10 Craziest Facts About The Human Body

You need sleep as much as you need food. Many people neglect the importance of having enough sleep without knowing that humans can actually survive longer without food than without sleep.

read more | digg story

Ambition !!

Liz Murray grew up in the Bronx, New York City. Addicted to drugs, her parents sometimes sold household items in order to get their fix. As a child, Liz hated school because when she did go, she was teased: there was no one to make sure that she showered or got up on time. As Liz grew older, her parents lost their apartment, and her father ended up in shelters. For a time Liz was placed in a group home. Her mother, who suffered from AIDS, became increasingly ill and was hospitalized. Rather than submit to the dehumanization and sadness that had characterized her experience in foster care, Liz chose to fend for herself. Liz slept on friends' couches or floors at odd hours, camped outside or rode the subway all night.

After her mother's death, Liz, then 16, felt that event as "a slap in the face" that caused her to question where her life was going. With an eighth-grade education, Liz decided that, as she said, "Life rewards action. I was going to go out there and... have action in my life every day instead of this stagnant behavior that I had been partaking in for so long."

Liz was admitted an alternative high school, the Humanities Preparatory Academy, where she doubled her course-load and completed high school in only two years. One of the top ten students in the school, Liz went on a school-sponsored trip to Boston and walked through Harvard Yard. "It's not as though I had some sort of epiphany at the moment ... It was just more that I got jealous of how these students had so much opportunities, and I'd felt that I'd had very little. And so then I thought, `Well, what's the difference between me and anyone here?' And I filled in all the gaps."

Her grades qualified Liz for the New York Times College Scholarship, and she applied for and was admitted to Harvard. But far from resting on those considerable laurels, Liz continued to break new ground. A member of the Washington Speakers' Bureau, Liz has found she has "a knack for" sharing her story and insights with audiences across the country. Her story was adapted for film by Lifetime Television in the 2003 film "Homeless to Harvard: the Liz Murray Story." Liz is also an avid writer whose memoirs, "Breaking Night," were published in 2005. Liz returned to New York City to care for her ill father, and is currently pursuing a master's degree in psychology and sociology at Columbia University.

20 Common Cooking Ingredients that Also Work as Medications

The use of herbal treatments for everything from sore throats to cancer has become more and more common with every passing year. We all know about the herbal supplements like St. John’s Wort that can help you with chronic health problems, but did you know that many common edible herbs can provide impressive health benefits?

read more | digg story

Retrain Your Brain; Become a Creature of New Habits

It seems antithetical to talk about habits in the same context as creativity and innovation. But brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.

read more | digg story

5 Tips to Help You Live a Well-Balanced Life

With the hustle and bustle of our everyday lives, we often find ourselves yearning for a quieter, more balanced life. If your life has come to resemble an endless race to the finish line, take a look at the suggestions below to bring a greater sense of peace, calm, and even simplicity back into your life.

read more | digg story

16 Tips For Getting Good Sleep

There's a lot of advice out there about getting good sleep -- it's VERY important. We quickly adjust to being sleep-deprived, and don't notice that we aren't functioning at a normal level, but lack of sleep really affects us. If you're feeling blue or listless, try going to sleep thirty minutes earlier for a week. It can really help.

read more | digg story

CONFIDENCE- Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was born in 1879 at Ulm in Württemberg, Germany. At age five, his father showed him a pocket compass, and Einstein realized that something in "empty" space acted upon the needle; he would later describe the experience as one of the most revelatory of his life. Though he built models and mechanical devices for fun, he was considered a slow learner, possibly due to dyslexia, simple shyness, or the significantly rare and unusual structure of his brain (as seen following his death). He later credited his development of the theory of relativity to this slowness, saying that by pondering space and time later than most children, he was able to apply a more developed intellect.

Einstein began to learn mathematics at about age twelve. There is a recurring rumor that he failed mathematics later in his education, but this is untrue; a change in the way grades were assigned caused confusion years later.

His failure of the liberal arts portion of the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (Federal Swiss Polytechnic University, in Zurich) entrance exam the following year was a setback; he was sent by his family to Aarau, Switzerland to finish secondary school, and received his diploma in 1896. In 1900, he earned a teaching diploma at the Swiss Polytechninc University and was accepted as a Swiss citizen in 1901. During this time Einstein discussed his scientific interests with a group of close friends.

Upon graduation, Einstein could not find a teaching post, and instead, started to work at the Swiss Patent office. He judged the worth of inventors' patent applications for devices that required a knowledge of physics to understand. He obtained his doctorate after submitting his thesis "On a new determination of molecular dimensions" in 1905.

That same year, he wrote four articles that provided the foundation of modern physics, without much scientific literature to refer to or many scientific colleagues to discuss the theories with. Most physicists agree that three of those papers (Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect, and special relativity) deserved Nobel prizes. Only the photoelectric effect would win in 1921.

Albert Einstein was much respected for his kind and friendly demeanor rooted in his pacifism. He occasionally had a playful sense of humour, and enjoyed playing the violin and sailing. He was also the stereotypical "absent-minded professor" he was often forgetful of everyday items, such as keys, and would focus so intently on solving physics problems that he would often become oblivious to his surroundings. He died on April 18, 1955 in Princeton, New Jersey.

 

The Orgasmic Mind: The Neurological Roots of Sexual Pleasure

Achieving sexual climax requires a complex conspiracy of sensory and psychological signals —and the eventual silencing of critical brain areas. Testosterone, a hormone ordinarily produced by the ovaries, is linked to female sexual function, and the women in this 2005 study had undergone operations to remove their ovaries.

read more | digg story

Memory Distortion and its Connection to Reality

"Memory is the scaffolding upon which all mental life is constructed."-GF Memory enables us to learn, make sense of the present, and contemplate the future via exploiting information from our past. The “scaffolding” is fragile and often flawed. Not a surprising claim since we are all prone to forgetting birthdays, names, and the such......

read more | digg story

7 Secrets to Improve Your Ability to Learn

No matter what your age, throughout your life you will be learning. Your formal education ends with high school, but for many the learning never ends. Here are some secrets for improving your ability to learn. Most apply to classes, but you can adapt them to any learning situation

read more | digg story

Don't Let Life Pin You Down- An Excerpt from Finish Strong

"Don't Let Life Pin You Down" An Excerpt from Finish Strong By Dan Green

Kyle Maynard is a regular guy with a love to compete. He knows that to truly live you must set your sights on a goal and never give up. The fire that burns in his belly helped propel him to contend for the Georgia state high school wrestling championship in 2004. Not such a big deal you might say – except for the remarkable fact that Kyle has no arms or legs. He was born a congenital amputee – his arms ending at his elbows, his legs at his knees.

The first time I saw Kyle on an ESPN special (he won an ESPY award for the Best Athlete with a Disability in 2004) I was immediately struck by how normal he seemed. During the special, they showed Kyle doing all of the things that any other person or athlete would do.

He spoke with passion and conviction and he never left me with the impression that the world owed him anything. I was amazed to see him training hard, lifting weights – he has cannon balls for shoulders. Using a specially designed attachment, he was pushing more than double his own body weight. I was instantly inspired to learn more about this amazing person.

From the beginning, Kyle's parents, Anita and Scott, were determined to raise a normal child. They insisted that he learned to feed himself and play with the other kids like any other child would do,

When Kyle saw other kids picking up crayons with their fingers, he learned to pick them up by using the crease in his short, but sensitive biceps.

His grandmother Betty was a source of inspiration and would often take him to the grocery store where she would instill a sense of confidence by encouraging Kyle to sit up and look folks in the eye and smile. He was fitted with prosthetic devices at a young age, but quickly dismissed them because they were too restrictive. He wanted to be free to run and play just like the other kids and those devices kept him from doing so.

Kyle led an active childhood. He played street hockey with his friends (he was the goalie) and in sixth grade was able to make the football team. Kyle hung tough on the football team, but his physical differences put him at a disadvantage against other players. Eventually, his father encouraged him to try another sport that would put Kyle on an even plane with his competition – wrestling.

Kyle started wrestling in sixth grade. He lost his first 35 matches in a row. During this period of time, Kyle had to dig deep to find the confidence to continue. Kyle however, was a warrior and he didn't like to lose. With the support of his father, a former wrestler, he learned to train with weights, became very strong and learned some moves unique to his strengths. Kyle overcame the self-doubt he felt during his early wrestling days and became a winner. In his senior year, Kyle won 35 times on the varsity squad and qualified for the state championship. In the state tournament, Kyle won his first three matches and had to face his final opponent with a broken nose. Although Kyle did not win the state championship, he gained a level of self-confidence and became a source of inspiration for everyone that he met.

Kyle graduated high school and attends the University of Georgia, where he continues to wrestle and inspire others. As a member of the Washington Speaker's Bureau, Kyle is regularly asked to give motivational talks. But what he has to say has little to do with his perceived physical differences. Rather, he talks of overcoming fear and doubt and what it takes to compete and win – just as any other champion would do. To this day, Kyle has never been pinned by an opponent. What a fitting metaphor for his life.

 

8 Reasons Why This Is The Dumbest Generation

Bauerlein writes: "The ignorance is hard to believe ... It isn't enough to say that these young people are uninterested in world realities. They are actively cut off from them. ...

read more | digg story

The Value of Devotion

The doctors told Dick Hoyt that his infant son Rick should be institutionalized. There was no hope, they said, of Rick being anything more than a vegetable.

Four decades later, Rick and Dick Hoyt have competed over 65 marathons, 206 triathlons and hundreds of other events as a father-son team. Rick, whose father was told he was incapable of intellectual activity, graduated from Boston University in 1993. The devotion of this remarkable pair to each other and their goals has enabled them both to accomplish things that neither would have done alone.

During Rick's birth in 1962, the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, cutting off oxygen to his brain. Rick is a spastic quadriplegic, has cerebral palsy, and is unable to speak. Despite the doctors' grim prognosis, Dick and his wife Judy raised him at home and struggled to get him admitted to public schools.

Though Rick could not speak, his parents knew that he was just as intelligent as his siblings. Dick convinced a group of engineers from Tufts University to build a "communicator" for his son. By hitting a switch with the side of his head, Rick selects letters to form words and sentences.

Rick was attending public school two years later, when a five-mile benefit run was held for a local lacrosse player who had been paralyzed in an accident. Rick wanted to participate. Dick was not a runner, but agreed to push Rick in his wheelchair. During the run, Rick felt as though he simply wasn't handicapped anymore - he was just one of the runners. Wanting to give Rick this feeling as often as possible, Dick ran in an increasing number of events with his son.

As "Team Hoyt" began competing in earnest in the late 1970s, they were often treated as outsiders and avoided by other competitors. What began as a way for Rick Hoyt to experience inclusion and equality broadened. It became a way to send a message that, as Rick said, "everybody should be included in everyday life." The duo's first Boston Marathon in 1981 yielded a finish in the top quarter of the field, and attitudes began changing. "In the beginning no one would come up to me," recalled Rick. Now, he says, "many athletes will come up to me before the race or triathlon to wish me luck."

Dick has ran, ridden and swam literally thousands of miles to be with and support his son. This has enabled Rick to live a full and purposeful life - but it turns out that, in a way, Rick has saved his father's life as well. After a mild heart attack, Dick's doctors told him that he may have died 15 years ago if he weren't in such good shape.

Team Hoyt's total commitment to each other and to what they do ensures that they are constantly challenging themselves. In addition to their athletic events, the Hoyts tour the country to speak about their experiences. They have also established the Hoyt Fund, which is supports educational and technological efforts surrounding persons with disabilities. They anticipate running their 26th Boston Marathon in April.

Can you suffer from chronic tiredness?

Learn what chronic tiredness is and how you can manage it.

read more | digg story

Why Does the Brain Need So Much Power?

It is well established that the brain uses more energy than any other human organ, accounting for up to 20 percent of the body's total haul.

read more | digg story