Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder)(4)

What's the Recommended Treatment Plan for Dissociative Identity Disorder? While there's no "cure" for dissociative identity disorder, long-term treatment is very successful, if the patient stays committed. Effective treatment includes talk therapy or psychotherapy, medications, hypnotherapy, and adjunctive therapies such as art or movement therapy. Because oftentimes the symptoms of dissociative disorders occur with other disorders, such as anxiety and depression, dissociative disorder may be treated using the same drugs prescribed for those disorders. A person in treatment for a dissociative disorder might benefit from antidepressants or anti-anxiety medication.

Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder)(3)

Who Gets Dissociative Identity Disorder? While the causes of dissociative identity disorder are still vague, research indicates that a combination of environmental and biological factors work together to cause it. As many as 98% to 99% of individuals who develop dissociative disorders have recognized personal histories of recurring, overpowering, and often life-threatening disturbances at a sensitive developmental stage of childhood (usually before age 9). Dissociation may also happen when there has been insistent neglect or emotional abuse, even when there has been no overt physical or sexual abuse. Findings show that in families where parents are frightening and unpredictable, the children may become dissociative. How Is Dissociative Identity Disorder Diagnosed? Making the diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder takes time. It's estimated that individuals with dissociative disorders have spent seven years in the mental health system prior to accurate diagnosis. This is common, because the list of symptoms that cause a person with a dissociative disorder to seek treatment is very similar to those of many other psychiatric diagnoses. In fact, many people who have dissociative disorders also have secondary diagnoses of depression, anxiety, or panic disorders. The DSM-IV provides the following criteria to diagnose dissociative identity disorder: 1.Two or more distinct identities or personality states are present, each with its own relatively enduring pattern of perceiving, relating to, and thinking about the environment and self. 2.At least two of these identities or personality states recurrently take control of the person's behavior. 3.The person has an inability to recall important personal information that is too extensive to be explained by ordinary forgetfulness. 4.The disturbance is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (such as blackouts or chaotic behavior during alcohol intoxication) or a general medical condition (such as complex partial seizures). Are There Famous People With Dissociative Identity Disorder? Famous people with dissociative identity disorder include retired NFL star Herschel Walker, who says he's struggled with dissociative identity disorder for years but has only been treated for the past eight years. Walker recently published a book about his struggles with dissociative identity disorder, along with his suicide attempts. Walker talks about a feeling of disconnect from childhood to the professional leagues. To cope, he developed a tough personality that didn't feel loneliness, one that was fearless and wanted to act out the anger he always suppressed. These "alters" could withstand the abuse he felt; other alters came to help him rise to national fame. Today, Walker realizes that these alternate personalities are part of dissociative identity disorder, which he was diagnosed with in adulthood. How Common Is Dissociative Identity Disorder? Statistics show the rate of dissociative identity disorder is .01% to 1% of the general population. Still, more than 1/3 of people say they feel as if they're watching themselves in a movie at times, and 7% percent of the population may have undiagnosed dissociative disorder.

Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder)(2)

What's the Difference Between Dissociative Identity Disorder and Schizophrenia? Schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder are often confused, but they are very different. Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness involving chronic (or recurrent) psychosis, characterized mainly by hearing or seeing things that aren't real (hallucinations) and thinking or believing things with no basis in reality (delusions). People with schizophrenia do not have multiple personalities. Delusions are the most common psychotic symptom in schizophrenia; hallucinations, particularly hearing voices, are apparent in about half of people. Suicide is a risk with both schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder, although patients with multiple personalities have a history of suicide attempt more often than other psychiatric patients. How Does Dissociation Change the Way a Person Experiences Life? There are several main ways in which the psychological processes of dissociative identity disorder change the way a person experiences living, including the following: Depersonalization. This is a sense of being detached from one's body and is often referred to as an "out-of-body" experience. Derealization. This is the feeling that the world is not real or looking foggy or far away. Amnesia. This is the failure to recall significant personal information that is so extensive it cannot be blamed on ordinary forgetfulness. There can also be micro-amnesias where the discussion engaged in is not remembered, or the content of a meaningful conversation is forgotten from one second to the next. Identity confusion or identity alteration. Both of these involve a sense of confusion about who a person is. An example of identity confusion is when a person sometimes feels a thrill while engaged in an activity (such as reckless driving, DUI, alcohol or drug abuse) which at other times would be revolting. In addition to these apparent alterations, the person may experience distortions in time, place, and situation.

It is now acknowledged that these dissociated states are not fully-mature personalities, but rather they represent a disjointed sense of identity. With the amnesia typically associated with dissociative identity disorder, different identity states remember different aspects of autobiographical information. There is usually a host personality within the individual, who identifies with the person's real name. Ironically, the host personality is usually unaware of the presence of other personalities. What Roles Do the Different Personalities Play? The distinct personalities may serve diverse roles in helping the individual cope with life's dilemmas. For instance, there's an average of two to four personalities present when the patient is initially diagnosed. Then there's an average of 13 to 15 personalities that can become known over the course of treatment. While unusual, there have been instances of dissociative identity disorder with more than 100 personalities. Environmental triggers or life events cause a sudden shift from one alter or personality to another.

Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder)

Dissociative identity disorder (previously known as multiple personality disorder) is an effect of severe trauma during early childhood, usually extreme, repetitive physical, sexual, or emotional abuse. What Is Dissociative Identity Disorder? Most of us have experienced mild dissociation, which is like daydreaming or getting lost in the moment while working on a project. However, dissociative identity disorder is a severe form of dissociation, a mental process, which produces a lack of connection in a person's thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity. Dissociative identity disorder is thought to stem from trauma experienced by the person with the disorder. The dissociative aspect is thought to be a coping mechanism -- the person literally dissociates himself from a situation or experience that's too violent, traumatic, or painful to assimilate with his conscious self. Is Dissociative Identity Disorder Real? You may wonder if dissociative identity disorder is real. After all, understanding the development of multiple personalities is difficult, even for highly trained experts. But dissociative identity disorder does exist. It is the most severe and chronic manifestation of the dissociative disorders that cause multiple personalities. Other types of dissociative disorders defined in the DSM-IV, the main psychiatry manual used to classify mental illnesses, include dissociative amnesia, dissociative fugue, and depersonalization disorder. What Are the Symptoms of Dissociative Identity Disorder? Dissociative identity disorder is characterized by the presence of two or more distinct or split identities or personality states that continually have power over the person's behavior. With dissociative identity disorder, there's also an inability to recall key personal information that is too far-reaching to be explained as mere forgetfulness. With dissociative identity disorder, there are also highly distinct memory variations, which fluctuate with the person's split personality. The "alters" or different identities have their own age, sex, or race. Each has his or her own postures, gestures, and distinct way of talking. Sometimes the alters are imaginary people; sometimes they are animals. As each personality reveals itself and controls the individuals' behavior and thoughts, it's called "switching." Switching can take seconds to minutes to days. When under hypnosis, the person's different "alters" or identities may be very responsive to the therapist's requests.

Along with the dissociation and multiple or split personalities, people with dissociative disorders may experience any of the following symptoms: Depression Mood swings Suicidal tendencies Sleep disorders (insomnia, night terrors, and sleep walking) Anxiety, panic attacks, and phobias (flashbacks, reactions to stimuli or "triggers") Alcohol and drug abuse Compulsions and rituals Psychotic-like symptoms (including auditory and visual hallucinations) Eating disorders Other symptoms of dissociative identity disorder may include headache, amnesia, time loss, trances, and "out of body experiences." Some people with dissociative disorders have a tendency toward self-persecution, self-sabotage, and even violence (both self-inflicted and outwardly directed). As an example, someone with dissociative identity disorder may find themselves doing things they wouldn't normally do such as speeding, reckless driving, or stealing money from their employer or friend, yet they feel they are being compelled to do it. Some describe this feeling as being a passenger in their body rather than the driver. In other words, they truly believe they have no choice.

Asteroids: Formation, Discovery and Exploration

This enlarged view of photo of the asteroid Lutetia is one of the closest views ever of the asteroid. It was taken by Europe's comet probe Rosetta from 80,000 km away during a July 10, 2010 flyby. Asteroids are small, airless rocky worlds revolving around the sun that are too small to be called planets. They are also known as planetoids or minor planets. In total, the mass of all the asteroids is less than that of Earth's moon. But despite their size, asteroids can be dangerous. Many have hit Earth in the past, and more will crash into our planet in the future. That's one reason scientists study asteroids and are eager to learn more about their numbers, orbits and physical characteristics. If an asteroid is headed our way, we want to know that. Most asteroids lie in a vast ring between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. This main belt holds more than 200 asteroids larger than 60 miles (100 kilometers) in diameter. Scientists estimate the asteroid belt also contains more than 750,000 asteroids larger than three-fifths of a mile (1 kilometer) in diameter and millions of smaller ones. Not everything in the main belt is an asteroid — for instance, comets have recently been discovered there, and Ceres, once thought of only as an asteroid, is now also considered a dwarf planet. Many asteroids lie outside the main belt. For instance, a number of asteroids called Trojans lie along Jupiter's orbital path. Three groups — Atens, Amors, and Apollos — known as near-Earth asteroids orbit in the inner solar system and sometimes cross the path of Mars and Earth. Formation Asteroids are leftovers from the formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. Early on, the birth of Jupiter prevented any planetary bodies from forming in the gap between Mars and Jupiter, causing the small objects that were there to collide with each other and fragment into the asteroids seen today. Physical Characteristics Asteroids can reach as large as Ceres, which is 940 kilometers (about 583 miles) across and is also considered a dwarf planet. On the other hand, one of the smallest, discovered in 1991 and named 1991 BA, is only about 20 feet (6 meters) across. Nearly all asteroids are irregularly shaped, although a few are nearly spherical, such as Ceres. They are often pitted or cratered — for instance, Vesta has a giant crater some 285 miles (460 km) in diameter. As asteroids revolve around the Sun in elliptical orbits, they rotate, sometimes tumbling quite erratically. More than 150 asteroids are also known to have a small companion moon, with some having two moons. Binary or double asteroids also exist, in which two asteroids of roughly equal size orbit each other, and triple asteroid systems are known as well. Many asteroids seemingly have been captured by a planet's gravity and become moons — likely candidates include among Mars' moons Phobos and Deimos and most of the distant outer moons of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The average temperature of the surface of a typical asteroid is minus 100 degrees F (minus 73 degrees C). Asteroids have stayed mostly unchanged for billions of years — as such, research into them could reveal a great deal about the early solar system. Classification In addition to classifications of asteroids based on their orbits, most asteroids fall into three classes based on composition. The C-type or carbonaceous are greyish in color and are the most common, including more than 75 percent of known asteroids. They probably consist of clay and stony silicate rocks, and inhabit the main belt's outer regions. The S-type or silicaceous asteroids are greenish to reddish in color, account for about 17 percent of known asteroids, and dominate the inner asteroid belt. They appear to be made of silicate materials and nickel-iron. The M-type or metallic asteroids are reddish in color, make up most of the rest of the asteroids, and dwell in the middle region of the main belt. They seem to be made up of nickle-iron. There are many other rare types based on composition as well — for instance, V-type asteroids typified by Vesta have a basaltic, volcanic crust Earth impacts Ever since Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago, asteroids and comets have routinely slammed into the planet. The most dangerous asteroids are extremely rare, according to NASA. An asteroid capable of global disaster would have to be more than a quarter-mile wide. Researchers have estimated that such an impact would raise enough dust into the atmosphere to effectively create a "nuclear winter," severely disrupting agriculture around the world. Asteroids that large strike Earth only once every 1,000 centuries on average, NASA officials say. Smaller asteroids that are believed to strike Earth every 1,000 to 10,000 years could destroy a city or cause devastating tsunamis. Dozens of asteroids have been classified as "potentially hazardous" by the scientists who track them. Some of these, whose orbits come close enough to Earth, could potentially be perturbed in the distant future and sent on a collision course with our planet. Scientists point out that if an asteroid is found to be on a collision course with Earth 30 or 40 years down the road, there is time to react. Though the technology would have to be developed, possibilities include exploding the object or diverting it. [Image Gallery: Potentially Dangerous Asteroids] For every known asteroid, however, there are many that have not been spotted, and shorter reaction times could prove more threatening. When an asteroid, or a part of it, crashes into Earth, it's called a meteorite. Here are typical compositions: Iron meteorites: •Iron 91 percent •Nickel 8.5 percent •Cobalt 0.6 percent Stony Meteorites: •Oxygen 36 percent •Iron 26 percent •Silicon 18 percent •Magnesium 14 percent •Aluminum 1.5 percent •Nickel 1.4 percent •Calcium 1.3 percent Discovery In 1801, while making a star map, Italian priest and astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi accidentally discovered the first and largest asteroid, Ceres, orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. Ceres accounts for a quarter of all the mass of all the thousands of known asteroids in or near the main asteroid belt. Naming Since the International Astronomical Union is less strict on how asteroids are named when compared to other bodies, there are asteroids named after Mr. Spock of "Star Trek" and rock musician Frank Zappa as well as more solemn tributes, such as the seven asteroids named for the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia killed in 2003. Naming asteroids after pets is no longer allowed. Asteroids are also given numbers — for example, 99942 Apophis. Exploration The first spacecraft to take close-up images of asteroids was NASA's Galileo in 1991, which also discovered the first moon to orbit an asteroid in 1994. In 2001, after NASA's NEAR spacecraft intensely studied the near-earth asteroid Eros for more than a year from orbit, mission controllers decided to try and land the spacecraft. Although it wasn't designed for landing, NEAR successfully touched down, setting the record as the first to successfully land on an asteroid. In 2006, Japan's Hayabusa became the first spacecraft to land on and take off from an asteroid. It returned to Earth in June 2010, and the samples it recovered are currently under study. NASA's Dawn mission, launched in 2007, began exploring Vesta in 2011 and is slated to explore Ceres in 2015 and will be the first spacecraft to visit either body. In 2012, a company called Planetary Resources, Inc. announced plans to eventually send a mission to a space rock to extract water and mine the asteroid for precious metals. — Charles Q. Choi, SPACE.com Contributor

What Is Herpes? What Is Genital Herpes?

Genital herpes is a sexually transmitted infection caused by HSV (herpes simplex virus). This virus affects the genitals, the cervix, as well as the skin in other parts of the body. There are two types of herpes simplex viruses: a) HSVp1, or Herpes Type 1, and b) HSV-2, or Herpes Type 2. Herpes is a chronic condition. Chronic, in medicine, means long-term. However, many people never have symptoms even though they are carrying the virus. Many people with HSV have recurring genital herpes. When a person is initially infected the recurrences, if they do occur, tend to happen more frequently. Over time the remission periods get longer and longer. Each occurrence tends to become less severe with time. HSV is highly contagious The herpes simplex virus (HSV) is easily human transmissible. It is passed from one person to another by close, direct contact. The most common mode of transmission is through vaginal, anal or oral sex. When somebody becomes infected with HSV, it will generally remain dormant. Most people who are infected with HSV do not know it because their symptoms are so slight - many people have no discernible symptoms. What are the symptoms for genital herpes? For those who do experience symptoms, they are generally present as blisters on the genitals, and sores around the mouth. Most people do not have apparent symptoms for many months, or even years after becoming infected. Those who do have symptoms during the initial period will usually notice them about 4 to 7 days after being infected. Primary infection symptoms Primary infection is a term used for an outbreak of genital herpes that is evident when a person is first infected. Primary infection symptoms, if they are experienced, are usually more severe than subsequent recurrences. Symptoms can last up to 20 days and may include: ◾Blisters and ulceration on the cervix ◾Vaginal discharge ◾Pain when urinating ◾A temperature (fever) ◾Malaise (feeling unwell) ◾Cold sores around the mouth ◾Red blisters - these are generally painful and they soon burst and leave ulcers on the external genital area, thighs, buttocks and rectum In most cases the ulcers will heal and the patient will not have any lasting scars. Recurrent infection symptoms These symptoms tend to be less severe and do not last as long, because the patient's body has built up some immunity to the virus. In most cases symptoms will not last for more than 10 days. ◾Burning/tingling around genitals before blisters appear ◾Women may have blisters and ulceration on the cervix ◾Cold sores around the mouth ◾Red blisters - these are generally painful and the soon burst and leave ulcers on the external genital area, thighs, buttocks and rectum Eventually recurrences happen less often and are much less severe. Patients with HSV-1 will have fewer recurrences and less severe symptoms than people infected with HSV-2. What causes genital herpes? When HSV is present on the surface of the skin of an infected person it can easily pass on to another person through the moist skin which lines the mouth, anus and genitals. The virus may also pass onto another person through other areas of human skin, as well as the eyes. A human cannot become infected by touching an object, such as a working surface, washbasin, or a towel which has been touched by an infected person. The following can be ways of becoming infected: ◾Having unprotected vaginal or anal sex ◾Having oral sex with a person who gets cold sores ◾Sharing sex toys ◾Having genital contact with an infected person HSV leaves the skin just before a blister appears. The virus is most likely to be passed on just before the blister appears, when it is visible, and until the blister is completely healed. HSV can still pass onto another person when there are no signs of an outbreak (but it is less likely). If a mother with genital herpes has sores while giving birth it is possible that the infection is passed on to the baby (see section on pregnancy below). How is genital herpes diagnosed? Some herpes facts "People who have genital herpes can have sex. They should avoid sexual contact if they have symptoms. Wearing condoms helps prevent passing it on." "More than 50% of the population of the USA has herpes. Most of them don't know it." "Receiving oral sex from somebody who has cold sores around their mouth significantly raises the risk of becoming infected." "You cannot get genital herpes from a toilet seat." "Genital herpes can spread from one part of your body to another." "If you never have symptoms, this does not mean you do not have genital herpes." "Stress can trigger a recurrence of symptoms." "People who have genital herpes are more susceptible to HIV." "Genital herpes cannot make you sterile." Anybody who has genital herpes symptoms should see his/her GP (general practitioner) or go to a sexual health clinic or a genito-urinary medicine (GUM) clinic. Anything discussed or discovered is completely confidential. An initial diagnosis of genital herpes should ideally be made by a GUM specialist - however, if you cannot see one go to your GP. A GP may refer the patient to a specialist. Before doing so, he/she will ask the patient some questions regarding possible signs and symptoms and carry out an examination. Herpes is much easier to diagnose when the infection is still present. A health care professional will take a swab sample of fluid from the infected area - this may require gently breaking the blister. The sample will be sent to a laboratory. If the result comes back negative it does not necessarily mean the person does not have genital herpes. Confirmation is more likely if the patient has subsequent recurrences. Blood tests can also be used to find out if a person is infected. However, blood tests may miss very recent infections. Diagnosing recurrent infections of genital herpes Anybody who has a recurrent bout of genital herpes should see his/her doctor. The doctor will ask about the symptoms, and previous bouts. He/she will also try to find out whether this outbreak, or previous ones, might have been triggered by something, such as illness, or stress. The doctor will examine the genital area in order to determine the severity of the infection. What are the treatments for genital herpes? Self-help ◾Pain - paracetamol (Tylenol, acetaminophen) or ibuprofen can be bought without a prescription. ◾Some people find that bathing in lightly salted water helps relieve symptoms. ◾Ice packs can help. Make sure the ice is wrapped in something - do not apply ice directly to the skin. ◾Apply Vaseline (or some kind of petroleum jelly) to the affected area. ◾If urinating is painful apply some cream or lotion to the urethra, for example, lidocaine. Some people find that if they urinate while sitting in warm water it is less painful. ◾Do not wear tight clothing around the affected area. ◾Wash your hands thoroughly, especially if you have touched an affected area. ◾Refrain from sexual activity until symptoms have gone. Medication There is no drug that can get rid of the virus. The doctor may prescribe an antiviral, such as acyclovir. Acyclovir is usually taken five times a day. It prevents the virus from multiplying. A course of acyclovir lasts five days if the patient still has new blisters and ulcers forming in the genital area when treatment started. Antiviral tablets will help the outbreak clear up faster - they will also help reduce the severity of symptoms. Antivirals are generally given the first time a patient has symptoms. Even after aggressive antiviral treatment, with for example acyclovir, the herpes virus can reactivate, scientists from University of Washington Virology Research Clinic in Seattle, WA, USA, reported in The Lancet (January 2012). As recurrent outbreaks are milder, treatment is not usually necessary. Episodic treatment and suppressive treatment ◾Episodic treatment - this is generally for patients who have less than six recurrences in one year. A five-day course of antivirals is prescribed each time symptoms appear. ◾Suppressive treatment - if a patient has more than six recurrences in a year, or if symptoms are very severe, antiviral treatment may last longer. The aim here is to prevent further recurrences. Some patients may have to take acyclovir twice daily for several months. Although suppressive treatment significantly reduces the risk of passing HSV to a partner, there is still a risk. Genital herpes during pregnancy If a mother became infected before she got pregnant the risk of infecting her baby is very low. This is because her antibodies will be passed on to the baby. The longer the mother had the infection before becoming pregnant, the better her immunity will be, and that will be passed on to the baby. Those antibodies protect the baby during the birth and for many months afterwards. For a woman who became infected during the first 13 weeks (first trimester) of her pregnancy, the risk of infecting the baby is slightly higher. If infection happens later on during the pregnancy, the risk continues to increase. Most women who became infected during their pregnancy are advised to take aciclovir (antiviral medication) during their pregnancy. The risk of passing the infection on to the baby is considerably higher if the mother became infected during the late stage of pregnancy. The risk of infection for the baby is during, or just before the birth. Doctors will often advise the mother to have a cesarean section delivery. The mother will also be taking antiviral medication. A mother who has recurrent infections of genital herpes during the third trimester of her pregnancy may need to have a cesarean section if she has blisters and ulcers in her genital area around the date of the birth. Most doctors will not advise a cesarean section delivery if there are no sores and the mother has been infected since before she got pregnant, as the risk of passing the infection on to the baby is very small. Prevention Genital herpes vaccine research - scientists from the Louis University Center for Vaccine Development reported in NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine that an investigational vaccine protected some females against HSV-1, one of two viruses that cause genital herpes.

Schizophrenia: Schizophrenia Information & Treatment Introduction

By Michael Bengston, M.D. Throughout recorded history, the disorder we now know as schizophrenia has been a source of bewilderment. Those suffering from the illness once were thought to be possessed by demons and were feared, tormented, exiled or locked up forever. In spite of advances in the understanding of its causes, course and treatment, schizophrenia continues to confound both health professionals and the public. It is easier for the average person to cope with the idea of cancer than it is to understand the odd behavior, hallucinations or strange ideas of the person with schizophrenia. As with many mental disorders, the causes of schizophrenia are poorly understood. Friends and family commonly are shocked, afraid or angry when they learn of the diagnosis. People often imagine a person with schizophrenia as being more violent or out-of-control than a person who has another kind of serious mental illness. But these kinds of prejudices and misperceptions can be readily corrected. Expectations become more realistic as schizophrenia is better understood as a disorder that requires ongoing -- often lifetime -- treatment. Demystification of the illness, along with recent insights from neuroscience and neuropsychology, gives new hope for finding more effective treatments for an illness that previously carried a grave prognosis. Schizophrenia is characterized by a broad range of unusual behaviors that cause profound disruption in the lives of people suffering from the condition, as well as in the lives of the people around them. Schizophrenia strikes without regard to gender, race, social class or culture. Delusions & Hallucinations Are Common in Schizophrenia One of the most obvious kinds of impairment caused by schizophrenia involves how a person thinks. The individual can lose much of the ability to rationally evaluate his or her surroundings and interactions with others. They often believe things that are untrue, and may have difficulty accepting what they see as "true" reality. Schizophrenia most often includes hallucinations and/or delusions, which reflect distortions in the perception and interpretation of reality. The resulting behaviors may seem bizarre to the casual observer, even though they may be consistent with the schizophrenic's abnormal perceptions and beliefs. For instance, someone with schizophrenia may act in an extremely paranoid manner -- purchasing multiple locks for their doors, always checking behind them as they walk in public, refusing to talk on the phone. Without context, these behaviors may seem irrational or illogical. But to someone with schizophrenia, these behaviors may reflect a reasonable reaction their false beliefs that others are out to get them or lock them up. Nearly one-third of those diagnosed with schizophrenia will attempt suicide. About 10 percent of those with the diagnosis will commit suicide within 20 years of the beginning of the disorder. Patients with schizophrenia are not likely to share their suicidal intentions with others, making life-saving interventions more difficult. The risk of depression needs special mention due to the high rate of suicide in these patients. The most significant risk of suicide in schizophrenia is among males under 30 who have some symptoms of depression and a relatively recent hospital discharge. Other risks include imagined voices directing the patient toward self-harm (auditory command hallucinations) and intense false beliefs (delusions). The relationship of schizophrenia to substance abuse is significant. Due to impairments in insight and judgment, people with schizophrenia may be less able to judge and control the temptations and resulting difficulties associated with drug or alcohol abuse. In addition, it is not uncommon for people suffering from this disorder to try to "self-medicate" their otherwise debilitating symptoms with mind-altering drugs. The abuse of such substances, most commonly nicotine, alcohol, cocaine and marijuana, impedes treatment and recovery. Do you have schizophrenia? Take the test The Onset of Schizophrenia The onset of schizophrenia in most people is a gradual deterioration that occurs in early adulthood -- usually in a person's early 20s. Loved ones and friends may spot early warning signs long before the primary symptoms of schizophrenia occur. During this initial pre-onset phase, a person may seem without goals in their life, becoming increasingly eccentric and unmotivated. They may isolate themselves and remove themselves from family situations and friends. They may stop engaging in other activities that they also used to enjoy, such as hobbies or volunteering. Warning signs that may indicate someone is heading toward an episode of schizophrenia include: •Social isolation and withdrawal •Irrational, bizarre or odd statements or beliefs •Increased paranoia or questioning others' motivations •Becoming more emotionless •Hostility or suspiciousness •Increasing reliance on drugs or alcohol (in an attempt to self-medicate) •Lack of motivation •Speaking in a strange manner unlike themselves •Inappropriate laughter •Insomnia or oversleeping •Deterioration in their personal appearance and hygiene While there is no guarantee that one or more of these symptoms will lead to schizophrenia, a number of them occurring together should be cause for concern, especially if it appears that the individual is getting worse over time. This is the ideal time to act to help the person (even if it turns out not to be schizophrenia).

The ‘Tooth’ About Pelagornithids

Seabirds are interesting animals. This rather loosely defined group (every definition always throws up some exceptions) contains some of the most familiar species of birds such as the chip-stealing seagulls or the tuxedoed gentlemen of the sea, the penguins. Yet there are some seabird groups that are not well known by the majority of people. One such group is the pelagornithids and this is a situation I feel needs rectified. This strange and enigmatic bird group lived for over 50 million years (Bourdon, 2011), achieving a global distribution and only disappearing from the skies around 2.5 million years ago. But what exactly is it about the pelagornithids that makes them so enigmatic? Read on and you will find out… There are several factors why the pelagornithids are considered enigmatic. The first one is to do with their anatomy and is perhaps best shown using a picture. Look at the below reconstruction of a pelagornithid by the fantastic palaeo-artist Peter Trusler. Now, bearing in mind what you know about modern birds, what is strange about this picture? What does this bird have that we wouldn’t necessarily associate with the birds we see today? Figure it out yet? If you said “teeth” then award yourself one science and move to the top of the class! This is a bird, but with teeth. How strange is that? One of the more commonly used names for the group is the bony-toothed birds. To confuse matters more, these are not true teeth. Rather than being situated in alveoli and possessing a root, crown, enamel and dentine, pelagornithid ‘teeth’ are actually hollow bony outgrowths of the jaws (Mayr, 2011). It is believed that pelagornithids used these structures to trap their prey (squid, soft skinned fish) within their beak after they had taken it from the water, possibly as they skimmed the sea surface. The second factor in the enigmatic nature of the pelagornithids is a taxonomic one. Despite being known to science for over 150 years (the first pelagornithid material was found in France in 1857 (Lartet, 1857)), nobody still has any real clue to which group the pelagornithids are most closely related to. Various analyses has seen them allied with the Pelecaniformes (pelicans and relatives) (most studies in late 19th and early 20th centuries), the Procellariiformes (albatrosses, petrels and relatives) (Harrison and Walker, 1976) and the Anseriformes (ducks and relatives) (Bourdon, 2005). They have even been placed in their own order, the Odontopterygiformes (Howard, 1957); such is their stubbornness to ally with one particular group. Finally, the most recent phylogenetic analysis has found that pelagornithids may have even been outside of Neoaves (the group that every living bird species belongs to) altogether! The title of one paper sums them up very well: Cenozoic mystery birds (Mayr, 2011)! The third reason why pelagornithids are just that little bit special is their size. The largest flying bird alive today in terms of wingspan is the wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans), which has a wingspan of up to 3.5 m. A well preserved pelagornithid skeleton from the late Miocene of Chile, was found to have a skeletal wingspan alone that spanned 4.5 m. Once you add the large primary feathers to that skeleton you end up with a flying bird that had a wingspan of between 5.5 – 6 m. That is one seriously big bird! These animals were the biggest things in the skies since the pterosaurs went extinct some 66 million years ago. Perhaps the next time a seagull steals one of your chips when you’re at the beach, you should be grateful that it wasn’t one of these guys, who may have been more likely to take your whole hand off!

What Happens to Google Maps When Tectonic Plates Move?

George Musser A couple of weeks ago, I was writing up a description of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, and I thought I’d compare the warping of spacetime to the motion of Earth’s tectonic plates. Nothing on Earth’s surface has fixed coordinates, because the surface is ever-shifting. Same goes for spacetime. But then it struck me: if nothing has fixed coordinates, then how do Google Maps, car nav systems, and all the other mapping services get you where you’re going? Presumably they must keep updating the coordinates of places, but how? I figured I’d Google the answer quickly and get back to Einstein, yet a search turned up remarkably little on the subject. So, as happens distressingly often in my life, what I thought would take 30 seconds ended up consuming a couple of days. I discovered a sizable infrastructure of geographers, geologists, and geodesists dedicated to ensuring that maps are accurate. But they are always a step behind the restless landscape. Geologic activity can create significant errors in the maps on your screens. One of the people I talked to is Ken Hudnut of the U.S. Geological Survey, an earthquake researcher (and blogger) who set up one of the first GPS networks to track plate motions. “Say that you’re standing right in the middle of a road intersection with your GPS receiver and you get the coordinates for your position,” he says. “You look at Google Earth, and instead of being located right at the middle of the road intersection, you’re off by some amount.” Several factors produce these errors. Consumer GPS units have a position uncertainty of several meters or more (represented by a circle in Google Maps). Less well known is that maps and satellite images are typically misaligned by a comparable amount. “It’s partly the GPS hardware that limits the accuracy, and part of it may also be the quality of the georeferencing,” Hudnut says. An interesting, if dated, study from 2008 looked at Google Earth images in 31 cities in the developed world and found position errors ranging from 1 to 50 meters. It’s not hard do to your own experiments. The image at left shows my position in Google Maps while I was standing on my back deck—a discrepancy of about 10 meters, much larger than the stated error circle. When I go to Google Earth and compare images taken on different dates, I find that my house jumps around by as much as 20 meters. In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t much, but does make you wary of high zoom levels. Hudnut says he sees map bloopers in his field work all the time. As technology progresses, so will we all. “We’re fast approaching the day when people will expect accuracies of centimeters in real time out of their handheld devices and then we’ll see a lot of head scratching as things no longer line up,” says Dru Smith of the National Geodetic Survey in Silver Spring, Md., the nation’s civilian chief geodesist—the go-to guy for the precise shape and size of our planet. For the most part, misalignments don’t represent real geologic changes, but occur because it’s tricky to plop an aerial or orbital image onto the latitude and longitude grid. The image has to be aligned with reference points established on the ground. For this purpose, NGS maintains a network of fixed GPS stations and, over the past two centuries, has sprinkled the land with survey marks—typically, metallic disks mounted on exposed bedrock, concrete piers, and other fixed structures. The photo at left shows one near my house. But the process of ground-truthing a map is never perfect. Moreover, the survey-mark coordinates can be imprecise or downright wrong. NGS and other agencies recheck survey marks only very infrequently, so what a stroke of luck that a whole new community of hobbyists—geocachers—does so for fun. “One of the many things we no longer have money to do is send out people to make sure those marks are still there,” Smith says. “Geocachers, through this creation of a new recreation of going out and finding these marks, are sending in tons of reports.… It’s been helpful to us to keep the mark recoveries up to date.” Errors also sneak in because the latitude and longitude grid (or “datum”) is not god-given, but has to be pegged to a model of the planet’s shape. This is where plate tectonics can make itself felt. Confusingly, the U.S. uses two separate datums. Most maps are based on NAD 83, developed by NGS. Google Maps and GPS rely instead on WGS 84, maintained by a parallel military agency, which, thanks to Edward Snowden, we now know has a considerably larger budget. The civilian one is optimized for surveying within North America; the military one sacrifices domestic precision for global coverage. When NGS introduced NAD 83, replacing an older datum that dated to 1927, it was the geographic version of the shift from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. If you’d been paying attention, you would have woken up on December 6, 1988, to find that your house wasn’t at the same latitude and longitude anymore. The shift, as large as 100 meters, reflected a more accurate model of Earth’s shape. Vestiges of the old datum linger. You still see maps based on NAD 27. Also, when the U.S. Navy developed the first satellite navigation system in the 1960s, engineers set the location of 0 degrees longitude by extrapolating the old North American datum. Only later did they discover they had drawn the meridian about 100 meters east of the historic Prime Meridian marker at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. (Graham Dolan tells the whole, convoluted story on his website, the definitive reference on the meridian.) NGS and its military opposite number worked together to align their respective datums, but the two systems have drifted apart since then, creating a mismatch between maps and GPS coordinates. Plate tectonics is one reason. WGS 84 is a global standard tied to no one plate. In essence, it is fixed to Earth’s deep interior. Geodesists seeking to disentangle latitude and longitude from the movements of any one particular plate assume that tectonic plates are like interlocking gears—when one moves, all do—and that, if you add up all their rotational rates, they should sum to zero. The effect of not tying coordinates to one plate is that surveyed positions, and the maps built upon them, change over time. In contrast, NAD 83 sits atop the North American plate like a fishnet laid out on the deck of a boat. As the plate moves, so does the datum. Other regions of the world likewise have their own local datums. That way, drivers can find their way and surveyors can draw their property lines in blissful ignorance of large-scale tectonic and polar motion. “Most surveyors and mapmakers would be happy to live in a world where the plates don’t move,” Smith explains. “We can’t fix that, but we can fix the datum so that the effect is not felt by the predominant number of users.… Generally speaking, a point in Kansas with a certain latitude and longitude this year had that exact same latitude and longitude 10 years ago or 10 years from now.… We try to make the planet non-dynamic.” To deepen the datum discrepancy, NAD 83 has not been revamped to account for improved knowledge of Earth’s shape and size. “We are currently working with a system that is very self-consistent and very internally precise, but we know, for example, that the (0,0,0) coordinate of NAD 83, which should be the center of the Earth, is off by about two meters,” Smith says. NGS plans an update in 2022, which will shift points on the continent by a meter or more (as shown in the figure at top of this post). The tradeoff for keeping surveyors happy is that the North American latitude and longitude grid is increasingly out of sync with the rest of the world (as shown in the diagram at left, in which you can see how the North American plate is rotating about a point in the Yucatán). The “rest of the world” includes Southern California, which straddles the North American and Pacific plates. The Pacific plate creeps a couple of inches toward the northwest every year relative to the rest of North America. The plate boundary is not sharp, so the actual amount of movement varies in a complicated way. The California Spatial Reference Center in La Jolla has a network of tracking stations and periodically updates the coordinates of reference points in the state. “That’s what the surveyors then use to tie themselves into NAD 83,” says the center’s director, Yehuda Bock. The last update was in 2011 and another is planned for next year. Like Smith, Bock says that more frequent updating would actually complicate matters: “Surveyors do not like it if coordinates change, so this is kind of a compromise.” For localized line-drawing, it doesn’t much matter, but large-scale projects such as the California high-speed rail system have to keep up with tectonic motion. Things obviously get more interesting during earthquakes. “What the earthquake would do is the equivalent of what you do with a pair of scissors, if you cut diagonally across a map along a fault line and then slid one side of the map with respect to the other,” Hudnut says. For instance, in Google Earth, go to the following coordinates north of Palm Springs, near the epicenter of the 1992 Landers quake: 34.189838 degrees, –116.433842 degrees. Bring up the historical imagery, compare the July 1989 and May 1994 images, and you’ll see a lateral shift along the fault that runs from the top left to the bottom right of the frame. The alignment of Aberdeen Road, which crosses the fault, shifts noticeably. The quake displaced the land near the fault by several meters. GPS networks can even see earthquakes in real time. Here’s a dramatic video of the 2011 Tohoko quake, made by Ronni Grapenthin at U.C. Berkeley based on data from the Japanese Geospatial Information Authority. The coastline near the quake site moved horizontally by as much as 4 meters. The video also shows the waves that rippled outward over Japan (and indeed the world). Adjustments for tectonic activity take time to filter down to maps. I spoke with Kari Craun, who, as director of the USGS National Geospatial Technical Operations Center near St. Louis., is in charge of producing the USGS topographic maps beloved of outdoors enthusiasts. She says the maps are updated every three years (and even that pace has been hard to maintain with budget cuts). In between, mapmakers figure, the error is swamped by the imprecision of mapping and GPS equipment. Future maps may be updated at a rate closer to real-time. “We have the technology now with GPS to be able to make those slight adjustments on a more frequent basis,” Craun says. As someone who relies on Google Maps to get around, I look forward to that. But the romantic in me prefers seeing out-of-date maps. They never let us forget the dynamism of our planet. Diagrams courtesy of Michael Dennis of the National Geodetic Survey; screenshot and photo by George Musser

5 Questions To NEVER Ask Yourself

Life causes us to question ourselves, but not all thoughts that come to mind are beneficial for us. In fact, many can be harmful and misleading. Here are five of those undesirable questions that if you find yourself asking, you'd be wise to rephrase or reroute them. Subtle differences in phrasing can make a big impact in your mind. 1. Why Am I Here? Whether you got to this moment by a failed marriage, back surgery, a lottery ticket, or by bus, it doesn't matter for purposes moving forward. If you don't like your situation, the only way out is found in solutions for the present moment, and "why am I here?" moves your mindset backwards, away from solutions. There's a better question that puts your focus in the present moment. Better Question: Where do I go from here? Quote: "You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight." - Jim Rohn 2. Why Me? This question sums up the victim's mindset. The main reason you don't want to be a victim is because victims only have things happen TO them. They can't take charge and control the situation, because their focus is not on what they can do, but on what happens to them. Would the opposite of this question give the opposite mindset of a victim? Yes, ask yourself the opposite... Better Question: Why not me? (This is the possibility question!) Quote: “To the dumb question, 'Why me?' the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, 'Why not?'” - Christopher Hitchens 3. How Do I Lose Weight? It doesn't look bad, but it is secretly horrible. Asking this question frames the problem (being overweight) for a temporary solution. Unless you're trying to make weight for your wrestling match, I doubt you want to lose weight and put it back on a month later. To explain why, here is the better question to tackle weight loss. Better Question: Who do I need to be to weigh less? This alternative question has an identity shift built into it as part of the solution, and these are the solutions that stick. Weight, after baseline genetic attributes, is a result of lifestyle, which stems from your identity. If you try to change with forced mechanical actions - like the answers to the question "how do I lose weight?" will lead you to do (exercise, eat vegetables, control portion size, etc) - your willpower will run out eventually. "Who do I need to be?" changes the goal to an internal shift of values and habits that will automagically take you to a lower weight. It's sustainable because you'll have changed at the core level instead of forcing yourself to live against your established nature. To start the process of changing your identity, compare the benefits of a new identity to your current one. How would it be better? How would it be worse? Which do you like better overall? "How do I lose weight?" makes you want the results, and "who do I need to be..." makes you want the change. When you want the change, you'll get the results. When you only want the results, you'll often end up with nothing. Quote: "You must begin to think of yourself as becoming the person you want to be." - David Viscott 4. Why Won't Anyone Talk To Me? Why won't you talk to anyone else? If you want to talk to someone, it isn't their responsibility to talk to you, but yours to talk to them. Every single conversation you have is either initiated by you or by someone else. If you never initiate conversation, it gives people the impression that you don't want conversation. A better, more productive question to ask yourself when you're lonely is... Better Question: Why don't I go introduce myself to that person? Quote: "There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met." - William Butler Yeats Bonus Quote: “Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends.” - Shirley MacLaine 5. When Will I Finally Succeed? To ask this question shows that you're after the end result without caring about how you arrive at it. The "overnight success stories" you hear about are preceded by years of progress that you don’t hear about. Focus on becoming the type of person who would succeed. Focus on progress and you should find success eventually. But instead of thinking about success, here’s a better question... Better Question: What small steps could I take today to move forward? Quote: "If you focus on results, you will never change. If you focus on change, you will get results." - Jack Dixon If you want to know why getting motivated doesn't work, read my Ultimate Guide For Taking Action When You Don’t Feel Like It. And if you want to learn how habits, focusing, and small steps all relate and can change your life, you would enjoy subscribing to Deep Existence. I write an insightful newsletter each Tuesday and give new subscribers a set of 40 focus wallpapers and my well-liked eBook, Stress Management Redefined. If you’re interested, sign up here. We’d love to have you!

How To Think Like A 21st Century Entrepreneur. Tips For Success And Getting Ahead In The Information Age.

Do you ever stop to wonder how rich people made their money? Are they smarter than you? Did they just work harder or smarter? Or did they have a lucky break or some sort of advantage that let them reach their goals easily. Worrying about all these questions is not a good thing to do if you want to create your own business. Instead of worrying about what you can't change, it's much better to start thinking like a 21st century entrepreneur. They're much like entrepreneurs and businessmen from other time periods, but being in the early stages of the Information Age, quite a few differences also exist. Tips to Succeed in Business (and Life) Here's a collection of sage advice that will help you think like a modern entrepreneur. Following these tips and recommendations can give you an edge when competing against others in the business world. ● Seize the Day - As Saul Bellow wrote, it's important to seize the day. This includes being able to see opportunities and also have the foresight to act on them when they're noticed. This is not easy in the modern world that moves so quickly, but it's a good way to increase your chance of success in business and life in general. ● The Three Keys - If you want to succeed professionally in the 21st century, it all comes down to three basic things that you need; talent, persistence, and luck. While the first two are up to you, the last - getting a lucky break - may never happen. That is, unless you can do something to increase the odds you'll get lucky. This is the spirit of the modern entrepreneur. ● All About Balance - Learning moderation in all aspects of your life can go a long way in helping you have the right mindset to get ahead in the business world. This isn't always easy to do - especially with all the stress that comes with being a business leader - but with practice you can learn to balance work, play, rest and other aspects of your life.

● Ideas are Good, Results are Better - Thinking up ideas is not all that difficult for most people given enough time. On the other hand, actually taking those ideas and doing something with them is another matter entirely. The 21st century entrepreneur not only comes up with killer ideas, they act on them and take the lead no matter what industry they're in. ● Learn to Multitask - Being able to handle doing more than one thing at the same time is almost a necessity in the modern business world. The sooner you can learn to efficiently multitask, the sooner you'll begin to reach your goals and even surpass them. That or learn how to outsource easy tasks. ● Be the Change You Want to See - No one likes a whiner. Not even most mothers. Instead of complaining about something being wrong or corrupt and doing nothing, log-off of Facebook and Twitter and get to work changing the world for the better. This is what separates the leaders from the followers, the good from the great. ● Always be Learning - Technology moves so fast these days that it can be tough to stay up to date. This is essential for the 21st century entrepreneur who wants to achieve their goals, however. Taking time each week to stay well read in your industry can help your career considerably in a lot of different ways. If you can learn something new every day or every week, you're going to excel. Life of the 21st Century Entrepreneur The life of a 21st century entrepreneur may look boring and tedious to some, but this couldn't be further from the truth. Running your own business and becoming a leader is very exciting on many different levels. From the money that's made to the feelings of accomplishment as milestones are reached, the life of a modern entrepreneur is one that's very fulfilling. Having said that, not everyone is cut out for the life of an entrepreneur. But if you work hard and take the advice above to heart, there's a good chance you can succeed. The Internet has been tremendously helpful with leveling the playing field for people just starting out. Some would say there's never been a better time to start a business, especially one that involves the Internet and mobile devices.

Deliver Your Speech Like A Pro By Using These 12 Ways to Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking

Why is it that so many people are scared witless of speaking in public? Surveys show that some of us are more afraid of public speaking than we are of death! Too many of us have the idea that public speaking is a talent that you’re born with—or aren’t. In truth, great speakers are made, not born and anyone can learn to deliver a speech like a pro. Whether it’s speaking at a town hall meeting or making a presentation at work, most of us will have the need to step up to the podium at some time. Why not learn how to deliver an effective speech right now? Here are some hints for overcoming your fears and mastering the art of speaking in public. Admit you’re scared. The main underlying reason for the phobia about public speaking is fear of the unknown. You don’t know what’s going to happen when you get up there on the podium and open your mouth. Will you forget your speech? Will you lose your voice? Will people laugh at you? When you look at these fears rationally, they don’t make much sense. None of these are very likely, are they? Identifying your fear will help you to conquer it. Face your fears. When your fears are amorphous, free-floating things like ghosts, it’s easy to be afraid of them. Look carefully at each of your fears and face them, one at a time. Pretty soon, you’ll be so comfortable with those former fears that you’ll see how unimportant they really are. Vow to take on those fears and triumph over them. Sometimes you have to be willing to take the plunge and just do it! Stop sabotaging yourself. If you keep telling yourself that you can’t speak in public and will never be an effective speaker, then you won’t be one. Not because there’s any physical or organic reason you can’t do it, but because you’ve convinced yourself that you can’t. How do you even know if you’re terrible at something you’ve never tried? Instead, tell yourself that with a bit of work, you can be a good public speaker. Repeat his mantra over and over. Then get to work! Take a public speaking course. Anything is scary when you have no idea what you’re doing! Nothing can raise your confidence and allay your fears like taking a course in public speaking. Some companies make these a requirement for rising execs, but just about any of us can benefit from mastering the ins and outs of speaking before a crowd. You never know when you’ll want to protest your city’s trash collecting policies or help a friend run for local office. We are making progress but now it’s time to make a plan and overcome your fear so you can deliver a compelling speech to your audience. Keep reading for some easy ways to put your fears to rest. Have a plan. You can start out by writing your speech on a piece of notebook paper and scribble changes in the margins, but before you actually deliver it, make a formal presentation. Start entering your text into a document with title, bullet points and subheds. Organize your information. Move topics around until you find the best order. The more coherent and organized your speech is, the easier it will be to deliver. Be prepared. Are you afraid of forgetting your lines? Rehearse until you have them down pat, and put your speech on cards or a tablet so that you can consult your notes if you need to. Worried about not having your props? Pack them in your bag ahead of time. If you’re lying in bed worrying about what could go wrong, isolate each possibility and ask yourself what you can do to prevent the problem. If you have to get out of bed and do something to help you be more prepared, then do it—provided you go back to bed and get a good night’s sleep! Act confident, even if you don’t feel that way. Remind yourself that the audience doesn’t know how scared you are. While you may be thinking that everyone can see that your stomach is in knots and you feel like throwing up, they can’t see what’s going on inside your head (or your stomach). Fake it til you make it! Stand up straight, pull your shoulders back and put on a great big smile. Looking and acting confident can inspire trust in your audience—and distract them from the fact that your knees are knocking together. Practice, practice, practice. Set up your laptop or smartphone to make a video of your speech rehearsals. Look at the results with an open mind and see how you can improve your presentation. Don’t be too hard on yourself, but do note the things you can improve upon. Practice makes perfect, and this is the surest way to look at yourself from the outside and perfect your speech before giving it. If you have trouble pronouncing some words, maybe you should change them, or practice saying them until you get them right. The more often you deliver your speech, the better you will get at making your words flow effortlessly. For your very first speech, you may need to do this 20 or 30 times before you have it down, but the time spent will pay off in the long run. Every successive speech will be easier and require less prep time. Record your performances. Use that same phone or laptop to record every speech you deliver. Compare how the actual performance compares to your rehearsals. Strive to make every speech better than the last. Breathe deeply and relax. Practice a few breathing exercises to help you relax before going onstage. The calmer and more relaxed you feel, the more you can concentrate on delivering your speech. Don’t get rattled. If you do forget a point or make a mistake, just take a deep breath and keep moving ahead. No one expects you to be perfect, so why expect it of yourself? We know from watching last year’s presidential debates that practically every candidate made a gaffe or two at some time. If the people who want to run this country can’t get everything right all the time, it’s not very realistic to expect perfection from the rest of us! Don’t take it too seriously. Reward yourself for a job well done. After you’ve successfully delivered your speech, give yourself a pat on the back. Congratulate yourself for overcoming your fears. You’ve achieved a milestone, and any speech you give in the future will be much easier!

11 Simple Ways to Fall in Love With Yourself

Whenever we think of falling in love we always imagine another person involved. It even feels awkward to utter the phrase “I’m starting to fall in love with myself”. Try it on for size and I bet it’ll feel like shirt that’s too small, something about it just doesn’t feel right. We’ve all reached the point of needing to love ourselves more. Maybe the thought arose after you’ve been taking care of another person for too long, or maybe you’re just burnt out and need to pour some energy back into yourself. You’re feeling drained, wiped, out of touch and something just feels a little off. Sometimes a little love is all you need. A dash of that feeling has the potential to take on a life of its own. You’ve felt love, usually for another. This time we’re going to flip the script and direct this awesome force back to the one who deserves it the most, you. You Already Know How to Love Yourself, You’ve Just Forgotten If you don’t love the place you’re at or the person you’ve become, it’s not your fault. The act of loving is a simple process you can reignite and start again. The beauty is once you ignite the spark of love in your life, it can start a fire that can be hard to turn off. Even a torrential downpour will have a hard time turning off your love. Once you learn the art of filling yourself up, you’ll no longer have to seek out others to turn on that feeling in you. You won’t feel like you have to chase love, or there’s ever a lack of it in your life. To use a beautiful illustration. Pretend you’re a bucket and you’re trying to fill someone else up. You try and try but at the end of the day you’re still empty. You want to learn how to create your own faucet. That way you can fill yourself up whenever you're in need and even give a little extra to a loved one, friend, or stranger. It’s time to unveil the art of loving. 1. Take a breath. Taking a deep breath is one of the simplest luxuries we can give ourselves. When we breathe deeply we activate the relaxation response within our bodies, which turns on our recovery mechanisms. When the body is relaxing it puts our mind at ease. Face it, no one like to be a bundled up ball of stress. Stress produces cortisol, which is incredibly bad for your body, and acts as a cancer causing agent. Definitely not the product of someone loving themselves. So, take a deep breath and let it out slow. Focus on the moment and give your body and mind a treat. 2. Give yourself a hug. When giving a hug, your body releases the feel-good chemical oxytocin. Oxytocin is also known as the love chemical. Imagine you’re about to hug someone you have the deepest love for. Maybe it’s a long lost love, or a family member you haven’t seen in a while. Imagine the powerful force of this hug and how you would feel the moment before impact. Channel this feeling into yourself. Wrap your arms around yourself as you would them. Imagine them giving you love back. Really take some time to feel it deeply. The more real you make it the more its power will stick with you. Eventually, the love you’re pretending to exchange with another should be the same level of love you feel for yourself. 3. Give yourself a compliment. What’s something you truly love about yourself? It could be your drive or ambition, or your friendliness and openness. It could even be your luscious curly hair. The only catch is you have to mean it. Really feel the love shower upon you as you give yourself this compliment. It might feel strange to verbally give yourself a compliment, but it’s important. You must push through the discomfort and really take the compliment. What emotions does it trigger? Does it make you laugh, smile or feel funny? Let the feeling rush over you. Take the compliment, there’s many more to come. 4. Turn off your phone, unplug. The immense amount of time we spend with our devices can actually leave us feeling worse about ourselves. The constant stream of false positiveness streaming down your Facebook wall can leave you feeling drained and awful. The world can fill us up with life, if we let it. When we’re wrapped up in virtual worlds, we allow the subtle beauty that’s unfolding around us to pass us by. The smile of a stranger, the wag of a dogs tail, a leaf slowly twirling to the ground. We miss everything. When we’re actually aware of the world around us we can gain new insights about ourselves and the nature of how things unfold. Take some time and be a part of it. Take a breath and try being present. Sending that text can wait. 5. Go for a walk. A healthy body is one that’s treated with love and respect. Walking gives us time to process the world around us. The act of walking gives you time to breathe and contemplate your future. Some of the greatest minds of our world were avid workers, Albert Einstein and Henry David Thoreau, just to name a few. How would you like to join the class of these fine men? Walking can even be taken up as a form of meditation. Focusing on each step fully draws you into the moment. Try and cultivate your gratitude for the ability to take a slow stroll. Your worries melt away and you begin to uncover the self love you’ve always had. 6. Smile. In changing your body physiology you actually bring more happiness into your life. When you smile imagine the force of your smile bringing a warmth throughout your entire body. Let your smile fill with gratitude and joy for every aspect of yourself. Imagine you were smiling at the love of your life, take this passion and throw it into your upward grin. Now unleash the force of your smile onto yourself. 7. Write down a big dream of yours and take a step towards it, now. Take out a sheet of paper and title it “My Biggest Dreams”, and dream away. Let the pen run and see where it takes you. Hold an attitude of openness, and don’t judge anything that comes out. Once you’ve spilled your guts onto the page, relax for a moment and let it simmer. See what jumps out at you the most. Something you’ve written will ring true and make you emotional. This is where you want to stake your claim. Once you’ve found the hidden gem, take one step towards making it real. The momentum will bring you to life. 8. Treat Yourself Often we spoil others with our gifts, even if it just happens to be our attention. This time do something to spoil yourself. It could be a going out to a meal you love, or visiting a place you love to go. Think of it like taking yourself on a date. We all know you deserve it. 9. Write down five things you love about yourself. This is an extension of giving yourself a compliment. If you’ve passed #3 with flying colors then you’re ready for this step. Your goal here is to find more things you love about yourself and write them down. Don’t do this half assed. You must truly mean each thing you write down about yourself. 10. Look in the mirror and say, “I love myself”. This is taking loving yourself to the next level. Open your eyes and gaze deeply into one of your eyes (it’s impossible to do both at once), and feel the love coming from within. Imagine you were uttering this phrase to someone you love deeply. Say it out loud as many times as possible. Engage with it fully. The more intensely you feel it, the more love it will bring back to you. 11. Send a note of gratitude to someone you love. When you share your love it always finds a way to come back to you. Sometimes giving away your love makes it come back tenfold. Think of someone you care deeply about and tell them. Tell them what you love about them, the little things they do that you appreciate and make your day. Now you have a plethora of ways to open up your heart to yourself. Begin now, and start small. Soon you’ll be overflowing with abundance and love. Now that you are on the path to falling in love with yourself make sure you take some time to find out how to accept your destiny and build the ultimate form of confidence.

Hi guys, I just wanted to share this inspirational post I stumbled upon with you MOTIVATIONAL TALK Ou Dieu vous a seme, il faut savoir fleurir YOU MUST KNOW HOW TO FLOWER WHERE GOD HAS SOWN YOU IF YOU DON'T GET WHAT YOU LIKE THEN YOU MUST LEARN TO LIKE WHAT YOU GET MOTIVATIONAL PEP TALK By VIKRAM KARVE YOU MUST KNOW HOW TO FLOWER WHERE GOD HAS SOWN YOU Long back I learnt a trick from an eminent trainer on how to get the audience to focus. I too use this technique on a few occasions when I want my audience to settle down to receptive vibes. The moment you take the stage, you tell the audience to close their eyes for one minute and think of the one person who they consider as their most important mentor. A few days ago, one of my brilliant ex-students, who attended a motivational lecture in her new organization and was subjected to the same exercise, rang me up and told me that it was my face that came to her mind as a mentor. Then she talked about her work, that she was not very happy with her new workplace which apparently did not measure up to her high expectations. I feel privileged that my ex-student considers me a mentor and I write this “pep talk” especially for her and all my dear mentees, protégées and protégés . Ou Dieu vous a seme, il faut savoir fleurir YOU MUST KNOW HOW TO FLOWER WHERE GOD HAS SOWN YOU Every person, sooner or later, goes through a moment when it seems that he or she is on the wrong road, that his entire way of life is wrong. Have you ever experienced this feeling...? Think about it. Do you find yourself stuck in an incongruous career or in an incompatible relationship or in a redundant place...? And sadly there is nothing you can do about it, owing to compulsions and constraints beyond your control. You cannot turn around and retrace your steps or change your road of life. It seems you have crossed the point of no return and you have no choice but to keep on travelling on the “wrong” road of life. Failure follows failure ... and with repeated failure comes the fear of failure. It is indeed a terrible vicious cycle which gradually overwhelms you with the chill of despondency. What can you do in such a situation...? Maybe the answer lies in a saying I read somewhere a few years ago and noted in my diary: “ Ou Dieu vous a seme, il faut savoir fleurir ” which roughly translated means “You must know how to flower where God has sown you” or “wherever God plants you, there you must learn how to bloom” How does one learn to flower where God has sown you, bloom wherever God plants you...? One may turn to the Enchiridion of Epictetus for guidance. Epictetus (A.D.55 – A.D. 135), the great Stoic Philosopher, states that happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not in our control. This is the basic Stoic truth of subjective consciousness and it is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what is in your power from what is not in your power, and know what you can control and what you cannot control, that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible. On analytical reflection we find that the mind alone can be brought under our control. Everything else, the world of events and people’s behaviour, is beyond the scope of our control. What disturbs you are not events but your attitude towards them Don’t demand or except that events happened as you would wish them to. Accept events as they actually happen. And you will be at peace with yourself.

Except for extreme physical abuse, other people cannot hurt you unless you allow them to. Don’t consent to be hurt and you won’t be hurt You must learn to approach life as a banquet and not as a buffet. Think of your life as if it were a banquet where you would behave graciously: When a dish is passed to you, extend your hand and help yourself to a moderate portion If a dish should pass you by, enjoy what is already on your plate Or if a dish has not been passed to you yet, then patiently wait for your turn Carry on the same attitude of polite restrain and gratitude to your children, spouse, colleagues, friends, career and money. There is no need to yearn, envy and grab. You will get your rightful share when it is your time. It then becomes our paramount duty to control the mind and practice total unconcern to externals. When something happens, the only thing in your power is your attitude toward it ... you can either accept it or resent it. To accept an event is to rise above it, to resent an event is to be overpowered by it. With acceptance comes happiness, with resentment comes misery. Acceptance of an event is not to be mistaken for a life of passivity or submission to fatalism characterized by laziness and a sense of helplessness. “Simply doing nothing does not avoid risk, but heightens it.” Epictetus exhorts us, therefore, to brave the storms of life with planned action born of clear thinking. He recognizes, too, the practical necessity of working for worldly gains, but cautions us only against the false belief that happiness depends on the results such endeavours. Being an integral part of social structure, you cannot live in isolation; social interaction is inescapable. In your relationship with others at home, at work or in society, no matter how people behave, you have to maintain inner tranquility, with unwavering attention on achieving your own merit and excellence. People act under their own inner compulsions over which you can exercise no control. Epictetus advises: “Focus not on what he or she does, but on keeping to your higher purpose” He assures that if you truly live in tune with your will and resolve, and in harmony with your inner self, nobody’s words or actions (barring extreme cases) can disturb your mental equipoise. Duty of any kind is not to be slighted. A person should not be judged by the nature of his duties, but by the manner in which he performs his duties. In his discourse on Karma Yoga Swami Vivekananda says: “A shoemaker who can turn out a strong, nice pair of shoes in the shortest possible time is a better man, according to his profession and his work, than a professor who talks nonsense every day of his life”. Remember, FATIGUE LIES IN HALFHEARTEDNESS If we do with sincerety, with full zest and enthusiasm, the duty which is in our hands now, we make ourselves happy. The key is to work with freedom and love and without too much expectation. Try to accomplish something wherever you are and do not compare with others. Undue hankering after rewards will render you akin to a slave of your expectations; you must work for your own internal satisfaction – work like a master and not as a slave. This glorious attitude to life and knowledge of your self makes you free in a world of dependencies and enables you to flower where God has sown you, and to bloom wherever God plants you. " Ou Dieu vous a seme, il faut savoir fleurir " Wherever God plants you, there you must learn how to bloom. You must know how to flower where God has sown you. Wish you GODSPEED in all your endeavors.

The Universe Is 13.82 Billion Years Old

The Universe is a wee bit older than we thought. Not only that, but turns out the ingredients are a little bit different, too. And not only that, but the way they’re mixed isn’t quite what we expected, either. And not only that, but there are hints and whispers of something much grander going on as well.

So what’s going on?

The European Space Agency’s Planck mission is what’s going on. Planck has been scanning the entire sky, over and over, peering at the radio and microwaves pouring out of the Universe. Some of this light comes from stars, some from cold clumps of dust, some from exploding stars and galaxies. But a portion of it comes from farther away…much farther away. Billions of light years, in fact, all the way from the edge of the observable Universe.

This light was first emitted when the Universe was very young, about 380,000 years old. It was blindingly bright, but in its eons-long travel to us has dimmed and reddened. Fighting the expansion of the Universe itself, the light has had its wavelength stretched out until it gets to us in the form of microwaves. Planck gathered that light for over 15 months, using instruments far more sensitive than ever before.

Drawing of the Planck spacecraft.
Image credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech

The light from the early Universe shows it’s not smooth. If you crank the contrast way up you see slightly brighter and slightly dimmer spots. These correspond to changes in temperature of the Universe on a scale of 1 part in 100,000. That’s incredibly small, but has profound implications. We think those fluctuations were imprinted on the Universe when it was only a trillionth of a trillionth of a second old, and they grew with the Universe as it expanded. They were also the seeds of the galaxies and the clusters and galaxies we see today.

What started out as quantum fluctuations when the Universe was smaller than a proton have now grown to be the largest structures in the cosmos, hundreds of millions of light years across. Let that settle in your brain a moment.

And those fluctuations are the key to Planck’s observations. By looking at those small changes in light we can find out a lot about the Universe. Scientists spent years looking at the Planck data, analyzing it. And what they found is pretty amazing:

• The Universe is 13.82 billion years old.
• The Universe is expanding a bit slower than we expected.
• The Universe is 4.9 percent normal matter, 26.8 percent dark matter, and 68.3 percent dark energy.
• The Universe is lopsided. Just a bit, just a hint, but that has profound implications.

What does all this mean? Let’s take a quick look, one at a time, at these results.

The Universe is 13.82 billion years old.

The age of the Universe is a little bit higher than we expected. A few years ago, the WMAP spacecraft looked at the Universe much as Planck has, and for the time got the best determination of the cosmic age: 13.73 +/- 0.12 billion years old.

Planck has found that the Universe is nearly 100 million years older than that: 13.82 billion years.

At first glance you might think this is a really different number. But look again. The uncertainty in the WMAP age is 120 million years. That means the best estimate is 13.73 billion years, but it could easily be 13.85 or 13.61. Anything in that range is essentially indistinguishable in the WMAP data, and 13.73 is just in the middle of that range.

And that range includes 13.82 billion years. It’s at the high end, but that’s not a big deal. It’s completely consistent with the older estimate, but Planck’s measurements are considered to be more accurate. It will become the new benchmark for astronomers.

The Universe is expanding a bit slower than we expected.

The Universe is expanding, and has been ever since the moment it was born. We can measure the speed of this expansion in various ways; for example, looking at distant exploding stars. We can measure how fast they are moving away from us, swept along with the expansion of space, by seeing how much their light is redshifted (I have details about how this works in an earlier post on redshifts and the expansion of the Universe). We can measure their distance, too, using various methods including how bright they appear to be, and with both their speed and distance we can calculate how fast the Universe is expanding.

The farther away you go, the faster the Universe expands, and what Planck found is that the Universe is getting bigger at a rate of 67.3 kilometers per second per megaparsec. A megaparsec is a unit of distance equal to 3.26 million light years (which is convenient to astronomers). That means that if you look at a galaxy one megaparsec away, it appears to be moving away from you at 67.3 km/sec. A galaxy two megaparsecs away would recede at twice that speed, 134.6 km/sec, and so on.

This is called the Hubble constant. Various methods have been used to measure it for the past century, and some of the best found it to be about 74.2 km/s/Mpc. Planck’s measurement is smaller, so the Universe appears to be expanding a little more slowly than we thought, which is why the age is a bit higher than measured before, too.

Part of the reason the number is smaller from Planck is that it’s looking at light that is very old, and came from very far away, so they extrapolate forward in time to see how fast the Universe is growing. Other measurements use light from objects that are closer, and scientists extrapolated backwards.

Since the two numbers are different, this may mean the Hubble constant has changed over time, though that’s way too preliminary to tell. I’ll just note it here as an interesting development. The Hubble constant is notoriously difficult to measure, and I imagine astronomers will be arguing about it for some time yet to come.

The Universe is 4.9 percent normal matter, 26.8 percent dark matter, and 68.3 percent dark energy.

I love this bit. The amount of the fluctuations in the light from the early Universe as well as how they are distributed can be used to figure out what the Universe is made of. The ingredients and amounts of the universal constituents are:

• 4.9 percent normal matter
• 26.8 percent dark matter
• 68.3 percent dark energy

Planck's map of the location of all the matter in the Universe. The strip across the middle is due to bright light from our galaxy which interfered with the much fainter background, and had to be subtracted away. Click to ensaganate.
Image credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech

Normal matter is what we call protons, neutrons, electrons; basically everything you see when you look around. Stars, cashews, dryer lint, and books are all made of normal matter. So are you.

Dark matter is a substance we know exists, but it’s invisible. We see its effects through its gravity, which profoundly alters how galaxies rotate and clusters of galaxies behave. There’s more than five times as much of it as there is normal matter.

Dark energy was only discovered in 1998. It’s very mysterious, but acts like a pressure, increasing the expansion rate of the Universe. We know very little about it other than the fact that it exists, and it’s a bigger component of the universal budget than normal and dark matter combined.

The best estimates for these numbers before Planck were a bit different: 4.6, 24, and 71.4 percent, respectively. That’s neat: there’s less dark energy than we thought, so the Universe is made up a little bit less of that weird stuff, if that makes you feel better. But there’s still a lot of it!

The good news is that having better numbers for all these means astronomers can tune their models a little bit better, and we can understand things a little better. Different models of how the Universe behaves predict different ratios for these ingredients, so getting them focused a bit better means we can see which models work better. We’re learning!

The Universe is lopsided. Just a bit, just a hint, but that has profound implications.

Of all the results announced so far, this may be the most provocative. We expect the Universe to be pretty smooth on large scales. Those early fluctuations should be random, so when you look around at this ancient light, the pattern should be pretty random.

And it is! The distribution of the fluctuations is quite random. It may look to your eye to have patterns, but our brains are miserable at seeing true randomness; we impose order on it. You have to use computers, math, and statistics to measure the distribution to test for true randomness, and the Universe passes the test.

Kindof. The distribution is random, but the amplitudes of the fluctuations are not. Amplitude is how bright they are; like the height of a wave. It’s hard to see by eye, but in the big map made by Planck, the fluctuations are a wee bit brighter than they should be on one side, and a wee bit dimmer on the other. It’s an incredibly small effect, but appears to be real. It was seen in WMAP data and confirmed by Planck.

A simple model of the Universe says that shouldn’t happen. The Universe is lopsided on a vast scale! What can this mean?

A map of the lopsided Universe. This shows the difference between a smooth mathematical fit to the background light of the cosmos versus what is actually seen - these leftover fluctuations are just a hair bigger than we expected, but that makes all the difference in the Universe. Click to anomalate.
Image credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration

Right now, we don’t know, and there are far more ideas for why this would happen than we have data to test for. It could mean dark energy is changing over time, for example. Another idea, and one that is terribly exciting, is that we’re seeing some pattern imprinted on the Universe from before the Big Bang. I know, that sounds crazy, but it’s not completely crazy. My friend and cosmologist Sean Carroll has some detail on this.

We may be seeing something so big in extent it’s happening over scales we literally cannot see. It’s like having a house built on a slight incline. Standing in one room you might not notice it, but measuring the elevation in a room on one side of the house versus one all the way on the other side might show the discrepancy. And even then, it only gives you a taste of how big that hill might be.

We’re seeing that on a cosmic scale. The Universe itself appears to be slightly canted, and we only get a hint of it when we take the measure the entire Universe.

Everything

I am entirely and thoroughly delighted by these new results.

As a scientist, of course, I like it when we get better measurements, more detail, refined numbers. That’s how we test models, and it helps us understand our ideas better.

But I’m human, and a big part of my brain is still reeling from the fact that we can accurately measure the age of the Universe at all. We can figure out what’s in it, even when most of it is something we cannot see. We can determine not only that it’s expanding, but how quickly.

And best of all, we see that the Universe is doing things we still don’t understand. It’s showing us that there is still more out there, things occurring on so vast a canvas that it both crushes utterly our sense of scale and expands ferociously our imagination.

Every day, we get better at learning what the Universe is doing. And the work continues to find out how. It may even lead us to the answer of the ultimate question of all: why?

If that answer exists (if the question even makes sense), and we can understand it, then we are making our first steps toward it right now.

I still hear some people say that science takes the wonder out of life. Those people are utterly and completely wrong.

Science takes us to the wonder.