If you’ve ever felt like you go a little cross-eyed after taking a peek at an optical illusion, then you know they can be a pretty intense phenomenon. What your eyes perceive when looking at one of these images is actually a visual illusion; you see the image as something different than what it is because the different cells and receptors in your eyes distinguish images and colors at dissimilar speeds. The eye can only receive a limited amount of visual stimuli, but as your brain constantly processes the visual information, it gives you the illusion of continuous sight. Whether it’s an optical, physiological or cognitive illusion, the design plays a trick on your eyes (and mind). Check out some of the interesting illusions below—but beware, you may not be able to absorb them all in one sitting. The brown leaf shapes against a green background make this look as if the entire group is flowing—making waves if you focus on the picture as a whole. Photo from Flickr If you stare at this one long enough you’ll notice a fast and pulsing multicolored vortex. Photo from Flickr The blue almond-shaped objects look as if they’re all passing over three separate columns. Photo from Flickr Although this image is comprised of simple purple and green squares outlined in black, it looks like it is bulging out in the center. Photo from Flickr A collection of black, blue, green and white shapes appears to be five different kaleidoscope-type figures—each swirling toward their centers. Photo from Flickr The black and white circular lines make this illusion seem as if there are various depths in the image, creating different entryways and tunnels. Photo courtesy of Paco Calvino If you stare at the center of the image, it looks as if the outer rings are rotating in alternating directions—an effect meant to mesmerize the viewer. Photo courtesy of Todd A. CarpenterFLOWING LEAVES
PULSING VORTEX
WAVES
HYPNOSIS
KALEIDOSCOPES
WORMHOLE
BULL’S-EYE
STARBURSTS
Source : yahoo.com
Do you ever feel dumb around other people? Are you embarrassed when you don’t know the answer to a teacher’s question? Everybody has times when they just feel like they don’t know anything. Of course, you can’t know everything, but no matter how smart you are, you can start to become more intelligent today.here is some Gautamblog tips:Steps:
# Improve your memory. Much of what is generally considered intelligence is simply the ability to remember things well. You can improve your ability to retain and recall memories in a variety of ways, including by using mnemonics and by paying more attention to details.
# Study more effectively. If you find yourself at a loss when your teacher puts you on the spot, or if you perform poorly on exams, you may not be studying enough. Even if you study a lot, improving your study skills can make a big difference. A variety of Gautamblog tips to help you.
# Read a lot. Just about everything that humans know can be found in print, whether in books and magazines or on the internet. Become a voracious reader, and you’ll expose yourself to more ideas and information. If you’re a slow reader, consider learning speed reading. Consider jotting down notes, and perhaps looking up a word or two in the dictionary.
# Visit the library frequently and pick up anything which looks interesting to you. The subject matter is not quite as important as is the act of reading. Always have at hand something good to read.
# Be more curious. How do some people get to know so much? Good memory skills are only part of the answer: you also have to be curious. If you’re satisfied going through life with little or no understanding of things you’re unfamiliar with, you won’t learn much. Make a conscious effort to be more curious by reminding yourself that developing your curiosity will broaden your horizons and help to make you more intelligent.
# Research. Curiosity without initiative is like having a car that’s out of gas — it won’t take you anywhere. Fortunately, when it comes to knowledge you’re never far from a gas station. If you read a word that you don’t know, look it up in the dictionary. If you wonder how airplanes fly, read a book. If you want to know more about politics, pick up a newspaper. With internet access now widespread, there’s less excuse for not finding something out that you want to know.
# Learn how to look things up. If you know how to use references, from an internet search engine to an encyclopedia, you’ll be able to find the information you want more quickly and effectively. Effective researching skills will nourish your curiosity because you’ll become more confident in your ability to access knowledge. If your research skills leave something to be desired, take a class or workshop on how to research, ask a librarian or teacher, or simply practice researching. Or just press the "help" tabs on the internet and computer programs and read.
8. Figure things out on your own. There’s a lot more to intelligence than “book smarts.” We can all learn to perform everyday tasks at work, home, and school better and more intelligently. If you don’t know how to do something, resist the urge to ask somebody else to do it for you or show you how. In most cases, you’ll be able to figure it out on your own, either by trial-and-error or by researching. While it usually takes longer to figure something out than it does to ask about it, you’ll learn more about the overall process, and you’ll remember it better. Most importantly, you’ll exercise your problem-solving skills instead of your “do as you’re told” skills.
9. Ask for help. It’s great to figure things out on your own, but sometimes you don’t have enough time to do so, despite your best efforts. Don’t give up; ask somebody to show you how. Make sure to pay close attention and ask any questions that you have, so that you’ll never have to ask the same thing again.
10. Exercise your mind in different ways. Most of us are good at the things we excel in naturally or the activities we do everyday. Challenge yourself to learn a new skill or to think in a different way, however, and you’ll actually become more intelligent. Choose something you’d like to learn to do (play the accordion, for example) or a subject you don’t do well in (maybe math) and focus on that thing. Initially, you may be uncomfortable and feel even less intelligent than you did before, but if you study or practice diligently, you’ll become more confident, and you’ll make new connections in your mind.
11. Teach others. In order to teach something to somebody else, you’ve got to know it pretty well. When you try to explain an idea or skill to somebody else, you’ll not only remember it better yourself, you’ll also find that the other person’s questions will help you find out how well you really know what you’re talking about.
12. Learn a new word each day. Go through the dictionary and find a word that you don't know already, then practice using it throughout the day.
13. Do your homework if you're in school! Don't procrastinate, finish it last minute, or copy someone's paper. The homework is there for practice, and when you do it, you'll become more confident in that subject. But remember, homework time is not the same as study time, so you can't count homework as studying.
Tips
* Don't limit yourself to what your teachers give you. If you already know everything on your grade level, don't stop studying. Try high school work, then college level — always challenge yourself.
* Don't limit yourself to "smart subjects"; learn about whatever interests you, as this will usually lead to an interest in "smart" subjects. You don't have to start with nuclear physics to be smart.
* Besides looking to learn, always look for new ways to learn. If you aren't big on reading, try watching people, or talking to people, and even the TV - there are many many educational channels available.
* Don't learn simply to learn, it will not work. Find a way to be interested in it, make it fun and you will learn faster, and remember more.
* Always remember that you can’t know everything. Why would you want to, anyway? Being good at one or two things can be more valuable than being considered brilliant.
* Some psychologists now say there are multiple types of intelligence, such as interpersonal intelligence (how to interact and get along with people) and bodily intelligence (coordination, athleticism). Don’t neglect to nurture these aspects of yourself. Even if they don’t make you “smarter,” they can help you lead a happier, more well-rounded life.
* Get enough sleep. Some researchers say, while you sleep, your brain makes new connections. For example if you don't understand how to perform a math equation completely and you 'sleep on it', there is a chance that your brain will have figured it out while you slept.
* Learn a new language because that can open doors to other sources of knowledge. If you can speak to a Chinese Scientist, who does not speak English, you may learn something easier.
Scientists in the U.S. are developing a laser gun that could kill millions of mosquitoes in minutes.The laser, which has been dubbed a "weapon of mosquito destruction" fires at mosquitoes once it detects the audio frequency created by the beating of its wings.
The laser beam then destroys the mosquito, burning it on the spot.Click here for more
Developed by some of the astrophysicists involved in what was known as the "Star Wars" anti-missile programs during the Cold War, the project is meant to prevent the spread of malaria.
Lead scientist on the project, Dr. Jordin Kare, told CNN that the laser would be able to sweep an area and "toast millions of mosquitoes in a few minutes."
Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites that are transmitted to people from the bites of female mosquitoes.t is particularly prevalent in tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world and kills an African child every 30 seconds, according to the World Health Organization.
There are an estimated 300 million acute cases of malaria each year globally, resulting in more than one million deaths, the WHO reports.
Responding to questions about any potential harm the laser could pose to the eco-system, Kare said: "There is no such thing as a good mosquito, there's nothing that feeds exclusively on them. No one would miss mosquitoes," he said.
"In any case," he added. "The laser is able to distinguish between mosquitoes that go after people and those that aren't dangerous."
He added that other insects would not be affected by the laser's beam.
The research was commissioned by Intellectual Ventures, a Washington, U.S.-based company that was founded by Nathan Myhrvold, a former Microsoft Corporation executive.
His previous boss, Bill Gates, who funded the research, asked Myhrvold to look into new ways of combating malaria.source:CNN
“People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live…[We] never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.”
Albert Einstein
One sign of the lack of faith in the future progress of technology and the poor acceptance of the neurological basis for mind is the way in which our society treats the “post-mortem” human brain.
In some cases, the brains of those whom modern medicine cannot help are removed after cardiopulmonary arrest and donated (by the permission of the patient or the family) CLICK HERE TO READ MORE fo
for research. In such cases, the brains are preserved so they can be studied over a long period of time. They are also sectioned and prepared in other ways for examination. Such donated brains have helped scientists learn about the human brain, with an eye to improving methods for treating conditions such as Alzheimer’s or mental illness. However, other brains have been preserved mainly because they belonged to famous people.
One of the more famous cases is the brain of Albert Einstein, removed in 1955 and preserved apparently without his or his family’s permission, and then made available for study. According to an NPR report, Einstein’s brain was fixed, sectioned into over 200 blocks, embedded in celloidin, and then stored in formalin.
Since that time, Einstein’s brain has been further sectioned and divided among researchers. A 1985 study by Diamond et al. reported that the Einstein brain sections’ neurons were still observable, and the study’s authors even assumed the number of neurons preserved in Einstein’s brain would be the same as those in recent preserved brains.
Presumably, people have wanted to study the brains of famous people in order to learn something about what made those people special. Turning a person into a mere object of study is a questionable notion, though, and the idea that the study could yield any information about the person’s mind underscores how it is widely accepted by scientists that the brain instantiates the mind, and thus the person.
Neuroscience is still too much in its infancy to make much sense of the evidence of the brain, as the scientific reception to the Diamond study showed. We do not yet know how to “read” the brain for the specific memories and personality traits and other phenomena of mind stored in it. However, because we do know enough now to know that the mind arises from the brain, we must realize that to preserve the brain is to preserve the potential of mind, and to preserve the potential of mind is to preserve the possibility of life for the person whose brain it was.
The neural basis of personhood sits ill with older notions such as immaterial souls or spirits. The neural basis of personhood also fits poorly with existing medical and public policies such as commonly accepted definitions of death and laws related to end of life. If death is understood as irreversible damage to certain identity-critical areas of the brain, the irreversibility of such damage is put into question by every advance in the treatment of injury and disease of the brain, as well as by the brain’s mysterious ability to recover from conditions such as minimally conscious state after many years. The cardiopulmonary-arrest definition of death does not involve the condition of the brain, and the usual definitions of brain-death do not distinguish between identity-critical areas or aspects of the brain and other areas or aspects of the brain. A more rigorous definition of personal death has been developed by Ralph Merkle, who states:
“A person is dead according to the information-theoretic criterion if their memories, personality, hopes, dreams, etc. have been destroyed in the information-theoretic sense. That is, if the structures in the brain that encode memory and personality have been so disrupted that it is no longer possible in principle to restore them to an appropriate functional state then the person is dead. If the structures that encode memory and personality are sufficiently intact that inference of the memory and personality are feasible in principle, and therefore restoration to an appropriate functional state is likewise feasible in principle, then the person is not dead.”
Although there is still some lack of clarity about the “etc.” and “appropriate functional state”, this definition of death at least is founded on the neural basis of personhood. Those who believe in the future progress of technology and accept the neural basis of personhood are led inevitably to understand that preserving the brain is preserving the person, potentially for later resuscitation.
It is not impossible to imagine that, in a more advanced future time, the formalin-fixed, celloidin-embedded brain sections could be reassambled, and if the synaptic circuitry of the neurons were well preserved, any significant damage could be repaired. The brain might be able to be returned to a viable state by reversal of the fixation and removal of the celloidin embedding. Resuscitation of an isolated brain would be unacceptable, but eventually it might be possible to restore the rest of the body around the brain by cloning or regeneration of the cells or some other prosthetic embodiment.
As amazing as it may seem, a patient reduced to a preserved brain, whose mind would be in a stopped state, might be able to be healed, that is, totally restored to a healthy body and a mind which could resume the life it left off, with all the memories and personality intact.
The case of Albert Einstein’s brain is unfortunate. All the impudent cutting, handing around, and tampering with Einstein’s brains sections, and the crude preservation method, may have irreversibly damaged the neural basis of his personhood. Yet we do not know enough today about the brain to know how much of it needs to be preserved, and in what state, to be able to revive a person with future technology. The preservation of the brain, though, would provide a theoretical possibility of future resuscitation. It may not be possible to someday restore Albert Einstein from the remains of his brain, but if it were possible, those in possession of the brain sections would first have to be willing to consider whether their “specimens” might be the restorable fragments of a still potentially living person who deserves to live more than to be studied.
Smiling is a great way to make yourself stand out while helping your body to function better. Smile to improve your health, your stress level, and your attractiveness. Smiling is just one fun way to live longer read about the others and try as many as you can.
Note: Stay up-to-date on longevity and anti-aging with my weekly newsletter.
1. Smiling Makes Us Attractive
We are drawn to people who smile. There is an attraction factor. We want to know a smiling person and figure out what is so good. Frowns, scowls and grimaces all push people away -- but a smile draws them in.
2. Smiling Changes Our Mood
Next time you are feeling down, try putting on a smile. There's a good chance you mood will change for the better. Smiling can trick the body into helping you change your mood.
3. Smiling Is Contagious
When someone is smiling they lighten up the room, change the moods of others, and make things happier. A smiling person brings happiness with them. Smile lots and you will draw people to you.CLICK HERE FOR MORE REASONS
4. Smiling Relieves Stress
Stress can really show up in our faces. Smiling helps to prevent us from looking tired, worn down, and overwhelmed. When you are stressed, take time to put on a smile. The stress should be reduced and you'll be better able to take action.
5. Smiling Boosts Your Immune System
Smiling helps the immune system to work better. When you smile, immune function improves possibly because you are more relaxed. Prevent the flu and colds by smiling.
6. Smiling Lowers Your Blood Pressure
When you smile, there is a measurable reduction in your blood pressure. Give it a try if you have a blood pressure monitor at home. Sit for a few minutes, take a reading. Then smile for a minute and take another reading while still smiling. Do you notice a difference?
7. Smiling Releases Endorphins, Natural Pain Killers and Serotonin
Studies have shown that smiling releases endorphins, natural pain killers, and serotonin. Together these three make us feel good. Smiling is a natural drug.
8. Smiling Lifts the Face and Makes You Look Younger
The muscles we use to smile lift the face, making a person appear younger. Don't go for a face lift, just try smiling your way through the day -- you'll look younger and feel better.
9. Smiling Makes You Seem Successful
Smiling people appear more confident, are more likely to be promoted, and more likely to be approached. Put on a smile at meetings and appointments and people will react to you differently.
10. Smiling Helps You Stay Positive
Try this test: Smile. Now try to think of something negative without losing the smile. It's hard. When we smile our body is sending the rest of us a message that "Life is Good!" Stay away from depression, stress and worry by smiling.
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