43 -0500

fastcodesign:

The Perfect Hire Starts With The Perfect Job Posting

Hiring may be one of the biggest challenges facing any company, but it’s often considered a secondary task, taking a backseat to more “pressing” matters like a new product launch or client acquisition. However, your team is your company’s greatest investment and no decision has a bigger impact on your business’ future than whom you hire.

While many job ads are hastily sketched out with little forethought, these descriptions can be one of the most important tools to finding the best people for the job. Paying careful attention to your ad ensures your team understands the role you’re trying to fill, as well as broadcasts your needs to the world. After all, you’re not going to attract the right people if you haven’t defined what “right” means for you.

This doesn’t mean that putting together a job requisition needs to involve all the blood, sweat, and tears of writing the next great novel. Here are five tips to help you through the process:

1. Don’t Re-Invent The Wheel
Since it’s easier to start from something than nothing, go through any previous requisitions that you or any other hiring managers in the company have written before.

2. Define The Role
Research the requirements of the role by soliciting input from those who are working in a similar position as well as those who will be interacting with the new staff member on a regular basis. What are the must-have skills and traits, and what are the nice-to-haves?

In addition, be clear about the level of experience required for the job. Advertising for the wrong skill level sets your candidates up for failure and creates unnecessary tension in the company culture.

3. Writing The Req
Just as you’re looking for that great candidate, they’re looking for that great opportunity. A standout job title will start your requisition off with a bang.

4. Focus On Culture Fit
Finding the right employee entails more than skill-sets and experience. While you’re naturally looking for a top-notch customer service agent, you also want to find people who fit well within your company culture. Inject the vibe of your organization into your job and company descriptions. Be sure to stress the work environment, company values, learning opportunities, and any other details that will accurately represent what your company is all about.

5. Post It
Once the requisition is written, you will need to post it for the world to see. Be thoughtful about where to place your job ads: your goal is to attract the right candidates, not as many candidates as you can. In addition to the careers page on your company website, think about the preferred avenues and networks for your target candidates.

Social networks present one of the best opportunities for finding your best hires because they provide good access to your target audience. Have your team members share job openings through their personal Facebook profiles, LinkedIn updates, and Twitter feeds. Encourage employees to use their own authentic voice to introduce the role and company to people in their networks. Employee referrals are generally considered the best source of new hires, and as such, social networks have transformed recruiting.

How do you find the people for your team?

[People Pattern: Login via Shutterstock]

Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 13:00:57 -0500

Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us:

“If you could figure out a way to pay doctors better and separately fund research … adequately, I could see where a single-payer approach would be the most logical solution,” says Gunn, Sloan-Kettering’s chief operating officer. “It would certainly be a lot more efficient than hospitals like ours having hundreds of people sitting around filling out dozens of different kinds of bills for dozens of insurance companies.” Maybe, but the prospect of overhauling our system this way, displacing all the private insurers and other infrastructure after all these decades, isn’t likely. For there would be one group of losers — and these losers have lots of clout. They’re the health care providers like hospitals and CT-scan-equipment makers whose profits — embedded in the bills we have examined — would be sacrificed. They would suffer because of the lower prices Medicare would pay them when the patient is 64, compared with what they are able to charge when that patient is either covered by private insurance or has no insurance at all.

That kind of systemic overhaul not only seems unrealistic but is also packed with all kinds of risk related to the microproblems of execution and the macro issue of giving government all that power.

Yet while Medicare may not be a realistic systemwide model for reform, the way Medicare works does demonstrate, by comparison, how the overall health care market doesn’t work.

Unless you are protected by Medicare, the health care market is not a market at all. It’s a crapshoot. People fare differently according to circumstances they can neither control nor predict. They may have no insurance. They may have insurance, but their employer chooses their insurance plan and it may have a payout limit or not cover a drug or treatment they need. They may or may not be old enough to be on Medicare or, given the different standards of the 50 states, be poor enough to be on Medicaid. If they’re not protected by Medicare or they’re protected only partly by private insurance with high co-pays, they have little visibility into pricing, let alone control of it. They have little choice of hospitals or the services they are billed for, even if they somehow know the prices before they get billed for the services. They have no idea what their bills mean, and those who maintain the chargemasters couldn’t explain them if they wanted to. How much of the bills they end up paying may depend on the generosity of the hospital or on whether they happen to get the help of a billing advocate. They have no choice of the drugs that they have to buy or the lab tests or CT scans that they have to get, and they would not know what to do if they did have a choice. They are powerless buyers in a seller’s market where the only sure thing is the profit of the sellers.

world-shaker: englishteacheronline: 6 Great Bullying...

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 11:18:41 -0500

world-shaker:

englishteacheronline:

6 Great Bullying Posters.

Signal boost.

fastcompany: Here’s why Twitter software engineer Buster Benson...

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 11:17:58 -0500

fastcompany:

Here’s why Twitter software engineer Buster Benson or Y Combinator founder Paul Graham think that you need to learn to love to toil.

The personal slog

Writing on his always-interesting SVBTLE blog, Benson says there are different modes of work:

Introspection: Finding yourself.

Exploration: Finding everything else.

Goal-making: Based on values found during introspection.

Strategy-making: Hypotheses about how to achieve your goals.

Experimentation: Trying things, playing, iterating.

Finding fit: Person/universe fit.

Slogging: Executing. Doing the work.

Each draws on different moods, states of mind, and brainwaves, Benson says, and we tend to excel at some and suck at others.

These processes don’t happen sequentially; they’re simultaneous. If your workflow is a startup, its organization is flat: Each mode is strongest when the others are strongest, and neglecting one hurts the others.

And it’s the slog that’s getting things done.

An inquiry into human schlepping

Paul Graham is Silicon Valley’s godfather who defines what makes a startup a startup (growth) and what a founder really is: an economic research scientist. Part of that research is schlepping.

“One of the many things we do at Y Combinator is teach hackers about the inevitability of schleps,” he writes in a recent post. “(They) are not merely inevitable, but pretty much what business consists of.”

We don’t like schleps, Graham says, and that dislike provokes an unconscious blindness. We are, unknown to ourselves, pulling away from doing hard stuff (like seeing your friend in Queens).

But because everyone’s scared of the schlep, the toils are doubly valuable.

So keep calm and schlep on.

Here’s the full story.

jayparkinsonmd: (via The Ultimate Guide to Quitting Smoking |...

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 21:58:35 -0500

jayparkinsonmd:

(via The Ultimate Guide to Quitting Smoking | Greatist)

Self-Reblog: Tanning-bed addiction and teen melanoma

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 19:05:25 -0500

Self-Reblog: Tanning-bed addiction and teen melanoma:

cranquis:

cranquis:

cranquis:

“74% greater risk of melanoma among tanning-bed users”… Wow!

Winter is coming in the US — a time when many turn to tanning beds to “get their sunlight”. Just thought I’d remind you that it’s a BAD IDEA. Better to invest in a $70-100 “Light Therapy” lamp, to get all the Vitamin-D-stimulating effects of sunlight without all the melanoma-inducing effects of a tanning bed!

Just thought I’d remind everyone…

USA.gov: End-of-Year Charity Giving Tips from the IRS

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 14:41:37 -0500

USA.gov: End-of-Year Charity Giving Tips from the IRS:

usagov:

As 2012 comes to a close, individuals and businesses need to remember some key tax provisions for making contributions to charity. The IRS offers these reminders for year-end giving:

To deduct monetary donations you must have a bank record or written document from the charity stating the…

USA.gov: Get Through the Holiday Blues

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 14:21:57 -0500

USA.gov: Get Through the Holiday Blues:

usagov:

The holidays aren’t joyous for everyone. This time of year can bring stress and feelings of loneliness. Exercise, focusing on positive relationships, and doing things that you find rewarding can help with depression. Get tips on what to do if you feel depressed.

Keep in mind that winter…

artandsciencejournal: Data Visualization “Data”, that’s a scary...

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 20:28:05 -0500

artandsciencejournal:

Data Visualization

“Data”, that’s a scary word. All we can picture are mountains of numbers that are indiscernible from one another. But this is also a fact, entire genomes are getting sequenced, the universe is being mapped out… we’re entering an era of big data, even bigger mountains. So… what do we do with it ? We manipulate it, we design it, so that big data can be digested, dare I say enjoyed.

Sometimes it’s even fun to browse this mountain of information. At least that’s what I thought when I found the We Feel Fine project. This emotional search engine crawls blogs and networking sites, picking up sentences which include “I feel” or “I am feeling”, as well as the gender, age and location of the people posting those sentences. The result is a database of several million human feelings, sorted out, displayed, in the hopes of creating a piece of art for everyone, by everyone, sprouting from our deepest feelings.

Check out the java applet here.

- Agathe of Frontal Cortex

ikenbot: 6 Shocking Ways TV Rewires Your Brain Side note: I...

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 20:15:04 -0500

ikenbot:

6 Shocking Ways TV Rewires Your Brain

Side note: I referenced this article in the past post ‘Brain Programming: Science of Real Self-Mind Control’. But I wanted to flesh the article out into its details for everyone to read up on here in case they were too lazy to go to the actual article and look at the points they brought. So here’s the list in full details on its own post. Because I think anyone who’s passionately involved with any show, movies, media, radio (as they all operate similarly) needs to see this.

The average American watches more than four hours of television per day (five times the amount dedicated to socialization!). It makes sense that it would change us, the same as doing anything for four hours a day changes you. Yet, it’s surprisingly hard to get people to accept this. But the science is pretty much overwhelming. Enough television rewires your brain in a bunch of unexpected ways. For instance …

#6. It Changes You, Even if You’re Too Young to Know What You’re Watching

It’s easy to assume that impressionable children can be affected by TV shows, but what about toddlers? They aren’t even aware of what’s going on around them. Besides, they don’t do a whole lot besides chew on furniture and inflate their diapers, so it’s not like they could be doing something better with their time.

Scientists tracked more than 1,000 29-month-old babies and their television habits and the effects of excess TV were downright startling — even after researchers accounted for all the other factors that would explain differences in behavior. The more television a child watched as a toddler, the more likely it was that he’d be fat, bullied, bad at math, inactive and prone to misbehavior in the classroom.

Again, that’s not a result of watching violent TV shows or anything else that would encourage them to do bad things. Not that a 3-year-old would be able to absorb those lessons anyway.

Nope, it’s just the act of watching television. And again, it’s not just that the type of parent who plants a kid in front of a TV all day probably also runs a bad household — the results hold up even if you account for all other factors in the kids’ upbringing.

And the research holds up around the world. A New Zealand study found that more hours of television viewed as a toddler led to a higher probability of dropping out of school later in life. In a stunning display of initiative, France has even banned shows from having children younger than 3 as their target audience, because French adults are the only ones allowed to have their intelligences insulted.

And while we’re on the subject, let’s get this one out of the way…

#5. Yes, TV Lowers Your Attention Span

Since television — especially children’s TV — is lightning-fast and loaded with stimuli, it isn’t outlandish to think that a person’s brain might become adjusted to that pace over time. When a teacher cannot supplement his or her lectures with dinosaurs and explosions, a child’s television-altered attention span may be so deprived that the child cannot stay focused.

But most of us who don’t buy into “the modern world is destroying the children!” alarmism have trouble believing that too much TV can actually rewire your attention span in any significant way.

But an Iowa State University study sure enough found that students who stare at a screen for more than two hours per day are twice as likely to be diagnosed with attention problems, which is awesome when you consider that the average amount of time a child spends watching television and playing video games is 4.26 hours a day.

The study followed 1,323 children in grades three through five and 210 college students. The results make it fairly hard to argue that television doesn’t literally change the way the human brain functions, with enough exposure. But even stranger, other studies have shown (just like with the example above) that the amount of television watched as an infant can affect attention habits later in life.

So again, if you want your kids to be able to pay attention to anything for longer than 38 seconds, you need to move into a hotel and wheel the television out onto the balcony like Craig T. Nelson in Poltergeist.

#4. It Alters Your Dreams

Television can change your dreams, and not just by making you wish you could master time travel to become an advertising executive in the 60s.

According to science, television can alter your actual dreams, the kind that happen while you’re asleep. Research has found that some people have monochrome dreams (that is, they dream in black and white), and it’s apparently all their televisions’ fault.

In a study of 50 people, half under 25 and the rest over 55, the subjects filled out a questionnaire related to the color of their dreams, their contentedness with their marriages and the colors of their televisions in their formative childhood years. Then the subjects were asked to keep a dream diary. Researchers found that while hardly any of the younger people dreamed in black and white (around four percent), a quarter of the older-than-55 group did. That is, the people who grew up with black and white televisions.

Scientists attribute this to hours of exposure to black and white images during the subjects’ formative years, but there is no way to know if the actual dreams were in black and white, or if the subjects just remember them as such due to years of visual training by their TV sets.

#3. It Deceptively Cures Loneliness

You might know people who get so wrapped up in a show that they forgo social interaction until they’ve caught up to the latest episode. The rest of us are probably waiting for the day when they realize they need actual friends for fun and emotional support, but that day may never come. Scientists have found that television, specifically the pseudo-relationships formed with TV characters, can drive away feelings of loneliness and rejection.

Using a combination of four studies, scientists have shown that television shows can instill a sense of belonging in people with low self-esteem who have been rejected by friends or family. This is called the social surrogacy hypothesis, which figures that in order to fill the emotional void of social deprivation, a person will establish relationships with fictional characters (as teenagers, many of us had a similar type of relationship with late-night Cinemax).

One study showed that subjects who were experiencing feelings of loneliness felt better after turning on their favorite television programs. Another had subjects writing essays about either their favorite shows or some other random subject as a control. The subjects who wrote about their favorite shows used fewer words expressing loneliness than the control group.

Scientists are not sure whether establishing relationships with television characters suppresses a need for human interaction or actually fulfills that need, but they generally advise against dumping all human contact in favor of the cast of Carnivale.

#2. It Makes it Likelier to Fall into Obesity

Obesity is sort of like a merit badge for watching too much television as far as most of us are concerned, so it shouldn’t be surprising to find a scientific correlation between watching less TV and burning more calories. But scientists have found that people who watch less television burn more calories each day than their television-bound counterparts without necessarily engaging in any extra physical activity — the mere act of using your brain instead of numbing it with hours of Burn Notice is enough.

University of Vermont researchers set up a six-week study involving 36 subjects who ranged from overweight to obese. The subjects watched, on average, five hours of television per day. Scientists cut the television consumption of 20 of the subjects by attaching time-tracking devices to their TVs that would turn them off once the maximum time of use for the week had been reached (these monitoring devices, and the armbands attached to the subjects to track their weekly activity, were presumably set to explode if tampered with). Scientists found that the subjects with limited television time burned an average of 120 more calories per day than those in the control group without doing so much as a single jumping jack.

Instead, the factors behind the extra calorie-burning were the mundane tasks done instead of watching television, such as reading, playing board games or doing simple household chores. Snacking didn’t actually decrease with fewer television hours, either. The participants just switched to more mentally rigorous activities that required more energy to perform.

#1. It Makes You Violent

The average 18-year-old has seen 200,000 violent actions committed on television over the course of his life, including 40,000 murders.

The cold-blooded killer segment of our audience will probably notice that’s an excellent violent action-to-death ratio, about five to one. We assume that many of those murders weren’t particularly desensitizing and gruesome affairs, probably mostly involving a hero thoughtlessly mowing down an army of clumsy masked goons.

But regardless of the severity, the violence we view on television actually does have an influence on our behavior. A study that followed the television viewing habits of 700 children over the course of 17 years found that (again, after ruling out factors like poverty and neglect) more hours of television translated to more violent acts. Scientists found that 22.5 percent of children who watched one to three hours of television per day committed aggressive actions such as threats, assaults, and fights in subsequent years. If the children watched more than four hours per day, the percentage rose to 28.8 percent.

In contrast, only 5.7 percent of kids who watched less than one hour per day would go on to commit aggressive actions against others.

Now, to be clear, violence in television isn’t nearly as large an influence on future violent behavior as is living in an abusive home (or, say, having an obligation to avenge your family after your corrupt uncle usurped the throne), but it is seemingly enough to make otherwise complacent children into burgeoning thugs.

This example, as with many of the previous ones in this article, will no doubt yield many of you (and some in our comment section) to say, “But I watched the shit out of television when I was a kid, and I turned out fine!” That is no doubt true, and by the way, it conflicts in no way with any of these studies. They’re not saying TV ruins 100 percent of the kids it touches. Just that you’re more likely to have problems if you watch a ton of TV.

Do Your Loved Ones Know Your Wishes for End-of-Life Care and Beyond?

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 13:00:41 -0500

Do Your Loved Ones Know Your Wishes for End-of-Life Care and Beyond?:

usagov:

Learn about advance directives and make a plan.

moneyisnotimportant: Apple loves to push the fact that you can...

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 10:10:31 -0500

moneyisnotimportant:

Apple loves to push the fact that you can get your items engraved FOR FREE! It seems cool to have your name laser-inscribed on the back of your new device, but you should avoid this.

First, if you decide that your device isn’t worth the money after it arrives, Apple won’t let you return it if it’s engraved. All of the sudden, we know why they’re so generous with this “free” engraving.

Second, a lot of people love to buy the latest and greatest electronics, and a good way to curb the cost of this habit is to sell your old phones, tablets, etc. when you’re done with them. But, you’ll quickly find that companies who purchase your used items don’t want them if they’re engraved! It simply costs too much for them to remove the engraving, so they’d rather not even mess with it.

So, if you’re planning to buy a new iPhone, iPad, etc. for yourself or someone else this year, DON’T HAVE IT ENGRAVED!